Monday, March 11, 2013

Wake up

Ok, either Al Gore IS COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT and is living in a fictional reality that is ten times more hilariously out of touch with the facts than Mayan cult worshipers and Doomsday preppers...or we're totally fucked.

Am I the only one who read the final chapter of Gore's book "The Future" and felt like the condom full of cocaine that I had swallowed suddenly ruptured as the border police questioned me in a small room? The chapter is titled "The Edge" and it even specifically targets my pathetic hydro-fracking career....
"...the fracking process results in the leakage of enormous quantities of methane which is 72X as potent as CO2 in trapping heat in the atmosphere..."

Methane and Hydrogen Sulfide are closely linked but H2S isn't mentioned in the fracking section. I guess Gore hasn't worked on a instrumentation team in the shale field...

My favorite part says, "Due to the total volume of methane leakage....virtually all the benefit natural gas might have because of its lower carbon content compared to coal is negated."


Or how about this..."Between 1977 and 2001, 80% of the coral reefs in the Caribbean were lost." Or the announcement that half of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia had died in the last 27 years.

Acidification....desertification...carbonization....corrosive...melting...drought....famine....pestilence....child mortality...global warming....

The index reads like a tree hugger's worst nightmare.

But as I read about the evidence Gore has compiled to support his claims that the ship is sinking I came on a term that had me scratching my head in puzzlement..."Superstorm Sandy."
It was clear that Gore was referring to something that was supposed to be common knowledge...like the meteor that hit near the Yucatan and exterminated all life about 65 million years ago or the volcano of Tambora that erupted in 1815 and caused global crop failure....but for a moment I had no idea what Superstorm Sandy referred to.

My memory returned and then I realized that's the central problem. Texas is so big that it would be hard to keep track of every disaster that happened in Texas. I swear the dominant theory is that Superstorm Sandy hit New Jersey...because it isn't Texas. And because it isn't Texas it has no place in our mindset. "We have enough problems of our own..." And WE DO have enough problems of our own. We actually do have more problems than New Jersey folks can comprehend. And the border wars, drug trafficking, wild hogs...methane reserves and lack of water in Texas never cross the minds of your average person in New Jersey. So why would a Texan pay much attention to Superstorm Sandy? I watched a few hours of the storm coverage and that put me a few hours ahead of almost every person I worked with. Several had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned the storm.
"What storm?"
"The one on the East Coast."
"Was it bad?"
"It pretty much destroyed Atlantic City."
"Where's that?"

And it went on and on until I stopped caring and eventually forgot it happened. It had no impact on my life at all.

Incidentally, my desperate attempt to voyage to Ellesmere Island in 2012 to raise awareness about the plight of the Arctic Wolf coincided with the first summer in 4.5 billion years that the North Pole could be crossed by ship...it was completely in sync with the ecological pulse and was met with almost 100% disapproval. What could have been a historic event ended up as more evidence that if you go against the grain of conventional idiocy be prepared to grin and eat shit. Gore is another perfect example, he has to spend at least 200 pages reiterating the exact same information he was called an asshole for writing in "An Inconvenient Truth"....and he's still only reporting facts that the "liars for hire" such as Inhofe and Fox and Limbaugh and Bush attempt to discredit with lubricated bullshit spouted from their poisonous gullets. My point is that this centralist thinking is contagious...so hopefully telescopic thinking like Gore's is also virulent.

I could go on but if Gore's book doesn't affect you then consider yourself in good company with every hog killing Texan.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What if I didn't read either book. My Father sent me a WSJ article expounding the fact that electric vehicles use a shitload of carbon in their production and why they aren't all that "Green" after all. I responded like this, (BTW I don't have an electric car but a hybrid Prius)

First we don't drive an electric car we drive a hybrid. We get awesome gas mileage and spend less on fuel than say you, the Subaru, much to my chagrin the tdi, and most other cars on the market, even with my heavy foot.
Second you can't create a truly zero emissions vehicle. Plants use power. Zero emissions means staying at home.
Third the whole premise of the article is green power is way more important.
Fourth articles like this are just meant to make you feel better about driving a car that gets 8 mpg. It. Justifies me driving the vw or Prius.
Fifth. I don't like driving the Prius. It is boring, slow to respond, the dash layout is dumb and climate controls and radio controls are not intuitive. But when I drive 600 miles on a tank of gas I smile a little at the pump when it costs me 50 bucks to fill up on super while the Tahoe next to me dumps 100 bucks to drive. Barely 300.
It's about using less fossil fuels now so we develop better green energy later. Bring on the hydrogen vehicles.
Poncho

Anonymous said...

I am sure I incorrectly entered the captha text.... I am gonna try again.

Ponch

Anonymous said...

Yup total BS. I entered something close but not accurate.... what the fuck?
Poncho

Anonymous said...

What if enter both incorrectly but close?
Poncho

Anonymous said...

What is I enter something totally incorrectly?

Poncho

Nope, one has to be correct and one close....

Oggy Bleacher said...

I noticed that too...if the word is off by two letters you still get a pass. But the numbers have to be right. But I am not getting erection spam so it's working to defeat the Russian Spambots.

Now, on the question of carbon...the fact we're having any dialogue at all on this subject puts us ahead of the rest of Texas and most of America. So congratulations. Seriously, most Americans believe it's God's Will that we roast ourselves like mini marshmallows.

I think your comment is addressed by Gore when he writes about the debate between mitigation and adaptation. It's the difference between trying to patch the hole in the Titanic and trying to build more lifeboats. But Gore raises the point that if we pretend adaptation is possible (colonizing the moon) then it will detract from the immediate and desperate need for mitigation...ie TOTAL CHANGE OF HABITS.
And even that appears desperate because of the long term effects of the 90 million tons of pollution we produce each day. Can we adapt to a planet where 50% of all species living today will be extinct by 2113? And if the outcome is so serious then is it possible we've already sealed our fate and adaptation is exactly what we should concentrate on?

I'm sure in some dark room scientists are trying to figure out how to use humans as fuel for gold-plated limousines since we are headed for peak oil and 14 billion people. Eventually it will be cheaper to pay children to push your car than to buy the gas.

I agree that WSJ articles are pro-growth writers trying to stay busy with fluff pieces. Some are "liars for hire" cunt rags who should be castrated and some are lazy thinkers who ended up at the WSJ.

The evidence right now is worst case scenario environmental holocaust caused by corporations without morals or accountability and citizens with cave man ethics and future shock. Too late for mitigation and impossible to adapt to. 124 degrees in Austin. A/C is required...which demands coal energy...which leads to 130 degrees...so A/C is required...which leads to 138 degrees. On and on. It is normally 59 degrees outside this time of year...it's 83 today! It's like the gambler who has to be more risky the more he loses. Those guys eventually go home. I think we flew too close to the sun.

Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.