Monday, May 23, 2011

Disasters in America.......wassup?

Isn't it awful and just plain WEIRD that we've had so many tornadoes (flattening countless towns and killing, including 89 more dead in Missouri Sunday), volcanoes, record-breaking floods (natural and man-made...leaving whole towns destroyed just to save New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and I mean "just"), and now stink bugs are on the verge of destroying thousands and thousands of acres of crops?
It was bad enough when California's liberal San Francisco bunch shut the water off in our whole Central Valley (approximately 1/3 the food capital of the whole country, by the way) for a useless tiny fish that they feared would grow extinct though it thrives in the Pacific Northwest....it's bad enough that our Southern coast was practically destroyed and may never fully recover its bounty due to the British Petroleum spill.........Sure, the last two situations I describe are man-made disasters, but how much more can America take? 
How will we dig ourselves out of the economic ramifications of all of this , let along the emotional
Very lately, it's just so much in such a short time.......really, wassup? 
geeeeeeeeZ

22 comments:

Karen K said...

It IS rather strange, isn't it?

Always On Watch said...

We're headed for economic disaster with all these natural disasters.

Should we be expecting a food shortage this summer? Probably. Or, at the least, through-the-roof prices for food.

Joe said...

It's the cooling of global warming.

Bob said...

And the lady said, "...wassup?"

Glad you asked.

Weather related stuff: We are in a La Nina phase in the ENSO cycle, which means that the Pacific currents change , causing the jet stream flow over the North American continent to change, leading to more extreme weather events such as flooding, tornados, and Atlantic hurricanes. Coupled with the cold winter, and record snow melts, the old Mississippi River is flooding, which is not an unexpected occurance.

Last year was a El Nino year, meaning that it was a lot warmer with fewer extreme weather events, and no Atlantic hurricanes making landfall on the North American continent.

Having grown up in Memphis I know it is not unusual for the river to flood the Arkansas side for miles, and backing up rivers in the process.

For a while, I was a radio station engineer working in a little house on 25 foot stilts in the Arkansas Mississippi River bottoms just over the bridge from Memphis. This transmitter house was next to the US Army Corps of Engineers facility which was built behind levees a good bit higher than our little building.

The Corps of Engineers knows how high the river gets, and what we see is not unusual in terms of decadal variations. That's what they plan on, as in the spillways on the lower river in Louisiana.

The recently opened barriers into the Atchafalaya basin are just allowing the river to do what it wishes.

From Wikepedia: If the Mississippi were allowed to flow freely, the Atchafalaya would capture the main flow of the Mississippi, permitting the Mississippi to bypass its current path through Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

As far as the BP spill goes, most of the Gulf Coast has physically recovered, and, indeed, most of the Florida beaches were never in trouble of getting a lube job. Mississippi and Alabama had relatively little damage.

However, Louisiana is the state with most of the physical damage, and nature seems to be mitigating that damage, and correcting itself.

With that said, BP still has a long way to go in cleaning the environment, and especially making good on the monetary losses the good people of Louisiana have suffered.

Sorry about the long post. You did ask.

Mark said...

In the aftermath of Harold Campings failed end of the world prediction, I am left thinking that these disasters are all part of the actual "end of days" scenario.

All the politics, nature, and apostasy point to the fulfillment of the scripture, Mark 13:8: "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows."

You want to know "wassup?"

That.

Ducky's here said...

Let's say it's 25 billion. Shut down the Afghanistan fiasco and invest domestically in the reconstruction.

That's easy enough.

The climate change issue, well let's continue to play ostrich.

Anonymous said...

"Let's say it's 25 billion. Shut down the Afghanistan fiasco and invest domestically in the reconstruction."

What a genius! We'll borrow money to pay for B instead of borrowing money to pay for A.

We ought to be smart enough to realize that there will always be natural disasters. I laugh every time I hear someone say "earthquake proof skyscraper." There is no such thing. So the bottom line is that we should expect disasters, and plan for them. That could mean spending less on stupid things like the Afghan War, giving billions to Venezuela, billions more to Brazil, tens of billions to Pakistan (of all places), and redirecting money from the failed Department of Education to repairing infrastructure and as a hedge against —yep, natural disasters.

Of course, all of this presupposes those nitwits in Congress wise up; but I suspect the odds of that happening are about the same as getting any common sense from Ducky.

Dave Miller said...

Z, many I come in contact with say it is global climate change.

Notice I did not use the political hot term of global warming, because that term seems to carry with it a certain political baggage.

But I hope all can agree at least, that our climate is changing, at least temporarily, and leave the fight over the reasons and longevity to another day...

Also, thanks for the kind words on your other post...

Z said...

Hi, Dave, "global warming" was changed to "change" by the Gore folks because "UHOH, it's getting COLDER, too!"

The problem with it is that one almost never hears of a stat that the new stats have just reached. If we just reached the snow level or rain level of 1920, then is it really change or is it cyclical?

But, my question is bigger...bugs, oil, water, deaths, drying up hugely needed farmlands which need water just to save a fish that's originally called extinct but really isn't?............
it's almost like a concerted effort of some THING or some ONE to do a REAL job on our country.

Who knows? it's just TOO WEIRD and TOO MUCH in the last year or so.

Thersites said...

Sunspot activity is picking up again, but the sun has been relatively quiet this week.

Z said...

Thersites, as you might remember, Mr. Z was somewhat an expert on climate since he realized early on the nuttiness of Gore and his folks' claims. He researched all SORT of green remedies, most of which just don't work in practicality, too.
Lord Monckton even changed his mind after starting out on Gore's page and then actually studying sunspot cycles, etc etc......

The problem is that once you say it's not mostly human caused, that gives the simple-minded the idea that YOU ARE AGAINST A HEALTHY EARTH. THIS kind of ridiculous attack is the kind of idiocy that's dragging our country down.
If you don't like Obama, that MUST mean you're racist.
If you discuss food stamps, you're RACIST (Smile)
If you don't favor gay marriage, you must HATE GAYS.
\Where do we go from THERE?

THIS is the kind of bashing and misrepresenting by LIberals that MUST change if we want real change and real moving forward together....but, let's face it, to the uninformed, it DOES get people to have Conservatives and vote for the lefties.

I might blog on that, come to think of it....this kind of 'thinking' (I lose the term loosely) slams the door on any real progress.

Bob said...

Z: You are correct. The term "climate change" is meaningless. The climate always has changed, and always will change. It is a dynamic system.

As to the change in terminology, the alarmists quit using "global warming" and substituted "climate change" so they could, according to their definition, blame any change in the weather on climate change(Weather is NOT climate!).

The real issue is carbon dioxide. The alarmists claim that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause runaway warming. Most scientists ( like your husband) would know that this is not correct. There are no empirical studies that would lead any one to say this. It is pure speculation.

This is the real science: Carbon Dioxide is a naturally occuring gas in the earth's biosphere that is necessary for life, and increasing concentrations encourage plant growth and crop yields. It is a greenhouse gas, and as such a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere causes about 1 degree Celcius increase in average global temperature. That's all.

It will take about another one hundred years to double the concentrations from today's levels.

Since C02 is good for life, and necessary for our survival, why are the alarmists targeting CO2 emitting fossil fuels for extinction?

It gets real simple, real quick.

Our capitalist system depends on cheap energy, which means fossil fuels.There are thousands of anti-US environmentalists that want to destroy our economic base which is based on coal and petroleum products.

The arguments are not about the science. The arguments are all about politics.

Well, it seems to be a wordy day for me. Sorry about that.

BSEE's rule!

Ducky's here said...

So we borrow the money at what, 2% and the resulting economic activity isn't going to generate a 2% return, mustang?

Of course we can borrow it and invest in a depreciating asset like the military, that somehow makes sense to you.

Galbraith pretty much destroyed your type of argument. I know that s a right winger you "know economics" but you might want to read him.

Z said...

Bob, PLEASE get me your blog address again so my readers and I can check in to your latest posts...I appreciate your being here so much and am sorry I can't reciprocate: I'll put you on my blog roll when I've got it so it'll be here permanently. I wish you could link it to your blue "Bob", but I understand computer glitches,(TRUST ME)

I couldn't agree more with anything you've said here.
The thought that we know there are children in NYC who have cried themselves to sleep dreading the flooding of NY because Gore tells them so is SO disgusting, and just another way to grab their little minds and twist them to the "progressive" will.

BUT, it's not right to damage those children, you HATE THE EARTH!! :-)
Very dangerous tactic of the Left, isn't it.

Z said...

Ducky, you regard our American military as a 'depreciating asset'?

My GOD.

Scotty said...

Sunspot activity is picking up again, but the sun has been relatively quiet this week.

Sunspot activity is cyclical like most things in our solar system.

HAM radio operators, like myself; look forward to the 7 to 10 years when the sun spot cycle peaks. It makes that big sky above us even a better mirror for us to bounce our radio signals off.

Certainly, the increase in the sun spot cycle, is nothing to worry about. It may cause a bit of havoc with some radio signals and may even affect that satellite dish reception, if that’s what you use.

One person havoc is sometimes another’s joy!!:-) I LOVES bouncin' those radio signals!

Scotty said...

Ducky, you regard our American military as a 'depreciating asset'?

It shouldn't surprise ya, Z. Most libs do!

Z said...

Scotty, how stupid can people be, though...
It's like actually thinking that if Israel pushed back to 1967 borders, they'd be welcomed in the Middle East! There's just no talking to liberals about an Arab mentality or what Arab children have been taught about Jews, either. What, they're going to go back to old borders and then retrain Arab children NOT to want all Jews dead? I don't care if that's not PC to say, either..

Scotty said...

Scotty, how stupid can people be, though...
It's like actually thinking that if Israel pushed back to 1967 borders, they'd be welcomed in the Middle East!


Their souls are too dark to see the spiritual war that is really being waged there....

Bd said...

Keep letting big industry pollute unregulated and watch what happens

Ducky's here said...

Yes, z. The expenditure in Afganistan has to be constantly replenished with little wider value.

In the past the civilian economy has benefited from military research and expenditure but that is no longer widespread at all.

The money just goes down the drain.

Z said...

BD, when any of them get really unregulated, start worrying. Stop worrying when they hire, too..big gov't can't afford to hire the whole country, you know.

Ducky, I agree about Afghanistan; but it's a cheap and silly shot. I know liberals believe we'll perfectly safe once we have Jews back where the Arabs can keep an eye on them "hey! If we get 1967 borders, Palestinians will stop attacking Israel...all Muslims will be thrilled and EVERYBODY WILL BE HAPPY!" :-)
And, of course, you guys are borrowing more and more from China, soon they'll own us and we won't be able to fight them off. GOOD JOB, LEFTIES!

but, some of us still love AMerica enough to want her protected and would never look upon our military as you seem to.