Drought Driven Catastrophe in Texas

Update on the Drought Driven Catastrophe in Texas

April 4, 2012

Which Way Do We Go?

In Texas, ironically an” energy state,”  has had a severe prolonged drought, for 6 years. There is no end in sight; and, when we run out of water, we can no longer generate electricity.  The standard steam turbine generator cannot operate without massive amounts of water.  Normally, 25% of our water is used in the generation of electricity.  But 25% of nothing is Zero.  So, as is predicted by everyone who studies weather ,Texas will run out of water sometime in 2012; suddenly leaving 25 million people without water and electricity.  There are no quick fixes for either shortage.  Texas is not connected to the national power grid, so massive power lines would have to be built for hundreds of miles: a 2 year project.  There is no water supply anywhere close to the state.  NO ONE has any idea how to solve that problem.  Therefore, our population density will have to decrease to something like New Mexico/Arizona, which in the most optimistic scenario, means 5 or 6 million people.  We have almost 26 million.  Those numbers don't match up, so about 20 million people will have to migrate out of Texas.  To make matters even worse, most will have to go by car; and, it is at least 1000 miles to regions that have the water and housing to accommodate any of them. This is a logistical nightmare.  If 20 million leave over a three year period, that adds 20,000 vehicles per DAY to our already congested interstates.  That means that all highways going north and east from Texas will resemble parking lots for >1000 miles and become useless to the people in other states that normally use them.  This will disrupt all shipping by trucks going east or north for the entire center of the country east and north of Texas.  Thus, this catastrophic drought will trigger the largest migration ever in the industrialized world .

End of the Road

The impact will be so massive that our respect for the coming era of more violent weather and climactic change the Weather Modelers and tree huggers have been screaming about for over two decades, will rise to an appropriate level.  All the corporate and Right Wing resistance to the ecological movement and the environmentalists will cease.  It will be crystal clear to everyone that we learn how to adapt to nature or we will perish.  There is no room for greed or any abuse of the environment in this necessary adaptation.  Finally, we are still the most wasteful nation in the world (we are 5% of the world's population and we still use 30% of the energy resources). This has gone unchanged in 20 years of public knowledge that this is the situation.  Lots of  talk and no improvement in 20 years is pathetic.  I believe there are several reasons for this disgusting failure.  We are inexplicabley attached to stupid, needless and useless aspects of our consumerism lifestyle, like big powerful cars and trucks (come on that's teenager stuff---you don't need 350 HP to drive to work or carry a couple of 4x8 pieces of plywood do you ???); lighting our homes and cities like it’s the middle of the day all night long ; insisting on a perfect 70 degree indoor climate 24/7 regardless of the outdoor conditions in our homes and work places (how about wearing a couple of sweaters or wear shorts and T-shirts ? Dress codes are idiotic. Open windows. Build facilities where the temperature can be controlled by simple mechanical means).  Then there is our obsession with lawns (we waste 25% of our water on grass; I think it comes from a fantasy about the British Aristocracy---those stunning estates with the wide perfect grass---but guess what, you don't need to water grass in that climate).  So let's give up all the childish obsessions, so we can survive.

Prejudice Against Aging and Disease

Discussion of Prejudice Against Aging and Disease

April 4, 2012                                            

Homeless Man

 With 30 years in medicine, I have refined my skill at helping people adapt to their health limitations because there are many diseases we cannot cure or even lessen the symptoms very much.  The diseases of aging, like the degenerative arthritis that I have that has rendered me "totally permanently disabled" by Social Security is one example. However, there is nothing wrong with my mind that would impair my ability to make good medical decisions.  Rather the opposite, I am at the peak of my game.  The wealth of experience combined with a superb understanding of the human organism, especially the "mental" aspect and psychiatric illnesses combined with potent instincts about the level of sickness in a patient (both physical and mental) means I can out perform 99% of general medical physicians.  But, by not being flexible regarding sitting positions and computer data entry (trivial issues, they aren't paying me to be a secretary; but, my value, any physicians value resides in his or her JUDGEMENT.   But I am tossed aside because I have chronic pain and can't sit in an ordinary chair.  Thus, I am having to adapt by finding other ways to be helpful to mankind, including finding other ways of expressing myself.  Photography helps fill that gap; and, has become both artistically more sophisticated and more political for me, as well as becoming a social commentary at the same time.  I have learned a lot  about how to use symbolism and abstraction to achieve these goals  There exists an  idiotic social prejudice  in our society against "sick people".  Prejudice against illness is the last prejudice we have yet to confront.  We have addressed racial, ethnic, gender, sexual preference (to some extent); but, age and illness, which come together at times, we have yet to confront .  Part of the reason is that historically we have never had a large percentage of the population reach "old age";so there was really nothing age-related to be concerned about from a demographic view point.  As recently as 1900, the average life span in the US was 50.  For the first 99.99% of the existence of homo sapiens, the life span was 35.  Thus, we have gone from 35 to 80 (for women) in about 4 centuries.  I guess our society simply can’t  culturally adapt to that rapid a change in the demographics !

Texas Drought a Key to Exposing Sociopaths in Government

Drought in Texas holds the key to

Defeating the Sociopaths

April 6, 2012

Pushing the Earth with a D6 Cat

In spite of being in the 6th year of the worst drought in Texas history, the developer is extending the road (which I can see from my back porch) for more development sections, in spite of the fact that the drought is going to destroy the economy of the state very soon.  It is incredible waste, and painful to see 1000 mature trees knocked down.  It has been emotional torture to be at home the last two days.  Today, my wife had to leave for 6 hours until the work day was over.  The greed driven society led by an army of sociopaths in government and at the top of most large corporations are ruining this country in so many ways it is hard to count them.  It will take a revolution to stop them unless we vote the majority of them out of office, and vote their replacements out of office immediately if they behave the same way.  but that is slow way to weed out the sociopaths.  They will continue to deal out copious amounts of misery in the time it will take to tell them no at the polls.  It is driving me crazy that I can see what is coming, I know why it is happening, and how to fix it, but I can't get any significant audience to listen to me.  The climactic catastrophe in Texas may be a gift in that it will so horrible to watch at least 6 million people die and the economy crushed because the sociopath didn't warn people what was coming.  It is crime of negligence that will rival that of Hitler.  Science has warned us for 3 decades the the ecosystem was teetering on the edge of collapse.  We ignored it.  Our nations success was based on constant growth and wasteful use of natural resources.  But Malthus was right.  There isn't enough to go around if the population is allowed to grow beyond the limits of the capacity of the earth to support it.  There is no room for waste any more.  Twenty years ago we Americans (5% of the worlds population) used 30% of the worlds energy.  Even with that knowledge and a great many people pushing for economic reform, the sociopaths at the controls blocked every attempt to change the economy of growth and waste because they were making such huge profits.  The examples of their overt negligence such as the Valdez, are "too numerous to count".  The environmental movement protested mightily but were ignored because sociopaths care nothing about anything or anyone but them selves.  The mass of the populous was blind to this, and were to sedated by the narcotic of TELEVISION, and didn't take the time or the effort to figure it out.  More and more sociopaths were voted into office because they are very convincing liars.  Few bothered to follow up on election promises and behavior, so they told people what they wanted to hear to get elected and then did whatever they damned well pleased once in office.  Wolves in the henhouse.  We watched it but didn't see.  But now we will pay.  Megadeath daily for a couple of years on our own soil. We now know for certain what the source of evil in the world is and has always been, the sociopath.  A genetic defect in 1% of the population, that renders them unable to tell right from wrong from birth.  They can't be changed.  Psychiatrists have understood this for decades.  But now we have anatomical and genetic proof of who they are and why they are the way they are.  And a peaceful, kind, adaptive society, that can have a chance to cope with the threatening climactic changes we are going to be faced with cannot tolerate the sociopath.  If they are free to do what they want, they will sabotage ALL of our best efforts and intentions, and our species will be at the brink of extinction.  Perhaps science will figure out a way to modify their behavior, but until then, they must be locked up and isolated from society.  It sounds cruel,  but they are the essence of cruelty: THEY TORTURE AND KILL FOR FUN.  No other type of person does that.  But they are easy to defeat by a unified opposition because they will not fight for anything but themselves.  They hang out together because they can combine their treachery to enhance their profits.  But when pressed in a battle the betray each other.  The are just as incapable of loyalty as the are of telling the truth.  They are helpless against a unified force.  If you understand this, there is no reason to fear that they will win.  Yes, the can deal out death and suffering as they go down, because they pay others to fight for them.  But they cannot instill loyalty in their troops because the cannot offer any.  The troops know they will be betrayed the moment it is convenient.  Patton knew this secret of war fare: loyalty trumps everything else when weaponry is anywhere close to equal.  He defeated Germans with far superior tanks, because his troops believed in him.  Patton directed his troops from the front lines, he was often in the lead tank during an offensive maneuver.  He didn't ask his troops to take any risk that he was not willing to take himself.  So, Patton, a little bit of a maniac, demonstrated something of critical importance to Americans today: LOYALTY is the key to defeating the sociopath.  People that love each other will defeat the people that are incapable of loving any one or anything.

Mo

Debt to Our Fathers

Debt to Our Fathers Who Fought WWII

May 29, 2012   Memorial Day

A personel reflection.

A Salute to WWII Veterans

The current younger generation, has no depth to this appreciation if they have any at all.  The only exceptions are people like my 34 y/o son, who was born with a warrior's spirit and started studying all things related to the law enforcement and the military at age 12.  He was voracious in his study and we subscribed to a dozen magazines like S.W.A.T.,Guns and Ammo, etc. My wife was alarmed; but I told her that a teenage male with this intensity is going to learn this stuff whether you like it or not.  As parents we should not resist or be critical, but be sure he learns from skilled mature persons.  The world will always need good soldiers and good cops.  Besides, he has never been violent in any way; on the contrary he is usually the first to step in to defend a kid who is being picked on by other students.  He is morally and ethically a leader among his peers.  She relented and found a senior detective from the Seattle PD, one of my patients, to teach Jason how to shoot.  J had memorized all the proceedures for arm safety for all standard weapons and endlessly practiced all the shooting positions for pistol and rifle and learned when each was most appropriate for every standard situation.  I also reminded her that her mother's father, Bill Templeton, was in the Cavalry in WWI and as well as being a top notch horseman, won several nationsl championships shooting both riifle and pistol.  I suggested that this preoccupation with firearms was likely to be in part genetic and would probably be a fine shooter.  When he went to police firing range with the detective, for his first experience with a real firearm (he had the usual .22 caliber beginners rifle), he started with the detective 9mm Sig Sauer (a Swiss firarm and one of the best in the world), he impressed everyone there by placing every shot in the first clip (15 rounds) in the central body mass and was inside the target three times. Gary, our friend the detective said: "Jason, I have experienced beat cops that don;t do any better than that."  An elderly man, a veteran of every armed conflict for 50 years of his carrier had a case full of a variety of firearms, some very old and some very new.  He took an interest in Jason, and let him fire every one of his weapons.  Needless to say, this experience just inflammed J's studies.  When he was a little older I told him about my father's nightmare experience in war.  He was so touched to finally understand why grandpa was so withdrawn, he started reading everything he could about WWII; an became the WWII expert at his prep school.  This has continues to be refined over the years, and he has the greatest respect for soldiers.  But he is an oddity among his peers, and it took him several years to get over being disgusted with their ignorance.  He finally got over that and takes every opportunity to teach them the history of warfare.

To recover from the current mess, we must rekindle that practical "can do" spirit of my father's generation.  Only that level of devotion and persistence will defeat the forces of EVIL manifested by the sociopaths that have gained control of this country.

Mo

Water the Most Precious Substance on Earth

Water

April 9, 2012

Reeds & Reflections

Water, we mindlessly waste most of the water we "use". That wastage combined with the pollution of large bodies of water by industrial processes (again, the improper treatment of contaminated waste water is justified on the basis of "It's to expensive" or "It will reduce our profits and people will loose their jobs"---is a smoke screen for the real reason for the negligence: greed. The companies don't give a damn about the water, the employees, or the ecology of the region or the planet). They only care about profit. And as long we accept this lame excuses, the abuse will continue. The more water that is ruined by industrial greed makes the remaining potable water even more valuable. Potable water (which means water fit for human consumption) is now the most precious substance in the world. It is an absolute necessity for life, and we either contaminate or waste it as if we are trying to commit suicide. The way we treat water, necessary for life, is the most stupid, idiotic, misinformed and thoughtless act ever done by mankind. It is even worse than war, except nuclear war. Nuclear war and running out of water have the same result: WE ALL DIE. The species, homo sapiens, that committed suicide. Think about it. 

Watering the Sidewalk in the Middle of the Night Automatically

Here is an example of water wastage in America. We live in Texas, a state that is in the 6th year of an unprecedented type of drought since records have been kept. The whole state is having a profound drought at the same time. Past droughts involved a region or two only, and there were regions that had plentiful water, so the water was simply moved from areas of plenty to areas of scarcity. That system has worked fine until now. No region has any excess. since this has never happened before, there is no alternative plan. And as yet there is no plan to make an alternative plan. We are simply paralyzed. Admittedly, even vigorous research does not reveal any easy solution. However,that is not a legitimate reason for the State not to commission an elite task force to work on solution for the problem. 25 million lives are at stake but our government is so dominated by conservative thinkers who are so radical that they don't even believe in minimal government, they don't believe in any government at all. So the Perry administration does nothing. No wasting money on figuring out a solution to the water problem, never mind that 25 million people can't live without it. No wasting money on warning the people that we are on the verge of running out of water (every professional that studies weather from local meteorologists to global climate modelers agree that Texas will run out of water sometime in this calendar year). No wasting money on warning the people that running out of water means that we will simultaneously run out of electrical power. Few people understand that the stand way to generate electricity in Texas is the steam turbine. The steam turbine has been a standard device for generating electricity for decades and the design has been perfected. Unfortunately, an inherent weakness is that for maximum efficiency they must run at high speeds and on a regular basis they run too fast and heat up rapidly. If they aren't cooled of immediately with enormous amounts of water, they continue to speed up until they explode and take the building and all nearby personnel. So it is too dangerous to run steam turbines without adequate water supplies. 

Orange Carp and Leaf in Pond Abstraction

Therefore an unformed populous due to negligent government that is theoretically profoundly flawed, with be stunned when suddenly they have no water and no electricity. No one at any level is making contingency plans, and this lack of panning will be catastrophic for many people. There will be a panic. People will buy every thing on the shelves at the supermarkets that is drinkable, but all retail may be forced to close due to current health and safety regulations. City agencies will have to revise the regulations on an emergency basis. Communications will be disrupted because not all communications facilities have generators designed for anything but emergency short term use. This power outage will last a couple of years until power lines will have to be built from distant cities. Texas is not part of the national energy grid. People will flee the state by the millions creating a traffic jam for 1000 mile on ever highway going east or north from Texas. Millions will die in their cars for lack of food ,water, or gas. Many could be saved if we were prepared, but because our consevative government doesn't believe that we have a problem and if did it is not their job to do anything about it, the losses in lives will be vastly higher than it would be if we were prepared. But you can't prepare for something you don't know about. Just think, we elected Perry 4 times. We are idiots for not seeing that he is so totally incompetent, even though he was hand picked by another incompetent, GW Bush.Morris Creedon-McVean

Update on Texas Drought: Catastrophe

Update on the Drought Driven Catastrophe in Texas

April 4, 2012

Near the End of the Road for Electrical  Power

In Texas, ironically an” energy state,”  has had a severe prolonged drought, for 6 years. There is no end in sight; and, when we run out of water, we can no longer generate electricity.  The standard steam turbine generator cannot operate without massive amounts of water.  Normally, 25% of our water is used in the generation of electricity.  But 25% of nothing is Zero.  So, as is predicted by everyone who studies weather ,Texas will run out of water sometime in 2012; suddenly leaving 25 million people without water and electricity.  There are no quick fixes for either shortage.  Texas is not connected to the national power grid, so massive power lines would have to be built for hundreds of miles: a 2 year project.  There is no water supply anywhere close to the state.  NO ONE has any idea how to solve that problem.  Therefore, our population density will have to decrease to something like New Mexico/Arizona, which in the most optimistic scenario, means 5 or 6 million people.  We have almost 26 million.  Those numbers don't match up, so about 20 million people will have to migrate out of Texas.  

Common Urban Landscape

To make matters even worse, most will have to go by car; and, it is at least 1000 miles to regions that have the water and housing to accommodate any of them. This is a logistical nightmare.  If 20 million leave over a three year period, that adds 20,000 vehicles per DAY to our already congested interstates.  That means that all highways going north and east from Texas will resemble parking lots for >1000 miles and become useless to the people in other states that normally use them.  This will disrupt all shipping by trucks going east or north for the entire center of the country east and north of Texas.  Thus, this catastrophic drought will trigger the largest migration ever in the industrialized world .The impact will be so massive that our respect for the coming era of more violent weather and climactic change the Weather Modelers and tree huggers have been screaming about for over two decades, will rise to an appropriate level.  All the corporate and Right Wing resistance to the ecological movement and the environmentalists will cease.  It will be crystal clear to everyone that we learn how to adapt to nature or we will perish.  There is no room for greed or any abuse of the environment in this necessary adaptation.  Finally, we are still the most wasteful nation in the world (we are 5% of the world's population and we still use 30% of the energy resources). This has gone unchanged in 20 years of public knowledge that this is the situation.  Lots of  talk and no improvement in 20 years is pathetic.  I believe there are several reasons for this disgusting failure.  We are inexplicabley attached to stupid, needless and useless aspects of our consumerism lifestyle, like big powerful cars and trucks (come on that's teenager stuff---you don't need 350 HP to drive to work or carry a couple of 4x8 pieces of plywood do you ???); lighting our homes and cities like it’s the middle of the day all night long ; insisting on a perfect 70 degree indoor climate 24/7 regardless of the outdoor conditions in our homes and work places (how about wearing a couple of sweaters or wear shorts and T-shirts ? Dress codes are idiotic. Open windows. Build facilities where the temperature can be controlled by simple mechanical means).  Then there is our obsession with lawns (we waste 25% of our water on grass; I think it comes from a fantasy about the British Aristocracy---those stunning estates with the wide perfect grass---but guess what, you don't need to water grass in that climate).  So let's give up all the childish obsessions, so we can survive.