I TOLD YOU SO!!!! (snow white says this is too long)
This is done just after midnight and there really isn’t much change regarding the SPC forecast for Saturday. The idea is that a short wave runs along a boundary to the north and storms will erupt along the track but they have the severe risk area this far south due to the potential for guys forming south of the short or the short moving along farther south than the models indicate. I’ll update this during the day on Saturday.
The Dead Zone If you want to look back at a previous post of mine on this subject, look no further than here: ”I Told You So” from June 16, 2007 and “A Real Problem” from May 14, 2007
What I’m talking about is water pollution. I’ve talked often about how, in my view, we need to be concentrating our efforts on cleaning up a known death trap…that is the pollution of our waters. Unlike Global Warming, we know for a fact that we are polluting our waters. I know it every time we go to scull on Harrod’s Creek. The other day when we put one of the boats on the water, the always delicate Snow White screeched “It’s feces!!” And you know what? She was right. My father-in-law told me it was a sewer and he hasn’t been there for years. He’s known it for years. Reports have come in for years about all of the municipalities that pollute directly into the Ohio River all up and down the waterway. No one does a thing. But we do give Academy Awards for movies that gets people all worked up over something else that may or may not be happening and may or may not be something of which we can do something about. But water pollution is something we can do something about and we should do something about. Water is a basic building block of all life. Without it, we and everything else dies. Poison it and we poison ourselves.
As part of the effort to stave off Global Warming and also reduce energy dependence on foreign oil, Congress mandated ethanol. Corn prices soared and corn production increased. More fertilizer has been used. That fertilizer is known to end up in the rivers through run-off. The fertilizer, I believe it’s the nitrogen, helps to decrease the oxygen content and makes for a dead zone. When Snow White and I went to the Chesapeake Bay last summer, crabbing interests were in a decline because the number of crabs had been depleted due to a dead zone in the bay. It has also been a well known fact that there is a dead zone near the mouth of the Mississippi River. The photo above below Colonel Klink is a NASA photo where the red and yellow colors show depleted oxygen levels. Marine life cannot live in these zones. Here is a link to the NASA page that explains further.
Now comes a report that the rains and Midwest flooding will only increase the dead zone. More fertilizer for more corn crops so we can inefficiently produced ethanol to raise corn prices and not affect gasoline prices in the least. More fertilizer then has more rain which puts more runoff into the Mississippi River that then goes into the Gulf of Mexico and then there is more uninhabitable marine areas. Prior to this time it was 5,800 square miles of dead Gulf of Mexico. How much more do you want? Maybe I should make a movie and get people’s attention. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…Global Warming is worth studying but water pollution deserves action today…now. We’re 68% water…our bodies…where do you think that water comes from? Our planet. Poison the earth’s water and we poison ourselves. We are in fact poisoning our planet…no question its all around us. Yet, we do nothing. Here’s a story that came out today.
Dead Zone In Gulf Larger than Predicted 10,000 Square Miles?
On This Date In History: Woodrow Wilson went into office with the idea that America wanted change from the Republican days of Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Never mind that he never got 50% of the vote. He wanted to get America back to where he thought the founders intended and that was a non-interventionist foreign policy. Yet, he invaded Mexico at least twice and took us into World War I. I won’t debate the merits of World War I and will only mention that the first invasion of Mexico happened in Vera Cruz in 1914 when a handful of sailors were detained briefly by Mexican authorities. The President sent a bunch of battleships and Marines to the area. The Mexicans released the sailors and apologized. Not good enough. Wilson demanded that the Mexicans also raise the American flag to a 21 gun salute. Wilson wanted to embarrass a President of Mexico that he didn’t like. The Mexican president refused to fire off 21 cannons while raising the American flag so we invaded briefly. So much for change. TR must have chuckled and applauded Wilson’s gunboat diplomacy.
On this date in 1916, General John J. Pershing’s troops were attack by the Mexican army. Why? Well, maybe it was because he took his 10,000 troops into Mexican territory. They were after Pancho Villa who had executed several Americans in Mexico and then briefly crossed the US border and burned down a town in New Mexico. So, Wilson the non-interventionist sent Pershing into a foreign country too find a bandit who had killed some Americans. The end result was some American soldiers were killed, more Mexican soldiers were killed and after 11 months, Pershing returned to the United States empty handed. Villa lived several more years before being assassinated…by what most historians suspect was the Mexican government.
Woodrow Wilson promised change, to be less belligerent with other nations of the world and later to track down a bandit who had killed Americans abroad and on US soil. Oh…and one of Wilson’s legacies was the Treaty of Versailles which was so flawed that it directly led to the calamity known as World War II. Change can be dangerous. History if full of unintended consequences.
