Should We Fight Structural Erosion Damage Or Work With It?

There is an interesting old quote people often used to describe hardships, it is good advice, perhaps you've uttered these words; "go with the flow!" And yet as a society, and in some of the decisions that we make in our civilization, we don't necessarily do that do we? Let me give you an example if I might; we seem to be building barriers to keep out ocean waves, and stronger support structures to protect us from the environment, rather than using the flows - we try to fight them.

When we put bridges over water we build extremely strong and durable bases for the pillars that hold up the bridge. When we build dams, we do the same thing. When we build giant wind turbines we build extremely strong cylinder shaped structures to hold up the wind turbine blades hundreds of feet in the air. Nevertheless, the shapes that we use are not always the most efficient for the wind flows or water flows.

There was an interesting article in Terra Daily on November 14, 2012 titled; "Erosion has a point and an edge," by Staff Writers in New York NY which appeared not more than a couple of weeks after Hurricane-Super Storm Sandy hit the New Jersey shoreline and NYC.

The article showed how over time the tide or current would reshape objects. A cylinder object would be molded into triangular shaped forms. The research was done by Leif Ristroph, et. al., post-doctoral researchers at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and one of the study's co-authors where they used "submerged clay-shaped as balls or cylinders-into a 15-foot long water tunnel."

Well, knowing this information and the shapes that the relative wind or relative water flows are trying to create, perhaps we should beat them to the punch, and design those structures in a manner which works with nature rather than against it. What can we learn from all of this? Well, it seems currently we aren't learning enough, and we are probably causing ourselves headaches which are unneeded.

Consider if you will that the estimates are in the trillions of dollars of the work we need to do on our infrastructure. Report after report shows that our bridges, dams, and other infrastructure are decaying, and in many cases less than safe. Had we better designed these things in the past using the modeling we have now, and what we know, we may have saved ourselves hundreds of billions of dollars in maintenance and rebuilding costs.

Wouldn't it be nice to have that money now to help pay down some of this national debt, or allow our federal government to live within its means - and not just our federal government, but at the state, county, and city levels as well? What if everyone around the world was thinking here? Indeed, I hope I'm starting to make some sense. I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.