Air Transport To Be Curtailed Drastically (To Zero, Actually!)

The operation of aircraft will soon be drastically curtailed due to
the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico...

but it won't be because of what you think... not because of a shortage
of jet fuel...

BUT BECAUSE OF A SHORTAGE OF OXYGEN IN THE ATMOSPHERE!!

Look, it was reported more than two years ago in a major newspaper
article that our oceans are dying... dying from garbage dumping and
other forms of pollution. These factors resulted in the drastic
decline of populations of plankton in numerous areas of the oceans.

Why is this significant?

Well, ocean plankton is responsible for producing more than half of
the supply of oxygen in the atmosphere, this being much more than the
oxygen produced by all of the world's rain forests COMBINED!

As it is, atmospheric levels of oxygen are half of what they were
about 125 years ago, and now the polluting oil spill of the Gulf is
further threatening the oceans' oxygen producing capability.

Early on in this Gulf catastrophe, I stated to others that all sorts
of chemical poisons and heavy metals are coming up from the leak into
the Gulf water including unrefined gasoline, benzene, turpentine,
kerosene, jet fuel, etc.... not to mention untold amounts of methane.
Minor mention had been made on the televised news about Gulf coast
residents' possibly smelling gasoline in the air; this confirmed my
earlier suspicions, but more significantly, now, about 2 months into
this episode, the news media finally stated that *POISONS* are coming
up with the crude oil.

I would say that Gulf shores where the water still appears to be fine
probably have harmful chemicals which separated from the oil and
dissolved invisibly.

Additionally, escaping methane, about which I was previously
concerned, is now reported to be a big, big problem.

Methane is dissolving into the water where bacteria act on it to break
it down, but this process consumes oxygen. Eventually, areas of the
Gulf then become "dead zones" totally devoid of oxygen and totally
devoid of life INCLUDING THE ALREADY DEPLETED PLANKTON which is needed
for the atmosphere to be breathable.

Nobody really knows how bad the consequences of the Gulf oil leak will
ultimately be, BUT...

Even before the oil leak, there were times when I would awaken during
the night feeling that as much as I was inhaling and exhaling, I
wasn't getting enough air (most likely not enough oxygen) even with my
windows open with a window fan going.

I don't currently live in Florida, but I have in the past, so I know
what high humidity with high temperatures are like.

Right now, where I am with *lower* temperatures, on days with somewhat
high relative humidity, things are so much more oppressive than they
were in Florida! I am not the only person to have noticed this. People
around me who are getting up there in age report trouble walking on
relatively humid days or going up a minor incline which really should
not pose a problem for them.

Remember, you don't have to pollute every last drop of water of the
oceans to do real damage. Ocean plankton is at or near the surface of
the water, and at or near the surface of the water is where
petrochemical pollution will float and be concentrated.

If the Gulf oil leak results in ocean pollution such that the oceans'
oxygen producing capacity is impaired to the point that the
atmospheric level of oxygen is brought critically low for human
survival, THEN ALL HUMAN OXYGEN-DEPLETING (I.E. OXYGEN-BURNING)
ACTIVITIES WORLDWIDE WILL HAVE TO BE BANNED!

At or near the top of the list will be the operation of aircraft:
commercial, military, and pleasure craft... there's be no more driving
of cars nor trucks nor ambulances... no more barbecuing, no more lawn
mowing...

Electric consumption will be curtailed down to the fraction of current
production that is not attributable to the burning of coal, oil, gas
and oxygen: just hydroelectric, nuclear and wind power or other
"green" sources will be available. Don't even think of heating your
home in the dead of winter with oil or gas... or even with wood in a
potbelly stove!

With so much of our economy predicated on energy consuming activities,
just think of how much economic activity *worldwide* will come
grinding to a halt if oxygen in the atmosphere drops to borderline
survivable levels.

All airline pilots and flight attendants will be laid off. ALL AIRLINE
WORKERS FOR THAT MATTER WILL BE LAID OFF!

All auto production workers will be out of jobs as will all auto
mechanics. Truck and bus drivers, too, will be out of work.
Supermarkets will close down due to lack of food deliveries. The
reapers on the farm belt will not operate due to insufficient oxygen
and will become known as the "grim non-reapers."

If you are an air travel enthusiast, your frequent flier miles won't
be worth a plug nickel, and don't hold your breath waiting for them to
rebound in value.

There may not be enough oxygen in the atmosphere for athletes to exert
themselves, so professional sports - all sports - will be suspended
indefinitely!

Black people, of all people, should be screaming bloody murder over
this oil leak, because they may very well be among the first to go as
the result of the possible depletion of oxygen in the atmosphere. This
will become clearer after I now move on to a discussion of simple
geometry and the extinction of the dinosaurs and of the large mammals
of North America and Australia.

If you recall from basic geometry, if you scale up the linear
dimensions of an object, then the volume (and weight) of the larger
object will increase by the cube of the scaling factor while the
larger object's surface area will increase by only the square of the
scaling factor.

You can demonstrate this with a toddler's blocks, the ones with
letters of the alphabet on their sides.

You start with one such block; if you want to build a larger block
that is three time higher, three times wider, and three times deeper,
then it will take 27 blocks like the initial one (3x3x3=27, which is
the cube of 3). If you total up the number of faces on the larger
block, you will count 54 of the faces while the original block had 6
faces. Hence, the larger block has 9 times the surface area of the
original block (3x3=9, which is the square of 3).

Now, if you have a dinosaur which is five times taller than a human,
and five times wider, and five times deeper, then the volume and
weight of the dinosaur will be 125 times those of a human, but the
dinosaur's oxygen absorbing capacity, which is proportional to the
surface area of its internal lung sacks, will increase by only a
factor of 25. CONCLUSION: the dinosaur needs more oxygen in the
atmosphere than a human needs in order to survive.

OK, ok, ok, I admit that if you are yelling and screaming that things
don't work out exactly this way biologically vis a vis geometrically,
you are correct, BUT, BUT, BUT I'll still bet that the oxygen
absorbing capacity of a large creature is not proportionally
commensurate with his added size and weight, so if oxygen levels in
the atmosphere start dropping to critically low levels, the big guys
will be the first to go. I'll bet that it was not a shortage of food
that did in the dinosaurs; it was a lack of sufficient oxygen, which,
by the way, was still sufficient for smaller critters to survive.
Similarly, it was probably a lack of sufficient oxygen that did in the
large mammals (the mammoths and sabre tooth tigers) of North America
and the large mammals of Australia, too, tens of thousands of years
ago while smaller critters survived.

So, now we have the prospect of human survival being threatened by a
decline of atmospheric oxygen levels.

The first among us humans to go will be the big guys - I think its
Belgium or Holland with the tallest humans - the elderly, whose lung
capacity has already been reduced by the aging process, and, as
already noted: black people!

When I was in college, I took a swimming class for physical education.
I remember distinctly the instructor saying that black people don't do
so well at swimming due to their smaller lungs and, of course, the
lesser capacity of those lungs to absorb oxygen.

So, it's bye, bye, black bird... err, I mean "black people."

Oh, well, I suppose funny men Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock can see the
humor in all of this.

On a more positive note, if any humans ultimately survive this
possible scenario, it will be the hobbits, midgets, dwarves, pigmies,
and microcephalics. Oh, happy days... and it keeps getting better!

It was just reported on the news that the stubby remains of the pipe
under the Gulf, from which the oil is leaking and upon which the
containment cap was placed, may break off due to the stress of the
pressure of the oil flowing through it in which case oil will start
leaking right from the floor of the Gulf, and then the oil will be
UNCONTAINABLE... and its flow will probably then increase fourfold or
more!

I had something else in mind as a concern, but first let me discuss
what happened in Florida recently.

Because of frost and crop damage concerns, Florida strawberry farmers
pumped much water from the ground to spray on their crops to prevent
them from freezing. Well, the farmers were successful at preventing
frost damage, but all of their water pumping from the ground caused
sink holes to develop under homes in nearby residential communities
causing much structural damage.

I fear that with all the drilling and pumping out of oil in the Gulf,
not to mention the major leak, the support of the floor of the Gulf
will be undermined so much that the 3-mile-thick floor will totally
collapse causing a sea of water to be replaced with a sea of oil,
yucky oil.

Now, do the math, if just a relative small sinkhole opens up at the
floor of the Gulf, oh, about the size of your living room, the area of
that hole will be more than a THOUSAND TIMES GREATER than the area of
the cross section of the seven-inch-in-diameter pipe that is currently
leaking! Holly cow!

OK, ok, ok, that's all pure speculation!

What's not speculation is that the leaking pipe (as documented by the
televised news) is spewing forth all sorts of chemical poisons into
the Gulf thereby altering the chemistry of the water which may now act
as ANTIFREEZE. [Back to speculation] This antifreeze may defrost the
vast undersea reserves of methane that is now in the frozen, solid
state. Once transformed into and unleashed as gaseous methane, that
methane will bubble up and form huge, huge, plumes of highly explosive
methane just above sea level.

All that it will take is just one on-board, nicotine-addicted A-hole
to light up and BADDA-BING/BADDA-BANG, you have an explosion of atomic
bomb proportions to knock out jetliners five miles up in the air...
just one more thing to worry about on your next pleasure trip... THIS
NOT TO MENTION KNOCKING OUT 3,000 OTHER OIL RIGS RESULTING IN 3,000
MORE UNCONTROLLABLE OIL LEAKS!

Oh, well, I hope that all of this hasn't been too much of a downer for
you, but if it has been, then I suggest you read the book, "How To Be
Happy No Matter What!"

Correction: It would have been preferable for the following statement:

CONCLUSION: the dinosaur needs more oxygen in the
atmosphere than a human needs in order to survive.

to have read: " CONCLUSION: the dinosaur needs a more oxygen-rich
atmosphere in order to survive than a human needs."

wrote:


As it is, atmospheric levels of oxygen are half of what they were
about 125 years ago,

Excuse me for being so blunt - but are you insane? It is trivially
easy to demonstrate the the level of oxygen in the atmosphere is
the same as it ever was.

Bob M.

"Bob Myers" wrote in message
...
wrote:


As it is, atmospheric levels of oxygen are half of what they were
about 125 years ago,

Excuse me for being so blunt - but are you insane? It is trivially
easy to demonstrate the the level of oxygen in the atmosphere is
the same as it ever was.

Actually, it's significantly higher than it "ever" was

tim