Assignment 3 - Oliver Fister - Excellent Man-Made Solutions to Natural Problems

In 2018, the amount of natural disasters that have graced our beautiful country has been staggering - forest fires, hurricanes, and blizzards have run rampant this year. Is climate change to blame for these worsening conditions? Probably, but no problem made by man cannot be fixed by man! Here are my proposed solutions to solve natural disasters with, so to speak, positive climate change.

Forest fires have overwhelmed western states like Utah and California this year. Thousands of square miles of forest have roasted under the hot western sun, and hundreds have lost their homes, or worse. The solution here seems obvious: forests can't burn if they don't exist, can they? And all of these displaced people need houses and cities to live in, right? Plow down those acres of useless, flammable foliage and put down some new towns. It's a win-win; people get places to live while their toasted homes get repaired, and the trees that once had the potential to cause untold damage now cease to exist.

Hurricanes and blizzards are two problems that, at first glance, could not be more different. Hurricanes decimate the warm and sunny beaches (bye-bye, Hilton Head!) of the East Coast with torrential rains, while blizzards bury the North in yards of snow (so long, Minneapolis!). However, both of these problems actually have one shared solution, and that is global warming! Yes, the one thing people have been bickering about since they first tore a hole in the ozone later might actually save our skins. Here's why - increased carbon emissions makes the planet warmer. And that means that blizzards and snow will melt before they even get close the planet's surface! How does this nullify hurricanes? Well, as the ice caps melt and water levels rise, the very coastlines that we tried to protect are now gone! Just like the forests, there's no need to protect them if they aren't there. (Of course, some people may be displaced in the process, but that means they can just go to California, where the lack of trees now means an abundance of cheap real estate!)