How models work

Ugh ... sorry folks, this post ain't about sexy Hollywood models with million dollars bods. But if I have your attention, I was really talking about computer models. There are a bazillion kinds of those things so let's narrow it down to Climate Change and Global Warming.

This is big news lately, with our President sounding like he wants carbon dioxide mandates and major folks like Joseph Romm (Climate Progress), Freeman Dyson (a major physics denier dude), and Thomas Friedman (NY Times Pulitzer winner) getting published all the same week, duking it out. And there are thousand of more major peeps banging the pots and pans as well.

What it all comes down to are several ensembles of computer models that predict sea level rise, ice coverage, differential heating, and technical stuff I won't bore you about ... other than all these models suck!

Say what, Sammy?

It's a rather existential question because any models that try to predict things into the future are based on humans, and most of the time Mother Nature has a different idea in mind. So global models for sea ice totally missed their mark, a horrible thing for the "modelers." What happened was that sea ice was supposed to break up in a decade or two, like in the Arctic and now even the western Antarctic. They blew it. The stuff is melting at an incredible rate never forecast by ANY computer model. What happened was a classic case of under-shooting because all models done by humans are fallible.

Then there are there is over-shooting, where some models show global heating right now, even in a mild cooling stage, although in the long term they are perhaps correct because the thinking is "Mother Nature took off a year or two from warming." Excuses, excuses, the models that predicted rampant global warming also failed. Poor Al Gore has been severely abused by these notions.

Then there are the ... what can I say, weirdos who predict "crazy weather" from global warming. These folks don't know the difference between climatology and today's weather and unfortunately must be relegated to the loony bin, as no model can support those conclusions except when modeled results conflict with each other, or somebody tries to bloviate about "super hurricanes." The only folks to get away with that trick was the original Farmers Almanac that predicted sun, rain, hail, sleet, and snow all in the same day in Boston sometime in the 1800s.

A model only works for about 5 years of predictive value and I'm going to leave it at that. We have absolutely no idea what will happen in 50 or 100 years. I'm serious! But before you dismiss me as having sentiments one way or the other, I can tell you that climate change is happening right now. I can also say that if the climate was not changing, we'd be in for some very serious entropy problems.

And so far, as good as our bazillion-dollar satellites and billion-dollar super-computers are, we really can't predict very much other than some obvious things that are already happening. This does not mean that they are bad. It means that climate modeling needs a new generation of thinkers who can plug in the right kinds of data without being so political about it.

Poof'n'Whiff Anniversary?

I had to ask Lori how long Poof'n'Whiffs has been, well, poofing and whiffing. She says four years and three-four months. It was before we moved from Leander to here on South Padre Island for sure. Moved in July, 2005 before Hurricane Emily.

Gosh, the dream it was back then, and many (including me at times) didn't think we'd ever move down to the seashore. People say I've changed since then - gosh I hope I didn't turn into an asshole again. Dang I hate that when it happens. It's been fun so far.

I guess in the next chapter, Sammie will get his own boat.

Shower Politics

Not a great picture, but here's an outside shower, one I've been meaning to fix with new pipe, valves, and a shower head - and that ugly rusty deadbolt. I came across an interesting article in Salon about 'shower politics.' Basically, those who take a shower (white collar) before work are treated much better than those who take a shower after work (blue collar). The writer does a pretty good job of explaining our outrage at the AIG executives who got millions in bail-out money, while company workers like at GM are getting the ... pink slips and the boot.

Here on the island is no different I guess, other than we don't care when you take a shower ... its usually after getting in the sand or in the water because otherwise you'll get itchy and pack sand into the bed at night. That's where our humble outside shower comes in!

The shower analogy is a good one also describe water issues. In many areas of the world we consider tapwater a given, something you can waste. However, parts of Australia and the Caribbean are in a horrible drought and most rely on meager rainwater collected in cisterns. It wasn't but last year at this time the Rio Valley was so dry the Rio Grand stopped flowing. Shower water is often used to water plants, flush the commode, and other beneficial uses. So there are people who watch their water use and those who do not.

Oh well, as Texas Week winds down now, and the daughter has just left to go back to Austin, I think I'm ready for a ... shower.

Spring Break 2009

Just catching up on things, noting the wonderful turn of the weather and more kids for spring break today, the few migrant birds and hummingbirds that have passed through, and mundane things like that.

I learned that Spring Break was invented in 1983 at the old Sandy Retreat hotel (which became the Mira Mar), where there parking lot was used for rock 'n' roll bands. The gathering was started by a bunch of Valley kids, not out-of-area college students. In 1984 the Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughn played there. Gosh, that was only 25 years ago. Steve Hathcock has a great story about the history in the last issue of the Coastal Currents local newpaper (sorry, not online). He has a rather amusing ending about Dionysus and how since ancient Greek times, people have been celebrating spring.

It's a break in things right now, as Lori and daughter head to Mexico for goodies and her boyfriend is checking out driving on the beach. Work has been quiet so I'll have to give them a jingle in a while. But it's definitely an "open door day," a good one too.

Grass-mud horse

There is a huge controversy about censorship now in China, something I knew was always repressive but here's a new twist: a children's song about the "grass-mud horse" and it's battle against the evil river crab (which actually stands for peace and harmony).

The way the words are pronounced, "grass-mud horse" sounds exactly like "f*ck your mother," which technically is spelled very differently. Wow, all these kids singing that song, this IS creepy. I have never heard of such a protest since the Falun Gong massacre.

Where were the grass-mud horses when President Bush was in power, anyway? Compared to our fearless Chinese counterparts, we're a society of wimps.

Last Blasts of Old Man Winter

Here's a computer model for Saturday's weather that shows expected rain and other stuff (click the pic to slightly enlarge). Most of the bad weather will be to the north, with some lingering showers in our area. It is expected to be cool the weekend, perhaps bad for Spring Break but good if we see some migrating birds. SPI is located towards the bottom center of the graphic in the pink part showing light rain.

So enjoy today, as a preliminary front is coming down with a chance of thunder this evening, some cool air, a secondary shot of cool air, and some over-running rain. By Monday things should be dry and on the mend - there are no big storms I can see behind this one yet.

Why Twitter is sometimes funny

This is a chain on Twitter posts that started when one of us found a story about "male enhancement pills" that said they didn't work. I'm "Whams."

1. Whams@southpadrelive Dood, I don't think you are near cute enuff to do lap dances, keep the day job!less than 5 seconds ago from web in reply to southpadrelive
2. southpadreliveForget the free lap tops-Where do I sign up for free lap dances15 minutes ago from TweetDeck
3. Whams@southpadrelive TMI brudder!15 minutes ago from web in reply to southpadrelive
4. sandyfeet@southpadrelive Thanks for that visual, JW (not!)22 minutes ago from TweetDeck in reply to southpadrelive
5. southpadrelive@sandyfeet Yea I take them so it will stick out enough so i don't pee on my feet23 minutes ago from TweetDeck in reply to sandyfeet

Sam, Sam, the programmer man

That's a picture of an original Jim Franklin poster for the 'Thirteenth Floor Elevators,' one of the first real hippie bands that played at a cool place called the Vulcan Gas Company up in Austin, late 60s ("Conquero"). Jim went on to Armadillo fame later but these old posters are quite rare. I never got any prints but I do remember getting a bunch of cheap copy paper to staple them onto telephone poles downtown, which made for some rather unusual telephone poles.

But I digress, at the same time these hippies were blasting out electric rock 'n' roll, folks were programming on computers. I think this had something to do with the hippie movement. In essence, kids were making up any entire new language to communicate more effectively. I will never forget when one of the UNIX originals told our training class that "disk slash dollar dot splat" was the ultimate insult ... well you had to be there but the training was at the UT think tank technology incubator facility, millions of bucks and chaired by Admiral Inman himself.

So getting onto my point, since those days programming has changed, and boy has it. RegularHTML and SQL programming has gone nuts, and no telling what they do to jack up all those freaking graphics. It's amazing. DO YOU KNOW THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO PROGRAM IN FREAKIN' 'TWITTER'?

Ahem. I guess I am old school and went into a kind of statistics programming language called SAS, which was strange for a former English Major like me. SAS started in the 60's too, by a couple of hippies who left Big Blue (IBM) to work on applied mathematics, including such stuff as linear regression to analysis of variance and quality control. Unless you "sex up" your SAS output it looks like it was printed on one of the first linotype mainframe printers you ever saw.

Me I don't mind it a bit, and while I'm not getting rich I can make in the low six figures in the little job niche I wandered into. SAS has been berry, berry good to me. I guess I'm graphically challenged but viewing data in different ways, formats, and structures has always appealed to me, and a picture or movie is always better than reams of data. An emerging consensus is that when you really view data and visualize it, many of the common urban myths and old wive's tales turn out to be completely false!

So there I am, like the "best of 1998" and these mainstream programmers today are really hot. It's OK and it's all good, and as more people use computers communication will increase. I did put in a major plug for data programming, which can always use sexing-up. Just like them good old boys and girls did down on Congress Street at the Vulcan in Austin, Texas, light show and all.

Frumpy Hibiscus Effect

As spring keeps rolling into South Padre Island, the mind turns toward assessing the damage from the hurricanes, cold fronts, bugs, and plant diseases. This poor, stunted Hibiscus was a very expensive hybrid with double flowers, obviously never to amount to much. I got to looking around the island and many are in the same condition. Unfortunately, the only thing to do is to throw them away, dirt and all.

Salt might have something to do with it, but I noticed that after a plant gets stressed a little the bugs such as aphids will move in. Then some kind of ant "farms" the aphids. I think one or both help spread harmful bacteria, viruses, and fungus. For lack of a better expression I call it "frumpy hibiscus syndrome."

Interestingly, one common hibiscus I threw in the ground is going great, so how certain plants or varieties get sick is something of a mystery. But I'll be playing in the yard this weekend, trying to make sense of it all.

George F. Will and Global Smarmy

I'm temped to post about global warming and the recent torrent of pubic outcry out the last two columns by George F. Will of the Washington Post. I just posted a note on Grist, a very green blog, that they missed the point and inadvertently allowed George to win the argument.

We all think that George is something of a skeptic, although his antiquated views shouldn't be a threat to the effort to educate folks about climate change - which most everyone will say is happening. But his main point was that each side has a certain orthodoxy about what to think, and anybody who disagrees with them are considered insane. He brought up the media articles done back in the 1970s that in very alarmist terms, said the Earth was going to freeze over solid.

Naturally the "greens" responded with reams of information, studies, and "proof" that George F. Will was a lying, insane skeptic. Some of the responses such as by Joseph Romm were so rabid and over the top they were comical. The facts are, George F. Will might have a limited understanding of the science and got things slightly wrong in a citation (he proves where he got the information though), but his points about alarmism, extremism, and orthodoxy were pretty much right on target.

The mistake was the greens who went on the attack failed to convince anybody but themselves and only served to illustrate what George was saying. Instead of trying to work with folks to calmly educate them and lead them down the path to understanding how global warming works, they screamed, shouted, and revolted, nearly foaming at the mouth. It's almost like a "dictatorship of the nerds." It's was almost embarrassing to watch them struggle to reclaim the high ground.

This is important because while public opinion puts global warming at the bottom of the top ten national priorities, Americans are fairly divided about being for or against the concept of global warming, very similar to the recent Presidential election results. President Obama intends to float initiatives for low-carbon vehicle standards and a cap & trade program for large industries, ones that have to be voted up or down in Congress. That's why this fight is so important.

Perhaps things just aren't going very well for the greens these days. The economy dominates the media and a recession had put off some construction plans for clean power. Obama's plans for investing in mass transit and "green jobs" were drastically scaled back - which was as if it was a slap in the face. And George F. Will won the debate on his own grounds because he took the high road and acted calm.

I guess I'll leave you with my perspective. If you reduce energy consumption that will save you BIG BUCKS. If one can harness solar, wind, and water power and make that competitive, that will also save money, especially if fossil fuel costs race skyward again. The US could save about 30 percent of its power costs simply by improving efficiency and that saves a ton of money. Oh and by the way, when you do that, CO2 emissions will also go down about 30 percent, not a bad side effect. I think that's the right direction to go.

Springtime & the Dirty Crocks

It's funny but for us locals, Croc washing happens when the ocean water warms up. The surf here is fooling with the idea of 70 degrees. Let's just say that if you don't wear socks but you like life in them most of the time, your Crocs are going to look and smell a wee bit shabby. It's time to take my doggies to the beach.

Between the sand and the nice surf water - have to wade in for a few minutes and I like faking I'm "surf fishing" - the Crocs turn out pretty clean and the funkies are all gone. Now brush them outside using a little mild soap, scrub, rinse in the outside shower, and dry: that's a Croc's life for ya.

Now don't be leaving nice Crocs on the beach unattended. Last season some were growing feet and mysteriously disappearing, or possibly stolen. I'm sure that at over thirty dollars retail, they'd be worth at least five bucks in a garage sale. When "going nekked" meaning no shoes I bring my foulest, oldest paint-splattered, lawn-mowing, poop-scooping, offshore fishing Crocs, ones that could make a freight train divert to a dirt road. Trust me, they're still there when I come back from body surfing or walking. Just a suggestion, don't be leaving your brand new, prized Camo Crocs with the cool hunting colors down on the beach.

So spingtime rolls around again - we really didn't get much winter and knock on wood. I've tried the sink, buckets, and all kinds of ways to clean your Crocs but going to the beach and rinsing them really does the trick. I'm so happy I feel like another bonfire.

I Wanna Grouper Claypot

I really miss my fix of Vietnamese food sometimes, and nothing more than grouper claypot. Sorry for the rip-off picture, that looks more like chicken, shitake mushroom, and mung bean or some madness. Yeah you could even have vegetarian claypots and twice-fried tofu and it is wonderful, an essential ingredient of the mighty grouper claypot.

It's the king, the bomb, the best. I got to asking Hao the owner and chef how the heck he did those things. Aside from his wonderful brown sauce, a family secret, he said "it's all in the bowl."

And darn if he didn't show me. Those clay bowls have a snout at one end to insert a 2-foot wooden handle. The pot is lowered into a circular opening in stove top, like an old coal stove or something, sitting about a third of the way down. All of Hao's clay pots had brass wire on the outside: "Sometimes they crack or blow up and make a big mess," he says. Comforting, eh? Serving was a matter of bringing the claypot to the customer with a side of Jasmine rice, hopefully in non-exploding mode but still sizzling.

Basically it's just a vegetable stew with Chinese ketchup and some meat if you want it, I know, but I want one again. Interestingly, the mushrooms such as the Shitake, Oyster, and Morel came out perfect this way (I'm shakin' like Elvis). And I know, grouper is getting to be an endangered species, but there is none finer than a real grouper claypot.

The North End

That's a section of what I call the "North End," about two-thirds of the way between the Shores development and the end of Park Road 100. This piece of land is about exactly 6.45 miles long. The Gulf is on the right, with a white beach and then a skinny black line that is the park highway. To the left of the road you'll see some blobs that indicate large vegetated dunes, some mudflats, and weird stuff due to the resolution of the picture.

Except for a few high dunes on the beach side, the beach is about 600 feet wide between the roadway and the dark sand (see the little red dots?). The brilliant white color indicates a lack of vegetation except in small places, and most of those dunes are small coppice dunes or larger, shifting "air dunes."

I didn't get the best shot here but see that "fan" effect on the bayside at the very top of the picture? That's an indicator of a very large and powerful washover zone. So there are a lot of dangers and risks in building up in this area. Unfortunately, a complete Google Earth satellite view of the entire length of the island in dispute looks like spaghetti so short sections such as this picture are the only way to gain an appreciation for the area.

Let's talk set-backs from the wet sand now, a nice surrogate for the high water mark. We now have 600 feet to play with, and the vegetation line is nowhere near obvious. I'm not a coastal expert by trade but you can drive for quite a while and not see any continuous vegetation line anywhere. That's important because the area between the vegetation line and the waterline is considered a public beach.

Then you has a "building line" which is usually a setback from the waterline of maybe 200 feet to 400 feet depending on the area (the Shores went with 400 I think). That's interesting, since the erosion rate in this part of the island is about 10 feet per year! Does that mean in 20 years there won't be anymore public beach? Gee, I hope to be alive to see that one.

Perhaps I'm being Captain Obvious here but it is clear to me we have major problems just figuring out how to plan that part of the island. I would prefer if nothing was developed up there but that just isn't going to happen. What would you do?

SPI Bees

Okay, not my best picture with $99 automatic but that was supposed to be a close-up of my Meyer's Lemon bushes which were - until I got close - were covered with all kinds of bees. There were at least five kinds of bees. I discovered that aside from a typical honey bee or bumble bee, I had no clue about the bees down here.

But I think you get the message that a bunch of stuff is flowering, including my lemons and some Huisache trees, and when it gets over 75 or 80 degrees the bees are quite active.

There's little teeny bees of several kinds, regular bees, bees that look like wasps, brown-black bees, and a huge black bee that looks like a flying B-52. My online sources such as Wiki, Google, and the Texas Handbook of Insects are totally useless. They like to talk about regular honey bees, some carpenter bees, and the dreaded Africanized bee, which we know are really from Brazil. Useless!

I find it fascinating to watch all these bees play on the flowers, some incredibly small and some large as a nickel in size. Maybe somebody knows? Until then, let's sing along with some Frank Sinatra:

Do bee-do, bee do bee,
Do bee-do, bee do bee do ...

More Beach Graphs

Here's something I believe we need more of down on SPI - beach transects. Imagine if you sliced the beach due east and measured the distance to the beach as well as the elevation. This transect was done in 2005 or so on a place called "SPI02," which I have no idea where that is. But with the new dredge stuff, constant erosion, and probably storms, it's nice to graph these over time and see how things are changing.

In this graph, the sea wall is where measurements are taken. You'll see a hump for a nice dune or two, and then a hump in the middle called the fore-dune. The vegetation line is on the right side of the fore-dune. The rest is all public beach down to the water line.

The horizontal scale is not perfect because I'm a dummy with the new Excel software but that's 300 feet from the condo seawall (historic building line) to the waterline, not bad. Note that this was before the erosion events that occurred later in 2005 due to Katrina and Rita, which would be cool to compare.

I also backwards engineered this graph to show that it is almost exactly 7 feet from the waterline to the top of the seawall - usually the survey numbers are negative and in meters, which are a little tough to read. The 300 feet is a magic number though, as erosion will cause that to dramatically shorten.

Think this is tough stuff requiring professionals? They have students trained at Point Isabel High School who do this all the time!

On Building Dunes

click the pic to enlarge

For the record, I am not a coastal biologist, scientist, or engineer although all three interest me, so be careful about using my words against anybody else. But I think folks may have lost a bit of common sense about "how to build a sand dune." And to learn how to grow dunes, you have to learn how the winds affect the shifting piles of sand.

So that ugly picture is a wind rose from Corpus Christi - the closest one I could find - that show wind direction, wind speed, and wind speed frequency. This one was for a 30 year average of days in January. What you see are two long barbs going to the northeast and the southeast. Other months such as July only has one barb to the southeast because there are no cold fronts with north winds in the summer.

But this means something, chiefly that building a "continuous dune line" will be frustrated from winds coming both directions, not at once of course but that significant dune shifting will result in the winter months, always eroding the face and creating a long slope behind the lee side of the dune.

To me this has two implications: that a "herringbone" type construction is needed instead of a linear one, and second that the idea is to build onto already existing humps, coppice dunes, and mature, vegetated dunes rather than piling sand and seaweed. In other words, any new dunes must grow naturally.

The herringbone construction is essentially a "vee" that slows down the wind from the northeast and southeast during the critical winter dune building months. Either wind direction, the project design works. Other designs, either laterally (north-south) or perpendicular (east-west) will both fail from either wind direction!

But human nature being what it is, folks want to "fill the gaps" with artificial dunes that to me, just won't work. All dunes have a certain wind flow around them and we will never have a true "continuous dune line" no matter what we do - and the air effects around tall buildings makes it even worse in the urbanized part of South Padre Island. We will always have dune gaps and wash-overs - and as long as condo roof drains are allowed to drain onto the Gulf side (a violation of the Clean Water Act), we'll have a horrible problem.

Not many people see things the way I do. I'm not going to get into what did and didn't work so hot. But using some common sense, one can build onto robust, mature dune and make them move up and down the beach. I'd use a ton of railroad vine roots and clippings, is my idea.

Finally, I wrote this because of an article in the Island Breeze which mentioned something like "if we don't vegetate the dunes, we'll get horrible hurricane damage." What a crock. Vegetated dunes were cut down like a butter knife by Hurricane Ike waves. The idea is just to slow down the damage a little bit. All I want is to bring some common sense to the table, no rocket science.

The Stinky Cheese Wars

Ah, who would have thought that such a perfectly foul smelling, wonderful French cheese would be the subject of a global trade war? Nobody really knows. As reporting the the Washington Post, the Bush Administration slapped a 300% import duty of Roquefort cheese in retaliation for the EU prohibiting importation of hormone-injected beef. Why Roquefort? Maybe I need to watch some more Monty Python movies.

If that's not existential enough, take the Stinky Cheese Wars being fought over the Town Lawyer on the SPI Forum. Like Roquefort cheese or the hilarious Flying Circus 'Cheese Shop' we simply have no idea why the idea came up, other than some old farts on the island must have gotten into some ... well some really stinky cheese or too many beans or something. We have no clue why people are mad at the poor lawyer, other than he has a helmet hairdo and drives a fancy Porsche 911 turbo. Hmm, hard to tell really.

I'm headed over to Zeste to see if they have any ugh ... stinky killer cheese balls!

Now that's a beeg plane!

This caught my eye, the biggest commercial jet plane in the world, the Airbus A-380. Quantas Air flies them mainly West Coast to and from Australia. It is so large that Los Angeles Airport (LAX) must stop all plane and ground transportation movements when one approaches or takes off. The local LAX officials like the business but treat the A380 as a royal pain because the wing span intrudes into all of the FAA safety zones.

Four Rolls Royce turbo-fans each output 70,000 foot-pounds of thrust and share a 80,000 fuel tank system. These engines are so large they required special sound dampening controls, or the passengers and crew would go deaf on a take-off. It creates such a turbulent wake effect that other planes must stay at least 10 miles away from it - smaller planes even further away.

Need to hit the restroom or make a fast destination when you've landed? With 500 to 800 passengers, the aircraft takes over 45 minutes to unload unless a third gate is added. Other US airports are looking to allow the A380 to land there (Kennedy does already), but the expense for taxiways and terminals is over 100 million dollars.

Ah, now that's living large, huh? I wonder if Sandy Feet rode one of those to Aussie Land or not.

Sustainabllity Part 4

One more post on the topic and I'm taking a break until the some inspiration (or brain fart) happens about the topic. I would like to say that unlike the early days of the island, SPI was indeed a sustainable place, and there are doubts about the future. Yes the economy will be here, but what kind of economy and quality of life? This is in recognition that the only industry on SPI is tourism.

As stated very broadly on the Center for Sustainable Destinations, there are 5 aspects to geo-tourism and sustainable communities:

1. Sustains tourism
   
2. Protects the destination
3. Conserves the resources
4. Respects local cultures and traditions
5. Promotes quality over quantity

Some of these concepts are being discussed around the island grapevine, without knowing they're talking about big concepts such as sustainability and geo-tourism. For example, Items #2 and #3 are about eco-tourism and the need for recycling and electrical conservation. Item #5 is misleading to many because they often think we need more rich visitors and residents on the island, which simply is not true. While the kinds of tourists that are more educated, stay longer, and spend more money do indeed have some disposable income, it could apply to any type of tourist. More on the topic will follow after a brief hiatus.

Happy Inauguration Day, 2009.

Sustainability Part Three

That's a 1957 postcard picture of the old bridge, also known as the Queen Isabella Causeway. Since that time a new causeway was built in about 1973, the present one linking Port Isabel and SPI. A third proposal is underway for yet another causeway to be built somewhere north of the existing ones. And interestingly, it would be a tollway exactly like back in 1957.

The stated reasons for a second causeway is that additional capacity is needed in case of emergencies or in case a barge takes out one or the other, and plus the existing causeway is quite old (although there are no plans to remodel it). The unstated reason for a second bridge is because developers want a bridge to the North End of the island, so resort travelers would not have to drive through the towns of Port Isabel and SPI. The concept is to create additional capacity (discussed in the last blog entry). One wonders how sustainable the whole concept really is, especially given the estimate of about two hundred million dollars.

The North End is roughly defined as the land between the Shores and the end of Park Road 100. It is also the wild end of the island, relatively thin, and known for hurricane wash-overs and high erosion rates. To construct the huge resorts - a few residential lots have been sold but it is mostly resort - the fragile dune systems would have to be flattened. While there might be some restaurants eventually constructed in the area, it is expected that the business and entertainment zone would be in SPI. The grocery stores would probably remain where they are, the Blue Marlin downtown with the Wal-Mart and HEB over in Port Isabel. So there are a host of gambles, what-ifs, and relationships with the old SPI town core that haven't even been addressed yet. Those relationships turn out to be very important.

Many assume that self-contained mega-resorts or even casinos would be constructed on the North End. However, knowing human nature, they will want to fish, shop, dive, see dolphins, go to Sclitterbaun, see the fireworks, and so forth. So I don't trust the "self-contained" resort paradigm in the least, and building up on the North End will only make our town less sustainable. Further, one would expect very few long-term residents to move into that area, as it would be mostly casino-like resorts for shortime visitors and a few very rich folks who can afford second mansions. I know I sound negative here but there is no plan to accomdate such kind of growth to the North End. In truth it would be best developed for mixed uses that were low-rise dwellings - but development will happen and there's nothing we can do about it.

And on the same subject, I will not dwell on the "leaning tower of SPI" which was supposedly constructed to the best engineering available, yet it failed and will never be inhabited, a stark reminder of the conditions at the "wild end" of the island. So my take is that building up the North End is an incredible risk that will not improve upon sustainability one iota, and would probably ruin the wild beaches and the access to them as well.

In the next section I'll talk about "geo-tourism" which is very different from eco-tourism although they are related. The concept of geo-tourism is directly intertwined with sustainability.