House of Eratosthenes

The history of mankind is replete with occasions wherein the simple nature of truth is forgotten. Truth is what truth is. You can’t vote on it, and no parliament or king can say what it is. Wherever an institution installs itself for the purpose of telling lesser men what is true and what is not, an empire will surely fall.

That’s just common sense. What’s fascinating, to me anyway, is for how long a time, and how often, people forget this. Well, it’s just been done one more time, except this time people think it’s a really important movie.

Albert Einstein once said, “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”

While the gods must consider An Inconvenient Truth the ultimate comedy, real climate scientists are crying over Al Gore’s new film. This is not just because the ex-vice-president commits numerous basic science mistakes. They are also concerned that many in the media and public will fail to realize that this film amounts to little more than science fiction.

Gore’s credibility is damaged early in the film when he tells the audience that, by simply looking at Antarctic ice cores with the naked eye, one can see when the American Clean Air Act was passed. Dr. Ian Clark, professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa (U of O) responds, “This is pure fantasy unless the reporter is able to detect parts per billion changes to chemicals in ice.” Air over the United States doesn’t even circulate to the Antarctic before mixing with most of the northern, then the southern, hemisphere air, and this process takes decades. Clark explains that even far more significant events, such as the settling of dust arising from the scouring of continental shelves at the end of ice ages, are undetectable in ice cores by an untrained eye.

Hat tip to Varifrank, which is probably headed to this blog’s sidebar, sooner rather than later.

Let’s take all this at face value for a minute, and make-believe we will let the Al Gore band of elites dictate to the rest of us what truth is. Let’s say that we’re headed into the thick of global warming, it will only get worse, man is the cause. And furthermore, “everyone” realizes it save for slope-foreheaded red-state-leaning morons like me, high-school-educated gun-lovin’ Nascar-watching “Appliances On The Front Porch” rednecks who are too stupid to see the obvious.

From San Diego, CA to Bangor, ME, and every inch in between, all federal, state, county and municipal buildings have solar panels on the rooftops. Why not? It’s a one-time disbursement, with a negligible load of maintenance, a drop in the bucket compared to the year-to-year money all those agencies spend on other things.

There is a truly massive effort underway to relocate all residential, commercial and government facilities, several miles away from the water’s edge. That includes most of Manhattan, including Wall Street. Government agents are walking door-to-door to contact tens of thousands of coastline residents who have no telephone or Internet service.

Nobody is bellyaching about the cost of gas. Those of us who rely on it, after all, are only using it for the handful of years that remain before we trade Ol’ Bessie in an electric model. In that enterprise, cost is irrelevant. Bellyaching is instead confined to the subject of what the electric models cost, and the scarcity of charging stations and other facilities.

Of course, the Senate has sat down to vote on the Kyoto Protocols, and this time passed them overwhelmingly. The Protocols themselves have been re-written so that no countries are exempt. The official United Nations response to any country seeking exemption, is “Are you out of your freakin’ gourd?”

A construction crew cooking up a batch of tar to fix a leaky roof, is about as common a sight as a Victorian-era chimney sweeper.

Residents of states do not ask residents of other states, “what are the smog check and automative emissions requirements where you live?” This question is now pointless, as the Federal Government has declared a national emergency and siezed control of the emissions standards in all states. Nobody passes, or very few do. Repair cost caps, grace periods, temporary permits, these are all things of the past. It’s smog, after all. Smog causes global warming.

We have new programs to encourage telecommuting, the likes of which have not been seen before. Incentives for employers, regulatory oversight, seminars, the works! In fact, you have to explain to your boss why you don’t want to telecommute now, and he has to explain to the government why you can’t. None of these conversations are any fun.

Shopping mall parking lots…are empty. Except for the overcrowded bicycle racks. The mall management keeps promising everybody more bicycle racks are on the way, but it never seems to be enough. Gas stations are being torn out. Retail shops dealing in bicycle gear and equipment, go in their place. The IRS would like to know what you spent at those shops, so they can give you credit.

Soccer, for kids, is history. Kids play in the yard, like kids did back in my day. If this presents a danger of kidnapping or child abuse or injury or some other shenanigans, then the parents just spend more time watching the kids, and make the time to do so.

On Monday morning at the water cooler, people brag to each other about the television shows they missed. Reading books and newspapers is very popular among men, and crochet is popular among ladies. Teachers make more money than professional football players. Nobody remembers the last time they saw a commercial. Every household has a remote with a dead battery, if the remote can be found at all, and nobody cares.

There is a massive network of electric rail systems to transport goods across the country, as the classic eighteen-wheeler did before. Highway funding is still used to coerce states into abdicating their sovereign rights to make laws as they see fit, and do things Uncle Sam’s way instead. But it isn’t called “highway funding,” it’s called “transport funding.” The states can spend it on expanding the federal network of electric rail, and thereby qualify for an extra 10% incentive subsidy. Which, of course, they all eagerly do.

That you drive something that gets less than 30 miles a gallon, earns you more social stigma than a swastika or “KKK” or “McCarthy Was Right” bumper sticker ever would.

What we now call “roads,” are actually called “legacy asphalt” or something like that. They’re falling into disrepair. Nobody is complaining. It would be nice to have more manpower pulling the big slabs of asphalt off the ground so the hitherto-endangered species would have a little surplus space to live and breed. But whatever labor we lack the public funds to hire, we just pull out of the prisons anyway. The prisoners are happy to help out, now that they aren’t allowed to watch television anymore.

Speaking of jail, illegal immigration is punished by jail time period. If they have to live here illegally, might as well do it in jail where they’ll consume less power. Did I mention there’s no television in there?

You know those signs some hotels have about laundry? How they want to conserve hot water so if you want a towel washed, leave it on the floor because the maid isn’t going to touch the other ones? Well, now they do the same thing with air conditioning. In fact, they don’t have it. Even the nice ones. To travel, means to sweat your ass off, and it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re used to. Everybody swims when they go to hotels. The hotels have all put in larger pools and hired more staff to keep things clean and tidy. You can buy some trunks in the lobby if you are one of the exceptionally rare travellers who didn’t pack any.

It doesn’t change when your trip is over. Nobody runs the air conditioner. EVER. What would be the point? It just makes the whole earth hotter to make this one room cooler. Lives are at stake here. Off it goes. Off, and out. If you have a health condition and can’t be in a stuffy room for too long, your doctor will recommend a water-cooled collar you can wear around your neck.

Special permits required for breeding cows. They give off massive amounts of methane, and nobody’s categorized them as endangered just yet. Beef goes for twenty or thirty dollars a pound for low-grade chuck, and nobody gives a rat’s ass. Microwave-cooked beef just gives you a case of the trots, anyway. Lobster-and-shrimp tacos are all the rage now.

No private jets. I don’t care who you are. You can’t get ahold of one anyway, they’ve all been scrapped.

Okay back to reality…none of the above is being done. All of it should be — okay, maybe I got away from myself and got silly a couple times — it’s fair to say some of it should be. Why are we supposed to care again, after all? Something about the extinction of several species, possibly including our own? Seems pretty drastic. And yet, none of the above has taken place. None.

I go out and ride my 24-speed hybrid, and it’s a huge rancid pain in the ass. I do not own those roads, not even close. The cars let me know I’m in the way. Which technically I am, if there is no bike path…and that is most of the time. And those cars, by the way, are freakin’ huge. To say nothing of fashionable.

It seems the more left-wing the politician, the lower the mileage rating of the SUV or limousine in which he rides.

My country’s financial center is right on the water, along with the homes of millions of people who really don’t want to wake up to ocean in their bedrooms. Nobody’s moving anything. Nobody’s even talking about moving anything.

So what we have going on here, is a story even older than the despot telling us what truth is. It is the story of the hypocrite: People saying one thing and doing something else. You know, I’ve noticed when I ignore people who do this, I never regret it. Food for thought.

Update 6/28/06: On the subject of those environmentally-dirty cows, some good, fresh…uh, lean meat. From this CNN article, summer of 2000. Subject: Scientific measurements of methane emissions from cows in Australia. Interestingly, the measurements are being taken in order to fulfill obligations under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Helpful statistics about the filthy cows can be gleaned, such as:

World cow population has doubled over the last 40 years to 1.3 billion worldwide.

Methane is 25 times more potent than CO2 in contributing to global warming.

A cow (I presume over its lifetime) produces two pounds of methane for every pound of meat.

A typical cow burps about 280 liters of methane each day.

A lower quality of animal feed will result in more gas and less meat.

Vile, nasty cows. They’re a bunch of damned four-legged fartin’ whores, that’s what they are. We don’t need billions and billions of these squalid, despicable things. Let’s get with it!

Shrimp tacos.

Veggie burgers.

Goat cheese.

Rice milk.

Why are our elected leaders being so lazy about this? It’s greenhouse gases. Lots of ’em. Greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.

We’re still buying hamburgers at McDonald’s for 69 cents, cheeseburgers for 89 cents. We are patronizing a market that breeds lots and lots and LOTS of these dirty animals…and in so doing, we pull up to drive-through windows that have been raised several inches higher over the last decade, to make it easier to order from an enormous vehicle that probably gets eleven miles a gallon, if that.

Global warming destroying our planet? And we’re worried? We don’t act like it, not in the slightest.

[…] Nobody ever reads this blog, but among the nobodies who do, this is old news. We’d talked about it here when Al Gore’s movie first came out. A lot of the same stuff you see in my rants nowadays…I think global warming is a bunch of nonsense, and when I’m out riding my bike, I get run off the road by tree-hugging hippies in SUV’s who think Bush should’ve signed the Kyoto treaty. The irony of it all. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/10/2007 @ 10:28

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Me, Or Your Lyin’ Eyes? IIThursday, June 15th, 2006

Me, Or Your Lyin’ Eyes? II
Thursday, June 15th, 2006