Gold and the Weather

What about the weather! Everybody skirts around it, (especially hurricanes) but few address the major economic and social implications. We need to get the debate into the open.(depending on the weather!) As usual, people generally can’t see the wood for the trees, and get fobbed off with the political and media spin. It seems to me that the present climate (I make appointment with analyst to stop this juvenile attitude) is one that we have virtually no control over (neo-con or otherwise), and yet the results would have a major effect on our way of life (god help us – whatever form he takes! I hear Amenhotep is making a comeback), and shoot the price of gold through the roof. Here is a couple of snippets:

CHINA
Global weather conditions are beginning to deteriorate apace. Massive sandstorms come in from the desert and pound China for months on end – I’ve been there, you can’t see your hand in front of you, and everybody has to wear a mask while walking in the street. They have mistakenly tried to create a barrier of trees and forest for the last ten years to act as a break, but all it has done is to worsen the situation by creating a funnel effect.

Over 400,000 farmers have been relocated from the edge of two deserts in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region over the past five years to accelerate the ecological recovery of the fragile environment.

Yun Feng, secretary of the Erdos city committee of the Communist Party of China, said the farmers depended on meager farm yields and livestock. Human activity, however, was primarily to blame for the degraded biological conditions on the edge of Mu Us and Hobq deserts.

48 percent of the 87,000 square km of the land administered by Erdos city has been engulfed by the two deserts, which now deposit 100 million tons of yellow sand in the Yellow River, the biggest in north China.

Years of heavy drought and increasing population have deteriorated the ecosystem.
The local government realized that biological rehabilitation was only possible if human activities were eliminated. NICE ONE CHINA.

USA
At this moment in time, serious weather fronts are building up off the coast of Africa which could cause some more force 5 hurricanes off the US coast of Florida, Texas and New England in the next few weeks.

Homeowners insurance doesn't cover flood damage if you live in a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) or high risk area. If you do, your mortgage lender requires you to have flood insurance. PARADOX OR WHAT!

The economic impact of Katrina has been unprecedented. Federal disaster declarations covered approximately 90 thousand square miles, an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), more than 1.4 million applicants have registered for housing and other needs assistance, and over $5.1 billion has been provided to applicants for housing assistance and other needs. (To me that comes to about $3600 a piece! – MORE THAN ENOUGH TO PEPLACE A SHATTERED LIFE! ) Katrina damaged or destroyed 30 oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and forced the closure of nine Gulf Coast refineries. In the six months following Katrina, the total shut-in oil production from the Gulf was about one quarter of the annual production, and the shut in gas production for the same period was 18 percent. According to a Marshall University study, the total economic impact on Louisiana and Mississippi alone could top $150 billion.

And so it goes on, and I haven’t even mentioned potential earthquakes (San Francisco is due), CO2, CFC’s, Tsunamis, polar-axis shift, volcanoes, melting polar icecaps etc (and any further levels of paranoia that you can think of!

If these figures even barely resemble the truth, we won’t have to worry about creeping inflation over the next 10 years, it will be crawling all over us (From out of a Dense Swamp in the Everglades).