Polar Ice Cap Studies Refute Catastrophic Global Warming Theories

When it comes to environmental issues there is never one simple solution. The problem is that everything is connected. Tweak one thing and it affects a thousand others.

There is also the issue of scale. Candles are fairly innocuous at current use levels. What would happen if 6 billion people used them for their daily illumination needs? Think of the CO2 all those candles would emit. Think of the oil we’d need to drill for the paraffin. Think of all the forests we’d have to clear to grow soy for alternatives to paraffin. And where would we get enuff bees for all the beeswax? And how would that effect local and native insect populations? It’s easy to be self-righteous about this while you’re one of so few that use candles for daily light needs. But what if EVERYBODY did?

It’s the same with biofuels. To start with, many of them give a net loss of carbon due to processing–you have to burn something to turn the plant material into alcohol, and that burning emits carbon. Then the biofuel emits carbon again when it’s burned, sometimes more carbon is emitted in the chain than simply using fossil fuels. Then there’s the issue of cropland. Brazil is clearing the rainforest for sugar cane to produce alcohol for its cars. Drilling oil doesn’t clear rainforests. And then if you’re going to clear land for biofuels AND clear land for food crops AND clear land for livestock, what the hell’s going to be left for good ole wildlife and fishing and hunting and camping? not much.

From raw materials to production to fuel use, hybrid cars yield a net-loss in carbon also, or at least some do. Hydrogen fuel also yields a net loss in carbon as well cuz you have to burn fossil fuels to produce the hydrogen and it yields less energy as a fuel per unit than it takes to make it. And hydrogen fuel yields water as its exhaust and water is a worse “greenhouse gas” than CO2 is, if the the whole greenhouse gas thing is even a relevant issue. Of course, you could go nuclear, but then you have nuclear waste to deal with.

A friend of mine uses vinegar instead of bleach as a disinfectant. Hey, great idea. Now if 300 million Americans did the same we’d have a NEW problem–acidification of our waterways. Then we’d have to pump lime into our water treatment plants,lakes and streams, which means we’d be mining more limestone to do it, A LOT more. If the 1.3 billion Chinese did it where I live, you couldn’t even go swimming in a natural body of water. And what irks me even more than the ignorance of the problem of scale underlying these proposed alternatives is the sanctimony and proselytizing that many “alternative” advocates infect their rhetoric with.

Citrus cleaners–same thing. Natural pesticides like plant pyrethrums–same thing. And so on.

I find the best approach is simply to not worry about this shit. I just saw “No Country for Old Men.” A sheriff wants to retire in the midst of a killing spree in his jurisdiction. An old-timer tells him something like “you can’t stop what’s comin’. If you think everybody’s waitin’ fer you, well, that’s just vanity”

The same statement applies to most environmental activism and just about ALL politics.

Thornypants