Tag!
You're Dead!
I really enjoyed watching Joe Biden's town hall last
night. How heartening to have an honest, intelligent
man running the government again. It was fun watching
Mr. Biden calling OPEC bastards without calling them
bastards.
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(The following Rant, like the cartoon above, is originally
from October 9, 2013.)
"Incontrovertible" is not a kind of car.
It means something that cannot be denied or disputed...
like evidence that humankind is directly responsible
for soaring amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,
the side-effect of which is rising temperatures, melting
ice-caps, and future mass-extinction of, you know,
us.
You may have your eyes closed and put your fingers
in your ears going "LA-LA-LA! LOOK AT MY NEW SUV
AND MY BIG-SCREEN TV AND GODDAMIT SOMEBODY TURN UP
THE AC!" at
the top of your lungs but, whether you accept the data
or not, the Earth is currently racing past the tipping
point for the greenhouse effect.
Let me say that again because it's kind of important....
we're past the tipping point for the type of ongoing
environmental disaster that will spell the end of NFL
football.
Do I have your attention? Good.
Unless we take drastic steps to lower the rate of greenhouse
gas emissions immediately global temperatures will,
by the end of this century, soar to levels not seen
since the Permian-Triassic extinction event die-off
250 million years ago, when fully 90% of all species
on Earth perished. For those that missed the inference
that means another 90% die-off... or 90% of what we
haven't already driven into extinction by then.
Awww, but what do we care? Barring major advancements
in human longevity none of us, nor many of our children,
will be around to suffer through the final days of
mankind's miserable slog on Earth. Let's dance and
be jolly while the oceans boil.
On the bright side, and there is one for those who
care about the continuation of the species, here are
three simple things you can do to help stave off disaster:
(1) Stop eating meat, or vastly reduce your intake.
The protein pipeline is rife with greenhouse gases.
(2) Insist that your country, and all countries, begin
investing heavily in renewable energy, both solar and
wind. The sooner we remove coal and crude oil from
the energy matrix, the better.
(3) Suffer a little. If you're lucky enough to have
a thermostat, set it in the high-80s in summer and
the mid-60s in winter. You can do this. (However, if
you generate your own renewable energy supply, go nuts.)
It would also help if we start taking population control
seriously. In America, let's limit the tax benefit
for the number of children at two. Have all you want,
but pay for them yourself.
And, to a lesser degree, we need to reduce our Pavlovian
response to all the shiny new gadgets that appear in
the marketplace. We are, after all, a country that
has elevated the hoarding of consumer goods to an art
form, but all that novel new technology requires both
energy and natural resources, each of which come with
a price at the expense of the environment. It therefore
makes sense to mandate standards for the manufacture
of major goods that require them to not only last longer
but make them easy to repair.
Above all, we need to stop wasting trillions of dollars
fighting wars for the benefit of oil companies and
marshal our resources against our real enemies... methane
and CO2.
If you have other useful suggestions, apart from building
vast fleets of interstellar spaceships to ferry us
all to the next poor, humanity-benighted planet, I
welcome you to offer them in the comment section below.
--------------
Health update: In addition to my usual long bike rides
I'm also taking long walks in the sun to boost my vitamin
D
levels, which is my primary physical issue. (I'm extremely
fortunate that this is the extent of my problems, vexing
though it may be.) My condition is improving significantly
but I've read
it may take
several months to reach normal levels. That being said
I think I'll be ready to go come November 1st.
--------------
Today's comic originally appeared
October 9, 2013.
=Lefty=
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