you can help us prevent hurricanes

A while back I wrote an article about how to prevent hurricanes.  It’s been a really popular post lately, and for good reason — Hurricane Isaac was recently causing a swath of destruction along its path through the southern U.S.

Hurricane Isaac in 2012

The article explained some ways to prevent hurricanes, but there has been a noticeable lack of funds coming in.  So obviously investors either haven’t found it, or they didn’t take it seriously.  I realize the presentation could’ve been made in a more “professional” manner.  It started off with some rambling (also known as digressing), and some of the ideas were intentionally over-the-top for fun.  But I make no apologies for the format — this is a humor blog, after all.  Even when legitimate ideas are released into the blogosphere, they are accompanied with humor.  That’s just how I roll.  (Well, I do have a serious blog, and it could’ve went there, but then I would’ve had to edit out the randomness, and what’s the fun in that?)

The last idea was actually somewhat viable, though.  It could make a difference in so many ways.  Obviously we wouldn’t cover the entire Sahara desert with solar panels, but we’d have to make only a something-eight percent difference to improve the current status quo.  And as the post explains, this would reduce global warming AND save money from hurricane damages AND be a clean, green, unlimited, renewable energy solution.  So what’s the problem?  All we need is appropriate funding (and by appropriate I mean a LOT, like billions of dollars), but it would pay for itself many times over.

There may be some people who worry about tampering with Mother Nature, and there are valid concerns to address, but we’ve been doing it for years already.  If things do change for the negative somehow, people will just blame labels like “Global Warming” and “Climate Change” (partly because it gives them political power and enables them to raise taxes with the cleverly named “Cap and Trade”, but I’d better not rant on that or I will surely digress).  Besides, there are solar panels already installed in the southwest U.S., and nobody complains about that changing the weather.

It’s important that we focus on the key initiative here, and that is to solve numerous global problems at once.  Well, that and make billions of dollars in profit.  But as the saying goes, it takes money to make money.  And it takes money to save the world, unless you’ve got super powers like Superman.  However none of us are Superman, and as far as I know, no one on the Buffet o’ Blog staff has any of the super powers of Superman (or we’d know, because it would be awesome to use them).  So we need investment funding, which is another way of saying “send us your money”.  We’ll send you an official certificate saying you contributed to saving the world.  Plus you’ll feel all warm and toasty inside, and you’ll help extend the life of the Earth, and you can’t put a dollar value on that.

how the Grand Canyon formed

I saw a TV show on the History Channel that explained how the Grand Canyon was formed.  They said that many billions of years ago, that area was a massive mountain range, with peaks higher than the Himalaya Mountains.  I can believe that, at least the mountain part.  But then the story went in an unexpected direction.

These mountains were covered by the ocean at least 8 times.  I can easily believe they were at least once, but what do I know?  But then the mountain range flattened out, into flatlands.  There were no mountains, no valleys, and no canyons.   Then the land rose up, kinda like how mountains are formed from plate tectonics, but it didn’t create mountains — all the land rose up in that area.  (Can you picture that?   And can you believe that?)

To get the canyon-forming process under way, there was a giant lake, and it overflowed.   That’s what formed the Colorado River.   The lake is long gone, but the river still flows (obviously).  And over the past 5.5 million years, the water carved out the Grand Canyon.

Now you know.  Or well, you know what some scientists think happened.  The question is, are they right?  Parts of the story are believable, although I’m having trouble with the whole area of land rising evenly.  But either way, it’s interesting to think about.

I like watching these types of shows, because it challenges how I think.  It also gives me ideas on how to create my own Grand Canyon, so I can have a great view like that and make millions of dollars from tourism.  I’ll need to speed up the process, plus extend my life for a few years.   But I already plan to live forever — so far so good!  🙂

Anyway, back to reality, let me make a serious point (if the editor-at-large will allow that).   If the Grand Canyon was covered by ocean at least 8 times, who is to say it shouldn’t ever happen again?  And those things don’t just happen randomly.  There had to be some sort of… um… climate change… to cause such a massive event.   And probably not one or two degrees.  I’m just saying…