ot: natural disasters, east v west coast

[bearishgurl]

spdrun, does your bldg have a flooded basement and do you have a vehicle parked in there??

[spdrun]

No flooded basement, and my car was safely parked outside of NYC the day before the storm. The building further down my block closer to the East River had a flooded basement, which actually started a minor electrical fire last night.

This was extent of flooding near me last night. The bridge in far background is the 59th St. Bridge to Queens, and it’s rather amazing that the streetlights are still burning with their bases under a foot of water:

[scaredyclassic]

one fond memory of my dad; NYC; 1970’s…when we’d hear on the radio or our staticky black n white tv that there was a hurricane or extreme storm watch, he’d urge us to come hang out with him in his room with the window of his bedroom wide open, looking out at NYC from th 6th floor, watching for an hour or so for the hurricane. he drank little tiny Miller “pony” beers while we were doing this. I recall this being very exciting and fun and I remember it happening pretty regularly….

i think this was the storm he was waiting for…

[scaredyclassic]

here’s what i used to do in NM; when there was an extreme lightning storm–frequent occurrence; id’d get my kids, strip the blankets off the bed, and go hang out on the covered porch till they fell asleep watching lightning all around.

[Jazzman]

Well it looks very much like global warming is now shouting at the top of its voice, and it still looks very much like the subject remains taboo, at least on the media. Did one commentary examine the increased frequency of droughts, floods, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and heat waves. No. You can see everyone is just too scared to come right out and say it. Why? I think you are going to start to see a migration from east to west.

[livinincali]

[quote=Jazzman]I think you are going to start to see a migration from east to west.[/quote]

That might last a little while until that 8+ earthquake shows up.

[spdrun]

Well it looks very much like global warming is now shouting at the top of its voice, and it still looks very much like the subject remains taboo, at least on the media.

Save the country, and the world. Treat all oil company employees, from the lowest to the highest, like the proverbial soldier returning from Vietnam in 1969. Basically, make them sorry to have been born.

And yeah, I realize that locking up the drug dealers doesn’t solve the drug problem. But it’s a good start. Other than that, we should fund a thousand companies like Solyndra, see what new tech sticks, and print money if needed to roll it out. Combine the New Deal and the Manhattan Project, and let’s be the guiding light of the world rather than a fuckin’ laughingstock.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=spdrun]

Well it looks very much like global warming is now shouting at the top of its voice, and it still looks very much like the subject remains taboo, at least on the media.

Save the country, and the world. Treat all oil company employees, from the lowest to the highest, like the proverbial soldier returning from Vietnam in 1969. Basically, make them sorry to have been born.[/quote]

Blithely typing away from creature comforts reaponaible

[spdrun]

Fossil fuel use per annum per capita in NYC is actually very low as compared to the rest of the country. Shared walls in apartments and houses make for good insulation, and daily travel distances are quite small.

But those things only work in a big city. What we need is a grand-scale project to convert the US economy into one based mostly on electricity and hydrogen produced using nuclear, hydro, and renewables. This should be combined with conservation wherever feasible without reducing comforts. It can be done — the challenges are engineering and financial problems at this point, not questions of theoretical physics.

The idea is to effect positive change WITHOUT reducing comforts.

[no_such_reality]

I’ve seen those claims. They’re measuring direct energy consumption and not total lifecycle impact.

For instance, NYC needs a lot of food shipped in. It also needs a lot of water shipped in. The 40+ year construction of Water Tunnel #3 comes to mind…

Or we could look at the humble coffee cup. Seems the more they look at the coffee cup, the more they question their environmental conclusions.

The household standard stoneware mug is far more damaging than paper or styrofoam.

Which is beside the point. Demonizing oil company employees, actually more correctly, energy company employeees, isn’t going to help solve the problem. Those evil “oil” companies also happen to be some of the biggest green energy investors.

People really need to think about that as they get led by the media for adopting social and economic policies.

[livinincali]

[quote=spdrun]Fossil fuel use per annum per capita in NYC is actually very low as compared to the rest of the country. Shared walls in apartments and houses make for good insulation, and daily travel distances are quite small.

But those things only work in a big city. What we need is a grand-scale project to convert the US economy into one based mostly on electricity and hydrogen produced using nuclear, hydro, and renewables. This should be combined with conservation wherever feasible without reducing comforts. It can be done — the challenges are engineering and financial problems at this point, not questions of theoretical physics.

The idea is to effect positive change WITHOUT reducing comforts.[/quote]

If you include nuclear and especially LFTR (Liquid fluoride thorium reactors) it can be done. The problem is you’re fighting one hell of a fight against the environmentalists because you advocating nuclear and coal in the same sentence. There’ just no way to produce significant base load generating capabilities using renewables. Solar thermal with liquid salt might work in the Mohave desert as a base load generating technology, but you’d have to cover massive amounts of land with mirrors. I.e. like half of the Mohave to replace the west coast current energy demand.

Fusion might be a holy grail but we’re still decades away from commercial use. The ITER in Europe won’t be ready to start experiments until 2019 and the LIFE project in Livermore is still working on component tests.

[spdrun]

And by “environmentalists”, you mean pseudo-environmentalist limo-liberal scum who wouldn’t know science and engineering if it booted them in the scrotum with a steel-toed combat boot.

The choice should be couched to those mouth-breathers as follows: we’re going to have nuclear. Either we keep running existing reactors, which are on average 30-40 years old and less safe than modern designs, or we build more reactors that are both safe and clean.

[spdrun]

For instance, NYC needs a lot of food shipped in. It also needs a lot of water shipped in. The 40+ year construction of Water Tunnel #3 comes to mind…

Unless you’re living on a farm, that’s true for most of the US.

As far as the oil companies being investors, true. But it would be far better to expropriate their oil profits into submission, forcing them to either adapt (much more quickly than they are) or die. The idea should be to raise fossil fuel energy costs to the point where nascent clean tech can compete, and to use the money expropriated to fund development and roll-out of that tech.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=spdrun]

For instance, NYC needs a lot of food shipped in. It also needs a lot of water shipped in. The 40+ year construction of Water Tunnel #3 comes to mind…

Unless you’re living on a farm, that’s true for most of the US.

As far as the oil companies being investors, true. But it would be far better to expropriate their oil profits into submission, forcing them to either adapt (much more quickly than they are) or die. The idea should be to raise fossil fuel energy costs to the point where nascent clean tech can compete, and to use the money expropriated to fund development and roll-out of that tech.[/quote]

LOL, meanwhile, China’s already realized CO2 increase from coal consumption exceeds Kyoto’s CO2 reductions by 4:1…

[spdrun]

More wrongs don’t make a right. Not to mention, if we place a 250% tariff on Chinese products, we could very easily and quickly take the wind out of their economy’s sails. The better if it’s combined with covert action to damage their government (read: Tiananmen 2.0).

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