Last week, while at my sister's house, I noticed on CNN on the little hyp-mo-tizing news-ticker thing-a-ma-jiggy at the bottom of the screen (one major reason that I normally avoid watching CNN) that Prince Charles had cancelled his annual ski vacation to Klosters in order to "...reduce his carbon footprint." Of course, the ticker made no mention of the fact that there hasn't been too much snow in Switzerland this year, and that the skiing hasn't been too good.
Wait...that didn't have anything to do with Chuck's decision to blow off the annual Swiss ski vacation, did it?
Naaaaaaaaaa!
Oh, come on, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume (BTW...pronounced a-shoom by some Brits - and they say that Americans are destroying the English language!) that his intentions were sincere and not some lame attempt to gain some good publicity before booking THE ENTIRE FIRST-CLASS AND BUSINESS CLASS SECTION (a total of 62 seats) OF A JUMBO JET FOR HIS 20-STRONG ENTOURAGE - TO PICK UP AN AWARD FOR HIS WORK ON THE ENVIRONMENT.
Doh! Insert "carbon foot" into mouth...NOW!
I guess it truly as been a bad year for Global Warming Alarmists. Don't get me wrong; there is nothing wrong with the environmental friendly lifestyle of reduce, reuse, and recycle. I don't believe in wasting anything, and I am constantly trying to think of ways to reduce our "carbon footprints". Solar power? Wind power? Tidal power? Bring 'em on! They're all good as far as I'm concerned in spite of the fact that I just happen to be one of those people who thinks that the media has created public hysteria and that "human activity" global warming isn't as bad as a lot of people fear that it is.
Hell...I'm still waiting for acid rain to start. Whatever happened to that?
13 comments:
let me try to be brief. I think Global Warming "alarmists" have moved on to scare techniques because that is the only thing people will listen to. If you present the average American with a sound scientific argument for something, and a BS answer that has nothing to do with science they are just as likely to believe the second one.
The facts are basically all climate scientists believe that we have a problem, and the really truly scary part is that we don't even know how our actions really affect the environment. case in point, a few months back there was a paper in Nature where some biologists found that growing trees actually emit methane!!! Here is a natural process that we thought we had a pretty good understanding of, the whole growth/photosynethsis thing, and all of a sudden the biologists are like, oh wait, remember how we said lots of trees would be good, well turns out that they produce lots of methane which is a way more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide!! Recently it has also been shown that when the temperatures go up trees start to emit more CO2 themselves.
My point is, we are so so so far from understanding how what we do changes the environment, and things are never black and white (solar panels? they produce lots of toxic chemicals in their manufatucring as well as take a huge amount of energy to make, tidal power? what will the things we put in the ocean do to the life there? and then what will that do to the ecosystem as a whole?)
My dad is a pretty clever guy and he makes models of species in the environment, for example what one invasive species does to one other one, and people get all excited when they can understand what some other kind of grass growing in a marsh does to the grass that was there before, talk about only understand a tiny tiny bit of the whole thing.
Anyway, to try to make a point out of this whole rant, I don't think there is any way in which we can be too careful about our impact on the environment, and if people will only listen to alarmist arguments and not rational scientific discussion then that is what we need to do to reach them.
Hey, you changed to the new blogger version??
To all - I've decided that I am going to begin deleting anonymous comments unless the person signs their name at the bottom. However, since this "anonymous" person's name was attached to the copy that was sent to my mailbox, I won't delete it.
People can (and do) drive themselves crazy by worrying about global warming as if the world is going to end tomorrow if something is not done today - I think that is hysteria that comes from people watching too much telelvision. I pretty much ignore ALL the arguments (especially those on television) regarding global warming because I am of the school that TECHNOLOGY WILL EVENTUALLY CURE ALL ILLS; even the ills that technology caused in the first place.
CS - I had to switch; you'll have to eventually switch also. I signed in, and a message came up that read that it would be the last time that I could log-in under old blogger. Like it or not, I am now on the new (non-BETA) blogger.
hmm your new nonbeta blogger is messing with mine, i signed in for that comment that appeared Anonymous, i think that happened on one of your other posts too. well, we will see what happens with this one.
for an interesting (nonTV) read, check out Collapse by Jared Diamond.
And as a member of the profession that is supposed to be producing this all ills curing technology, let me tell you, you should be very afraid. Check out www.phdcomics.com
ok, one last thing, i totally agree that the media likes to whip up frenzies about everything and should generally be ignored, but when papers are appearing in peer reviewed scientific journals that say we should be worried and do something about it, then I don't think it is alarmist to take notice.
Global warming my a$$! It is freakin' 4 degrees here in Chicago.
On a serious note, I do believe there is global warming that we have created thru our technology etc... I kind of agree with TBF that hopefully technology will cure all ills. That being said, I feel we should be mindful of it and do what we can within reason.
Back from my ski vacation 2 days early. Where's my prize for environmentalism?
jul, you have to fly here to geneva and i will give it to you
:)
sorry, this is totally off-topic, but is there any reason why your site doesn't publish an RSS feed? it's so handy to know when everyone's blog has been updated!!
Samanta - I've noticed these "RSS feed" things lingering about, but I have no idea what they do, nor do I have the slightest idea how one is set up. If one of you young whipper-snappers would explain what it does and how I go about setting it up, I'd be happy to do so.
Sure, it's really easy - you just need to go to your blogger dashboard, click on "settings", and then on "site feed". Then you just set the part where it says "allow blog feed" to either full or short. Press save, and voilà, you're finished!
I don't know nothin' 'bout global warming, but after switching to the New Blogger, many, but not all, of the comments on previous posts appeared as "anonymous" and I could only see who they were from through Gmail. No idea what that's about but it's annoying. Also, you can turn on the RSS feed in your Blogger settings.
It's a shame annons ruin the fun out of not having to moderate... Brief! Move onto somewhere else why don't ya!
Anyhow - if oyu want to experience acid rain, go to Siberia where there have been reports of Orange crap considered raining down...
That's about as close as one might get for now...
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