Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Power through Fear, Sucks

I may lose some friends over this article; then again I may gain even more new ones. There was a time when the cover of time magazine declared that the next ice age was on the way. They were very proud to point this out and used it to explain the effects of then current global weather patterns. Confirming temperature readings with ice core findings seems to be reliable for the last hundred years, but beyond that 100 years / 100 meters of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, the ice is under so much pressure and has flowed so much that dating and coming up with an accurate measurement is practically nil. Contamination is also a real danger once they bring the core sample near to the surface and let it rest to become less brittle and test-able. If anyone tells you that they know what the temperature was in your town two hundred years ago or more, they are lying. They do not know for sure, but are just making the best guess that they can since actual measurements were not taken then.
I remember the brown skies above LA during the 1960s. We had ‘smog alerts’ all through the 1970s to the point where our cross country coach would send us out to the oil fields a mile south of my high school so that we could run practice in the hills and not be noticed by the administration. I have not seen the brown air from my childhood in a long time. A couple of times in Houston in the late 70s, and Salt Lake City in the 90s, but not much at all lately. Invisible pollutants are still there and being measured, but it sure is nice not to see so much brown sky anymore. I glad many industries are being responsible and running cleaner, but if anyone thinks that they have a zero carbon footprint, they are kidding themselves and lying to us all. Do you know how the high prophet of environmentalism Al Gore, who grew up in a hotel and spent summers working the family tobacco fields, gets even close to a zero carbon footprint? He does it by buying carbon credits from the real energy savers. Hopping all over the globe in private jets and lighting his many estates is definitely not being an energy saver. What is the main component that affects heat on our planet? Man? No, it’s the sun. Manipulate that energy, and you may have something. Volcanoes annually pump more toxins into the atmosphere than any industry does today. More oil leaks up from the bottom of the ocean naturally every year than is spilled in any industrial accident. I am not saying that there are not any problems here. I am saying that in relation to global events and global weather, man made problems are miniscule. The planet will kill us off long before we could ever conceive of endangering the earth.
Why is there all this type of talk in the first place? Money. Government grants funding new research which come up with new inventions to be taken private and sold to the public to make more money for the individual or entity that contracted the university to seek the grant in the first place.
All this talk of global warming is to gain Power through a tyrannical Fear that will Suck the tax money out of your pocket and into the pocket of someone wanting this research done. Instead we should have our taxes reduced and should have the choice to give to the charity and/or research facility of our own choosing. The governed in this country are supposed to give consent to this communistic re-distribution of wealth. The officials we have elected are instead taking our implied consent and re-distributing our tax dollars in a fashion that helps to keep them in office/funded. Eisenhower complained of a do-nothing congress. In my book, that is one of the better types of congress. Why must they continually twist, contort, and otherwise re-write existing laws, and claim that they are doing something new, instead of investigating why current laws are not being enforced. If they find an old or current law that is not ‘good’, repeal it first, and re-write it from scratch instead of piling on layers so thick that a twelfth grader can no longer comprehend the tax code.
This rant has been building for about thirty years and I could go on for another thirty thousand pages, which might bore us all. Instead I will just advise that you re-use, reduce, recycle, get involved, monitor your government, and live well. And remember what the romans said of those that did not involve themselves with governmental affairs, that they were idiots.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You don't think 4 billion people contribute just a tad Proto? Or at least move things along faster than nature intended?

MGM said...

While I do live "green" within reason and reasonable practicality (reduce, re-use, recycle and all that jazz), this entry of yours already makes me a much bigger fan of you than I am of Mr. Gore. I also believe what you have said more than I believe Al Gore, though I'm sure that sounds like no compliment as I don't think it takes much to outdo the Gore.

Proto said...

A tad? I think humans are natural creatures and do natural things and have the strength to even rise above and think for ourselves. I don't think we would be on this planet if it couldn't handle us. And if the planet could not handle us, it would destroy us. It's important to keep the area around each self as pleasing and friendly as possible. But what really set me off was knowing that a little activist was suing several local business's because he drove by them and may have been exposed to a toxic chemical that is already heavily regulated by the city and county of Los Angeles as well as the state of California and our federal government. Argh. At least we are not assinating our political opponents and blowing up the witness's like what happen in asia today.

Robin said...

I with you!! I think congress is just legalize racheteering! Just as insurance!