Lately I been hearing people jawing about what they know fer a fact and what they say is “Just a Theory.” Well I got a theory I would like to share with y’all, and by share I mean cram it down your throat and make you gag on it. Now mind you it is “Just a Theory,” so feel free to treat it as such; kind of like Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity is a just a Theory of gravity. If you don’t understand that joke then just stop here and I will have someone turn off the gravity and fling you off the planet into outerspace where you will be less of a danger to others.
I say...I say I don't give a rats tookus in January just exactly how mixed up you all a wanna go through life; but when it comes to the basic principles of good science, well I ain't a gonna... I say, I ain't a gonna let you all git yer facts and fiction all jumbled together like a barnyard dawgs breakfast. The truth of the matter is that a lot of your so called common knowledge of scientific principles seems to get a little more blurred with each retelling over time and these days it seems many people are fine going through life in the state of confusion. Well let me tell you the state of confusion is a great place to visit, some very nice people live there. The only problem is that trying to explain any thing to the people of the fine state, is like trying to ride your sow to church in your Sunday best. You end up looking the fool and the sow… well she goes on about her day. The only purpose living in such a state serves is to block full understanding from getting inside your head. Now that's a joke. Get It? BLOCK...HEAD... BLOCKHEAD. Is any of this seeping inside that wooden noggin' of yers.
Just why do you suppose; I say just why do u suppose that so many people can have the wool pulled over there eyes; scientifically speaking of course. In a nutshell, it's because we can manage to live our entire life just fine without eva understandin’ anythin’ scientific at all. A case in point is that most of us are oblivious to the fact that organic chemistry is the chemistry of molecules containing carbon and hydrogen. A carbon atom bonded to 4 hydrogen atoms (CH4) makes methane gas; it's the main smelly ingredient in cow farts. If we combine those same two atoms in a slightly different way we get C4H10 or butane; which allows us to light up a big ceegar after dinner and sit on the front porch whilst a pondering upon the deplorable state of our so called EDUKASHUNAL SYSTEM. We can even take that same carbon and hydrogen and jumble it around some more and make something just a bit more complicated. C8H18 also know as octane. That tharr is what makes yer car a go fast. But the unwashed masses see; they don’t need to know anything about all that to drive their car down a country road, while smoking a ceegar and rolling down the window to smell all them cows in the field farting up a storm.
Now as I’ve so aptly demonstrated here, science touches every single thing you do in life, yet the fact remains a good number of us choose not to understand much about it simply because the world around us let's us live our life like that. Completely oblivious; like an ostrich with it’s a head in a hole. I don’t know what goes on in those holes but the ostrich; well they sure find it interesting. Well I'ma here to tell you that you should have some basic understanding of science; it’s the only way to tell the difference between shit and shinola. It's what enables those of us that live our life outside the state of confusion to tell the flat earth society that their oil ain’t a reaching their dipstick; iffin you catch my drift.
In order to have a basic understanding of science I’m first going to have to dispel one of the most annoying myths of science that many of us have come to believe as factual. Many people suffer from the delusion that a scientific hypothesis will become a theory and then a law. The general belief is that as evidence and data increase scientific hypotheses will become scientific theories; and then when the empirical evidence and data accumulate to the point where they are irrefutable, the scientific theory will become a law. If this is what you believe then you've been hornswoggled, because nothing could be further from the truth. Now you shouldn't feel bad about being led down the garden path of utter tripe; after all you have some very illustrious company with you including former President Ronald Reagan - who in his 1980 presidential campaign stated that he wasn't troubled by the idea of evolution because it was just a scientific theory. Misstatements of this kind continue to propagate the myth that an idea is not worthy of any real consideration until so called "Lawness" has been bestowed upon it by the scientific community. Then in 2005 President George W. Bush told a group of newspaper reporters that he believes that intelligent design should be taught along side evolution as competing theories; thus proving that one's skull can actually be thick enough so as to be totally impervious to the effects of a Harvard and Yale education. Any REAL scientist such as a biologist or a particle physicist will confirm that intelligent design is not scientific at all, but that is indeed an unsubstantiated ideological religious viewpoint with no scientific merit whatsoever; in spite of the continued outcries of all the intelligent design proponents.
The intelligent design community has been to court many times and has never won a single case. They lost the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, U.S. Supreme Court, Edwards versus Aguilard in 1987, and Kitzmiller versus The Dover School District in 2005. It’s high time they quit trying to advocate their creationist dogma as science. They like to site evolution as “Just a Theory” and as such it’s not proven and up for debate. Nothing could be further from the truth. Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity is a geometric theory of gravity, but you don’t see people running around saying they "We don't believe in gravity it’s 'Just a Theory,' we believe that the earth just sucks”. Within the scientific community there is no debate on evolution. It exists just like gravity exists despite the fact that both are now, and ever will be, so called "Just Theories."
Science explains the world as it is observed, using naturalistic mechanisms which can be tested and verified by independent observation and experimentation. Although the existence of God is not necessarily denied by science, supernatural explanations which are based upon the unseen actions of any God are excluded from science as a matter of necessity. As biologist J.B.S. Haldane pointed out, science is dependent upon the assumption that the world is real and operates according to regular and predictable laws, which are not changed from moment to moment at the whim of supernatural forces: "My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course." (cited in Montagu, 1984, p. 241) Geologist and theologian Dr. James Skehan also notes, "I undertake my scientific research with the confident assumption that the earth follows the laws of nature. . . . My studies are performed with the confidence that God will not capriciously confound scientific results by 'slipping in' a miracle!" (Strahler, 1987, pp. 40-41) I can just about hear some of you saying “Now hold on, that Haldane guy said science is based on the assumption the world is real and if science is based on what amounts to a mere assumption the how good can it be?” Well, my answer to you is this. Let’s ASSUME I have a baseball bat and I commence to beating you all about the noggin with it. If the world ain’t real then there’s a no reason for me to stop now is there? I rest my case. Science is how we separate the shit from the shinola. Our lack of understanding when it comes to scientific principles is why things like so called intelligent design have people that truly believe it, and the population of the state of confusion continues to rise at such an alarming rate.
There is of course a relationship between scientific laws and theories but a theory does not simply become a law, not matter how much data and evidence is amassed. Simply put Laws are generalizations, principles or patterns observed in nature and Thoeories are the explanations of those generalizations. For example Newton’s inverse square Law of gravity published in Principia Mathematica in 1687 gives us the mathematical tools we need to calculate the gravitational attraction between two objects based on their mass and distance apart. But it was not until 1915 when Alert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity after ten years of deep thinking the world was given its first theory of gravity. Now before I go running off at the mouth about general relativity; the point I want to make is that the relationship between laws and theories allows us to use scientific laws without understanding the theories that underline the reasons behind those same laws. Interestingly, Newton himself addressed the distinction between law and theory. Even though he had discovered the Law of Gravity, Newton refrained from publically speculating about its cause. In Principal he states "...I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypothesis…” “…it is enough that gravity does really exist, and according to the laws which we have explained…” (Newton, 1720/1946, p 547).
In 1998 NASA was able to hurl a satellite out in to space to send back pictures of the surface of Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. NASA launched the Cassini satellite towards Venus and it used gravity to build up speed and it head right back at the earth gaining more speed as it passed. It then made a second pass around Venus nearly doubling its speed and then it headed straight for Saturn. Cassini used gravity again to navigate its way through the rings of Saturn and then into orbit around Titan in 2005. A probe was sent to the surface of Titan and that probe took pictures for 180 minutes before it succumbed to the extreme cold. But for those 180 minutes it tool pictures of the most earth like heavenly body in our solar system. All of this was only possible because of our scientific understanding of Newton's Laws' of Gravity and Motion the scientists behind Cassini didn’t need to understand Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, String or M-theory, or even the existence of gravitons and gravitational waves (as of yet those have not been observed in the universe, although the evidence for them is quite compelling). Is any of this getting inside that wooden noggin of yours? In a nutshell, no theory will ever become a law.
The next time you hear someone blathering on about how Darwin’s theory of evolution is “Just a Theory” you will know that these people have driven so far into the state of confusion they ain’t a never gonna find the border; not even with GPS. Evolutionary biology has gone way beyond Darwin’s “On Origin Of Species” published in 1859. It has many, many scientific Laws that support it; such as Mendel’s Law of Segregation, and Law of Independent Assortment. These laws work and are verifiable. The massive amount of evidence in support of evolutionary processes is abundant and it continues to happen right before our eyes; although the young earth creationists would have us all believe that evolution is “Just a Theory”.
The creationist idea that God divinely created the universe may or may not be true, but, by postulating a supernatural event which occurs outside of the natural laws of the universe, such an idea places itself firmly outside the realm of science. There is simply no experiment which can verify any of its assertions and no predictions of future data that can be drawn from this hypothesis, and those who hold such conclusions can do so only on the basis of faith. This is fine for a religious outlook or an ideology, but it has nothing at all in common with science. Just as no person is permitted to argue in a US court that they are not responsible for a crime because Satan was in control of them, or that such and such a crime happened because it was the will of God. The only way to plea that in court is to plea insanity; now what does that tell you. Similarly, the actions of supernatural entities are also excluded from the scientific arena. Neither system denies the existence of God, but both exclude God as an explanatory mechanism.
One of the tenets of good science is that is must be falsifiable. That is there must be a way to prove that what ever ideas are put forth we must be able to design experiments which could ultimately produce data that proved a certain theory wrong. The discovery that it was impossible for mutations to occur in DNA and for those mutations to be passed down to subsequent generations would falsify the theory of evolution. If you are a young earth creationist feel free to hold your breath waiting for that to happen. Some young earth creationists like to use the argument that since it cannot be disproved that divine creation or intelligent design did not happen, it must then be assumed that it did happen. This is an error in logic when “insert god here” is used where a more proper explanation of “we don’t know yet” should be. The fill the gap logic of young earth creationists creates a false dichotomy where any gap in evolutionary science therefore becomes evidence of creation or intelligent design. This is a load of cow pies and simply precludes intelligent design from being considered science in any way shape or form. Now, it’s Just a Theory, mind you, Just a Theory but if you are a young earth creationist you’ve either been hornswoggled into that belief or you are delusional; but that my friends is “Just a Theory.”
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Earth Hour
Well I won't say that this Earth Hour idea is a bad one; that would be perceived as the equivalent of kicking puppies by most people. I would however like to point out to people that if you do choose to participate in Earth Hour you shouldn't be all that proud of yourself. You are not really doing much to help the environment or global warming. In some cases what you do in place of leaving the light on my actually be worse. I've heard people say they are going to turn out the lights and just have a barbecue or a fire in their backyard. Well excuse me Mr. Green; I'm no expert but replacing the fossil fuel spent to generate your electricity for an hour by simply burning other fossil fuels is moronic. Especially if you don't even know where the hell you are getting your electricity. Maybe it comes from wind or hydro generation. If that is the case then you are actually increasing your carbon footprint.
I have nothing against the Earth Hour trying to shed light on the issues with our environment. The harm they do comes from people thinking these band-aid type solutions are actually going to make a difference. The attitude that turning your lights off for an hour and driving a hybrid is going to save the earth from global warming or a dozen other environmental disasters just sitting on our door step waiting to rear their ugly heads is utter nonsense. The issue is extremely complex and needs more than feel good awareness campaigns. There have been awareness campaigns for people starving in Africa and guess what people; they are still starving. Live aid, Farm aid, Band aid, Kool aid and far to many other awareness campaigns to name here have come and gone and every single one of the issues they were meant shine a light on and ultimately solve; are still with us. Imagine that. An awareness campaign that accomplishes nothing.
The reason they ultimately don't help is that we rally around the issue, get on the band wagon, create a big ruckus and make a lot of noise. Then we throw in our 2 cents worth of contribution, pat ourselves on the back and go back to living our lives the exact way we have always lived them. We then have the audacity to act indignant; like we are all doing our part and its those 3rd world countries like China; bringing a coal fired generator on line nearly every week. Those are the truly evil doers; well them and that Verizon bastard - with his big network following everyone around all the time. You can't tell me that is environmentally friendly.
Well I got news for you. Those generators supply power to the factories; that build the cars you drive, make the clothes on your back, the shoes on your feet, the consumer electronics in your home, the couch that is making you more potato like everyday, the cell-phone surgically attached to your ear and practically everything else you own. If you want to help the environment. Try living your life with less. Less clothing, less consumer electronics, less of the creature comforts we have in our homes, smaller homes and cars with less horsepower. Now that is something that would have a real impact on the environment.
What about the shipping. Every single item in your home got their because it was shipped by fossil fuels. The table you eat dinner at is made of wood harvested in a forest (one of natures ways of truely managing global warming) with chainsaw that uses fossil fuels. Hauled to a mill on a truck using fossil fuels. The mill refining the timber is run on fossil fuel. It's shipped to manufacturer on a truck using more fossil fuel. Hand crafted on a CNC router in a factory run on electricity, purchased from an electrical grid fueled by coal fired generators. Then it is shipped overseas on a ship that burns more fossil fuel then you and every single person at your dining room table could possibly burn in their vehicles in their entire lives. Apparently the only source of wood to make your furniture is always on the exact opposite side of the earth from where ever you are located. Your table then sits in a temperature controlled warehouse that uses more electricity. It gets shipped thousands of miles by a truck that burns diesel fuel, uses oil, needs tires, needs regular maintenance and ultimately, replacing; which guess what folks? It all requires more fossil fuel or electricity (which is mostly fossil fuel burnt in incredibly large amounts, in very remote places on the planet because we don't want those smelly things anywhere near us and the only way to ship electricity is by making huge amounts of it and forcing more than we can possibly need down thousands of miles of electrical lines, so the power is their when we flip a switch. Oh yea, the electrical system will need maintenance too, and that will mean using more fossil fuel. After all that, your table is still at the store. You still have to surf the Internet, using electricity/fossil fuel. Then you have to drive to at least 3 locations to get all touchy feely with the furniture; and the whole time you will whine and complain about the outrageous price of gas. Ironically though you will feel good about the 2 cent carbon tax that was added to the price of gas to combat global warming; never realizing the the money goes into general revenue to fund salary surveys, political pension plans and double digit pay raises for the politicians. And just to rub salt in the wounds you have to listen to them on the radio complaining about needing more tax revenue to fix the health care system; as you drive all over town to pick out your brand new dining room table. Then you have to arrange for delivery on a truck that uses fossil fuel, you have to take time off from work to be their for the delivery - so you actually drive to and from work twice that day; using guess what? More fossil fuel. But that's OK you can feel good about your purchase because you made sure the dining room table you purchased was made from wood that came from a sustainable forestry operation. To bad you are oblivious to the fact that sustainable forestry uses significantly more fossil fuel. That in turn means that Fort Mc Murray needs to dig up even more bitchamen; literally trading one environmental disaster for another. But it's all worth it when you have the family all around the dining room table enjoying the meal that fossil fuel cooked for you and you spouse says "Honey, I think we need to paint the whole main floor of the house to go with the new dining room furniture." And the cycle starts all over. I hope you are literally ill after reading this paragraph because it made me sick to write it.
So if you want to help the environment; think about all the fossil fuel you burn every single time you buy something. ANYTHING, right down to the produce in your calorie conscious salad. Collectively your lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado and dandelion salad has probably traveled more miles than you will on your next ten vacations. Which makes me think of the airlines and overnight shipping and the 1.3 billion dollars federal express spent on fossil fuel last quarter. Does it ever end. No it doesn't It's fossil fuel that's good to the last drop, not coffee. Face it, if you are a middle class citizen living in North America you are a consumer junkie and therefore you are a complete and utter environmental disaster all by yourself. So good on you for participating in Earth Hour, just don't go around thinking you actually fixed the problem.
One last thing about electricity. Its not a commodity that is easily stored. The coal goes in the generator; the generator produces the electricity; the electricity is pushed down the lines. If you turn on the light switch its used, if you don't turn on the light the electricity is gone, it's not saved for you to use later. So when it comes to Earth Hour, ask your self this question. Are the men and machines feeding coal into the furnaces actually going to stop for the hour we all sit in the dark singing Kum Ba Yah. Wake up McFly, the answer to that question is NO. WHY? Because the power grid has to be fed enough fuel to produce enough electricity to meet the some anticipated fictitious quasi guesstimate of the expected demand in the near future. Power is not produced on immediate consumption. "Hey Bill, can you throw another shovel of coal in the furnace so this loud mouthed schnook can post his stupid rant on the Internet." Sorry folks, it just doesn't work that way. It's not like the water faucet in your home where you just turn it on and off whenever you feel like it. So in a nutshell if we want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel we burn producing electricity. We have to cut our consumption continually, across the board, all the time, till we die. That's a hell of a lot longer than the Earth Hour for most of us. Unless I find that Verizon bastard.
Even if we had Earth Day they would not slow down feeding coal to power grid. Maybe if we had Earth Week they would slow down around day 6. Next time we should have Earth Month. Let's all live in the dark for a month and see how much power that saves. Right now you are thinking you couldn't last a day let alone a month. Well let's all go drive around in our hybrids oblivious to the fact that the batteries in those damn things are more of an environmental disaster than the fossil fuel required to power a fleet of hummers it would take to run these things off the roads.
I know I sound like a granola crunching, socks and sandals wearing, tree hugging, eco-terrorist; but honestly the thing that really drove me to write this post was all the feel good 30 second media hype surrounding Earth Hour, that is all such utter bullshit. I'm just trying to call a spade a spade. Speaking of spades I would like to use one across the back of David Suzuki's head. That guy totally annoys me. When I see him or that that other guy, Al Gore, the guy that claimed he invented the Internet. Shhhheeeesh, what a bone head. In my opinion he is just a stupid turd, but that is a whole other post. Who uses the word "turd" anymore. I think that word should be exclusively applied to Al Gore. From now on if you are reading any of my posts and you hear me use that word you will know I'm talking about Al Gore.
There are well over 6 billion people on the planet now. We are all becoming more and more consumer driven. Plus we all want the modern conveniences that electricity brings to our homes and lives. These facts more than anything else will continue to drive global warming into the future. If you want to stop global warming, then you need to start thinking about a bumper sticker campaign promoting the use of condoms! Surely we don't need all 6 billion of us. I can think of three guys I could live with out; not mentioning any names... David Suzuki, that turd Al Gore and the Verizon bastard. We need power that does not rely on fossil fuel. Ultimately that means research into better solar converters and heaters, low-voltage DC power consumption in the home. More wind power, and letting consumers sell power back to the grid. The challenges in making Hydrogen fuel cells viable must be solved. 85% of the electricity produced around the world is based on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are at the height of their production now and it won't last very long at these levels. We need to burn it cleaner and more efficiently. We will also most likely need to replace it long before other more environmentally friendly forms of power are viable. This means we will have no choice in the future but to damn the rivers and drown some cute and furry endangered forest creature into extinction. I can only hope the flood takes that Verizon bastard too. Start thinking about having a nuclear reactor in your backyard too. The world's hunger for power will most likely not be satiated any other way in the not too distant future. Think Homer Simpson and Mr.Burns. The planet might actually be cooler in the future, but your face may still melt.
You know what is totally ironic about this Earth Hour and everyone sitting around in the dark for an hour. Nine months later there will be a population explosion, and isn't that how we got into this mess in the first place. Now is that ironic or what? Actually, I'm not sure if that is irony; maybe I should call Alanis Morrisette. She should know.
Please remember that as a professional loudmouthed schnook I'm allowed to talk this way and even though I make some serious points the mud slinging is all meant in jest. I'm Foghorn Leghorn folks and I sa I sa I sa don't let yourself be hornswoggled by the eco-terrorists. They will give you methane producing bum steer, and that won't help the environment either. And just for your personal imformation I will be bowling for toasters during the the Earth Hour and I have no idea what the bowling alley plans on doing.
If you want more info on the Earth Hour go here. http://www.thestar.com/specialsections/earthhour
I have nothing against the Earth Hour trying to shed light on the issues with our environment. The harm they do comes from people thinking these band-aid type solutions are actually going to make a difference. The attitude that turning your lights off for an hour and driving a hybrid is going to save the earth from global warming or a dozen other environmental disasters just sitting on our door step waiting to rear their ugly heads is utter nonsense. The issue is extremely complex and needs more than feel good awareness campaigns. There have been awareness campaigns for people starving in Africa and guess what people; they are still starving. Live aid, Farm aid, Band aid, Kool aid and far to many other awareness campaigns to name here have come and gone and every single one of the issues they were meant shine a light on and ultimately solve; are still with us. Imagine that. An awareness campaign that accomplishes nothing.
The reason they ultimately don't help is that we rally around the issue, get on the band wagon, create a big ruckus and make a lot of noise. Then we throw in our 2 cents worth of contribution, pat ourselves on the back and go back to living our lives the exact way we have always lived them. We then have the audacity to act indignant; like we are all doing our part and its those 3rd world countries like China; bringing a coal fired generator on line nearly every week. Those are the truly evil doers; well them and that Verizon bastard - with his big network following everyone around all the time. You can't tell me that is environmentally friendly.
Well I got news for you. Those generators supply power to the factories; that build the cars you drive, make the clothes on your back, the shoes on your feet, the consumer electronics in your home, the couch that is making you more potato like everyday, the cell-phone surgically attached to your ear and practically everything else you own. If you want to help the environment. Try living your life with less. Less clothing, less consumer electronics, less of the creature comforts we have in our homes, smaller homes and cars with less horsepower. Now that is something that would have a real impact on the environment.
What about the shipping. Every single item in your home got their because it was shipped by fossil fuels. The table you eat dinner at is made of wood harvested in a forest (one of natures ways of truely managing global warming) with chainsaw that uses fossil fuels. Hauled to a mill on a truck using fossil fuels. The mill refining the timber is run on fossil fuel. It's shipped to manufacturer on a truck using more fossil fuel. Hand crafted on a CNC router in a factory run on electricity, purchased from an electrical grid fueled by coal fired generators. Then it is shipped overseas on a ship that burns more fossil fuel then you and every single person at your dining room table could possibly burn in their vehicles in their entire lives. Apparently the only source of wood to make your furniture is always on the exact opposite side of the earth from where ever you are located. Your table then sits in a temperature controlled warehouse that uses more electricity. It gets shipped thousands of miles by a truck that burns diesel fuel, uses oil, needs tires, needs regular maintenance and ultimately, replacing; which guess what folks? It all requires more fossil fuel or electricity (which is mostly fossil fuel burnt in incredibly large amounts, in very remote places on the planet because we don't want those smelly things anywhere near us and the only way to ship electricity is by making huge amounts of it and forcing more than we can possibly need down thousands of miles of electrical lines, so the power is their when we flip a switch. Oh yea, the electrical system will need maintenance too, and that will mean using more fossil fuel. After all that, your table is still at the store. You still have to surf the Internet, using electricity/fossil fuel. Then you have to drive to at least 3 locations to get all touchy feely with the furniture; and the whole time you will whine and complain about the outrageous price of gas. Ironically though you will feel good about the 2 cent carbon tax that was added to the price of gas to combat global warming; never realizing the the money goes into general revenue to fund salary surveys, political pension plans and double digit pay raises for the politicians. And just to rub salt in the wounds you have to listen to them on the radio complaining about needing more tax revenue to fix the health care system; as you drive all over town to pick out your brand new dining room table. Then you have to arrange for delivery on a truck that uses fossil fuel, you have to take time off from work to be their for the delivery - so you actually drive to and from work twice that day; using guess what? More fossil fuel. But that's OK you can feel good about your purchase because you made sure the dining room table you purchased was made from wood that came from a sustainable forestry operation. To bad you are oblivious to the fact that sustainable forestry uses significantly more fossil fuel. That in turn means that Fort Mc Murray needs to dig up even more bitchamen; literally trading one environmental disaster for another. But it's all worth it when you have the family all around the dining room table enjoying the meal that fossil fuel cooked for you and you spouse says "Honey, I think we need to paint the whole main floor of the house to go with the new dining room furniture." And the cycle starts all over. I hope you are literally ill after reading this paragraph because it made me sick to write it.
So if you want to help the environment; think about all the fossil fuel you burn every single time you buy something. ANYTHING, right down to the produce in your calorie conscious salad. Collectively your lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado and dandelion salad has probably traveled more miles than you will on your next ten vacations. Which makes me think of the airlines and overnight shipping and the 1.3 billion dollars federal express spent on fossil fuel last quarter. Does it ever end. No it doesn't It's fossil fuel that's good to the last drop, not coffee. Face it, if you are a middle class citizen living in North America you are a consumer junkie and therefore you are a complete and utter environmental disaster all by yourself. So good on you for participating in Earth Hour, just don't go around thinking you actually fixed the problem.
One last thing about electricity. Its not a commodity that is easily stored. The coal goes in the generator; the generator produces the electricity; the electricity is pushed down the lines. If you turn on the light switch its used, if you don't turn on the light the electricity is gone, it's not saved for you to use later. So when it comes to Earth Hour, ask your self this question. Are the men and machines feeding coal into the furnaces actually going to stop for the hour we all sit in the dark singing Kum Ba Yah. Wake up McFly, the answer to that question is NO. WHY? Because the power grid has to be fed enough fuel to produce enough electricity to meet the some anticipated fictitious quasi guesstimate of the expected demand in the near future. Power is not produced on immediate consumption. "Hey Bill, can you throw another shovel of coal in the furnace so this loud mouthed schnook can post his stupid rant on the Internet." Sorry folks, it just doesn't work that way. It's not like the water faucet in your home where you just turn it on and off whenever you feel like it. So in a nutshell if we want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel we burn producing electricity. We have to cut our consumption continually, across the board, all the time, till we die. That's a hell of a lot longer than the Earth Hour for most of us. Unless I find that Verizon bastard.
Even if we had Earth Day they would not slow down feeding coal to power grid. Maybe if we had Earth Week they would slow down around day 6. Next time we should have Earth Month. Let's all live in the dark for a month and see how much power that saves. Right now you are thinking you couldn't last a day let alone a month. Well let's all go drive around in our hybrids oblivious to the fact that the batteries in those damn things are more of an environmental disaster than the fossil fuel required to power a fleet of hummers it would take to run these things off the roads.
I know I sound like a granola crunching, socks and sandals wearing, tree hugging, eco-terrorist; but honestly the thing that really drove me to write this post was all the feel good 30 second media hype surrounding Earth Hour, that is all such utter bullshit. I'm just trying to call a spade a spade. Speaking of spades I would like to use one across the back of David Suzuki's head. That guy totally annoys me. When I see him or that that other guy, Al Gore, the guy that claimed he invented the Internet. Shhhheeeesh, what a bone head. In my opinion he is just a stupid turd, but that is a whole other post. Who uses the word "turd" anymore. I think that word should be exclusively applied to Al Gore. From now on if you are reading any of my posts and you hear me use that word you will know I'm talking about Al Gore.
There are well over 6 billion people on the planet now. We are all becoming more and more consumer driven. Plus we all want the modern conveniences that electricity brings to our homes and lives. These facts more than anything else will continue to drive global warming into the future. If you want to stop global warming, then you need to start thinking about a bumper sticker campaign promoting the use of condoms! Surely we don't need all 6 billion of us. I can think of three guys I could live with out; not mentioning any names... David Suzuki, that turd Al Gore and the Verizon bastard. We need power that does not rely on fossil fuel. Ultimately that means research into better solar converters and heaters, low-voltage DC power consumption in the home. More wind power, and letting consumers sell power back to the grid. The challenges in making Hydrogen fuel cells viable must be solved. 85% of the electricity produced around the world is based on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are at the height of their production now and it won't last very long at these levels. We need to burn it cleaner and more efficiently. We will also most likely need to replace it long before other more environmentally friendly forms of power are viable. This means we will have no choice in the future but to damn the rivers and drown some cute and furry endangered forest creature into extinction. I can only hope the flood takes that Verizon bastard too. Start thinking about having a nuclear reactor in your backyard too. The world's hunger for power will most likely not be satiated any other way in the not too distant future. Think Homer Simpson and Mr.Burns. The planet might actually be cooler in the future, but your face may still melt.
You know what is totally ironic about this Earth Hour and everyone sitting around in the dark for an hour. Nine months later there will be a population explosion, and isn't that how we got into this mess in the first place. Now is that ironic or what? Actually, I'm not sure if that is irony; maybe I should call Alanis Morrisette. She should know.
Please remember that as a professional loudmouthed schnook I'm allowed to talk this way and even though I make some serious points the mud slinging is all meant in jest. I'm Foghorn Leghorn folks and I sa I sa I sa don't let yourself be hornswoggled by the eco-terrorists. They will give you methane producing bum steer, and that won't help the environment either. And just for your personal imformation I will be bowling for toasters during the the Earth Hour and I have no idea what the bowling alley plans on doing.
If you want more info on the Earth Hour go here. http://www.thestar.com/specialsections/earthhour
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
