Thursday, May 25, 2017

                                 SCARING  THE  FISHES

DIMENSIONAL  ANALYSIS  IS  NOT  THE  STRONG SUIT OF  BLOOMBERG  'CLIMATE CHANGED' WORRY - WORT  BARRY  CLARK.   INSTEAD  OF   INQUIRING  INTO   THE  SUSCEPTIBILITY   OF LADY  LIBERTY'S  SOFTLY PATINATED  COPPPER  SKIN  TO  THE  RAVAGES OF TIME,  HE ASKS:

How Do You Save the Statue of Liberty From Drowning?

Lady Liberty is a towering symbol of our national vulnerability to the changing planet.
Never mind that the statue's Eiffel Tower quality 200-ton wrought iron armature rotted away in under a century - Barry fears 3 millimeters of annual sea level rise will drown  the great French Centennial souvenir before verdigris  can  devour what remains  of  its  2.4 millimeter thick copper skin - substanial  holes from  marine corrosion appeared in the '50's, but were patched over in the 1976 restoration of the statue's 22.7 ton copper cuticle using patinated victorian copper from the dome of the original Bell Telephone laboratory.

We may need a replacement, for at the present rate,  while rising seas may  reach  the copper base by  the year 3308, ( not even melting the Antarctic icecap  can produce the full Charleton Heston Effect- she's inconveniently  a  lot  taller  than  The Day After Tomorrow  posters suggest ), science must cut the copper skin's corrosion rate to under 70 microns  per century  in order to have as much as an original toe left to feel the water.  Given  how  much  went  missing in the first 100 years, that's a pretty tall materials science  order,  so  a  truly corrosion proof  22 Karat  silicon-hardened gold  reboot  may  be the  best buy.  At 864 million dollars, it would cost  less  than  restoration efforts to date, and free up space in the Fed's Downtown bullion vault.