Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Captives

Greetings good citizen,

Pinhead that I am, I watch the Science channel (a lot.) And even if you’re only half paying attention to shows like ‘How the Universe works’, you pick up a few things.

Like the story behind the modest sized fusion generator in the sky.

Like the reason why this sensationalist bullshit has next to nothing to do with us:
Warming causes greater evaporation and, once the ground is dry, the Sun’s energy goes into baking the soil, leading to a further increase in air temperature. That is why, for instance, so many temperature records were set for the United States in the 1930s Dust Bowl; and why, in 2011, drought-stricken Texas saw the hottest summer ever recorded for a US state.

Why is this bad news? Because the Earth has warmed only a bit more than 1°F since the catastrophic Dust Bowl — and we are poised to warm an astounding 9-11°F this century if we stay anywhere near our current greenhouse gas emissions path.

While the ‘big ball of fire in the sky’ ages, it makes heavier elements and these ‘heavier elements’ retain heat, causing the ball of fire in the sky to burn hotter.

Left to our imaginations is whether or not this process is more advanced than we’ve been led to believe. (It is generally acknowledged that our planet will, in four or five billion years, be swallowed by the sun.)

So this twaddle about escalating ten degrees by the end of the century is nothing but alarmist bullshit! It may well get ten degrees hotter but it is utter nonsense to preach that there is something we can do about it!

Will it cause environmental damage? Undoubtedly.

Is there anything we can ‘do’ about it? Short of ‘leave’, no.

The real challenge here is re-balancing the Earth’s carrying capacity with its exploding (human) population problem.

A hotter, drier environment will be incapable of supporting as much life as it once did.

And, naturally, capitalism’s constant need to expand is destroying record amounts of habitat at a time when we can no longer, er, ‘afford’ ‘endless expansion’.


In fact, the Real Estate market is going to go absolutely haywire because rising oceans are going to start, er, ‘reclaiming’ low lying areas around the globe, creating a dearth of ‘dry, arable land.’

And if anybody thinks they can ‘own’ the property that remains, I’d opine they have rocks (soon to be joined by bullet-sized chunks of lead) in their head!

The most we can hope for is to ‘mitigate’ the negative effects of warming as best we can, striving to adapt to our new circumstances while working together to avoiding extinction.

How ironic is it that eventually ‘land’ will become so valuable that the, er, ‘survivors’ will live on barges in the water (with some lucky stiffs living under the ocean) so the land that remains can be ‘cultivated’?

Yes good citizen, we mustn’t discount the violence of the storms that will rage across a largely ‘water world’.

Wind obstructed by…nothing.

That and the elevated water temperatures.

This isn’t supposed to happen for, if our scientists can be believed, millions of years.

BUT, the sun could very well warm the earth to create the conditions I’m describing in a relatively short period of time.

By the end of this century it is entirely conceivable that both ice caps will have melted (or will be submerged) each summer. (Regionally relative.)

This may go on for centuries…and it will have had nothing to do with us. The Sun is getting hotter, simple as that.

No, our ‘problems’ are much closer to home:
As They Lose Traffic, Once Bustling Airports Have Space to Rent
By JANE L. LEVERE

Airports in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and other secondary cities are having to address vacant terminals and hangars as they lose business to bigger destinations.

Okay good citizen, what are we to make of this?

If we begin with the idea that transportation facilities are ‘overbuilt’ in the first place the misleading word in this headline is ‘Bustling’.

Chances are good that none of these minor airports located in, er, ‘Fly-over states’ was ever ‘bustling.’

Back in their hey days they might have been ‘busy’ as airlines squeezed the hinterlands for everything they were worth, attempting to build their customer bases for Wall Street speculators.

But now it has become obvious that the once mighty United States is headed the way of the United Kingdom, to ‘was-been’ status.

We are rapidly becoming a pauperized nation where the rich and the powerful no longer live.

How ironic is it that our ‘mistake’ was letting our natives wax ‘rich and powerful’ in the first place?

Although it could be argued that ‘the rich and powerful’ actually ‘migrated’ here.

We weren’t in peril from ‘homegrown’ millionaires, we got in trouble when the Friedman’s and the Rands of the world set us on the path of Globalization…

Which was nothing less than that ancient quest for global domination!

Something our (or should we say ‘their’) politicians did NOTHING to stop!

And whose to say a ‘united’ world wouldn’t be a happier, more productive place?

Sadly, those of us who are NOT members of the > One Percent.

We are THEIR hostages (or perhaps ‘captives’ is a better descriptor?)

Regardless, no matter how you look at the future, a happy ending just doesn’t appear to be in the cards.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


No comments:

Post a Comment