I meant to write about this a week or so ago, but didn't get around to it.
It's a story about one of them Silicon Valley douchebags who has more money than common sense. Money he probably got for providing the Obama Administration with my e-mails and phone records, and from selling shares of online companies that aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Anyways, it seems that this doofus, who is what one might consider one of those extreme environMENTALists, did something which, quite frankly, is not all that shocking, but is indicative of the real thought processes behind most people who push a Green Agenda.
See, this asshole spent a few million bucks to have a section of Redwood Forest bulldozed, just so that he could have the Dungeons&Dragons-themed wedding the nerdy little fuck probably always wanted.
EnvironMENTALism isn't about saving Mother Gaia: it's about a bunch of self-selected elites getting to rape the planet in the name of saving it at everyone else's expense, and about telling others how they should live. In this guy's world, it's probably quite okay to destroy a two-thousand year old redwood to erect a mock up of Tintagel so you can play Knights of the Round Table on your wedding day, so long as you gave to the Audubon Society, Greenpeace, and the Obama campaign. What counts is your intent, not your actions.
The Catholic Church used to operate this way. They called it an indulgence, in which a rich man's money bought him forgiveness for his mortal sins.
The funny part about the modern version, is that the very people who behave like this probably consider the Catholic Church to be the most corrupt organization that ever existed.
Showing posts with label Environmentalists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Environmentalists. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Friday, October 12, 2012
The Truth is Told: Gas is Expensive Because You're a Fat Fuck...
Whoever at the Obama Campaign is paying these people to make these sorts of statements should ask for their money back.
Allstate Insurance says fat drivers/riders have wasted 1 billion gallons of gas since 1960.
Flo from Progressive would never tell you something hurtful like that.
Sounds like an environMENTALIST plot, to me.
Allstate Insurance says fat drivers/riders have wasted 1 billion gallons of gas since 1960.
Flo from Progressive would never tell you something hurtful like that.
Sounds like an environMENTALIST plot, to me.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The Government and Your Storm Door...
One of the loudest battle cries of the modern Republican is Get The Government Out of People's Lives. The logic behind this motto is that over several decades -- some would say as far back as the Woodrow Wilson administration, but in any case, at least as far back as FDR's tenure -- that government has taken it upon itself to "do things" that government, strictly speaking, has no Constitutional Right to do.
Typically, this slogan is applied to specific areas of American Life, like the Social Welfare patchwork, the regulation of commerce and Environmental regulations, that are often onerous, nonsensical, contradictory, and sometimes just plain dumb. I happen to agree with much of this sentiment, but for the purposes of this screed, it will not be necessary to talk about the Cradle-to-grave aspirations of some sectors of Government at all levels. That's for another conversation.
What we're talking about today is the questionable level of government interference in something as simple a putting a new goddamned storm door on your house.
Typically, this slogan is applied to specific areas of American Life, like the Social Welfare patchwork, the regulation of commerce and Environmental regulations, that are often onerous, nonsensical, contradictory, and sometimes just plain dumb. I happen to agree with much of this sentiment, but for the purposes of this screed, it will not be necessary to talk about the Cradle-to-grave aspirations of some sectors of Government at all levels. That's for another conversation.
What we're talking about today is the questionable level of government interference in something as simple a putting a new goddamned storm door on your house.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Barack Obama's First 2012 Campaign Ad...
You Should Love $5 Gas America, Because It Means Shorter Lines at the Airport...or something.
You'll still have to show up three hours early for your two-hour flight, but at least the TSA groping will be, mercifully, shorter.
Who the hell writes these things? That's like saying "The Clap is Awesome, because getting it is usually so much fun..."
Then again, you can tell that this was written by a Watermelon EnvironMENTAList (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) because all the 'upside' of $5 gas is shit that only matters to a bubbleheaded douchebag, like 'greater demand for higher mileage cars'. What sort of bullshit it that?
That's supposed to be a tangible benefit of $5 gas that will truly affect people's lives in a positive way?
And MSN tried to pass this off as a business article, too?
You'll still have to show up three hours early for your two-hour flight, but at least the TSA groping will be, mercifully, shorter.
Who the hell writes these things? That's like saying "The Clap is Awesome, because getting it is usually so much fun..."
Then again, you can tell that this was written by a Watermelon EnvironMENTAList (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) because all the 'upside' of $5 gas is shit that only matters to a bubbleheaded douchebag, like 'greater demand for higher mileage cars'. What sort of bullshit it that?
That's supposed to be a tangible benefit of $5 gas that will truly affect people's lives in a positive way?
And MSN tried to pass this off as a business article, too?
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Green Energy is a Scam...
British taxpayers pay Scottish Wind Farms NOT to generate Electricty.
My American ex-pat bud in Watford, England told me about this yesterday, and he was incensed.
By the way, contrary to the assertion made by the screaming doofus quoted in the article, there is no such thing as a 'storage facility' for electricity; it's an on-demand commodity, and if you produce more than you use, the excess is wasted. It cannot be 'stored' like grain, water, or winter clothing.
But here's yet one more reason to finally come to the conclusion that Green Energy is a scam; the wind farm gets paid when it produces, but it also gets paid -- 20 times more-- to shut down, and I can promise you that all those windmills were paid for by a government subsidy (i.e. paid for by taxpayer money, with the taxpayer having no say in how the funds were spent).
Here's how the Green Energy Scam works:
Some douchebag screams about Greenhouse gasses and Global Warming and impending environmental doom.
Then some bigger douchebag, usually with a title like 'Minister of Parliament' or 'Congressman' figures there's some money to made here, or at least votes, and the possibility of getting some good PR.
The MP and the Congressroach get their rich buddies together (I think they call them 'constituents') and they craft a Green Energy Policy, a dire necessity if we're all to avoid dying of a really nasty sunburn or melting ice caps, and since the Private Sector -- i.e. people with brains who put them to use so as to make themselves rich -- won't invest in it (the return ain't worth it), then the Government simply must, as a last resort. It's the duty of the government to 'protect' it's citizens against the possibility of changing climate, you see, while neglecting to tell them that the same government can do jack shit if a comet were to be on collision course with the planet, every volcano on Earth blew at the same time, or some virus evolved into a Super-Bug that gave us all polka-dotted skin and jock itch before killing us, but no matter.
The 'Government', usually via closed-door session, or by the clever alternative of slipping a provision at the last minute into a absolutely humongous bill that no one ever bothers to read before voting on it, grabs billions in taxpayer funds to subsidize Green Energy Companies. Green Energy Companies, by the way, which the MP's or Congresscritter's friends, start -- at least on paper -- in expectation of a massive government grant.
The MP's and Congressdouche's friends might build a few windmills, shuffle some official papers about, and go through the motions of appearing to be a real company providing a real service to real customers, all the while reaping huge benefits in terms of further subsidies, grants, tax benefits, and the extraordinarily-and-purposely vague and ridiculous terms of contracts written with government aid that still allow them to get paid -- by the taxpayer -- handsomely whether they actually produce anything, or not.
In a few years, when the REAL energy companies (utilities, oil companies, etc) get...ahem...wind...of how lucrative this windfarm scheme is, they simply make a takeover bid for the comeptition, and more cash changes hands, The instigators of the scam have gotten paid fifty times over, the public gets the shaft (because even if Exxon-Mobil now owns the windfarm, it's operating it under the same conditions as the previous owner -- i.e. get paid, no matter what), and your MP or Congressfucker gets a little on the side because they were the first people called when the IPO hits the market, and the first to know when the takeover offer is made so that they can get in and out of the stock at just the right time as to make a fortune.
The downside is that your electric bills go up, the government passes more regulations to screw your life up in order to protect what they have created, and your taxes continue to rise. Your life isn;t improved in any meaningful way, and guess what? All the talk about saving the environment was just that; talk. Because the people who can be counted upon to make the loudest noises about being Green are the people who usually know the absolute least...about everything.
My American ex-pat bud in Watford, England told me about this yesterday, and he was incensed.
By the way, contrary to the assertion made by the screaming doofus quoted in the article, there is no such thing as a 'storage facility' for electricity; it's an on-demand commodity, and if you produce more than you use, the excess is wasted. It cannot be 'stored' like grain, water, or winter clothing.
But here's yet one more reason to finally come to the conclusion that Green Energy is a scam; the wind farm gets paid when it produces, but it also gets paid -- 20 times more-- to shut down, and I can promise you that all those windmills were paid for by a government subsidy (i.e. paid for by taxpayer money, with the taxpayer having no say in how the funds were spent).
Here's how the Green Energy Scam works:
Some douchebag screams about Greenhouse gasses and Global Warming and impending environmental doom.
Then some bigger douchebag, usually with a title like 'Minister of Parliament' or 'Congressman' figures there's some money to made here, or at least votes, and the possibility of getting some good PR.
The MP and the Congressroach get their rich buddies together (I think they call them 'constituents') and they craft a Green Energy Policy, a dire necessity if we're all to avoid dying of a really nasty sunburn or melting ice caps, and since the Private Sector -- i.e. people with brains who put them to use so as to make themselves rich -- won't invest in it (the return ain't worth it), then the Government simply must, as a last resort. It's the duty of the government to 'protect' it's citizens against the possibility of changing climate, you see, while neglecting to tell them that the same government can do jack shit if a comet were to be on collision course with the planet, every volcano on Earth blew at the same time, or some virus evolved into a Super-Bug that gave us all polka-dotted skin and jock itch before killing us, but no matter.
The 'Government', usually via closed-door session, or by the clever alternative of slipping a provision at the last minute into a absolutely humongous bill that no one ever bothers to read before voting on it, grabs billions in taxpayer funds to subsidize Green Energy Companies. Green Energy Companies, by the way, which the MP's or Congresscritter's friends, start -- at least on paper -- in expectation of a massive government grant.
The MP's and Congressdouche's friends might build a few windmills, shuffle some official papers about, and go through the motions of appearing to be a real company providing a real service to real customers, all the while reaping huge benefits in terms of further subsidies, grants, tax benefits, and the extraordinarily-and-purposely vague and ridiculous terms of contracts written with government aid that still allow them to get paid -- by the taxpayer -- handsomely whether they actually produce anything, or not.
In a few years, when the REAL energy companies (utilities, oil companies, etc) get...ahem...wind...of how lucrative this windfarm scheme is, they simply make a takeover bid for the comeptition, and more cash changes hands, The instigators of the scam have gotten paid fifty times over, the public gets the shaft (because even if Exxon-Mobil now owns the windfarm, it's operating it under the same conditions as the previous owner -- i.e. get paid, no matter what), and your MP or Congressfucker gets a little on the side because they were the first people called when the IPO hits the market, and the first to know when the takeover offer is made so that they can get in and out of the stock at just the right time as to make a fortune.
The downside is that your electric bills go up, the government passes more regulations to screw your life up in order to protect what they have created, and your taxes continue to rise. Your life isn;t improved in any meaningful way, and guess what? All the talk about saving the environment was just that; talk. Because the people who can be counted upon to make the loudest noises about being Green are the people who usually know the absolute least...about everything.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Now You Know Why that Stimulus Bill Didn't Work...
...because the money is going to China.
Rhode Island Wind Farm will use turbines Made in China, paid for by Stimulus Funds.
Really? I mean, Rhode Island is so small you could probably power the entire state with half a dozen hamsters running in wheels attached to an Our-Gang-style, jury-rigged generator. And who knew they had sewage systems in Rhode Island? I thought it was just Massachusetts' parking lot.
This story is problematic -- and typical of government 'solutions' to any problem, because:
a) Green Energy sources, especially windmills, don't work as they are dependant upon a fuel which is largely unpredictable or expensive to create or capture, in this case, the Wind. Wind power is not practical as a primary power source, and in addition it kills off birds in great numbers (birds being too stupid to avoid flying into whirling turbine blades, or to avoid falling out of nests built on the towers), which sorta-kinda defeats it's supposed ecological benefits.
b) I wonder what Jeff Immelt over at GE thinks about his asshole-buddy relationship with the Obama Administration now? I thought we made wind turbines here in America, unless the American brand -- heavily subsidized by tax dollars -- is still too damned expensive (probably because of Union Wage scales) to be bought by Americans. I reckon Jeff figured that having paid enough of his shareholder's money to get into Obama's good graces,and having his broadcast arms (NBC and (P)MSNBC) practically get Obama elected without doing as much as a single investigative piece on him, that GE was entitled to every dollar the government intends to waste.
Sometimes, Jeffy, when you lie down with -- and kiss the asses of -- dogs, you wake up with fleas...and a really bad taste in your mouth.
c) EnvironMENTALism is simply Socialism in better packaging. Not only are we now implementing a regime of 'renewable energy' which is part of a grander scheme of redistributing wealth all over the planet at our expense, we're paying Communists to help us to do it.
d) If Rhode Island needed three windmills -- to pump shit through a pipe -- why didn't the taxpayers of that state just pay for it themselves? Maybe because that would have meant the state couldn't spend that money on bi-lingual education or funding abortions. Priorities, and all that.
EnvironMENTALism is the New Socialism; it's basic aim is to arrest the technical development of the Industrialized World (by restricting it's use of energy and by pouring billions of dollars into largely-useless and wasteful initiatives) which will allow the Third World -- largely exempt from the Carbon Control Scheme -- to 'catch up', thus bringing about Socialism in effect. It operates by pulling one society down, while allowing another to make incremental-and-unregulated surges upwards, and so, artificially aims to 'equal' everyone out without having to toss a violent revolution to achieve any of it. Of course, all this really means is that Western economies, through Green Energy initiatives, Carbon Control regimes, international treaties and U.N. Mandates, will be economically hamstrung until everyone in Katmandu, New Guinea or the Congo, can afford an iPad and at least half a meal a day, while the West will have committed Economic and Social suicide under the banner of "saving the environment".
The purpose of Green Energy projects is to basically waste resources that otherwise would have been spent by individual consumers or taxpayers to increase their standards of living and quality of life, and thus, increase the distinctions based on wealth between peoples. Building windmills is fundamentally the same as baking a million loaves of bread -- and then setting them on fire. It's the equivalent of catching a few billion fish and then dumping them back into the sea. Energy is expended, resources are used up, labor is wasted, capital is spent... and no one benefits from it.
Except the Chinese who get paid for the windmills, the politicians who took the bribes to make sure the Chinese got the contract, and the doofus in the Serengetti who, if his standard of living hasn't been raised, as least has the smug satisfaction of knowing that his American counterpart hasn't gotten any richer or more comfortable.
That is, after all, what Socialism is all about: it's all about fear, and guilt, and envy, all wrapped up in a nice,shiny package emblazoned with the words like "Equality!" and "Plenty!", and all it can really guarantee is that there's Plenty of squalor to be Equally distributed. Now that's REAL Equality: we can all starve to death at the same speed.
Why do you think it is that every Socialist regime in history comes with a Secret Police and a system of Gulags, after all?
So, while we'll all be equally miserable, if the Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) have their way, we can at least console ourselves with the thought that our initial motive was high-minded...
...and that Rhode Island has a wind-powered sewage treatment plant just at the point in history when indoor plumbing becomes a thing of the past, seeing as how bankrupt and homeless Americans will all soon be living in cardboard boxes in the woods because their government spent their hard-earned tax dollars to give the Chinese jobs at their expense.
Until the Watermelons start complaining that all those people living in the woods are destroying the ecosystem, of course. The government of Rhode Island will probably respond to that next environmental crisis by outsourcing the roundup and transport of it's citizens to the concentration camps to Russia, or something.
It's probably the one service GE doesn't provide, and I hear The Russkies are really good at that sort of thing.
Rhode Island Wind Farm will use turbines Made in China, paid for by Stimulus Funds.
Really? I mean, Rhode Island is so small you could probably power the entire state with half a dozen hamsters running in wheels attached to an Our-Gang-style, jury-rigged generator. And who knew they had sewage systems in Rhode Island? I thought it was just Massachusetts' parking lot.
This story is problematic -- and typical of government 'solutions' to any problem, because:
a) Green Energy sources, especially windmills, don't work as they are dependant upon a fuel which is largely unpredictable or expensive to create or capture, in this case, the Wind. Wind power is not practical as a primary power source, and in addition it kills off birds in great numbers (birds being too stupid to avoid flying into whirling turbine blades, or to avoid falling out of nests built on the towers), which sorta-kinda defeats it's supposed ecological benefits.
b) I wonder what Jeff Immelt over at GE thinks about his asshole-buddy relationship with the Obama Administration now? I thought we made wind turbines here in America, unless the American brand -- heavily subsidized by tax dollars -- is still too damned expensive (probably because of Union Wage scales) to be bought by Americans. I reckon Jeff figured that having paid enough of his shareholder's money to get into Obama's good graces,and having his broadcast arms (NBC and (P)MSNBC) practically get Obama elected without doing as much as a single investigative piece on him, that GE was entitled to every dollar the government intends to waste.
Sometimes, Jeffy, when you lie down with -- and kiss the asses of -- dogs, you wake up with fleas...and a really bad taste in your mouth.
c) EnvironMENTALism is simply Socialism in better packaging. Not only are we now implementing a regime of 'renewable energy' which is part of a grander scheme of redistributing wealth all over the planet at our expense, we're paying Communists to help us to do it.
d) If Rhode Island needed three windmills -- to pump shit through a pipe -- why didn't the taxpayers of that state just pay for it themselves? Maybe because that would have meant the state couldn't spend that money on bi-lingual education or funding abortions. Priorities, and all that.
EnvironMENTALism is the New Socialism; it's basic aim is to arrest the technical development of the Industrialized World (by restricting it's use of energy and by pouring billions of dollars into largely-useless and wasteful initiatives) which will allow the Third World -- largely exempt from the Carbon Control Scheme -- to 'catch up', thus bringing about Socialism in effect. It operates by pulling one society down, while allowing another to make incremental-and-unregulated surges upwards, and so, artificially aims to 'equal' everyone out without having to toss a violent revolution to achieve any of it. Of course, all this really means is that Western economies, through Green Energy initiatives, Carbon Control regimes, international treaties and U.N. Mandates, will be economically hamstrung until everyone in Katmandu, New Guinea or the Congo, can afford an iPad and at least half a meal a day, while the West will have committed Economic and Social suicide under the banner of "saving the environment".
The purpose of Green Energy projects is to basically waste resources that otherwise would have been spent by individual consumers or taxpayers to increase their standards of living and quality of life, and thus, increase the distinctions based on wealth between peoples. Building windmills is fundamentally the same as baking a million loaves of bread -- and then setting them on fire. It's the equivalent of catching a few billion fish and then dumping them back into the sea. Energy is expended, resources are used up, labor is wasted, capital is spent... and no one benefits from it.
Except the Chinese who get paid for the windmills, the politicians who took the bribes to make sure the Chinese got the contract, and the doofus in the Serengetti who, if his standard of living hasn't been raised, as least has the smug satisfaction of knowing that his American counterpart hasn't gotten any richer or more comfortable.
That is, after all, what Socialism is all about: it's all about fear, and guilt, and envy, all wrapped up in a nice,shiny package emblazoned with the words like "Equality!" and "Plenty!", and all it can really guarantee is that there's Plenty of squalor to be Equally distributed. Now that's REAL Equality: we can all starve to death at the same speed.
Why do you think it is that every Socialist regime in history comes with a Secret Police and a system of Gulags, after all?
So, while we'll all be equally miserable, if the Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) have their way, we can at least console ourselves with the thought that our initial motive was high-minded...
...and that Rhode Island has a wind-powered sewage treatment plant just at the point in history when indoor plumbing becomes a thing of the past, seeing as how bankrupt and homeless Americans will all soon be living in cardboard boxes in the woods because their government spent their hard-earned tax dollars to give the Chinese jobs at their expense.
Until the Watermelons start complaining that all those people living in the woods are destroying the ecosystem, of course. The government of Rhode Island will probably respond to that next environmental crisis by outsourcing the roundup and transport of it's citizens to the concentration camps to Russia, or something.
It's probably the one service GE doesn't provide, and I hear The Russkies are really good at that sort of thing.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
I'll Bet They Saved a Polar Bear,Though...
French Vegans on trial; Child fed only on breast milk dies of malnutrition.
Some people are just too stupid to be parents. Then again, some people are just too stupid to be government officials. I submit:
"While anxious not to call into question the couple's lifestyle, Anne-Laure Sandretto, the deputy prosecutor, admitted: "The problem with a vitamin B12 deficiency could be linked to the mother's eating habits."
Right, because we should never question or investigate 'lifestyles' that lead to dead infants. That would be, like, all, oppressive, and junk. That vegan lifestyle choice and a dead baby are, like, totally unconnected.
Of course, we also shouldn't call into question the state of mind of two people who seem obsessed with cabbage and clay, even going as far as to use both as medicine, because then we might have to label them as stark, raving lunatics, and have to take their children away and perhaps lock them up in a place with rubber sheets...on the walls. That might ruin their self-esteem,and cost money that could be better spent on making certain the elderly, or prison inmates, have free Viagra and government maid service.
And this is the country that led President Odingbat into a kinetic-military-action-of-choice in Libya?
Here's why I don't understand the legal system, even though this is France you would assume the systems are somewhat similar to ours in the basics:
"Patrick Quenel, lawyer for the father, whose business has gone into liquidation, said the couple were "completely aware of the mistakes they made".
Isn't that tantamount to a confession? A recognition of responsibility or rather, irresponsibility? If so, then why is there a trial which appears as if it's entering it's third year? Oh, and nice touch with that 'business in liquidation' bullshit, councillor -- like that's going to gin up any sympathy when the jury gets shown photos of a malnourished, dead baby?
Some people shouldn't be allowed to be parents. Perhaps one day we'll develop some sort of test administered at at birth that warns us about just who the irresponsible, the stupid, the cruel, the monstrous and the insane are, and then we can spay or neuter 'em before they breed. One can only hope.
OMG,I just sounded like a Progressive Libtard there for a second! That was, in fact, the driving force behind abortion-on-demand and the Lynchburg Experiments!
Some people are just too stupid to be parents. Then again, some people are just too stupid to be government officials. I submit:
"While anxious not to call into question the couple's lifestyle, Anne-Laure Sandretto, the deputy prosecutor, admitted: "The problem with a vitamin B12 deficiency could be linked to the mother's eating habits."
Right, because we should never question or investigate 'lifestyles' that lead to dead infants. That would be, like, all, oppressive, and junk. That vegan lifestyle choice and a dead baby are, like, totally unconnected.
Of course, we also shouldn't call into question the state of mind of two people who seem obsessed with cabbage and clay, even going as far as to use both as medicine, because then we might have to label them as stark, raving lunatics, and have to take their children away and perhaps lock them up in a place with rubber sheets...on the walls. That might ruin their self-esteem,and cost money that could be better spent on making certain the elderly, or prison inmates, have free Viagra and government maid service.
And this is the country that led President Odingbat into a kinetic-military-action-of-choice in Libya?
Here's why I don't understand the legal system, even though this is France you would assume the systems are somewhat similar to ours in the basics:
"Patrick Quenel, lawyer for the father, whose business has gone into liquidation, said the couple were "completely aware of the mistakes they made".
Isn't that tantamount to a confession? A recognition of responsibility or rather, irresponsibility? If so, then why is there a trial which appears as if it's entering it's third year? Oh, and nice touch with that 'business in liquidation' bullshit, councillor -- like that's going to gin up any sympathy when the jury gets shown photos of a malnourished, dead baby?
Some people shouldn't be allowed to be parents. Perhaps one day we'll develop some sort of test administered at at birth that warns us about just who the irresponsible, the stupid, the cruel, the monstrous and the insane are, and then we can spay or neuter 'em before they breed. One can only hope.
OMG,I just sounded like a Progressive Libtard there for a second! That was, in fact, the driving force behind abortion-on-demand and the Lynchburg Experiments!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
On 'The Managerial Revolution'...
I made reference to James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution a few days ago, and got some mail from people asking me where they could find a copy, since it doesn't seem to be floating around many Public Libraries these days.
Of course, you can find all the Jacqueline Suzanne you want, but very little in the way of Political Science. Unless it's Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, which I'm led to understand the library can't keep on the shelves, or Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (can't wait for the movie!). Amazon.com has The Managerial Revolution -- at an unconscionable price. I personally found my copy at The Strand bookstore in Manhattan, many years ago, and I think I paid about $8 for a used copy, so try them. Otherwise, I'd keep my eyes peeled at used book sales, swap meets, etc.
For those who can't afford the ass-rape price over at Amazon.com, I'll summarize the book for you here as best I can.
Burnham wrote the book in about 1940 or '41, at the start of the Second World War. His basic premise was that laissez-faire capitalism was as dead as a doornail, and as proof of this dictum, he pointed to the defeat of the capitalist nations of France, and the hanging-on-by-it's-fingernails desperation of Great Britain and it's empire. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were going to win the war, according to Burnham, because they had abandoned the old-fashioned, outdated, unworkable system of Capitalism. The superiority of the Nazi/Fascist economic system, where industries were nationalized but their owners allowed to keep ownership -- and profit -- by the State, was evident by it's visible effects upon the battlefields of Europe.
Burnham also made the point that while Capitalism was doomed, Socialism wasn't exactly automatically going to inherit the Earth, as many Leftists had hoped (the Soviet Union, he felt, would also be defeated, or at least come to some accommodation with the Nazis in order to simply survive). What was going to replace those two systems was a mixture of both; a planned economy (on the Nazi, socialist model), geared to national aggrandizement and victory, but run by a new generation of people who weren't interested in such old-fashioned notions as mere profit, as much as they were eager to be the New Arbiters of Power within this new system.
This New Generations were to be called The Managers. Their ranks were to consist of the politicians, scientists, technical specialists, inventors, lawyers, media types, and so forth, who were willing to put their talents to work for the empowerment of the State in return for special privileges; the opportunity to manipulate the levers of power for their own benefit. These were the men and women who would remake society according to their tastes, and being privileged employees of the State, they were to also acquire the ability to direct resources as they saw fit (usually, in their own direction).
The Managers, in the new, Managerial State, would find their way into positions from which they could influence business and government according to their efforts, while remaining invisible.
A similar idea was once also promulgated by the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, who postulated that if given a choice between full-blown Communism and Capitalist Democracy, the greater mass of the people would choose Capitalist Democracy almost every time. Therefore, the Communist was always assured of defeat in fair electoral politics. So, instead of engaging in electoral politics, the True Believer Commie would instead make an effort to insinuate himself into the institutions of the State -- into the educational system, the judiciary, the legal profession, law enforcement, labor unions, and so forth -- and work within the bureaucracies to promulgate his stupidity. Much like the Managerial Class would do.
In any case, Burnham turned out to be wrong in a major way: the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States defeated Hitler and Mussolini, and it was the American Capitalist System that had become the Arsenal of Democracy that built the guns, ships, planes, grew the food, pumped the oil, and shipped it all over the oceans to every battlefield where it was needed, and wherever it could be brought to bear against the enemy.
In fact, I think it was 1944 -- when Germany was staring certain defeat in the face -- when Burnham changed his original thesis in another book, The Machiavellians, in which he basically said "forget what I said before...it's obvious that Hitler and Mussolini had the right idea, but were just the wrong guys to lead this new Managerial Revolution, but the idea will survive. Democracy, it turned out, was far more amenable to Managerialism after all than Dictatorship was... just you wait..."
And we waited.
You now live in a world which is managed by selfish little toads to the nth degree. Products are produced with built-in obsolescence as a major consideration, and with full knowledge that newer-and-better technologies and products are available now but deliberately held back by Big Business. Government advocates on behalf of this industry or that, sends trade missions to foreign countries on their behalf, and negotiates Free Trade Agreements which allow favored industries to relocate the more expensive aspects of their operations overseas (where wages are lower and regulation non-existent). Where it would be inconvenient to move operations, the government then allows masses of illegal immigrants to pass into the country unmolested, or issues H1-B visas to effectively do the same thing. The Middle Class is deliberately destroyed so as to make them dependant upon government.
There is no longer anything that can be described as a Free Market, anymore. Markets are now manipulated by a hybrid of Business Interests and Government Regulations. Government now picks winners and losers in industry. Businesses are started overnight with government subsidies, and then quickly die when the subsidy money dries up without having produced a single thing except profits for it's executives. Banks are allowed to defy economic logic and extend their reach into stock markets, mortgage markets and insurance industry, and then are bailed out by legislators and Presidents who have been bought and sold by corporate money when they become Too-Big-To-Fail -- and no one notices that it was the lawmakers (manipulated by the Managerial Class) who allowed them to get that way by issuing this or that waiver, or failing to perform the basic oversight duties its empowered to conduct.
And when the inevitable happens -- disaster looms -- then government simply demands more restrictive and intrusive powers to ensure that 'this never happens again!' Restrictive and intrusive powers put into the hands of...you guessed it: the Managerial Class (i.e. the bureaucracy).
How do you think GE has managed to avoid paying any taxes whatsoever, get Jeffrey Immelt (perhaps the worst CEO in America today) on the President's Economic Advisory Board, and then stand to profit enormously because of its involvement in Green Energy, Electric Hybrid Vehicles, High-Speed Rail and Nuclear Power projects? Not to mention having it's finance arm, GE Capital (the largest such finance company in the world) bailed out by American taxpayers? The Oil and Coal industries are being slowly strangled in the name of environMENTALism -- another branch of Managerialism; this one says we can control the weather with lovely thoughts and strangling Western Economies -- from which GE will profit handsomely, and gladly return some of that tax-free profit into Obama's and the democratic party's coffers.
General Motors and the UAW have also been the recipients of government largess, and they will, we're assured, in the very near future be building automobiles powered by GE products. Those automobiles will be protected against foreign competition by the government (remember all those Potemkin Toyota Hearings last year? Oh, btw, it turns out that Toyotas don't have accelerator problems...only stupid drivers). The Defense Industry has it's hooks into every Congresscritter who's ever lived, so that Congress can fund 400 F-22's when the Air Force only wants 300, sell tanker aircraft the military doesn't even want, build tanks which are overkill for the current battlefields were on, fund jet engine programs that no one wants, and spend money to ensure that every soldier has every high-tech geegaw, regardless of it's actual battlefield utility?
NASA only exists to ensure that thousands of highly-trained specialists actually have jobs. In return, we get to watch them shoot golf carts to other planets we could never live on, chase asteroids, build an International Space Station for which we bear the burden of cost, and look for exoplanets in other galaxies we can't reach for millenia, if ever. There is currently no replacement due for the Space Shuttle for another decade, and not too much of a domestic, commercial Space Industry in this country: Do you believe the government is simply going to allow all that talent and experience to either wither away, or worse, head overseas? NASA engineers and technicians will, mark my words, be able to write their own checks.
You get your news and entertainment from corporate conglomerates that are cheerleaders for this-or-that political point of view, and they don't even try to hide their biases anymore. The executives of the major networks exert their influence on behalf of the political parties. Hollywood makes films attacking this or that political standpoint, or cultural tradition. News anchors have absolutely incredible power to shape public opinion. Newspaper editors, too. All contribute to political parties and candidates, and then actively seek to aid the very politicians they've bought, or raised to prominence. Editorial content is carefully vetted, crafted, infused with orthodoxy, to ensure that only one point of view is presented, and that any other point of view is discredited.
Washington, D.C. (and every state capitol, also) is absolutely lousy with lobbyists, lawyers, think tanks, special interest groups, etc. These people actually write legislation in cahoots with lawmakers, carving out special breaks, tax credits, waivers, relaxation of regulations, legal immunities, for themselves or their clients, and then ensure that a steady stream of cash flows into campaign coffers, or that lucrative job offers for 'retired' politicians are available when needed, in return.
The healthcare industry is about to be handed over to the Federal Unions. The private insurance industry is about to be squeezed out of the medical insurance racket by legal means, economic factors, and state-run insurance exchanges, all brought into being by ObamaCare. That new system will be run by the bureaucrats who made Medicare such a rousing success. The ultimate goal is to de-privatize as much of the healthcare system as possible, and then leave the business of deciding who lives and dies in the hands of a nameless, faceless, unelected mish-mash of bureaucracies, approval boards, Death Panels, government accounting boards, lawyers, and so forth.
President Odingbat, in order to better run all these new government bureaucracies that he's created and dole out the giveaways to politically-favored people and entities, has appointed something like 35 'Czars' who are unelected, unanswerable to the people or Congress, and as we have seen, have little or no regard for the law. They seem to act capriciously, and pick-and-choose who wins and who loses according to their personal preferences, or according to political orientation/affiliation.
Your Public Schools and Universities are chock full of people pretending to be educators, but their real job is to indoctrinate; to prepare future generations of people for the day when every aspect of their lives will be controlled for them, where their decisions will be made for them. We turn out college graduates who can't add. We promote elementary school children who can't read. Textbooks are devoid of facts, and full of pie-in-the-sky garbage disguised as scholarship. The price of a college education continues to climb, ensuring that only the 'right'people -- i.e. rich liberals who can afford it, or who have been exempted from the more onerous and oppressive dictates of government -- will be able to get one. And where will they work? Not private industry -- which will soon be destroyed -- but for the government. The schools impose "Speech Codes" ostensibly for the protection of people's sensibilities, but mostly because no dissent against the coming Managerial Revolution can be voiced, or even tolerated.
Wall Street, once a bastion of Conservative Capitalists, is more and more coming to be dominated by the Rich Liberal. Wall Street poured more campaign cash into Barack Obama's coffers than they ever did any republican, in the last election cycle. In return, ex-Obama administration appointees find themselves with highly-paid sinecures when they leave Public Service, and the Firms find themselves with a ready supply of people who have the ears of those in power, or in a position to re-write this or that reg, squash this or that investigation. And to be fair, it was going on long before Obama came down the pike; How many Clinton Administration officials found themselves on the board of directors of Citigroup, JP Morgan., AIG, and others?
How much influence do NOW, the NAACP, United Nations, Council on Foreign Relations, EncironMENTAL groups, a thousand think tanks, study groups, blue-ribbon panels, immigrant spokesdouches, Advocacy Groups of a Thousand Stripes visibly exert upon American Policy? How often do we see the same people leave -- and then re-enter -- 'government service' on a regular basis?
Burnham predicted this would happen; a collusion between business, government, and politically-favored-and-funded groups in which one hand washes the other; but instead of just the old-fashioned notions of plain old graft and bribery, all this coziness has an identifiable, and yet not-too-easy-to-discern, goal; the Management of the American Public by people and groups who will stand to benefit the most from the re-ordering of society when the fruits of capitalism are 'spread around' in the proper fashion. And by the proper people.
Of course, such a thing will eventually destroy the very capitalism that it depends upon to fund it, but that was the goal all along. Once there's no more money and the ensuing crisis such an event will create finally arrives, government (i.e. the Managers) will simply grant itself "Emergency Powers" to re-order society as it sees fit. The decisions on who gets what, if anything, will be made by the same Managerial Class (bureacrats, 'experts', and so forth) that probably engineered the crisis in the first place. Socialism will arrive -- if not in name but surely in effect -- without there ever having been a vote in favor of it, without a violent revolution, and without anyone ever identifying it as 'Socialism' at all.
NOTE: This post has been edited for spelling, and punctuation, and a few additional notes have been added since the original publication.
Of course, you can find all the Jacqueline Suzanne you want, but very little in the way of Political Science. Unless it's Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, which I'm led to understand the library can't keep on the shelves, or Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (can't wait for the movie!). Amazon.com has The Managerial Revolution -- at an unconscionable price. I personally found my copy at The Strand bookstore in Manhattan, many years ago, and I think I paid about $8 for a used copy, so try them. Otherwise, I'd keep my eyes peeled at used book sales, swap meets, etc.
For those who can't afford the ass-rape price over at Amazon.com, I'll summarize the book for you here as best I can.
Burnham wrote the book in about 1940 or '41, at the start of the Second World War. His basic premise was that laissez-faire capitalism was as dead as a doornail, and as proof of this dictum, he pointed to the defeat of the capitalist nations of France, and the hanging-on-by-it's-fingernails desperation of Great Britain and it's empire. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were going to win the war, according to Burnham, because they had abandoned the old-fashioned, outdated, unworkable system of Capitalism. The superiority of the Nazi/Fascist economic system, where industries were nationalized but their owners allowed to keep ownership -- and profit -- by the State, was evident by it's visible effects upon the battlefields of Europe.
Burnham also made the point that while Capitalism was doomed, Socialism wasn't exactly automatically going to inherit the Earth, as many Leftists had hoped (the Soviet Union, he felt, would also be defeated, or at least come to some accommodation with the Nazis in order to simply survive). What was going to replace those two systems was a mixture of both; a planned economy (on the Nazi, socialist model), geared to national aggrandizement and victory, but run by a new generation of people who weren't interested in such old-fashioned notions as mere profit, as much as they were eager to be the New Arbiters of Power within this new system.
This New Generations were to be called The Managers. Their ranks were to consist of the politicians, scientists, technical specialists, inventors, lawyers, media types, and so forth, who were willing to put their talents to work for the empowerment of the State in return for special privileges; the opportunity to manipulate the levers of power for their own benefit. These were the men and women who would remake society according to their tastes, and being privileged employees of the State, they were to also acquire the ability to direct resources as they saw fit (usually, in their own direction).
The Managers, in the new, Managerial State, would find their way into positions from which they could influence business and government according to their efforts, while remaining invisible.
A similar idea was once also promulgated by the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, who postulated that if given a choice between full-blown Communism and Capitalist Democracy, the greater mass of the people would choose Capitalist Democracy almost every time. Therefore, the Communist was always assured of defeat in fair electoral politics. So, instead of engaging in electoral politics, the True Believer Commie would instead make an effort to insinuate himself into the institutions of the State -- into the educational system, the judiciary, the legal profession, law enforcement, labor unions, and so forth -- and work within the bureaucracies to promulgate his stupidity. Much like the Managerial Class would do.
In any case, Burnham turned out to be wrong in a major way: the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States defeated Hitler and Mussolini, and it was the American Capitalist System that had become the Arsenal of Democracy that built the guns, ships, planes, grew the food, pumped the oil, and shipped it all over the oceans to every battlefield where it was needed, and wherever it could be brought to bear against the enemy.
In fact, I think it was 1944 -- when Germany was staring certain defeat in the face -- when Burnham changed his original thesis in another book, The Machiavellians, in which he basically said "forget what I said before...it's obvious that Hitler and Mussolini had the right idea, but were just the wrong guys to lead this new Managerial Revolution, but the idea will survive. Democracy, it turned out, was far more amenable to Managerialism after all than Dictatorship was... just you wait..."
And we waited.
You now live in a world which is managed by selfish little toads to the nth degree. Products are produced with built-in obsolescence as a major consideration, and with full knowledge that newer-and-better technologies and products are available now but deliberately held back by Big Business. Government advocates on behalf of this industry or that, sends trade missions to foreign countries on their behalf, and negotiates Free Trade Agreements which allow favored industries to relocate the more expensive aspects of their operations overseas (where wages are lower and regulation non-existent). Where it would be inconvenient to move operations, the government then allows masses of illegal immigrants to pass into the country unmolested, or issues H1-B visas to effectively do the same thing. The Middle Class is deliberately destroyed so as to make them dependant upon government.
There is no longer anything that can be described as a Free Market, anymore. Markets are now manipulated by a hybrid of Business Interests and Government Regulations. Government now picks winners and losers in industry. Businesses are started overnight with government subsidies, and then quickly die when the subsidy money dries up without having produced a single thing except profits for it's executives. Banks are allowed to defy economic logic and extend their reach into stock markets, mortgage markets and insurance industry, and then are bailed out by legislators and Presidents who have been bought and sold by corporate money when they become Too-Big-To-Fail -- and no one notices that it was the lawmakers (manipulated by the Managerial Class) who allowed them to get that way by issuing this or that waiver, or failing to perform the basic oversight duties its empowered to conduct.
And when the inevitable happens -- disaster looms -- then government simply demands more restrictive and intrusive powers to ensure that 'this never happens again!' Restrictive and intrusive powers put into the hands of...you guessed it: the Managerial Class (i.e. the bureaucracy).
How do you think GE has managed to avoid paying any taxes whatsoever, get Jeffrey Immelt (perhaps the worst CEO in America today) on the President's Economic Advisory Board, and then stand to profit enormously because of its involvement in Green Energy, Electric Hybrid Vehicles, High-Speed Rail and Nuclear Power projects? Not to mention having it's finance arm, GE Capital (the largest such finance company in the world) bailed out by American taxpayers? The Oil and Coal industries are being slowly strangled in the name of environMENTALism -- another branch of Managerialism; this one says we can control the weather with lovely thoughts and strangling Western Economies -- from which GE will profit handsomely, and gladly return some of that tax-free profit into Obama's and the democratic party's coffers.
General Motors and the UAW have also been the recipients of government largess, and they will, we're assured, in the very near future be building automobiles powered by GE products. Those automobiles will be protected against foreign competition by the government (remember all those Potemkin Toyota Hearings last year? Oh, btw, it turns out that Toyotas don't have accelerator problems...only stupid drivers). The Defense Industry has it's hooks into every Congresscritter who's ever lived, so that Congress can fund 400 F-22's when the Air Force only wants 300, sell tanker aircraft the military doesn't even want, build tanks which are overkill for the current battlefields were on, fund jet engine programs that no one wants, and spend money to ensure that every soldier has every high-tech geegaw, regardless of it's actual battlefield utility?
NASA only exists to ensure that thousands of highly-trained specialists actually have jobs. In return, we get to watch them shoot golf carts to other planets we could never live on, chase asteroids, build an International Space Station for which we bear the burden of cost, and look for exoplanets in other galaxies we can't reach for millenia, if ever. There is currently no replacement due for the Space Shuttle for another decade, and not too much of a domestic, commercial Space Industry in this country: Do you believe the government is simply going to allow all that talent and experience to either wither away, or worse, head overseas? NASA engineers and technicians will, mark my words, be able to write their own checks.
You get your news and entertainment from corporate conglomerates that are cheerleaders for this-or-that political point of view, and they don't even try to hide their biases anymore. The executives of the major networks exert their influence on behalf of the political parties. Hollywood makes films attacking this or that political standpoint, or cultural tradition. News anchors have absolutely incredible power to shape public opinion. Newspaper editors, too. All contribute to political parties and candidates, and then actively seek to aid the very politicians they've bought, or raised to prominence. Editorial content is carefully vetted, crafted, infused with orthodoxy, to ensure that only one point of view is presented, and that any other point of view is discredited.
Washington, D.C. (and every state capitol, also) is absolutely lousy with lobbyists, lawyers, think tanks, special interest groups, etc. These people actually write legislation in cahoots with lawmakers, carving out special breaks, tax credits, waivers, relaxation of regulations, legal immunities, for themselves or their clients, and then ensure that a steady stream of cash flows into campaign coffers, or that lucrative job offers for 'retired' politicians are available when needed, in return.
The healthcare industry is about to be handed over to the Federal Unions. The private insurance industry is about to be squeezed out of the medical insurance racket by legal means, economic factors, and state-run insurance exchanges, all brought into being by ObamaCare. That new system will be run by the bureaucrats who made Medicare such a rousing success. The ultimate goal is to de-privatize as much of the healthcare system as possible, and then leave the business of deciding who lives and dies in the hands of a nameless, faceless, unelected mish-mash of bureaucracies, approval boards, Death Panels, government accounting boards, lawyers, and so forth.
President Odingbat, in order to better run all these new government bureaucracies that he's created and dole out the giveaways to politically-favored people and entities, has appointed something like 35 'Czars' who are unelected, unanswerable to the people or Congress, and as we have seen, have little or no regard for the law. They seem to act capriciously, and pick-and-choose who wins and who loses according to their personal preferences, or according to political orientation/affiliation.
Your Public Schools and Universities are chock full of people pretending to be educators, but their real job is to indoctrinate; to prepare future generations of people for the day when every aspect of their lives will be controlled for them, where their decisions will be made for them. We turn out college graduates who can't add. We promote elementary school children who can't read. Textbooks are devoid of facts, and full of pie-in-the-sky garbage disguised as scholarship. The price of a college education continues to climb, ensuring that only the 'right'people -- i.e. rich liberals who can afford it, or who have been exempted from the more onerous and oppressive dictates of government -- will be able to get one. And where will they work? Not private industry -- which will soon be destroyed -- but for the government. The schools impose "Speech Codes" ostensibly for the protection of people's sensibilities, but mostly because no dissent against the coming Managerial Revolution can be voiced, or even tolerated.
Wall Street, once a bastion of Conservative Capitalists, is more and more coming to be dominated by the Rich Liberal. Wall Street poured more campaign cash into Barack Obama's coffers than they ever did any republican, in the last election cycle. In return, ex-Obama administration appointees find themselves with highly-paid sinecures when they leave Public Service, and the Firms find themselves with a ready supply of people who have the ears of those in power, or in a position to re-write this or that reg, squash this or that investigation. And to be fair, it was going on long before Obama came down the pike; How many Clinton Administration officials found themselves on the board of directors of Citigroup, JP Morgan., AIG, and others?
How much influence do NOW, the NAACP, United Nations, Council on Foreign Relations, EncironMENTAL groups, a thousand think tanks, study groups, blue-ribbon panels, immigrant spokesdouches, Advocacy Groups of a Thousand Stripes visibly exert upon American Policy? How often do we see the same people leave -- and then re-enter -- 'government service' on a regular basis?
Burnham predicted this would happen; a collusion between business, government, and politically-favored-and-funded groups in which one hand washes the other; but instead of just the old-fashioned notions of plain old graft and bribery, all this coziness has an identifiable, and yet not-too-easy-to-discern, goal; the Management of the American Public by people and groups who will stand to benefit the most from the re-ordering of society when the fruits of capitalism are 'spread around' in the proper fashion. And by the proper people.
Of course, such a thing will eventually destroy the very capitalism that it depends upon to fund it, but that was the goal all along. Once there's no more money and the ensuing crisis such an event will create finally arrives, government (i.e. the Managers) will simply grant itself "Emergency Powers" to re-order society as it sees fit. The decisions on who gets what, if anything, will be made by the same Managerial Class (bureacrats, 'experts', and so forth) that probably engineered the crisis in the first place. Socialism will arrive -- if not in name but surely in effect -- without there ever having been a vote in favor of it, without a violent revolution, and without anyone ever identifying it as 'Socialism' at all.
NOTE: This post has been edited for spelling, and punctuation, and a few additional notes have been added since the original publication.
Monday, January 31, 2011
"Why Don't My Solar Panels Work?"
That was the question asked by one of my neighbors yesterday, whilst discussing the increasing cost of electricity. This neighbor had taken advantage of one of those Obama Administration Green Energy Boondoggles, and had a series of solar panels installed on her roof at great expense, but still saw her utility bills dramatically rise.
Her general belief was that with the simple installation of solar panels, she would be getting "free" electricity in return. That's the first mistake she made, and I'm sure many people make the same miscalculation, if only because they don't stop to get the facts first.
The second mistake she made was that believing she was getting "free" electricity, that she could increase her own consumption astronomically. Why not leave the lights burning? Why not do more, and smaller, loads of laundry as I need them? Yes, let's get that third television, that second refrigerator, that fancy outdoor lighting I've always wanted but couldn't afford to pay for?
The result? Electric bills which have nearly doubled.
What this neighbor had failed to understand was just what it is that a solar panel actually does.
To begin with, a home-based solar panel does not generate electricity; it simply heats water. If you want to generate electricity from sunlight, you need a photovoltaic cell, which is something completely different. Most home solar systems are simple heat-collectors which use sunlight in order to heat a ready-supply of water for showers, washing, baseboard heating and so forth, the advantage being that you will use less gas or electricity to do those things than you normally would. Typically, one does not replace their traditional electric or gas-operated hot water systems when installing solar panels (nor should you!), because solar panels are reliant upon good weather -- if it's overcast or raining, your solar panel is useless.
A solar heating system is an adjunct, or supplement, but not a replacement. In this case, the neighbor replaced some of her gas-operated appliances in favor of electric ones, but was generating no electricity, and her furnace was still burning gas in order to heat water on the days when the solar panels were not working properly or efficiently. She hadn't really "saved" anything.
At best, she simply returned a few hundred cubic feet of natural gas per year (the typical home uses about 600-1200 cubic feet of gas in a year) back into "the System" (i.e. that the utility company did not have to sell to her) where someone else could make use of it, and naturally, I'm certain that someone did. This individual contribution to Mother Gaia is exceedingly small in the grand scheme of things, and so a few scores of people in your neighborhood installing solar panels to save on the gas bill really only brings marginal benefits; they may lower their overall bills by a few hundred dollars per year, but they only marginally increase the ready supply of natural gas available for everyone else, which is quickly sold and used, in any case.
In this woman's case, whatever she had saved by using less natural gas, she quickly lost when she ramped up her electric consumption under the mistaken impression that she was getting something for nothing.
This is one of the major flaws in the whole Green Energy motif; people come to believe that something, because it comes from the Sun, the Wind, or the Tides, is "free", or at least not-as-expensive. They believe this because a) most people are dumber than dogshit, and b) because that's how the whole Green Energy thing is sold to them.
I know, because I used to "sell" Green Energy, but I fully admit to not being a true expert in all the inner-workings of the entire industry.
See, this is how you (usually) get electricity. It's a very basic explanation, so spare me the technical e-mails. It's for the benefit of the layman:
Someone builds a generator. This is typically a very large magnet stuck on the end of a rotating shaft, the whole assembly attached to a turbine. This shaft/turbine assembly is surrounded by a thick coil of copper cables. The turbine is made to rotate at very high speeds, causing the magnet and coil to interact, warping the magnetic fields of both the magnet and the coil. This manipulation of the magnetic field aligns the electrons within the copper and then sets them into motion (this is electric current) down the wires and cables that emanate from the power plant, and connect to your home.
There are typically two ultra-efficient ways to get these turbines spinning at the speeds required to generate this constant electric current;
a. Water power (Hydro-electric power): rapidly-moving water falling down a waterfall (like Niagara Falls), or artificially dammed and released (like Hoover Dam) spins the turbine.
b. Steam generation; a heat source (produced from burning oil, coal, gas, or generated by splitting atoms) heats water to boiling. This steam is then collected and concentrated (super-heated) under pressure, so that when it is released it has enough power behind it to spin that turbine super-quickly.
After thousands of years of human progress, we're still using the same basic mechanisms: the Wheel, Fire, the Steam Engine, and capturing kinetic energy. In any case, we're using energy to create energy. There is nothing"free" about it. You have to construct a super-expensive kit in order to capture or create the energy needed to generate electricity, and a portion of the energy that comes out of the process is wasted due to the principles of resistance (current does not flow uninterrupted down a wire), and the laws of Physics: you can't have more energy coming out of the process than what you've put into it. Also, electricity is an on-demand commodity; it cannot be stored easily or cheaply in vast quantities, like oil or coal. You'd better use every volt you generate as soon as it's generated, or it gets lost. This makes the price jump up or down according to supply and demand, only much faster than many other commodities, because it's a "spot" market.
You can, to a certain extent, calculate how much energy goes into the process, and then regulate the amount that comes out, but this is not an exact science, and inefficiencies abound.
Green Energy methods promise (but never deliver) the ability to do away with some of the more odious aspects of power generation, particularly the need to burn fossil fuels, but the methods currently available are not reliable enough to chuck the whole "burn-something-to-generate- steam-and-spin-a-turbine-model".
Wind Turbines do away with the need to burn something and, thus, generate no pollution, but the wind is unreliable, and the turbines themselves are incapable of generating much power individually because of the complex gearing involved. That's why wind farms contain hundreds of windmills, take up several hundred acres of land, and produce negligible amounts of electricity for what they cost to build and operate.They also require specialist maintenance crews who get paid a shitload of money to climb one or two hundred feet up a mast to work with a giant fan that can easily kill them. You'll usually also see hundreds of dead birds at the base of a wind generator -- the birds get caught in the blades, fly into them, or they nest on the tall masts and fall out/get diced and sliced.
Tidal Generators work much like any windmill or hydroelectric plant, but they use the power of the tides to spin their turbines. Since most places usually only have two high tides a day for a few hours each, the tidal generator spends much of the day inactive. When it works it generates a powerful flow of electricity, but it can't operate on-demand 24/7/365. It too, is inefficient.
Geothermal plants take advantage of the Earth's heat. Built over natural hot springs and steam vents, geothermal plants use the steam that comes up from underground to spin a turbine and generate electricity. There's only one problem: that steam usually contains poisonous and corrosive compounds that can be deadly to man, and which are absolute hell on machinery, meaning a geothermal plant must be built with specially-constructed, high-tolerance materials, and is a maintenance nightmare -- not to mention the problems inherent in "scrubbing" emissions from the plant itself, so that dangerous gases and chemical compounds are not released into the air and environment.
In fact, the only truly efficient methods we have available to us that don't require fossil fuels are hydroelectric power and nuclear power. Both are bad juju to the environMENTAL activists; one scars the landscape, inconveniences fish and interferes with the natural flow of rivers and streams. The other produces small amounts of radioactive waste that has to be stored somewhere until it can either be reprocessed, or the radioactivity dissipates enough for it to be released back into the environment. This is the dilemma which faces the Green Energy crowd: their current solutions are unworkable, and the alternatives don't pass muster with people determined to nit pick them to death. Damn efficiency, progress or good sense.
And of course, it's all super-expensive.
Why, when I sold Green Energy, we never told a potential customer that he would "save money" by buying electricity or gas obtained/generated by Green Methods, because that was a virtual impossibility. Generating that sort of power in a Green fashion costs more than the traditional methods. No, instead we always sold Green Energy as a matter of social consciousness and "displacement". I'll explain.
The social conscious part is self-explanatory. People want to do things they perceive as "good". In fact, most people are simply begging to do something good, because they get a high off of it, or because it makes them feel superior to others. Most people are absolute douchebags, after all. Selling Green Energy as a way to "clean the environment", "Save the Planet" or even as a means to "Stick it to The Man" was an easy sell. There are people in the world who are swayed by such arguments, perhaps 1-in-20, because they are that stupid or committed.
The Displacement Theory takes a little explaining. It was generally suggested that for every kilowatt hour you bought that was generated by Green Methods, you were "displacing" a kilowatt hour generated by "dirty" means, i.e. that was one less kilowatt hour that would have to be generated by burning coal or gas. And if enough people bought Green Energy, then by God, we'd do away with the fossil fuel-burning power plant altogether by pushing the output of those evil machines right off the grid.
Ummm, no.
First off, you have absolutely no way, short of running a cable directly from the windmill to your front door to know whether the electricity you get is Green or not. It all goes into the same Grid. Once power is generated, your nice, clean Green Energy gets mixed in with the Dirty Energy you used to get from Con Ed or Duke Power. There is no way to distinguish between the "Good" electricity and "the bad".
Second, utility companies that have more generating capacity then they need usually don't just shut the lights, close the plant down and quit the business; they try to find more customers for it. Especially since they're producing their power at cheaper rates (after all, if there's more expensive Green stuff in the grid, then their power becomes cheaper by comparison), and selling it at cheaper rates. Given a choice between "Good for Mother Earth, but twice the cost" and "Cheap, Readily-available and Reliable" guess which choice most people (remember; most people are stupid, easily-swayed, lowest-common-denominator douchebags, now) will make?
And in any case, the investment made in constructing the original electric grid/gas delivery systems was so great, the utility companies have a financial interest in keeping them running and profitable, and are happy to simply maintain those delivery methods without having to generate any extra power to pump through them. See, when you Go Green, you're buying power that still has to be delivered to you through your traditional utility company, because they own the means of distribution. You usually see that on your bill as an increased"Delivery Charge"; since the utility has lost you as a power consumer, they'll make sure they rape you on delivery. You'll either come back, or you'll suck it up and decide that's the cost of being Green -- and they can sell the energy they would have provided you to someone else -- and still profit.
But at least you'll get a Carbon Credit -- which doesn't really exist, is difficult to trade, and which has no fixed monetary value -- and if you do manage to sell/trade it on the sham Carbon Markets, it basically means you have given someone else the right to pollute on your behalf, with your blessing. And somewhere in there, someone will have made a buck, but it won't be you.
In fact, when the Green Energy companies can't produce the electricity they need to satisfy their customer's demand, what do you think they do? They buy it on the open market from the people who make the dirty stuff and re-sell it, of course! It's the only other supply.
My usual sales meeting, usually with people who had expressed an interest about buying Green Energy, mind you, with a customer usually went something like this:
We can give you all the electricity you need, no problems. We have a great many suppliers who can feed us with all the Green Energy we can handle.
That's great.
And you will be doing something positive for the environment. You'll be helping to clean the air, streams, and oceans, and saving wildlife, too, by helping to reduce acid rain, and helping to do away with some of the dirtier aspects of power generation.
I'm always looking to make a positive impact, YESSSIRRREEE! Why,that sounds fantastic! I was always wondering when someone would get around to making Green Energy a reality! It's been one of my interests for years. It's why I joined Greenpeace, you know!
That's super! In fact, not only can we can guarantee you all the power you need, you will never have to worry about service, either; you can simply call your current utility provider, and they'll still come and fix any problems you have with access or distribution, because they still own it -- we only sell them power which they pass on to you. We can also promise that the energy we produce will be as clean as humanly possible.
Wonderful! Fantastic! It's about time!
Also, for every so-many kilowatt hours you purchase, you'll be getting a Carbon Credit, which you can trade on the open market. That's a valuable commodity, these days. It's a good reason to go Green, isn't it?
Wow! This is sounding better all the time!
So, here you are: you can get the energy you need, generated by clean methods, which is best for the environment and saves polar bears and Aborigines; you don't need to swap service providers so you can retain the expert and reliable services of your current power company, and in the process, you'll be gaining valuable Carbon Credits which you can sell for a profit. Everyone wins!
Sounds like it! So, how much does it cost?
Well, you'll be signing a five-year contract (don't tell them about the substantial fees involved for breaking the contract before the first year is up). I have to tell you that the price is slightly higher, about 8-10% higher, than what you're paying now, BUT we guarantee that your price will never increase for any reason at any time during that five year period. And when you consider that you'll at least know for certain what your power costs will be for the next five years -- this helps you considerably when budgeting, you know -- and that you're doing something positive for the world -- and your children -- and that you also get Carbon Credits that you can sell at a profit for it, it's a great deal, don't you think?
Oh, umm, sorry, but....ahhh....that sounds a little too expensive for my tastes, and I didn't realize it would mean a five-year contract. Thank you for your time, and I'm sorry we couldn't do business.
Even those most committed to being Green bail out when they find out how much Green it's going to cost them.
The whole thing was about as close to a legal scam as it was possible to get. There was nothing inherently illegal or immoral about what we were doing, but it wasn't exactly on the up-and-up, either. It depended on the stupidity of legions of people who were under the impression that they were going to get something cheap -- if not free -- with the added benefit that they could brag to their friends about it.
Now, I don't mean all this to be a knock on people who buy solar panels for their homes. Or even of Green Energy, in general; there's a place for it. But it won't replace the existing apparatus without great investment and advances in technology which at present are not cost-effective, and not exactly forseeable. When everything is known -- the purchaser understands exactly what he's buying and what he's getting for his money, and especially the limitations and obligations that come with it-- Solar Panels on your Roof, Windmills on the Plains and Geothermal plants at Yellowstone aren't a bad idea, per se. Just remember the ironclad rule that applies to the generation, distribution, usage and regulation of power:
Nothing is ever free. And if someone sold you a solar panel outfit without telling you exactly what it was good for and how you were supposed to use it, then you shouldn't complain about skyrocketing energy bills.
My neighbor is a little bit wiser now, and was embarrassed to find out just how wrong she had been in her assumptions. Don't make the same mistake yourself.
Her general belief was that with the simple installation of solar panels, she would be getting "free" electricity in return. That's the first mistake she made, and I'm sure many people make the same miscalculation, if only because they don't stop to get the facts first.
The second mistake she made was that believing she was getting "free" electricity, that she could increase her own consumption astronomically. Why not leave the lights burning? Why not do more, and smaller, loads of laundry as I need them? Yes, let's get that third television, that second refrigerator, that fancy outdoor lighting I've always wanted but couldn't afford to pay for?
The result? Electric bills which have nearly doubled.
What this neighbor had failed to understand was just what it is that a solar panel actually does.
To begin with, a home-based solar panel does not generate electricity; it simply heats water. If you want to generate electricity from sunlight, you need a photovoltaic cell, which is something completely different. Most home solar systems are simple heat-collectors which use sunlight in order to heat a ready-supply of water for showers, washing, baseboard heating and so forth, the advantage being that you will use less gas or electricity to do those things than you normally would. Typically, one does not replace their traditional electric or gas-operated hot water systems when installing solar panels (nor should you!), because solar panels are reliant upon good weather -- if it's overcast or raining, your solar panel is useless.
A solar heating system is an adjunct, or supplement, but not a replacement. In this case, the neighbor replaced some of her gas-operated appliances in favor of electric ones, but was generating no electricity, and her furnace was still burning gas in order to heat water on the days when the solar panels were not working properly or efficiently. She hadn't really "saved" anything.
At best, she simply returned a few hundred cubic feet of natural gas per year (the typical home uses about 600-1200 cubic feet of gas in a year) back into "the System" (i.e. that the utility company did not have to sell to her) where someone else could make use of it, and naturally, I'm certain that someone did. This individual contribution to Mother Gaia is exceedingly small in the grand scheme of things, and so a few scores of people in your neighborhood installing solar panels to save on the gas bill really only brings marginal benefits; they may lower their overall bills by a few hundred dollars per year, but they only marginally increase the ready supply of natural gas available for everyone else, which is quickly sold and used, in any case.
In this woman's case, whatever she had saved by using less natural gas, she quickly lost when she ramped up her electric consumption under the mistaken impression that she was getting something for nothing.
This is one of the major flaws in the whole Green Energy motif; people come to believe that something, because it comes from the Sun, the Wind, or the Tides, is "free", or at least not-as-expensive. They believe this because a) most people are dumber than dogshit, and b) because that's how the whole Green Energy thing is sold to them.
I know, because I used to "sell" Green Energy, but I fully admit to not being a true expert in all the inner-workings of the entire industry.
See, this is how you (usually) get electricity. It's a very basic explanation, so spare me the technical e-mails. It's for the benefit of the layman:
Someone builds a generator. This is typically a very large magnet stuck on the end of a rotating shaft, the whole assembly attached to a turbine. This shaft/turbine assembly is surrounded by a thick coil of copper cables. The turbine is made to rotate at very high speeds, causing the magnet and coil to interact, warping the magnetic fields of both the magnet and the coil. This manipulation of the magnetic field aligns the electrons within the copper and then sets them into motion (this is electric current) down the wires and cables that emanate from the power plant, and connect to your home.
There are typically two ultra-efficient ways to get these turbines spinning at the speeds required to generate this constant electric current;
a. Water power (Hydro-electric power): rapidly-moving water falling down a waterfall (like Niagara Falls), or artificially dammed and released (like Hoover Dam) spins the turbine.
b. Steam generation; a heat source (produced from burning oil, coal, gas, or generated by splitting atoms) heats water to boiling. This steam is then collected and concentrated (super-heated) under pressure, so that when it is released it has enough power behind it to spin that turbine super-quickly.
After thousands of years of human progress, we're still using the same basic mechanisms: the Wheel, Fire, the Steam Engine, and capturing kinetic energy. In any case, we're using energy to create energy. There is nothing"free" about it. You have to construct a super-expensive kit in order to capture or create the energy needed to generate electricity, and a portion of the energy that comes out of the process is wasted due to the principles of resistance (current does not flow uninterrupted down a wire), and the laws of Physics: you can't have more energy coming out of the process than what you've put into it. Also, electricity is an on-demand commodity; it cannot be stored easily or cheaply in vast quantities, like oil or coal. You'd better use every volt you generate as soon as it's generated, or it gets lost. This makes the price jump up or down according to supply and demand, only much faster than many other commodities, because it's a "spot" market.
You can, to a certain extent, calculate how much energy goes into the process, and then regulate the amount that comes out, but this is not an exact science, and inefficiencies abound.
Green Energy methods promise (but never deliver) the ability to do away with some of the more odious aspects of power generation, particularly the need to burn fossil fuels, but the methods currently available are not reliable enough to chuck the whole "burn-something-to-generate- steam-and-spin-a-turbine-model".
Wind Turbines do away with the need to burn something and, thus, generate no pollution, but the wind is unreliable, and the turbines themselves are incapable of generating much power individually because of the complex gearing involved. That's why wind farms contain hundreds of windmills, take up several hundred acres of land, and produce negligible amounts of electricity for what they cost to build and operate.They also require specialist maintenance crews who get paid a shitload of money to climb one or two hundred feet up a mast to work with a giant fan that can easily kill them. You'll usually also see hundreds of dead birds at the base of a wind generator -- the birds get caught in the blades, fly into them, or they nest on the tall masts and fall out/get diced and sliced.
Tidal Generators work much like any windmill or hydroelectric plant, but they use the power of the tides to spin their turbines. Since most places usually only have two high tides a day for a few hours each, the tidal generator spends much of the day inactive. When it works it generates a powerful flow of electricity, but it can't operate on-demand 24/7/365. It too, is inefficient.
Geothermal plants take advantage of the Earth's heat. Built over natural hot springs and steam vents, geothermal plants use the steam that comes up from underground to spin a turbine and generate electricity. There's only one problem: that steam usually contains poisonous and corrosive compounds that can be deadly to man, and which are absolute hell on machinery, meaning a geothermal plant must be built with specially-constructed, high-tolerance materials, and is a maintenance nightmare -- not to mention the problems inherent in "scrubbing" emissions from the plant itself, so that dangerous gases and chemical compounds are not released into the air and environment.
In fact, the only truly efficient methods we have available to us that don't require fossil fuels are hydroelectric power and nuclear power. Both are bad juju to the environMENTAL activists; one scars the landscape, inconveniences fish and interferes with the natural flow of rivers and streams. The other produces small amounts of radioactive waste that has to be stored somewhere until it can either be reprocessed, or the radioactivity dissipates enough for it to be released back into the environment. This is the dilemma which faces the Green Energy crowd: their current solutions are unworkable, and the alternatives don't pass muster with people determined to nit pick them to death. Damn efficiency, progress or good sense.
And of course, it's all super-expensive.
Why, when I sold Green Energy, we never told a potential customer that he would "save money" by buying electricity or gas obtained/generated by Green Methods, because that was a virtual impossibility. Generating that sort of power in a Green fashion costs more than the traditional methods. No, instead we always sold Green Energy as a matter of social consciousness and "displacement". I'll explain.
The social conscious part is self-explanatory. People want to do things they perceive as "good". In fact, most people are simply begging to do something good, because they get a high off of it, or because it makes them feel superior to others. Most people are absolute douchebags, after all. Selling Green Energy as a way to "clean the environment", "Save the Planet" or even as a means to "Stick it to The Man" was an easy sell. There are people in the world who are swayed by such arguments, perhaps 1-in-20, because they are that stupid or committed.
The Displacement Theory takes a little explaining. It was generally suggested that for every kilowatt hour you bought that was generated by Green Methods, you were "displacing" a kilowatt hour generated by "dirty" means, i.e. that was one less kilowatt hour that would have to be generated by burning coal or gas. And if enough people bought Green Energy, then by God, we'd do away with the fossil fuel-burning power plant altogether by pushing the output of those evil machines right off the grid.
Ummm, no.
First off, you have absolutely no way, short of running a cable directly from the windmill to your front door to know whether the electricity you get is Green or not. It all goes into the same Grid. Once power is generated, your nice, clean Green Energy gets mixed in with the Dirty Energy you used to get from Con Ed or Duke Power. There is no way to distinguish between the "Good" electricity and "the bad".
Second, utility companies that have more generating capacity then they need usually don't just shut the lights, close the plant down and quit the business; they try to find more customers for it. Especially since they're producing their power at cheaper rates (after all, if there's more expensive Green stuff in the grid, then their power becomes cheaper by comparison), and selling it at cheaper rates. Given a choice between "Good for Mother Earth, but twice the cost" and "Cheap, Readily-available and Reliable" guess which choice most people (remember; most people are stupid, easily-swayed, lowest-common-denominator douchebags, now) will make?
And in any case, the investment made in constructing the original electric grid/gas delivery systems was so great, the utility companies have a financial interest in keeping them running and profitable, and are happy to simply maintain those delivery methods without having to generate any extra power to pump through them. See, when you Go Green, you're buying power that still has to be delivered to you through your traditional utility company, because they own the means of distribution. You usually see that on your bill as an increased"Delivery Charge"; since the utility has lost you as a power consumer, they'll make sure they rape you on delivery. You'll either come back, or you'll suck it up and decide that's the cost of being Green -- and they can sell the energy they would have provided you to someone else -- and still profit.
But at least you'll get a Carbon Credit -- which doesn't really exist, is difficult to trade, and which has no fixed monetary value -- and if you do manage to sell/trade it on the sham Carbon Markets, it basically means you have given someone else the right to pollute on your behalf, with your blessing. And somewhere in there, someone will have made a buck, but it won't be you.
In fact, when the Green Energy companies can't produce the electricity they need to satisfy their customer's demand, what do you think they do? They buy it on the open market from the people who make the dirty stuff and re-sell it, of course! It's the only other supply.
My usual sales meeting, usually with people who had expressed an interest about buying Green Energy, mind you, with a customer usually went something like this:
We can give you all the electricity you need, no problems. We have a great many suppliers who can feed us with all the Green Energy we can handle.
That's great.
And you will be doing something positive for the environment. You'll be helping to clean the air, streams, and oceans, and saving wildlife, too, by helping to reduce acid rain, and helping to do away with some of the dirtier aspects of power generation.
I'm always looking to make a positive impact, YESSSIRRREEE! Why,that sounds fantastic! I was always wondering when someone would get around to making Green Energy a reality! It's been one of my interests for years. It's why I joined Greenpeace, you know!
That's super! In fact, not only can we can guarantee you all the power you need, you will never have to worry about service, either; you can simply call your current utility provider, and they'll still come and fix any problems you have with access or distribution, because they still own it -- we only sell them power which they pass on to you. We can also promise that the energy we produce will be as clean as humanly possible.
Wonderful! Fantastic! It's about time!
Also, for every so-many kilowatt hours you purchase, you'll be getting a Carbon Credit, which you can trade on the open market. That's a valuable commodity, these days. It's a good reason to go Green, isn't it?
Wow! This is sounding better all the time!
So, here you are: you can get the energy you need, generated by clean methods, which is best for the environment and saves polar bears and Aborigines; you don't need to swap service providers so you can retain the expert and reliable services of your current power company, and in the process, you'll be gaining valuable Carbon Credits which you can sell for a profit. Everyone wins!
Sounds like it! So, how much does it cost?
Well, you'll be signing a five-year contract (don't tell them about the substantial fees involved for breaking the contract before the first year is up). I have to tell you that the price is slightly higher, about 8-10% higher, than what you're paying now, BUT we guarantee that your price will never increase for any reason at any time during that five year period. And when you consider that you'll at least know for certain what your power costs will be for the next five years -- this helps you considerably when budgeting, you know -- and that you're doing something positive for the world -- and your children -- and that you also get Carbon Credits that you can sell at a profit for it, it's a great deal, don't you think?
Oh, umm, sorry, but....ahhh....that sounds a little too expensive for my tastes, and I didn't realize it would mean a five-year contract. Thank you for your time, and I'm sorry we couldn't do business.
Even those most committed to being Green bail out when they find out how much Green it's going to cost them.
The whole thing was about as close to a legal scam as it was possible to get. There was nothing inherently illegal or immoral about what we were doing, but it wasn't exactly on the up-and-up, either. It depended on the stupidity of legions of people who were under the impression that they were going to get something cheap -- if not free -- with the added benefit that they could brag to their friends about it.
Now, I don't mean all this to be a knock on people who buy solar panels for their homes. Or even of Green Energy, in general; there's a place for it. But it won't replace the existing apparatus without great investment and advances in technology which at present are not cost-effective, and not exactly forseeable. When everything is known -- the purchaser understands exactly what he's buying and what he's getting for his money, and especially the limitations and obligations that come with it-- Solar Panels on your Roof, Windmills on the Plains and Geothermal plants at Yellowstone aren't a bad idea, per se. Just remember the ironclad rule that applies to the generation, distribution, usage and regulation of power:
Nothing is ever free. And if someone sold you a solar panel outfit without telling you exactly what it was good for and how you were supposed to use it, then you shouldn't complain about skyrocketing energy bills.
My neighbor is a little bit wiser now, and was embarrassed to find out just how wrong she had been in her assumptions. Don't make the same mistake yourself.
More Evidence that Global Warming is a Communist Plot...
Surprise! There are no melting glaciers, after all!
Of course there aren't; the whole thing was spun from whole cloth, the better to frighten the bejesus out of people so that they'd panic and fall in line with the Master Plan of the Greenie Meanies, who simply want to "Save the Planet" by arresting progress and redistributing the wealth of the industrialized world.
Personally, I don't give a shit if some headhunter on New Guinea drowns because the island is swamped by rising sea levels (that's a load of bullshit, too). I figure if headhunting was a viable way of life more people would be doing it -- and the fact that the vast majority don't tends to bear me out on this -- that sort of culture would be more widespread. I also reckon that any society which has not evolved beyond it's Stone Age origins and technology is a society that is most likely doomed to eventual extinction. Since extinction is a part of the natural cycle, making expensive efforts to save that which Nature has judged failures is a waste of time and money.
Of course there aren't; the whole thing was spun from whole cloth, the better to frighten the bejesus out of people so that they'd panic and fall in line with the Master Plan of the Greenie Meanies, who simply want to "Save the Planet" by arresting progress and redistributing the wealth of the industrialized world.
Personally, I don't give a shit if some headhunter on New Guinea drowns because the island is swamped by rising sea levels (that's a load of bullshit, too). I figure if headhunting was a viable way of life more people would be doing it -- and the fact that the vast majority don't tends to bear me out on this -- that sort of culture would be more widespread. I also reckon that any society which has not evolved beyond it's Stone Age origins and technology is a society that is most likely doomed to eventual extinction. Since extinction is a part of the natural cycle, making expensive efforts to save that which Nature has judged failures is a waste of time and money.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Unfortunately, We Never Seem to Run Short of Idiots...
More Proof that Global Warming is Bullshit.
Conceding the point that Global Warming Alarmists are wrong, at least this time, the same Watermelon Douchebag interviewed to pooh-pooh the report tries to cover his own ass:
"This is something that people don't appreciate. We tied a record in 2010 (for temperature records) globally. That is primarily from the C02 we put in the atmosphere in the 70s and early 80s, and we have been ramping up since then," he said.
"So it is not good. We are seeing the response from a mistake we were making 20 years ago, and we are making bigger mistakes today."
In other words: we're wrong, but not for the reasons you'd think (i.e. we don't know what the fuck we're talking about), but because we just haven't had enough time to be proven right yet. Global warming won't kill us all in 2020, like we originally said and gave Al Gore a Nobel Prize for repeating, but maybe in 2040...maybe 2068...it might happen...possibly...if everything else falls into place.
They sound like the guys who, circa 500 AD, were all over screaming about the return of Christ and the accompanying worldly upheavals (Question: if Jesus returns to Save, why does that require war, plagues, the deaths of millions and natural disasters?), excoriating the sinful, and demanding that they repent before all their flesh was burnt away and their immortal souls sent to experience the eternal torments of Hell.
Come Jan. 1, 501 AD, what happened? Nothing. And then the Doommongers were all, like, "Yeah, but the day of judgement is still coming, you'll see! Any day now...any day...You'll be sorry you didn't listen when it comes, Boy! Yessirrreee!" and they've been repeating that nonsense for the last 1500 years. When they fail, or are proven wrong, they simply move the goal posts, change the subject, make excuses, and go back to their smug lunacy, still convinced they have all the answers and that you are an idiot.
The Global Warming crowd has much in common with those so-called "prophets" (besides that they, too, don't know what the fuck they're talking about); given enough time and the vagaries of circumstance, any prediction comes true...eventually. Doesn't matter if we're talking football teams, religion, whatever. It's why Nostradamus'predictions only make sense in retrospect; if Nostradamus was of any real value then you would think someone would be taking advantage of them and doing things with them...like preventing Hitler's rise to power, nipping Soviet Communism in the bud, and being prepared for 9/11. Nostradamus, as predictive tool, is useless.
The current state of climatological "science" is, likewise, complete crap. It's the scientists who made it that way, too. They do no one, and especially their own cause, no good when they make contradictory statements along the lines of "well, the data is bad, the report is flawed, but it could still be right". This willful disbelief of scientifically-established facts by supposedly-reputable scientists for the purposes of advancing a personal and political agenda is frightening; it's bordering on mental illness, really. You might as well grow a long white beard, get yourself a sandwich board and paint"Repent!" on it and wander the streets; you'd be doing pretty much the same thing.
Ultimately, however, Science, Nostradamus and Religious Doofuses alike, are correct in this regard: this planet is doomed, and there's not much mankind can do to either prevent it, or as these dimwits would have you believe, speed the process up. Our Sun will go nova, cook off the atmosphere, boil off all our water and give us all a permanent crispy coating and kill us all. A comet, asteroid, or meteor will smack into our little blue marble, and kill us all. E.T. will come along, and decide we look tasty...and kill us all. The Moon will eventually escape the Earth's gravitational tug, spin off into space, and leave us with no tides and a greatly-reduced capacity to generate internal planetary heat...and we'll all die. Some nasty bird flu or common cold virus will evolve to a newer, more robust and sophisticated stage and infect us all, and we'll all die. Islamonazis in Iran or Pakistan will initiate a nuclear war that will engulf the planet in flames and fallout...and we'll all die.
Extinction is, indeed, part of the cycle of life, even more natural than granola and weaving your own clothes out of hemp, and it's pretty much unavoidable. The ultimate destruction of this planet is certain, and when viewed from this perspective, then putting up solar panels in order to save an exotic flea, or a few Stone Age New Guinea Tribesmen is a complete waste of time. Yes, we should do everything we can to ensure that our environment is as clean as possible, but to believe we can ever "restore" it to a "pristine" condition that can be maintained indefinitely is sheer stupidity. Expensive stupidity.
There is an arrogance, mostly born of ignorance, amongst some of the most ardent EnviroWeenies which is the natural consequence of their mistaken beliefs; In this formulation, it is believed that Man has the ability to "freeze" time and natural processes alike, that there will be a moment of ecological perfection that we can achieve, and then through conscious effort (and government control, naturally) we'll magically halt progress at the exact moment when everything is "perfect", and then live in a continuous present where tomorrow resembles today, and nothing ever changes ever, ever again.
This, incidentally, has also always been the historical goal of the world's worst dictatorships; to arrest progress at the every moment they are at the height of their power, and then exercise continuous power in ever-subtler forms throughout an unchanging future. Some of you lefties and dolphin lovers had better read Orwell. You might be cured of your unfortunate leftard tendencies.
Message to the Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside): Your thought processes are wrong, your fundamental beliefs are often easily overturned by reason and the very science you claim as your best ally, and every time it happens, you simply change tack and re-center the argument, never recognizing the errors you've made, only redoubling your efforts in a different direction. It's difficult to take you seriously.
You're no better than the morons who shout about Armageddon and the Rapture: when it doesn't come to pass, they figure it's because they weren't pious enough. So they just try harder, and get more annoying, and fall deeper into mental illness.
I'm not in favor of trying to save that which cannot be saved, whether it's souls or polar bears, and especially not by means that require my standard of living to be drastically reduced because all you eventually accomplish -- for all your talk and supposed "authority", whether Divine or Scientific -- is to make yourself look like an ass, and piss us normal people off.
Conceding the point that Global Warming Alarmists are wrong, at least this time, the same Watermelon Douchebag interviewed to pooh-pooh the report tries to cover his own ass:
"This is something that people don't appreciate. We tied a record in 2010 (for temperature records) globally. That is primarily from the C02 we put in the atmosphere in the 70s and early 80s, and we have been ramping up since then," he said.
"So it is not good. We are seeing the response from a mistake we were making 20 years ago, and we are making bigger mistakes today."
In other words: we're wrong, but not for the reasons you'd think (i.e. we don't know what the fuck we're talking about), but because we just haven't had enough time to be proven right yet. Global warming won't kill us all in 2020, like we originally said and gave Al Gore a Nobel Prize for repeating, but maybe in 2040...maybe 2068...it might happen...possibly...if everything else falls into place.
They sound like the guys who, circa 500 AD, were all over screaming about the return of Christ and the accompanying worldly upheavals (Question: if Jesus returns to Save, why does that require war, plagues, the deaths of millions and natural disasters?), excoriating the sinful, and demanding that they repent before all their flesh was burnt away and their immortal souls sent to experience the eternal torments of Hell.
Come Jan. 1, 501 AD, what happened? Nothing. And then the Doommongers were all, like, "Yeah, but the day of judgement is still coming, you'll see! Any day now...any day...You'll be sorry you didn't listen when it comes, Boy! Yessirrreee!" and they've been repeating that nonsense for the last 1500 years. When they fail, or are proven wrong, they simply move the goal posts, change the subject, make excuses, and go back to their smug lunacy, still convinced they have all the answers and that you are an idiot.
The Global Warming crowd has much in common with those so-called "prophets" (besides that they, too, don't know what the fuck they're talking about); given enough time and the vagaries of circumstance, any prediction comes true...eventually. Doesn't matter if we're talking football teams, religion, whatever. It's why Nostradamus'predictions only make sense in retrospect; if Nostradamus was of any real value then you would think someone would be taking advantage of them and doing things with them...like preventing Hitler's rise to power, nipping Soviet Communism in the bud, and being prepared for 9/11. Nostradamus, as predictive tool, is useless.
The current state of climatological "science" is, likewise, complete crap. It's the scientists who made it that way, too. They do no one, and especially their own cause, no good when they make contradictory statements along the lines of "well, the data is bad, the report is flawed, but it could still be right". This willful disbelief of scientifically-established facts by supposedly-reputable scientists for the purposes of advancing a personal and political agenda is frightening; it's bordering on mental illness, really. You might as well grow a long white beard, get yourself a sandwich board and paint"Repent!" on it and wander the streets; you'd be doing pretty much the same thing.
Ultimately, however, Science, Nostradamus and Religious Doofuses alike, are correct in this regard: this planet is doomed, and there's not much mankind can do to either prevent it, or as these dimwits would have you believe, speed the process up. Our Sun will go nova, cook off the atmosphere, boil off all our water and give us all a permanent crispy coating and kill us all. A comet, asteroid, or meteor will smack into our little blue marble, and kill us all. E.T. will come along, and decide we look tasty...and kill us all. The Moon will eventually escape the Earth's gravitational tug, spin off into space, and leave us with no tides and a greatly-reduced capacity to generate internal planetary heat...and we'll all die. Some nasty bird flu or common cold virus will evolve to a newer, more robust and sophisticated stage and infect us all, and we'll all die. Islamonazis in Iran or Pakistan will initiate a nuclear war that will engulf the planet in flames and fallout...and we'll all die.
Extinction is, indeed, part of the cycle of life, even more natural than granola and weaving your own clothes out of hemp, and it's pretty much unavoidable. The ultimate destruction of this planet is certain, and when viewed from this perspective, then putting up solar panels in order to save an exotic flea, or a few Stone Age New Guinea Tribesmen is a complete waste of time. Yes, we should do everything we can to ensure that our environment is as clean as possible, but to believe we can ever "restore" it to a "pristine" condition that can be maintained indefinitely is sheer stupidity. Expensive stupidity.
There is an arrogance, mostly born of ignorance, amongst some of the most ardent EnviroWeenies which is the natural consequence of their mistaken beliefs; In this formulation, it is believed that Man has the ability to "freeze" time and natural processes alike, that there will be a moment of ecological perfection that we can achieve, and then through conscious effort (and government control, naturally) we'll magically halt progress at the exact moment when everything is "perfect", and then live in a continuous present where tomorrow resembles today, and nothing ever changes ever, ever again.
This, incidentally, has also always been the historical goal of the world's worst dictatorships; to arrest progress at the every moment they are at the height of their power, and then exercise continuous power in ever-subtler forms throughout an unchanging future. Some of you lefties and dolphin lovers had better read Orwell. You might be cured of your unfortunate leftard tendencies.
Message to the Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside): Your thought processes are wrong, your fundamental beliefs are often easily overturned by reason and the very science you claim as your best ally, and every time it happens, you simply change tack and re-center the argument, never recognizing the errors you've made, only redoubling your efforts in a different direction. It's difficult to take you seriously.
You're no better than the morons who shout about Armageddon and the Rapture: when it doesn't come to pass, they figure it's because they weren't pious enough. So they just try harder, and get more annoying, and fall deeper into mental illness.
I'm not in favor of trying to save that which cannot be saved, whether it's souls or polar bears, and especially not by means that require my standard of living to be drastically reduced because all you eventually accomplish -- for all your talk and supposed "authority", whether Divine or Scientific -- is to make yourself look like an ass, and piss us normal people off.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Law of Unintended Consequences...
...will always come back to bite you in the ass.
Note to the French, and especially the U.S. Government:
When you give money away, don't be surprised when people take you up on the offer at greater-then-expected rates.
I especially loved this part:
"Most panels installed in France were made in China with a highly questionable carbon footprint," Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet told parliament last month. Policy must "create jobs in France, not subsidize Chinese industry."
Good thing we're creating all those Green Energy jobs... in the least Green country on Planet Earth, huh?
Note to the French, and especially the U.S. Government:
When you give money away, don't be surprised when people take you up on the offer at greater-then-expected rates.
I especially loved this part:
"Most panels installed in France were made in China with a highly questionable carbon footprint," Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet told parliament last month. Policy must "create jobs in France, not subsidize Chinese industry."
Good thing we're creating all those Green Energy jobs... in the least Green country on Planet Earth, huh?
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Biology For Dummies...
Lots of tree-hugging hippies out there like to write nasty -- and they'd like to think anonymous, but not really George P. in Terre Haute, or Alyssa V. in Schenectedy -- e-mails, and a few with more braincells than usual like trying -- and failing -- to hack other people's computers and e-mail accounts, too. You know who you are, and if you don't knock it off, I'm going to make a special effort to pay you a visit and MAKE YOU STOP...permanently. I can promise you that ObamaCare won't support you in a vegetative state for very long, so please, don't make me have to beat you.
I can handle nasty. Doesn't bother me at all. I just can't handle STUPID. Drives me insane.
This post brought some blowback (and really, people, can't you just use the reply function to make your stupid case? Oh, right; that has a 4,000 character limit, and unfortunately, you can't spout crap in under 5,000), most of it about the destructive effect of all that extra carbon dioxide that will kill us all.
Apparently, you don't need to know the basics of biology in order to be an environMENTAList. Nor do you need critical thinking skills. All that is required of you is that you simply believe, in much the same way the Muslim or the Catholic establishment doesn't really give a shit about what you think; they only care that you believe, and obey...and send money. This willing suspension of disbelief, to disregard evidence, logic, objective truth, or counter-argument is called "Faith". There's no thinking required. It's the major reason why so many sad-sacks join storefront churches, or strap explosives to themselves in the name of God; Faith is far easier than Truth or Reason, and certainly cheaper than a psychiatrist.
If you're a committed environut, you have to only believe four things (mostly because you're incapable of remembering more than four things) , not taking into consideration evidence to the contrary, nor accepting any argument or evidence whatsoever that would seem to knock the intellectual underpinnings out from beneath your beliefs. These four things are:
1. Carbon dioxide is a deadly poison.
2. Carbon dioxide levels are too high, and that Man has the ability to to do all of the following;
a. Calculate precisely how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere,
b. Calculate precisely how much CO2 is "just right" for the continuation of Life as We Know it, at optimum efficiency,
c. determine that if CO2 levels are too high, that it MUST be the result of Mankind doing things (i.e. going through the processes of what we like to call "living").
d. Discern just how elevated CO2 levels will affect the climate of the planet (as if there were only one world-wide climate!), with disastrous results, especially for people who are, in the best of times, slowly starving to death because they can't grow food, fucking themselves into starvation, killing each other in the name of religion, killing each other because they have nothing better to do, or dying of diseases that could be easily prevented if only they'd use soap, or stop fucking their livestock.
3. That Science is providing all the answers to the mysteries of a number of complex systems that we barely understand, and have barely begun to study in earnest.
4. That sans evidence that Man is actually doing catastrophic harm, it is your duty to insist that He is, and to make every effort to arrest progress that it's in your power to do. Usually, this means whine, bitch and moan until you get your way, like a four-year old.
Or write nasty, you-think-you're-anonymous e-mails. So, boys and girls, let me tell you about the Great Chain of Life, in eight (8) Easy Steps. Pay attention, because you just might learn something that might cause you to give up that lifestyle of pretentious affectation you're engaged in now.
1. There are untold trillions of a certain kind of organism on this planet which we call "Plants" and "Plant-like Organisms".
2. These Plant and Plant-like Organisms like to eat, and in fact, must do so to survive, just like you do, only without Che Guevara T-shits, American Idol, patchouli oil, marijuana, and bottled water.
3. Because they don't have access to Tofu, Doritos and Starbucks, these Plants and Plant-like Organisms have developed a wonderful system of making their own food, which we call Photosynthesis, in which they combine CARBON DIOXIDE with water, sunlight, and trace elements to produce complex carbohydrates (you know, like you get in your tastes-like-shit-but-is-supposedly-healthy-as-all-hell PowerBar?) and sugars. The Plants and Plant-like Creatures eat these sugars, and therefore, grow and thrive.
4. As a result of Photosynthesis, these Plants and Plant-like Organisms basically "shit" OXYGEN, a gas which is a requirement for life for water buffalo, mountain gorillas, polar bears, spotted owls, parrot fish, and dumbass Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) who write stupid e-mails telling me I should die because I happen to disagree with them...an' stuff.
5. It is a known fact that when Plants and Plant-like Organisms have access to more CO2, they tend to grow faster and bigger, much like your average person if fed a steady diet of Chips Ahoy's, Ruffles, Pork chops, whipped-cream-out-of-the-can, ice cream and Pepsi would. More plants means more oxygen, and more food for cute little grazing animals like Bambi and Dumbo.
6. If one takes CO2 out of the atmosphere, then one deprives the Plants and Plant-like Organisms of their main source of food, thus killing them. And Bambi and Dumbo, too.
7. If one kills the Plants and Plant-like Organisms, one reduces the amount of Oxygen in the air, it means that those of us with the ability to find our own asses with both hands and a flashlight will have to kill and eat nosepicking environMENTALists in order to survive in an Oxygen-and-food-depleted environment.
8. Once the herd has been culled of the dumbass envirowhackos, we survivors will go back to putting CO2 back into the atmosphere, so that the Plants and Plant-like Organisms can eat and grow again, so that we can breathe, and so that the chickens, cattle, pigs, and fish -- assuming any of them survived both the loss of plants (their fucking food), and Oxygen -- will return, so that we may eat them instead of environMENTALISTs who aren't so tasty, are far from being Brain Food, and have less nutritional value than CheezWhiz.
So, you see, CO2 is not so much a poison as it is a RESOURCE NECESSARY FOR THE CONTINUATION OF LIFE ON THIS PLANET, YOU DUMB-AS-DOGSHIT ASSHOLE!
Also, I get a kick out of people who:
1. Tell me I should save the world by killing myself, but who apparently won't follow their own advice. Avoiding the "looming environmental disaster headed our way" doesn't fill them with enough fear and despondency to take their own lives. No, no, no; it's all of us regular people who should sacrifice ourselves on the Greenie Meanies' behalf, the selfish cocksuckers. Ever notice how those of us who don't agree with them are "selfish" but those that who would demand your death for their own personal comfort and salvation mysteriously aren't?
2. Lecture me about the evils of industrialization, whilst using a computer made from petroleum products and mined metals, transmitting across the ether on cables made of the same, the whole endeavor powered by coal, oil or natural gas burning power plants, or nuclear plants which leave radioactive waste, the very same things these douchebags say is destroying the atmosphere, and without which, modern life would be impossible.
3. Can use the terms "Massive Global Warming Catastrophe" and "Unprecedented Global Ice Age" in the same sentence and not notice the inherent contradictions, massive stupidity, or delicious irony, contained within?
4. If Darwin (your other Icon) was right, then whatever survives the no-plants-no-oxygen conditions of a global catastrophe will evolve so that they can. It's called Adaptation. They just probably won't be going to college and majoring in Keg Party, Gender Studies and Repeating the Stupid Shit My Professor Says.
If you can process all of this, Children, then maybe you'll begin to discover why it's so difficult to take you seriously.
I can handle nasty. Doesn't bother me at all. I just can't handle STUPID. Drives me insane.
This post brought some blowback (and really, people, can't you just use the reply function to make your stupid case? Oh, right; that has a 4,000 character limit, and unfortunately, you can't spout crap in under 5,000), most of it about the destructive effect of all that extra carbon dioxide that will kill us all.
Apparently, you don't need to know the basics of biology in order to be an environMENTAList. Nor do you need critical thinking skills. All that is required of you is that you simply believe, in much the same way the Muslim or the Catholic establishment doesn't really give a shit about what you think; they only care that you believe, and obey...and send money. This willing suspension of disbelief, to disregard evidence, logic, objective truth, or counter-argument is called "Faith". There's no thinking required. It's the major reason why so many sad-sacks join storefront churches, or strap explosives to themselves in the name of God; Faith is far easier than Truth or Reason, and certainly cheaper than a psychiatrist.
If you're a committed environut, you have to only believe four things (mostly because you're incapable of remembering more than four things) , not taking into consideration evidence to the contrary, nor accepting any argument or evidence whatsoever that would seem to knock the intellectual underpinnings out from beneath your beliefs. These four things are:
1. Carbon dioxide is a deadly poison.
2. Carbon dioxide levels are too high, and that Man has the ability to to do all of the following;
a. Calculate precisely how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere,
b. Calculate precisely how much CO2 is "just right" for the continuation of Life as We Know it, at optimum efficiency,
c. determine that if CO2 levels are too high, that it MUST be the result of Mankind doing things (i.e. going through the processes of what we like to call "living").
d. Discern just how elevated CO2 levels will affect the climate of the planet (as if there were only one world-wide climate!), with disastrous results, especially for people who are, in the best of times, slowly starving to death because they can't grow food, fucking themselves into starvation, killing each other in the name of religion, killing each other because they have nothing better to do, or dying of diseases that could be easily prevented if only they'd use soap, or stop fucking their livestock.
3. That Science is providing all the answers to the mysteries of a number of complex systems that we barely understand, and have barely begun to study in earnest.
4. That sans evidence that Man is actually doing catastrophic harm, it is your duty to insist that He is, and to make every effort to arrest progress that it's in your power to do. Usually, this means whine, bitch and moan until you get your way, like a four-year old.
Or write nasty, you-think-you're-anonymous e-mails. So, boys and girls, let me tell you about the Great Chain of Life, in eight (8) Easy Steps. Pay attention, because you just might learn something that might cause you to give up that lifestyle of pretentious affectation you're engaged in now.
1. There are untold trillions of a certain kind of organism on this planet which we call "Plants" and "Plant-like Organisms".
2. These Plant and Plant-like Organisms like to eat, and in fact, must do so to survive, just like you do, only without Che Guevara T-shits, American Idol, patchouli oil, marijuana, and bottled water.
3. Because they don't have access to Tofu, Doritos and Starbucks, these Plants and Plant-like Organisms have developed a wonderful system of making their own food, which we call Photosynthesis, in which they combine CARBON DIOXIDE with water, sunlight, and trace elements to produce complex carbohydrates (you know, like you get in your tastes-like-shit-but-is-supposedly-healthy-as-all-hell PowerBar?) and sugars. The Plants and Plant-like Creatures eat these sugars, and therefore, grow and thrive.
4. As a result of Photosynthesis, these Plants and Plant-like Organisms basically "shit" OXYGEN, a gas which is a requirement for life for water buffalo, mountain gorillas, polar bears, spotted owls, parrot fish, and dumbass Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) who write stupid e-mails telling me I should die because I happen to disagree with them...an' stuff.
5. It is a known fact that when Plants and Plant-like Organisms have access to more CO2, they tend to grow faster and bigger, much like your average person if fed a steady diet of Chips Ahoy's, Ruffles, Pork chops, whipped-cream-out-of-the-can, ice cream and Pepsi would. More plants means more oxygen, and more food for cute little grazing animals like Bambi and Dumbo.
6. If one takes CO2 out of the atmosphere, then one deprives the Plants and Plant-like Organisms of their main source of food, thus killing them. And Bambi and Dumbo, too.
7. If one kills the Plants and Plant-like Organisms, one reduces the amount of Oxygen in the air, it means that those of us with the ability to find our own asses with both hands and a flashlight will have to kill and eat nosepicking environMENTALists in order to survive in an Oxygen-and-food-depleted environment.
8. Once the herd has been culled of the dumbass envirowhackos, we survivors will go back to putting CO2 back into the atmosphere, so that the Plants and Plant-like Organisms can eat and grow again, so that we can breathe, and so that the chickens, cattle, pigs, and fish -- assuming any of them survived both the loss of plants (their fucking food), and Oxygen -- will return, so that we may eat them instead of environMENTALISTs who aren't so tasty, are far from being Brain Food, and have less nutritional value than CheezWhiz.
So, you see, CO2 is not so much a poison as it is a RESOURCE NECESSARY FOR THE CONTINUATION OF LIFE ON THIS PLANET, YOU DUMB-AS-DOGSHIT ASSHOLE!
Also, I get a kick out of people who:
1. Tell me I should save the world by killing myself, but who apparently won't follow their own advice. Avoiding the "looming environmental disaster headed our way" doesn't fill them with enough fear and despondency to take their own lives. No, no, no; it's all of us regular people who should sacrifice ourselves on the Greenie Meanies' behalf, the selfish cocksuckers. Ever notice how those of us who don't agree with them are "selfish" but those that who would demand your death for their own personal comfort and salvation mysteriously aren't?
2. Lecture me about the evils of industrialization, whilst using a computer made from petroleum products and mined metals, transmitting across the ether on cables made of the same, the whole endeavor powered by coal, oil or natural gas burning power plants, or nuclear plants which leave radioactive waste, the very same things these douchebags say is destroying the atmosphere, and without which, modern life would be impossible.
3. Can use the terms "Massive Global Warming Catastrophe" and "Unprecedented Global Ice Age" in the same sentence and not notice the inherent contradictions, massive stupidity, or delicious irony, contained within?
4. If Darwin (your other Icon) was right, then whatever survives the no-plants-no-oxygen conditions of a global catastrophe will evolve so that they can. It's called Adaptation. They just probably won't be going to college and majoring in Keg Party, Gender Studies and Repeating the Stupid Shit My Professor Says.
If you can process all of this, Children, then maybe you'll begin to discover why it's so difficult to take you seriously.
Monday, January 03, 2011
When All Else Fails, Show 'em Your Tits!
Environmentalists and scientists are concerned about the massive drop in public interest in the topic of Global Warming over the last year. Now they are looking for new strategies to turn the tide. They're searching for so-called "mind bombs" -- highly emotional images that reduce a complex problem down to one core message.
This is par for the course for Lefties: when you can't make your argument on logic, science, facts, or enlightened self-interest, go for emotion....or sex.
One initial experiment showed an attractive female researcher posing in a bathing suit in front of Arctic ice. "Climate change is sexy," was also the motto of several working groups at the Global Media Forum in Bonn.
I'm told this sells beer and automobiles, too. You would think they could have found more attractive models for this sort of thing. I guess the sight of flesh, even on ugly people (see the slide show within the article) , is enough to arouse a Lefty and get him or her (it's usually a her) motivated to do stupid things. But, just in case you were worried that this was all about tits and vaginas, and therefore, extremely sexist, there's this:
India has even managed to turn a sex symbol into an icon for climate protection. The Ice Shiva Lingam, an enormous ice stalagmite in the Amarnath caves of northern India, is revered as a fertility symbol. Major news outlets in the country have begun reporting on global warming since the frozen phallic symbol began to melt.
Yep, because when I think "phallic symbols", I always think "India". If there was a more direct and obvious correlation between the phallus and Indians, there would probably be more Indian dudes making porn movies, I think.
The next logical step is to give 'em an image, out of context, which is supposed to appeal to people's better sensibilities, and a short, catchy slogan (no more than four words, please; the committed Leftist can't remember more than that, i.e. 'No Blood 4 Oil", "Hands off My Bush", "It's for the Children", "Think Global, Act Local" and so forth). When sex and simplicity don't work, then go for pure shock value:
One commercial in a campaign by the British-based environmental organization 10:10 showed a teacher blowing up two students who were skeptical about cutting their carbon emissions, with fountains of blood spraying the others in the class. Other 10:10 videos have the same fate befalling recalcitrant office workers and footballers. But the campaign proved a dud -- it sparked massive protests and was quickly withdrawn.
More successful was a Greenpeace advertising spot that targeted the multinational food company Nestlé. Greenpeace wanted the video, in which a bar of chocolate turns out to be a gorilla's bleeding finger, to be understood as a symbol of endangered rainforests, where harvesting palm oil for chocolate production encroaches on great apes' habitats. After the video caused a considerable stir, Nestlé promised to stop using products that damaged rainforests.
I would assume there are means of obtaining palm oil for chocolate which doesn't endanger rainforests, but probably costs twice as much, an expense that will eventually be passed on to the consumer until a Nestle's Crunch costs the same as a gallon of gasoline. Thanks douchebags!
When that fails, go with the celebrity factor, because we all know that stupid people just love to take their cues, or advice about how to think or live their lives from even dumber people who just happen to be "famous". I wonder if George Clooney or Brangelina are available to provide play-by-play commentary on the next video of pandas being nailed to trees by men in Nazi costume?
The rest of the article is telling. It shows an environMENTAL movement that is so desperate that it is wiling to lie (only they call it "A New Kind of Journalism"), invent a new "Scientific Language" (hey, hasn't "Global Warming" already become "Climate Change, and then "Climate Chaos" in little more than a year?), and even adopting the strategy of Leftardism's greatest enemy; religion. They call this "The Search For a New Messiah" (because the old one, Al Gore, is such a douche), and even make an appeal to the sainted memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., because let's face it: Climate Change is just as bad as treating a formerly-enslaved race like second-class citizens, when you aren't burning crosses on their front lawns or hanging them from any convenient tree.
It makes you wonder if this planet isn't simply the loony bin of some alien race, which sits back and watches from above and laughs it's collective ass off at the stupidity of some human beings.
What's really funny, in that it's-so pathetic-you-don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry way, is that Save Gaia propaganda is handled in exactly the same shallow-flashy Madison-Avenue fashion that one would use to promote any other product or brand name. But if you asked any committed Leftard his opinion on Madison Avenue, he'd probably call it the Handmaiden of Death, because it's the very vehicle that pushes the unsustainable, mass-consumption vision of the world that the Leftards insist is destroying the planet in the first place!
This is par for the course for Lefties: when you can't make your argument on logic, science, facts, or enlightened self-interest, go for emotion....or sex.
One initial experiment showed an attractive female researcher posing in a bathing suit in front of Arctic ice. "Climate change is sexy," was also the motto of several working groups at the Global Media Forum in Bonn.
I'm told this sells beer and automobiles, too. You would think they could have found more attractive models for this sort of thing. I guess the sight of flesh, even on ugly people (see the slide show within the article) , is enough to arouse a Lefty and get him or her (it's usually a her) motivated to do stupid things. But, just in case you were worried that this was all about tits and vaginas, and therefore, extremely sexist, there's this:
India has even managed to turn a sex symbol into an icon for climate protection. The Ice Shiva Lingam, an enormous ice stalagmite in the Amarnath caves of northern India, is revered as a fertility symbol. Major news outlets in the country have begun reporting on global warming since the frozen phallic symbol began to melt.
Yep, because when I think "phallic symbols", I always think "India". If there was a more direct and obvious correlation between the phallus and Indians, there would probably be more Indian dudes making porn movies, I think.
The next logical step is to give 'em an image, out of context, which is supposed to appeal to people's better sensibilities, and a short, catchy slogan (no more than four words, please; the committed Leftist can't remember more than that, i.e. 'No Blood 4 Oil", "Hands off My Bush", "It's for the Children", "Think Global, Act Local" and so forth). When sex and simplicity don't work, then go for pure shock value:
One commercial in a campaign by the British-based environmental organization 10:10 showed a teacher blowing up two students who were skeptical about cutting their carbon emissions, with fountains of blood spraying the others in the class. Other 10:10 videos have the same fate befalling recalcitrant office workers and footballers. But the campaign proved a dud -- it sparked massive protests and was quickly withdrawn.
More successful was a Greenpeace advertising spot that targeted the multinational food company Nestlé. Greenpeace wanted the video, in which a bar of chocolate turns out to be a gorilla's bleeding finger, to be understood as a symbol of endangered rainforests, where harvesting palm oil for chocolate production encroaches on great apes' habitats. After the video caused a considerable stir, Nestlé promised to stop using products that damaged rainforests.
I would assume there are means of obtaining palm oil for chocolate which doesn't endanger rainforests, but probably costs twice as much, an expense that will eventually be passed on to the consumer until a Nestle's Crunch costs the same as a gallon of gasoline. Thanks douchebags!
When that fails, go with the celebrity factor, because we all know that stupid people just love to take their cues, or advice about how to think or live their lives from even dumber people who just happen to be "famous". I wonder if George Clooney or Brangelina are available to provide play-by-play commentary on the next video of pandas being nailed to trees by men in Nazi costume?
The rest of the article is telling. It shows an environMENTAL movement that is so desperate that it is wiling to lie (only they call it "A New Kind of Journalism"), invent a new "Scientific Language" (hey, hasn't "Global Warming" already become "Climate Change, and then "Climate Chaos" in little more than a year?), and even adopting the strategy of Leftardism's greatest enemy; religion. They call this "The Search For a New Messiah" (because the old one, Al Gore, is such a douche), and even make an appeal to the sainted memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., because let's face it: Climate Change is just as bad as treating a formerly-enslaved race like second-class citizens, when you aren't burning crosses on their front lawns or hanging them from any convenient tree.
It makes you wonder if this planet isn't simply the loony bin of some alien race, which sits back and watches from above and laughs it's collective ass off at the stupidity of some human beings.
What's really funny, in that it's-so pathetic-you-don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry way, is that Save Gaia propaganda is handled in exactly the same shallow-flashy Madison-Avenue fashion that one would use to promote any other product or brand name. But if you asked any committed Leftard his opinion on Madison Avenue, he'd probably call it the Handmaiden of Death, because it's the very vehicle that pushes the unsustainable, mass-consumption vision of the world that the Leftards insist is destroying the planet in the first place!
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Orwell Never Sleeps...
As anyone who reads this tripe regularly knows, I absolutely adore George Orwell. Not in that "I want to have his babies" sort of way (despite that such a thing would be physically impossible, even if he wasn't already dead) but because Orwell was, in my estimation, the Greatest English Writer Who Ever Lived.
Even when you don't agree with anything he's written (Orwell was a committed Socialist), you can still appreciate it. He was a virtuoso of the English Language, and even the stuff that makes you scratch your head, or want to shoot your cat, still holds your interest because of the flowing quality of the words. Orwell was precise; he used exactly the right words in order to convey his thoughts, making his intent unmistakable. He was the master of the metaphor, too.
But the most remarkable thing about George Orwell is just how relevant he still is, sixty years after his death. The subjects he wrote about, the stories he told, his commentary -- all products the 1930's and 40's -- could very well have been written just last week. Or yesterday. Or more likely, Tomorrow. Moreso than H.G. Wells, or Aldous Huxley, George Orwell wrote about Tomorrow Today, and in such a way as to cause one to come to the realization that just because something has already happened, it doesn't necessarily follow that it won't happen again; only the form and circumstances will be different.
Orwell, of course, did not set out to write in this way; he was not aiming at being the next Nostradamus, nor do I think he was trying to suggest to us, as the great Christian Theologians who almost kept us in the Dark Ages insisted, that "There is nothing new under the Sun...". I think, rather, that he'd figured out something that many of our so-called Learned Men still have not figured out; the world may change, but human nature does not. He was a man who set out to tell the Truth As He Saw It; it just so happens that most Truths are immortal.
Let's face it, ever since Bill Clinton, the word "Orwellian" has pretty much entered the lexicon of anyone capable of breathing without mechanical assistance, so even if you've never heard of him, you've heard of him!
If you're not familiar with Orwell's works, then I suggest you get yourself so as quickly as possible. Not so much because of what it may tell you about the world you live in, but mostly because it's just damned good reading, learning a thing or two, or just having something to think about on the side is just an added benefit.
Where most people usually become familiar with his works, it's because they were "forced" to read his classics -- Animal Farm, 1984, The Road to Wiggan Pier -- in school. It was an assignment, something they couldn't avoid, and I'll wager, because it had that quality it was something they never enjoyed. Because of that mindset, they probably never picked up anything with his name on it again, or ever imagined that there was more to the man than those three books.
Not true! I would suggest, if you can, that you get yourself a copy of George Orwell: Essays, from the Everyman's Library series of books. It is a collection of Orwell's short stories, essays, newspaper reportage, and book reviews, in which he discusses everything from how to make the perfect cup of tea, to the future of democracy in a world in which it would soon be easy to regulate thought, repress dissent, and co-ordinate every human activity through the power of government. I have to say, it's my all-time favorite thing to read, and I never tire of it.
Every so often, I break out my Orwell collection, turn to a random page, and then just read. Today, that random page happened to be an essay, written in 1946, about the possibility that Man would learn to control the Earth's climate, and what that would mean to him, personally. Naturally, he entitled it "A Bad Climate is Best" (Take THAT Al Gore!), because to Orwell, perfection was always a pipe dream, and it's pursuit a waste of time and energy, so why not learn to see the virtue even in those things that make us uncomfortable?
Unfortunately, I could not find this particular essay posted on the Internet, so I can't reproduce it easily here, which is a pity; Orwell even made the sad sight of a elm tree covered in a shaggy canopy of dead leaves sound somewhat romantic.
Even when you don't agree with anything he's written (Orwell was a committed Socialist), you can still appreciate it. He was a virtuoso of the English Language, and even the stuff that makes you scratch your head, or want to shoot your cat, still holds your interest because of the flowing quality of the words. Orwell was precise; he used exactly the right words in order to convey his thoughts, making his intent unmistakable. He was the master of the metaphor, too.
But the most remarkable thing about George Orwell is just how relevant he still is, sixty years after his death. The subjects he wrote about, the stories he told, his commentary -- all products the 1930's and 40's -- could very well have been written just last week. Or yesterday. Or more likely, Tomorrow. Moreso than H.G. Wells, or Aldous Huxley, George Orwell wrote about Tomorrow Today, and in such a way as to cause one to come to the realization that just because something has already happened, it doesn't necessarily follow that it won't happen again; only the form and circumstances will be different.
Orwell, of course, did not set out to write in this way; he was not aiming at being the next Nostradamus, nor do I think he was trying to suggest to us, as the great Christian Theologians who almost kept us in the Dark Ages insisted, that "There is nothing new under the Sun...". I think, rather, that he'd figured out something that many of our so-called Learned Men still have not figured out; the world may change, but human nature does not. He was a man who set out to tell the Truth As He Saw It; it just so happens that most Truths are immortal.
Let's face it, ever since Bill Clinton, the word "Orwellian" has pretty much entered the lexicon of anyone capable of breathing without mechanical assistance, so even if you've never heard of him, you've heard of him!
If you're not familiar with Orwell's works, then I suggest you get yourself so as quickly as possible. Not so much because of what it may tell you about the world you live in, but mostly because it's just damned good reading, learning a thing or two, or just having something to think about on the side is just an added benefit.
Where most people usually become familiar with his works, it's because they were "forced" to read his classics -- Animal Farm, 1984, The Road to Wiggan Pier -- in school. It was an assignment, something they couldn't avoid, and I'll wager, because it had that quality it was something they never enjoyed. Because of that mindset, they probably never picked up anything with his name on it again, or ever imagined that there was more to the man than those three books.
Not true! I would suggest, if you can, that you get yourself a copy of George Orwell: Essays, from the Everyman's Library series of books. It is a collection of Orwell's short stories, essays, newspaper reportage, and book reviews, in which he discusses everything from how to make the perfect cup of tea, to the future of democracy in a world in which it would soon be easy to regulate thought, repress dissent, and co-ordinate every human activity through the power of government. I have to say, it's my all-time favorite thing to read, and I never tire of it.
Every so often, I break out my Orwell collection, turn to a random page, and then just read. Today, that random page happened to be an essay, written in 1946, about the possibility that Man would learn to control the Earth's climate, and what that would mean to him, personally. Naturally, he entitled it "A Bad Climate is Best" (Take THAT Al Gore!), because to Orwell, perfection was always a pipe dream, and it's pursuit a waste of time and energy, so why not learn to see the virtue even in those things that make us uncomfortable?
Unfortunately, I could not find this particular essay posted on the Internet, so I can't reproduce it easily here, which is a pity; Orwell even made the sad sight of a elm tree covered in a shaggy canopy of dead leaves sound somewhat romantic.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Global Warming Probably Gave Your Dog Fleas, Too...
In response to this post, an Anonymous reader posted a link to a recent New York Times article on Global Warming, which pretty much says that the recent cold snaps that have struck and crippled Europe this past fortnight, and which dumped 2-feet of snow on New York City the last two days, are, alas, caused by Global Warming, too.
The article is unadulterated bullshit, and the author should be ashamed of himself. Assuming, of course, he had any shame to begin with. But this is par for the course when dealing with the true believers in Man-made Global Catastrophe; they are shameless liars, and possessed of a bulletproof stupidity that they themselves would sneeringly attribute to the poor slugs who, snicker-snicker, believe in God.
Of course, these are the same people who believe that Man has the power to halt the cycle of Evolution and Extinction, and return the planet to a supposed Golden Age where atmospheric conditions were "just right". They can't define "just right", but they know it exists,because it must have...once. And they call Conservatives crazy people who want to turn back the clock?
The major problem with the Global Warming types is that they simply don't care about truth, nor do they care about science. For the committed Tree-Hugger, the debate over global Warming is about neither truth nor science, nor about what's good for the Human Race, it's always about a self-appointed elite who hate their fellow human beings and want to control their lives.
This Elite wants to control your actions a) for their personal (mostly mental) comfort, b) for their personal enrichment, c) because they're pretentious assholes who believe they're better than anyone else, and d) because they're committed to the idea that World Socialism is still a viable system, it just needs a new marketing campaign and better World Socialists to run it.
This is, after all, their overall goal; to bring about World Socialism without having to have debates, without having to fight wars, without having to deal with forces that they cannot control. It's best to concoct a fairy tale of mankind destroying his habitat so as to arrest the growth of the developed nations (The West), while allowing the rest of the planet (The Third World, India, China) to "catch up" industrially by removing any such restrictions upon their activity. In this way, the dream of World Socialism will have been achieved (material equality, or rather, equality of misery) in the way that Socialists typically want it to be achieved; by destroying the rights and privileges of the individual, sovereign nations and traditional institutions.
The package of World Socialism has just been wrapped in festive, brightly-colored, and friendlier paper: now, it's no longer about Proletarian struggle, unavoidable historical forces coming into conflict, class warfare, or a war of ideologies that may lead to actual shooting and nuclear exchange. No, the World Socialism crowd now comes to you claiming they want to save Polar Bears and Tropical Fish, starving African villagers and rain forests full of endangered fruit trees. The goal, however, still remains: control of the world economy, either directly (through the U.N.) or indirectly (again, through the U.N.) by means of treaties, or international law that forces some nations to bear the technical and financial burdens of modernizing all the others.
Global Warming advocates are the slipperiest of eels.
Too hot? Heat waves and droughts?
That's Global Warming.
Too cold? Blizzards?
That's Global Warming, too.
Too Many hurricanes?
Global Warming, for sure.
No Hurricanes at all?
Definitely Global Warming.
Cat missed the litter box? Didn't win the Lottery? Got Vanilla when you asked for Chocolate? Barack Obama got elected President?
Global Warming will get you every time...
Eventually, you get to the point where Global Warming is responsible for Icelandic volcanoes erupting, and Haitian Earthquakes, as some of the dumber Global Warming idiots did, indeed argue, at the time those events occurred.
Ask for proof,and you get "science"that is falsified. Point out the science has been doctored, or worse, relies on assumptions that no one can quantify, and the committed Global Warmer simply moves the goal posts; it's still doesn't matter if the science is fake, the threat is still real, or suddenly, there's a new variable that someone tosses into the equation that's never been reported on, but someone has been studying in his basement for the last 20 years.
They are like the Christian Apologists of the 30's and 40's, who told you that it doesn't really matter if Christ existed, or if there's resurrection of the body, or even if the saintsperformed miracles, what matters is not the literal veracity of Gospel, but the perceived intent. Point out that if you argue that Christ really hadn't risen from the dead, and that there is no real promise of a resurrection of the body, then the pillars upon which their faith rests must surely fail, and you get that most condescending and annoying retort "you're not a theologian, so you can't possibly understand..."
Global Warming douchebags do this all the time. They make claims that cannot be proven, and then in their defense say that you, John Smith, are just too stupid to understand the REAL science. And just like the Christian Apologists, who were always able to stay one step ahead of you in any argument that threatened to devolve into a test of logic, the Global Warming Idiot plays the same confidence trick.
Is there Global Warming? Of course there is. The climate of this planet has changed repeatedly in 4 billion years, and will continue to change long after mankind is gone. How do I know? Because there is provable scientific data that says the Earth has gone through several major Ice Ages in the recent geological past, and since there ain't any glaciers here on Staten Island and my diet doesn't consist of Elephant Seal and Whale Blubber, I have to assume that, consequently, there was at least an equal number of warming events, also easily proved by accepted, provable scientific means, just in case the evidence of your own eyes isn't enough.
The Question is how much does Man's activity contribute to this warming phenomenon,and the answer is...no one actually knows... and when true,honest scientific minds try to find out, they find it is beyond their capacity to actually enumerate, because the complexities of weather and climate are, even in the 21st Century, poorly understood.
The Global Warmer foot soldier, however, is convinced, sans evidence, that ALL the warming is the result of human activity, and the only means to arrest it is to bring progress to a screeching halt,no matter how many people it kills, no matter how many landscapes it destroys, no matter how expensive that might be. In the meantime, his Puppet Masters, the World-Socialists-in-Sheep's-Clothing, sit back and enjoy the wealth and power they accumulate by manipulating the brain-dead masses.
Like most Left-wing movements, EnvironMENTALism is a movement of the Ill-informed-but Well-intentioned, led by the Ill-Intentioned-but Well-informed. Truth, science, and logic have nothing to do with any of it, nor does the bloody weather.
Update: I rest my case.
The article is unadulterated bullshit, and the author should be ashamed of himself. Assuming, of course, he had any shame to begin with. But this is par for the course when dealing with the true believers in Man-made Global Catastrophe; they are shameless liars, and possessed of a bulletproof stupidity that they themselves would sneeringly attribute to the poor slugs who, snicker-snicker, believe in God.
Of course, these are the same people who believe that Man has the power to halt the cycle of Evolution and Extinction, and return the planet to a supposed Golden Age where atmospheric conditions were "just right". They can't define "just right", but they know it exists,because it must have...once. And they call Conservatives crazy people who want to turn back the clock?
The major problem with the Global Warming types is that they simply don't care about truth, nor do they care about science. For the committed Tree-Hugger, the debate over global Warming is about neither truth nor science, nor about what's good for the Human Race, it's always about a self-appointed elite who hate their fellow human beings and want to control their lives.
This Elite wants to control your actions a) for their personal (mostly mental) comfort, b) for their personal enrichment, c) because they're pretentious assholes who believe they're better than anyone else, and d) because they're committed to the idea that World Socialism is still a viable system, it just needs a new marketing campaign and better World Socialists to run it.
This is, after all, their overall goal; to bring about World Socialism without having to have debates, without having to fight wars, without having to deal with forces that they cannot control. It's best to concoct a fairy tale of mankind destroying his habitat so as to arrest the growth of the developed nations (The West), while allowing the rest of the planet (The Third World, India, China) to "catch up" industrially by removing any such restrictions upon their activity. In this way, the dream of World Socialism will have been achieved (material equality, or rather, equality of misery) in the way that Socialists typically want it to be achieved; by destroying the rights and privileges of the individual, sovereign nations and traditional institutions.
The package of World Socialism has just been wrapped in festive, brightly-colored, and friendlier paper: now, it's no longer about Proletarian struggle, unavoidable historical forces coming into conflict, class warfare, or a war of ideologies that may lead to actual shooting and nuclear exchange. No, the World Socialism crowd now comes to you claiming they want to save Polar Bears and Tropical Fish, starving African villagers and rain forests full of endangered fruit trees. The goal, however, still remains: control of the world economy, either directly (through the U.N.) or indirectly (again, through the U.N.) by means of treaties, or international law that forces some nations to bear the technical and financial burdens of modernizing all the others.
Global Warming advocates are the slipperiest of eels.
Too hot? Heat waves and droughts?
That's Global Warming.
Too cold? Blizzards?
That's Global Warming, too.
Too Many hurricanes?
Global Warming, for sure.
No Hurricanes at all?
Definitely Global Warming.
Cat missed the litter box? Didn't win the Lottery? Got Vanilla when you asked for Chocolate? Barack Obama got elected President?
Global Warming will get you every time...
Eventually, you get to the point where Global Warming is responsible for Icelandic volcanoes erupting, and Haitian Earthquakes, as some of the dumber Global Warming idiots did, indeed argue, at the time those events occurred.
Ask for proof,and you get "science"that is falsified. Point out the science has been doctored, or worse, relies on assumptions that no one can quantify, and the committed Global Warmer simply moves the goal posts; it's still doesn't matter if the science is fake, the threat is still real, or suddenly, there's a new variable that someone tosses into the equation that's never been reported on, but someone has been studying in his basement for the last 20 years.
They are like the Christian Apologists of the 30's and 40's, who told you that it doesn't really matter if Christ existed, or if there's resurrection of the body, or even if the saintsperformed miracles, what matters is not the literal veracity of Gospel, but the perceived intent. Point out that if you argue that Christ really hadn't risen from the dead, and that there is no real promise of a resurrection of the body, then the pillars upon which their faith rests must surely fail, and you get that most condescending and annoying retort "you're not a theologian, so you can't possibly understand..."
Global Warming douchebags do this all the time. They make claims that cannot be proven, and then in their defense say that you, John Smith, are just too stupid to understand the REAL science. And just like the Christian Apologists, who were always able to stay one step ahead of you in any argument that threatened to devolve into a test of logic, the Global Warming Idiot plays the same confidence trick.
Is there Global Warming? Of course there is. The climate of this planet has changed repeatedly in 4 billion years, and will continue to change long after mankind is gone. How do I know? Because there is provable scientific data that says the Earth has gone through several major Ice Ages in the recent geological past, and since there ain't any glaciers here on Staten Island and my diet doesn't consist of Elephant Seal and Whale Blubber, I have to assume that, consequently, there was at least an equal number of warming events, also easily proved by accepted, provable scientific means, just in case the evidence of your own eyes isn't enough.
The Question is how much does Man's activity contribute to this warming phenomenon,and the answer is...no one actually knows... and when true,honest scientific minds try to find out, they find it is beyond their capacity to actually enumerate, because the complexities of weather and climate are, even in the 21st Century, poorly understood.
The Global Warmer foot soldier, however, is convinced, sans evidence, that ALL the warming is the result of human activity, and the only means to arrest it is to bring progress to a screeching halt,no matter how many people it kills, no matter how many landscapes it destroys, no matter how expensive that might be. In the meantime, his Puppet Masters, the World-Socialists-in-Sheep's-Clothing, sit back and enjoy the wealth and power they accumulate by manipulating the brain-dead masses.
Like most Left-wing movements, EnvironMENTALism is a movement of the Ill-informed-but Well-intentioned, led by the Ill-Intentioned-but Well-informed. Truth, science, and logic have nothing to do with any of it, nor does the bloody weather.
Update: I rest my case.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Hey, S.E. Cupp: I Already Wrote This!
Dear S.E. Cupp: if you've lifted one my posts, then you owe me. Since it's Christmas, I'd like you to arrive at my doorstep, in a bikini, with a bottle of something good, and a fistful of $100 bills. We'll find a hot tub later, Sugarshorts.
Now, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, because I have no proof of anything untoward. But when I read Cupp's Opinion piece in the NY Daily News this morning, I had a feeling of deja vu. I wrote the almost exact same post back in January! It's possible that two people might have the same exact idea eleven months apart, but it's kinda spooky, dont'cha think? Then again, great minds thinking alike and all that.
You be the judge. Here's mine.
l'll be waiting for your call, S.E., you sexy beast.
UPDATE: Updated the link.
Now, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, because I have no proof of anything untoward. But when I read Cupp's Opinion piece in the NY Daily News this morning, I had a feeling of deja vu. I wrote the almost exact same post back in January! It's possible that two people might have the same exact idea eleven months apart, but it's kinda spooky, dont'cha think? Then again, great minds thinking alike and all that.
You be the judge. Here's mine.
l'll be waiting for your call, S.E., you sexy beast.
UPDATE: Updated the link.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Douchebag!
Al Gore (almost) admits that's he's a lying sack of hypocritical shit pushing a bullcrap communist-driven agenda that even he doesn't believe.
Notice how Al wants you to sacrifice and suffer for a (supposed) greater good, while he reserves the right to act upon his self-interest whenever he feels like it or needs to. Inside every environMENTAList is a selfish bastard who believes YOU are stupid.
Al Gore probably owns piles of stock in biofuel concerns. It wouldn't surprise me at all if his "ethanol epiphany" has little to do with saving Mother Gaia, and putting yet more Green in Al's pockets.
Notice how Al wants you to sacrifice and suffer for a (supposed) greater good, while he reserves the right to act upon his self-interest whenever he feels like it or needs to. Inside every environMENTAList is a selfish bastard who believes YOU are stupid.
Al Gore probably owns piles of stock in biofuel concerns. It wouldn't surprise me at all if his "ethanol epiphany" has little to do with saving Mother Gaia, and putting yet more Green in Al's pockets.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
You Mean Those Bike Lanes that No One Uses?
The City of New York can find more ways to waste money than just about any government entity on the planet.
Several years ago, these bike lanes were painted on the streets -- very expensively, and in the face of much public opposition -- and touted as the greatest thing since Luke Skywalker was told the amazing secret of his dark and sinister lineage. Mayor Mind-Everyone's-Business, said so. Alas, they have gone mostly unused.
There's several reasons for this:
1. The City put some of them in the stupidest places. Three blocks from my home you can ride the bike path all along North and South Railroad Avenues...right up until the time both streets come to an abrupt end within about a mile, or so. And those two don't even connect to another bike path; you have to travel across other streets, in normal traffic, just to get to another bicycle path to continue your Journey to Nowhere.
2. The City insisted on painting these bike lanes on some of the narrowest major thoroughfares on Staten Island, so that bicyclists just might as well be riding in traffic, anyways. Many of our streets still follow the haphazard routes they did in Colonial Times, and few of them have been widened 230+ years later. Considering how many bus stops and stores there are along some of these roads, the bikers have to weave in-and-out of the lane and into traffic to avoid the buses and the delivery trucks. Most of these bikers don't have the same brainpower you'd expect to find in a garden slug, and consequently, they don't signal. Many are under the mistaken impression that someone doing 55-in-a-40-zone, with three screaming brats in the back, putting on her makeup in the rearview, and dialing a cell phone while driving a 3-ton SUV, are possessed of a gymnast's reflexes, and will most certainly stop to avoid hitting them. Heaven forbid a biker should have to stop to let the flow of traffic pass them by.
3. I can't tell you how many bicyclists haven't figured out how to navigate intersections. There's two kinds of biker in this category; a) the effete, metrosexual douchebag who believes that where the bike lane is broken by an intersection, he still has the right of way, no matter what, insisting that the lane must be assumed to be infinite where it isn't -- and besides, he's superior to you car-driving slugs, and b) people who will wear bright yellow or reflective orange spandex in public without a clue, fear of embarrassment, and despite open questions about their lineage and/or sexual preferences.
4. There is a brand of biker in this City that is so in-your-face about the superiority of the Watermelon EnviroMENTAList biker code, that they deliberately weave in-and-out of the lanes to obstruct traffic, curse and threaten those making legal turns across the bike lanes, and take every opportunity they can to delay traffic and antagonize motorists as a sport. Consequently, this being New York, many of those obnoxious bikers find themselves involved in "accidents" that range from the unintended open car door, the "unintentional" nudge of SUV or Full-Size sedan that occurs after the biker flips someone the bird (commonplace!), to the City Bus Driver who "just didn't see him (The Spandex-wearing buttsniffer) in my blind spot". Consequently, these bike lanes get less use by the day, because the more aggressive bike riders are recovering from the consequences of their own stupidity...and more often, their just desserts.
5. The only people dumber than Staten Island bicyclists are those tens of thousands of assholes who congregate here every year for the New York City Marathon. Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island is the starting point for the Marathon, and the runners begin their first leg by crossing the Verrazano-Narrows bridge...which must be closed for the event. Just so a few thousand doofuses can have the "experience" of trying to run 26-miles while keeping control of bowel and bladder...only to fail, dropping dead from heart attacks along the way.
This is rich:
"It’s a major step backwards. It’s sad, and to do it without input from the community is, in a word, arrogant."
Umm, no; the lanes were originally PUT IN without input from the community (Mayor Bloomberg insisted upon them, and he presumes to know better about everything than we do, the asshole), and the person who gave this quote should remember the old saw about people in Glass Houses; The Bike Riders of this Island are a bunch of arrogant cocksuckers who believe a bicycle should be allowed to go wherever they can get it to, and worse, they're aggressive in this arrogance; just ask anyone who has had to dodge bicycles and their metrosexual owners who insist on riding upon the Boardwalk, through the train stations and trains themselves, and the Ferry.
Mr. "This-is-in-a-word-Arrogant" Douchebag, you're lucky you're still alive; I know a ton of drivers who would just love to run a dope like you over, if they could get away with it.
I want to know how the City justifies the money they spent in painting these monstrosities on the street in the first place, only to cover or remove them five years later? I have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting the answer to that question.
Several years ago, these bike lanes were painted on the streets -- very expensively, and in the face of much public opposition -- and touted as the greatest thing since Luke Skywalker was told the amazing secret of his dark and sinister lineage. Mayor Mind-Everyone's-Business, said so. Alas, they have gone mostly unused.
There's several reasons for this:
1. The City put some of them in the stupidest places. Three blocks from my home you can ride the bike path all along North and South Railroad Avenues...right up until the time both streets come to an abrupt end within about a mile, or so. And those two don't even connect to another bike path; you have to travel across other streets, in normal traffic, just to get to another bicycle path to continue your Journey to Nowhere.
2. The City insisted on painting these bike lanes on some of the narrowest major thoroughfares on Staten Island, so that bicyclists just might as well be riding in traffic, anyways. Many of our streets still follow the haphazard routes they did in Colonial Times, and few of them have been widened 230+ years later. Considering how many bus stops and stores there are along some of these roads, the bikers have to weave in-and-out of the lane and into traffic to avoid the buses and the delivery trucks. Most of these bikers don't have the same brainpower you'd expect to find in a garden slug, and consequently, they don't signal. Many are under the mistaken impression that someone doing 55-in-a-40-zone, with three screaming brats in the back, putting on her makeup in the rearview, and dialing a cell phone while driving a 3-ton SUV, are possessed of a gymnast's reflexes, and will most certainly stop to avoid hitting them. Heaven forbid a biker should have to stop to let the flow of traffic pass them by.
3. I can't tell you how many bicyclists haven't figured out how to navigate intersections. There's two kinds of biker in this category; a) the effete, metrosexual douchebag who believes that where the bike lane is broken by an intersection, he still has the right of way, no matter what, insisting that the lane must be assumed to be infinite where it isn't -- and besides, he's superior to you car-driving slugs, and b) people who will wear bright yellow or reflective orange spandex in public without a clue, fear of embarrassment, and despite open questions about their lineage and/or sexual preferences.
4. There is a brand of biker in this City that is so in-your-face about the superiority of the Watermelon EnviroMENTAList biker code, that they deliberately weave in-and-out of the lanes to obstruct traffic, curse and threaten those making legal turns across the bike lanes, and take every opportunity they can to delay traffic and antagonize motorists as a sport. Consequently, this being New York, many of those obnoxious bikers find themselves involved in "accidents" that range from the unintended open car door, the "unintentional" nudge of SUV or Full-Size sedan that occurs after the biker flips someone the bird (commonplace!), to the City Bus Driver who "just didn't see him (The Spandex-wearing buttsniffer) in my blind spot". Consequently, these bike lanes get less use by the day, because the more aggressive bike riders are recovering from the consequences of their own stupidity...and more often, their just desserts.
5. The only people dumber than Staten Island bicyclists are those tens of thousands of assholes who congregate here every year for the New York City Marathon. Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island is the starting point for the Marathon, and the runners begin their first leg by crossing the Verrazano-Narrows bridge...which must be closed for the event. Just so a few thousand doofuses can have the "experience" of trying to run 26-miles while keeping control of bowel and bladder...only to fail, dropping dead from heart attacks along the way.
This is rich:
"It’s a major step backwards. It’s sad, and to do it without input from the community is, in a word, arrogant."
Umm, no; the lanes were originally PUT IN without input from the community (Mayor Bloomberg insisted upon them, and he presumes to know better about everything than we do, the asshole), and the person who gave this quote should remember the old saw about people in Glass Houses; The Bike Riders of this Island are a bunch of arrogant cocksuckers who believe a bicycle should be allowed to go wherever they can get it to, and worse, they're aggressive in this arrogance; just ask anyone who has had to dodge bicycles and their metrosexual owners who insist on riding upon the Boardwalk, through the train stations and trains themselves, and the Ferry.
Mr. "This-is-in-a-word-Arrogant" Douchebag, you're lucky you're still alive; I know a ton of drivers who would just love to run a dope like you over, if they could get away with it.
I want to know how the City justifies the money they spent in painting these monstrosities on the street in the first place, only to cover or remove them five years later? I have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting the answer to that question.
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