Back to one of the three cats - the climate. We are watching Hurricane Irene barrell toward New England, and some are saying it could be bad. There seem to be an amazing number of people out there who are surprised that a hurricane could threaten New York and its surroundings. There are a few that are saying they have been trying to tell people for years that there is a risk from weather such as this, but not one really wanted to listen. And definitely too many are concerned about the profits next quarter to do any mitigation for the possibility.
Count me as one of the cassandras. My daughter is reviewing my latest book (Was A Time When) and she might have noticed on page 6 of Chapter 15 entitled June, 2024 A.D., Adolescence the following bite of Sam telling of what he remembers from when he was eleven years old:
An amazing number of people in 2026 still denied that our society had a problem with energy or weather or the economy. The world kept changing around them, and they just didn't know how to handle it. It took little effort on my part to make a fortune on their stupidity. I started small with my gaming profits, and before long built that stash into a pretty good bankroll, in the millions. I moved most of the money to off-shore accounts just to be safe.
At the end of August in 2026, Hurricane Gracie hit New York City. She came toward land as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of just under 150 miles per hour, but she hit Manhattan as a Category 5. I remember how Mom, Dad, and I sat glued to the TV throughout the night watching the satellite images as the hurricane’s eye wound its way up the coast of New Jersey across Long Beach, then veered into the Lower Bay just south of New York City. Early in the morning it punched north into the Upper Bay and continued up the west side of the Hudson River. I can still remember TV pictures of the Statue of Liberty inside the eye standing so peaceful in the sunrise.
The storm surge up the East River measured thirty-five feet. Water poured from the river onto the surrounding countryside. Long Island disappeared under water, and over half of New Jersey flooded. When the storm ended over they reported fifty-three thousand people dead or missing, and authorities estimated over two trillion dollars in damage. I heard that the storm left more than eight million homeless, and the damage reached far north past Albany.
The hurricane destroyed the island of Manhattan. They never found the money to pump out the subways.
Losing the financial center of the country – and maybe of the world – broke the back of the US financial structure. China and Saudi Arabia moved out of dollars, and the world stopped denominating oil in dollars. They required gold or grain or some other solid commodity to complete any transaction..
Financially, being one of the lucky ones, I moved all my funds out of New York to Lisbon and Sydney the year before. I put most of my cash into gold equivalents. With things so unstable I started another gold fund in Johannesburg, managed it over the Internet, and learned basic commodities trading first hand.
My International funds continued to do well by any measure, and I possessed a good supply of Chinese Yuan and gold stashed away in a Singapore bank built high above the bay. Rising sea-levels would not catch me.
Just wanted you to know I wrote this excerpt over five years ago, only a year after Katrina visited New Orleans. So the current story in the news is not all that new. It will be interesting to see how close I come in my prediction -- okay, I am off by 15 years and the intensity is down, but that is because of the limitation placed on the timing of my story. What will be the impact on New York City? We will know in a few days.
Oh yes, Irene is only a Cat 2 at this time and will probably fall to Cat 1 before land-fall. But things like this do happen, even though the full effects of climate change are not yet upon us.
sam
