Towheeblog

Divers have now traced a petroleum kleaj to a brokebn four-inch pipe about two miles offshore in Louisiana. This is presumed to have been caused by Hurricane Ida damaging. The storm alsio flooded at least ine oil refinery which may be contributing all sorts of hemicals to the surrounding water,

Add this to the extended power outages in Louisiana, the flooding and deaths in the northeastern states and it becomes painfully and expensively obvious the U.S. is not built for the changed climate reality. Overhead electic lines strung between poles? Really? We can’t encase cables in something a bit more sturdy than air? How many wind downed lines causing fires must we go through? How many drownings and power outages must we experience and then have to pay for as we continue to let people live at or just above sea level? Obstinately dumb, I see. Here in Oregon we have thousands of homes in the line of the next tsunami. Across the west many people live in fire-prone forests. When will insurance companies stop covering such baffling heedlessness?

Ida may cost insurers $18 billion and total damage estimates now run as high as $95 billion…and that probably does not include oil spill clean-up. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to move people to higher ground? Stop building exposed power lines? Recognize flood zones and then permanently evacuate them? Does any rational person still think New Orleans has to remain where it is? Ida thought we could try to be more reasonable, perhaps a tad less stubborn in confronting nature…

Meanwhile population shifts continue to places that are fated to become unliveable. Phoneix, even more insanely placed than New Orleans, in a desert getting only dryer, and near the Colorado River which doesn’t even flow to the sea any more…yes, that Phoenix is now the fifth largest city in America! Can some fine chemist turn sand into water, please?