DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS IS NOT THE STRONG SUIT OF BLOOMBERG 'CLIMATE CHANGED' WORRY - WORT BARRY CLARK. INSTEAD OF INQUIRING INTO THE SUSCEPTIBILITY OF LADY LIBERTY'S SOFTLY PATINATED COPPPER SKIN TO THE RAVAGES OF TIME, HE ASKS:
Never mind that the statue's Eiffel Tower quality 200-ton wrought iron armature rotted away in under a century - Barry fears 3 millimeters of annual sea level rise will drown the great French Centennial souvenir before verdigris can devour what remains of its 2.4 millimeter thick copper skin - substanial holes from marine corrosion appeared in the '50's, but were patched over in the 1976 restoration of the statue's 22.7 ton copper cuticle using patinated victorian copper from the dome of the original Bell Telephone laboratory.
How Do You Save the Statue of Liberty From Drowning?
Lady Liberty is a towering symbol of our national vulnerability to the changing planet.
We may need a replacement, for at the present rate, while rising seas may reach the copper base by the year 3308, ( not even melting the Antarctic icecap can produce the full Charleton Heston Effect- she's inconveniently a lot taller than The Day After Tomorrow posters suggest ), science must cut the copper skin's corrosion rate to under 70 microns per century in order to have as much as an original toe left to feel the water. Given how much went missing in the first 100 years, that's a pretty tall materials science order, so a truly corrosion proof 22 Karat silicon-hardened gold reboot may be the best buy. At 864 million dollars, it would cost less than restoration efforts to date, and free up space in the Fed's Downtown bullion vault.
