Climate Change and NYC Flooding

 Climate Change and NYC Flooding

True story:

The west side highway and FDR drive used to be elevated. The elevated west side highway was an active railway with elevated exits for cars and trains right into buildings several avenues over into the city. Those were the exits and there were ramps down to the street. It was profitable for the city to destroy the elevated highways and railways  and sell the steel for the elevated highway and extension exits. So they did. It's an island why wouldn't you elevate everything including the subway. Which used to be elevated train lines. Separate from the railways and highways. All worked just fine even when the city flooded. Climate change is a catch all excuse for the den of thieves we call our representatives to ask for more money to steal instead of spending our tax dollars on us.

There was also a massive set of independently operated trolley systems that were connected from one sided of the country to the other and they honored each other's transfers coast to coast.  Trolley lines that dropped you off down the street from your house all over all the cities of the US. There are a couple of documentaries about it that you can watch for free. How and Why Big Oil Conquered the World.   

Corbett has produced tons of documentaries on his site that explain how the world really works and why things are the way they are. We don't have to waste or lives scratching our heads like idiots wondering why when we know our actual history and all the facts.

As a kid I loved riding in a car through buildings in Manhattan and riding in electric old timey cabs with extra fold up seats because of all the room in the back when a car doesn't waste all its space on an engine and gas tank. The electric trolley on 14th Street was a special treat.

I think bio-engineering and habitat engineering are smarter

I posted this in the comments section of a science post about the current thinking that the only solution to climate change is climate engineering. I think that is a bad idea. Not just because it encourages the fantasy of terraforming other planets and wild irrational space travel. But also because it's a wrong headed idea based on a premise that we don't have the technology to survive and thrive in any environment. It is in our best interests to engineer our way out of our current environmental mismatch. My TEDTalks.com fueled diatribe follows.

Geo-engineering is a bad idea and a waste of resources that should be going to bio-engineering and habitat engineering research, development, and manufacturing. The threats to our existence on our planet are much farther ranging than climate change. Climate change is a natural process. Ice ages are where the glaciers that created the great lakes and that have recently melted away in other places come from. We've got a swing by the gravitational force of the black hole at the center of our galaxy through direct alignment with our Sun. Which should be an interesting demonstration of just how powerful the magnetic and gravitational field of a black hole at that distance is when focused through a gravitational field as powerful as our Sun's. We've got the possibility of several disasters that are happen on a cyclical basis around that same time. The two super volcanoes. One right here in or I should say that is Yellowstone Park. The occasional reversal, polarity flipping, and 1000 year disappearances of the earths magnetic field that coincidentally keeps the Sun from burning off our atmosphere. There is also the Atlantic shelf that should wipe the Americas clear of anything not bedrock if it shifts significantly. And that is not even mentioning the many untracked solar and stellar objects that could really ruin our day or the fact that the moon is slowly floating away and will have a massive effect on our climate.

My point is that if we are planning to survive beyond our infancy. Yes I say infancy because it is infantile to chase after the idea of money as a life goal. And yes I say idea because that is all money or any possession is. Let us come up with a plan that lays out exactly what kind of technology we would need to survive all of these events. No, not survive, but thrive in the face of all of these events and more. The "rich" are holding back the future because they incorrectly believe it is unprofitable to them to have everyone off the grid and living free. If you could satisfy all of your energy needs from the Sun via locally and communally generated wind power, water power, sea power, thermo-electric, magnetosphere, solar collector, or what have you. And you dealt with others as equals. Everyone being responsible for themselves and the world as a whole without arbitrary governance by ignorance encouraged by profiteers. And you were educated about the realities of our ability to harness even the simplest of technologies to solve all of our problems like drought, famine, hunger, transportation, shelter, communication, and survival. You would no longer be a consumer. In fact for the cost of a car (~$20,000) you could buy all the equipment needed to setup a micro-factory and be a manufacturer. We need to collaborate on using the technology that is already available to build the technology needed to thrive during extreme adversity. We must evolve beyond the womb of the Earth. To do so we don't need to travel to other planets and terraform them to match our requirements. What we need is to evolve by raising the bar and saying we aren't dependent on a very fragile environment to survive. We have the technology we need the will.