Letters to the Editor
zzz05
Published Letters: 411 Editor's Choice: 9
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Much of this storm and fury comes down to people LITTERING.
[Read the article: Plastic bags are killing us]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yeah, we have met the enemy and he is largely us.
My state just got through debating and turning down yet again a proposal for 5 cents deposit on non-carbonated beverage bottles, like water, to go with the one we already have on carbonated beverages. (Yes, that's right; if you buy a bottle of Sunkist carbonated orange drink there's a deposit, if you buy a virtually identical looking bottle of Sunkist noncarbonated orange drink there's no deposit). Why? Because, for one reason, it would be such an enormous burden for the elderly and/or frail to have to lug the empties back to the store to get the nickel back. Although, apparently, lugging the full bottles home and then going back to the store empty handed when they need to buy more to lug home is not any kind of burden. I don't know how to fight people who can say that kind of thing seriously.
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A Rational Conservative Response To The Plastic Bag Hysteria
[Read the article: Plastic bags are killing us]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You bring up some good points.
1) There is no real evidence that plastic bags are accumulating.
2) If they are accumulating, it is most likely a natural process which has been going on for billions of years rather than the efforts of puny mankind.
3) There is evidence that plastic bags are accumulating on other planets. What do you think Saturn's rings are made of?
4) There is no evidence that the accumulatiion of plastic bags will actually be harmful. They may actually be helpful. For instance, small bunnies can use them for shelter. Why do environmentalists want to hurt small bunnies? They are worse than Hitler.
5) Even if the increasing accumulation of plastic bags is harmful, it will undoubtedly destroy the economy to stop the process, and the rational approach is to adapt to it.
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here's another theory
[Read the article: Why did Gonzales resign?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]gonzales stayed in office as a distraction; if he left, the next target might be Rove. With Rove gone, no more need for Gonzales.
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typical Lomborg
[Read the article: Bjørn Lomborg feels a chill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just looking at the 20 feet sea level rise thing; Gore doesn't say in the movie the sea level will rise 20 feet, or will probably rise 20 feet, or anything like that. He says there's enough ice on Antarctica and Greenland that if both melted, the sea would rise 20 feet; he goes on to point out to the "fuzzy math" folks that if half the ice melted it would rise 10 feet, etc. (Nerd that I am, I actually looked up the volume of ice on both and checked these calculations and it's true, btw). Just an illustration that the problem is not dismissable or obviously too trivial to worry about. Lomborg's rebuttal that most scientists don't think the sea will rise 20 feet this century is a typical Lomborg straw man.
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Excessively simple minded analysis
[Read the article: Bjørn Lomborg feels a chill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As S.S. pointed out here, the "problems" of the world don't operate in an either-or fashion, they tend to be synergistic. Fight climate change or fight malaria? In fact, climate change will extend the range of malarial mosquitoes to new territories where it used to be too cold for them. This does not take a brilliant Ph.D. climatologist to figure out. (West Nile fever is now infecting people in Alberta, Canada). Rising sea levels, floods, droughts, etc. will cause famines, and mass migrations of people in the third world leading to more wars, massacres, genocides, etc. Again, this is not something that the IPCC needs to prove via a page full of references to scientific publications.
For an example, imagine if Lomborg had lived a couple of centuries ago, to argue that this newfangled radical emphasis on sanitation and public hygiene and keeping the feces out of the drinking water was nice, but it was diverting badly needed funds which could be better used on more immediately productive research into medical treatments, like bloodletting.
The second obvious gross error made by Lomborg and the rest of the "we-can-spend-the-money-better-elsewhere" folks is to equate "costs" in a profoundly bizarre way; $1 billion spent on perfecting technology which makes us more energy-efficient or leads to practical application of solar power, for instance, is NOT the same as $1 billion spent on rebuilding large US port cities which are destroyed as a result of a storm and/or sea level rise.
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gratuitous off topic humorous swipe against political scientists
[Read the article: Bjørn Lomborg feels a chill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The chairman of the physics department sees the dean to ask for more money for more equipment.
"Why can't you be more like the math department?" asks the dean. "All they need is paper, pencils, and wastepaper baskets. Or like the political science department; they don't even need wastepaper baskets."
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These guys shouldn't have been let graduate kindergarten.
[Read the article: Hot air]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Something most of us learn as an ethic in kindergarten is leave things the way they were when you found them. Don't leave your toys scattered all over the floor. Flush the toilet after you use it. Put the milk back in the fridge. Don't throw the candy bar wrapper out the car window. This is necessary for the function of your own personal "society". The more ethically advanced even learned to occasionally pick up after the few who don't pick up after themselves.
But it holds for society on the large scale as well. Put the highly toxic uranium mine tailings back in the ground where you found them, if you don't mind. Don't change the chemical composition of the oceans, please. You may not be able practically to prevent the use of your fossil fuel in diffuse locations from altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere, but it would be good if you could contribute your share of what it costs to restore it, thanks.
But it's a lot more profitable to just leave the crap lying around as Somebody Else's Problem. Another example of what is humorously called 'Free Market Capitalism'; it's capitalism when it's profitable, but when it's costly it's socialism. I should be able to keep whatever I make, but I don't see why I should have to pay for my debts. Then follows a lot of pompous pontification about the "tragedy of the commons" and why therefore privatization of everything is the only way to go. The only way to save the climate will be presumably to privatize it.