Al Gore Explains 'Snowmageddon'

[Greg]

Salt depresses the freezing point of water. Now a lot of times, they'll spray magnesium chloride or calcium chloride on the road before it snows to prevent accumulation.

I know what ordinary salt does, but it's hard on cars, bridges, etc. Doesn't help plants much, either.
Down here, sand isn't much of a problem afterward, you just use a road brush to move it onto the shoulders.

That's great, if it only snows once or twice a winter. It would also likely work OK in colder, more severe climates if the area wasn't very built up.

But in highly built up areas, particularly ones that depend on road transport for basic economic function (you know, for trucks to bring in the goods to keep everyone alive) you want to get the ice off your roads, period. If nothing else you don't want accumulated ice and snow to ice dam up your storm drains, causing your roads to flood and then turn into sheets of ice. And to maintain traction you'd have to keep reapplying grit/gravel/ash (whatever you use as a traction aid) on top of each new layer of ice that will form. Before long, you'd have streets covered in thick sheets of something way too similar to pykrete. Not good for traffic flow. Nobody gets to work, stores don't get stocked, old people die... (something similar happens to sidewalks that don't get salted).

[Greg]

In 2008 the city of Seattle wouldn't use salt to clear the frozen roads for fear it might end up in the ocean.

You know I almost overlooked that gem. That's goddamn HILARIOUS.

(I wonder if anyone asked the Seattle city non-gender-specific elders why you don't drink ocean water.)

[Netpackrat]

As far as I can tell, nobody uses salt on the roads up here, and we seem to do alright. They use up a lot of sand, which has to be cleaned up with sweeper trucks at the beginning of each summer. I'll often throw down some salt in my driveway where we walk because I don't want to have to clean up the sand in the spring.

[Greg]

As far as I can tell, nobody uses salt on the roads up here, and we seem to do alright. They use up a lot of sand, which has to be cleaned up with sweeper trucks at the beginning of each summer. I'll often throw down some salt in my driveway where we walk because I don't want to have to clean up the sand in the spring.

Did I mention built-up areas? And hungry mouths?

All of Alaska has fewer people than some COUNTIES I've lived in. By a factor of 4. Aside from the sheer mass of hungry urban mouths, rural people think differently. They have to, they haven't had the luxury of learning to depend on built-up infrastructure (little things like buried power lines mean a lot) and dense transportation grids.

[Netpackrat]

I live in the middle of Los Anchorage.

[Greg]

I live in the middle of Los Anchorage.

You clearly don't understand.

Brooklyn, NY which is one county of ~70 square miles, has over 2.5 million residents. Anchorage, of ~1700 square miles, has ~280K people. The population density is lower by more than a factor of 200. (Population density in Manhattan, with it's 1.6million residents, is nearly two times higher than that because Brooklyn is so large.)

[Netpackrat]

The municipality limits are much larger than the size of Anchorage itself. Not in the same ballpark as your example, but still much higher density than those numbers would make it appear. What I clearly don't understand, is why anybody would willingly choose to live in someplace like NY or NJ....

[Greg]

The municipality limits are much larger than the size of Anchorage itself. Not in the same ballpark as your example, but still much higher density than those numbers would make it appear. What I clearly don't understand, is why anybody would willingly choose to live in someplace like NY or NJ....

It's not something I'd choose, I live in the suburbs. But I was born in Brooklyn, NY and grew up there. My parents were born and grew up in Brooklyn, NY. Municipal services were and are really extremely good, and people learn to take things very much for granted. The water was drinkable straight from the tap and never went out. Power outages happened once a decade and were events of legend that people were simply not prepared for, because there was no need. The only reason we ever stocked any extra food in the house beyond what would last us to the next trip to the store was if we bought in bulk to save money. We were far from unique, and hey we HAD food in the freezer and the cupboards (at least a few days' worth)... a sizable portion of the population doesn't even have that much, they have pretty much no food in the house and either eat out or grab convenience food for every meal (paradoxically it's the poor who live this extravagantly, because in general in the US there is a strong correlation between poverty and simply having no clue how to live).

Unless you want Egypt replayed in our cities, you keep the damn roads open. Salt helps.

(And yes my wife- who grew up in the country in the middle of nowhere where week long power outages were not really anything special - and I had some culture shock. City people are just *different*, in some ways they're spoiled and unprepared and fragile to a degree that most people here just can't comprehend.)

[Evyl Robot]

City people are just *different*, in some ways they're spoiled and unprepared and fragile to a degree that most people here just can't comprehend.

One of the reasons that I would never want to live in a city is how *different* the people are. I like living in a smaller town, and I'm very much looking forward to living just outside of a much smaller town.

[skb12172]

Yet, they keep trying...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/opini ... ugman.html