Hurricane Isaac will bring much needed rain to the parched S.E., and even to Lake Linear. It has passed over the city of Tampa, perhaps because of the Republican National Convention and is moving toward the Big Easy and the French Quarter with possibly as much as 19.5 inches of rain in store.
If Isaac makes it as far as Texas it will be a blessed drought reliever better for Texas than Roger Clemens winning five games for the Astros.
A more lasting water shortage fix might be to adapt nuclear power plant cooling technology to use sea water for cooling and to turn the water into vapor in order to recondense it as fresh water. Screening out the intake flow of sea life and returning it in smaller pipes to the Gulf, and selling the salt to salt companies or using it for some other purpose might be a way to generate water for West Texas irrigation .
Though Isaac is only a category One Hurricane and the Gulf Coast has had five years to ready for it, the practice of Hurricane readiness is a good thing for with the global heating of the oceans there is a potential for several hurricanes this year reaching even as far as the Chesapeake Bay and Washington D.C.
The political ramifications for each hurricane very in relation to tea leaves, news analysis methods and expert storm predictions. Hurricane politics become diversions from the tedious work of rational federal budgeting and ecological economic reform. Certainly gasoline prices will be affected yet not with addition of a minimum gas price of 4 dollars so competition factors to create cheaper renewable energy might have some assurance of probable return for research investment.
image credit N.O.A.A.
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