Letters to the Editor
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Global Warming? Don't accept just because EVERYONE does.
Anyone who becomes a believer because "everyone" believes, deserves what he gets. At the turn of the 20th century all the great Physicists believed that everything was know about Physics that could be learned. It was the guy who observed something that didn't fit what everyone "knew" (Albert Einstein) that made everyone recognize that had just scratched the surface. Then we have the "disaster of DDT". Well..... what about the 50 million people who have needlessly died of Malaria since its use was stopped. Everyone know it was bad... Right?
By the way...models don't "prove" anything. At best they suggest.
It's easy to blame iceberg calving on the Antarctic Pensinsula on Global Warming. Help me understand how a thickening ice cap in central Antarctica (where we have the bulk of the ice) is consistent with the model of global warming and then we can talk.
The environmentalist blow off anything that doesn't follow what they believe by blaming it on "big oil money". Show me why their observations are wrong and we can talk. I can just as easily blame everything that is said about Global Warming on "big tree-hugger money" (and believe me there is a lot of it).
We need to put all the information on the table, listen to it all, and honestly review it before we can draw the kind of conclusions that are being drawn.
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Two (New) Items:
I think my point on GW is being made quite clearly: http://themachoresponse.blogspot.com/2007/05/put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is.html
And, yea, you've got to "read my blog!" to get it,...
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Earth 2007
Hi Camille, this is long, please bear with me...
In the after burn of Earth Day I picked up the "Whole Life Times" to assess the condition of all things Green in 2007.
The magazine is beautifully done: glossy, full color bleed page printing, attractive font, professional layout - it's free but rivals anything on the stands for six dollars.
The first inside-the-cover ad is an arresting two page spread - a beautiful blond New Age female, Shiva Rae, in a form-fitting bright orange yoga outfit is braced, several feet above the ground, in the burnt out trunk of a giant Sequoia. She appears to be meditating. The product is the VISA enlightenment card (sign up and it donates $20 to the tree).
The ads go on for pages, like a classy fashion magazine: an organic Ad Agency, organic milk, yoga DVD's, "greener choice" hardware store promotion, more yoga, Agape Church Easter show at the Universal Amphitheater, a holistic Dentist, consciousness raising expos and fairs (one featuring holistic hula-hooping), enlightened soda pop, a private Malibu school called "Muse" ("a progressive indepenant (sic) school"), gurus, yogis celebrities like Siva Baba, Tony Robbins, Yogananda and a guy named Aaron Perceval who is able to directly channel God. Also a piece of colorful jewelry that will protect the wearer from harmful EMF's and people's "negative energy"
All told, the Green movement seems lush and prosperous, doing a brisk business among people with both high incomes and self-regard. This demographic caused me to reflect on the 100 history of what we call the Environmentalism.
First Wave: True Conservatives.
The first conservationist were also Conservatives, people like Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir. These blue bloods, and their society ladies, loved to visit the Yosemite - but they feared that the beauty of the area would be despoiled by commoners, with their rude picnics, crude tents and litter, so they created the Sierra Club to lobby the government to keep the "lower classes, the immigrants, the ethnics" out of their beloved park. Today, this rich and elitist tradition continues with groups like "Nature Conservancy" whereby rich land owners "donate" land, which is sold to the federal government at a profit to become a park, thus protecting the land from a disaster like someone else might build a house on the property within view of the mansion. It's effect on the protection of the environment is negligible, but for property values it's been nothing short of miraculous!
Second Wave: The Regulators.
In the sixties, based on shoddy methodology and fraudulent research, environmental disaster books began to appear. One of the more popular was Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" about the horrors of pesticide DDT visited upon some birds that are overdue for extinction anyway. Because we can no longer kill mosquitoes with DDT one million people, mostly Africans, die of malaria every year. Not many of our "heroes" can claim numbers like that, more dead than all 20Th century wars put together through these preventable bug-bite deaths. Why? Because we care more about some dirt, bugs and rats than human beings. Nice job, Rachel. The Regulators didn't stop there, however - they soon banned or regulated out of existence anything that had a whiff of the noxious - crippling or destroying industries that provided good paying jobs to our marginally educated lower-to-middle class working men and women. Millions needlessly dead and a hundred million more cast into a permanent economic underclass - these we call Environmental Gains.
Third Wave: Eco-Apartheid
It's not surprising really, when enviros all along said our #1 environmental problem is overpopulation. And they aren't talking about the Malibu mom sipping organic latte in the SUV, driving little Poindexter to the Muse school, and then dashing off for some holistic cosmetic dentistry. They are talking about the Great Unwashed, the brown and off white lower classes, with their 12 yr old smoggy shit-box cars, their "value menu" McDonald's, their goddamn WalMart - the ones who don't shop Fred Segal for $20 organic socks.
And now we all must "sacrifice" for the sure-thing, doomsday, man-made you-know-what with the climate. But who will really be left behind? The lower class, of course - the lower class already spends a disproportionate amount on housing, energy and transportation than the hybrid driving Westsiders with their solar Jacuzzis. Who will feel the squeeze of "Cap-and-Trade", the retarded program our Governor signed into law? The people will be squeezed and sucked dry for what? because a beach front mansion might get the lawn ruined by saltwater?
But that's the way the environmentalists have always been: racist, elitist and anti-human, why expect any difference now? C