They say that everyone talks about the weather, and no one ever does anything about it-- but since the mid-1980's we've been expected to do things about it. Two generations of children have grown up with the mantra that putting the empty soda in the right trash can is all that stands between them and the destruction of the planet, not to mention all the dead dolphins, paddling polar bears and crying indians.
There are just too many people, we're told, and too many of them are buying things and eating things and living too long. And all that is killing the planet. Sure you can guzzle Fair Trade coffee until your face turns green, bike to work until you're sterile and smugly lecture everyone else on the importance of saving the planet-- but no matter what you do, you're coughing up carbon into the air like a defective air conditioner.
To get some perspective on this, let's visit Tokyo, one of the major centers of the global economy, (not literally of course, because that's just too expensive) home of the Japanese royal family and the largest metropolitan area on the planet. When Hollywood writers imagine what the world will look like in 2282 or 5692 or some other random collection of numbers that leads to a world where everyone wears silver spandex and is rebelling against a totalitarian government, they usually use Tokyo as a model of the terrible future of flying cars, soulless skyscrapers and genetic scans that we're bound for.
And how big is the Tokyo metropolitan area? About 5,000 square miles, which takes up a lot of room in the 197 million square mile surface area of the planet. Imagine a wart on an ant that's living under the sink of your twenty room mansion, and you get some idea of the significance of the largest city we have in relation to the planet itself.
Every now and then some environmentalists insist that the planet is alive and angry at us, but if it were alive, it would notice us as about as much as you notice the mites on your skin. And then imagine the mites holding seminars worried about their impact on your epidermal layer, warning that if any more dead skin flakes off, it could be the end.
But environmentalism really isn't about the environment-- it's about the environmentalists. Watch the tree-hugger who warns that if we don't shape up, we'll be living in a wasteland of used tires and toxic fumes, take a jet to wherever he wants to go. Or the celebrity who proposes that we save the planet by drinking rat's milk, drive off in a gas guzzling car.
Most of all though, it's about Albert Gore the Second, the insecure boy who grew up to be an insecure man. The thing about Gore is that he tends to lose his mind when he experiences a setback. After losing the election to Bush, he grew a beard, became a mad hermit and emerged only to offer his insights on journalism based on the plum position of a senator's son on an army paper back in Vietnam.
Now Al Gore is losing it again because people have stopped paying attention to his cult because they're too busy waiting in line to collect their unemployment checks. His outbursts and crazy rants are cries for help from a man with serious mental problems who tried to submerge his neurosis in politics. And they're being ignored by a party that decided he was a millstone around their necks, the last time he became a running joke.
It may be the fate of most modern vice presidents to become jokes. Certainly it's been the case since after the Reagan Administration, which was saddled with George H.W. Bush, a man whom not even a lineup of angry liberal comedy writers could mold into anything humorous. And while Biden is the reigning gaffe champion of America, China and parts of the North Pole, he has never managed to take a single line and turn it into a national punchline for three years running.
"I invented the internet." It was that scent of hubris that would stick with Gore. The uncomfortable man, standing stiffly next to more affable politicians. The man who would rather be thought a nerd, than be known for the nobody that he was. The scion of a clan who was unable to live up to his family's expectations. Who inherited power, but had no idea what to do with it.
The internet would never belong to Gore the Second, but the environment briefly did. Gore had latched on to the environment, not because he knew anything about it, but because he knew that hardly anyone did. It was a perfect pose for a man who had nothing to offer, a subject that everyone pretended to care about, but no one knew anything about. And it was the subject that he turned to again after the dreaded electoral college turned him down.
The environment made Gore relevant again and it helped make him wealthy. Suddenly the stiff man was the prom king of Gaia High School and everyone wanted him to sign their hockey graph. But the environment is also a cruel mistress, no sooner do you bring out a line of biodegradable dish towels which go to help train Guatemalan farmers to grow sustainable coffee beans, than people stop paying attention to you all over again.
For celebrities, the environment is a part time gig, twenty minutes posing in front of a green screen on which a grim vision of smokestacks spewing pollutants into the air will be added in editing, and then jet on to France where they're having a film festival to celebrate the works of the only expat American director in Paris who didn't molest any children.
But for Al, the environment was his only gig. It will be a desperate Rotary Club that pays him to talk about changing economic conditions or doing business in China. Gore's way of doing business in China is not exactly accessible to anyone who doesn't have a hall pass to the Oval Office anyway. The environment is the only reason anyone has paid attention to him. And that's going away now.
Like some evil spirit who shrivels up and blows away when people don't pay attention to him, Gore is turning shriller as an act of desperation. A prolonged cry of why isn't anyone paying attention to the environment, when what he really means is why isn't anyone paying attention to me.
Recently Gore proposed that we start treating people who don't believe that humanity is destroying the planet like racists. If he means like, Albert Gore the First, who voted against the Civil Rights Act, then we would elect them to the Senate and then name a highway after them.
This pathetic outburst followed a Rolling Stone editorial and an obscenity-laced tirade all on the same theme-- those damned deniers who question that fraudulent science that was on the verge of carving up American industry to benefit Wall Street and the Green Mafia. But Gore is wrong about this being the fault of Global Warming critics. It's not the critics that tanked his cause, it's Obama and the economy.
Gore's second coming was a matter of good timing. An Inconvenient Truth was part of a liberal surge that took Congress and neutered the Bush Administration. While Obama waited backstage, lighting up a blunt and practicing his teleprompter face-- the new wave lacked a public figure and a message besides Iraq. Al Gore provided both.
The Democratic Party did not expect to ride the green horse to the White House, but it was one of a series of causes that welded together a liberal coalition and made the next few years seem less like the pig party that it actually was. But Gore's star faded, as Obama's star rose. In the new party of the cult of personality, there was only room for one star, and it wasn't an overweight aging man who had already embarrassed the party once.
Gore's intent seriousness concealed his basic lack of ideas, it was the one trick he had picked up over the years, and that seriousness could also be confused with integrity. A man this awkward and serious had to be sincere, was the takeaway. But Gore's post-election meltdown had already revealed how little there was to the fake Jimmy Carteresque sincerity and the pompous pseudo-religiosity, and how many missing windows there were in the mansions of his cranium.
The latest batch of meltdowns is just another reminder of what Gore is, an insecure man drawn to a limelight that he can never hold. But it is also a reminder of the sort of man who is drawn to the green and the motives for it.
Environmentalism promotes grandiosity, the idea that man shapes the environment, rather than the other way around as science had always held. There is nothing scientific about the notion that human industry is dooming the planet-- it is a wholly apocalyptic belief that makes use of twisted science to promote a grandiose notion.
The Flying Global Warming Monster is a religion, but is a faith in the absence of faith. Liberal theology does not provide its own apocalypses, but liberal activists have stepped into the breach to manufacture a manmade apocalypse. A disaster with its own prophets and rituals to propitiate the Flying Global Warming Monster who lurks in the sky and will raise surface temperatures by one tenth of a fourth of a degree if we do not begin using reusable cloth bags.
Al Gore, with his latent interest in theology, was always drawn to the ecclesiastical role, his equine features with their look of placidly serious idiocy perfect for looking down his hawk nose at people and nodding in all the right places. But instead he followed the family business to its end, and like a phoenix rising from Montecito, reinvented himself as the figurehead of his own church, preaching against the apocalyptic sunburn and the rising tide, while taking a cut of the Cap and Trade profits.
It was a good time to be Gore, but now it's over. What Obama didn't do to overshadow him, the economy has. When times are good, then people are ready to dump money on all sorts of silly things, including the crazy belief that the thriving polar bear population is about to vanish because there are too many cows in Wyoming. But when times are bad, then the doomsayers had better step up their act. Armageddon is scary, but being out of work is even more frightening and leaves folks with less money to drop in Reverend Gore's green biodegradable plate after services.
Gore reinvented himself once, but he's not ready to do it again, instead like a man about to lose the woman of his dreams, he's panicking and behaving in a way that makes the country want to file a restraining order against him. The Madness of King Gore the Second is back, as the national madness for the environment fades into the shadow of the old fads. The nation is putting aside foolish things and climate change tops the list. Gore the Second raves from his multi-monitor setup in Montecito. Long may he rave.
To get some perspective on this, let's visit Tokyo, one of the major centers of the global economy, (not literally of course, because that's just too expensive) home of the Japanese royal family and the largest metropolitan area on the planet. When Hollywood writers imagine what the world will look like in 2282 or 5692 or some other random collection of numbers that leads to a world where everyone wears silver spandex and is rebelling against a totalitarian government, they usually use Tokyo as a model of the terrible future of flying cars, soulless skyscrapers and genetic scans that we're bound for.
And how big is the Tokyo metropolitan area? About 5,000 square miles, which takes up a lot of room in the 197 million square mile surface area of the planet. Imagine a wart on an ant that's living under the sink of your twenty room mansion, and you get some idea of the significance of the largest city we have in relation to the planet itself.
Every now and then some environmentalists insist that the planet is alive and angry at us, but if it were alive, it would notice us as about as much as you notice the mites on your skin. And then imagine the mites holding seminars worried about their impact on your epidermal layer, warning that if any more dead skin flakes off, it could be the end.
But environmentalism really isn't about the environment-- it's about the environmentalists. Watch the tree-hugger who warns that if we don't shape up, we'll be living in a wasteland of used tires and toxic fumes, take a jet to wherever he wants to go. Or the celebrity who proposes that we save the planet by drinking rat's milk, drive off in a gas guzzling car.
Most of all though, it's about Albert Gore the Second, the insecure boy who grew up to be an insecure man. The thing about Gore is that he tends to lose his mind when he experiences a setback. After losing the election to Bush, he grew a beard, became a mad hermit and emerged only to offer his insights on journalism based on the plum position of a senator's son on an army paper back in Vietnam.
Now Al Gore is losing it again because people have stopped paying attention to his cult because they're too busy waiting in line to collect their unemployment checks. His outbursts and crazy rants are cries for help from a man with serious mental problems who tried to submerge his neurosis in politics. And they're being ignored by a party that decided he was a millstone around their necks, the last time he became a running joke.
It may be the fate of most modern vice presidents to become jokes. Certainly it's been the case since after the Reagan Administration, which was saddled with George H.W. Bush, a man whom not even a lineup of angry liberal comedy writers could mold into anything humorous. And while Biden is the reigning gaffe champion of America, China and parts of the North Pole, he has never managed to take a single line and turn it into a national punchline for three years running.
"I invented the internet." It was that scent of hubris that would stick with Gore. The uncomfortable man, standing stiffly next to more affable politicians. The man who would rather be thought a nerd, than be known for the nobody that he was. The scion of a clan who was unable to live up to his family's expectations. Who inherited power, but had no idea what to do with it.
The internet would never belong to Gore the Second, but the environment briefly did. Gore had latched on to the environment, not because he knew anything about it, but because he knew that hardly anyone did. It was a perfect pose for a man who had nothing to offer, a subject that everyone pretended to care about, but no one knew anything about. And it was the subject that he turned to again after the dreaded electoral college turned him down.The environment made Gore relevant again and it helped make him wealthy. Suddenly the stiff man was the prom king of Gaia High School and everyone wanted him to sign their hockey graph. But the environment is also a cruel mistress, no sooner do you bring out a line of biodegradable dish towels which go to help train Guatemalan farmers to grow sustainable coffee beans, than people stop paying attention to you all over again.
For celebrities, the environment is a part time gig, twenty minutes posing in front of a green screen on which a grim vision of smokestacks spewing pollutants into the air will be added in editing, and then jet on to France where they're having a film festival to celebrate the works of the only expat American director in Paris who didn't molest any children.
But for Al, the environment was his only gig. It will be a desperate Rotary Club that pays him to talk about changing economic conditions or doing business in China. Gore's way of doing business in China is not exactly accessible to anyone who doesn't have a hall pass to the Oval Office anyway. The environment is the only reason anyone has paid attention to him. And that's going away now.
Like some evil spirit who shrivels up and blows away when people don't pay attention to him, Gore is turning shriller as an act of desperation. A prolonged cry of why isn't anyone paying attention to the environment, when what he really means is why isn't anyone paying attention to me.
Recently Gore proposed that we start treating people who don't believe that humanity is destroying the planet like racists. If he means like, Albert Gore the First, who voted against the Civil Rights Act, then we would elect them to the Senate and then name a highway after them.
This pathetic outburst followed a Rolling Stone editorial and an obscenity-laced tirade all on the same theme-- those damned deniers who question that fraudulent science that was on the verge of carving up American industry to benefit Wall Street and the Green Mafia. But Gore is wrong about this being the fault of Global Warming critics. It's not the critics that tanked his cause, it's Obama and the economy.
Gore's second coming was a matter of good timing. An Inconvenient Truth was part of a liberal surge that took Congress and neutered the Bush Administration. While Obama waited backstage, lighting up a blunt and practicing his teleprompter face-- the new wave lacked a public figure and a message besides Iraq. Al Gore provided both.
The Democratic Party did not expect to ride the green horse to the White House, but it was one of a series of causes that welded together a liberal coalition and made the next few years seem less like the pig party that it actually was. But Gore's star faded, as Obama's star rose. In the new party of the cult of personality, there was only room for one star, and it wasn't an overweight aging man who had already embarrassed the party once.
Gore's intent seriousness concealed his basic lack of ideas, it was the one trick he had picked up over the years, and that seriousness could also be confused with integrity. A man this awkward and serious had to be sincere, was the takeaway. But Gore's post-election meltdown had already revealed how little there was to the fake Jimmy Carteresque sincerity and the pompous pseudo-religiosity, and how many missing windows there were in the mansions of his cranium.
The latest batch of meltdowns is just another reminder of what Gore is, an insecure man drawn to a limelight that he can never hold. But it is also a reminder of the sort of man who is drawn to the green and the motives for it.
Environmentalism promotes grandiosity, the idea that man shapes the environment, rather than the other way around as science had always held. There is nothing scientific about the notion that human industry is dooming the planet-- it is a wholly apocalyptic belief that makes use of twisted science to promote a grandiose notion.
The Flying Global Warming Monster is a religion, but is a faith in the absence of faith. Liberal theology does not provide its own apocalypses, but liberal activists have stepped into the breach to manufacture a manmade apocalypse. A disaster with its own prophets and rituals to propitiate the Flying Global Warming Monster who lurks in the sky and will raise surface temperatures by one tenth of a fourth of a degree if we do not begin using reusable cloth bags.Al Gore, with his latent interest in theology, was always drawn to the ecclesiastical role, his equine features with their look of placidly serious idiocy perfect for looking down his hawk nose at people and nodding in all the right places. But instead he followed the family business to its end, and like a phoenix rising from Montecito, reinvented himself as the figurehead of his own church, preaching against the apocalyptic sunburn and the rising tide, while taking a cut of the Cap and Trade profits.
It was a good time to be Gore, but now it's over. What Obama didn't do to overshadow him, the economy has. When times are good, then people are ready to dump money on all sorts of silly things, including the crazy belief that the thriving polar bear population is about to vanish because there are too many cows in Wyoming. But when times are bad, then the doomsayers had better step up their act. Armageddon is scary, but being out of work is even more frightening and leaves folks with less money to drop in Reverend Gore's green biodegradable plate after services.
Gore reinvented himself once, but he's not ready to do it again, instead like a man about to lose the woman of his dreams, he's panicking and behaving in a way that makes the country want to file a restraining order against him. The Madness of King Gore the Second is back, as the national madness for the environment fades into the shadow of the old fads. The nation is putting aside foolish things and climate change tops the list. Gore the Second raves from his multi-monitor setup in Montecito. Long may he rave.
Comments
OUCH. Poor Gore :-)
ReplyDeleteGreat article about a perfect example of a 'nincompoop' :) Thank you!
ReplyDeleteFantastic piece!!!!!
ReplyDeleteWell said Sultan!
ReplyDeleteHideeHo Sultan!
ReplyDeleteAl Gore's face frightens little children.
ReplyDeleteHe seems a bit deranged most of the time.
There's hope for Al Gore. Provided he becomes a member of the Church of the Flying Spgaghetti Monster.
ReplyDeleteThey maintain that global warming is caused by a a reduction of pirates in the world. Al Gore needs to join and dress like a pirate.
(The guy who created the flying spaghetti monster is quite creative).
OT but didn't Gore use clips from a movie involving a flood in his documentary? Water worlds perhaps.
I had to laugh when environmentalists said our October 13, 2006 Surpise snow storm was caused by global warming and a revenge of the trees.
Sheesh. Even when it's cold and snowy they blame global warming.
Hey Mr Knish. If you're going to have an opinion on a field with a science tangent then please use some science to make a fair assessment.
ReplyDeleteYou think that environmentalists like to blow their horn a lot, fine.
But there are a lot of Cassandras out there and in the case of the environmentalists, they at least try to use evidence.
An excellent analysis as usual.
ReplyDeleteThe Goracle's attempts at Liberal inculcation, steeped in the massive self-serving falsehoods of Liberalism itself, is just one facet, albeit a very important one, of the Great Liberal Enterprise. The Lysenkoism Liberals are supremely confident about one thing and to them it is the only thing that matters: THEY are the most noble, corageous and enlightened beings to have ever inhabited the planet and their supremely enlightened nature dictates that they be given control over everyone and every thing. Its just simple "Liberal Logic".
For anyone to question Liberals assumptions about themselves or their endless personal crusades (ala Glo-Bull Warming nonsense) to perfect the world is, therefore, an unspeakable act of evil and anyone doing so must be both stupid and wicked. Facts, history, even science itself must be bent to the personal needs of the Liberal for those things to comport with their false, self-serving assertions. Why oh why don't we little people trust their obviously wise, enlightened nature to rule over those of us who dersperately need their guidance?
Liberalism/Socialism/Communism = Narcissists institutionalized rationale for power. For the narcissist the destination isn't important, its all about the campaign to get there which gives them the attention and platform the desire above all else.
Halycon: Would this "science" altar that you worship at be the same massaged and cherry picked data that your brilliant scientists tried to scam the world with? You do realize that it's simply about money, don't you? Do you really think Al Gore and the rest of your champions care one iota about environmentalism? Or you?
ReplyDeleteYou freaks are all the same, you're not even good at lying, leaving incriminating evidence lying around in the form of emails. Correct that, you're quite accomplished at lying to yourselves. The gig is up, the working people who drive this world economy have all run out of money, there's no more to try and guilt them out of. We're going to begin a new game very soon, called survival of the fittest. I think that soon you environmentalists will get your wildest dream, a simpler, more earth friendly existence. But when the electricity stops coming through the wires (just like magic!) and you're running for your life in your earth friendly sandals, pursued by a starving horde of Great Society brand socially engineered savages, you can at least be at peace with mother gaia and tell her you tried your best.
See you at the races!
Don't know about the US but, sadly, in the UK Gore and his beliefs are NOT being 'put aside' in the way you suggest. The government and the entire media accepts them, and anybody in a public position who disagrees is shunned. Indeed Gore's comments about climate change 'deniers' needing to be treated like racists were reported in a way to suggest that this was simply new evidence that climate change deniers were indeed lunatics. In other words whereas you saw Gore's quotes as being a story about how idiotic Gore had become, the UK media saw it is a story about how idiotic the climate change deniers had become.
ReplyDelete@ LFMayor Yeah the gig has always been that we live on a planet with limited resources. It was the Marxists who didn't view this as much of a problem but the scientists who've concerned themselves with the tangible have had some concern over.
ReplyDeleteThe real financial interests have always been the big oil and gas companies who've never liked the conclusion from scientists about global warming.
Scientists aren't out to be popular but to tell the objective truth, and most scientists agree on global warming.
Thanks Lgstar, Elizabeth and Anons
ReplyDeleteLemon, he also frightens flocks of sheep
K.A., Al Gore dressing like a pirate would at least be truth in advertising
Halycon, this isn't a detailed analysis of the science, it's a piece on one of the puffed up personalities who got in front of it
Mr Ed, exactly, self-righteous grandiosity for power and profit
Edgar, yes in the UK the propaganda is everywhere, but in the US it's been shaken
Halycon, the real financial interests now are looking for government money to subsidize 'green jobs' and a shakedown that will take a cut of everyone's wallet for cap and trade and all the other greenwashing garbage
@ Halycon You might want to read Lomberg's "Skeptical Environmentalist." If you do, you'll discover some very serious science that demonstrates that "limited resources" is another myth -- just like Anthropogenic Global Warming.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the idea that "most scientists" agree on global warming, there was a time when all scientists agreed that fire was caused by the escape of phlogiston from the object that was burning. Turns out, they were wrong.
If you want real science, you should check out the most recent publication, in Nature, of the CLOUD experiment conducted at CERN. It seems that the Solar Wind's effect on cosmic rays is the primary mover of cloud cover and therefore, temperature - many orders of magnitude beyond greenhouse gases.
Owl Gore attended Divinity School and dropped out.
ReplyDeleteOWL GORE FLUNKED GOD!
BBQWHALES
Say what you will about man's role or non-role in environmental degradation, but it is so that we are in the midst of a great extinction. This is the sixth mass extinction known to us, the last one happening about 65 million years ago. I don't think one can blame human beings for that one! or any of the four preceding ones either... since we weren't actually here yet.
ReplyDeleteThe obvious truth is that whether or not humanity kills off humanity, the Earth will not care a whit. The Grand Canyon will still be grand, and the Colorado River will still flow through it long after we are gone.
So, Sultan, while there is no doubt that Mr Gore is an emotionally damaged fear-monger and an opportunist to boot, science is science, and what is true is true. I love what and how you write and think, but this time, writing about earth science (such as it is) qua science would be a great contribution.
There are many, many devoted brilliant and honest scientists, without political agenda, studying long-term earth processes.
Great article- as ussual, yet I must admit, once again, I did cringe before I clicked on the link to your website, for I knew that I would be face to face, (at least pictorally) with Al Bore.
ReplyDeleteNext time, Sultan, will you please deliver a "graphic" warning, so I (and others) can prepare by placeing a trashcan next to our chairs.
Thank you.
maybe i can photoshop him into a burqa
ReplyDeleteAGW like multiculturalism may be dead or dying, but the politicians in Europe have got what they wanted from their paid climatologists - we are now paying huge taxes to stop AGW or Climate change, with no party promising to abolish them.
ReplyDeleteOur utility bills include this AGW/climate-change tax, but do not explicitly show what that charge is. The blame for the rising cost of energy is then put on utility companies, who then put the blame on the international market. The Utilities are happy, as they charge 10% for administration + another margin for their profit. The government keeps mum, and ignore any complaints. Meanwhile, the state's broadcaster BBC, continues with its AGW propaganda.
Meanwhile, the elderly die quietly in their cold homes, and the cause is put down as age. As for the rest, we are paying a tax on carbon dioxide, wind turbines, at the same time paying even higher bills for energy, as the earth gets colder.
Environmentalists, unknowingly hopefully, are causing huge distress to the elderly and the poor, just as the economy goes down.
I sincerely hope that the sun will increase its output, and we do get some Global warming.
Yes, please photoshop him in a barqa or at least a brown paper bag.
ReplyDelete*****
I don't know too much about global warming but I can't help but wonder what Gore's reaction would be if the Pacific Ring of Volcanoes were to erupt and cause a global winter.
Would they blame us for leaving a lava footprint?
Hmmmmm.....a burqa, you say? Ahhhh, yes, the face would be covered......yes, I like it.
ReplyDeleteAs an alumnus of MIT, I often browse to the www.mit.edu website, and lately, I've been quite disturbed to see their main page devoted to "ways to deal with climate change", etc., etc., even though Professor Lindzen of MIT's own Meteorolgy dept. is one of the leading debunkers of the whole AGW myth.
ReplyDeleteLots of people in lots of places are being payed off in one way or another to keep this scam going.
There's a ton of money and the prospect of a lot more pouring into a field which doesn't normally see the big bucks.
ReplyDelete@ Knish. Considering how Muslim countries use petrodollars to fund Wahhabism, I thought you would be in favor of finding ways to get of oil dependency to the Muslim world.
ReplyDeleteIt is for oil and gas that the West capitulates with terrible regimes like Saudi Arabia and Libya. Nobody goes around invading countries for the prospect of wind power yet the West invades Iraq under the pretense of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" which are never found and the big oil companies like Halliburton get to make big contracts in the meanwhile.
@NJ_Tom Thanks for pointing to the 24 August 2011 CERN cloud article in Nature. The article notes that the investigation is in its early stages.
ReplyDeleteThe free abstract:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v476/n7361/full/nature10343.html
The press release:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.504.html#B1
Petrodollars aren't going anywhere and the Green movement isn't about real affordable alternative energy, but about making energy use expensive
ReplyDeletewhich plays into the hands of the oil states who can profit
@ Knish "Petrodollars aren't going anywhere". Is that why Saudi money is being used to spread radical Islam?
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7093423.stm
Oil states profit if they have customers. If the West kicked it's dependency on oil then the Arab countries would see a fall in revenue.
If that happened then the government would face intense anger over a faltering economy which would decrease their living standards. Just as the Arab Spring was started due in part, to food prices.
The green movement is also about trying to save money such as through energy efficient light bulbs, home insulation etc. Not about making everything, more expensive.
Heck the green movement wants a plentiful energy just like the rest of us.
Like using termites to create hydrogen.
Just like big government waste. The people are wasting far too much and consuming far too much.
With the U.S facing an obesity crisis. Cycling around doesn't seem like a bad idea compared to driving around, despite needing exercise.
I'm all for kicking oil, but the environmental movement does not want plentiful and cheap energy. It's not out to let people drive a car more for less, that's the exact opposite of its goal.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1
ReplyDeleteThorium Nuclear power seems to be the solution.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1
ReplyDeleteThorium nuclear power seems to be the solution for green power.
In the "Liquid Floride Thorium reactor" (LFTR) model.
- Fuel is Self regulating (when it gets too hot it expands which slows the reaction)
- at least 1% the waste that uranium would make also most of the waste can be sold for medical & science purposes ofsetting the fuel costs.
- Can be burn up all current nuclear waste while generating power.
- Fuel is plentiful&cheap. easily 22000 years worth.
- Stops proliferation of atomic bombs as it's not easily used for them. Good solution for iran & NKorea.
- Very efficient (Most uranium is wasted, usually only ~0.7% uranium is used)
-Very Safe as simple passive systems can be used. (ususally a plug in the bottom of the reactor which melts when it get's too hot, the liquid salts then flow into cooling tanks)
Current reactor manufacturers make most of their money from the fuel which is specific to each brand/model of reactor. This wouldn't be a problem with a LFTR reactor.
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