Your Carbon Butt-Print Is A Problem
Monday, April 20th, 2009Environmentalists now want to tax your ass–not metaphorically. They literally want your ass taxed. This science was inevitable (via Pierre LeGrand). I love the title, “Stay Slim To Save The Planet“:
Overweight people eat more than thin people and are more likely to travel by car, making excess body weight doubly bad for the environment, according to a study from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
…
“We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend toward fatness, and recognize it as a key factor in the battle to reduce (carbon) emissions and slow climate change,” the British scientists said.They estimated that each fat person is responsible for about one tonne of carbon dioxide emissions a year more on average than each thin person, adding up to an extra one billion tonnes of CO2 a year in a population of one billion overweight people.
Environmentalism is the new religion. And now, the amen pew will be shaming the gluttons. For being so open-minded the Left sure sounds like a bunch of old ladies at a prohibition meeting.
Iowahawk Saves The Environment
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009Iowahawk’s got a list of many. Here are two of my favorites:
8. Go On a Random Killing Spree. The scientific debate is over: our current environmental mess is caused by an oversupply of human beings, and it’s high time we address these two-legged eco problems head on. Next time you’re on your way to a location shoot, do a little location shooting of your own – Biggie/Tupac style. Have the driver lower the tinted windows and pop a few caps on behalf of Mother Earth. Not only will you be doing the environment a good turn, it will earn you valuable youth market “street cred.”
9. Destroy The Entertainment Industry. Science shows that no single sector of the economy exemplifies America’s obscene energy waste more than show business. Witness the untold megatons of carbon released into the atmosphere every year by the production and consumption of entertainment, with no objective benefit to society. It all adds up to one gigantic, mindless, Earth-raping waste of time, and will take the commitment of progressive industry leaders like you to stop it. Before greenlighting any new project, make sure it contains at least 85% organic recycled preachy self-indulgence. By ridding your products of their dangerous popular appeal, you can keep the public where they belong — at home, with the TV off, playing eco-friendly board games like ‘Scrabble’ and ‘Mystery Date.’
There’s more environmental-friendly goodness at Iowahawk.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News
Travel Blogging Part Trois: We’re Here!
Sunday, December 21st, 2008Sydney, Australia is quite simply gorgeous.
Birds sing. Trees blow in the breeze. It’s in the low 80s. There’s water everywhere. Stunning! The little town, Rozelle, reminds me a bit of San Fransisco, a bit of Grand Haven, Michigan, and a bit of some vague European city with the twisty-turned streets, brick everywhere and crammed together business and housing. It feels familiar enough that I don’t feel like a tourist, but I look like one. I have my Superman backpack (they’ve run out of them, but this is the style, and they work great!) and a camera in my hand and I don’t give a hot damn that I look like a nerd.
Finished up the book Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)
on the trip. Yes, it’s good. Nothing that’s going to give you extra I.Q. points, mind you, but a great story with interesting characters and all the angst of adolescence on full display. Some reviewer here in Sydney said the book was just like Harry Potter. I’m wondering what sad planet of I-didn’t-read-the-book he was from. Whatever. The book is entirely different in tone, setting, and focus. Where Harry Potter is epic good-evil with a dash of growing pains thrown in, Twilight is a “first love/true love” story with vampires thrown in. Sheesh! Sometimes, I think I should be a book reviewer. Anyway, it was good enough that I’m finishing the series, maybe while I’m here. We’ll see how much time I have to read.
Tomorrow the ferry and Mandalay Beach. I expect to fry like a marooned baby seal. I don’t exactly intend to fry, mind you. I have the sunscreen and cover-ups, etc., but Australia has a monstrous ozone hole over the continent, no doubt created by the tiny Australian population using excess resources and being big, fat, wasteful consumers since they are a Western Democracy. Or, it’s the Chinese fault, kinda like it’s Detroit’s fault that all parts Toronto are polluted, or rather, it used to be Detroit’s fault back when they had factories, back in the olden days. Anyway, there’s a big ozone hole and it’s easy to get burned. I’ll do what I can to prevent that. Don’t want to prematurely age. Too late, I have kids. Comes with the territory.
Strange thing about technology: I’m in America. I’m in Sydney. My Twitter and blogging friends are so ass-backward body-clock wise, it’s like I’m home. And so, in a weird way, technology plays along with the normal-seeming yet strange sensation of being 14 hours off my body clock’s time.
I’ll be updating, if I can get the Australian data network to work, on Twitter with pics and all. Hope you’re having a great break, if you’re on one.
Global Warming Frozen In Bad Data
Thursday, December 11th, 2008From the Washington Times:
Environmental extremists and global warming alarmists are in denial and running for cover. Their rationale for continuing a lost cause is that weather events in the short term are not necessarily related to long-term climatic trends. But these are the same people who screamed at us each year that ordinary weather events such as high temperatures or hurricanes were undeniable evidence of imminent doom.
Now that global warming is over, politicians are finally ready to enact dubious solutions to a non-existent problem. In Britain, Parliament is intrepidly forging ahead with a bold new plan to cool the climate, even as London experienced its first October snowfall since 1934 and Ireland went through the coldest October in the last 70 years.
This is an absurd spectacle. Our advanced civilization is being systematically mismanaged by technologically illiterate lawyers responding to political pressures from irrational fanatics. Would someone please tell these people it is impossible to overturn the laws of thermodynamics?
We cannot improve our economy by artificially forcing people to use expensive, unreliable and inefficient energy sources.
From the U.S. Senate committee on Environment:
“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” – Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” – Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC “are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” – Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.
“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet.” – Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.
“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” – Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.
“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” – Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.
“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” – Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.
“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” – Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.
The problem with this nonsense is that people will believe nothing and therefore everything in the future. Everybody is lying, therefore there is no objective truth.
Climate scientists risk losing all credibility. Science in general will be a victim. Just as the Catholic church lost believers over their collusion with abominable sinning caused loss of faith generally in religious institutions.
H/T High Plains Blogger, my friend from Twitter
Cross-posted at RightWingNews.com
Conservatives And The Environment And The Middle Class–UPDATED
Monday, November 24th, 2008At Pajama’s today, I wrote an article about the conflict between the economy and the environment and that when the two crises compete, the economy wins. It is not an either/or problem, of course. It is possible and important, I believe, for conservatives to have a cohesive message and coherent policy regarding the environment. Currently, we have neither.
The Left has both won and lost the environmental argument. (More by Patrick Ruffini on Leftist ideas that are old.) They’ve won in that most people now are convinced there’s a problem. They’ve lost in that the solutions are more stringent than a Pentecostal’s sin list. So, people pay lip service to the environmental problem, do what little they can and tune out. This is a an opportunity for conservatives.
The fact is, there are many conservatives deeply concerned about how to care for and protect the environment while addressing the economic and human concerns. Tied into this issue is a general lack of restraint and a corpulent life-style now in America symbolized by our big waist-lines and mind-numbing debt top to bottom. Conservatives are for personal responsibility and grown-up thinking and discipline. Caring for the environment in concrete ways conforms to that thinking.
Part of the problem with this issue is that it’s not simple in the same way that stem cell research isn’t simple. Complex theories don’t make for simple policy solutions. That doesn’t mean the Left has a complex solution. They have simple logos and simple solutions: “Hurting the environment is bad” is simple. Do conservatives have a simple response? Can the argument be reframed right now, especially, while the economy struggles and there’s a tension between expensive pie-in-the-sky solutions and reality? Will “waste not, want not” sell right now?
Another problem is that conservatives are against regulation and government interference and nanny-statism. How can government policy encourage responsible behavior without seeming coercive and take away rights or economic freedom? I’m not a smoker, but I bristle at the punitive government behavior on legal activity. To me, that means tax breaks and lots of press for things considered good behavior. What good behavior do conservatives want to encourage? Well, why not tax breaks for efficient everything–hot water heaters, windows, etc. But again, these retrofits take money, money that people don’t have right now.
I’m seeing problems as I write this and think out loud. The “right” solution means identifying the real problem. With the science so shoddy, good luck figuring out what the best solution is for fill-in-the-blank environmental issue. The problem, of course, is that the Left accepts this shoddy science on faith and crafts punitive public policy. The Right must answer, every, single, time. And we must be preemptive.
The Left has co-opted the environmental message and managed to irritate a lot of people in the process. The Right can do better. The key will be to simplify the message and make it relevant to economic realities. And another thing before I’m done babbling. I think the environment will retreat as an issue should the economy continue it’s slide. The Right doesn’t need to end up being a day late and a dollar short on an environmental message only to miss the more important message that has been their traditional strength–the economy and changing the American culture of debt. In fact, part of what undid McCain was his seeming irrelevance. He was holding environmental talks, extolled the fundamentals of the economy and sounded seriously out of touch.
Conservatives need to remember that citizens expect the Left to be fou-fou about the details and expect the Right to be solid on the big picture. We lost the big picture in the last election, played to our weaknesses and forgot our strengths.
James Joyner has more.
UPDATED:
The Left has become somewhat of a caricature:
Latest Pajama’s Media Article: Environmentalism Is A Luxury
Monday, November 24th, 2008My latest Pajama’s Media article is up over there and I hope you’ll read it. It’s nothing you’ve read here or elsewhere…yet. Fresh new content.
The environmental movement is outrageous for a simple reason: it is discriminatory. That’s right. In order to be fully immersed in it, you have to have the money to do so. It is like the country club congregation church of yore that these people tend to loathe. And it is as repugnant to be preached at by lushly-funded church-going folk who have never known a moment of want as it is to be preached at by Gaia-worshiping folk who have never known a moment of want. When people need jobs, being preached at to use plastic, no paper, no plastic, no paper, gets old.
Here is a snippet from the article:
It was with interest that I followed Robert Scoble’s tweets from China. He reported choking smog and horrendous pollution that was the side effect of making the cheap consumer electronics we Americans used to enjoy buying before the current economic downturn. Scoble also reported that the Chinese are making strides to make environmentally friendly factories.
Environmentally friendly factories are all to the good and not exclusive of human concerns. Without money flowing to buy products, there will be no factories. Environmentally friendly ones will be as out of business as polluting ones.
This begs the question: Does anyone not want to care for the environment? I put the environmental grandstanding in the same category as torture. Who the heck is for torture? No one. And who is for destroying the environment? No one. The question gets murkier when survival is at stake. If a person must choose, and sometimes leaders must choose, between survival and the ideal, sometimes an ethically challenging decision must be made because the higher value is the value of life. More on that in a bit.
The environmental movement depends not only on excessive moralizing and the same sort of mother guilt that keeps therapists everywhere in steady employment, but also suspect data. Just this week, data from NASA which came from Russia turned out to be false. John Hindraker says, “As the scientific evidence continues to accumulate, it becomes increasingly clear that ‘global warming’ hysteria is based on a combination of bad science and fraud.” It turns out that the climate is getting colder.
There’s a lot more over there and I hope you’ll go read it and leave your thoughts.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News and The Houston Chronicle
