The Next Gold

With the advent of global warming, potable water will become an increasingly scarce commodity. As the arctic and antarctic ice caps begin to melt in summer, sea levels will begin to rise. Couple this with poor urban planning (much like what is happening in Atlanta right now) and you have the makings of a potential crisis for millions of people.

There is one thing America is known for: ingenuity. We need to apply our ability to come up with innovative solutions to known water problems. An idea that I think should be given consideration is building desalinization plants along the coasts and pumping converted sea water into potable -- or at least non-potable, but usable -- water.

Certainly the main obstacle to such a project is its capital-intensiveness. And critics could argue against it either because the cost is perceived to be prohibitive and unnecessary based on the premise that global warming doesn't exist (the conservative argument) or because it could become just another case of private profits and socialized losses.

Something that many people don't know is that in the Native American tradition, things that are produced by the earth or nature belong to everyone and should not inure to the benefit of private companies or individuals. The question that begs to be asked in this line of thought is this: Who made the water? Who made the air we breathe? Who made the soil? (Did man make the water, air or soil -- and by extension, the minerals produced by natural processes?) It goes to the heart of property rights that have formed the basis of our legal system.

Ultimately, we must recognize that we owe it to our country -- and our world -- to make the best use of our natural resources. The implementation of a water supply from converted sea water will take many years to implement. The point in its favor, however, is that the need is foreseeable years -- even decades -- in advance.

Obviously, there are other problems related to increasing use and need for other commodities. Energy demand is growing every day, not only due to developing economies in Asia (which, long term, may end up becoming the center of the next empire), but also due merely because of an increasing global population and the energy needs to grow crops to feed them. Overfishing is causing a natural food supply to become more scarce and innovative techniques are needed there as well. That will require a non-polluting and renewable energy source.

As a result of these challenges, we need to create a national energy policy based on sustainable technologies. This problem, too, is foreseeable. There are many technologies based on sustainable energy: wind, solar, hydroelectric, tidal and geothermal. The effectiveness of each of the natural energy supplies vary depending on location. What is needed is a national program to maximize the use of these various natural energy supplies.

I haven't been writing much lately. I told you I've been thinking a lot. See what happens when I do that?

Rock You Like A Hurricane

Last night I survived my first hurricane. Hurricane Humberto was only supposed to be a tropical storm, but it picked up power very quickly and strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane. I don't want to find out what a Category 2 will do. The eye of the hurricane passed right by here. The good news is that I ended up on the left side of the eye, which is less damaging than the right side. My RV seems to have escaped relatively unscathed. However, many of my neighbors were not so lucky.

I have to admit, it was downright scary to be inside an RV during a hurricane where the winds were near their top speeds next to the hurricane's eye. We heard this morning that they had clocked winds in excess of 100 mph. I was awakened with a lot of shaking and rocking back and forth at about 2am and could not get back to sleep until after 5am.

When I got up this morning, I joked to my neighbors that we get more warning time of impending tornadoes than they do of sudden hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. And they pass over and leave quicker. And their path of destruction is a lot smaller area.

My post Eye of the Storm was a little bit of a inside hint of where I was headed. I didn't fully expect that I would actually end up right under the eye of an actual storm.

Popcorn Showers

Everyday here along the coast of south Texas they have what are called "popcorn showers." The clouds build up throughout the day and then it rains hard for about 10 minutes in the afternoon. Then the clouds dissipate and it gets sunny again.

It is an interesting phenomenon.

Sunday Music: I Can See Clearly Now

The rain is gone.

Johnny Nash -- I Can See Clearly Now

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head (Part 2)

It's raining again today. The local news reported that the farmers -- who had all thought we were going to have a bumper crop in May -- have said all of their wheat fields are a total loss. Why you ask? Yep, you guessed it: too much rain. Because the ground is too soggy, their combines cannot harvest the wheat. And because it would take ten days for the ground to dry out, by that time the crops would be destroyed due to rot.

This is so Oklahoma. Hope turns to despair, from the Dust Bowl of the Depression-era 1930s to now. In the 1930s, many Oklahoma farmers -- ruined by weather then -- moved to California to try to rebuild their lives. John Steinbeck wrote about this in The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck's novel is where the term "Okie" became well-known. It became a pejorative slang for a poor immigrant worker in California during this time (not necessarily limited to just Oklahomans).

While I am on the subject of The Grapes of Wrath, I should mention that the film adaptation of the book will be showing at the Oklahoma Museum of Art on Sunday, July 15th at 2pm as part of their Oklahoma Film series celebrating Oklahoma's Centennial.

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

From Oklahoma City's KOCO TV (Channel 5, ABC)

POSTED: 9:16 am CDT June 26, 2007
UPDATED: 5:11 pm CDT June 28, 2007

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Rain fell in Oklahoma City Wednesday for the 16th consecutive day with storms forecast into the weekend, and a flash flood warning blanketing southwestern Oklahoma and areas north of Ponca City.

Make that the 17th consecutive day. It's raining cats and dogs right now.

So, here is a song from a guy born in Hugo, Oklahoma. You might have heard of him. His name is B.J. Thomas. Normally, I would post this on Sunday for my Sunday Music post, but the situation here just seems to make it more apt given the situation outside.

B.J. Thomas - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

Environmental Issues In Popular Music

I have been trying to find a music video on YouTube that follows an environmental theme from popular Top 40 music (pop, rock, Christian or country) but I can't seem to find any that really talk about environmental or ecological issues. The closest I seemed able to find was the Australian band Midnight Oil's Blue Sky Mine. But that was not a Top 40 hit -- at least not here in the U.S. Their one Top 40 hit, Beds Are Burning, was really about the treatment of Native peoples (Aboriginal) in Australia.

I have read several artists, such as Peter Gabriel and Sting, that are involved in Social Justice and Environmental causes, but I have not been able to find actual examples of popular songs that deal with environmental concerns.

Can my regular readers think of any popular Top 40 songs that were about environmental issues for Earth Day?

Earth Year

Today is Earth Day. Bill Maher has a New Rule: make it Earth Year. Something I didn't know before is that bee colonies are disappearing. He said we don't know what is causing it, but without bees, plants don't get pollinated. Without pollination, plants won't produce food. Without food, we humans go hungry.

He mentions corn syrup as a potential cause, but I want to make another point about corn syrup. I read on another blog somewhere that the American obesity epidemic started right at the time that we started using corn syrup in all of our food. While our sedimentary lifestyle certainly and larger portion sizes at food establishments certainly contributes to the problem, we should not discount the possibility that the cheaper, sweeter corn syrup isn't contributing to the problem as well.

But back to the bees and the problem with pollination of plants, we are already suffering with drought conditions over the last several years. And the warming of the Earth's atmosphere is contributing to it. The last thing we need is to combine drought conditions with lack of pollination for the plants.

Ice Ice Baby

My yard and driveway (and the road in front of it) is a four-inch-thick solid sheet of ice. It is so thick and solid that even when I drive my car over it, it doesn't give. No tracks even. It is treacherous to walk on. And drive on. Good thing I don't live on a street with a slope.

Now we are being told to expect 8 inches of snow this weekend. Great.

I just went outside and saw that my carport has buckled under the weight of the ice. Had to call the insurance company. Great. That's all I need. At least I have homeowner's insurance. With 8 inches of snow, I have to worry a little about the roof because of the weight. I hope it holds up. We rarely get that much snow at once. Come to think of it, we rarely get that much snow all winter.

What I wouldn't give to be in New Zealand right now. It's summer there. The weather service there says it will reach 23 degrees Celsius with a low of 14C. That's about 75 and 57 Fahrenheit for us Americans.

We could sure use a little more of the "warming" part of Global Warming right about now.

They Were Dreaming of a White Christmas

But I don't think this is what they had in mind.

Blue Man Group Concert Review

The Blue Man Group came to the Ford Center in Oklahoma City Sunday night. It was a great show, as always. I have now seen them live three times: once in Las Vegas, once in Chicago and now once in Oklahoma City. The show, entitled "How to Become a Megastar 2.0" was about 75% of the same show as you will find on their Complex Rock Tour Live DVD.

As I watched the show, there was a segment about the enormous amount of information that we have access to now. During this part of the show, there was a screen that scrolled three lines of text. It goes across so fast that you would be lucky to read just one of the lines. I decided to pick the top line and just read it. It talked about how just one page of a modern newspaper contained as much information as what an entire paper from the 1700's would have. It also gave some statistics on how much information is contained on the internet every day compared to previous years.

It made me wonder: with all this information that we are bombared with, are we suffering from "information overload?" There are many days that I feel that there is too much information. What I mean by that is that I don't have enough time to keep up with it all.

Anyway, there is also a segment where they spoof U2's Bono and The Edge and their pushing certain causes. Anyway, the segment did a serious take on global warming (with some humor thrown in).

If you get a chance to see the show, it is one of the better ones.

Locals Weather News

Last night on Channel 5 news (ABC) the weatherman made a comment about how today's rain would be good for Oklahoma, as we are several inches below normal this year, and several feet low over the last few years.

Speaking of weather, it has been noticeably quiet on the hurricane front this year compared to last year.

Friedman on Brazil's response to high fuel costs

As a follow-up to yesterday's column here on oil manipulation, I saw today in the New York Times that Thomas Friedman (subscription required, which is only like $49.year -- roughly $4/month) has written about Brazil's response to the high price of oil. It turns out that sugar ethanol costs roughly half what ordinary gasoline costs. However, according to Friedman's article, ethanol makes roughly 30% less fuel economy than regular gasoline. So Brazilians simply do the math on the price of gasoline vs. the cost of ethanol.

The United States does not have enough cars that can run on ethanol to support widespread use of ethanol. Someone more technically savvy than me can explain it, but my understanding is that ethanol burns hotter, and is therefore harder on the engine's internal parts. If we were to produce ethanol here in the U.S., it would come from corn. However, corn-based ethanol is more expensive to produce according to a report at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. I am not a farmer or scientist, but I think I read somewhere that corn is a pretty water-intensive crop to grow; and, unlike Brazil, the U.S. does not have that many rainforests. Lately, the midwest and plains have suffered drought conditions, which is not the best condition to expand corn crops.

Rather than try to come up with solutions that are dependent on climate forces, I suspect hybrid technology has more promise -- at least for the U.S. Besides, water is expected to become a more scarce and valuable resource in the future due to climate change. We do not need to waste it on alleviating our oil dependence.