60 Minutes to Report New Orleans is Sinking
60 Minutes in an eposide to air tonight, will report that New Orleans is sinking and residents should just face this fact. 60 Minutes gathered this information in an interview with Tim Kusky, who is the Paul C. Reinert Chair of Natural Sciences in the department of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Saint Louis University. A quick search highlights Dr. Kusky is using Katrina and Rita to get as many interviews as possible.
State officials have asked the CBS television show "60 Minutes" to postpone Sunday’s scheduled segment highlighting a scientist’s allegations that New Orleans is sinking and that residents should be induced to leave the city.
Tim Kusky, a professor in the earth sciences department at St. Louis University, asserts on the show that New Orleans residents should "face the fact that their city will be below sea level in 90 years."
He also recommends a "gradual pullout from the city, whose slow, steady slide into the sea was sped up enormously by Hurricane Katrina," according to a preview of the program.
From the broadcast: "New Orleans is going to be 15 to 18 feet below sea level, sitting off the coast of North America surrounded by a 50 to 100-foot-tall levee system to protect the city,” says Kusky, a professor in the Earth Sciences Department at St. Louis University. He estimates this will happen in 90 years. “That’s the projection, because we are losing land on the Mississippi Delta at a rate of 25 to 30 square miles per year. That’s two acres per hour that are sinking below sea level,” he tells correspondent Scott Pelley.
