Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 12:29:43 -0500
Reply-To: Stan Wilder <wilden1-1@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stan Wilder <wilden1-1@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: OT Hurricanes--really an accident? A fryeday tale- not
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You have to remember that we've always had hurricane season every year.
We've never skipped a year.
As for Galveston Island it's just a matter of greed that the island is still
populated after the 1900 Hurricane. There is very little there besides a
boardwalk on the seawall about five miles long and lots of beer joints
along a beach separated by swim gear shops and souvenir shops. (the island
is 30 miles long but the seawall is only about 5 miles long)
The Maffa used the Island as a gambling Haven back in the 30s because it was
"Outside the law" with only the one dangerous bridge for island access.
Galveston has an interesting history that includes Priates, Mafia and many
colorful characters in it's history.
The low lying area around Galveston contains lots of houses up on stilts or
telephone pole mountings this tells me that the owners are saying "Yes I
know it's coming". But they still buy the houses in that sweltering mosquito
basin for some insane reason.
As much as 80% of these beach homes are weekender homes.
Although Galveston has a sea wall the tidal surge will bypass the seawall,
surrounding the island and enter from the backside where it's just marshes.
The place needs a good Police department during the fair weather months but
it falls dead calm in the cold weather months.
The area West of Galveston island along the only coast road has very space
population for the next 200 miles over to Corpus Christi TX. As you drive
West on the coast road you'll see many abandoned A frame houses and
squatters shacks.
The most ludicrous thing is the small huddles of beach homes with a sand
berm pushed up to protect them from the sea. The sea breeze erodes these
berms every month and they must be pushed back up as the beach erodes and
leaves the houses farther from the sea or the tide brings in sand stirred up
by ocean going barge traffic and deposits it on the beach along with tar
balls, floating plastic bottles, pieces of Styrofoam coolers and any number
of condoms, sanitary napkins and the ever present disposable beer bottles.
With every incoming tide you get another ton of trash to clean off your
private beach but the tar balls remain nearly forever, staining your feet
and stinking up the beach.
With about eight refineries with 20 miles I guess Galveston Island with
fresh sear breezes and the surround marsh residential developments offer
some relief from the never ending stink of the refinery processes.
The loss of the near to shore offshore drilling rigs and damage to the many
refineries could be fifty times the value of the structures on Galveston
island. Most of the oil related structures are insured but we will be paying
higher insurance rates forever and higher gas prices for their replacement.
Stan Wilder
Engine Ceramics
214-352-4931
www.engineceramics.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Keezer" <warmerwagen@YAHOO.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 12:42 AM
Subject: Re: OT Hurricanes--really an accident? A fryeday tale- not
> You forgot to blame Bush!
>
> I think Jupiter or Saturn or one of those big
> planets have atmospheres made of carbon dioxide
> and suplhuric acid and temperatures over 200 F.
>
> It makes me wonder if they had a politician there
> to blame it on.
>
> Even still, if you could save the world from
> "global warming" , you gain nothing if you are
> wiped out in an earthquake , volcanic eruption or
> on your daily commute.
>
> Robert
> 1982 Westfalia
>
> --- Don Spence <dkspence@TELUS.NET> wrote:
>
> > Once upon a time, long long ago, this planet
> > was a revolving mass of
> > gas. Now whether you believe it was divine
> > intervention or natural
> > processes, the gasses solidified, a planet was
> > born and plant life
> > appeared and began the arduous task of bringing
> > the atmospheric carbon
> > dioxide level down to a point where the
> > atmosphere held enough of the
> > sun's heat to support a biosphere (plants and
> > animals) but not enough
> > to fry it. Over time, the biosphere settled
> > into a balance that
> > supported all the life forms including that
> > late comer, homo sapiens
> > and his mate hetero sapiens.
> > The plants did this by capturing atmospheric
> > carbon dioxide in their
> > cells and then falling down dead on each other.
> > Sometimes they would
> > fall in the rivers and their bodies would make
> > dams and little pieces
> > of sand would be trapped and cover them all up.
> > The animals helped too
> > as they ate the plants, stored the carbon in
> > their bodies and fell down
> > dead too. The dinosaurs helped a lot because
> > they were so big and ate a
> > lot of plants. It came to pass that a lot of
> > them fell down dead all
> > together. Some say it was a natural disaster
> > that made this happen.
> > Others think the divine interventionist was
> > getting impatient so it
> > made them all fall down dead together to speed
> > things along. Over tens
> > of thousands of years (some say millions, some
> > say in six days but then
> > how long was a day way back then) their bodies
> > rotted and turned into
> > peat or coal or oil or natural gas that was all
> > buried away so it
> > couldn't escape back into the atmosphere. This
> > was good for the planet
> > because now a whole new multitude of organisms
> > could prosper and
> > multiply. Things like rats and bats, bugs and
> > flies and cockroaches and
> > bacteria and eventually humans found a place in
> > the forests, streams
> > mountains and plains on the good earth.
> >
> > All was good. A balance had been reached. The
> > poles were no longer
> > covered with tropical forests but had cooled so
> > they captured the extra
> > water in ice caps and snow fields. This too was
> > good because it created
> > a nice place for the Clauses to live and a lot
> > of ocean front property
> > for wealthy people to buy up. But I'm getting
> > ahead of myself.
> >
> > Sometime after the balance was reached it
> > became apparent that
> > conditions were also good for a human race. So,
> > depending on your point
> > of view, humans either rose out of the mud by
> > getting up on their hind
> > legs or with the assistance of the divine
> > potter and began to multiply.
> > For awhile this was good too as they did their
> > share of concentrating
> > the carbon and falling down dead.
> >
> > But it seems that when they fell down dead, for
> > some bizarre reason
> > they did so where they lived and they smelled
> > real bad. Particularly
> > after they were dead.
> > Now as it happened, these were social
> > creatures. At least during mating
> > season which for humans was continuous, so the
> > ones who hadn't yet
> > fallen down dead had a choice. Either move on
> > or do something with the
> > fallen down dead ones. For awhile they moved
> > on. Then something
> > happened and they discovered that instead of
> > running around all over
> > the place trying to find some plants to eat,
> > you could gather some
> > seeds and throw them on the ground and they
> > would grow new plants that
> > you could eat. There was a down side to this of
> > course. Because you had
> > to wait around for them to grow, you were no
> > longer able to simply walk
> > away from the fallen down dead. What to do?
> > It didn't take long for them to figure out that
> > if you covered them
> > with dirt they didn't smell so bad. So they did
> > that. But that created
> > another problem. Now you had all these mounds
> > of dirt all over the
> > place that you were always bumping into,
> > especially at night as they
> > hadn't discovered streetlights yet. (Or the
> > Divine planner was holding
> > out on them?)
> >
> > A new plan was needed! And so it was that they
> > began the custom of
> > burying the smelly fallen down dead below grade
> > instead of above grade.
> > The wiser among them noted that some ground,
> > notably peat bogs, was
> > easier to dig in than other harder ground. As
> > luck would have it, a
> > lightning bolt (naturally occurring or
> > intelligently designed?) jumped
> > down and struck that pile of peat before they
> > could put it back in the
> > hole and low and behold it caught fire.
> > This was a good thing if you were a cold smelly
> > human. This was not so
> > good a thing if you were the atmosphere because
> > the burning of peat was
> > releasing some of that captured carbon back
> > into the air. But because
> > there were not many humans, and they hadn't yet
> > invented the Bic
> > lighter, it didn't really have much effect.
> > Besides, the planet was
> > covered with forests and they would just eat it
> > back up for dessert.
> >
> > As time passed and humans really got into this
> > farming thing, they
> > found they had to spend less time hunting and
> > gathering and could spend
> > more time exploring things like the missionary
> > position with the
> > expected results. ( It's true. I saw it in a
> > movie, "Quest for Fire" )
> > Now with all the missionarying going on there
> > were more and more humans
> > which meant, you guessed it, that more and more
> > of them were falling
> > down dead. This again created a problem because
> > with their primitive
> > tools it was hard to keep up. Or keep them down
> > under the ground where
> > they wouldn't smell. Necessity being the mother
> > of invention, they soon
> > realized it was time to invent the shovel and
> > to make a long long story
> > shorter, this lead to the tool age.
> > Now some decided that there just wasn't enough
> > room around these parts
> > what with all the falling down dead and such so
> > they decided to move
> > north and south of the best, warm parts of the
> > planet. This was ok in
> > the summer but hey, whadda ya know, these
> > northern parts have winter.
> >
> > Now when the missionarying wasn't enough to
> > keep them warm they
> > remembered fire and peat and how forest wood
> > burned real good too. This
> > latter discovery lead to the need for the
> > invention of the axe which
> > lead to the start of the chopping down of the
> > great forests, which was
> > ok if you were cold or wanted to build a
> > shelter or a boat so you could
> > sail across the ocean to find more wood because
> > you had burned all
> > yours up.... But I'm getting ahead of myself
> > again.
> >
> > Now the stone axe was a good thing but because
> > they were all hand made
> > it was hard to get a replacement handle or head
> > that fit properly so it
> > was time to start the industrial age and
> > invent/create smelting and
> > forging and blacksmithing and all those other
> > things that you need to
> > burn coal to do. This lead to the iron age and
> > the need to use those
> > new shovels to dig up coal. You remember the
> > shovels right? While they
> > proved to work really well on coal, especially
> > when they started making
> > them out of iron and then steel. Some of them
> > realized that they could
> > make a lot of different things out of this new
> > iron and so began the
> > industrial age and it accelerated at an
> > enormous pace consuming more
> > and more carbon that the planet and it's
> > biosphere had worked so hard
> > to put away deep in the earth so things could
> > be in balance. One day
> > some humans even made a thing that nobody had a
> > use for and that begat
> > the advertising age.
> >
> > Now making things that were useful and things
> > that nobody actually
> > needed hastened the burning of the coal that
> > had been locked away for
> > centuries and centuries and began to release
> > more of that captured
> > carbon back into the atmosphere. Some humans
> > began to notice that
> > things were changing. But just. Mostly they
> > noticed that more and more
> > of them were falling down dead. Particularly in
> > places like London
> > where they burned a lot of coal. This created a
> > need for more
> > mortuaries and crematoriums and bigger and
> > faster hearses. The problem
> > was that moving from one horse power to two
> > horse power resulted in
> > more smelly stuff being deposited on the
> > streets. As that was what the
> > humans were trying to get rid of (smelly stuff
> > like the fallen down
> > dead people) they developed a need to invent
> > something that didn't
> > poop or fall down dead which horses were known
> > to do.
> >
> > And thus began the auto age aided by the
> > discovery of gooy stuff that
> > oozed out of the ground and could be burned
> > when you weren't using it
> > to patch canoes and stuff like that.
> >
> > Now if you've been paying attention you'll know
> > that this obviously
> > meant that more and more and more of that
> > carbon that had been secreted
> > away by the plants so that the biosphere could
> > become a habitable place
> > for humans and other living things was now
> > being released back into the
> > atmosphere at an alarming rate.
> >
> > On Top of that the humans were inventing all
> > sorts of things to feed
> > the advertising age like aerosol shaving cream
> > and deodorants and FDS
> > and whipped cream to combat that smelly
> > business and feed their
> > fantasies and that they had been real busy
> > playing beaver and chopping
> > down the forests which when they weren't
> > chopped down were trying real
> > hard to capture that carbon out of the
> > atmosphere again, and sending
> > their TV programs, the ones that showed how
> > everyone in one part of the
> > world wore cowboy hats and drove big expensive
> > cars and lived in
> > sprawling ranch style house to the parts of the
> > world that lived in
> > small apartments or on farms and drove bicycles
> > so that the bicycle
> > drivers wanted to have big shiny cars and
> > trucks too so they could burn
> > their share of the oil and pump the carbon back
> > into the atmosphere
> > even faster.
> >
> > And so it passed that the humans released a lot
> > of the stored carbon
> > back into the atmosphere and the atmosphere
> > didn't like it and got all
> > hot under the collar and melted the glaciers
> > faster than old man winter
> > could make new ones so the rivers dried up and
> > their cities had to be
> > abandoned and the ice shelves broke up and
> > melted away causing the
> > oceans to rise and take away all that nice
> > beach front property turning
> > Atlantic City into Atlantis City.
> > The atmosphere/divine intervener was not happy
> > that it had to carry the
> > carbon load again so it seethed mightily and
> > pushed things around a
> > lot. It spun like a top and created great
> > storms and the storms struck
> > back at the places where the carbon was being
> > released smashing the
> > platforms and the refineries, and making a lot
> > of humans fall down dead
> > as it tried to restore the equilibrium it had
> > worked so hard to create
> > and maintain. And some of the humans started to
> > think about all this
> > and they thought oh oh, we better do something.
> > And some others thought
> > about this and they thought hmmm, it must be
> > the end times. And maybe
> > they both were right.
> >
> > On Thursday, September 22, 2005, at 08:43 PM,
> > Automatic digest
> > processor wrote:
> >
> > > OT Hurricanes--really an accident?
> > >
> >
>
>
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