ahh ...ease up a bit Eric.  Ol' Ma Nature has been doling out this crap for thousands of years now in case you haven't been paying attention.  It's not like it's something new (global warming my ass *sigh*).  Sure it seems bad right now, but it's a cyclical thing according to most climatoligists.  And we're in for plenty more of it for the next 10 years or so.

Back in the  early 1700's, when NOLA was founded it made a lot of sense to settle there.  It was a perfect place for an international seagoing trading port that met the US's greatest transportation route at the time (the Mississipi River).  But does it still make sense for a place to put a city?  Personally, I don't think so.  What happened there was as obvious of a possibility to those early settlers as it is to me today.  They worked hard against it, but for obvious reasons because back then it made sense to do so. Look what it's gonna cost us now though to rebuild it...only to still be in the same vulnerable position.

But just in our own time, with regards to NOLA,  you seem to have already totally forgotten about the wicked hurricane Betsy back in '65:

http://wgntv.trb.com/news/weather/weblog/wgnweather/archives/001798.html

And how can you even discount the real and TRULY most devastating disaster in American history...the hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900? (Just like Rita might be about to mimic)

http://www.noaa.gov/galveston1900/ 

Just how much pollution were we throwing at mother nature back then anyway?  It was mostly farm animal methane as I understand.

At least now we have the technical skills to give us the information we need in time to get the hell out of her way. 

Well, that is if people would just listen to today's scientists that know this stuff and not the politicians that run their communities.