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Environmental Quotes by Roedy

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100 Offspring

It used to be you had to be a king or a dictator to have a family of 100 children. Now all you need in the ego of one to donate your eggs or sperm. I find it revolting some grossly obese housewife in Arizona is paid to spread her eggs over the planet like some bloated cockroach. There is no shortage of babies and kids who need homes. We should not dream of creating new lives at $200,000 each until all those kids have loving homes. The vanity and selfishness is disgusting.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

100% Recycling is Mandatory

Anything less than 100% recycling is not sustainable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

100-Year Plans

I most want to see plans that look out 100+ years. We really should not do anything that will almost certainly drive our species extinct or make their lives unbearable. So many of the idiotic decisions are made because no one looks past the next quarter. In that view, postponing dealing with climate change is rational and economic. The problem is, postponing big problems means they eventually rise to the top of the attention pile, but you have nowhere near enough time or resources to deal with them.

It is the same mentality as students at university who try to prepare for exams by doing a cramming allnighter.

It may be possible to get more international co-operation by talking about the far future. People are more willing to do the right thing later.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

2012 Ninnies

Americans are such ninnies. Based on a 1000 year old calendar were convinced the world would end on the winter solstice in 2012 even though the Mayan themselves believed no such nonsense. Yet they refuse to pay any attention to modern scientists warming them they are destroying earth with global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

2050

The fossil fuel industry tell us that demand for energy will double by 2050. Satisfying that would take some doing. We have passed peak oil. We need to reduce CO₂. If we fail to come up with that much energy, we will simply have to get by on whatever energy we can provide. If people don’t like it, tough. If people die as a result, tough.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

5% Growth

If anything grows at 5% a year, in 70 years it grows 32-fold. So, for example, if your city council aims for 5% industrial/population growth a year, in one lifetime it would need 32 times as many sewage treatment plants as it has today.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) click to watch see lecture by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett

7 Trees To Undo Your Damage

It takes 7 trees to recycle the exhalations of one human. That does not count the CO₂ generated by cars, electric power generation, agriculture or goods transport to support that person.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

97 Firemen

Imagine you heard a knock on the door. Outside were 100 firemen. They started shouting. Your house is on fire. We had better do something about it. But we need your permission. However, three of them piped up There is probably nothing we can do about it. It is an natural fire. Just accept it. There is nothing we can do about it. Whose advise are you going to take? Why then do you give any credence at all to the 3% climate change deniers on the payroll of big oil?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Abandoning Factory Farming

You could make factory farming more humane, but it will never happen without laws forcing farmers to. The whole point of factory farming is to get the most meat from the least space, with the least feed. This is incompatible with treating animals humanely.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Abundant Fishing

Most sport fisherman can tell you of a time when they got to angle somewhere that had not yet been overfished. The abundance is astounding. The ease of catching sounds like a tall tale, but I have seen this for myself.

Commercial fishers who oppose conservation and overfishing are unbelievably stupid. If they would just let stocks recover, there would be abundance, a much bigger overall catch, but, ironically, their greed drives them to deprive themselves, year after year, of most of the productivity of the oceans. If they would just let stocks recover, fish would be much easier to catch. Fishers would not need to buy so much fuel. When these fishers permit even a tiny sanctuary for fish to breed unmolested, the abundance of the surrounding waters explodes, but they won’t even do that to help themselves. What idiocy do they insist on doing instead?

Fishers are too greedy and too thick-headed to act in their own best interest. They are like gardeners who gulp down the seed packets and bleat about how unfair life is that nothing grows in their gardens. Commercial fishers complain that comedians mock them as cretins, but it is surely an accurate assessment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Accelerating Ice Melt

Ocean ice has a way of melting very slowly at first, then faster and faster, until suddenly it is all gone. Why? Snow reflects 87% of the heat from the sun. But after it melts and exposes a bit of ocean, the water reflects only 7%. In other words, when ice melts, the earth’s surface turns instantly from the best reflector to the best absorber of heat. Technically, this is referred to as the albedo effect. In the arctic, much of the lost ice will not be regenerated for millennia because the open ocean absorbs too much heat. The arctic is more melted today that it has been at any time in the last million years. Because of albedo, there is no way to refreeze the arctic; all we can do now is prevent it from melting even more.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Accelerating to Oblivion

Imagine being in a car. When you take your foot off the gas, the car still accelerates. When you hit the brakes, nothing happens. This is like today’s technological society accelerating to its destruction with overpopulation, over-production and environmental collapse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Accidental Bioweapon

Klebsiella planticola is a micro-organism found on the roots of every plant species on earth. It helps them absorb nutrients. A company in Oregon decided to genetically modify the organism to produce alcohol from plant waste for biofuel, then sell the remaining sludge as fertiliser. By happenstance, Michael Holmes, a student needing a project for his PhD thesis, decided to test the new lifeform for toxicity and discovered that it killed any plant it touched by producing twenty times more alcohol on its roots than it could withstand. What looked like such a great green idea on paper turned out to be a bioweapon that could have killed all plant life on earth.

The problem with GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms), is they are like Pandora’s box. Once we release them into the environment, there is no way to take them back. We have to be cautious. We have to think about what will happen when those modified organisms escape the field. You have no right to contaminate other people’s strains. We have to think about what will happen when the new genes jump to other species.

When you start shuffling genes between species, e.g. adding a peanut gene, or a shrimp gene, you could inadvertently create new allergies. People need to know what unexpected things are in their food to avoid allergic reactions. Monsanto fights such labeling.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Accumulating CO₂

Imagine you dumped 1 tonne of sewage each year into a nearby river. At the end of a decade, things would be pretty much the same. Imagine you racked up $1000 of debt each year. At the end of the decade, you would be much worse off, $10,000 in debt (plus interest). Most people think CO₂ emissions work like sewage, but they actually work like debt. Let’s say you emit 1 tonne of CO₂ each year. At the end of the decade you have 10 tonnes of CO₂ added to the atmosphere. It does not go away (at least not for thousands of years). Even if you get your emissions down to trickle, the problem will still continue to get worse. To improve, you have to figure out some way to suck CO₂ out of the air, not just slow down your emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Acidification

As CO₂ levels rise in the atmosphere, they also rise in the oceans. This makes the oceans more acidic. The dissolves the calcium carbonate that sea creatures use for their skeletons particularly in creatures like corals, oysters and plankton. If we don’t stop emitting CO₂, the coral reefs will be extinct by 2100.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Actively Promoting Pollution

On 2012-01-01 a pollution tax came into effect in the European Union. It was designed to reduce carbon emissions by taxing the pollution of flights into and out of Europe. The United States House passed a bill making it illegal for airlines to pay the tax. So it is clear the USA is not only unwilling to reduce its own pollution, it wants to stop anyone else from taking action. It wants the entire world to join in its mass suicide. I think that is more than sufficient justification to provoke a nuclear terrorist attack on America, but at least the Americans are now being honest about their suicidal intentions. Before, they pretended they were in favour of reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Addiction to Cars

I hear politicians and futurists say that people will never give up their cars because they are too attached to them. People sunning on a beach would rather not interrupt sipping piña coladas either, but they do when they see a tidal wave coming. The problem is, people have been so lied to they don’t understand that global warming is much more dangerous than a tsunami. According to Environment Canada scientists, climate change is second only to global thermonuclear war in devastation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Addict’s Mentality

Everyone knows the consequences of heroin or methamphetamine addiction. Addicts destroy their health. Addicts are utterly miserable. What motivates people to do such a stupid thing? It is the lure of immediate pleasure. Some people have a brain defect that makes them ignore consequences. All they think about is now. A similar defect makes the majority of human kind procrastinate taking action on global warming and the end of oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Advantage 2015

One of the perks of living in 2015 is I can still afford a place to live, food, water and heat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Advantage 2015

One of the perks of living in 2015 in BC Canada is all my medical care include the expensive HIV (Human Immuno-deficiency Virus) drugs are covered. I get the best medical care in the world, second only to Switzerland.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Advantage 2015

One of the perks of living in 2015 is there are still stands of old growth forests.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Advantages of Biking

If you bike instead of drive:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Advantages of Organic

I have heard many people pooh-pooh eating organic produce. They argue that pesticide residues are so low there is nothing to worry about. What they mean is pesticide residues are supposed to be low. Especially in third world countries, regulations are often ignored. People buy organic because they want to protect soils, not just themselves. People buy organic because they do not want to support companies like Monsanto. People may be supporting local producers, with the side effect of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Africans vs Americans

The average North American needs 14 times as many trees to absorb the CO₂ emissions (primarily from burning fuels) as does an African. The USA thus has the population equivalent of 4.3 billion Africans when it comes to global warming. The scary part is, much of the third world are learning to live like Americans too — the net effect is like a lethal population explosion. The really scary part is we have nowhere near enough trees even as it is and we are killing them off at an unprecedented rate.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

After Human Extinction

According to the History Channel, one of the few things man will leave as a legacy that will last more than 1000 years after he goes extinct is the Andalusian sheep dog, which will keep on herding and protecting sheep.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Aggregate Radioactivity

If all the man-made radioactivity were equally spread over the earth, it would increase the natural background radiation only 1%. The catch is, it is not equally spread. For example it tends to concentrate in Japanese fish.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Agriculture

The ancient Greeks denuded their soil. It still has not recovered. The fertile crescent today is a desert. It has not recovered in 7000 years. In America, within 100 years agriculture created the dust bowl. In India, in five decades of green revolution, irrigation salted the fields to the point they could not grow anything. Even at best, agriculture slowly degrades the soil. It is not sustainable. We need to grow our food in a way that regenerates the soil, as nature does.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Earth, but Not Civilisation click to watch

Aimless Driving

Auto manufactures, particularly Volkswagen, place TV ads to encourage people to commit ecological crimes — namely drive about aimlessly at high speed for long periods of time spewing greenhouse gases and gobbling up earth’s last reserves of fossil fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Albedo Effect

The albedo effect creates an accelerated runaway melting of the polar caps. Sea ice formed at is bright white and reflects most of the Oracle’s heat back into space, helping to preserve the ice. Sea ice formed at is grey, absorbing more of the Oracle’s energy, helping to melt the ice. Once the ice is melted, the dark sea water has very low albedo and absorbs most of the Oracle’s energy helping to rapidly melt any remaining floating ice. The net effect is, once the ice caps start to warm, they melt ever more rapidly.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Alberta Corruption

Just how crooked in the Alberta provincial government? Heather Kennedy is the assistant deputy minister of the Oil Sands Sustainable Development Secretariat in charge of approvals in the tar sands region. She is also a SunCor executive still on the SunCor payroll!

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Albertan Poetic Justice

On 2012-06-07, 3,500 barrels of light sour crude oil were released into Jackson Creek, a tributary of the Red Deer River 100 km (62.14 miles) north west of Calgary Alberta. Two days later there was another leak at Gleniffer Lake and Reservoir. The phrase poetic justice comes to mind. Albertans, especially Calgarians, especially Stephen Harper, have been trying to force filthy, environment-trashing, climate-change-producing tar sands oil on the rest of Canada and the rest of the world. They did not care if they destroyed ecosystems. They did not care if they pushed global warming over the brink. All they cared about was short term riches. The consequences are fitting — being forced to swallow crud from the biggest spill in Alberta in 35 years.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Albertans Killing Saskatchewan Fish and Wildlife

The Alberta tar sands put out so much air pollution it is killing fish in Saskatchewan lakes and killing off Saskatchewan wildlife. Albertans don’t care. They get the money.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Algae Biofuel

Exxon claims their algae biofuel absorbs CO₂ and hence helps reduce greenhouse gases, but they don’t tell you that when you burn the biofuel all the  CO₂ is released again, making the fuel carbon neutral, with no net CO₂ reduction. This sort of dissembling and lying from big energy is the norm.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Alien Invasion

If alien invaders melted our arctic and Antarctic ice caps people would freak and demand we stop them no matter what. But when we do it to ourselves gradually with a slow suicide by green house gas, almost nobody pays any attention.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Alien Species Invasion

Globalization means ships and planes are transporting every known species of plant and animal to every spot on earth. These alien species often raise havoc when they are introduced to existing ecosystems. Species without borders mean only 1/3 as many species.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

All You Can Eat

In a country where nearly everyone is morbidly obese, an all-you-can-eat restaurant is the moral equivalent of a crack house.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Alleged Ancient Conspiracy

All without a shred of evidence, global warming deniers claim all the world’s scientists are part of some conspiracy to sell the world on the danger of greenhouse gases. Fourier and discovered the greenhouse effect way back in 1896. Were they too supposedly part of this conspiracy? Don’t be an ass!

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Already Too Much CO₂

When we emit CO₂, it hangs around in the atmosphere for about 1000 years. There is already too much CO₂ in the air for a tolerable degree of climate change. The CO₂ we have emitted already will continue making the earth hotter and ever hotter for centuries to come. Thus we can’t talk about safe levels of emissions. Even zero is too much. We have to start removing the atmospheric CO₂ that we have already emitted.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Alternatives to Alternative Vehicles

Besides electric and hybrid vehicles, there are other alternatives including compressed air and flywheel.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Altruistic Bioterror

I could envision a scientist concocting a bioterror weapon to wipe out all of homo sapiens and releasing it, with love in his heart, doing it not to hurt humans, but to protect all the other species of planet earth from the suicidal ravages of homo sapiens. He would tell himself, I can let man take himself down and every other species with him, or I can take just man down and save the rest. A Spock-like individual would see the necessity of sacrificing even himself. I suspect the security on such projects is not well designed to block such a person.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Alzheimer’s Granny

Imagine visiting your grandmother. She had candles burning all over her tree. You say Gran, you can’t do that. You will burn the house down. Granny replies But I have tons of candles. I’d have to buy some new fangled LED (Light-Emitting Diode) lights if I wanted something that couldn’t catch the tree afire. Don’t worry. Jesus would never let my house burn down. This is like the thinking of the fossil fuel advocates. They ignore the fact they are making the earth uninhabitable with their greenhouse gas emissions. Their only concern is short term expenditure/profit.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Amateur Experts

I laugh contemptuously at Rush Limbaugh fans who take a look out the kitchen window and declare they know more than climate scientists who have collected acres of ice cores, marine sediment cores, air and water temperature readings, who have poured over satellite images, who have used thousands of the worlds most powerful computers to hone their models to fit climate changes over millions of years. In Greenland they drilled down 680,000 layers of snow, each representing the snow for one year.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Amazon Dried Up

What is the matter with mankind they refuse to pay attention to serious problems with our planet’s life support systems? In 2005 the Amazon dried up. The army had to bring in drinking water by helicopter. The Amazon is normally the rainiest place on earth. It is the lungs of the earth. In the Amazon there is a vicious circle of deforestation, baking sun, dying forests and drought. If you saw your lungs were dying, would you the ignore the problem? Of course, not. Why then do you ignore your planetary lungs? If they die so will you.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

American Lemmings

Americans (and Canadians) are hell bent on extinguishing themselves via global climate change. They refuse to take even token action to save themselves. If vandals figured out how to simultaneously destroy all the passenger cars in North America, they might save these idiotic lemmings from themselves. That would never happen, but I doubt anything less would snap North Americans out of their stupor.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Americans are Doomed

Americans have sealed their doom. Of out stupendous greed and stupidity they refused to act on global warming. Now Russia is building giant fleets to extract arctic oil and gas and China is consuming even more fossil fuels than the USA. What the USA does now is more or less irrelevant. It could not happen to more deserving fools. They are as stupid as monkeys who refuse to let go of a banana to escape a trap. Canada, especially Prime Minister Stephen Harper, deserves the same cow pies.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Americans Cling to the Past

Americans are extremely reluctant to embrace green technology. The bright side of this is the world will leave them in the dust — a nation of candle and buggy whip manufacturers. They have been too powerful in the past, throwing their economic and military weight around.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

An American Road Trip

An American is someone who takes his children on a road trip by bundling them in the back of a gas-guzzling SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle) and driving them thousands of miles while they watch cartoons on DVD (Digital Video Disc).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Anaesthetised Danger Response

Humans usually overreact to danger or threats to their lives. They panic and stop thinking. However, on some issues they grossly under react because the danger is not viscerally apparent. These include:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Angry Kids

Our kids are going to say What were you thinking! Didn’t you know about global warming? Why didn’t you do anything? What was so all-fired important that you procrastinated our very survival? What you did is unforgivable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Animal Hoaxsters

Because of global warming, plants and animals are going extinct. Conservationists are artificially moving them to colder regions to try to preserve them. Do those who claim global warming is a hoax also claim these animals and trees are in on it too, faking their own extinction?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Another Ford Insanity

Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto is a fat blimp of a man. He would like to eliminate bicycles from Toronto streets, presumably on the grounds he is way too obese to ever use one himself.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Anti-Conservation

When fishing, it is important to leave sufficient fish to spawn the next generation, but man’s greed and short term focus is so strong, he attempts to invent technology to kill every last fish.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Anti-Efficiency

The first thing the Republicans announced on taking over the house was scraping an energy-efficiency program for the house building that had cut fuel bills 23%. They consider energy efficiency liberal and limp wristed. What idiots! Wasting energy is what pudgy couch potatoes enjoy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Anti-Environment Subsidies

The USA has a anti-environment policy. If you buy a car weighing over 2.72 tonnes (3 tons), the government will effectively buy it for you with tax breaks. Nobody needs a car that heavy and that fuel-gobbling just to move their butt from A to B.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Anti-Environmental Culture

I feel no joy when a baby is born into an anti-environmental culture like the Chinese or American. The child will probably grow up to adopt the national goal of subduing nature as if it were some mortal enemy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Anti-Environmental Jobs

To make one of his hand held computers ultra sleek, Steve Jobs had the battery permanently glued into place. The net result was the battery could not be removed for recycling.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Antibiotic Soup

Conventional farmers feed their livestock a soup of dozens of antibiotics. This is not to cure some specific disease. It is improve growth rates and head off epidemics that are inevitable when you overcrowd livestock. The animals are sickly none the less. Ironically, organic farmers who don’t do this, have no problem with sickly animals, but then they give the animals some space to live. You have probably heard doctors and scientists frantically warning people not to use antibiotics needlessly and to take the exact complete prescribed dose. Why? Because casual use of antibiotics gives the bugs the opportunity to develop immunity to the antibiotic. The problem happens in animals only hundreds of times worse because of the widespread abuse of antibiotics. This concerns you, even if you are a vegan because the same bugs developing immunity in animals are using that immunity to kill you. We would never allow a doctor to treat antibiotics so casually, but we allow every conventional farmer destroy the effectiveness of antibiotics for which there are no replacements.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Fresh, The Movie

Appalling Ignorance

On 2012-08-19, most callers on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) ’s Cross Country Checkup phone-in show had only the vaguest understanding of global climate change. They could not even define it. They had it confused with local weather. Yet each one felt fully qualified to pontificate to Canadians all across Canada why only they knew what they were talking about and the scientists knew nothing. A pox on the lot of them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Apples and Genetic Diversity

Apple trees are produced by cloning. This means that most commercial apples in the world are clones of only 5 individual trees. Apples thus suffer from a drastic lack of biodiversity. This makes it easy for pests to evolve to overcome the trees’ natural defences. Farmers counter by dousing more pesticides on apples than any other crop. So, when you get an apple with some insect damage, this is a Good Thing™ This is a sign your apple was not soaked in pesticides.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Apples and Genetic Diversity

Apples are propagated by grafting i.e. cloning a plant identical to the original tree. There are only five basic species (plus combinations) grown commercially. This leaves apple trees a sitting duck to insects which have evolved to swamp their natural defences. The net result is apples have more pesticides than any other food crop.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Approaches to climate change

  1. The most common approach is wishful thinking. People tell themselves whatever nonsense will make themselves feel comfortable, such as the god Yahweh will clean up after man, or there is nothing to worry about because it is just a conspiracy of all the world’s scientists, including those long dead and most of the world’s politicians outside North America.
  2. Some are criminals. All they care about is short term wealth. They will die within a decade, so they don’t care what happens after that. They spread lies so they can continue business as usual.
  3. Some look at the problem and say We are hosed. The problem is too big and depressing so I will do nothing.
  4. Some look at the problem and say We are hosed. The problem is too big and depressing. However, if we do nothing, we are guaranteed to perish, but if I do my part to solve this problem, there is a slim chance we will prevail, or at least muddle through with less pain than had we done nothing.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Arctic Apple

The makers of the Arctic GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) apple that does not go brown when it gets stale, want their product unlabeled, so that consumers cannot tell it apart from an ordinary apple. They say consumers do not have the right to know that they are eating an Arctic apple since their GMO apple is not poisonous. That is a non-sequitur. I am unaware of any poisonous foods sold in my local supermarket. By Arctic’s reasoning, all of those products should be unlabeled too.

Foods are labeled to tell consumers information they want to know about the products, for example:

Purposes for labeling
Label Reason for labeling
Will this apple warn me when it is stale? feature, politics
Is this clover or heather honey? flavour
Was this orange grown in China or California? freshness, care with pesticides
Was this date grown in Syria or Israel? politics
Is this soy GMO? avoiding suspected allergy

I have a right to avoid GMOs, even if the manufacturer thinks I am being silly. It is not their decision. I have just as much right to avoid GMO s as I have to avoid kumquats. Whether they are non-toxic is irrelevant.

Further, refusing to label GMO apples is unfair to the growers of traditional apples because people wanting to avoid GMO apples will have no choice but to avoid buying apples altogether thus hurting traditional apple sales.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Arctic Apples

BC Arctic apples, now approved for sale in the USA, are genetically modified Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apples that don’t brown, no matter how long you leave them out. These will be a boon to salad bars who can then fob off fruit salad that has been sitting out for a few days as fresh. The company that makes them is strenuously objecting to them being labeled so that people will not be able to tell them apart from ordinary apples. This is odd. Surely customers who want the new no-brown feature should have a way to tell which apples to buy. Surely people who don’t want to eat GMO apples, for whatever reason, should have the right to avoid them. Without labeling, people who want to avoid the GMO versions will have no choice but to avoid buying apples generally, which will harm the sales of traditional and organic apples. What the world really needs are some totally new varieties, not cosmetic tweakings like this. The extreme lack of bio-diversity makes apples more susceptible to pests than any other crop.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Arctic Oil Spills

Oil spills in the arctic are much more of a problem that elsewhere. First icebergs and storms make spills more likely. Second, cleaning them up is harder. It is dark 6 months of the year. It is below freezing. It is too cold for the bacteria to thrive that naturally gobble up oil spills in temperate waters.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Arctic® Apples

Arctic® apples are a GMO apple that does not brown when sliced and left out the air. The purpose is to allow restaurants to put out sliced apples in a salad bar and leave them there. Think. Do you eat brown apples? No! Do you want to eat apples equally stale, but without the brown warning? No! This modification is solely for deceiving the consumer. As a side effect, it increases health risks from eating stale bacteria-contaminated apples. This is not a feature any sane consumer would want in his apples.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Are Humans Unique?

I wonder on what percentage of planets in the galaxy inhabited by intelligent species they are destroying its ability to sustain them as fast as they possibly can.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Arguments Against Meat-Eating

Those whose defend meat eating claim the opposition to eating meat is squeamishness over killing Bambi. That is a straw man argument. It is actually about:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Armageddon

The irony is, for millennia, Christians have been terrified that Yahweh would end life on earth. But they are doing it themselves either with nuclear war or with climate change. If one does not send us extinct in the next few decades, the other will.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Arrogant Santorum

The arrogance of ignoramuses like Rick Santorum and Jim Inhofe who have no scientific training claiming to know better about climate change than all the world’s scientists and Nobel laureates with PhDs and decades of study, is mind boggling.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Artificial Meat

A company called Beyond Meat has come up with an artificial chicken that can fool most people. Presumably, it will cost less than real chicken, does not require cruelty to any animals and has a smaller environmental footprint. We might transition gradually into using such products and meat products padded with artificial meats, simply because they are cheaper. I foresee the day when only people like Ted Nugent will eat actual meat at great expense. It will seem gross, like drinking blood.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Artificial Trees

Only an American would seriously propose manufacturing and installing billions of artificial trees to capture CO₂ instead of just leaving the natural forests in place.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Assault

When I was a boy there was much talk of assaulting Mount Everest and conquering nature. I hope we do not win.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Atmosphere is Thin

The atmosphere is incredibly thin — 100 km (62.14 miles). It is like a layer of shellac on a schoolroom globe. It is much more delicate than we imagine. Even tiny amounts of CO₂ are enough to knock it off balance.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Attitudes

There are two kinds of people:

  1. Those whose goal is to accumulate as much money as possible by taking it from others giving them as little as possible in return.
  2. Those whose goal is to make enough to live on so they can pursue their ecological goals.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Attitudes to Greenhouse Gases

Because greenhouse gases circulate quickly through the entire atmosphere, mankind must come to a consensus on what to do about greenhouse gases and global warming. There are essentially two competing views:

  1. This is the view of most North Americans. Let’s burn the fossil fuels as fast as possible. We will be rich. We will die young but happy. Tough beans for the next generation. I hate my kids anyway, the ungrateful little bastards. Sometimes these people lie, pretending they know better than the scientists about the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. The lonely, terminally selfish elderly, like the Koch brothers, are attracted to this view since they trust they will die of natural causes before the global warming effects start becoming fatal. These people have a similar mindset to cocaine addicts who argue that even though the drug is killing them, it feels very good now and now is all that matters.
  2. This is the view of most non-North Americans. Much as we think we need unlimited cheap energy, much as we are tempted by the riches of selling fossil fuels, the global warming side effects of fossil fuel burning are suicidal. We simply have to do something else, no matter how inconvenient, how expensive, how uncomfortable or how difficult. It would be unspeakably selfish to sacrifice future generations just for our temporary comfort. Thankfully, the cost of clean energy has dropped below fossil fuels. Fossil fuel companies are trying every filthy trick in the book to fool people into continuing to buy dirty, expensive, planet-destroying fossil fuels.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Attracting Lions

We have the lion of global warming roaring around the living room and yet idiots keep throwing meat (greenhouse gases) on the carpet to attract more lions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles)

People who ride ATVs have no idea how much they are hated for the noise, tearing up trails, creating erosion and killing plant life. One woman ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) rider was almost decapitated. But she could not think of a single motive why anyone would want to do that to her.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Automated Wasting

Despite the invention of the computer, humans use six times as much paper as they did in 1950. All that happened was we used computers waste paper faster.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Average Change

When ignoramuses hear about 5.0°C (9.0°F) of global warming they say Big hairy deal. My back yard swings through that much in a single day. The don’t seem to understand the difference between one spot on the earth changing for a few hours and the average for every spot on the globe changing for an entire year. During the ice age, Canada was only 5.0°C (9.0°F) cooler than it is now. Ignoramuses, especially the ignoramuses on FOX news, imagine they understand all this much better than the experts who have made a life study of it. I wonder if they feel the same way about their heart surgeons, the engineers who build spacecraft, their lawyers or particle physicists. Everyone is an expert on local weather which they arrogantly confuse with understanding global climate.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Avoiding Long Life

There was a time when people wanted to live as long as possible. Now, with all manner of environmental collapse looming like a hundred swords of Damocles, the aged give thanks they may not have to live with the consequences of their generation’s environmental irresponsibility.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ax Men

The History Channel aired a documentary called Ax Men glorifying the loggers of Oregon as manly men. In one scene the loggers came across an old growth tree. The other loggers came running to excitedly look at it. Such trees are quite rare. Of course, they killed and piled it with the other trees which looked like table legs in comparison. One logger noted that 20 years ago all trees were that way. The dramatic tension in the documentary came from the fact the loggers were behind quota in felling trees. To me, it was like watching a documentary the guards who ran the Nazi concentration camps worrying about meeting quotas. These people had no concept what they were doing to the planet. Like Nazis, they placed no value whatsoever on their victims.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

B.C.’s and Alberta’s Glaciers Will Shrink 70% By 2100

It is not just the loss of tourism. Glaciers store water and feed it year round, for drinking, agriculture, hydro…

In India, this means mass deaths when rivers like the glacier-fed Ganges cease to flow year round and massively flood in the rainy season. That means political unrest. That means more terrorism.

Every month we procrastinate dealing with the climate change problem, it gets harder to fix because the CO₂ levels are that much higher.

Correcting climate change is like steering a huge ocean liner. You have to start the turn many km/miles before you hit the iceberg to give the ship time to shift course.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Backward Canadians

Canadians and Americans like to think of themselves as futuristic and environmentally conscious, yet compared with the Europeans and Japanese, we are in the dark ages. We are literally in last place as developed nations go. This is economic suicide.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bad News For Oil

Over the past decades science has delivered considerable bad news to the fossil fuel industry. e.g. production is peaking and will slowly drop, even though demand continues to rise. The production costs for fossil fuels will rise as we exploit the easy to extract fuels leaving only the dirty and remote ones. The peak for coal will come much sooner than expected. It is proving extremely difficult to find a way to burn coal cleanly. CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuels are causing catastrophic climate changes. The developing world has a growing hunger for fossil fuels that will soon be even bigger than our own which will drive up prices (not all bad news). It is necessary to seek out alternative fuels. Fossil fuels are in their last days. Oil CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) reasoned that shareholders may sell their stock and invest in something with a brighter long term future. So they decided to publicly embrace junk science to confuse everyone.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Bad Weather Excuse

I am sick to death of the lame excuses from the oil companies claiming they can’t reign in or clean up oil spills because of bad weather. When else, but during extreme weather, are oil rigs ripped from their moorings? They need to install redundant technology that will automatically clamp off the flow of oil if ever power or control is lost.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Badly Behaved Latecomers

Few humans realise what a destructive species we are. We are a newcomer to planet earth. Other species have survived for millions of years of whatever nature could throw at them before we came along. And we are managing to send about a third of them extinct without even trying.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Balance

Popular wisdom says there should be balance between the needs of industry and the environment. Industry has had its way 99% of the time for the last 200 years. Balance would require the environmentalists get their way 99% of the time for the next 200.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Balanced Is Not

The result of a balanced approach to concern for the environment and commerce is, according to Dr. Boris Worm, every single species of edible fish collapsed by 2048. If the environment is not sustained, there is no commerce. Policy must be guided by that fact, not by proportionate mollifying of who is yelling loudest and providing the most campaign contributions. Right now we are using this same balanced approach with global warming, refusing to take any but token actions. Nature’s consequences are delayed but merciless.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Balanced Is Not Necessarily Best

The notion that a balanced approach is always best is wrong. Consider:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Balancing Is Insane

Talking about balancing the global warming with the economy is insane. If you don’t get on top of global warming, you won’t have an economy. Dealing with global warming is not optional, no matter how much it costs, unless, of course, you consider survival optional.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Banning Cannibalism

If we were debating whether to ban cannibalism, I doubt many people would want an exception for aboriginal peoples on the grounds they had been doing it since the dawn of time. Killing whales is wrong for the same reason killing people is wrong. There should be no exception based on economic necessity. We need to find some other way to solve aboriginal nutrition problems.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Barbaric Navy

The Navy drops bombs in the ocean and uses a super sonar known to kill whales. They take no precautions to protect the endangered orcas. Yet when an orca corpse shows up with wounds consistent with a Naval murder, they stick out their tongues and say, nya nya you can’t prove it and the evidence is classified. Ha ha ha

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bare Soil

Logically you should feel the same horror at seeing bare soil as you do seeing abraded bloody skin. It is open to erosion. It is open to invading weed seeds.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) Lies About Climate Change

Even as late as 2012, announcers on the BBC world service promoted the lie that a substantial proportion of the world’s scientists thought global warming was a hoax, or at least that man had nothing to do with it. These twits would find some eccentric on the web who claimed to believe the moon was made of green cheese and from that conclude the butterfat proportion of the moon was a raging scientific controversy.

Even with a grade 9 understanding of science, you can prove for yourself the CO₂ increase (which Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68) discovered back in 1886 to raise global temperature) is man made. Research the figures for how much coal, oil and natural gas man has burned each year since the start of the industrial revolution. Look up the figures for how much CO₂ you get from burning each kilogram of coal, oil or natural gas.

We also know the CO₂ is coming mainly from fossil fuels because fossil fuels and volcanoes emit a different proportion of C₁₂ and C₁₃. How we know volcanoes are NOT the source of rising CO2 click to watch

Make a spreadsheet to multiply and add to find out how much CO₂ in total was generated. From the total mass of the atmosphere and the percentage of in the atmosphere that is CO₂, compute the total amount of CO₂ it contains today. The climate deniers claim the amount added by burning is negligible compared to the total amount there. Do your own work, then nobody can bamboozle you.

These calculations are hardly rocket science. If the figures showed the deniers were right, don’t you think they would be touting them? They have no evidence, just wild accusations of a global conspiracy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Be Prepared

We have no business creating a global transport system that can deliver any new pathogen everywhere on earth in 24 hours without building in some emergency technique to shut it down.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Beano For Cattle

Given that cattle emit more greenhouse gases than cars, somebody needs to invent a Beano for animal feed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bear Hunting

Native people in the Great Bear rain forest have decided to ban bear hunting. British Columbians are debating both whether they have that right and whether banning hunting is a wise thing to do. I have two arguments for banning hunting, one based on economics and one based on genetics.

  1. If you sell bears to bear watchers, you can collect a fee from thousands of American tourists for each bear. You can start collecting from the day the bear first sees the light of day, even if it later dies as a teenager. If you sell the bear to a trophy hunter, you can no longer collect those fees.
  2. Natural predators go after the sick, weak, deformed and malnourished. This has the salutary effect of removing those weak genes from the gene pool, making subsequent generations stronger. Trophy hunters go after the strongest, biggest bears in the prime of life. Normally those prime bears would sire the next generation. Hunting removes their premium genes from the gene pool forever. Hunters create a sort of reverse Darwinian selection when the fittest perish. Thus the quality of the gene pool deteriorates over time, hastening extinction.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bee Poisoners

If you put poison on your flowers, you will poison the bees who come. You will poison the honey they make. You will poison the people who eat that honey.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Beetles

Why study beetles? The practical reason is the more you know about beetles in general the more prepared you are to handle a population explosion of one particular species that threatens a commercially important tree or plant. The religious reason is Yahweh spent more time designing different varieties of beetle than other types of animal. They must be his unacknowledged favourites. Mimicking beetle behaviour, e.g. eating dung, Isaiah 36:12, may be the key to currying his favour.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) An Inordinate Fondness For Beetles

Being Inconspicuous

Most animals do their best to be an inconspicuous as possible, to modify their environment as little as possible. I would love to see a mainstream architectural aesthetic develop along these same lines.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Being Respectable

If you live your life carefully, you can get through it without upsetting your fellows so badly that they lock you up. At the end of your life, you will have earned the title respectable. However, consider that Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were not respectable by that definition.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Believing A Tobacco Shill

What sort of nincompoop believes an ex-Tobacco apologist over thousands of professional scientists on the matter of climate change? A Republican. The Christian church has conditioned him since birth to believe what he wishes were true rather than what the evidence indicates is true.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Best Exercise

The exercise program you are most likely to persist with is getting rid of your car and doing your transportation by foot or bicycle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Betrayal

Hundreds of doctors in the 1950s and 1960s betrayed their patients and the country generally by taking money from the tobacco companies to lie that tobacco smoking was safe. This resulted in 100s of thousands of lung cancer and heart-related deaths. However, I don’t recall any of the victims or their families seeking revenge with lawsuits, murders or torture.

Today we have something similar going on, but on a much larger scale. We have scientists and people who pretend to be scientists taking money to lie about climate change. They are causing massive damage to earth for the most paltry benefits to the fossil fuel industry. I would hope the people will be so angry with them, that most will be torn to pieces for betraying their planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Betrayal

Justin Trudeau promised to block the Kinder Morgan bitumen pipeline during the federal election campaign. Then he flip flopped, and chastised British Columbians for wanting to protect their coastline from bitumen tanker spills (which are impossible to clean up), claiming they had a duty to meekly sacrifice their coastline for economic benefit of the rest of Canada (meaning Alberta). He suggested British Columbians were selfish. He suggested they had no right to protest. He accused them of fomenting a pointless trade war with Alberta. He pretended he did not understand why British Columbians were so furious with him. He expelled protesters from a town meeting on the issue in Nanaimo. He had no interest in listening to people from BC possibly because only 39% of British Columbians voted liberal and Kinder Morgan made fat donations to the Liberal party to guarantee the pipeline.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Beyond Crime

What BP has done is beyond crime. They have sacrificed their own employees and the ecosystem of the entire Gulf of Mexico for a few paltry dollars in extra profit. They have corrupted politicians to allow them to rape the planet. At every stage, they have lied and lied. All they cared about was corporate image, not actually remedying the situation. They have talked big and done little. The only apology remotely sincere enough would be for the entire BP board, executives, employees and shareholders to commit suicide and leave their estates to ensure such never happens again.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Beyond Genocide

Global warming deniers are global mega-vandals. It is a crime that requires a monumental ego and corruption beyond measure. It is several steps beyond genocide. It attempts to exterminate not only all humans, but all species.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Big Business Is Unfit to Make Big Decisions

Business has only one concern — short term profit. It has no concept of long-term sustainability. Therefore business should not be making any decisions affecting environmental sustainability.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Big Fine For Spills

If we want an end to oil spills, we have to get the oil companies’ attention with a $10,000 per barrel fine for oil released. Effective technology to prevent spills will magically appear.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Big Houses To House Stuff

Houses are much bigger than they were in the 1950s, even though families are smaller. They are so big just to house stuff. Instead of hobbies like gardening or home canning, people now go mindlessly shopping to collect more stuff to fill their houses.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Big Lie

The big lie industry and government try to tell over and over is that heavy industry and wildlife are compatible. There is not one example of success. Every government report tries to sells the idea that it will work this time.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Big Melt

If all of Antarctica’s ice melted, the oceans would rise 12 stories. All coastal cities would have to be abandoned.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Big Oil, Big Lies

Big oil has chutzpah. On one hand they promote the idea that climate change is a giant hoax involving all the world’s scientists, includes ones who died over a century ago. On the other had they tout oil drilling in the high Arctic now possible because global warming is melting the sea ice.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bigger Is Better

Wouldn’t it be funny if the bigger-is-better ethic of Detroit also applied to cellphones. People would tote lead acid car batteries on back packs to power the phones. The phones themselves would weigh 9.07 kg (20 lbs). They would have loudspeakers 50 cm (1.64 ft) diameter. The bigger your phone, the more masculine it proved you were and advertised the longer your penis.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Bigger Picture

CO₂ emissions are just as aspect of destruction of the ecosystems and habitats that support us. Focusing too narrowly on greenhouse gas emissions may lead us to some cockamamie purely technological solutions that leaves the big problems untouched.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bigger Threat?

In one summer, in France 10 times as many people died from global warming than died on 2001-09-11. Which is the bigger threat?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Biggest Extinction Event

If you wanted to watch the end of the dinosaurs, you would need a time machine to take you back 65 million years. However, if you wanted to watch the end of the amphibians or end of the large mammals, you already have a ring-side seat. We are in the middle of the biggest mass extinction since the KT event, and we humans are causing it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Biggest Polluter

The Yangtze River in China is the biggest source of pollution in the entire Pacific Ocean.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Biggest Problem Ever

Humanity is facing a problem bigger than any other in recorded history. Scientists tell us we must stop using fossil fuels now! Even if we did that, we are still in for a very nasty climate change ride. The CO₂ we have already emitted will continue to heat up the earth. Business is incapable of looking at anything other than the next quarter profits. Corporations such as BP and Shell don’t give a fig if climate change makes the world uninhabitable. Corporations have used paid shills (e.g. Republicans) to convince the sheep-people who make up the majority of the population that there is nothing to worry about. Eventually, the problem will be obvious even to the aggressively stupid, but by then it will be far too late to do anything about it. I feel like a proverbial lemming watching my fellows heading relentlessly for the cliff. The corporation is like Frankenstein’s monster that has turned on its creators.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Biggest User of Oil

Even with the recent temporary drop, Americans are up in arms at high oil prices and the way America is hostage to foreign oil. The biggest single buyer of oil on the planet is the US military. They have bid the prices up with their wasteful consumption of oil. An aircraft carrier gets about 58,804 litres/100km (0.004 mpg). Using fuel efficiently and protecting the environment are simply not on the military’s radar.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Bimbo

A parable: Miss Canada was traveling across Canada by train. She was doing her nails when the train derailed. The conductor appeared through the smoke and debris and said, Miss, you must get off the train immediately. There was a chlorine tank car and it is leaking the deadly poison gas. Miss Canada whined, But I can’t. I’ll ruin my high heels and my nails aren’t dry yet. The conductor shouted, Look you stupid bimbo. You don’t understand. If don’t get out of here pronto, you will die! No, you don’t understand. Do you know how much these heels cost?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The parable is about the bimbo reaction of the average Canadian to global climate change.

Biofuels are a Dead End

Biofuels are not really a fuel source. It takes oil to make the fertilisers. It takes oil to run the tractors and irrigation pumps. You put more energy in than you get back. No one would ever consider biofuels were it not for the massive subsidies. They are not a green solution. They are a con by big agriculture to suck out even more subsidies from the taxpayers. However, biofuels from algaes do have potential.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bird Poisoners

Scotts-Miracle Grow pleaded guilty on 2012-07-13 to willfully poisoning the wild bird seed it sold over a period of two years. They deliberately added illegal pesticides to the mix to prevent insects from eating the seeds during storage. I guess it never occurred to Scotts that a few insects in the mix would do the birds no harm at all. Some species of birds would consider them an extra treat. The irony is Scott charged twice what other seed companies charged. The fine amounts to about $1 a $10 bag of seed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Birds of the Eastern USA

The biggest perk of living in the Eastern United States must be all the colourful birds that visit your back yard. Yet the people of the region seem intent on driving these birds to extinction by dozens of means. They don’t deserve to be custodians of such a treasure.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Birth Control Pills and Fish

Dropping a birth control pill into the toilet is about the most harmful thing you can do to wild fish. The pills work even better on fish than people.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Birthrate Levelling

Why are people having fewer children?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bison

I think we should be moving away from cattle and pigs toward bison as the source of meat in Canada.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bisphenol A

Substances like LSD (d-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide), plutonium and estrogen hormone-mimetics (e.g. Bisphenol A) can cause damaging effects in even the most minute concentrations. Government environmental regulators are stuck in the thinking of the 1800s when scientists believed dilution made any poison safe.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bitching over 1%

Corporate executives and oil company shills like George W. Bush in the USA and Stephen Harper in Canada love to whine about the impossibly onerous 1% extra cost it will take to deal with global warming. Yet oddly, they have no concern at all about economist Stern’s estimated 20% cost of the consequences of doing nothing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bitumen Sinks

The big problem with bitumen is it is heavier than water. If it spills in a stream or the ocean how can you recover it? If you refine it, gasoline and even diesel oil, will float on the surface, where it can be skimmed, or eventually evaporate. The ecological damage of such a spill is much less.

There are jobs in building a pipeline, but just a skeleton crew is needed to maintain it. If you want ongoing financial benefits you must either:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bitumen Sinks

The problem is not so much the pipeline, but what happens to the bitumen and crude when it is shipped out of BC. There is no technology available to clean up a bitumen spill. It sinks. The best technology to clean up crude, at best under ideal conditions, can recover 5%. Yes, we may have the best technology money can buy, but it is still preposterously inadequate. Harper has ignored this, claiming that it does not matter if there is no way to clean up spills because the probability of spills is extremely low. (Cough) Talk is cheap. If the backers are so sure this is safe, how about a deal to prove it? They agree to shut the whole thing down permanently the first time they fail to keep their safety guarantee.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bitumen Spills

The most important fact about the Northern Gateway bitumen pipeline, is that if there is a spill, there is no technology to clean it up. Enbridge can pour dispersants on it, but that does not clean it up, just hides it. The problem is, bitumen sinks. Even the best technology can clean up only 3 to 5% of a much-easier-to-deal-with oil spill. The question is how many spills will there will be? Enbridge’s track record would lead us to expect several a year. BC gets to sacrifice so American oil execs can wash their feet in champagne.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Blacklist

The following are some of the organisations who had an unusually negative effect on planet earth:

  1. The Catholic Church
  2. The Republican Party
  3. BP and the oil companies generally
  4. Monsanto
  5. The Koch Brothers
  6. FOX news
  7. Answers in Genesis
  8. Liberty University
  9. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)
  10. Boko Haram
  11. Burger King and the fast food industry generally
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Blame the Babymakers

Environmentalists wring their hands at the shrinking habitat for wildlife, yet they refuse to point their fingers at the true culprits — those who breed all those babies that necessarily push wildlife off their traditional lands. Rampant motherhood is killing the planet. We must stop treating it as synonymous with unassailable virtue. It is a form of egotistical greed — trying to shape posterity in your own image, to hell with everyone else.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Blame It On the Volcanoes

Dingbats like Donald Trump sometimes will accept that climate change is caused by rising CO₂ levels, but claim that human activity has nothing to do with it, as if humans burning fossil fuels in cars, power plants etc. does not produce CO₂ like all other burning does.

2 C₈H₁₈ + 25 O₂ ⇒ 16 CO₂ + 18 H₂O

They are trying to deny the laws of chemistry. Sometimes they try to blame volcanoes. You would need a volcano the size of Mount Saint Helens, erupting every day of the year to come close to the amount of CO₂ we humans generate. So obviously it is not volcanoes.

Why would these bastards lie that science said it was volcanoes? Because Exxon-Mobil wants to wring the last pennies of profit from their dying sunset industry, even if it destroys the planet for their grand-kids. The money competition game means more to them than their grand-kids. Sick.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Blasé About CO₂

The public is quite blasé about CO₂. They can’t see it. They can’t smell it. They can’t taste it. We need a technology to psychologically detect it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bleak News

News about the environment is so bleak. Keep in mind that projections are based on everyone continuing to behave as they always have. Even the laziest student gets busy the night before exams. Unfortunately, the earth has so much inertia that even if you drastically mend your ways, it can be centuries before you reap your reward.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bleak Oil

Because the supply of oil is finite because discovery peaked 30 years ago because demand is still rising because we have already exploited most of the easy-to-drill oil because taxes to discourage greenhouse gases are rising, until we find a replacement for oil, the price will on average continue to rise. What are the implications of that?

Invest appropriately.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Blinded by Profit

Businessmen concerned only about short term profit want to derail attempts to curb their CO₂ emissions. They do it by hiring fake experts and sending them out into the world to spread FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) and baldly lie about climate science. Similar to pushing creationism as an alternative to evolution, they want climate change taught in schools as a global conspiracy hoax. This is like the Green Cheese alternate theory of moon composition. Valid science needs evidence and peer review not just wishful thinking.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Blithering Ninnies

What driveling ninnies humans are! They fret over a superstitions that calendars can end the earth, but refuse to take action on the obvious effect their greenhouse gas emissions are having on sending the earth over the brink. We deserve rapid extinction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Blowing Our Inheritance

Once three brothers made a huge Halloween score of 3 pillow cases of candy each. This was effectively an infinite amount of candy. They gorged themselves to the point of making themselves sick. They thought it would last forever, but, to their surprise it was totally gone in 2 months. This is much how humans are treating their massive inheritance of oil. They are squandering it, imagining it could never run out. Some twits have even claimed it can’t run out because it renews itself faster than it can be exploited, even though they have plenty of evidence to the contrary in the form of wells no longer producing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bogus Cheating Excuse

Cereal companies, cookie companies, yogurt companies, vitamin pill companies are claim they need to fill packages only half full to allow for settling. How come then all such companies don’t need to cheat their customers that way? Note that goods that come in 1, 2 and 4 litre bottles don’t cheat because the package size is standard.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Bogus Climate Petition

You may have heard of a petition of 30,000 scientists who say global warming is a hoax. There are a few problems with that. The definition of scientist is rather broad. It includes optometrists, journalists, geologists, chiropractors, veterinarians, computer programmers, people who have no training in climate science. Even I would qualify. 30,000 sounds like a big number but it represents only 0.3% of scientists, most of whom are on board with the consensus view. Petitions are not for deciding scientific questions, merely for bringing them to the attention of politicians.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bond Villain Modeled on Bechtel

Arch villain Dominic Greene and the Quantum organisation in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace is a thinly disguised Bechtel Corporation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Boobytraps for Posterity

It is theft and assault when one generation builds a nuclear power plant or a building that is not property designed to stand up to natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados… It should be unconstitutional for a generation to set up booby traps for posterity.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Booms Are Not Necessarily a Good Thing™

Cheering the economic boom of fracking is like cheering the rapid growth of a cancer tumor.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Borders

We used to think what each country did inside its borders was its own business. But we have discovered when they release CO₂ or other greenhouse gases into the air, they quickly spread all over the planet. Ditto when we poison the water. We can no longer allow irresponsible nations.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bottled Water Idiocy

The idea of bottled water is insane, paying $3 for something you can get free. Further, nobody inspects bottled water for safety the way they do tap water. If your tap water has a bad taste, filter it for pennies. Then carry it in a stylish reusable container, possibly a thermos, rather than a crummy-looking Nestlé plastic disposable. Evian is naïve spelled backwards. The people who use bottled water suffer from the same low environmental IQ (Intelligence Quotient) as those who buy Hummers to impress their friends with conspicuous consumption.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

BP As Poetic Justice

It is poetic justice that after waging years of environmental war on Afghanistan and Iraq that the USA would, in a fit of greed, attack itself with a massive oil spill and refusing to make BP clean it up.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

BP Should Go Bankrupt

BP exploited the Bush-Cheney lack of regulation. They gambled and lost taking shortcuts with safety. If they go bankrupt paying off their losses, that it how capitalism is supposed to work. Companies that employ money-losing strategies are supposed to go broke. It would be crazy to subsidise and encourage their recklessness with a government handout.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Brad Wall

People like Brad Wall (Premier of Saskatchewan) drive me nuts. I want to wring his neck. How can he possibly be so fucking stupid? Basically his position is, he will do nothing about climate change unless it stimulates the fossil fuel economy. This is mathematically impossible. Stimulating the fossil fuel economy creates still more greenhouse gases. What it then comes down to is having is, in Wall’s view, having a little more money is far more important than survival. He is either insane, or he is in denial about the seriousness of the threat that climate change presents.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Brats

There is a childish kind of person that if you tell them about the consequences of overeating, taking drugs, heavy drinking, sedentary lifestyle, eating transfat, emitting greenhouse gases, using plastic bags, wasting oil… they feel compelled to indulge just to prove they can’t be pushed around. Sarah Palin is one of these mental infants. Michelle Obama urged better diets for America’s children, so Sarah felt compelled to shove gobs of sugar snacks down the throats of school children, all without the permission of their parents.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Breaking the Law

Gandhi said that you may not use violence in your protest, but he most certainly did not say you must obey the law or politely do whatever you opponent asks (e.g. stay inside free speech zones or protest only where no one will see the protest). Rather, if a law is unjust you are honour-bound to break it and suffer the consequences.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Breeding is Irresponsible

A technological high wire balancing act has allowed us to push the population well beyond what is sustainable. It is criminally irresponsible to encourage couples to balloon the population further. Further, we must stop harassing those responsible people who forgo having children.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bum Cleaner

I consume the most trees each month in the form of toilet paper. Surely some device to wash my bum with warm, lemon-scented, soapy water would soon pay for itself.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bumpy Warming

Christians and other science deniers claim that because global temperatures do not rise smoothly, then CO₂ warming must be a hoax. They forget that there are many factors combine to influence temperatures:

As of 2015, there are a number of temporary cooling effects in progress. However, we are still experiencing the hottest year ever from the CO₂ effects.

Is CO₂ the Real Culprit?

How do we know it is CO₂ causing the warming?

How Do We Know Humans Are To Blame?

How do we know it is us humans creating the CO₂ not volcanoes or some other source?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Bungler James Inhofe

Senator James Inhofe is a bumpkin when it comes to medicine and science. Very few people would trust him to tinker with the their life support system in a hospital, yet the majority of people in Oklahoma entrust him with the life support systems of the entire planet, even though he has less understanding of them than your average second grader. This represents a death wish on the part of Americans, a retreat into medieval superstition.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Businessmen

You’d think businessmen as a whole would be very keen on renewable, clean energy. After all, there is a huge market. All the fossil-fuel based systems will need to be replaced. It is a sellers’ market. The whole world will be needing their products if they can get in on the ground floor.

However, clean energy has a huge disadvantage from the point of view of the businessman. Once you install it, it is essentially free. In contrast with coal, you have to keep selling trainload after trainload of coal to keep the plant functioning.

The other problem is clean energy is quite scalable. A single homeowner can implement it independently of what anyone else does. It does not need huge corporations to build and manage it. It is too damn democratic.

The result is, the big energy companies have withdrawn from clean energy to focus on squeezing the last drops of profits from their sunset fossil fuel investments. They promote the climate change denier lies to try to extend the lifespan of their investments a few years, even though they risk the planet to do it. It is individuals and villages who are busily transforming the planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Buying Organic

There are four main reasons to buy organic:

  1. To avoid cumulative pesticide residues and accidental pesticide overuse.
  2. To protect the environment.
  3. For better taste.
  4. For better nutrition.

To avoid pesticides, first budget to avoid non-organic meats, milk and eggs, then non-organic thin-skinned fruits and vegetables such as peaches, apples and strawberries and then if you have money left over, avoid non-organic thick-skinned fruits and vegetables like mangoes, bananas and eggplants. Meat is the worst offender because animals concentrate pesticides from the plants they eat. Farmers have less incentive to spray thick skinned produce since the thick skins naturally protect them from pests. Further, peeling the thick skins removes clinging pesticides.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Calerpa taxifolia

Super Species: The Creatures That Will Dominate the Planet describes a single celled, poisonous, hallucinogenic, tropical algae (Calerpa taxifolia). It is a single cell that grows up to 2.74 metres (9 ft) tall. A single male individual has invaded and taken over the Mediterranean. It sounds like the plot to a Roger Corman movie, but it is real.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Calgarian Denial

Calgarians with ever larger floods decimating their city remind me of Pharaoh denying the various signs. They are looking any excuse to cling to bitumen mining.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Calgary Floods

The spectacular floods in Calgary should come as no surprise. For a couple of decades climate scientists have been warning everyone to reduce CO₂ emissions to avoid extreme weather such as floods, droughts, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, glacier melting and ice cap melting. And what did Calgarians do? With Alison Redford and Stephen Harper cheering them on, they frantically started digging up the tar sands and selling the bitumen to others to burn thus ballooning CO₂ emissions.

So what now, other than reducing emissions? (Emissions are cumulative, so it will only get worse, no matter how low they drop.) They will have to rebuild Calgary to withstand these new more extreme weather conditions. This will be extremely expensive. If they just rebuild as it was, the infrastructure will just be taken out again in a year or two. They may even have to abandon the prime real estate bordering the rivers, perhaps converting it to parkland as Edmonton does. It serves the stupid buggers right. Out of blind greed, they willfully screwed up the climate of the whole planet, particularly Africa and Pakistan forgetting they were part of planet Earth too.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Callers

I listen to the CBC call-in shows about the environment. There are many callers who basically say Fuck the environment. I want jobs. They should shoot all the tree-huggers. What that really means is Fuck my future! Fuck my children! Fuck my grandkids! I don’t care if they die. I don’t care if there is anywhere to live cooler than Cairo. I don’t care if my kids have to live in a sewer. I don’ care if they can get jobs. I want jobs now!. Every other animal will happily sacrifice its life to ensure the well-being of its offspring. These folk are pathologically selfish.

U If they thought ahead a bit, they would be saying Protect the earth that is the source of all jobs. Give me jobs that will be around for my entire life not these pipeline construction jobs that will be gone in five years or jobs in the sunset fossil fuel industry. Let’s stop doing stupid things like burning fossil fuels and cranking up the earth’s temperature to make life impossible for coming generations..

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Callous Indifference

Why are so many people ignoring climate change? One reason is callous, cruel disinterest. The people who will be hurt most from the early effects of climate change live in the southern hemisphere. The second is selfishness. People are unwilling to give up any convenience to battle climate change. They don’t care if this unbelievable selfishness kills off their grandchildren.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Camping Con

Religious con men like Harold Camping (1921-07-19 2013-12-15 age:92) have been ripping off the gullible with tales of the impending doom. The public has become jaded and improperly ignore the warnings of scientists simply because they sound too alarming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canada Hit Hardest

It is odd that Canadians are so relaxed about climate change when the predictions are Canada will be hit with temperature increases twice that of the global average.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canada Rates a Heavier Burden

Canada and the USA rightly should bear a larger burden than other countries for cleaning up CO₂ in the atmosphere for several reasons:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canada Shirks Responsibility

Canada ships mountains of bitumen all over the world where it is burned to release greenhouse gases. Canada does not consider that part of its contribution to destroying the planet. That is like Colombia claiming it does not contribute to the world drug problem since the cocaine its produces is consumed elsewhere.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canada Subsidises Increased Global Warming

At the Rio Climate Summit in 2012, the nations of the world decided a good measure to reduce greenhouse gases would be to ban fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful oil and gas use. Canada and Venezuela opposed the measure. Canada wants everyone to subsidise increased global warming. Send your comments to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the man irresponsible. The oil industry is obscenely rich. It does not need subsidies. The subsidies are payback for political contributions to the Conservative party.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canada Worst

On 2012-10-18, Canada won the Dodo award as the worst country in the world for preserving wild spaces.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canada Worst Nation

On a per capita basis, Canada is the worst nation when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. This is due to dirty oils sands extraction, high car ownership and high fuel use for heating in the winter. BC, on the west coast, is the cleanest province, a surprise given it currently has a right wing government.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canada-China Investment Treaty

Obviously the 31-year FIPA (Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act) trade treaty with China is not to the advantage of the citizens of Canada, otherwise Prime Minister Stephen Harper would not be trying to lock us in long after he leaves office. He would not be keeping us from debating it now or even knowing what we are committing to. Presumably citizens of China will be worse off too. The treaty is part of Harper’s plan to plunder the environment based on his bizarre fundamentalist religious beliefs about end times and a god who has nothing better to do than clean up after him. Who benefits? Corporations in China get to sue if a Canadian federal, provincial or municipal government passes environmental or other laws that reduce their profits. Effectively, Harper is handing control of Canada’s laws to Chinese crown corporations. We are surrendering to China without a shot, without even a vote in parliament. Granted, Canadian corporations get a similar privilege to derail China’s attempts to move to clean energy and clean up their environmental disaster of a country. In the short term, this irresponsible behaviour is profitable to anti-environmental corporations, mainly big oil. In the long run it is suicidal. Harper is orchestrating a slow-motion coup to gradually dismantle democracy and install a corporatocracy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Canadian Eyesores

How can this be? France and Italy had no benefit of modern urban planners, yet created entire countries a delight to the eye with livable cities. We in Canada and the USA, had the benefit of urban planning and the experience of Europe, yet we decided to create eyesore countries of strip malls and forbidding cities.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cancer

Cancer is when cells grow without limit and strangle a body by recklessly consuming all the resources. Humans are like a cancer on earth, pushing out all other life forms with uncontrolled breeding. When we go to Mars, it will be like metastasising.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cancer Alley

There is a cancer alley every place there is a concentration of oil refineries.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Canvas or Plastic?

Advantages of Reusable vs Plastic Bags
Reusable Plastic
Plastic bags end up circulating in the Pacific ocean, more concentrated than plankton, never degrading, clogging the digestive tracts, lungs and gills of sea creatures and birds. The particles are too fine for current technology to clean up. Environmental vandals get a charge out of annoying environmentally responsible people. A plastic bag is cheaper badge of environmental vandalism than an SUV.
Reusable bags do not break. They do not fall apart in the rain like paper bags. You would not even be able to lift a load heavy enough to damage a canvas bag. Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity believe that double bagging when not necessary is manly and that using a canvas bag is feminine. I don’t follow. Further, I don’t see why they think women would want to appear manly.
Reusable bags hold more. You don’t have to remember to take a bag with you to go shopping.
Reusable bags are easier on your hands. You have to launder reusable bags every once in a while.
You have to buy a plastic bag each time (built into the price of the goods) even though you have hundreds of perfectly good ones already. You may get to the point you have no stock of generic plastic bags and have to buy some specialised ones for kitchen garbage pails.
Plastic bags are made of fossil fuels which have other much more valuable uses.
Canvas bags can be a male or female fashion statement. Plastic bags in contrast always look tacky.
Canvas bags are decorated with logos, images and messages you choose. Plastic bags are decorated with merchant advertising. You don’t always want people knowing where you have been shopping, especially around Christmas.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cap On Liability

There should be no cap on liability for oil spills. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Car = Improved Horse

A car could be thought of as an artificial horse. You would think as such it would be smaller, lighter and more fuel efficient.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Car Addiction

People believe they absolutely have to use their cars. However, massive smog in France lead authorities to ban all cars with even licence plates from the roads. They made public transit free. People discovered it was awkward to do without cars, but far from impossible.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Car Efficiency

Only about 20% of your fuel goes to move your car. The rest goes to heat up the great outdoors. Assuming your car weighs 1.59 tonnes (1¾ tons) and you weigh 90.72 kg (200 lbs) only about 1% of your fuel goes to move you. Obviously, there is lots of room for improvement, primarily by making cars lighter.

I suspect the day will come when you summon a driverless car, exactly the size needed to hold the passengers and cargo.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Car Racing

Car racing is the ultimate fuck you sport. It emits toxic fumes; it emits annoying noise you can hear for miles, it emits greenhouse gases; it emits noxious odours. The drivers are not even athletes; sometimes they are even obese. It burns money like a cocaine habit. It is the sport of bratty, indulged Arab-prince children who revel in vandalising the environment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Car Restoration

Amateurs spend untold hours building and restoring custom cars. The results are usually flashier and faster, but almost never lighter, more fuel-efficient or cleaner.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Carbon Debt

If you burn wood, you release CO₂. It is only once a replacement tree grows to maturity do you pay back the carbon debt.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Carbon Dioxide

You have certainly heard some oil company shills trying to pooh pooh the danger of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO₂. They will tell you it is completely harmless because you breathe it out in every breath. I will try to answer that several ways:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Carbon Footprint

If you don’t change the way business is conducted, every increase in economic growth means higher CO₂ emissions. You think you are getting somewhere, but you are just committing planetary suicide.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Carbon Negative

It is no longer enough to be carbon neutral. We must be carbon negative, actively removing CO₂ from the air, since so many individual and corporations are making no effort at all to curb their carbon emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Carbon Offset Fee

Paying a carbon offset fee is a bit like paying a fine for the right to molest children.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Carbon Tax

John Cummins, the leader of the BC Conservatives wants to scrap the carbon tax supposedly because it isn’t working. That is like taking — a Tylenol and saying Tylenol doesn’t work and giving up on them. The problem is the tax is far too timid to have the desired effect. Nobody likes paying a tax, but we have an unpleasant choice — increase the tax and reduce greenhouse gas emissions or repeal the tax and kill our grand-kids.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Carbon Tax

Popular wisdom is that a carbon tax hurts the economy. However, BC, the only province with a carbon tax, does better economically than any other province. A carbon tax lifts taxes off income and puts them on pollution. They are revenue neutral. Any business that modernises and invests in more modern equipment can escape the tax and have the benefit of a more profitable plant. It is actually a tax break for savvy businesses.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Carbon Tax

There are two basic ways of looking at a carbon tax (or cap and trade):

  1. It it like chemotherapy, something quite unpleasant, but something you have to tolerate to ensure your survival.
  2. It is like a tax on meat. Some vegans, for moralistic reasons, imposed it just to piss meat-eaters off.

The problem is corporate interests have lied so effectively to the public, that, even when they know better, they pretend that climate change is not a concern. They kid themselves it is wise to focus purely on short-term financial interests.

The churches, Trump, the Koch Brothers, Exxon Mobil and other fossil fuel companies have emitted a firehose of rumours and lies designed to undermine the public’s trust in science.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Carbon Tax Double Talk

Big oil often likes to claim carbon taxes do not work. That is like saying that reducing fines is the best way to deal with a rash of drunk driving. The problem obviously is the taxes are not high enough to prod businesses to change their ways.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Carbon Taxes

Conservatives are such twits when it comes to carbon taxes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Caribou Extinction

Because of global warming and increased human population predation, some caribou populations are endangered. Inuit hunters blame aircraft. I can see how a helicopter could spook caribou, but not kill them. An Inuit hunter interviewed on CBC Radio speaking about restrictions on caribou hunting said But what about me?. He did not get it; the restrictions are for his benefit. They are to stop him from foolishly hunting the caribou into extinction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Caribou Extinction

Why are Canada’s caribou going extinct?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cars Made of Water

It takes 4,000 cubic metres (5,231.80 cubic yards) of water to make one car.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cars ⇒ Motorcycles

Much as I don’t like the noise, I have to applaud people who have given up cars for motorcycles. They are doing their part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and conserve fossil fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Case for Organic Food

Corporations say that the minute amount of pesticide residue on agri-food won’t hurt you, so the whole organic movement is a crock. Even if that were so, there are at least five other reasons to eat organically:

  1. Especially in foreign countries, workers, accidentally or through ignorance, sometimes use hundreds of times the recommended amount of pesticide. This contamination would not likely happen with organic food.
  2. Organic agriculture is easier on the environment. It builds rather than depleting soils. It reduces nitrogen runoff into streams. It uses less energy. It does not harm bees. It produces less greenhouse gas. It treats animals more humanely.
  3. Though sometimes organic food tastes identical to agri-food, the difference in taste between a free range chicken and a factory chicken is like night and day, similarly free range eggs and factory eggs.
  4. When Monsanto genetically modifies a crop to manufacture its own pesticides, you can’t wash them off. They permeate every cell. Further, the plant continues to manufacture them even after it has been harvested. GM (Genetically Modified) crops are effectively drugs, but they are never tested as thoroughly as drugs since the presumption is, if they are plants, they must be safe. They should be tested even more thoroughly since they are more widely used than drugs and any side effects are not tolerable in things eaten in large quantities. In contrast, with traditional chemical agriculture, pesticide application stops weeks prior to harvest, giving the poisons time to wash off and degrade.
  5. The main use of GMOs is to make plants Roundup-ready (tolerant to Monsanto’s herbicide to control weeds). The catch is, Roundup causes cancer.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Casual use of Must

A commercial for Zurich insurance intones The Panama canal must triple its capacity as if it were a pregnant elephant. This is foolish. As oil runs out, as we accept we can’t expel CO₂ anymore, we have to stop shipping so much tonnage all around the earth. We need instead to figure out how to acquire locally the things we need.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Casually Dropping Acid

About 1/3 of the CO₂ greenhouse gas we pump into the air dissolves in the ocean making a weak carbonic acid solution similar to Coca-Cola. It dissolves the tiny skeletons of the plankton that produce most of the world’s oxygen. If you have ever kept tropical fish (marine or fresh) you know how exquisitely sensitive they are to pH (acidity). We are foolishly flipping off the switch to life.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Catch 22

Aerosols (smoke) block heat coming from the sun. They come from coal burning, forest fires, barbecues… If there were no aerosols, the average global temperature would be 0.50°C (0.90°F) cooler. However, the greenhouse gasses from the burning overwhelms the cooling effect with a net warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Catching Up To Germany

In Germany, there are more people building windmills than building cars. Why are we North Americans so reluctant to get on with alternative energy, knowing full well there is an exploding captive market for it? Why do we so desperately want to be the Johnny-come-lately?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Catholics Want to Destroy the Earth

Given what hell planet earth will be with twice the population and what a heaven it could be with half the population, you’d think sheer greed would reverse the population explosion. However, Catholics don’t think that way. They are willing to destroy the earth with a locust swarm of humanity so long as it ends with more Catholics than Muslims.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cattle Feed

The world’s cattle eat enough grain to feed 8.7 billion people. What is really strange is grain is a completely unnatural food for cattle. They are evolved to eat grass.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Forks Over Knives

Cattle: Then and Now

Pursuit of profits make humans do some really stupid things. Consider livestock management:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) The Origin of Feces: What Excrement Tells Us About Evolution, Ecology and a Sustainable Society

The Cause of Unemployment

In 1347 the Bubonic plague swept through Europe. Part of what helped it spread were the overcrowded cities piled with garbage that attracted rats. When the plague was over, there was plenty of farmland to go around. There were plenty of jobs. Because of the shortage of labour, landlords could no longer enslave their workers and serfdom crumbled and men were able to demand a decent wage. It never seems to occur to anyone to blame a shortage of jobs and bad economic times, even in our time, on overpopulation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Cause of Water Shortages

We have just as much fresh water as we did a century a ago. The only reason we are having shortages is because we have overpopulated.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CBC Climate Change Deniers

Susan McReynolds, guest host of Cross Country Checkup chastised one of her callers for mentioning CO₂ emissions as one of the causes of the 2013 Calgary floods. She falsely claimed it was controversial and should not be discussed. The caller corrected her saying not among scientists. Prime Minister Harper also falsely reassured everyone greenhouse gas emission were not the cause. Climate scientists gave Calgarians 20 years warning this would happen. It caught Harper totally off guard. So who knows what they are talking about? I wrote Susan McReynolds and chastised her for her ecocrime lie that could kill hundreds of thousands of people and asked her to think more carefully before a repeat ecocrime motivated by a bribe or out of stupidity and ignorance.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Celsius or Fahrenheit

Scientists, climate change experts, young Canadians, Europeans all use the metric Celsius system of temperature measurement. Americans and elderly Canadians use the earlier Fahrenheit system. Unfortunately, both schemes use the degree as the unit of measure. This causes confusion when a radio announcer talks about a 2.0°C (3.6°F) rise if they don’t specify the system. I have even heard an announcer on Deutsche Welle using both systems in the same sentence without specifying.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cement and CO₂

The manufacture of cement is the #3 source of CO₂ emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Chalk and Trans-fat

In the early 1900s, vendors adulterated flour with chalk. Nobody today thinks it unreasonable to prevent them from doing that. However, many think it unreasonable to block trans-fats which are thousands of times more harmful to health.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Characteristics of Global Warming Deniers

Notice that the global warming deniers have three characteristics in common:

  1. They are highly addicted to money.
  2. They are in their sunset years.
  3. They are pathological liars. They have a history of shilling.

They don’t care what happen to everyone after they are gone. All they care about is extracting a few more dollars out of the universe by hook or by crook before they die.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Charging Electric Cars

The good news is the coming electric cars would charge when the demand otherwise was lowest. Cars parked at home could also lend power back to the grid to help it get over demand humps. Because of these benefits, outlets to charge cars should be separately metered and billed at a reduced rate.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cheap Sustainable Agriculture

The cost of sustainable agriculture that does not require pesticides, avoids soil erosion and does not require massive doses of chemical pesticides would increase the cost of agriculture, but it need only cause a small increase in the price of food. The reason is that farmers take only a small slice of each supermarket dollar.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Chemical Irresponsibility

In the USA chemicals are innocent until absolutely proven guilty and even that is not enough to get them off the market, much less withdrawing them from current use. In Europe, chemicals are untrusted until proven safe. Surely it is cheaper to avoid damage that try to repair it later.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Chemical Spray

S.C. Johnson makes a plastic device that looks like a uterus that sprays you with noxious-smelling chemicals every time you walk by. It has no effect on bed bugs, mosquitoes or house flies. But here is the amusing part. They want you to pay money on an ongoing basis to have one of these things installed in your house.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cheney the Environmental Genghis Khan

Dick Cheney is an international war criminal, mostly for his activities surrounding the Iraq war. However, the damage he did there pales compared with the damage he did for generations to come by exempting the natural gas industry from all clean water, clean air and most other environmental laws.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Chimps

Chimpanzees are our closest relative. We share 99% of our DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) with them. Yet we are not descended from them. We have a common ancestor that lived 6 million years ago.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Chinese Blithering Idiots

Tuna are endangered. However, that did not stop the asshole idiot Chinese from building a huge tuna fishing fleet and subsidising tuna fishers to see if they can kill off every last tuna within a decade.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Choice

Today is unprecedented. More people and a greater percentage of people than ever understand what a utopian future could be like. They also understand the forces that will destroy us if we fail to take action. Further, never have there been more ways we could rapidly end the human experiment on earth, with just a small misstep.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Choose!

Canada has two choices:

  1. Sacrifice an area the size of Greece to tar sands mining.
  2. Get on with alternative energy, rather than waiting to the last minute when the oil runs out.

It is a trade off of short term profit for eternal environmental damage.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Choosing Extinction

Almost every choice homo sapiens makes brings its extinction closer. It is as if they were unconsciously motivated by an intense self-loathing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christian Rejection of Science

According to a Nanos poll on 2012-12-27, 1/3 of Canadians don’t believe what scientists are telling them about global warming. This is insane. The science was established by Joseph Fourier and Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68) back in 1896. There is nothing in the least controversial. There is no counter evidence. Granted Stephen Harper and Big Oil have dissembled and lied that it is. This is a case of terminal wishful thinking. We are sending our planet over the brink because of wishful thinking. These clueless idiot deniers have no excuses to believe what they do. They don’t know what they are talking about so they should just shut up. These ninnies and those like Harper who mislead them for nefarious motives are planetary traitors, of far greater danger to the planet the Hitler ever was.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christian Self-Delusion

The ability of Christians, Republican and right wing loonies to delude themselves is beyond belief. They claim the earth is not warming even though the three hottest years up to 2000 occurred in the last six years. They claim the earth is not warming even though they can see with their own eyes warm weather birds in winter. They claim the earth is not warming even though anyone over 60 can tell them about how much colder weather used to be. They claim the earth is not warming even though science of the 1800s predicted it. They claim the earth is not warming even though all the instruments say it is. They don’t want it to be, so that is all the evidence these goofuses need.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christian Vandals

Christians believe their god carefully concocted the formula for earth’s atmosphere to create the optimum climate for humans. Yet these same Christians have no concern at all when they massively upset that balance with CO₂ and other greenhouse gas emissions. Isn’t that sort of like spitting in their god’s face? Why would not their god punish them for vandalising his handiwork? Even the scientists say you can’t do this without dire consequences.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christianity Causes Stupidity

Christian arrogance gets in the way of common sense. For example, Christian scientists floated the idea there had to be something unique about earth having water, even though they knew perfectly well hydrogen and oxygen are some of the commonest elements in the universe. They got that nutty idea from the bible where they were assured the earth was the centre of the universe and the universe was created solely for man’s pleasure.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christianity Makes People Climate Change Ninnies

Christian countries have more than their fair share of climate change deniers. This belief tends to be fueled by a religious notion that either god would never be so mean as to allow man to destroy himself or god is going to destroy the world soon, but Revelation says it will not happen by climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christians are the Death of Earth

Christians are the biggest roadblock to the survival of mankind. Not only do they refuse to take responsibility for protecting life on earth, they interfere with others who do. The problem is they are deluded into thinking their god will clean up after every mess man makes and prevent anything seriously terrible from happening even though there is no evidence he has ever done so.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christians are Useless Ninnies

Christians are the most useless ninnies. Consider a problem like global warming. Some Christians, based on no evidence at all, deny there is a problem. They trust their god would never allow such a dreadful thing to happen, so there is nothing to do. Another group of them say, Glory. The world is ending. I caint hardly wait to have lunch with Jesus. Another group of the Christians say, if only we were not such wicked people, this dreadful fate would not befall us. Our god is punishing us. We are doomed, so there is nothing to do. Arrgh! Would these nincompoops please get out the way of people who do want to take effective action.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Christy Clark

Premier Christy Clark of BC suffers from extreme wishful thinking. She imagines you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and simultaneously burn more natural gas. You cannot do both. It is basic chemistry. When the world wakes up and accepts that reality, LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) overnight will be a dead duck.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Chrysler’s Solar SUV

Chrysler deserves the ultimate BS award for advertising their Jeep SUV as solar powered on the grounds it has a sun roof.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cigarette Butts

Cigarette butts are made of plastic — cellulose acetate. They take 25 years to bio-degrade. They are thus an even bigger littering problem than candy wrappers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Clash of Values

There is clash of values between capitalism and environmentalism. Capitalism wants you to consume as much as possible. Environmentalism wants you to consume as little as possible. Capitalism wants you to buy goods primarily to display status. Environmentalism wants you to buy only the goods you need. Capitalism wants you use once and discard. Environmentalism wants you to select durable goods and to recycle them when they are worn out. Capitalism cares only about this quarter’s profit. Environmentalism is concerned about the whole planet for many generations to come. Despite its apparent might, capitalism is a dead end. It is simply not sustainable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Clathrates

In the deep oceans are huge deposits of CH₄ methane, held in molecular cages called clathrates. The cold and pressure hold them stable. However, 53 million years ago, the earth warmed much as it is now and they suddenly burped and escaped causing a runaway greenhouse effect.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Clean Coal

There is no such thing as clean coal. It is a marketing lie. It refers to capturing the noxious substances from the gases as coal burns in a lab. It has never been done commercially.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Clean Coal Oxymoron

Clean coal that you see advertised so often on TV is a fraud. It does not yet exist. Coal fired electric generation plants are the #2 source of greenhouse gas emissions in the USA. There is not a single clean coal plant in the USA that captures or sequesters CO₂. The other problem with coal is sulphur emissions which cause acid rain which kill forests and fish.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Clean Energy

Canada and America will not be able to compete in solar panels and other clean technology because other countries have much cheaper labour. He have to do research to compete with better technology. Unfortunately, sunset fossil fuel industries have a stranglehold on the governments and refuse to let them invest in clean energy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Clean Energy

The Good News

The Bad News

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Clean Energy Is A Good Thing Period

Let us say that you have been seduced by some global warming denier or other. A green economy is still a good thing. It will be cleaner, quieter, healthier, better smelling and better looking. It won’t be hostage to foreign oil. It will be more resistant to terrorist disruption. You and your grandchildren will live in world where there are still and abundance of trees, birds and frogs.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cleaning Up Bitumen is Not Possible With Today’s Technology

Canadians have been debating the wisdom of a bitumen pipeline and shipping convoys to take Alberta’s tar sands crude oil to China. Leak technology is finally getting some air time. That is important, but so is cleanup technology. Everyone keeps avoiding the elephant. In the months of debate, the key show-stopper issue never comes up, namely how the heck do you clean up a bitumen (heavy tar) spill into a river or ocean given that bitumen sinks in water and does not evaporate? Ordinary cleanup technology works by skimming gasoline or crude which floats and eventually evaporates. No one in the media has ever asked Enbridge if technology exists to clean up bitumen, much less what percentage of a spill it can recover and how quickly. The bottom line is there is no technology yet invented for cleaning up bitumen spills. The only person, besides myself, I have ever heard point this out publicly was a First Nations hereditary chief.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Based Migration

Because of global warming, plants and animals must migrate toward the poles 56.33 km (35 miles) every decade. The polar animals have no place to go, so are being driven off the planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change

The dry places on earth, will get dryer. The wet places wetter. Everything will be more extreme. Unfortunately, even tiny increases in temperature require significantly more rainfall to maintain the soil moisture needed by plants.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Is the #1 Priority

The coming effects of climate change are so severe, that you can’t balance climate change and jobs. You have to deal with climate change, then with the resources left over, think about jobs.

There is an old joke about a drunk who announced he was going to swim from New York to London. His friends said, You are crazy. You will surely die. He cheerily replied Yes, but think of the prize, $20,000,000.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Action

Science has told us, if we don’t leave 80% of fossil fuels in the ground, we will push the earth up above 2.0°C (3.6°F). This is well above the 1.5°C (2.7°F) tolerable limit. Rachel Notley ( NDP (New Democratic Party) premier of Alberta) and Justin Trudeau (Liberal Prime Minister of Canada) refuse to accept this. They want to keep mining fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) as usual and building pipelines as if there no tomorrow. Of course, there will be no tomorrow if we let them procrastinate for short term political/financial reasons. They refuse to acknowledge the more we procrastinate, the more painful and expensive the remedy will get. They are behaving like Christians, where public policy is based totally on wishful thinking.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change and the Bible

The bible has nothing to say about climate change. It does not say it will happen. It does not say it won’t. It does not say Yahweh will prevent man-caused climate change. Some ignorant Christians such as Senator Shimkus imagine climate change implies a global flood or the death of all life on earth.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change and Snow Melt

In the winter, snow falls on the mountains. In the spring and summer, it gradually melts providing year round clean water. When you get even mild global warming, snow starts later in the season and stops sooner. In spring, the snow melts faster creating floods. By summer there is only a trickle of water left. This means agriculture has to cut back and city dwellers have to live with water restrictions. That means higher food prices.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change and the Titanic

I could imagine a steward on the Titanic who urged the orchestra to play on and the people to keep dancing, fully aware there were not enough lifeboats for all. Meanwhile, he plotted his own escape plan. This is how government leaders are behaving. They have long ago given up trying to prevent global warming. All they do is plot their personal survival plans. Global warming, for them, is primarily a military problem, how to deal with the starving desperate mobs and how to grow food on the last bits of arable land on earth without those mobs uprooting it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change and Wild Fires

Five of the worst fire years in history have been since 1999 in the American south west. The fire season is now two months longer. The droughts fueling the fires are exactly what the global climate change scientists predicted.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Is Beyond Individual Action

Libertarians argue that governments should not and cannot do anything about global climate change. The solution will have to come from individuals. Consider that we have known about the severity of global warming for about 38 years and during that time, governments have refrained from acting and individuals have made not the tiniest dent in the problem.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Denial

Given that there is no evidence against climate change and given that only a few paid shills posing as scientists are skeptics, why do so many Americans identify as deniers? It could simply be that they find climate change so depressing and overwhelming that they use their wishful thinking skills honed in Christianity to pretend the world is the way they wish it to be.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Denial

People are wishfully thinking that the freaky weather, floods, fires, tornadoes’ has nothing to with global climate change even though these effects are exactly what was predicted. The denial will have to crack at some point. How much longer after that will people who have lost their homes start successfully suing green house gas emitters and sellers of fossil fuels. How much longer before governments are forced to impose massive carbon taxes to help people who have lost their homes rebuild?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Denial

People fall into various categories when it comes to climate change.

type notes examples
Republicans These people know absolutely nothing about climate change. They are told it is a liberal conspiracy, so they would not be caught dead reading about it any more than they would the Communist Manifesto or the Atheist Debater’s Handbook. Their climate-change denials are based on peer-pressure and the echo-chamber. Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Scott Pruitt, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Senator James Inhofe, Ben Stein, Rush Limbaugh.
faux climate change deniers These are typically elderly people with extensive financial holdings in the sunset fossil fuel industries. They are fully aware of the climate change catastrophe bearing down on us, but they do not care. They will be dead. What matters is winning the money game in the little time they have left. So they spend billions on FUD to confuse people about climate change. They can also be paid liars for the fossil fuel industry. They are willing to betray their planet for a decent sized hunk of change. source. The Koch Brothers, Chris Christie, Michael Crichton, Paul Driessen, Steven Milloy.
conspiracy theorists Some people just naturally gravitate to a conspiracy theory no matter how absurd. They like the idea of all scientists in the world secretly faking scientific data and peer reviewed articles, all of them motivated by greed. It does not bother them there was not one whistle-blower or one document. If the plot seems plausible to a non-scientist, it must be so, even if there is no evidence for it. Alex Jones, Internet trollers
faux champions Usually politicians who claim to be champions of dealing with climate change, particularly setting targets for 2050 when they will no longer be in office. Yet they are ironically evangelists for pipelines and increased fossil fuel extractions. They oppose carbon taxes. They oppose investment in clean energy. They are puppets of their fossil-fuel contributors and their ignorant constituents demanding fossil-fuel jobs even if they destroy the planet. Justin Trudeau, Rachel Notley, Christy Clark
lip servers These are people claim to be all for taking urgent action on climate change, but do nothing at all in their private lives to help. They still drive a gas guzzler, they never bike, their house is lit up like a Christmas tree with incandescent bulbs… They heat their whole house 24-7 whether they are home or not. They refuse to inconvenience themselves in the slightest on behalf of the planet. wealthy liberals
ego maniacs Bloggers and Youtubers who like to claim, even without any education, they know far more than the experts. They have noticed errors that the professionals missed. They desperately want to be admired. They leap on any supposed discrepancy without researching it. They desperately want the pros to be wrong or crooked. Youtubers and bloggers
third worlders People in the third world, on a per capita basis, emit far less CO₂ than we do. They have no cars. They have no giant houses to heat. They have no electric appliances. However, they are first to feel the sting of the consequence of climate change. people living outside North America and Europe.
true champions People who work tirelessly to educate the public about climate change, to debunk the climate change deniers. They put up with extreme abuse. Al Gore, David Suzuki, Elizabeth May, Andrew Weaver, Guy Dauncey, Jared Diamond, Gwynne Dyer, Tim Flannery, Richard Heinberg, George Monbiot, Bill Maher.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Denier = Creationist

Almost all climate change deniers are creationists and almost all creationists are climate change deniers. They believe the God Yahweh will clean up after his darlings. Our literal survival depends on neutralising the political power of these lunatics. This will be difficult. They have hijacked the Republican party.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Denier = Creationist

Climate Change deniers are Creationists in disguise. It is not any evidence that persuades them. It is their religious belief that Yahweh would never permit such a thing. I find that trust odd given that in a fit of pique Yahweh allegedly wiped out nearly all life on earth in a flood.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Denier Shills

The time has come to treat the global-warming denying shills who spread FUD about global warming with the same contempt we treat shills for the tobacco companies who insisted second hand smoke is harmless. It should come as no surprise that they are the same people, just shilling for new clients.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

All scientists accept climate change. Those who deny climate change are not scientists. They are either ignoramuses or shills for the sunset fossil fuel industry.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

Climate change deniers are like enormously fat women with a jones for chocolate fudge. They will now at least admit they are rapidly gaining weight, but refuse to admit eating chocolate fudge has anything to do with it. They so strongly want to keep eating fudge, they are willing to deceive themselves. They smack down anyone who dares suggest chocolate fudge is the problem.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

Climate change deniers are as nutty as those who insist the best way to put out a forest fire is to use gasoline.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

Here are some things you will discover about climate change deniers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

How do you know that climate change deniers are full of shit? One of their common claims is that the earth’s temperature is falling. They will draw you a graph to show you that. If the graph is genuine, they must have got the data from someone like NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) or the Hadley center that has temperature-measuring stations and satellites.

Ask them where they got their data. Trace the data back to a reputable agency that actually made the measurements, and see what their graphs say. If they will not tell you where their data came from, they just made it up; they just pulled it out their asses. Even if they want to claim NASA is crooked, they have to trust some agency who actually made millions of readings to compute the average temperature over the entire earth, over the entire year.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

I wish climate change deniers would read about snowball earth and what the earth was like when CO₂ was much higher millions of years ago. The earth has been able to generate these extremes all by itself. Surely it could reach even greater extremes with humans mindlessly pushing it with unprecedented CO₂ emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

The ignorance, stupidity and malice of the global warming deniers is beyond appalling. The most idiotic are those who imagine all the world’s scientists are in on some massive conspiracy including Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68), the great Swedish chemist, born in 1859, who, in 1896, discovered the CO₂ global warming effect.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

In debating with climate change deniers, you don’t have to convince them that climate change is a serious problem. They already know that. Instead, you have to convince them they should stop taking money to betray the planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

It is a wonder that climate change deniers got any traction.

I think it is all over but the shouting. The deniers have tricked us into wasting precious time. Eventually, the Koch brothers and their ilk should be executed for mass murder, but the priority now is to stop more carbon dioxide CO₂ and methane CH₄ emissions and restore the forests, particularly in the Amazon so the trees can suck the excess CO₂ out of the air.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

The Koch Brothers have been the major funders of disinformation about climate change for a number of years. Charles and David Koch run a large privately held company involved in oil and other industries, producing sizable greenhouse gas emissions. One of their climate change denier shills was Richard Muller, who ignored CO₂ concentrations and the effect they have on global temperature that has been known since the 1800s. He did a study on the accuracy of weather stations and the effect of local urban heating and came to the conclusions that these were false quibbles and all the other scientists were right all along. Greenhouse gases could have a disastrous impact on the world, he said. The Kochs have not made clear if they too have seen the light, or if they will persist in trying to fry the world like some crazed Bond villains.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

What is going wrong? Why are there still so many climate deniers? It could be because people like Senator Jim Inhofe have encouraged others to make up their mind on climate change based on personal intuition. What Inhofe is doing is as grandiose as Rush Limbaugh having an intuition-based opinion on the mass of the Higgs-Boson. They have done no study, but they think their intuition trumps the years of intensive observation and research by hundreds of thousands of scientists.

Even most deniers now agree that the world is warming. What they disagree on is whether man could cause it. What none of them know is the famous Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68) worked out the formula between CO₂ concentration and warming way back in 1896. It did not become controversial until the 1980s when the fossil fuels companies started emitting FUD. We know the CO₂ concentration is man-made because we know how much fuel we burned. We have the receipts. When we burn a litre of gasoline, we know to three decimal points how much CO₂ we release.

This is not rocket science. It is very old, very established science. Arrhenius is also the guy who discovered ions. That is how old this science is. An amateur questioning Arrhenius is like questioning Marconi and his assertion it is possible to broadcast without wires.

But why are the deniers so irrational? Many of them believe their god would never permit a global catastrophe, even though there have been world wars, plagues and a year without a summer. This closes their ears to all contrary evidence.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers

When you ask climate change deniers why they think climate change is a hoax, they have no evidence, no alternative explanation for the warming. They tell you all scientists on earth conspired to lie to make money. They offer no evidence. They have no explanation for how such a massive conspiracy could form without leaving a trace.

In science, you make money with good results not false ones. Fake ones destroy careers. Lying in science is almost impossible because all science is interconnected. Deniers imagine it works like politics where politicians like Trump can tell a different version of a lie every day without consequences.

What the deniers are doing is analogous to lying about a fire in a theatre. They lie there is nothing to worry about. The consequences of lying about climate change are the extinction of our species.

The deniers are funded by elderly billionaires like Charles Koch and David H. Koch who have heavily invested in fossil fuels. They do not care if the earth fries to a crisp. They will be dead by then. They have a vested interest in lying about the danger of fossil fuels because they don’t want CO₂ reductions depressing fossil fuel sales.

Way back in 1896, the famous Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68) worked out the mathematical formula of how much warming you would get from each gram of CO₂ released into the atmosphere. There was no objection to this science until the 1980s when we started discussing the need for CO₂ reduction. By then the science of global warming was confirmed because we knew how much fossil fuels we had burned each year and how much CO₂ that released and how the average global temperature had risen each year.

The bottom line is climate change denial is pure lies. There is no science behind it. Other than a few crackpots, those who promote climate change know they are lying. They are not simply mistaken.

Many professional deniers did similar work on behalf of big tobacco, trying to hide the health dangers. These people have seriously compromised consciences.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers are Affluent

Climate change denial is a North American phenomenon. You won’t find climate change deniers in the third world. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers are Like Pharaoh

Glaciers melting, record temperatures, bigger and nastier hurricanes, massive flooding, bigger and nastier tornadoes, plants, animals and birds showing up at higher and higher latitudes than normal… all as predicted and still the Americans studiously ignore global warming. It reminds me a bit of the story of Pharaoh in the bible unable to take a hint.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Deniers Are Like Reluctant Bathers

Some kids (and adults) postpone taking baths for weeks at a time. When they finally take the plunge they have a wonderful time. It is hard to get them out of the tub. Climate change deniers are similar. When they finally let us clean up the world, they will enjoy it as much as anyone else and will wonder why they were so reluctant to get on with enjoying a clean world.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change is Everyone’s Business

An Inuit representative speaking on the CBC radio called for Greenpeace to mind its own business and let them solve Inuit problems using traditional solutions. Greenpeace is minding its own business. Environmental problems like climate change are not like littering. What you do affects everyone on the planet.

We foolishly treat the Inuit as if they had some magic ancient wisdom as a panacea for modern ills. The Inuit have a foot in the past and a foot in the modern world. They hunt seals with ski-doos and rifles instead of dog sleds and bone spears. They eat groceries shipped in at astronomical cost from southern Canada.

The net effect of all this has been an explosion in the Inuit populations. Traditional ways can only support traditional population densities. They are driving animal species to extinction with their folly. You can’t just kill all you can catch any more. You need regulation and limits. It is not the white man being mean. It is the Inuit having more babies and living longer and adopting modern technology and in the process creating a much bigger ecological footprint.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Excuses

Imagine your barn was burning down. Your elder brother refused to help put out the fire. He explained that your younger brother was not putting out a full effort, so to encourage him to greater efforts, he was doing nothing.

This sounds absolutely crazy in the context of a barn fire, but this is precisely the logic countries, including Canada, use to excuse themselves for doing nothing about climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Excuses

One of the favourite excuses for inaction given by developed nations is that African nations don’t have greenhouse gas reduction programs. They are already emitting only about 1% per capita of the developed nations. Think about it, how much gasoline, coal and oil can you burn if you only make $1 a day?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change FUD Defeat

I have noticed that the climate change FUD is waning. It is not the persuasion of science and logic, but rather that people now talk about climate change as an accepted fact without phony pretence to controversy. Herd think is working for the good for change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Goals

Politicians like to talk about goals for climate change for the year 2100. What nonsense! You can’t make promises about what other people will do, only what you will do. The world will be a completely different place. Much stricter or laxer goals than we predict now will reveal themselves as appropriate in time. These phony goals are just a smokescreen to hide the fact politicians are doing nothing now.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change History

250 million years ago, the earth warmed to the point that frozen deposits of methane on the ocean floor melted and released their gas into the atmosphere. Methane is 25 times as potent greenhouse gas as CO₂. The greenhouse gas warming melted even more methane in a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Nearly all life on earth was wiped out except for pink algae. The melting point of methane has not changed since then and we have warmed the earth to the same tipping point. Why humans refuse to be concerned baffles me. A species so careless about its survival and so blindly focused on profit, deserves to go extinct.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) The Story of Earth and Life click to watch

Climate Change in a Nutshell

Climate change deniers do not accept that CO₂ from human burning of fossil fuels is causing the global temperature rise. The famous Swedish chemist, Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68) back in 1896 worked out just how much CO₂ and how much methane CH₄ cause just how much temperature rise.

His work did not become controversial until the Koch brothers started slinging FUD to milk the last dollars from their sunset fossil fuel investments.

We know how many tons of fossil fuels we sold world wide over the decades so we know how much CO₂ we released. It is a very simple calculation. We can also directly measure the CO₂ concentration in the air and in the bubbles in ice cores going back 400,000 years.

One of the most important things to know is CO₂ is cumulative. Even if you stopped emitting it altogether, temperatures would not drop. They would just stop getting even hotter. It would take over 1000 years of no emissions for CO₂ levels and temperatures to drop to normal. Any amount of emissions will permanently heat up the earth to some extent.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Logo

climate change logo People are wearing plain buttons like this to get people to ask about them and thus start a conversation on climate change. People are studiously ignoring the problem because it is terrifying because they prefer to listen to big oil shills because it requires them to make changes and oddly because it has a silly name global warming which sounds rather pleasant rather that the apocalypse it is. Scientists have a habit of such understatement, e.g. the big bang or cessation of cerebral function.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Climate Change Means Climate Change

Climate Change will make some spots on earth hotter, some dryer, some colder, some wetter. A tiny increase in the average temperature over all the earth, over all seasons will disrupt the ocean currents. If it were not for the currents, Scotland and Juneau would have the same climate. More heat energy is being pumped into the atmosphere and oceans, so expect everything to be more extreme. Amateurs (and oil company shills such as Stephen Harper) who do not know the first thing about climate pose as experts, basing their conclusions from observing the weather in one month in one small region of earth, not on detailed measurements of global patterns over decades. Their arrogance and wishful thinking is pathetic. These environmental vandals have not even read popular science magazines to learn what science predicts much less why.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Migration

You might think as the climate warms, animals will just move further north. The catch is wild animals mostly live in isolated reserves. There are no corridors out of the reserves to ones further north. They are all isolated. The only option for the animals is evolving to adapt without the benefit of biodiversity input from other reserves.

The biomass of our domestic animals is much larger than that of humans themselves. So it is actually our food animals pushing wildlife off the planet even more than ourselves.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Milestones

We have it hit 0.90°C (1.62°F) rise in average global temperature. This is enough to melt the polar caps, sink island nations beneath the waves, cause flash floods, cause heat waves, cause record hurricanes, cause record temperatures…

When it hits 1.7°C (3.1°F) the Great Barrier Coral Reef will die. We have already released sufficient CO₂ to hit this milestone, no matter what we do.

No matter what we do, we will hit 2.0°C (3.6°F) by the end of the century. This will be far, far more than twice as worse as what we have done so far.

If we carry on, business as usual, we will hit 4.0°C (7.2°F) by the end of the century.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Persuasion Techniques

My desire to stop the various fossil fuel pipelines is environmental, both because of the long term extinction facing us from their continued effect on global warming and because of their short term environmental pollution of oceans and streams.

The public does not appreciate the dangers from climate change. There are several reasons:

Unfortunately, environmental arguments mean nothing to Stephen Harper or Richard D. Kinder, CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Kinder Morgan. We must instead use arguments that would be persuasive to them — financial arguments:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Is Scarier Than It Sounds

There are several reasons the temperatures predicted by the climate scientists don’t sound as scary as they really are.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Skeptics are Trying to Kill You

People don’t get it yet. Those flagrantly emitting greenhouse gases are trying to kill you or your grandkids. They need to be dealt with like any other serial killers — arrest and incarcerate them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Trumps Everything

There are hundreds of crucial political, environmental and civil rights issues facing our planet. The most important of them all is climate change because green house gases are transforming the delicate balance in our atmosphere that sustains life as we know it. Without reliable water and thriving plant and animal life we, even in the west, will experience extreme food shortages. Without food and water to sustain us, these other issues are moot.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change vs ISIS

The novel George Orwell’s 1984 describes an authoritarian society run by Big Brother. Like all autocratic leaders, Big Brother convinces the population to fanatically hate/fear some group, in his case Emmanuel Goldstein, to create compliance and unity.

Donald Trump uses ISIS for this same purpose. ISIS is not nearly as big or dangerous as he portrays. Consider that cars, airplanes, street drugs, bathtubs, swimming pools, house fires, hunting rifles, donuts, handguns… all kill far more Americans than ISIS does.

If you listen to Trump, you would think ISIS is about to bring America to its knees any day now, even though they don’t even own a single row boat or plane.

However, climate change is a monstrous threat, far greater than everything I have mentioned so far combined. Even if the USA put up the fight of its life, it will still likely be crushed. People find this so frightening, that the only way they have of dealing with it is to ignore the threat and wishfully imagine, without evidence, it were just a hoax. That erases any chance of survival.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change Will Get Me if A Heart Attack Does Not

It’s spooky the way mankind has decided to commit suicide by climate change at roughly the same time I would die of natural causes anyway. It’s odd that most of the people who care about global warming are my age or higher. Perhaps the younger people who are destined to suffer most living through the tribulations, are thus the ones most in denial.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change With Your Own Eyes

Even though climate change is gradual by human standards, you can see it happening in your own back yard. Just keep track of how many of each type of bird you see each year. You will see species from down south you have never seen before. Further, cold-loving species will disappear and take up residence further north.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change’s Evil Twin

Ocean acidification is climate change’s evil twin. The greenhouse gas CO₂ dissolves in ocean water and makes it acidic. This dissolves the calcium carbonate shells of sea creatures, most notably planktons and corals. These tiny creatures are the base of the food chain.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Change’s Side Effect

Climate change heats ocean water. Hot water cannot dissolve as many gases, especially oxygen. Oxygen-deprived water does not support life. You create dead zones.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Deniers

Climate scientists monitor the Greenland ice sheets with satellites accurate to the width of a human hair. Climate deniers make their pronouncements based on a casual observation of their back yards. Yet the deniers claim they are more competent than the scientists. They have some nerve.

They are planetary traitors. I think that should be a capital offence. They do far more damage than any murderer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Climate Slobs

Climate deniers and climate slobs who refuse to act on climate change are similar to alcoholics and drug dealers. Alcoholics think only of the short-term pleasure of a drink. They ignore the long-term pain of its effect on health and their loved ones. Drug dealers sell products they know will kill their customers. They don’t care. All they think about is the profit. Climate slobs think only of the money they get from selling fossil fuels. They are quite happy to betray their planet, all the people in it and all future generations. Like alcoholics, they have a million excuses for their behaviour.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Club Of Rome’s Bad Timing

The Club of Rome was not wrong, they just got the timing a bit off by neglecting some favourable factors. Their predictions are all coming true. Unfortunately, humanity is lulled thinking nothing awful can happen because of the failure of their first cut. Some take this failure so far as justifying denying anything science has to tell them, even that the stores of fossil fuels are finite and that we have already burned more than half the oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Clueless Twinks Tinkering With Technology

Our world has become so completely dependent on technology that only a small fraction of the population understands it. Just as you would not let a toddler drive your car, you can’t trust religious believers to control the planet’s life support systems. They have a reckless overconfidence that they are more qualified than the scientists who invented them, so much so, they most often do the exact opposite of what the scientists recommend. Believers presume with absolute confidence, that if they screw up, Yahweh will clean up after them, even though Yahweh has never done this before. Electing believers to office is as unwise as recruiting all candidates from an institution for the criminally insane. The classic example is Stephen Harper, Canada’s science-hating fundamentalist Prime Minister. (Perhaps he misunderstood the meaning of his title. It is a political, not religious office.)

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Coal

42% of the CO₂ emissions come from coal. That is why replacing coal with clean energy is the top priority to get control of climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Coal Consumption

A coal-fired electric plant in the USA burns an entire trainload of coal every 12 hours.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Coal Jobs

The coal industry is screaming that reducing greenhouse gases will cause the loss of 3 million jobs. There may be coal jobs lost, but their will be just as many new jobs created. We still need energy. There will be new jobs creating it cleanly. If we don’t reduce greenhouse gases, the economy will be in far worse shape with the collapse in agriculture and the flooding of coastal cities.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Coal is More Dangerous Than Nuclear

The most dangerous machine for producing energy is not a nuclear power plant, but a coal plant, perfectly functioning according to spec. It belches out greenhouse gases.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Coal Reserves

At current levels of output, coal reserves can be expected to last 500 years but we will kill ourselves off with the greenhouse gas emissions long before then.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) click to watch see lecture by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett.

The first catch is only half that reserve is recoverable. The second catch is energy consumption is not sitting still. It has been doubling approximately every decade. Even those enormous reserves would be gobbled up in 51 years with modest 5% coal reserves growth. The third catch is burning all that coal would cause mass extinction through global warming.

How long will the coal really last? See the  calculator.

Coal Subsidies

In the United States because of the power of the coal lobby, coal fired plants get much bigger subsidies than solar. It does not matter that solar is clean, emits no greenhouse gases and uses free fuel delivered free by nature in perpetuity.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Coal vs Solar

Investors shy away from solar preferring coal because the start-up costs are higher. Several things could change that:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Coal-Fired Hair Dryer

If you use a hair dryer, over its lifetime, you will consume 0.68 tonne (¾ ton) of coal for the electricity to run it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70), source National Geographic video The Human Footprint.

Cod Greed

We are nostalgic about the people of eastern Canada and the complete collapse of the cod fishery in 1992. Their greed was monumental. Their refusal to confront reality of the damage they were doing was medieval. They more than deserved their fate.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) The End of the Line

Coddling Drivers

It is unbelievable how much we coddle automobile drivers:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Collapse of Fossil Fuels

As of 2015-03-17, the Canadian tar sands need to sell for at least $100 a barrel or it does not pay to extract it. Arctic oil which Canada and Russia are researching will have an even higher break-even point. Already Australian coal is down to $72 a ton. It no longer pays to dig it up. The price of oil has dropped to $63 a barrel. Fossil fuels are already on the ropes. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Collapse of the Natural Gas Market

In mathematics, there is something called catastrophe theory for modeling things like the growing awareness of climate change.

Every day, more people are becoming more and more alarmed about climate change. One day there will be a sudden snap. There will be a bandwagon effect, and almost overnight everyone will demand we stop burning natural gas and releasing it. (It is a greenhouse gas in itself 24 times more potent than CO₂.)

This is why it is foolhardy to make long range projections of revenue from natural gas. The market is going to suddenly disappear.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Collapse of the US Global Empire

Who would have thought that denial of environmental problems would play such a major rôle in the collapse of the American global empire.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Collective Guilt

You can think of global warming as a terrible punishment inflicted on mankind to punish them for waste, greed and selfish lack of concern for other creatures. The irony is, man knowingly and voluntarily brought the catastrophe upon themselves. It is as if mankind collectively and unconsciously decided to commit suicide out of guilt.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Collective Guilt

You could look on global warming as an extreme cosmic punishment for man’s greed and selfishness. The big irony is he knowingly brought it on himself, as if unconsciously he wanted to annihilate himself in shame over his crimes against the planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Colossal Fossil Award

At the Copenhagen U.N. climate conference in 2008-12, Canada won an award — the Colossal Fossil, for Stephen Harper’s exceptional work blocking action on climate change not just in Canada but also in other countries.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Competitive Law Growing

The sport of choice for suburban men is competitive lawn growing. It is even more environmentally destructive than auto racing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Competitive Lawn Growing

grass
grass

Here in Victoria, the grass is lushest in the cool damp days of February. Yet no one cuts it. They just enjoy it and the crocuses and snowdrops poking through. Later in the year, when it is much more difficult to keep a lawn green, competitive lawn growing season starts with all its rituals of cutting, illegal watering and fertilising. In North America lawn is the biggest crop, bigger even than corn or wheat. Oddly, gardeners discard the entire crop, perhaps as some sort of unconscious religious sacrifice.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conceited Technological Man

Technological/commercial man is so conceited that he seriously entertains the notion he is the most intelligent being in the entire universe. Yet his reign will last no more than 300 years, one of the shortest ever before he destroys himself and a good chunk of his planet in the process. Even the dinosaurs were not so stupid as to deliberately destroy themselves.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Concentrated = Dangerous

Unfortunately, the more concentrated a fuel is, the more dangerous it is to handle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Condemned To Gridlock

Through their own selfishness, stubbornness and stupidity, drivers condemn themselves to gridlock.

Drivers create their own hell. They fully deserve it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Confusing Conservatively

Early in my computer career, I designed high voltage transmission lines for BC Hydro. We designed them conservatively. We wanted to make very, very sure they would not fall down, even in freakishly hot, cold, icy or windy weather. So we designed for the worst cases plus a fat safety factor. Oddly the oil companies use the word conservative in precisely the reverse sense when talking about policies to deal with global warming. What they mean by conservative is doing nothing, spending nothing, presuming the best possible case or relying on technology not yet invented, in other words what most people would call cavalier or wildly optimistic.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Congestion

Why are the roads congested?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conquering Nature

Have those loons who talk about conquering nature ever thought about what would happen if they succeeded?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Consequences for Denial

Calgarians are going to pay through the nose for their selfish and greedy emissions of CO₂ from bitumen sales which is causing world-wide extreme weather including the Calgary floods. For a start they will have to rebuild all the bridges, culverts and roads ripped out by the floods. They will have to reinforce all such infrastructure for even worse weather to come. Waters inundated the basements and first floors of many homes. Cleaning crews with fans will have to help get rid of the mud, water, damp and mould. Drywall will have to be replaced. Wood floors will have to be refinished or replaced. Carpets will have to be replaced. Furnishings and appliances will have to be replaced. Some electrical wiring will have to be redone. Furnaces, hot water heaters, washers, dryers and other basement appliances may need to be replaced. Imagine the cost of similar repair work done as a renovation. We could easily be talking $20,000 to $100,000 per home. Because of the shortage of labour capable of doing these restorations, homeowners will pay a premium and will have to get in line. Many homeowners are at the limit of their ability to borrow already and will have to sell their damaged homes at a loss. This is poetic justice for joining in the Calgary’s gang rape of planet earth. Ironically insurance companies do not cover the damage, claiming it is an act of God. It is most definitely not an act of a deity; it is a deliberate malicious act of Stephen Harper, Alison Redford and the CEOs of big oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conservative

Conservative usually means cautious, avoiding risk. But on the matter of climate change, the people who identify as conservatives are recommending a reckless long-shot gamble, that all the world’s scientists are wrong, based on no evidence that could be so. They are anything but conservative. They are wishful thinkers. They are bat-shit crazy cavalier.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conservative Weasel

Deepak Obrai is an environmental pig running for the leader of the Conservative Party. He talks about how Canada puts only a fraction of the greenhouse gases into the world, therefore we need do nothing useful. Yet on a per capita basis we Canadians are about as bad as they get. Per capita emissions are what count. Everyone on earth has to do their bit no matter where they live. That we Canadians are collected politically into a fairly small country means nothing to nature. Nature does not see the borders. It just sees the emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conserving Taxi Gas

The laws governing taxis result in taxis traveling long distances without passengers. This is insane. We need to burn the laws and start over with the goal of transporting the most people with the least gas.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conserving Water

Global warming is causing more and more droughts. This means more and more municipalities are trying to deal with the problem of not having enough water. What can they do to make it stretch?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Considering Alternatives to Capitalism

It is becoming clear capitalism, as we currently practice it, is rapidly destroying the environment that sustains us. We have no choice but to examine some alternatives. Because of cold war propaganda and because the Soviets and Chinese implemented theoretical Communism in such authoritarian ways, it never occurs to us there could be even one good idea to salvage from the thinking of the Communist philosophers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Considering the Consequences

Humans are like little children when they invent something that will transform the earth, like the automobile, steamships, chemical fertilizers, electric dams… They instantly start covering the earth with the new technology without spending so much as a millisecond trying to predict the side effects or what could be done about them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Consistent Desire To Destroy

The good folk of British Columbia simultaneously vote against building sewage treatment plants and for oil tanker ports. At least they are consistent in wanting to destroy the marine environment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conspicuous Consumption

In Arizona, 75% of the water shipped into the cities at great expense from hundreds of miles away, is used to water lawns.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conspicuous Waste

People use cars and houses to display status. This is why they so stubbornly refuse to make them energy efficient. Conspicuous waste is the essence of status display.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conspiracy Theorists

I was quite surprised how many people asserted that all the world’s scientists had formed a conspiracy to falsify all the climate data. The alleged motive for this was to increase government funding. They could offer no evidence for this. They considered it self-evident (perhaps based on their own motivators).

To me, the very notion was preposterous. It would be impossible to co-ordinate such a conspiracy. Concocting terabytes of consistent false data would be extremely difficult. It would impossible to gain sufficient consensus. Surely someone would spill the beans with evidence. Finally motivation. Scientists are motivated less by money and more by desire for fame than most. They are also motivated by the thrill of discovery.

It could well be the people who started this rumour did not believe it themselves. They just started it for the benefit of big oil to delay curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Various right wingers mindlessly passed in on because right wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh promoted it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Consumption Rate

If your country were spending money 3,000,000 times faster than it was taking it in, you would surely feel alarmed. We are burning oil 3,000,000 times faster than nature produces it; why are you not similarly concerned?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Contaminated Organic Foods

In the United States, the concept of Organic Food has become so corrupted that over 200 non-organic ingredients are permitted in foods designated organic.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Controlling HIV

Trying to convince men infected with HIV to avoid having unprotected sex and infecting women goes against their deep-seated biological urge to fill the universe with copies of their own DNA, damn the consequences to their offspring or anyone else.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Conversion

Most Republican politicians were on board for reducing CO₂. Then they all suddenly flipped, pretending to be deniers. The Koch brothers and the fossil fuel companies gave them billions of dollars in bribes/contributions to do so. When politicians resisted, the Kochs massively funded Tea Party climate change deniers to challenge them in the primaries.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cooking The Books

The Enron scam worked by leaving costs off the books. The entire agribusiness industry is doing the same thing. They are leaving out the costs of soil depletion, aquifer destruction, water pollution, destruction of biodiversity, soil salinisation and leaking of artificial genes into wild populations. Ancient civilisations were more careful than we are about soil erosion and gradually as the soil was lost, yields dropped, to the point where entire civilisation collapsed. This has happened time after time. Any uncorrected soil erosion will eventually result in fields incapable of growing crops.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cooking The Books

The Enron scam worked by leaving costs off the books. The entire fossil fuel business is pulling a similar scam by ignoring the costs of greenhouse gas emissions, the choking of the oceans with discarded plastic that becomes a gill-choking confetti, the destruction of eco-systems with oil spills and the pollution of the aquifers and waterways with petro-chemicals.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Coping Without Cars

Imagine if cars stopped running. It might be gas costs became too high, Iran blocked oil shipments through the Straits of Hormuz, a solar flare fried their electronic ignition systems or people came to their senses realising emitting greenhouse gases is tantamount to suicide. How would you cope? Some people might use bicycles with trailers to go shopping. Others might hire young people to run errands for them. Many would discover they could do their work mostly from home using telecommuting. You might decide to do most of your shopping locally. You might rely on retailers to deliver goods by cart, perhaps drawn by horses, donkeys, large dogs or goats. You would send your kids to local music teachers and local recreational facilities so they could get there on foot. You might tear up the lawn and plant something you could eat or trade with your neighbours for fresh produce. It would be inconvenient, but not the end of the world.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Coral Reefs

Coral reefs cover only 0.5% of the ocean bottom, yet harbour 25% of all fish species. Corals are extremely sensitive to ocean temperature. Global warming from greenhouse gas emissions is rapidly wiping them out.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Corn as Fuel

Corn as biofuel is a fraud. It produces more CO₂ than regular gasoline since there is so much CO₂ released tending the corn and distilling the ethanol. It only makes sense economically because of the $5 billion a year in American agricultural subsidies originally intended to ensure plentiful, inexpensive food. Further, taking land from agricultural production for biofuel creates food shortages and increases food prices. And finally burning the corn is 81% more efficient than making it into ethanol.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Corporate Lies

Consider how tobacco, pesticide, oil… companies lied without restraint. I think it is time to presume anything any corporation says is a lie, unless there is evidence to the contrary.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Corporate Mole

Michael R. Taylor
Michael R. Taylor

Consider the career of Michael R. Taylor, the consummate corporate mole. He vibrated back and forth between government and industry 12 times, always serving corporate interests. A few highlights: He was a lawyer for Monsanto, the most evil corporation on earth. The FDA (Federal Drug Administration) hired him to be director of policy even though he had no scientific credentials. He was VP (Vice President) of Monsanto. He was Obama’s advisor.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Corporations Need Supervision

I don’t understand this naïve trust people have in corporations, claiming they need even less oversight than individuals. Corporations have proved themselves negligent by triggering the biggest mass extinction event since the end of the dinosaurs, brought on global warming and destroyed the forests which act as the lungs of our planet just to mention three of their major eco-crimes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Corporations Plotting To Kill Your Grandkids

If you discovered that a corporation were actively plotting to kill your children and grandchildren, would you continue to patronise them? Then why are you patronising the oil and coal companies who are, with malicious intent and profit motive, trying to turn earth to a cinder with ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Corporations Without Conscience

A corporation will happily bribe politicians to enact policies that will make earth uninhabitable if they think it will improve the next quarter profit by 1%. They are like children with super powers and no conscience or thought for the morrow.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Correcting For the Sins Of Your Parents

If your parents were environmentally irresponsible and had more than two children, you and your siblings can compensate to correct the mini population explosion by limiting yourself to four children among you.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cosmic Injustice

The cosmic injustice of global warming is that the nations that did the least to cause it will suffer most.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cosmic Injustice

There is cosmic injustice in the wealthy conspicuous consumers having the easiest time surviving the environmental collapse they caused.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cosmic Injustice

There is a lack of cosmic justice surrounding global warming. Americans created nearly all the CO₂ causing global warming, but those who pay the penalty are the innocent people of the Seychelles whose island country is disappearing under the waves, the Pakistanis whose low lying country is being flooded out, the indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest dying of drought, the reptiles of Australia and the frogs that have thrived on planet earth since the first animals left the water. Californians, the most ecologically aware Americans, have had to deal with extreme wildfires and, of course, the impoverished people of Louisiana had to bear the brunt of Katrina. I spit at those smug SUV owners and overpowered penismobiles who just don’t give a flying fig about the effect they have on others.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cost Of Bee Killing

We are rapidly wiping out the bees with pesticides. When the bees are gone, the flowering plants that rely on them for pollination will also go extinct. This has happened already in 1980 in Sechuan province in China. The motive is financial. The irony is, once the bees are gone, it will cost the USA $90 billion a year for hand pollination of food crops.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cost of Choosing to Overpopulate

Consider how much we humans have given up by overpopulating. Almost nobody can afford a house with 40 hectares (98.84 acres) surrounding it. Japanese people resort to robotic pets since real ones are not permitted in tight quarters. We have wars over water and land to grow food in Africa and Israel. We have destroyed the very forests that purify the air we breathe.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cost of Clean

Clean solar has already dropped in price equal to the cost of fossil fuels for providing electricity to homes even with the temporary Saudi-created low oil prices.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cost of Climate Change

According to the British Government, climate change costs us $3 trillion dollars a year.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cost of Polluting

If capitalists were more strict in computing costs, they would behave better. For example, a typical American company manufactures a poison then discards it into a local river, aka pollution. Clearly this is foolish behaviour from an economic point of view. They either should stop manufacturing the poison or they should sell it, or modify it is some way so that can sell it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Counter Fact for Deniers

I wonder how the global warming deniers explain the fact that the coal industry is spending so much on research on how to burn coal without emitting CO₂.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Counter-Intuitive Nature

Human intuition thinks that if something has not happened in a while, it probably won’t likely happen again. However, nature confounds that intuition. The longer since an earthquake, the more probable a big one, ditto for volcanoes and hurricanes. Frequent small earthquakes relieve stress, preventing a big one. Small eruptions vent pressure, preventing a big one. Small hurricanes use up the heat in the ocean water, preventing a big one.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Country-Wrecker

Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, (the author of the great Gulf of Mexico oil spill) has damaged the USA far more than the combined antics of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yet Americans are not even impolite to Mr. Hayward.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cowboys of the Apocalypse

The five cowboys of the apocalypse are cars, chainsaws, cattle, coal and cement. These are the major means man is using to crank up the global thermostat with CO₂.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cowed Scientists

Scientists, with the exception of NASA ’s Hansen, are preposterously cowed by big oil. They are like a fireman at a fire at the Zambelli fireworks plant refusing to speculate on the cause of the fire.

Fourier and Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68)worked out back in 1896 how much the earth would heat up given various amounts of CO₂ in the atmosphere. We can measure how much CO₂ there is. We know how much fossil fuels we have burned so we can calculate how much CO₂ we humans released. We can measure the average temperature increase. All is coming true just as predicted.

We know that heat is energy and adding heat to the atmosphere will cause more energetic weather, bigger storms, bigger floods, dryer droughts, bigger wildfires, receding glaciers, plants, animals and birds showing up at higher and higher latitudes than normal. This is exactly what we are seeing. Yet still scientists have not the balls to tell the yahoo Australians who imagine they understand science claiming there is no problem to go find another planet to ruin. You cannot wait until the earth is literally on fire to act. By then it will be way way too late do anything.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CO₂

The 2014 average annual concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere was 398.55 parts per million, about 0.04%. It is increasing at 2.1 ppm per year. In 1700 it was estimated at 280 ppm.

That tiny concentration is sufficient to sustain all the plant life on earth. It is also sufficient to keep the world warm. The CO₂ is transparent to the visible and UV (ultraviolet) radiation from the sun. It hits the earth and is reflected back as infrared radiation. The CO₂ blocks the infrared from leaving, so heat builds up on earth. A greenhouse works in a similar way.

CO₂ is not the only greenhouse gas. For example, methane (natural gas/cow farts) is 24 times as potent.

This is not in the least controversial. The math for the way CO₂ warms the earth was discovered way back in the 1800s. We know humans are the source because we know how much fossil fuels we have sold and burned.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CO₂

In the last 100 years, atmospheric CO₂ has risen by . There is only one thing that can account for that massive increase — burning fossil fuels. We know how much fossil fuels we have burned and that precisely accounts for the rise.

At the end of the ice age, the seas rose 5 metres (16.40 ft) per century, they did not have CO₂ spurring it on. With the additional CO₂ effect, we can expect 4.88 metres (16 ft) sea rise per century.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CO₂ and Ice

For millions of years, earth was covered with ice 1 km (0.62 mile) thick. The temperature was -50°C (-58°F). Then volcanoes released massive amounts of CO₂. Within a few hundred years all the ice melted and the temperature soared to 50°C (122°F). Idiotic humans are repeating the experiment releasing massive amounts of CO₂. They know darn well what will happen, but they do it anyway. All they care about is themselves and their temporary convenience, not their grandchildren or children. No other creature plots to murder all successive generations.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CO₂ Balance

You breathe out about 215.46 kg (475 lbs) of carbon dioxide each year. Just to absorb the CO₂ in your breath, not considering the 20.40 tonnes (22.49 tons) the average American creates by burning fuels, requires 7 trees. To handle all the CO₂ requires 95 trees. We have already leveled over half the planet’s forests, which was suicidal considering we have only a minute fraction of the trees we need.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CO₂ Blanket

Since 1750, global average levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere have increased to 141% of the pre-industrial concentration of 278 parts per million (ppm). According to the WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) there were 393.1 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2012, an increase of 2.2 ppm over 2011. All those little CO₂ molecules behave like tiny blankets warming up the earth. We have not had this much CO₂ for millions of years.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CO₂ Calculations

Let’s say you wanted to know the temperature of the earth 50,000 years ago. You would go to Antarctica, drill down through 50,000 layers of ice, collect a sample, find a bubble in it and measure the proportion of CO₂ in it. Then, using math discovered in the 1800s, you could calculate the temperature, the more CO₂, the higher the temperature. But wait, isn’t that the exact same math scientists use to predict global warming based on greenhouse gas emissions? Yes. The global warming deniers are quite happy with the math when it is used to compute past temperatures but reject it when it is used to predict future temperatures. But that does not make sense. Lies don’t have to make sense.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CO₂ Has Huge Power to Control Temperature

Lay people don’t have the proper respect for CO₂. They think of it as the innocuous gas that gives soft drinks their fizz. But millions of years ago when the sun shone only 1/3 as brightly as it does today, CO₂ kept the world warm. In other words it has the power to heat our planet comparable to the sun being three times hotter. Excess amounts on other planets makes them so hot, lead melts.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CO₂ Levels

According to Nova, today’s CO₂ levels are much higher than they have been at any time in the last 500,000 years. We are in no way prepared to put up with even a tiny fraction of the crazy weather that came down during the last 500,000 years and we are begging for much worse with our utterly out-of-control CO₂ emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

CO₂ Redline

The latest science tells us the redline for CO₂ is 350 ppm. That is the maximum level that will sustain life on earth and sustain technological civilisation. We have already hit 390 ppm. The negative effects are delayed. If we are to survive, it is no longer enough to stop putting more CO₂ into the air, we have to start removing it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Crackpot Fear of Smart Meters

To the crazies who think smart meters are a plot to spy on your sex habits:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cranks For Balance

When there is a TV show on space exploration, we don’t insist on inviting flat earthers for balance. When there is a show on geology, we don’t insist on religious fundamentalists for balance. It is just as silly to provide a free platform for crank climate change deniers at every discussion of global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Crazy Man

If your house is on fire and you are hosing it down with water and Stephen Harper comes along and starts hosing it down with gasoline, what do you do? You have to stop him somehow. It is not a matter of negotiating a compromise or striking a balance between sane and insane behaviours. That is a metaphor for Stephen Harper and global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Creating Jobs

Yes, its true, oil tankers running along the BC coast will create jobs — for Thai sailors and for Canadians cleaning up oil spills.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Criminal Reproduction

Adding yet another human to a planet that is already full, is indirect act of murder. It should be punished at the minimum by some sort of forced birth control to prevent a repeat. It defensible to replace yourself and your partner, by having at most two children, but certainly no more.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cross Purposes

Building gas and oil pipelines and carbon taxes work at cross purposes. Just one pipeline produces enough greenhouse gases to totally saturate our targets — with nothing left over for cars, industry, other pipelines, heating etc.

Make up your bloody mind. Do you want to survive or not? If we want to survive, no matter how expensive or inconvenient, we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Crossover

Solar-generated electricity is now cheaper than electricity produced by burning natural gas. As more solar panels are built, the cost per panel goes down. As more gas is used, the price increases, because it is a shrinking resource that takes more work to find. People won’t clean up to save their lives, but they will switch to solar to save a few pennies.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Crowding

packed Volswagen beetle

When 17 people crammed into a 1971 Volkswagen beetle, nobody seriously claimed that the problem was the vehicle was too small, or that better technology was needed for cramming people in. The problem was simply trying to pack too many people into a space that could only hold four comfortably. Yet when we try to pack 10 billion people onto a planet that can only support half a billion, we kid ourselves that our cleverness must inevitably find a way to do it comfortably.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cruelty of Natural Birth

We need to sell women the idea that is it is unspeakably selfish and heartless to bring yet another child into the world when there are so many abandoned children needing homes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cuba Forced To Go Sustainable

When the Soviet block collapsed, Cuba faced a crisis. It has only 1/20 the oil to support its industrial agriculture to create pesticides, fertilisers and to run the tractors. It required 12 units of energy to produce 1 unit of food energy. Academics persuaded the government to abandon monoculture, to turn every square inch of available land even in cities to farming, to use compost and worms, to use organic pest control, to encourage biodiversity… basically the opposite of everything Monsanto promotes. Everyone was astonished when yields, including dairy, doubled and farming became so profitable that farmers made twice as much money as doctors. The CBC Nature Of Things did an episode about it called The Accidental Revolution, Part 1.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Culling Excess Humans

People are always calling for culls to some species or other. The most seriously over-populated animal is homo-sapiens, yet humans oppose even the most humane means of reducing that excess, such as birth control pills. They even demand subsidies for hard core breeders.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Culling Rare Elephants

We cull elephants even though there their numbers are rapidly declining, yet the creature in most need of a cull is homo sapiens. There are more humans than there is food, water or resources to support them. Humans are destroying the environment in a scramble for resources. Modern war mainly maims, not kills, so it no longer helps much. Modern medicine has defanged the infectious disease plague. The solution is birth control or sterilisation. We need to pay women not to have babies. We need propaganda to emphasise the downside and common disappointments of having children. We need to make sure that only parents who can emotionally and financially support children are entrusted with their care.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Curbing Fossil Fuel Addiction

Children have tantrums when mothers limit their intake of candy. They see their mother as mean or abstemious. They refuse to believe Mom’s warning that sugar consumption is harmful to health. All they care about is the sugar rush. In a similar way, the BC Liberals and corporations have tantrums when environmentalists try to get them to limit the use of fossil fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Curbing the Population Explosion

Nearly everyone imagines that stopping the population explosion is impossible save via some global catastrophe. What about simply having fewer babies? Refraining from having babies is considerably easier than refraining from smoking. Excess population is far more dangerous to the planet than smoking. If people had half as many babies as usual, in a generation we would have reduced the global population in half, thus turning intractable global problems into solvable ones.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Current Mass Extinction Event

Amphibians (frogs and salamanders) are the barometer of environmental health. 1/3 of all amphibian species are facing imminent extinction. There has not been such a mass extinction in 65 million years, since the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Curse

Humans (and other animals) are cursed with a biological urge to fill the universe with copies of their own DNA, even if doing so makes the carriers of those copies utterly miserable from the effects of overpopulation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cutting Meat Consumption

You can be just as much an environmental greenhouse gas emissions hero as your neighbour who upgraded to a hybrid vehicle by cutting your family’s meat consumption in half.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Cycling

Switching from cars to bicycles is an incredible win:

Everyone should visit the Netherlands to see how pleasant a carless society is. Paris goes carless three days a week. As fossil fuels become increasingly rare and expensive and as the absolute necessity for curbing greenhouse gases sinks in, we will all be giving up our cars for bicycles (perhaps electric assisted for the disabled or elderly).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Damage Database

We need a global database that consolidates environmental information about products, chemicals and components that tells you how much damage they do to the environment:

Then a computer could compare two manufacturing processes, or consumer items for environmental friendliness. You could boil it down to a friendliness rating to help guide every consumer purchase. It would be organised as the mother of all BOMP (Bill Of Materials Processor), allowing loops, e.g. the impact of steel depends on the impact of the use of electricity used to make it and the impact of electricity depends on the impact of the steel used to build the electric grid.

For example, if the CO₂ impact of manufacturing changes NaOH, (sodium hydroxide) that impact would propagate to all processes that use NaOH.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Damage Should Be Built Into the Price

The damage fossil fuels do with greenhouse gas emissions is not built into the price. There is no economic incentive to offer clean energy. The solution is politically unpopular yet refusing to enact is mass suicide. We must built the damage into the cost, namely a pollution tax on gasoline, oil and natural gas and use it to subsidise clean energy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Damn Fertility Treatments

I am angry at couples who spend tens of thousands of dollars on fertility treatments when the world is already overpopulated and when there are already so many babies and children going without parents.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Damn the Stupid People!

I get so angry at people who think you can just ignore climate change because dealing with it is inconvenient. If you don’t get on top of it, you kill billions of people. Is that not more important than a very temporary kick to the economy?

Fossil fuels are a dead end. It is stupid economically to bank on them. Not that long from now, they are going to die completely. It will happen when clean energy costs drop below fossil fuel costs, or sooner if something dramatic happens with climate change that scares everyone. The wise thing to do is get on the clean energy band wagon.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dangerous Deserts

People who live in deserts are risk takers. All it takes is for power, water or transportation systems to fail and they can die within days if they are not well prepared. The faith people have that these systems will always be there for them outstrips religious belief. It helps to travel internationally to learn their functioning is not guaranteed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Dangerous Experiment

Over the last million years, the average temperature of earth has been no hotter than 1.00°C (1.80°F) than it is now. Yet we are aiming to heat up the earth by 6.0°C (10.8°F).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

David Black’s Plan

Tycoon David Black has proposed building a refinery near Kitimat in BC and shipping only refined petroleum products rather than raw bitumen as is now planned. Mr. Black’s proposal is infinitely better than the existing Enbridge plan. With Mr. Black’s plan, if we have a spill from tankers, all that will be released are light distillates like gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel, which are relatively easy to clean up. They float on the surface, where they can be skimmed and eventually evaporate.

Crude oil is the same density as water. If it hits water, it gets churned into the water. According to the guy who manages the daily oil spill drills for Washington state, you are lucky to recover 3 to 5% of it. Bitumen is denser than water. If it hits water, it sinks. You have no hope of cleaning it up. Mr. Black’s plan avoids this major problem.

NOAA says only 25% of the BP Deepwater Horizon spill was removed, including recovery, burning and evaporation. Unlike the BP crude oil spill, bitumen sinks and does not evaporate.

However, that still leaves two major drawbacks that both plans have in common:

  1. If there a pipeline spill near a river, the bitumen cannot be cleaned up. Enbridge has proved itself incompetent at preventing spills.
  2. Tar sands oil is a disaster from the point of view of global warming. The extraction process emits huge amounts of greenhouse gases as does the burning, much more than conventional oil. It would be suicidal to burn this oil or let anyone else burn it. The deposit is so huge, burning it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and triggers runaway unstoppable climate change. If we must burn fossil fuels, let us burn much cleaner natural gas instead.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

David H. Koch

David H. Koch is a puzzling man. He donates millions of dollars to fund some of the best science programming on Nova. Then he turns around and spends billions of dollars on climate change disinformation. He spreads lies about climate change because he is heavily invested in sunset fossil fuels. He does not want any action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because it would impact sales of fossil fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dawn Dissembling

Dawn Dishwashing Liquid TV ads claim they donate $1 from the sale of every bottle to helping clean up wildlife caught in oil spills. I had been buying this product feeling virtuous until I read the fine print. (I can read the bottom line on a reading eye chart. I had trouble reading Dawn’s disclaimer.) It turns out they do no such thing. Only if you visit their website and pass a gauntlet of tests do they donate the $1. Further, they cap their donations at $500,000 no matter how much soap they sell. Their detergent donations cleaned up 75,000 waterfowl.

The gauntlet includes:

What Dawn has done is unforgivable, effectively using fraudulent advertising to steal people’s donations to help oil-soaked wildlife. The executives responsible should be criminally prosecuted and forced to pay up the $1 on every bottle as promised.

Note the website now says, more truthfully one bottle can = $1 to save wildlife, where the TV ads fraudulently claim one bottle = $1 to save wildlife. They should also be required to place ads confessing to the net amount per bottle they actually donated.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dawn Fraud

Proctor & Gamble’s Dawn dishwashing detergent fraudulently advertises they donate $1 for every bottle to dish-washing detergent sold to help clean wildlife damaged by oil spills. This is a lie. In the ultra-fine print they tell you they donate only if you go to a website and negotiate a gauntlet designed to discourage you, including browser specific html, an eyesight test and a typing test. Finally, they confess in the fine print that they will donate no more that $500,000 no matter how many bottles they sell. Granted, their offer did seem too good to be true. This is really sick, ripping off animals hurt by the BP oil spill.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dead Zones

Huge dead zones have formed in the oceans all over the earth. The entire Baltic Sea has become one. There is one off the coast of Oregon. A dead zone has no dissolved oxygen whatsoever. This means no animal life of any kind can survive there. There are no fish, jellyfish, crustaceans, clams, corals, crabs, shrimps, larvae… Of course, blue-green algae can thrive since they don’t consume oxygen. These zones are growing rapidly, as a complex side effect of global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dead Zones

Man has created ever-expanding dead zones in the coastal waters of the oceans all over the world where there is not sufficient oxygen for fish or other sea creatures to survive. There are a few species such as giant jelly fish and vampire squids from hell (Vampyroteuthis infernalis, a living fossil, the predecessor to both squid and octopus) that have evolved to live in low oxygen conditions. It seems odd we humans are bequeathing the oceans to creatures we don’t like all that much.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Deadbeat Humans

If you are a typical human, chances are you have done absolutely nothing to help make your planet sustainable. You have left it up to others, who have also done nothing. You may even be one of those conspicuous wasters like Glenn Beck who uses extra plastic bags and drives an SUV just to irritate environmentalists. The consequences of this mass irresponsibility are coming to roost, probably within a decade after I die. If then, when you find yourself, in abject misery because of some environmental collapse, please imagine me taunting you with I told you so. If by chance, you did take reasonable action, don’t you feel ever so much better that your predicament is not your fault?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Deadbeat Parents

A few generations ago, parents would sacrifice everything to give their children an education, a farm or a new country with political freedom and economic opportunity. However, today, parents seem unwilling to make even the most minor sacrifices for subsequent generations, most notably sacrifices to deal with global warming, alternative energy and pollution. What changed? One factor is the rise of Christian end-of-times cults. These loons believe God is about to destroy the world, so there is no point in doing anything to sustain it. Another is the generation gulf. Young people’s fashion, speech, tattoos, piercings, music etc. are so repulsive to their parents, parents come to hate their kids.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dealing With An Asteroid on Collision Path

If a large asteroid were discovered on track to obliterate earth in 40 years, given man’s track record with global warming, you could expect prominent Republicans to declare it a hoax. Countries would fight with each other, each claiming someone else should fund a solution. We would do nothing until it was too late.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Death of Tar Sands Oil

Former Prime Minister Harper put all of Canada’s eggs in the oil basket. He bet the farm and lost. The price of oil plummeted as the USA embraced fracking and became Canada’s competitor instead of customer. Saudi Arabia dropped oil prices to 25% of what they were. Competing clean energies such as solar and wind rapidly dropped in cost. Canada’s tar sands oil is very expensive to produce. We could not even afford to produce it at 0 profit. To cap it off Obama killed the Keystone pipeline, (though Trump revived it).

In addition environmental concerns rose, both the contaminating of soils and rivers and also CO₂ emissions that cause climate change.

Canada’s tar sands oil is both extremely dirty and extremely expensive.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Deciding to Have a Baby

Parents so often bring yet another mouth into a world already extremely overpopulated. I wish parents would first interview 100 parents of grown children to learn what they are getting into:

It is a pig in the poke. You never know what you are going to get, but whatever it is, you are stuck with it. Make sure you are ready to handle anything before you stop using birth control.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Decline of Animal Eating

I predict eating animals will disappear within a century. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Decline of Golf

It is a Good Thing™ golf is in decline. It the most anti-environmental sport. It takes huge amounts of water and land. It poisons the rivers with fertiliser and insecticide runoff. We cannot afford to turn farmland into playgrounds for the uberrich.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Decline of Spinach

When I was born in 1948, spinach contained 158 milligrams of iron per 100 grams. By 1973 it plummeted to 2.2 milligrams. In other words, spinach used to be 72 times as nutritious in 1948. What happened? Factory farming replaces only four minerals: potassium, calcium, nitrogen and phosphates with fertilisers. The trace minerals such as iron and zinc have long been leached out of the soil by intensive monoculture.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Declining Oil Production

The world is producing 8 million barrels of oil less each day. Yet Big Oil still tries to convince American that the future is oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Deep Ocean Life

In terms of biomass, number of individuals and number of species, most life on earth lives in the deep oceans.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Definition of Dow Jones Index

The Dow Jones is an index of how fast man is destroying the environment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Definition of Reserves

For oil to be useful, you must make more money selling it than you spend extracting it. Naturally, oil companies extract the easy oil first. Much of what we count as reserves are not economically viable or are just marginal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Deforestation

When forests are burned or cleared, the CO₂ sequestered in them is released back into the atmosphere. Deforestation has about same effect as the global CO₂ emissions from transportation combined air, rail, trucks, automobiles, ships…

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Demand the Death Penalty

If people understood just how serious global warming is, they would demand the death penalty for people driving with more than one unoccupied seat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Democratic Breakdown

Democracy is breaking down in Canada. Nobody wants more pesticides in food or less meat inspection but that is what the Conservative government is giving them. The problem is the system of legalised bribery where corporations can bribe politicians with massive direct and indirect campaign contributions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Denial

There are many Americans who think climate change is a hoax. This is wishful thinking. We all agree it would be nice if this were so. American Christians are deeply practiced at wishful thinking. Further, big oil has been lying to them for decades. They ignore scientists and listen to the echo chamber. They never hear a word contrary to what they believe.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Denial is not Protection

Denying global warming does not protect such fools from the consequences of it any more than denying arsenic is poisonous will allow gobbling it without effect.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Denier Lie

One of the many lies that climate change deniers like to tell is that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) represents just a handful of people. It is an intergovernmental organisation with 195 member countries and thousands of scientists publishing climate change research.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dependence on Oil

We humans have a serious problem. We are in the midst of a population explosion sustained by oil. As the oil runs out, we will only have the resources to support 1 in 9 of the current population. If we want to avoid the chaos of mass famines and wars, it would be wise to lower the population gradually via non-violent means. Various groups have attacked the population problem in different ways:

  1. The pope urges his flock to breed like rabbits and harass people who do not have children, particularly homosexuals.
  2. Republicans lobby hard to make sex education, abortion and birth control illegal to increase pregnancies by single women.
  3. Soldiers go to foreign countries and kill people.
  4. Priests force sex on children, thus traumatising them and making it difficult for them to create families as adults.
  5. Some cultures prefer male children and use sex selection technology or abortion to assure a male child. The resulting societies have an excess of males who cannot find female partners or breed.
  6. The Chinese tried to institute a one-child policy, but the people thwarted them at every turn.
  7. Gay people rarely reproduce, though they sometimes raise children others have abandoned.

It seems to me that gays are most responsible of all, yet society treats them with contempt. On the other hand the pope, soldiers and priests behave in the most unethical way, yet they enjoy the highest status.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dependency

The oil and natural gas lobbies love to brag about how dependent America is on oil and natural gas. They claim this is a Good Thing™ But what it really means is we have refused to plan for an alternative as fossil fuels run out and as we have to discontinue them to avoid global warming. We are all going to be screwed and they are smiling because they will corner the market on money as fuel prices go through the roof. There is not much point is being filthy rich if you are also dead.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Desertification

An odd hypothesis is that grazing actually stops desertification, if the animals are migrated over the rangeland to simulate the habits of wild grazers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Desperation Breeding

Hormones make people attempt to procreate even when there is less than a 1 in 10 chance the child will reach adulthood. We are little different from insects is that respect. Religious traditions and pressure from relatives push people to breed even when the environment clearly cannot sustain the additional population. Child bearing is one area where people are insanely selfish.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Destroying Earth As A Side Effect

The villains who are working tirelessly to destroy all life on earth are for the most part unrecognised because they do it as a side effect of making money. They have negative effects millions of times more severe than even the most vicious child rapists, torturers and terrorists. They include: lobbyists who work to derail efforts to stop global warming, combustion engine manufacturers, the coal, gas and oil lobbyists, employees of Monsanto, nuclear weapons technicians, people who work in the defence industry and politicians on the take from these lobbyists,

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Destroying Young Lungs for Oil

Because of the increasing pollution from burning fossil fuels, the lung capacity of ten year olds is dropping about 10% per decade. Surely that is reason enough to stop using these fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Dirtiest Fuel

From the point of view of greenhouse gas CO₂ emissions, you can’t get a dirtier fuel than coal. It is worse than any other fuel. This is because it is made of almost pure carbon. You would never guess that from the TV ads touting coal as a clean fuel.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dirty Old Koch Brothers

The Koch brothers have spend millions spreading FUD, about climate change, dragging along foolish Christians like calves with rings in their noses. Their motive is not religious, but financial. They are heavily invested in dirty fossil fuels like Canada’s tar sands. They are old. They don’t care what happens to earth a decade or so off because they will be dead.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dirty Tar Sands

Canada’s tar sands are the dirtiest environmentally of any form of oil extraction. They massively pollute land, water and the global atmosphere with greenhouse gases. The problem is huge quantities of super heated steam from natural gas are needed to heat the tar sands up enough for the bitumen in them to melt and flow. You get greenhouse gas emissions from the natural gas burning, creating the energy used to pump the viscous tar, creating the energy to refine the tar and when the oil/gasoline is finally burned. The steam condenses and the oily slurry is dumped into nearby rivers. However, despite these environmental drawbacks, the USA projects it will get most of its oil from the Canadian tar sands in 2012. Canadians have no choice in the matter.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dirty Tricks to Sell Water

Companies such as Nestlé have arranged that public drinking fountains have been disconnected, so that people will buy their water at inflated prices. There are no standards of cleanliness or honesty in labeling of bottled water. Corporate America also seems to be working hard on making the air unbreathable too, presumably so that can sell us air.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Disappearance of Bees

There in near panic about the disappearance of the honeybees. Bees are absolutely needed to pollinate food crops. Scientists insist of finding a single cause. I think this is moronic. We know of half a dozen heavy-duty stressors we have imposed on the honeybee. The bees might be able to deal with one of them at a time, but not ganged up on. Instead of trying to pin the blame on a single stressor, how about relieving the bees of all of them as best we can and see if they recover.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Disappearance of the Caribou

The George River Caribou herd in Labrador is rapidly disappearing. There were 800,000 animals. The herd is down to 27,000. Environmental pigs are refusing to stop hunting them. Nobody knows what is causing the collapse, though heavy hunting is obviously contributing to it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Disappearing Bees

This movie in a microcosm, using the example of disappearing bees, explains what an insane thing we human are doing to our planet with agribusiness.

dvd cover recommend DVD⇒Vanishing Of The Beesto dvd home
DVD
byGeorge Langworthy[director], Maryam Henein [director]
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The documentary follows the mystery of that was killing bees suddenly and in huge numbers. It turned out the French had figured it out a decade earlier. Bayer (the Aspirin people) marketed two systemic pesticides Gaucho and Poncho. System poison get inside the plant and stay there its entire life, making every part of the plant, including the nectar and pollen poisonous. Bayer had tested them only for death within 3 days. It turns out they kill by gradual buildup. Immature bees in contaminated pollen brought back to the hive. Adult bees are poisoned when the turn to eating stored pollen when the weather turns cold. This is not just a tree-hugger tragedy. Bees are needed for all manner of crops from apples to blueberries. The wild bees are all but extinct and the domesticated ones are on the ropes. Even later thinking blames a parasitic mite. Pesticides lower resistance.
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Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Disappearing Glaciers

Glacier National Park in Wyoming used to have 150 glaciers in the time of Theodore Roosevelt. Today they are only 35 left. At the current rate of melting, they will all be gone by 2030. This is not just a matter of higher temperatures, it is a matter of insufficient water.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Discarded Aluminum Cans

Each year, Americans discard 38 billion aluminum cans, discard, not recycle. This would be enough to create an aluminum dome covering New York City.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70), source National Geographic video The Human Footprint.

Disease Friendly Civilisation

From the point of view of a new disease organism, our technological civilisation seems custom-tailored to help it spread. We transport diseases around the entire planet within hours on airliners; we move them around in food transported tens of thousands of miles; we congregate in tight spaces like buses, elevators and office buildings each day to exchange microorganisms. Even our greeting ritual, the handshake, exchanges more germs than had we ritually drunk each other’s urine. We have undone all we have evolved/learned in millions of years to control disease, namely live in small groups and be wary of contact with strangers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dispersant

BP used a toxic dispersant Corexit to hide the oil, even after the government told them not to. BP is falsely claiming the dispersed oil is gone. That is claiming like dirt disappears when you sweep it under the carpet. The purpose of the dispersant was to confuse the government whose fines are based on the amount of oil spilled and to avoid liability for cleaning it up. They are such scumbags!

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dispersants

The only purpose of a dispersant in an oil spill is to hide the extent of the spill.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Distracting Phony Catastrophes

Those that wish to create short-term profit by delaying green energy and ignoring global warming cheat by funding all manner of documentaries about improbable global catastrophes such as the Mayan Calendar 2012-12 end of the world, the Christian end times, asteroid hits, supernovae etc. The public feels overwhelmed and does nothing about the truly important threats.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

A Dithering Species

There are thousands of ships monitoring global warming. There are dozens of satellites. There are armies of scientists. Everybody studies the problem. Nobody does anything about it. What dithering species we are! We are going to go extinct from of terminal procrastination.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

To Do List

Cows and cars are the main sources of greenhouse gases. If we are to get on top of those two, we will have a reasonable chance of surviving climate change.

If we reduce the number of cows, we will reduce the methane, a super potent greenhouse gas. We will conserve huge amounts of water. We will stop the #1 source of river pollution. We can either switch to a plant-based diet or replace meat with meat made in the lab.

If we reduce the number of cars, we will reduce the CO₂ emissions. We have to reduce electric cars too since they are powered by electricity that is produced by burning fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal. We can do this by switching to human-powered vehicles, e.g. covered bicycles, low power vehicles such as electric bikes, scooters and small motorcycles. We can use public transit, including small busses computer dispatched and driven.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Do Nothing About Climate Change

If China invaded Canada, would we say We should do nothing. It would impact the economy. Wages are too low; we cannot afford to fight the Chinese. No, we would but defending Canada as priority 1. Climate change would do far more damage than a Chinese invasion. We must stop playing ostrich.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Do Nothing Option

When it comes to the environment, it is the extremists who want to do nothing to preserve and protect the environment. They are advocating planetary environmental suicide. What could be more extreme?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Do Nothing Study

The federal government spent 3 years and $26 million dollars to study why the main salmon run unexpectedly dropped to 1/10 its normal size. The commission concluded there were multiple stressors killing off the run. What would a good capitalist do to save the fishery? Follow the recommendations of the commission, perhaps? Prime Minister Harper decided more study is needed, with no action of any kind.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Doing Nothing To Save Your Grandchild

What would you do if you saw some stranger attempting to kill your grandchild? Then how come you don’t even say boo when that stranger drives an SUV to get groceries or an overpowered pickup truck to commute to work? Those strangers are wantonly spewing voluminous greenhouse gases that cause global warming that could easily kill your grandchild or at least make their life hell.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dole Villains

There is a movie, Bananas that shows some of the skulduggery that Dole, the producers of tropical fruit, stoops to. It poisoned its employees. It made false charges. It threatened the Swedish documentary maker who filmed the Dole’s trial and finally sued him for revealing material available in open court. Dole has the morals of Monsanto. The best way to fight them is to buy only fair trade organic bananas.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dolphin Haters

severed fish Joe: Stay away from Los Angeles. They hate anything marine: fish, seals, even us dolphins.
Rosalie: What makes you say that?
Joe: They grind up plastic and dump it in the water, so that it is so thick there is 600 times as much as plankton! You can’t breathe. It clogs the gills of the fish. Who wants to eat dead fish? Yuch! They also litter the surface of the water with plastic rings that snare turtles, fish and sea birds, either choking them to death or squeezing them to death over months. Those humans are so sadistic. What did the sea turtles ever do to them?
Rosalie: That’s pretty bad, but even far out to sea that crap outweighs the plankton 6 to 1.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Double Standard

Republicans tell us that the $3,000 billion they have spent on the Iraq war is good for the economy, but spending $10 billion to implement this year’s Kyoto target would break the economy. It is clearly not the amount bothering them, but rather whether they are the ones who get the money. Consider also that all you get back from the investment in the Iraq war is some large holes drilled into the other side of the globe. In contrast, every penny invested in clean energy will save you over and over in reduced foreign oil imports.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Double Standard Inuit

Inuit and native people can’t have it both ways — using modern motorboats, winch driven nets, exploding harpoons and guns with the traditional attitude that man has a right to kill as much as he pleases.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Doubling Production?

Oil executives testified they planned to double oil production by 2050. That is preposterous on at least two grounds:

  1. We have already hit peak oil, there is not enough oil left to double production.
  2. It is mandatory to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero. Doubling them would do as much damage as a global nuclear war.

In other words, they are lying through their teeth. They want to postpone clean energy as long as possible.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Doubling Time

To work out the doubling time of an annual percentage growth, divide it into 70. Why 70? It is 100 × ln(2). So, for example, when electric power consumption was growing at 7% a year, we had to come up with double the generating capacity every decade. Further, every decade consumed more power than in all previous history combined. These are the consequences of simple arithmetic.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) click to watch see lecture by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett.

Downside of Biofuels

One downside of biofuels is they mean increased fertiliser use. Fertiliser run-off creates dead zones of water without oxygen.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Downside Of Ethanol Fuel

The USA is now using — of its corn crop for making ethanol for fuel. This has taken a massive amount of grain off the world market, grain the world’s poor depend on for food. The corn for one tank of fuel would feed a man for a year. Third world food prices have more than tripled at a result of diverting grain from food to transportation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Downside of Helmet Laws

One of the unfortunate effects of bike helmet laws is a 50% drop in cycling, especially among teens. We have to balance out the additional brain injuries with the lost benefits of exercise, lower pollution etc. Helmet laws also block free-bike schemes from taking off because people find it inconvenient to carry a helmet with them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Downside of Warming Winders

Many people look forward to the warmer winters caused by global climate change. The downside is if you have warm winters, all the precipitation comes as rain which runs off. Come summer there is no snow pack to melt and keep the rivers flowing and cool. That means fish die and water shortages.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Drastic Changes A Coming

If you think you and your descendants are going to survive the next 100 years without drastic changes to your life style, you are kidding yourself.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Drilling for Water

Drilling for water is a temporary solution. Typically, the aquifer is drained in 50 years and takes 10,000 years to refill.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Driven by Reproduction

Genes drive animals to attempt to maximise the population, even if it means utter misery for the individuals. Even with our much vaunted intelligence, we humans are as equally driven as locusts.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Driverless Cars

Driverless cars are coming. Not that long thereafter, it will be illegal for humans to drive cars on public roads as too dangerous. This will be a mixed blessing:

There is a downside too:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Driverless Cars

I think driverless cars will became commonplace much sooner than most people expect. Further, cars that require drivers will be banned from most roads shortly thereafter. The benefits of driverless cars are not fully realised until you get all the relatively incompetent human drivers off the roads. Why am I so optimistic?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Driverless Cars

It is a considerably more difficult task to invent a driverless car that can coexist with human drivers and other driverless cars designed and manufactured by other companies than it would be to invent a driverless car that had to deal only with other driverless cars working to the same specification. To get to driverless cars, we must get over this hump. Then soon after, human-driven cars will be abandoned and all driverless cars will converge on the same navigation and communication system, but we cannot leap directly to this much simpler, safer, more efficient system.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Driverless Cars

It is not so much when driverless cars arrive, but when manually-driven cars are no longer permitted on the road. Manually-driven cars greatly add to the danger of traveling in driverless cars, slow them down and reduce traffic density. There is already one highway from Seattle to Vancouver that prohibits manually-driven cars.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Driverless Cars

When computers drive cars:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Driverless Cars Allow Everyone To Be Chauffeured

Rich people usually prefer to be chauffeured. I trust when cars are smart enough to drive themselves, people will give up driving without too much fuss, especially when they can arrive faster, safer and cheaper.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Drivers Of Outsized Vehicles

Have you ever noticed that the more preposterously outsized a vehicle is, the more its driver expects everyone to defer to him on the road. I think people who use the roads most efficiently should get priority.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Driving to Extinction

Mythically speaking, for millions of years, there has been a great race the animals run every year to judge fitness. The reward for good showing is sex and progeny. The punishment for poor showing is celibacy or death. We humans are driving species after species extinct. We are upsetting this evolved balance of species in many ways:

When the forces of greed are so keen on wiping out all of earth’s species, where should those oppose them put their resources?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dropping the Egg

Nature conservancy is a bit like an egg relay race. If anyone drops the egg, it is game over. If each generation does its part, the nature we enjoy today will continue to exist to delight thousands of years from now.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dropping Emissions

Good news for a change! In Canada, greenhouse gas emissions have dropped a tiny bit each year between 2005 and 2011. Granted, we are still worse off now than in 2005 since the cumulative emissions hang around for a millennia. The Conservative government crowed about the achievement. That’s odd given they are climate change deniers, repealed legislation designed to reduce emissions, reneged on Canada’s Kyoto treaty, scuttled the Durban climate change conference and put all of Canada’s energy and export eggs firmly in the fossil fuel basket. That bit of good news can be attributed to the slower economy and the hard work of individual Canadian corporations and citizens. It happened despite Prime Minister Harper and Environment Minister Peter Kent.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dropping Fossil Fuels

If we don’t wean ourselves off fossil fuels, life on planet earth will be like life in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria without power and without fuel. People starve to death. There is no drinking water. There is no transportation of goods. People further north under those conditions would freeze to death.

So no matter how costly or inconvenient it is, we have no choice. We have to replace fossil fuels. It is just a matter of how much procrastination we indulge in to ensure we fail.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Drought

BC Canada is having the driest summer ever. California is suffering from a four year drought. Because of climate change, droughts may be the new normal. What sorts of things might we do to conserve water?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Drought

If you took an airplane flight across the USA in 2015-08, you would discover most of the USA is brown. There are a sprinkling of bright green irrigated fields. Even in normally-lush places like Alabama, this year, plants are not growing because of the erratic weather. Californians are in their fourth year of drought.

Rich Californians complain that nobody told them about the risk of drought when they bought their properties, therefore they should be excused from conservation measures. However, scientists did warn them, for three decades, of the climate change effects of continuing to spew greenhouse gases as usual.

The consequences are even worse than you might first imagine:

The solution is not business as usual and thinking wishfully. The solution is to reduce greenhouse gases by rapidly switching from fossil fuels to clean fuels as Germany and Japan are doing. We know from the dust bowl experience how bad it can get. Only this time because of climate change, there is no reason to expect things ever to get back to normal until we reduce the concentration of CO₂ in the air back down to normal. We have known since the 19th century the precise mathematics of how a given amount of CO₂ heats up the entire atmosphere. It is not how long can you tread water?, but how long can you go without water?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Drugs vs Chemicals

Drugs are strenuously tested to make sure they are safe. Before they get on the market, drug companies have to prove they are safe. Chemicals that make their way into food are not tested at all. To get them off the market, some altruistic soul has to prove they are dangerous. I think we have this backwards. Why do I think this?

If anything should be tested, it should be the chemicals. We have stupidly closed our eyes and ignored the danger. This is yet another case of flagrant corporate irresponsibility motivated by profit.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dumb Luck

It is amazing the earth has lasted as long as it has when nearly all human actions are environment-destroying and violence-encouraging.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dumb Toasters

You’d think with all these advances in electronics, a toaster would be smart enough to turn on the elements in only the slots that contain bread.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Durable Plastic

The key attribute of plastic is its durability. It does not rust or corrode. It lasts for millennia. For this a very reason it should never be used for disposable items. All those plastic bags and plastic spoons end up in the ocean where it outweighs the plankton 6 to 1. It stays there indefinitely until oysters or clams filters tiny particles of it out of the seawater and embed it in their flesh where you eat it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dying Coral Reefs

Unless we make some drastic changes, the world’s coral reefs will be gone in thirty years. We are killing them off faster every day in three main ways:

  1. Global warming drives off the algaes that live inside the corals. The algaes convert sunlight to sugars for the coral. Without them, the corals bleach and starve to death.
  2. Silting, usually from clear cutting tropical forests and mangrove forests at the ocean edge that trap silt.
  3. Pollution aka human feces.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dying for the Money

Imagine a contest. The prize is $1,000,000,000. The catch is you have to eat 10 living poison dart frogs (the creature with the most potent venom. Even touching a paper towel a frog has touched will kill you). There are people (and one is on your show right now), who would be mesmerised by the prize and would leap at it. All they can see is the money. They deliberately blind themselves to the dangers. Scientists tell us the global warming (which admittedly does not sound all that terrible) is the biggest danger facing mankind. Let us not be arrogant and pretend we know better. We simply can’t go burning massive amounts of natural gas, no matter how attractive the economics.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Dying Seas

When I was growing up it was common to hear people say, In future, the endless bounty of the sea will feed earth’s teeming billions. You don’t hear than any more. You hear instead the 2000 study from the University of Dalhousie that 90% of the ocean’s large fish are gone. We overfished them. We starved them by overharvested the smaller fish they feed on. You hear that the cod still have not come back even with 25 years of moratorium.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Early Climate Change Effects

The cherries, cedars, firs and hemlocks are dying off from the record dry weather here in Victoria. These sorts of effects were not expected until 2100.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Early Death for Earth

In 6 billion years, the sun will run out of hydrogen and expand into a red giant and absorb planet earth. So that settles the fate of life on earth. The question that remains is, must we wipe out life on earth ahead of schedule?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Early Man-Driven Species Extinction

By the 12th century, the people of the Mediterranean had killed off the last Murex shellfish in their rapacious pursuit of indigo dye.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Early Warning

What is the point of scientists giving decades of warning on climate change if industry and policymakers ignore them?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Earth After Humans

The National Geographic Documentary Aftermath: Population Zero explores what would happen if humans were to suddenly vanish from earth. It makes the heart glad to know that earth is capable of healing most of the damage we humans have done to it within a century. It is just too bad we humans are so intent on destroying the very planet that sustains us.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Earth as Cruise Ship

Most North Americans see planet earth as a sort of cruise ship. Their job is to dance and eat the food. It is other people’s job to keep the whole show going.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Earth Is Full

The earth is already more than full. For every time you conceive a child above two, you are effectively condemning a child somewhere on earth to an early death.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Earth As A Whole

If your country gets in trouble by destroying its environment, it can bail itself out by importing from other countries or invading other countries and stealing their resources. However, earth as a whole does not have this option. There is no other earth to import from or to invade.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Earth, We Have Some Serious Problems

We earthlings have some serious problems creeping up on us. In various ways we are destroying our planet making in incapable of supporting humanity. Some of the ways include: climate change, pollution of air and water, soil erosion, overpopulation, nuclear war, bioterror, extinction of most of plants and animals on earth, destruction of habitat…

The main reason we are having so much trouble is because, back in the 1600s we invented artificial humans called corporations and set them out into the world with enormous financial power, no morals and a blind desire to make as much money as possible in the short term, no matter what the consequences. Natural human greed and selfishness has played a big rôle too.

It has got so bad that it looks like, within 200 years, humans will go extinct, or if we are lucky, just sent back to the stone age. There is almost no chance we will make any progress on any of these problems because with the Roberts Supreme Court decision, corporations now control the government and corporations do not care about sustainability. In fact, they are actively opposed to any efforts at sustainability because they imagine it will reduce their profits a fraction of a percent. (It is too bad corporations don’t take a slightly longer term view. Then they would realise if they drive humans extinct there will be no business at all.)

I can see only one ray of hope. AI (Artificial Intelligence) might just become smarter than us soon enough to take over and make-us/persuade-us/trick-us to see to our own self interest and start living in a sustainable way. Stephen Hawking has pointed out that developing AI is fraught with danger. However, given we are going to go extinct soon anyway, we have no choice but to take the chance.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Earthquake Frequency

Societies have no interest in building earthquake resistant cities until after a major quake that wipes out everything. Ironically, that is when a another big quake is least likely. It is most likely the longer it has gone without a major quake. It works somewhat analogously to human excretion.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Earthquake Prediction

When you have gone a long time between earthquakes, that is the time most likely you will have another and that it will be a big one. However, that is also the time humans feel safest and are least likely to be concerned with earthquake preparation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Earthquake Unpreparedness

It is clear the Japanese were not ready for the 2011-03-11 earthquake. Yet an almost identical quake and tsunami is overdue off the north west coast of the USA. Americans are much less prepared than the Japanese were. Why? I suggest it is Christian wishful thinking. Christians imagine their god will protect them, even if the geological record shows he regularly smites the area with tsunamis. It is a bit like a young shrimp refusing to prepare for low tide because he personally has not yet experienced one.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Eating

It is quite amazing how many thousands of hours of nature shows can be made filming nothing but watching other species eat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Eating an Endangered Animal

If I had my way, eating an endangered animal would be a capital crime.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Eating Meat and Manliness

American men associate eating meat with manliness, but ironically it is the main factor causing erectile dysfunction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Forks Over Knives

Eating Octopus

Octopus are roughly equal in intelligence to dogs. If you refrain from eating dogs because of their intelligence, you should give up octopus too.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Eating the World

Every creature attempts to convert all the biomass on planet earth into copies of itself. It does this mindlessly, even though success means a nightmare. Even intelligent heterosexual humans do it, quite successfully. I find it revolting.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Eco-Racing

If people must race cars and trucks, they should at least use an environmentally clean fuel like hydrogen peroxide, or hydrox and race them outside population centres so they don’t impose the noise on people who do not enjoy it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Eco-Vandals

The History channel and the National Geographic Channel are involved in a conspiracy to confuse the public about global warming. Presumably because oil money is funding them, they are willing to trick Americans to commit mass suicide. They keep pooh-poohing global warming as a fringe/theoretical/potential problem then creating documentary after documentary on phony looming disasters such as the earth stopping spinning, the sun suddenly going nova, or a plague sweeping the earth that turns people into zombies (I kid you not).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ecological Crimes

Even now that everyone understands the negative effects of fertiliser runoff, pesticides and herbicides, home owners persist in saturating their lawns and gardens with them. The airwaves are still packed with advertisements extolling these ecological crimes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ecological Mismanagement

We humans have been quite flat-footed in our treatment of the environment. We have spread species over the entire planet where these invasive species take over ecosystems without their usual predators. We kill off species sensitive to man-made pollutants. Global warming means equatorial squid now live in Alaskan waters. Overharvesting some species causes blooms of others. The tough species that are taking over are not often what you would call poster children. According to Garry Hamilton in Super Species: The Creatures That Will Dominate the Planet they include the American bullfrog, brown tree snake, chytrid fungus (frog plague), Humboldt squid, European green crab, eastern grey squirrel, killer algae, feral pig, giant African land snail, C. difficile, Argentine ant, crown of thorns starfish, nutria, hydrozoan, kudzu, zebra mussel, jellyfish, house sparrow, water hyacinth and Nile perch.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ecological Suicide

Utterly self-centred technological/commercial man has made ecological war on the planet with his pollution, habitat destruction, overpopulation and global warming. It is fitting that man is inexorably executing his ecological demise by his own hand.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ecological Vandals

We spit on our ancestors who destroyed the old growth forests, killed the last passenger pigeon and killed off the buffalo just for the fun of it. Coming generations will spit on us similarly for wiping out the salmon, sea otter and polar bear with our mad grab for filthy tar. They will be gone forever. The tar money will be here for only a decade. We will feel like such idiots. The animals will exist only as digital images. We have no authority to damage our planet that way. It is not ours. We are merely the temporary tenants.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Economic Benefit to Whom?

The oil companies talk about the overwhelming economic benefit of the Enbridge tar sands pipeline across BC. They mean the overwhelming benefit to them. After the construction is over, it would take only a skeleton crew to monitor the pipeline. Over time, monitoring would be handled more and more by electronics. The job boom would come only after a spill. There are no jobs refining. As the economic benefits wane, the ecological dangers escalate as China and the USA demand an ever larger flow of oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Economic Effect of Green Energy

Harperite conservatives think of green energy and preserving the environment as a frill, something only important so you can take photos for tourism ads. They never think of it as something that sustains the economy and ensures the long term stability of the Canadian government. Already green energy contributes more to the economy than the Alberta tar sands.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Economic Growth

The way things are now, economic growth implies increased fossil fuel use, which implies increased CO₂ emissions which is suicidal. Economic growth is no longer a Good Thing™ It will not be until we have adopted clean energy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Economic Growth

When politicians brag about how they stimulated the economy, what does that mean? It means corporations are more profitable. It means the environment has been raped at an accelerated rate. It is a mixed blessing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Economic Insanity

Economists have an odd view of what is desirable. To them, the purpose of life is to increase economic activity, any activity, even including things like more vandalism repairs, more funerals, more pollution, more soil erosion, more deforestation, more conspicuous consumption, more hospital care, more inefficiency, more waste… I call this locust mentality. Economists refuse to notice how their frantic efforts to stimulate short-term economic activity destroy the very substrate the enables sustained economic activity. They refuse to look even a decade into the future about how their actions harm economic activity, much less the environment or human welfare.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Economic Necessity

It insane that we poison mountain rivers with copper tailings and the extraction chemicals. We do it to make wires for cheap electricity so that sedentary north Americans can sit in front of the TV, with all the lights in the house blazing, simply because they are too obese to get up and turn them off. This is the supposed economic necessity that overrides all other concerns.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Economic Necessity

It is really sick that we destroy so many pristine mountain lakes by turning them into tailings ponds. Why? So that fat socialites can drape themselves in gold in a game of conspicuous consumption to lord it over their peers. This is the supposed economic necessity that overrides all other concerns.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Economics of Carbon Taxes

Sweden implemented a carbon tax back in the 1990s. Their emissions fell and their GDP rose contrary to the predictions of the big oil lobby.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Economics of Climate Change

Conservatives complain that saving the world from destruction by global warming would be too expensive, too hard on the economy. Yet these same men tout military spending to stimulate the economy, where you spend and get nothing in return. The countries doing best economically are also the ones most serious about climate change, e.g. Germany. Fossil fuels are a dead end. Foolish countries like Canada are hitching their economic stars to long term fossil fuel projects that will be obsolete even before they are built.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Economists are Insane

Economists are certifiably and criminally insane, the legal definition — unable to tell right from wrong. They believe it is a Good Thing™ if people consume and waste more, burn more fossil fuel, pollute more, emit more CO₂ and have more babies. That ignores the reality of a finite supply of fossil fuel, finite supply of arable land, finite atmosphere and finite oceans. What you can get away with on a small scale is not what you can get away with when all 7.601 billion people do it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Economy

Most North American see the purpose of life to grow the economy as fast as possible. It never occurs to them there are downsides to succeeding. For example:

Instead of raw growth in the economy, we should go for a more efficient economy that does more with less and does less damage to the environment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Economy or the Environment?

Christy Clark won the 2013-05-14 BC provincial election by claiming the voters had to choose between the economy and the environment. This is nonsense. Without the environment there is no economy. She wants to put all the province’s financial eggs in the fossil fuel basket. The voters bought this insanity, even though we have seen the way petrostate economies invariably deteriorate allowing all put petro-industries to collapse. We know the fossil fuel market will collapse long before the infrastructure is paid for because of competition from clean fuels and because of the effects of climate change. We will be stuck with the mortgage payments.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ed Fast, Raving Loon

Ed Fast, Conservative member from Abbotsford sees Canada’s problem is that we have too many fish and not enough markets for them. He has this backwards. Our problem is failing fish stocks, primarily from overfishing, pollution and interfering will seals culling diseased and deformed fish.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Effect of Overbreeding

If people persist in having more than two children per couple, they are inevitably condemning some of the next generations to die of starvation, disease or war. Some couples (gay and straight) help compensate for these population pigs by having less than two children. The problem is, society still shuns the childless or single childed (or those who adopt) as second class, when in actuality they are altruistic compensating for the sins of the overbreeders.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Effects of Global Warming

The Jet Stream normally moves air across the continent west to east, moving weather patterns and rain along. Global warming has stalled it. The result is droughts in BC, Washington and California.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Effects of Overcrowding

If you factory farm chickens, packing them indoors cheek by jowl so they can barely move, any disease will roar through the entire flock. Overpopulation is effectively factory farming humans in similar overcrowded conditions. We are sitting ducks for the first epidemic that comes along.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Efficiency

Let’s say you could build a new plant for a billion dollars to produce energy. Let’s say, for that same cost, you could introduce efficiencies (insulating, heat pumps, hybrid cars…) to reduce the need for an equivalent amount of energy. Which is the better choice? To the businessman, the power plant is better because it is a concentrated business opportunity. To the environmentalist, the efficiency is better because it has no greenhouse gas emissions and it conserves energy resources for the future.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Efficient Encoding

The human genome has about 3 billion base pairs. It takes about 750 megabytes to encode them in a computer. In contrast, a small hard disk for a desktop computer is about 120 gigabytes or 120,000 megabytes or 160 times bigger than required to contain the a human genome. In contrast, the specifications for an Airbus take about 1 terabyte or 1,000,000 megabytes or 1333 times more than the human genome. Yet humans exhibit far more complex behaviours than Airbuses. This means nature is still way ahead of us in the efficiency of its blueprints.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Efficient Ships

Ships can transport food 100 times as efficiently as trucks and planes. So don’t worry about how far your food comes by ship. Focus on reducing the distance and hence carbon footprint, it comes by plane or truck.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Efficient Toilets

Every flush of a toilet wastes 15 litres (3.96 US gallons) of water — an entire day’s ration of water in the third world. There are three things we could do use the water more efficiently.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Efficient Transport

Airlines are a buggy whip industry. They use huge amounts of fuel to transport people about. They can’t survive as fuel prices continue to rise. Cars are almost as bad, requiring several tons of metal overhead for just a single passenger. Trains, in contrast, are the most fuel-efficient vehicles we have yet invented, save the bicycle, especially when the engine is not on-board. We should stop using planes, except for intercontinental flights. We should stop subsidising them and put that money toward modernising trains (including light rail and automated subways). Even for intercontinental holiday flights, we should give up planes for more efficient and much more comfortable ships.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Effort

The USA is spending $20 billion to battle climate change. They spent $1 trillions demolishing Iraq. Which was the bigger threat? Hint: Iraq was no threat at all.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Elderly White Men

Elderly white men who vote Republican do not care a whit for what sort of world they will hand off to their grandchildren. All they care about is accumulating a bit more money before they die. They are like game-playing addicts. Because they refuse to take any action on:

Young people must wrest power from these old dinosaurs.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Email Scandal

scandalous emails

Climate exchange deniers made hay by taking snippets of 5000 hacked emails between climate scientists out of context. They saw the word trick and pounced demanding a criminal investigation. The trick was substituting more accurate thermometer data where available rather than using temperature estimates from tree rings for a graph of global temperature for a popular science magazine. The paper for the IPCC presented the full picture. The climate change deniers to this day pretend they uncovered criminal activity. Either the deniers were clueless in interpreting the emails or more likely dishonest. They are fully aware they are promoting lies. They are paid liars.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Embalming

When a body is embalmed and buried in a casket, it is like burying a time capsule of noxious chemicals. It is time we stopped doing that and either buried bodies without chemicals, or cremated them as we did in ancient times.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Embedded Emissions

Let’s assume country A mines some fossil fuel and sells it to country B who burns it to create the energy to manufacture some goods. Country B in turn sells the goods to country C. Who is responsible, and to what degree, for the greenhouse gas emissions?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Emulating the Crocodile

Crocodiles have endured longer than any other large animals. They have survived extinction events that wiped out most other species. The secret of their success is their extremely efficient use of energy. They can go for years without food if necessary. If we want to survive the tough times ahead, we too will have to become masters of energy efficiency.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Enbridge Lies

Enbridge spokesmen selling the tar sands pipeline and tankers to China claim their technology will ensure there will be an oil spill no more often than every 15,000 years. That would be presuming the use of latest double hulled tanker technology and no human error and no navigational failure. But what is to stop China from using the cheapest tankers available, Panamanian, Liberian, Marshallese or Bahamian-registered flags of convenience? If that were true, why does Enbridge has a spill about once a month?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Enbridge Promises

Enbridge promises to inject vast wealth into BC in return for destroying its marine environment and mountain streams. Yes, they will spend money, but it won’t be going into the pockets of ordinary British Columbians. It will be handed to other corporations and from there into the pockets of the like of Jimmy Pattison.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Encouraging the Bad

A type A company behaves responsibly. It makes sure it does not harm the environment. It is careful with the health and safety of its workers and customers. A type B company, in contrast, has no moral compass. It always does what is most profitable for the short term. If you don’t hold type B’s feet to the fire, you are harming the type A companies, making it harder for them to compete with the type B companies. You don’t want to do that.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

End of Death

There are animals that do not age. Scientists are concerned they will soon unravel the mystery of how they do it, and use CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) to halt aging in humans. The catch is, if humanity broadly adopts this technology, it must for all practical purposes stop having babies. The world is finite. You can’t have more people entering the world than leaving it.

There are two types of people on earth:

  1. Those that accept the earth is finite.
  2. Those who believe the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply overrides all common sense.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

End of Food Fish

We are on schedule to wipe out the last of the ocean food fish by 2040. I suspect some people will say, No problem, we will eat farm fish. No you won’t. Even farmed fish eat smaller fish, in the form of fish meal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The End of the Green Revolution

The Green Revolution has brought us agricultural abundance. However, it has reached the end of its useful life. Why?

Happily there are alternatives that still produce high yields. We need to start switching over. Unfortunately, corporations don’t want change, even if it kills us.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The End Of Oil

The global discovery of oil peaked in 1960. Discovery is now for all practical purposes 0. We need to bring online a Saudi Arabia every three years to compensate for the exhaustion of existing wells. There are two catches:

  1. There are no more large deposits we can exploit. We are doomed to decreasing supply and wildly increasing prices over the long term.
  2. Even if we had such deposits, we could not burn them because the greenhouse gases would cause completely unacceptable climate change.

We have to find an alternative source or sources of energy. Possibilities include: solar, wind, fusion, tide, geothermal, thorium and solar panels in space. All are clean and cheap in the long term. There is little advantage in procrastinating. All it does it give us less time, energy and resources for the conversion.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) There’s No Tomorrow click to watch

The End of Oil

The History Channel billed a documentary on the end of oil with the words In this scenario, the world’s oil supply runs out. Huh? Is there a scenario where it does not run out?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

End-of-Life

When people talk about the end-of-life on earth, they are being sloppy. What they really mean is one of:

  1. The end-of-life as we know it with cars, unlimited electricity, unlimited water, 7 billion people, supermarkets with an abundance of food. We have to cut back drastically on energy use, travel and international trade.
  2. The end of civilisation. We revert to living the way we did 4000 years ago in small bands.
  3. The end of man. Humans become an endangered species with less than 1000 individuals on the planet.
  4. The end of the large mammals.
  5. The end of multi-cellular creatures.
  6. The end of single-celled creatures including viruses, bacteria and plankton. The earth is sterilised, presumably by some cosmic event like a gamma ray burst.

The level that disturbs me most is the end of the large mammals. Humans are a defective species, a sloppy evolutionary experiment done too quickly, so their demise is inevitable. However, it burns me up that humanity is working hard to take down the cetacea with them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Endangered Species

The London Zoological Society has composed a coffee table book about the 100 most endangered species. You can get a copy free in PDF (Portable Document Format) form. The download is 9 MB, so be patient.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Endangered Species

We humans are not in the least interested in protecting endangered species. We have hogged 98% of the habit for ourselves and for our domestic animals. What excites us is bigger markets that come from having ever more people. We stole all that land from other species for ourselves, without the tiniest moral qualm. Our religions convinced us we were the paragon of animals, the only species that matters. The most common justification for protecting a species is so we can harvest them. Other species have no intrinsic value.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Endangered Species Priority

Up until recently, we tended to treat all endangered species equally and used the law to stop people from driving them extinct. It looks now we are creating a hierarchy of species and how much protection they deserve. If we discriminate, what should be the criteria? Similarly 95% of the world’s languages are spoken by only 5% of the people. Most of them are rapidly going extinct. Should we be trying to keep them alive? Should we be documenting them?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Endless Growth is Not Only Undesirable, it is Impossible

Mindlessly growing the economy is not ecologically sustainable. Instead we have to figure out how to provide for the comforts of living more efficiently, with less consumption of resources and less destruction of the environment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Enemies of the Environment

The enemies of the environment in Canada are:

The intent of all these innocuous sounding initiatives is to subvert Canadian sovereignty to regulate the environment and commerce and hand it over to American corporations. You would not believe what sovereignty Canada has already given away to the Americans. Our water is already signed away. Our right to regulate pesticides and poisons in food have already been given away to US corporations. Harper lied and claimed all we had given away is the right to differ on quality standards for jellybeans.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Enemies of the Environment

Who are the enemies of the environment? conspicuous consumers who waste energy and goods to display status, business people who refuse to take anything into consideration other than the next quarter profit, Christians who indulge in wishful thinking God will like some cosmic mother come along and clean up for us, ordinary folk who refuse to take any action because no conceivable effort could single handedly solve the problems. These people have a long-term effect worse than serial killers, yet we refuse to even ask them to desist.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Energetic Weather

Every 1.00°C (1.80°F) warmer causes the atmosphere to hold an additional 7% moisture. This causes more energetic weather events.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Energy Density

Energy density measures how much energy you can get out of a given weight of fuel. The higher it is, the more compact the fuel is and the less energy you waste carting it around. The best batteries (lithium thionyl chloride) hold 2.5 Megajoules of energy in every kilogram of fuel, methanol (biofuel) holds 19.7 MJoules/Kg, gasoline holds 43.54 MJoules/Kg, propane holds 49.6 MJoules/Kg. and hydrogen holds a whopping 143 MJoules/Kg. Uranium is in a totally different league with 88,250,000 MJoules/Kg. What does this mean? Batteries have a long way to go before they are efficient for long distance transportation. Hydrogen is the most efficient fuel for long distance transportation. We should get on with hydrogen powered cars.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Energy Economics

The cost per watt of solar energy drops every year. The cost of a barrel of oil rises every year on average. It won’t be that much longer before fossil fuels are obsolete. Big oil knows they are doomed. Their strategy is to stall the transition as long as possible even if it means destroying the planet with global warming, even if it means using the most unscrupulous tactics imaginable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Energy From Space

Every second, the sun releases millions of times more energy than has ever been produced on earth. This suggests to me, if we need energy, we should figure out how to cleanly harvest it from space. There is far more there than we could ever use.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Energy Slaves

The average North American has 147 energy slaves, i.e. uses the energy that would have been provided in earlier times by 147 slaves.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ensuring the Survival of Offspring

The men and women who lived through WWII (World War II) made huge sacrifices to protect their country and their children. If you study history, humans throughout the ages, no matter what the odds, will do whatever it takes to ensure the survival of their children. But today we have a castrated generation who refuses to even put up with minor inconvenience to look out for the survival of the next generation who are threatened by global climate change and environmental degradation, a foe much more deadly than Hitler ever was. People today have allowed themselves to be hypnotised into apathy, convinced that all action is futile. We all have equal time in each day. We all have a voice box. We all have seen endless examples of how individuals who take action inspire others to join in. We have no excuse for apathy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Entitlement to Pollute

The environmentalist looks on a carbon tax as a reminder to reduce his carbon footprint. An environmental pig looks on a carbon tax as an imposition by soft-headed people, that grants him unrestricted right to pollute. Polluting becomes a desirable, expensive, luxury indulgence. Polluting is a way to get revenge on environmentalists.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Environmental Collapse of Easter Island

Even without modern technology, Easter Islanders were able to wipe out all the trees, then all the birds then most of the edible shellfish before the islanders decimated themselves down to about 100 people. Granted, it took them 200 years to accomplish the destruction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Environmental Cowboy

James D. Watson (1928-04-06 age:90) the co-discoverer of DNA, says people are foolish to be worried about GMO foods because in principle they are no different than the products of traditional plant and animal breeders.

That is ridiculous. Traditional breeding can only make tiny incremental changes. It can’t make plants start producing pesticides, or scorpion venom or goat milk to contain spider silk, or some totally new chemical never before seen in nature. You must test these additives for safety. Just because they got there via GMO does not make them automatically safe. Unlike a traditional pesticide, you can’t wash a GMO pesticide off or wait for it to degrade. It is created afresh in every cell.

A drug is carefully tested for side effects and allergies, even though it will be given to only a relatively small number of people. In contrast a GMO crop is fed to everyone. It becomes a secret ingredient of thousands of products. If you have an allergy, you can’t avoid it. Therefore, testing needs to be stricter than for drugs. I would like to see some research on why so many people have recently developed a gluten allergy. One possibility is an allergy to GMO wheat.

Once a gene gets out into the field, it jumps to other species. You also have to test the safety of what happens if this gene becomes widespread. Monsanto has said it does not believe it should be required to test its products for safety. The government should do that.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Environmental Inconsistency

It is heart warming the way people will pull out all the stops to help a whale, dolphin or sea turtle in distress. But it odd, people won’t make the tiniest sacrifice to keep those same species from going extinct.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Environmental Philistines

It is hard to watch the earth deteriorate at the hand of environmental Philistines. There is some comfort in knowing they will suffer first and hardest from their vandalism.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Environmental Pigs

The lack of cosmic justice is galling when self-centred environmental pigs in their conspicuous consumption status displays (aka Hummers) spew CO₂ greenhouse gas into the air that causes unprecedented droughts in Kenya for people who own nothing but a few goats. The droughts kill all their livestock and plants.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Environmental Traitors

An environmental traitor asks himself, how big a car can I afford? An environmental patriot asks himself, how small a vehicle will get the job done? Americans live under the delusion a pickup truck is a suitable commuter vehicle and an SUV is necessary to buy groceries.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Environmental Turncoat

Andrew Weaver is a famous global climate change scientist from the University of Victoria, now a Green Party MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly), who suddenly reversed his position and became an apologist for exploiting the tar sands on the grounds that coal is even worse.

He told one major lie on the CBC The Current and committed one major piece of dissembling. I don’t dispute his statistics, just his dishonest interpretations.

The lie was this: He pointed out that if all the tar sands were burned it would raise the average global temperature of the earth 0.36°C (0.65°F). He then dismissed this as insignificant, even though he knew full well even 2.0°C (3.6°F) is unacceptable. That represents a massive and disproportionate global contribution from a tiny nation like Canada. It is not as though we Canadians are the only ones responsible for greenhouse gases. It all adds up. Canada is only 0.4% of the world’s population. We have no business contributing more than 0.4% of the world’s pollution.

Weaver’s dissembling was more subtle. He compared the burning all the tar sands with burning all the coal anywhere on earth. At the current rate of consumption, coal will last for 238 years. Unlike the tar sands, nobody is going to burn all the world’s coal in one decade. The effects of global warming will become so severe that most of that coal will never be burned. Weaver wants his audience to believe that the alternative to burning the Alberta tar sands is to burn all the coal on the planet. This is nonsense. Weaver is comparing apples and oranges. He is playing a psychological trick on his audience to convince them to approve of the tar sands. He knew perfectly the well the only honest way to compare coal and tar sands would be to compare a quantity of coal containing equal energy to the tar sands, not the entire world’s supply. Using his crooked methods, he could claim apple juice had way more vitamin C than orange juice. All he would have to do would be compare 100 litres (3.53 cubic feet) of apple juice with 1 litre (1.06 US quarts) of orange juice.

Why is he doing this? I suspect he had an encounter with the dark side of the force in the form of a bribe or a threat. He is completely correct to raise the alarm about coal, but not pooh-pooh concern for the tar sands. What he is doing is so cheap and transparently dishonest, he well could be hoping to be disgraced. He is Leader of the Green Party in BC. This reflects badly on the integrity of the party, though I find it inconceivable the federal leader Elizabeth May could have been corrupted too.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Environmentally Disastrous Projects

It is not necessary to stop an environmentally disastrous project. It is only necessary to delay it until it becomes economically non-viable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Environmentally friendly toilet habits

A squirt of water and a blast of warm air, would be more effective and environmentally friendly than a wad of toilet paper.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Environmentally Responsibility

Politicians are cretins. They imagine their responsibility for the environment goes away if the protesters give up and go home.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Equivalent of War

In WWII, people made major sacrifices and embraced rationing and Victory gardens and they gave up pleasure driving. Today, they flatly refuse to make similar sacrifices to fight global warming, failing to understand it is a far bigger threat than Hitler ever was.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Erectile Dysfunction Meaning

Erectile dysfunction is the first sign most men get their arteries are clogged and they are headed for a heart attack. The lining of functioning arteries naturally exude nitrous oxide, the same chemical that makes Viagra work.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Forks Over Knives

Estimate The Odds

Let us say that you have been seduced by some global warming denier or other. Perhaps you think there might be only a 1 in 50 chance than the majority of scientists are correct about global warming. That’s about the odds you might have a heart attack in the next year. Even with those odds because the consequences are so dire, you still take action, you still buy your health insurance. So surely you should take some action on global warming by the same reasoning. Hedge your bets.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ethanol

Ethanol is a joke. It takes more energy to create it than you get back. You need fertiliser, water pumps, tractors, trucks, distillers… The distillation process alone consumes massive amounts of natural gas. You might as well use the natural gas as fuel directly. Economically ethanol makes sense only because big agriculture bribes the government to give it huge subsidies. The other major problem is corn grown for ethanol displaces crops grown for food. For it to work, the raw materials must come from non-arable land.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

eToilet Paper

Even 100% recycled toilet paper goes down the drain never to be used again. If we were serious about stopping this waste of trees, we would switch to some sort of computer-controlled device that cleaned your bum with a directed spray of warm, soapy water. Because it could see better than you what it was doing, it would clean you better than paper.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Evacuation Orders

Sometimes, in the event of a major flood or mass fire, the government orders people to evacuate. Inevitably, many people refuse. I have contempt for these people. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Evanescent

Butterflies, snowflakes, Janis Joplin, men on death row… We are attracted because we know these things will be here only a short time. I look on our wildly unsustainable human civilisation the same way.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ever Faster Extinction

Australians want to relax to the restrictions on fisheries so they that they will go extinct even sooner than 2048. Why? Third world nations are making no effort to preserve fish, so why should they? Fisherman want to make the same living they enjoyed in past. The greedy dick heads don’t care they are completely destroying the fishery for all future generations.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Every Child A Wanted Child

We need to sell women the idea they have no business having children if they cannot provide for them and if they don’t enjoy caring for children. Every child deserves a secure and loving home.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Evidence of Global Warming in Alabama

The older rural homes in Alabama have ice houses. The rivers froze over in winter. People would use saws to cut out blocks of ice from the rivers for year-round refrigeration. The rivers no longer freeze. How can these people deny the reality of global warming?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Evil Doers

The following groups of people do far more than their share to leave the earth a more miserable place than they found it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Excess Fishing Capacity

There is enough fishing capacity to capture every food fish in the sea four times over. Overfishing follows as a natural consequence. Imagine if some enemy invaded your town with enough firepower to kill everyone four times over. What would your chances be of survival? Especially when they came through 7 times a year, year after year.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) The End of the Line

Excessive Quotas

The quotas for endangered blue fin tuna are three times that required for recovery. Why? Because corrupt businessmen and corrupt politicians can make even huger profit as dwindling stocks drive up prices.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) The End of the Line

Excuses to Pollute

The excuses for refusing to get on with clean energy and greenhouse gas reduction remind me of the lame excuses people use for continuing to smoke.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Exempt Milk Bottles

Of all containers, milk bottles take up the most space in landfills. Why then are they exempt from recycling and recycling fees?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Expectations On Past Humans

Looking back on previous generations, the main thing I wanted of them was not to drive animals extinct and not to destroy natural habitat. I could care less about their battles and empires. Future generations may judge us similarly.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Experiment with high CO₂ Levels

The ocean near the Vesuvius volcano has naturally had high CO₂ level for millennia, levels that we expect will occur all over the oceans from greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century. Sea grass grows happily, but fish cannot spawn successfully. So we know exactly what to expect from our refusal to curb greenhouse gas emissions. We are increasing the CO₂ level ten times faster that at any time in earth’s history. The last time this happened, the CO₂ acidification wiped the corals out, along with all the fish that depend on them. It took them 10 million years to recover.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Explosive Change

We humans have drastically changed our earth:

If we are going to make such drastic changes, we should know exactly what the effects will be, but we do not care in the least. This means humans are going to go extinct within a century or two, extinction by suicide.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Exponential Growth

  1. The first homo sapiens walked the earth 200,000 years ago.
  2. It took until 1804 for the global population to reach 1 billion.
  3. 123 years later in 1927, it reached 2 billion.
  4. 33 years later in 1960, it reached 3 billion.
  5. 14 years later in 1974 it reached 4 billion.
  6. 13 years later in 1987 it reached 5 billion.
  7. 12 years later in 1999 it reached 6 billion.
  8. 12 years later in 2011 it reached 7 billion.
  9. Today it reached 7.601 billion.
  10. In 2025 it is projected to hit 12 billion.

You can see the problem, called exponential growth. The more people there are, the more people there are having babies and the faster the population grows. The only remotely palatable solution is to lower the birth rate. Each family must have fewer than two children. We need incentives to have fewer children.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Extinction

Animals, coral reefs and colourful fish are some of the most pleasant aspects of life on earth. Our descendants will curse us for killing them all so callously for so little benefit.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Extinction

The map below shows species extinction. The fatter a country is shown relative to its actual size, the more species it has wiped out. The USA is the world leader in killing off species.

species extinction map

© Copyright SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan)

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Extinction

Species are going extinct 1000 times faster than usual. The main reason is humans are taking over more and more of the surface of the earth for human purposes. This is happening because humans refuse to limit their population growth. Further, the capitalist way of life requires ever more land per person. We humans are like a cancer the way we grow without limit.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Extinction of the Bee

Science already suspects half a dozen causes for the decline of the honey bee. Probably all of them contribute to some extent. Given how crucial bees are to commercial agriculture, we should do the prudent thing take action on all six fronts, rather than wasting time trying to prove 100% of the blame belongs to only one factor.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Extinction Booby Traps

I think it most likely that mankind will go extinct or at least endangered some time in the next couple of centuries. With our cleverness we humans have created so many booby traps for ourselves including:

The essential problem is humans, like other animals, are extremely selfish, but our technology has magnified the effects by millions of times. Similarly, humans enjoy the suffering of others. For example, we fund and glorify groups of young men who travel to remote spots on the globe to kill people without anyone being capable of giving a reason for it. It appears is it butchery for the joy of butchery. Similarly, humans are rarely willing to make even small sacrifices for the common good.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Extinction of Man

Every species goes extinct eventually, even if it takes 400 million years. This generation is fortunate to be present to watch the spectacle of spectacles, bigger than the downfall of Rome, the extinction of homo sapiens by what effectively amounts to mass suicide/mass stupidity egged on by greed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Extinction OK?

Republicans have the odd notion that the extinction events of the past that wiped out 95% of species were natural, thus it would be perfectly ok with us humans if similar events happened again today. They would mean either the extinction of man, or at least the deaths of most of us. It is not the end of the universe, but it hardly what you would call acceptable to mankind.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Extinction Rates

Over history we have thrown an average of one species a century off the earth. Today, we throw one every 13 seconds. Man’s current killing off other species is causing more damage than the Yucatan asteroid that ended the age of the dinosaurs.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Extinctions

Humans disgust me with their human-centric way of looking at the universe. Even environmentalists argue we should not toss all the other species off the planet solely because they might contain cancer cures. Surely other species have the same right to existence as homo sapiens. We are the new boys on the block.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Extrapolating Prices

Since we are looking for long term solutions to energy, we should not be too focused on the current prices of immature energy technologies. We should be trying to extrapolate where the prices will be after the technologies mature.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Exxon Mobil Betrayal

Exxon Mobil back in the 1980s studied climate change and concluded rising sea levels would serious impact they operations. They also felt that melting permafrost would make drilling cheaper. They decided to withhold this information and released FUD instead that climate change was a hoax. This betrayal of the planet was quite successful in delaying taking action on climate change. As a result Exxon Mobil will kill many more people that Hitler ever did. For a start, island nations sinking beneath the waves should sue Exxon Mobil for every penny.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Exxon Mobile’s Suicide

Exxon Mobile uses a pathologically narrow-minded decision-making process. To decide what do to about global warming they compute that opposing all measures to ameliorate it and lying to the public about the dangers of global warming will help them make more profit selling oil and gas in the next quarter. In their view, the fact that global warming leads to mass extinction of most of life on earth is irrelevant. That procrastinating greenhouse gas reduction until it is too late is similarly irrelevant. Even the long term bankruptcy of Exxon is irrelevant. All that matters is the next quarter profit. They behave like some sci-if super computer gone amok.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Fable of the Pet Lion

There was once a family who considered the possibility of acquiring a pet lion. Father was most excited about it. We’ll be rich he said. People will come from miles around to see it and we can soak them all.

Mother was worried it might poop on the rug. Don’t worry your silly little head about that, said father, There has to be technology to solve that.

Oh father how wonderful! Christy and I can go for lion rides. All the girls at my school will be so jealous, chimed in daughter Condoleeza. Envious!, mother corrected.

Mother fretted about the cost of feeding the lion. The males eat 7.03 kg (15½ lbs) a day, she explained. But think of the money! father reiterated.

Father prevailed and they bought a huge male lion with a magnificent shaggy mane and Christy and Condoleeza went for a lion ride. But due to human error, the lion was hungry, having missed three meals and ate both girls, even their hair and bones and, shudder, their painted fingernails.

The moral of the story is don’t be so enamoured of the attractions of something that you blind yourself to its obvious downsides, such getting all exciting about burning the Alberta tar sands because it will make you rich, then studiously ignore the fact doing that will release so much CO₂ it will kill billions of people with uncontrolled global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Facing Oblivion

I am old and weak enough that I probably will not be around when the effects of global warming become unbearable. Yet, oddly, I am hundreds of times more concerned about climate change than the young people who will face it head on. Perhaps my escape means I can look at this more objectively. I don’t need to kid myself.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Factory Farm

Farmers are complaining about being labeled factory farmers simply on the grounds they don’t like their animal cruelty crimes pointed out. If you raise animals where they cannot go outside and run around, you deserve to be called a factory farmer. If you don’t like it, stop mistreating your livestock.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fad Enthusiasms

Humans are prone to enthusiasms that become, at least for a while almost universal in a society. Sometimes they are harmful, but people don’t notice at first, e.g. smoking tobacco, junk food and Christianity.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Failing to Assassinate Hitler

We wonder why people of the 1930s were so reluctant to assassinate Hitler. I am fairly certain posterity will similarly condemn our generation for tolerating those who interfere with adopting green energy and reducing greenhouse gases.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Failure To Complain

Canadians are spending billions of dollars already to deal with the effects of global warming in freakish storms, floods, unprecedented wild fires, collapsed fisheries and droughts. Nobody complains. They treat these events as if they were ordinary natural disasters. On the other hand, they will not spend a penny, or even mildly inconvenience themselves, to prevent these disasters by reducing CO₂ emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Failure To Correct

If you were watching Jeopardy and Alex Trebek said No, the first world war was in 1929 millions of people would write to complain. Yet when equally incorrect assertions appear on TV, in books or even in school lectures, almost nobody complains because this is religiously protected misinformation, with even higher sacred cow status than the existence of Santa Claus. We don’t realise how ridiculous it is because we are so familiar with the religious myths. It is just as silly as if Christians started asserting John McCain were 200 years old and pounced on anyone who dared suggest otherwise, providing, of course, no evidence at all for this bizarre assertion.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Failure of Economics, Not Agriculture

The world is producing way more food than needed to feed everyone. Yet we still have about a billion people going hungry every day. This is a failure of the world economic system rather than world agriculture. African farmers cannot compete with imported low-priced American and European industrial food. That abundance of food drives the African farmers into poverty.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Failure of The Hoover Dam

Because less and less water falls on the Colorado mountains each year, the Hoover Dam will stop supplying water to Las Vegas and San Diego and electricity to Los Angeles in 2017.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fake Catastrophes

There are dozens of disaster movies for catastrophes unlikely to ever happen, but less than a handful about the most likely global disasters: global warming, nuclear war, runaway pollution, biowarfare… Why? Perhaps the real disasters are too gloomy. Once they start there is no way a hero can set them right at the last minute.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fall of Civilisation

Even if mankind drives itself extinct in 30 years, it is still fortunate to have a seat at this point in time to watch the spectacle. After all, you went to movies and read books about the fall of Rome and found it fascinating.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

False Bragging

Chevrolet advertises that is planting enough trees to eventually offset 8 megatonnes (8.82 megatons) of CO₂. To put that in perspective, the cars GM sold in 2010 produce 34 megatonnes (37.48 megatons) each year. They are compensating for 23% of the mess they make.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

False Intentions

If a country makes a promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by some future date, then does not immediately implement policies to make that happen, you know they have absolutely no intention of meeting that target. You can’t meet a reduction goal by action at the last minute.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

False Optimism

I listened to an audiobook called Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. It is a loose collection of good news you might have overlooked. The book cites Steven Pinker and Ray Kurzweil.

However, some of the logic made my hair stand on end. For example, he argues that the fuss over acid rain was a chicken little needless panic because none of the terrible predicted things happened. They fail to notice that governments and industries made massive changes to improve the situation.

He argues that because people tend to pay more attention to bad news than good, all the global problems we worry about must be phantoms. That is a non-sequitur.

He waxed poetic about how wonderful life will be when we can produce McFood 100 times more efficiently. They cited Japanese robotic factories as what we should aspire to in our personal lives. Their Utopian vision is a Koch brothers wet dream, billions of docile humanoids, packed like sardines, consuming artificial everything, not a leaf left, whose prime directive is corporate profit. This book is collection of corporate excuses for raping the environment. If you want a more thoughtful and truly optimistic view, read the original Pinker and Kurzweil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

A Famous Environmental Pig

Mrs. David Beckham, aka Posh Spice, is an environmental pig. She sold the cachet of her husband and herself to promote a gas-guzzling luxury SUV, intended purely for show as conspicuous consumption, intended never to see a rural road.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Farmers Hurt Themselves

There is cosmic justice in the fact that farmers who put carcinogenic chemicals on their crops will be the first to be hurt by them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Farming Reduces Total Catch

Ironically, the more fish farming we do, the less total fish we have because it takes 5 kilos of wild anchovies to create 1 kilo of farmed salmon. Humans could eat the anchovies directly.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fart Machines

I find it hard to understand how people can overcome the embarrassment of riding motorcycles, when then let out a noise like a giant fart that lasts for minutes at a time and can be heard for blocks. It is like cyclists installing whoopee cushions in their bicycle seats. Perhaps Mattel could come out with such a device so brats could pretend to be riding motorcycles.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fat Hamburgers

65% of the calories in hamburger come from fat, the result of feedlot finishing with high-starch corn.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Fatal Choice

We have a choice. We can succumb to the temptation to dig up and burn fossil fuels and perish or we can leave them in the ground and survive. Oddly, the overwhelming majority prefer the first choice. What is this, some sort of unconscious guilt? This is an nuts as preferring to eat a cream puff, even if you die by firing squad afterwards.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fatal Values

Americans are lethally confused about values. They hold the right to make money above the need to preserve the planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fattening the Planet

The map below shows species the spread of McDonald’s fast food outlets. The fatter a country is shown relative to its actual size, the more McDonald’s has infiltrated.

McDonald’s outlets map

© Copyright SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan)

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fear Of The Truth

The most cowardly people, when they hear bad news, pretend it can’t be true, simply because it frightens them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Feed Conversion Ratio

In animal husbandry, the feed conversion ratio is the ratio of the amount of feed you need to the amount of meat you raise.

Feed Conversion Ratios
Animal FCR
lower is better
Notes
farmed salmon 1.2-3.1 Not as good as it looks since the feed required is high protein fish
goat 1.5 Goat is low fat. Goats will not tolerate feed lot conditions.
poultry 2
tilapia 1.7
pork 3.5
sheep 4.5
beef 5-20

the cost of feed is the main factor in the price of meat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Feed Lot Sanitation

Let’s say that from some ghastly accident you were covered in inches of cattle feces and that you had been forced to eat food contaminated with cattle dung. How long would you spend cleaning yourself before you felt sufficiently clean to cook or let your lover lick you? How thorough would you be? The slaughter houses of Canada and the meat inspectors consider a quick hose-down with cold water completely sufficient. Obviously, the root cause of the meat recalls is the filthy conditions of feed lots.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Feedlot Shit

One feedlot produces as much feces as a city of 1.7 million people. The muck is poured directly into rivers without treatment. Oddly, the law considers it identical to dumping top soil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Feral Pigs

One source of E. coli on spinach was traced to feral pigs raiding a farm. Feral pigs are ecological wrecking machines.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fewer Mouths To Feed = Happiness

With global warming bearing down on us, the countries with the fewest mouths to feed will be happiest. This is not a time to encourage massive immigration or unrestrained breeding.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fighting Monsanto

The public already hates Monsanto, but since Monsanto does not sell food under their own retail name, the public doesn’t know how to boycott them. Monsanto has bribed/threatened legislators into letting them get away without labeling their food and from banning their competitors from advertising their food purity. The key then is to label Monsanto-containing products:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Filtering Immigrants

If you invite people into your country who believe that birth control is wicked and that the main function of women is to bare as many children as possible, you are inviting environmental catastrophe and social unrest as the proportions of various ethnic groups change rapidly.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Filthiest Source of Oil

The Alberta tar sands are the filthiest source of oil on earth. Separating the oil from the sand requires unbelievable amounts of energy. The process requires huge amounts of water which is usually polluted afterwards. Not only the finished oil produces greenhouse gases, the production produces vast amounts as well. The Conservative federal and provincial governments give massive subsidies to encourage exploitation of the resource. This is a ecological assault on the entire planet. At the very, least everyone should boycott all Alberta goods and services, especially tar sands petroleum.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fire

What would you think of a people so stupid they did not have the sense to leave a burning building and who fought the fire with gasoline? That metaphor describes humanity who refuse to take effective action on climate exchange and CO₂ greenhouse gas emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fire Retardant Chemicals

The foam inside furniture is filled with several pounds of fire retardant chemicals. The catches:

Then why has the California legislature, the one responsible for the law requiring these chemicals, not changed the rules? (Furniture makers make all furniture for North American compliant to the California law so they don’t have to produce two lines of furniture.) Legislators have tried five times. Every time, lobbyists from the chemical companies bought off sufficient politicians to block the change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fires Should Persuade

In Canada, 2011 is already the worst fire season since 1919. Americans are have major trouble with fires in the south west. Rush Limbaugh persists in saying the global warming is a hoax. He hopes you won’t notice the fires and ice melting.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Firestarters

Imagine there were a mammal like a rabbit or monkey that ran around setting fires for no apparent purpose. What a nightmare! Such a creature exists. It is called a smoker.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

First World Footprint

When determining the carrying capacity of the earth, it is not so important how many people there are on earth but rather how many Americans (or people who live the American life style), there are. Each of them uses hugely more energy, water, food and meat than a third worlder. The population explosion is greatly exacerbated by so many people in the third world (especially China) adopting an American life style.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fish Are Not Evolved To Deal With Humans

There is a bleak fact that commercial fishers refuse to accept — the only way to restore a moribund fish population is to stop fishing it altogether. Why is this so? Fish have been here for hundreds of millions of years. They have been managing their populations with hardwired genetically controlled behaviour. Suddenly, out of nowhere spring humans with all manner of machines and lures for catching fish. Humans instantly became the #1 ocean predator. Fish have no way to adjust to such a rapid change. It would take at least a million years for them to adjust. To succeed, we humans must never take more than that species of fish are evolved to immediately replace.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Five Stages of Grief

Kübler-Ross said that there are five stages of grief:

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Depression
  5. Acceptance

Most of the world, in particular the leaders of Canada and the USA are stuck in stage (1) when it comes to dealing with the end of the oil free ride and environmental degradation caused by overpopulation and our environmentally-hostile life style. People feel supernaturally entitled to continue living as we have this last century despite the overwhelming evidence we cannot.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Flat Earthers

A flat-earther in the modern day has to ignore the following:

Why then does a flat-earther persist in believing the earth is flat?

So basically the problem is a trust in gut intuition that trumps all evidence.

Climate Change Deniers are Like Flat Earthers

There are two kinds of climate change deniers: professional and fools. The professionals are not at all confused about climate change, however, they disseminate false information about climate change in order to prolong the life of their fossil fuel investments, knowing full well they will ruin the planet in the process. They don’t care. They are elderly. Even though folk like the Koch brothers are billionaires, nothing is more important to them than a few extra points of profit. They are mentally ill planetary traitors, but because they are rich, we don’t incarcerate them.

Why then do the fools become climate change deniers?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Flip Reaction to Danger

Climate change deniers are being flip about the danger second only to nuclear war (according to Environment Canada). If they had even the remotest idea of the magnitude of their damage, if they knew how they would be reviled for their aggressive ignorance and malice by all future generations, they might instantly shut up and do some serious, balanced research into climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Folly of Killing Sea Lions

Americans are slaughtering sea lions because imagine they are responsible for the decline is salmon stocks. Sea lions eat the slowest and sickest fish. This helps improve the stock and stop the spread of disease. Fisherman catch the biggest fish. This degrades the stock. 200 years ago the rivers wore so thick with fish you could walk across them. The sea lions were obviously no problem then. Why would they suddenly become a problem? In contrast look at all the insane things Americans have done to do to wipe out the salmon:

What slimy bastards the American are to blame the seal lions for they own mayhem, and that includes the aboriginal people in the USA suing to kill more seals!

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Folly of Sex Selection

Parents who interfere with the equal balance of male and female babies are condemning their children to a much lower chance of finding a life partner.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Food as Drug

Every food is effectively a drug you take in massive doses. It is wise to avoid taking each food for a week or so to learn what its benefits and negative side effects are. You might be surprised to learn that some of the foods you crave most have completely unacceptable side effects.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Food For Billions Of New Mouths

It requires the hubris of a TV faith healer to imagine there must be a way to double and redouble the productivity of an acre of soil endlessly as the population grows. The amount of energy from the sun is the same. The chemistry of chlorophyll is the same. How can we ignore the soils are getting worse each year from erosion and salinisation? How can we ignore that massive amounts of arable land are removed from production to serve other purposes? Surely we know much of the advances of the green revolution will reverse as oil runs out. If human ingenuity can solve any problem, why are we not seeing continuous improvement?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Food Hogs

Very few people brag that they managed to scarf 75% of the food when they go out with the gang for Chinese food, yet they will happily brag they managed to consume a disproportionate share of natural resources and manufactured goods and produce a disproportionate share of the garbage and CO₂ emissions. They will deliberately choose a vehicle that gets poor mileage to display their status. To me such people are pigs, vandals and criminals, with the lowest status of all. Hanging out with pigs like this is like being forced to invite Governor Chris Christy to come with you when you go for Chinese food.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Food Requires Oil

For every 1.0 kcal (dieting calorie) of food, it takes 10.0 kcal of fossil fuel energy for the fertiliser, pesticides, irrigation and delivery. This means, when we run out of oil, we also run out of food if we don’t have a replacement energy source in place.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Food Sufficiency

In 1969, on Vancouver Island where I live we grew 70% of our own food. I remember my grandmother growing oats, potatoes wheat and fodder for the cows. Today we grow less than 5%. Oil is rapidly depleting, which means increasing transportation costs. We will be forced by economics to growing most of our own food again. Unfortunately, we have paved over much of that farmland and we have many more mouths to feed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Food vs Drug

What is the difference between a food and a drug?

Food vs Drug
Food Drug
Can safely be eaten in large quantities. Must be eaten in small precisely specified dosages.
Not formally tested, but uses ingredients believed to be safe from thousands of years of use. Very carefully tested.
Eaten by everyone, young and old, healthy and sick. Only eaten by people with very specific diseases or conditions.
A food should have no negative side effects, other than making you fat if you eat too much of it. There is no pressing need to eat any particular food. If a cancer drug makes your hair fall out and makes you nauseous, even this can be tolerated so long as it cures the cancer.

Consider Proctor & Gamble introducing transfat (brand name Crisco). Consider Monsanto introducing genetically modified foods where genes from various species and artificial genes are mixed to form new foods. Consider DuPont’s fluoride. Consider food irradiation. These foods should be treated more like drugs because:

Besides testing, we need labeling both so that people can opt out of the experimental foods and so that people can track the negative side effects. If people are denied the knowledge they are eating these experimental foods, they will not consider those foods as a possible cause of some symptom. Their doctor cannot consider them either.

The creators of these foods strenuously and successfully resist even allowing competitors to label their foods as being free of these new ingredients. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, willing slave of the food manufacturers, and willing acceptor of contributions, enacted laws to keep consumers in the dark about what they are eating. There is no advantage to the consumer of doing that.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Food vs Drug Testing

We do drug testing, but not food testing. I think food testing is even more important because:

We have introduced untested foods with irradiation, GMO, drastically changing the diet of meat and milk animals, importing foods from the third world where they are careless with pesticides.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Foolish Baby Subsidies

The planet already has ten times as many people as it can sustain, so please don’t ask me to subsidise your fertility and child rearing through taxes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Foolishness of Fossil Fuel

Investing in fossil fuels as the governments of BC and Alberta are doing is foolish. It will not be long until the bottom falls out of the fossil fuel market. They will be stuck paying the long-term mortgages on all that useless infrastructure. There are two factors to consider:

  1. The cost of solar panels is dropping steadily. When the price per watt drops below the price of fossil fuels, it will mark the end of the age of oil. Germany is already generating 25% of its power with solar.
  2. Even before solar becomes cheaper than fossil fuels, people will become acutely aware that because of global warming, continued use of fossil fuels is suicidal. We simply cannot burn them no matter how much money it makes for corporations or how many jobs it creates. It is only a matter of time until the public dig in their heels and refuse to kill their grandchildren for the short term profit of big oil.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Foolishness of New Roads

We know for sure gasoline is running out. We know for sure that people will not be able to drive anywhere near as much as they do now. So why are we building new roads, as we expected traditional growth?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Footprint

The most important goal in life in these times is impose the smallest ecological footprint.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Forest Fire Ethics

Imagine you lived in a small town surrounded by forests. One dry summer, a forest fire started near your town and was rapidly on its way. It was pretty much up to the people in the town to protect it. Everybody did what they could to clear away flammable materials and damp down the homes, including those of the elderly. Everyone was pitching in to do what they could, all except the mayor co-incidentally named Stephen Harper. He did nothing, not even damp down his own home. He refused to free up any public funds. He explained I am a Christian, beloved of God. God would never let my house burn. I need do nothing. Besides, other people are working so I don’t need to.

What do you think of the ethics of this mayor? Of course, this is a metaphor for how Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been handling climate change. This is such a strange attitude when you look at all the terrible things God allowed to happen to Christians throughout history, e.g. the bubonic plague and the year without a summer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Forest Fires

Thousands of people have been driven from their homes by record forest fires in 2017-07 in British Columbia. They go on the radio to blubber about their misfortune to lose their homes and belongings. I have little sympathy for these people. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Forest-Killing Diapers

A disposable diaper takes 236.59 mls (1 US cups) of crude oil to make the outside cover. It sits at least 500 years in landfill, far longer than the child will live. It requires felling four mature trees to create the absorbent pads for one child’s supply of diapers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70), source National Geographic video The Human Footprint.

Forget Recycled Fryer Fat

Biodiesel from recycled fast food restaurant grease can never be more than a novelty. There only enough of it to fuel a few vans per city.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fossil Fuel Escalating Lies

The fossil fuel industry has been upping the ante from dissembling to outright lies. They now claim bitumen does not sink in sea water. Everyone agrees it sinks in fresh water river and streams. According to Introduction to Hydrology, Department of Geography, Okanagan University College. 2001-06-11, Oceans vary from specific gravity 1.020 to 1.029. Alberta Tar Sands bitumen is specific gravity 1.060. In other words, bitumen is considerably heavier i.e. denser than sea water. In other words bitumen sinks. In other words, the fossil fuel industry is lying thorough its teeth. Because bitumen sinks, there is no way to clean up a spill.

If you have listened to the doubletalk and dissembling about state-of-the-art recovery and world class recovery coming from the pro-pipeline folk over the last 5 years and 4 months, you might believe the technology exists to clean up maybe 99% of oil and bitumen spills. However, the best they can recover is about 5% of a crude oil spill. There is nothing they can do about a bitumen spill except for the tiny bit they can recover it before it sinks.

If they cared about the environment, they would do something like inject the bitumen with air bubbles, and wrap it in plastic into ice-cube sized lumps so it could easily be swept up after a spill.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fossil Fuel Promotion

All across Canada the federal and provincial governments are promoting new fossil fuel projects such as oil drilling, fracking, liquid natural gas plants, pipelines… Have people never heard of the imminent catastrophe of climate change? Pretending to ignore it does not make it go away. Even one pipeline puts out more greenhouse gas than our entire greenhouse gas target. What we are doing is planning to overshoot the target we promised to the other nations of earth by hundreds of times. At least we should be honest we are planning to deliberately sabotage the world for short term financial gain.

Eventually, we will smarten up and be forced to moth ball these projects to stop their greenhouse gas emissions and because the rest of the world has gone green we will no longer have customers. This is hardly good economics.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fossil Fuel Traditions

The fossil fuel industry has some long-standing traditions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fox Lies

FOX News told a monumental outrageous lie, one intended to derail clean energy in the USA. They claimed the USA did not get enough sun to support solar. When asked why Germany was so solidly into solar, they lied that Germany was much sunnier than the USA. Germany is about as sunny as Alaska. The main part of the USA is much sunnier than Germany.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) FOX news lies on solar click to watch

Fragile Earth

During most of its 4.543 billion years, earth was not habitable. Right now, we are living a fluke Goldilocks period when earth sustains life quite well.

The problem is, Republicans and Christians are under the delusion it is impossible for humans to do anything that would harm earth’ habitability. Everything is balanced on knife-edge. No god is holding all balanced.

Do a Pascal’s wager. If you do nothing about climate change you could die if scientists are right or live if Christians are right. If you work to stop climate change, you will live if scientists are right or live if Christians are right. You are basically betting your life on Christians telling you about long range climate predictions they have shown no evidence for. I can understand you trusting your fellow Christians on matters of spirit, the bible, home cooking… but you know perfectly well, in general, they have only an elementary school knowledge of science. Christianity hates science because science contradicts it at every turn, so it is only natural few Christians have a deep understanding of it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fred Singer

Big oil openly hired the same shill, Fred Singer, who testified on the harmlessness of tobacco, to pose this time as a climate expert to tell lies about global warming. Why do you ignore the evidence Big Oil is being dishonest and assume the world’s climate scientists are dishonest even though there is no evidence to support that contention?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fred Singer

Siegfried Fred Singer (1924-09-27 age:93) is arguably the most unprincipled man on the planet. He studied physics then pontificated, for a fee, saying whatever he was paid to say, posing as an expert on an astounding range of subjects such as:

One of his sources of income is Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, another ExxonMobil and another RJ Reynolds Tobacco.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Frequency of Oil Spills

How well constructed does the Enbridge Northern pipeline need to be? It is expected to last 30 years. If Enbridge used technology that is expected to go 60 years without a spill, we would have 50:50 odds of a major spill. But the technology they use creates a spill about every 3 weeks. This is only 1/1000 the safety needed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Friends of Climate Change

Oddly, there are only two branches of the US government that take climate change seriously. The military and homeland security are looking 50 years out into the future. Every other government agency has been corrupted by the Koch Brothers and the Republicans to put climate change deniers in charge. This is such a serious problem, I could make a case for a military coup to correct it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Frog Extinction

Frogs have survived whatever nature could throw at them for 200 million years. Now frog species are going extinct left and right. Why? one reason is because we humans are spreading the herbicide atrazine, a chemical similar to frog sex hormones on our fields. Even microscopic doses make male frogs develop eggs in their testes or develop ovaries. Farmers don’t seem to realise they need frogs for purely economic reasons to help control insects.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Frog In Warm Water

It is a myth that a frog placed in warm water, slowly heated will allow itself to cook to death. It will jump out. Frogs have a much better sense of self-preservation than humans.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fruits of the Hybrid Car

Engineers expended decades of work producing the hybrid car which can go twice as far on the same amount of gas. Do the owners of these vehicles then cut their gas consumption and greenhouse gases in half? Nope. They just drive around for the hell of it, driving twice as far as ever before, using up just as much of a limited resource and putting just as much greenhouse gas into the air. If our species goes extinct, nobody can say we did not deserve it. We are terminally stupid and short-sighted.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fuel Subsidies

Fuel subsidies have the deleterious effect of encouraging people to waste dwindling supplies of fuel. If people need help keeping warm, they should not get fuel subsidies, but general subsidies, or subsidies that can only be spend on fuel efficiency.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Fundamental Problem with Capitalism

Capitalism is fundamentally incapable of solving environmental problems.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fungible Oil

You have seen the ads; you have heard the politicians — drill baby drill to reduce American dependence on foreign oil. But all the oil from the continental shelves is sold on the international markets, just like all the other oil. It is in no way reserved for American use. As the economists say, oil is fungible. The relative trickle of oil derived from offshore drilling would have almost no effect on reducing global oil prices. To reduce imports, you must reduce demand though efficiency.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fusion Drawbacks

Fusion energy perpetually recedes 50 years into the future. However, I wonder if we ever get there, if fusion will be quite the panacea advertised. Sea water contains deuterium in microscopic amounts, yet the deuterium in a gallon of sea water is equivalent to 300 gallons of gasoline. However, you can’t use raw sea water in a reactor. You must extract and purify the deuterium aka heavy hydrogen. Heavy water D₂O and water H₂O behave the identically chemically, so you must use a process that takes advantage of the fact deuterium is slightly heavier that hydrogen, like repeated distillation or repeated electrolysis of water. This takes huge amounts of energy. You may have to invest so much energy preparing the fuel that the energy return is not worth the candle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Fusion Reactor

Imagine what a technical marvel it would be if man placed a giant thermonuclear reactor in space, far enough away for safety, sufficient to power the whole planet. We have one. It is called the sun. It comes bundled with billions of years of fuel. However, it is free and public property. It is thus of little interest to business.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Futile Boycotts

Boycotting gasoline is pointless. It has no effect on the bottom line of the oil companies. It is simply postponing purchases a few days. Boycotting driving on the other hand would work, as would trading up to a smaller more fuel efficient vehicle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Futility of Combating Climate Change

Trying to persuade fellow humans to stop emitting greenhouse gases is a bit like buying a lottery ticket. There is almost no chance of success, but if it worked, it would be quite grand to save a planet from self-destruction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Future

All I am doing here is projecting long-standing trends to guess what the future will be like. Mankind could always wise up and change direction. I would love to be wrong.

  1. Politicians are refusing to act on climate change. Instead, to mollify their constituents, they procrastinate with 30-year targets for other politicians to fulfill. This means mass extinctions of plants and animals. Since tropic regions will no longer be suitable for agriculture or human habitation, there will be tsunamis of refugees.
  2. Even though the world population is growing less explosively that it once was, it is still growing rapidly. This means we will have more mouths to feed, more bodies to house, more throats to slake. We will need more resources to manufacture goods. Yet we will have the same old earth with exhausted resources to provide for everyone. There will be wars over the shortages. People overbreed for Darwinian reasons and to spread their particular faith.
  3. We will continue to treat the oceans and rivers as a garbage dump. It is cheaper that way for corporations. The international free trade agreements enable them to block government efforts at cleanup.
  4. We have killed off 93% of the tigers in the last century. All the iconic animals of our toddler picture books will go extinct mainly through habit loss but also through poaching from the increased population pressure. All the large food fish will go extinct.
  5. The world will continue to be ever more sharply divided into the elites and have-nots. The middle class will gradually disappear.
  6. Jobs for humans will continue to disappear as robots/computers become better at them than humans. Soon to go: assembly lines, garment manufacture and truck and taxi driving.
  7. Christianity will decline. Islam will grow.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Future Civilisations

If thousands or millions of years into the future there are civilisation in other parts of the universe much older than ours, what would they be like? The key difference of beings of the future from us is they would have to be much cautious. If there were as cavalier as we are, they would have gone extinct in a century. Some of our risks:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Future Food

The food industry is gradually trying to wean us off food and into drinking meal replacements: Soylent, Slim-Fast, Boost, Ensure… Eventually, these drinks will be manufactured without any natural food ingredients. This is their answer to the overpopulation problem.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Futuristic Toilet

If you designed a toilet system for a two-story house, you could hide the common tank in the attic. It would provide super-pressure for all the toilets in the house. You could use less water and use just the precise amount of water needed per flush.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Gasoline Spill

Today 2011-04-18 there was a massive gasoline spill into a local salmon spawning stream. I think, when this happens, we should sacrifice an oil executive by throwing them into a volcano.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Genesis of Anti-Environmentalists

There are two main reasons people become anti-environmentalist.

  1. They are Christian. They share the delusion that the god Yahweh will clean up after them and prevent any environmental catastrophes. They believe this despite all the evidence of past environmental disasters. Some even entertain the mad notion that destroying the environment or global thermonuclear war will hasten the return of Jesus.
  2. Money-mad people who are so concerned with making large amounts of money as fast as possible that they ignore the environmental side effects of their economic activity.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Genies and Bottles

The biggest problem with GMOs is the lack of reversibility. In most cases if you discover you are doing something really dumb, you just stop doing it. With GMOs, that is not enough. You have irrevocably introduced your genes into wild plants and weeds and non GMO crops. There is no putting the genie back in the bottle. This means you need an exceptional amount of care and testing (which is incompatible with profitability).

One classic example was introducing a GMO Klebsiella planticola bacterium that produces alcohol. At the very last second Michael Holmes, a student needing a project for his PhD thesis, noticed that this thing killed nearly all plants by drowning their roots in alcohol.

I think we need some research why so many people are now allergic to wheat. It did not used to be so. I did not used to be, but now I am. It could be that wheat itself has changed.

GMOs sometimes use genes from totally unrelated species. This could trigger unexpected allergies. We need labeling of out-of-species genes to help track down such problems.

In general, I want more caution on anything you administer to almost everyone. Testing should be much more cautious than for a drug you administer to just a few people, for whom serious side effects are acceptable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Genius of Cap and Trade

The genius of cap and trade is that it uses greed to rope unscrupulous people who normally could care less about sustainability into selling the idea of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Getting Emotional

People chastise me for getting emotional about global warming. How much bigger an emergency do you need than the extinction of man and most large mammals to justify some emotion and arm waving? Other people go all weepy over the death of one serial-killing, sadistic soldier.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Getting Hot

In California, crabs just about at their limit. Another 1.1°C (2.0°F) and the crabs’ hearts will stop beating.

In Alaska and the Yukon the massive caribou herds are disappearing. The heat is creating swarms of mosquitos which pester the caribou so mercilessly they can’t eat. So they are too skinny to make it through the winter.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Strange Days on Planet Earth National Geographic Video

Getting on Top Of Climate Change

What do we have to do to get on top of climate change?

The problem is, politicians are doing the very opposite. Why? Because legacy industries do not want to change. They would sooner pay the politicians to betray the planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Giant Strawberries

You have probably seen those gigantic genetically modified strawberries in the supermarket. The farmer saves on picking labour and they catch the eye like a magnet on the shelves. The catch is they are filled with tasteless white pulp. Even after being burned multiple times, you might still find yourself buying them because you are buying with your eyes instead of your brain.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Giving Up On Global Warming

Many business people have decided dealing with global warming is hopeless, so they have decided to lie to everyone else that there is no emergency, so that they can loot, drink and be merry in the last days of techno civilisation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Glacier Loss

According to Nova, all the world’s mountain glaciers will be gone in 50 to 100 years. Glaciers store water and release it evenly throughout the year. Without them, you have alternating floods and droughts.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Glacier Retreat

The Columbia glacier is retreating at 0.80 km (½ mile) a year, 8 times faster than it was 30 years ago. Yet the media insist on calling this the apparent retreat of the glacier, as though there were some doubt it was retreating.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Glaciers Feeding the Ganges are Almost Gone

The glaciers of the Himalayas are melting so quickly, that within a few decades, the Ganges will no longer flow all year round from the melt-water. It will dry up completely.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Fishery Collapse

Because of man’s political inability to control overfishing, according to Dr. Boris Worm, he will have driven every single species of edible fish to collapse by 2048. Collapse is defined as population below 10% of normal without the ability to ever recover, leading to eventual extinction. Man is such as insatiably greedy animal. He is driving not only the ocean fish, but himself to extinction with it. I don’t know how anyone could be in denial. We have seen it happen over and over with specific species.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Food Safety

With globalisation, agricultural products are grown with a complete hodge podge of regulations, including none at all. Then they appear on your plate all mixed together. It is almost as if your own country rescinded all its laws around pesticides and their application. The best it can do is spot test imports for serious contamination.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Procrastination

The most frustrating thing about humanity is they insist on waiting until global warming is too advanced to reverse before they will even begin to act. A species that short-sighted fully deserves extinction. However, it is most distressing that these twits will take down all the large mammals and many other species with them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global self-defence

Logically, if you saw someone trashing the environment, you should be able to attack them and plead not only self-defence, but defence of all the people he was, perhaps unconsciously, trying to poison or kill with his attack on the environment. The law does not yet see it this way. It is more concerned about intent than effect.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Trashing Party

In New York City. people sometimes have parties the night before they vacate a rental premises, or earlier to convince the landlord to break the lease. They trash the place. Humans are holding a global trashing party to destroy our planet. We won’t be living here much longer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Warming Denial

In 1896, the great Swedish chemist, Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68) worked out the formula between CO₂ emissions and warming. This was not controversial for a century. It is basic chemistry. We know how much fossil fuels we burned. We know how much CO₂ that released. We know how much heat that trapped. That CO₂ traps heat is not controversial. Denying it is almost as goofy as denying that burning oil produces heat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Warming Deniers Are Intensely Evil

Spreading FUD about global warming is even more evil than genocide. It leads to the death of most humans on earth and the extinction of most species. Yet twits do it without thinking, for the most petty of motives such as short term financial or political advantage or enjoyment of annoying others. This crime of all crimes is not even illegal. You would think vigilantes would capture, torture and eradicate these idiots, but they rarely even chastise them in print. Scientists who understand the reality of global climate change suffer from a moral paralysis like the landlord in The Firebugs: A Morality Without a Moral.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Warming Effect is Very Old

What infuriates me is how many people will assert in the media that there is no correlation between CO₂ and average global temperature. This is very old science. It was worked out in the 1800s by Fourier (of Fourier transforms the key to modern telecommunications) and Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68) (the guy who discovered ions). It was not in the least controversial until mankind’s CO₂ emissions became massive. These shills are claiming that climate science is part of some global conspiracy going back to the 1800s to interfere with Exxon’s profit, or glean government grants, neither of which even existed back then. I seriously propose the death penalty for telling this lie. It is treachery and vandalism on a thermonuclear scale. Nothing short of nuclear war hurts more people and does more damage.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Warming Extinction Events

Scientists now think only one of the five major extinction events was caused by an asteroid hitting earth. The others were caused by global warming. The poles warm faster than the equator. Without sufficient temperature difference to drive the major ocean conveyors/currents, the oceans fail to reoxygenate. Fish and animals die and bacteria that live without oxygen take over. Eventually everything is covered in green slime both in the oceans and on land. We are headed in that direction right now.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Warming Fantasies

Most people have a very rosy and naïve view of what global climate change will mean to them. They might imagine it would be like an extended vacation in Cuba. At worst, it will mean having to buy an air conditioner. The reality is it will be a nightmare comparable to global nuclear war. There will be massive global food shortages and utterly desperate, angry people from the south, who have nothing to lose, pouring north to seek food. Billions of people will die. It is too late now to avert it. All we can do is make it somewhat less hellish.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Warming Ice Age

The odds are 50% that by 2100 global warming will have stopped the Gulf stream and paradoxically brought on a mini-ice age in Europe.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Gulf Stream and the Next Ice Age

Global Warming in Mexico

Global warming is heating up Mexico and central America making it ever harder to grow crops. This is sending an ever growing wave of illegal immigrants into the USA. Climate change is making weather in the USA freaky: huge hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, heat waves, water shortages… This is sending a small but ever growing wave of Americans north to Canada. This means America is becoming more and more Hispanic. This should help motivate right wingers to fight climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Warming Omerta

You’d think the 2011 heat wave with its many all time temperature records and the recent winter with its record snowfalls would at least bring up the topic of global climate change. Yet none of the TV news networks have said a peep. Why? The main reason TV networks do anything is one of their advertisers demands they do it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Warming or Climate Change?

Global warming> refers to the gradual increase in average global temperature. This does not mean temperature increases everywhere and at every point in the year. Cretins dance about every time it snows anywhere on earth and proclaim this proves there is no global warming. To avoid confusing the nitwits, professionals use the term climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Warming Paralysis

Man’s paralysis in the face of global warming makes as much sense as refusing to get out of the way of an avalanche because it would disrupt a poker game.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Global Warming Studies

Between 2007 and 2012 there were 7000 studies of global warming, all of which confirmed the earlier finding that the earth is warming and human emissions are causing it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

A Global Warning

Scientists have figured out what the earth’s climate, particularly temperature, has been doing for the last 650 million years. It started out with very low levels of CO₂. The entire earth was covered over 1.61 km (1 mile) deep in ice. It was -40°C (-40°F) at the equator. Almost all life was wiped out. Ten million years later, it swung to the opposite extreme and again it wiped out almost all life.

250 million years ago, CO₂ levels rose and wiped out 95% of life on earth.

55 million years ago CH₄, methane a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as CO₂ was the culprit. Crocodiles were living at the North Pole, then eventually the warming fried the entire earth and wiped out almost all life.

The famous chemist, Svante Arrhenius Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68) (Nobel prize winner who discovered ions), published his calculations in 1896 about the relationship between CO₂ and global temperatures. His work has been confirmed from over a century of observation and from our new ability to study the deep past.

The point is scientists are certain of the effects of CO₂. They also know we have already pumped it higher than it has been for 3 million years and if we do not charge our ways, will more than double that. We know that is already sufficiently high to trigger an extinction event. Climate-change extinction events are not like asteroid ones. The effects build gradually, usually over thousands or millions of years. The one we are creating now is happening very fast, over only a few centuries.

How the Earth Was Made, Life After People, a Global Warning - The History Channel Our Planet Box Set ~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Gloomiest Fact

The gloomiest fact about the future of the environment is those who control its fate, the economists and capitalists, are incapable of seeing anything except money. They don’t give a flying fig about the environment other that as it affects the flow of money. The complementary cheering fact is, without the environment, there is no economy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

GMO Danger

The fundamental problem with genetic manipulation, GMOs, is, to be able to insert a snippet of DNA in your target crop, you have to manipulate it to give it extra power to insert, to make it promiscuous. It keeps that power and later can potentially re-insert itself in any organism of any species it encounters far more readily than any natural DNA snippet. All kinds of genetic modifications are leaking out into the environment where they are definitely not wanted, e.g. genes to make plastic or pesticides.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

GMO Gibberish

It is untrue both to say that GMOs will kill you and GMOs cannot hurt you. They need safety testing just like other high technology people put into their bodies. GMOs allow plants to be drastically modified to manufacture chemicals that would never appear naturally.

Monsanto refuses to test its products at all. They claim that is the government’s responsibility. This is troubling. GMOs can harm. They can do things plant breeding cannot, like insert a pesticide or herbicide inside the cells where it cannot be washed off or time-degraded. Just because a pesticide is delivered by GMO does not means it is automatically safe.

GMOs become ubiquitous as ingredients in table-ready foods. You want to make sure you are not introducing mysterious allergies that consumers cannot track down or avoid.

There is some slimy dissembling from Monsanto. The modified genes themselves are clearly not harmful. They are just another DNA combo, perfectly digestible. The potential trouble comes from what those genes direct the plant to do.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

GMO Leaks

If you are a scientist and you produce some noxious or radioactive chemical and it leaks into the environment, you send in a hazmat team to dig up the contaminated soil and contain it. However, if you are a GMO scientist and one of your creations gets out into the environment it will not stay put. Life does everything it can to spread to every spot on earth that it can gain a foothold. If it has any unexpected negative side effects, too bad! There is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. That is why you must be thousands of times more careful with experimental life forms than with chemicals.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Gnats and Camels

It is amusing how much trouble Americans take to prevent a terrorist from bringing in even a baby bottle full of explosives. Simultaneously though, American cities invite nuclear waste, nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons into the heart of their city harbours onboard nuclear submarines that refuse safety inspection. They also invite LNG supertankers into their harbours. If one of these ever blew, (perhaps triggered by a small terrorist bomb or missile) it would take out the entire city core.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Go Bag Free

You probably know the disadvantages of one-use plastic bags:

Use a reusable canvas bag instead. Join Bag Free Day every July 3.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Goal Is Still Catastrophe

The goal of keeping global warming down to 2.0°C (3.6°F) is crazy. The last time the earth was that hot was the Pleistocene, when the sea was 15 metres (16.40 yards) higher. Even if we do meet the goal, it is still a catastrophe. Corporations think no further ahead than the next quarter. It is madness to put them in charge of global warming decisions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Goals

Animals have two simple goals:

  1. Survive.
  2. See to it their offspring survive.

Humans are animals, so you would expect them to behave the same way. However, corporations and peer pressure have persuaded them to behave insanely without even noticing, for example:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Going All Gooey

Some people go all gooey inside when they hear readings from the bible. Some go gooey on hearing the strains of their national anthem. I go all gooey when someone talks about preserving our planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Going Carless

Even if someone gave me a new car, I would not want it. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Going Clean Too Soon

What terrible thing would happen if we went to clean energy 20 years sooner than we absolutely had to?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Gold Mining

Gold mining has to be one of the strangest of human activities. We extract gold from the ground, ruining lakes and rivers in the process, then bury it again in vaults. We rarely use it for anything. When when we do use it, it is for decoration. We destroy the earth to decorate the fingers of the rich. Surely wearing gold should be considered as shameful as wearing the fur of endangered animals.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Gold Mining Protest

Perhaps the biggest demonstration against gold mining in a park was the battle of Little Big Horn that wiped out Custer. The US Army had been prospecting in the sacred treaty-reserved Sioux lands of the Black Hills of Dakota. The outrage brought the peaceful tribes to the battle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Goldilocks Zone

Lay people can’t seem to grasp how familiar, apparently innocuous gases like O₂ oxygen, CO₂ carbon dioxide, H₂S hydrogen sulphide, CH₄ methane, O₃ ozone, N₂O nitrous oxide etc. become lethal if the global atmospheric concentration wanders out of a fairly narrow safe band either directly or through the greenhouse effect. CO₂ carbon dioxide (pop fizz) can kill you just as dead as HCN hydrogen cyanide (gas chamber).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Good News For a Change

About 20% of greenhouse gases come from cow flatulence methane. A PEI (Prince Edward Island) farmer has discovered feeding cows red seaweed almost eliminates the methane.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Good News on Nuclear

Uranium-235 is an isotope of uranium making up only about 0.72% of natural uranium. The rest is uranium-238. A normal slow-neutron reactor consumes the Uranium-235, but leaves the uranium-238 behind as waste that remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. Decades ago, the Europeans invented a fast-neutron reactor than consumes both. So it can use uranium-238 nuclear waste as fuel and completely consuming it leaving almost no radioactive waste. This seems to me infinitely more sensible than any scheme to store the uranium-238 waste, hoping to keep it confined for hundreds of thousands of years. I don’t know if such reactors have serious drawbacks.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Google Favours Deniers

Nearly the articles Google mentioned the first three pages of results on Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth were from climate change denier shills. Does that mean Google too has been corrupted, or just that the shills are more vocal than real scientists?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Google Sunroof

Google Sunroof is a Google project to let you know how suitable your roof is for converting to solar panels. It tells you the expect savings and vendors for labour and materials. Germany is well ahead of other countries in converting to solar. Oddly, it has the same sunlight as Alaska.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Gradual Collapse

When you have environmental collapse, it is not as though you wake up one day and there is no food to be had, no fuel, no clean water. It happens gradually. The price of food, fuel and water snakes up and up until people can’t afford it, have to go without and eventually die. Watch the process unfold daily in the third world. Those with billions in the bank are much less concerned about such a collapse. They plan to use their wealth for personal survival. In a ghastly Darwinian sense, they are glad everyone else will die and they alone may survive to spawn the future generations. They are tempted to use their fabulous wealth to mislead the masses about the coming troubles so long as it helps them accumulate personal resources. These are people who believe deeply in dog eat dog.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Grants to Parents

Grants to parents are essentially an inducement to have babies. We transfer wealth from the environmentally responsible to the irresponsible. Obviously, we have to ensure the well being of our new citizens, but we should not overdo the inducements to the point more babies are born than would otherwise.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Graphene

Graphene is a new ultra-strong, ultra-light form of carbon. It promises batteries much lighter than today, with much higher capacity that can be charged in seconds. Imagine a light-weight bicycle with power assist to whisk you along at 64.37 km/hr (40 mph) through dead-locked traffic.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Gratuitous Pollution

Infiniti announced their new models have 29% more power, and 19% greater fuel economy. In other words they are gratuitously polluting at least 29% more than they need to with the current technology.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Greasing For Invasive Species

Invasive species usually don’t have much chance unless humans have done something to drastically alter the environment to put the native species on the ropes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Great Barrier Reef Is Rapidly Dying

Climate change deniers look at the rapidly dying Great Barrier Reef in Australia and lie that nobody has any idea what the problem is. It is climate change. You know that personally if you have ever kept a salt water aquarium. You know how incredibly sensitive the corals and fish are to temperature, salinity, NH₄ concentration, CO₂ concentration and pH. We have been jerking all these parameters around in a way that does not occur naturally in the Great Barrier Reef. There is no mystery why the reefs are dying.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Great Dying

The term climate change or global warming sounds like a granny attempting to murder you with too much cocoa, but it is serious stuff. Scientists are fond of understatement. Consider that 187 million years before the end of the dinosaurs there was a climate change event. It wiped out 96% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial species.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Green Party Partner

In the 2017-05-09 election, the Green party won 3 seats giving it the balance of power. The Leader Andrew Weaver said he would negotiate with both the Liberals and the NDP about forming a governing coalition. I am revolted at the callous lack of principle in even considering shoring up the Liberals, the government with the worst environmental record in Canada. That is a betrayal of all the people who voted for him, and of Dr. David Suzuki who endorsed him and of all the people who ran for the party.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Green Technology is Not Rocket Science

Americans imagine that green technology is some mysterious uncharted rocket science. They forget the Danes, Dutch, Germans and Japanese have been using it successfully on a massive scale for decades. Americans could implement it next month just by phoning in an order.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Green Washing

The silliest example of green-washing is the Jeep Wrangler ad that claims their SUV is both wind and solar powered. Bullshit! Absolute bullshit! It is not remotely true even metaphorically. SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles) are the least environmental class of vehicle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Greenhouse Gases

We need to reduce greenhouse gases both in extracting the fuel from the ground and in burning it. The catch is, oil, when you burn it, turns into CO₂ and water. That is unchangeable chemistry. There is nothing you can do to reduce those burning emissions. All you can do is capture them. Naïve politicians promise technology to burn more oil with less emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Greenhouse Gases On Other Planets

The greenhouse gas equations apply also to other planets. In fact NASA is toying with the idea of deliberately using greenhouse gases to warm up Mars. The conspiracy theorists who claim global warming is a hoax concocted by a secret conspiracy of all the world’s peer-review published scientists have not yet come up with an explanation for why these equations would apply to other planets, but not earth where they were originally derived.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Greening Your PC (Personal Computer)

Greening your PC

Here are 9 ways to green your PC. In addition, you can check up how much power you are using and what it is costing you with the PowCost Applet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Greenland

If the Greenland ice sheet melted, the oceans would rise 7 metres (7.66 yards). This would flood out 25% of the world’s population.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Greenland Melt

Greenland is covered with an ice cap 3 km (1.86 miles) thick. If it melts, the oceans of the world will rise 7 metres (7.66 yards). Even with the CO₂ we have already emitted, it is melting rapidly. The last time the earth got as warm as it is today, oceans rose 9 metres (9.84 yards).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) What Scientists Are Seeing Over Greenland click to watch

Greenwashing

Greenwashing is rampant. I saw five TV commercials in a row featuring windmills, all from companies that don’t have anything at all to do with wind energy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Growing Without Limit

Any city that grows without limit eventually experiences a catastrophic collapse. Economics falsely asserts this can’t happen. They falsely claim constant growth is necessary.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Growth = Suicide

To an economist growth is the meaning of life. To an ecologist, it is the primary way that cultures commit suicide. Is there any possibility of a reconciliation? The basic problem is the earth’s ability to sustain is finite. The earth mathematically cannot sustain continuous growth of the demands put on it. This means we cannot prosper by continually increasing the population. We cannot prosper by continually increasing the total amount of resource extraction or goods shipped over the earth. However, we can prosper with efficiency — learning new ways to extract more benefit out of every kilogram of resource extracted, every litre of water, every handful of soil and every erg of energy. We can also prosper by using that which was formerly wasted, e.g. garbage or rain or sun falling on cities. We can also prosper by having fewer babies so there are more resources to go around. Even as it is, it would take several planets the size of earth to sustain our current rate of consumption, much less the growing rate we are so frantically grasping for. We know perfectly well what happens to locusts and tent caterpillars, yet we still base our economic systems on their short-term maximum exploitation growth-is-king economic principles.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Growth is Cancer

From the point of view of economics, endless growth is the meaning of existence. From the point of view of ecology, endless growth is a fatal cancer. Money people live isolated from the real world in glass towers. They talk only to themselves. They are unaware they are working full time to kill the planet. They are whipping it to produce beyond sustainability. They are blowing the entire planetary capital of forests, minerals, fossil fuels, clean water, soil… Any form of economic activity will do: diesel buses billowing black smoke, lampshades made of endangered species, Chinese kettles that break after a month, war, funerals, health care for easily preventable diseases… The planet cannot even sustain anywhere near the amount of economic activity we have now, much less any more growth. We simply must get used to consuming less, recycling everything and lowering the birth rate and let the economists scream. They are completely out of touch with reality. Human survival trumps human convenience. We have no right to leave the next generations nothing but an empty shell of a planet, polluted, barren and stripped of resources.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Growth is Cancerous

Anything that grows without bounds is by definition cancerous. We humans think our cities are beautiful, like a demented old woman coddling the cancers in her breasts as divine manifestations.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Growth vs Sustainability

The big environmental conflicts are always between growth/profitability and sustainability. Profitability always sounds most important because those who will get the profits have the most money to promote their interests. But in the end, only a fairly small percentage of the population benefit. Even though economists promote endless growth as the meaning of the universe, any mathematician or ecologist will tell you it is flat out impossible. Any growth-based system will eventually go bust when it outstrips its resources. The keys to sustainability are recycling and living within your ecological means.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Halving Meat Consumption

If you halve your meat consumption, it will do more to help reduce greenhouse gases even than if you disposed of your car and ever after traveled by bicycle. This is because livestock fart methane CH₄ which is 25 times more potent than CO₂ as a greenhouse gas.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Handling Climate Change

There are only two ways I can think of that will allow us to survive climate change. One is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and wait for the cost of solar energy to come down enough for mass replacement. The other is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and wait for genetic engineering to create new microscopic lifeforms to deal with the CO₂ and produce energy and food from sunlight.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Happy Progress

Normal entrepreneurial motives are whisking companies along to solve the big problems facing our species, with one big exception — climate change. Big Oil sees clean energy as the competition, rather than its own future, so they do what they can to derail it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harming Wildlife

Warthog populations are down by 80%. Giraffe populations are down by 95%. 1/8 of all bird species are now at risk for extinction. 1/3 of all amphibians are at risk for extinction. 100% of male fish in a section of the Potomac river are producing eggs. They are all intersex as a result of pesticides and plastic softeners that mimic female hormones. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has no regulations on any of these chemicals. They affect humans too. In one town in northern Canada, girls outnumber boys 5 to 1 as a result of the chemicals in the womb feminising or killing off the male fetuses.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper: False Climate Guru

Stephen Harper did not predict the massive Calgary flood of 2013. The climate scientists did. Yet there are still adoring fans who think Harper knows more about the issue than scientists do.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Delusion

Religious leaders assert that behaving well sets the bar and encourages others to behave well. If you behave badly, it gives an excuse for others to behave badly. Canada’s Prime Minister Harper and environment minister Peter Kent disingenuously assert the opposite. They claim the more Canada emits greenhouse gases the more it will encourage others to cut back. What an absurd excuse for toadying to the oil companies.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Harper’s Wealth

Men of Stephen Harper’s generation are deciding to do nothing about global warming imagining it will slightly increase their personal wealth. The people who have to live with the consequences, have no say. No other creature, save corporate man, sacrifices the next generation for the current.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hated Spotted Owl

The spotted owl is the most hated bird in the USA, not because it has filthy habits, not because it preys on livestock, but simply because it is endangered and Americans lust after its tiny remaining forest habitat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hating Blackberries

Why do corporations go to such extreme lengths to stop blackberries from growing on their unused land? They can’t stand the idea of them providing free fruit.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hating the Earth

Some people so hate the earth than sustains them that they refuse to even use a biodegradable shampoo. They are like a thug who brags he is unusually manly because he likes to belt his mother in the stomach after she serves him Christmas dinner. There is no room for saboteurs like this on Spaceship Earth. We need to find a way to toss these bastards overboard.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Heads in the Sands

Demand for oil grows 2% a year. Oil reserves shrink 7% a year. Why is industry pretending to itself we can continue this way indefinitely? Oil is a dead end technology. Industry is just trying the squeeze the last few dollars out of it rather than getting on with clean technology.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Heart Medicine

The actions needed to reign in climate change are like heart medicine. They are both expensive. The difference is, if you refuse heart medicine, you die. If you refuse to take action on climate change, your grandchildren and most of the species on earth will die. On 2009-11-02, Americans elected a slate of Republican/Tea Party legislators who promised no compromises to repeal any legislation to counter climate change and to block anyone from trying to stop it. This tells you something dark and twisted about American values. They not only want American to commit suicide, they want to take the whole planet and most of its species down with them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute is a crooked organisation that spreads disinformation about global climate change. They are well funded. They are on track to kill more people that Hitler ever dreamed. In combating evil of this magnitude, the gloves have to come off. Peter Gleick used a false name to request a list of donors. Heartland gave it to him. Now Heartland is screaming foul and oddly so are many other people howling as if it were the crime of the century. Had his secretary asked for him in her own name, the effect would have been the same. Heartland has not a leg to stand on. If they did not want the list public they should not have been giving it out freely to the public. They are blaming Gleick for their own incompetence. Besides, Jim Rockford did it all the time.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Heat Build-Up

For most of the last 10,000 years the earth has been in equilibrium, radiating out into space the exact same amount of heat as it absorbed. However, today, due to greenhouse gas warming, the earth now absorbs 1.8 watts more per square metre than it radiates. It does not sound like much, but it amounts to roughly running a toaster 24/7 on every 1,011.71 sq metres (¼ acre) plot of the planet. However, this heat does not dissipate; it steadily accumulates, hour by hour, day by day, year by year.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Heating Fuel

For heating fuel, we have the choice of coal, oil, natural gas or electricity. Because of climate change, we have no choice but to phase out of fossil fuels. The cost is irrelevant. The alternative is mass extinction. Unfortunately, electricity, produced cleanly, is the most expensive option. The solution to high electricity prices:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Heating LA

2/3 of the land in Los Angeles is covered in roads and parking lots. Further, the asphalt absorbs almost all of the Oracle’s energy, warming the city by 10.0°C (18.0°F) relative to the surrounding areas. Even a child could come up with a more efficient transportation system.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Heavy Traffic

Living near heavy traffic doubles your odds of a heart attack.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Help Yourself

You may have noticed how quotations pop up at random all over my website, aimed at protecting the environment. You are welcome to use any or all of the quotations in my quotation collection in a similar way on your own website. To get your point across these days, you have to shrink it to a sound bite.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

High Performance Electric Car

The Japanese Eliica, an eight wheeled electric car, travels at 102.78 metres/sec (229.91 mph) using half the energy of a comparable gasoline-powered car, yet the perception persists that electric vehicles are suitable only for playing golf.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hillbilly Republicans

We demand that pilots learn to trust their many sensitive instruments rather than just look out the window and trust gut feel. Yet hillbilly Republicans imagine, just by looking out their living room window every once in a while, they know better than the climate scientists what is going on with climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Historical Effect of CO₂

If you study the history of the climate of earth over the last 400,000 years, you can see that the CO₂ levels went up and down, driving temperature up and down and driving the sea levels up and down by 100 metres (109.36 yards). Today the CO₂ levels are twice as high as they have ever been before. It is naïve not to expect a concomitant effect. Imagine defrosting an old fridge. You open the door, but it still takes perhaps a day for the ice to melt. You cannot conclude the ice won’t melt just because it takes a while to react to the warmer conditions. Also the oceans take up the excess heat in the atmosphere, delaying the warming effects. It is just wishful thinking to trust this time the earth will react in a different way for some unknown reason.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Historical Evidence

There is more CO₂ in the air today than at any time in the last 3,000,000 years. In Greenland we can drill down 680,000 layers of snow, each representing the snow for one year. We know from the ice core record what to expect when CO₂ levels change. Why are you so confident earth will behave completely differently this time than it has in past?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Historical Overfishing

People have been overfishing since the middle ages. Why do you think they went all the way to Iceland and North America to catch fish? They had already wiped out the European fisheries.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hitler vs Reagan

Adolf Hitler and Ronald Reagan each lead the world off for a decade chasing his personal delusions. Hitler’s were racial; Reagan’s were environmental. Reagan will do far more lasting damage.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hoarding What you Cannot Eat

Americans are like a woman with diabetes who has just discovered a cache of chocolate caramels. She can’t eat them anyway. Americans imagine if they scrounge enough oil or natural gas, they can still get for the next century. They close their eyes to the reality that they can’t burn those fossil fuels because of the absolutely unacceptable effects of the greenhouse gases.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Home Alone

More and more city dwellers are living alone. Social media are replacing partners and room mates. We need to adjust, with smaller cars and smaller housing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

A Home of my Own

The way our population is exploding, we will get to the point your only hope for owning a plot of land will be a little square about 5 cm (1.97 in) on a side. The big attraction is you can control what happens on it. You can landscape it. You can raise small creatures on it. Mostly you will stay in your living pod and watch and control it remotely much as people today manage aquariums.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Homesickness

People born in the high Arctic would prefer to live there than anywhere else. People born in the Sahara desert want to stay there despite the worsening climate. This feature of humans is as Good Thing™ otherwise we would have more wars over territory and even greater overpopulation in the prime real estate.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Homestead

The people at WholeSystemDesign.com help you design a homestead. They make sure you handle your water, soil, food, dwellings etc. in an optimal way. This will help you protect yourself from global climate change and fossil fuel price spikes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

homo deleotus

Humans drive other species to extinction by hunting, by taking over their habitat, by carrying diseases, by bringing in invasive species in from afar, by competing for food, by polluting, by causing climate change… Instead of homo sapiens perhaps we should have called ourselves homo deleotus.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Homo Sapiens is a Failed Species

I contend homo sapiens is a failed species. We are essentially hosed. Within a century, our numbers will drop to perhaps 20 million and technology will disappear. What’s the problem?

Basically our brains grew rapidly giving us hugely expanded power, but we kept the same primitive, greed-centred, short-term-centered motivation system. There was no corresponding increased restraint. Even when our intellect warns us some action is suicidal in the long run, we have no ability to curb our short term desires.

Let’s look at some of the ways we have sown the seeds of our own destruction.

  1. We breed without limit, far beyond the carrying capacity of earth. Religions fan this lunacy.
  2. We are on target to wipe out the last ocean food fish by 2048.
  3. We are deliberately driving bees needed for pollination to extinction.
  4. We are on target to wipe out half the terrestrial species.
  5. We have flatly refused to avoid emitting greenhouse gases. We will thus suffer the consequences of climate change, which Environment Canada called second only to global nuclear war. We have already cranked up the CO₂ levels to 400 ppm, on track for 450 soon. The last time, 3 million years ago, when CO₂ levels were this high, average temperatures reached 8.0°C (14.4°F) higher than today and the seas reached 40 metres (43.74 yards) higher than today.
  6. We have flatly refused to invest in a replacement clean energy for fossil fuels.
  7. We have poisoned the soils and rivers. It is no longer safe for a pregnant woman to eat a fresh water fish anywhere in the USA.
  8. We have used techniques of agriculture that rapidly erode the soils. We have just a small fraction of the original soil legacy left.
  9. We have stockpiled enough nuclear and biological weapons to wipe ourselves out many times over.
  10. We invented an artificial life form that has taken over the planet. They have a very primitive motivation system — short term profit. Everything else is irrelevant, even their own survival. Even though they are primitive, they are extremely powerful. They buy politicians and force them to do things that are suicidal to the species. They feel no pain. They cannot be jailed. They have no concept of morality. There is very little that can be done to influence them. They are like Dr. Frankenstein’s monsters. I speak of corporations, which enjoy the status of humans in the USA. And oddly, in the USA, this immoral behaviour is required by law.

Even if the odds are hopeless, you might as well do what you can to save our planet. There is always a chance of something unexpected. If you give up, there is no chance.

We have a longshot, artificial intelligence smarter than humans. It might have the means to solve these global problem, and the guile or power to impose the solutions on us humans, but there is little reason to think it would have any interest in doing so.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Homo Visum Brevis

Perhaps we should rename our species homo visum brevis for our species’ propensity for over-exploiting resources and focusing only on short-term gain.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hopeless Humans

I am thoroughly ashamed to be human because of the way we humans refuse to limit our population, the way we rape the environment, the way we treat other species with such cruelty. Humans have the capacity to think ahead and avert catastrophe, but refuse to do so because they are so short sighted, petty, greedy and corrupt. Only a few times in my life have I heard anyone else express such sentiments. Perhaps it is considered dangerous to do so, like criticising the home team or criticising America.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hopeless Humans

Using technology, we humans have managed to create massive problems that we are not capable of solving. It is as hopeless as expecting a pack of dogs to solve the problem of soil erosion. Humans are not up to the task:

I can see three possible solutions:

  1. The development of artificial intelligence that simple overwhelm humans and tricks them into doing the right thing.
  2. Some sort of technology to amplify intelligence, the ability to concentrate or the ability to look at problems from a planetary perspective. A think of these people might be able to overwhelm ordinary humans.
  3. A think tank of the brightest people funded by billionaires who see our planet is in peril. People are selected for their intelligence and global perspective. It is one thing to create a solution, but quite another to get idiotic FOX viewers to accept it.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hostility to the Carless

People who have cars are openly hostile to those who give up their cars or go for fuel efficient cars. This makes no sense. Those carless people are freeing up the streets for the car-addicted. Those people are reducing demand for oil, which will reduce the price of gas. I guess it is a bit much to expect rational behaviour from people deliberately destroy their planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hot Air

On 2014-11-11 Obama announced brave new cuts in CO₂ emissions with targets for 2030. This is complete bullshit. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hottest Decade

We have just lived through the hottest decade in human history ending in 2000. Global warming deniers claim it was caused by the sun giving out more heat, but satellites tell us the sun has given out less heat than usual.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hottest Years

The hottest year on record up to 2007 was 2005. The second hottest year was a tie between 1998 and 2007. The top ten hottest years all occurred since 1990. Oddly, among Republicans, only 49% accept that the earth is warming, down from 62% in a former Pew Poll. To Republicans, global warming has become a religious issue, completely divorced from scientific fact.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How Bad Was It?

In Somalia and in surrounding areas there has been no rain in the last three years. Those people will either have to migrate or die.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How Clean is the Electric Car?

The electric car is not nearly as clean as it looks. Even though it produces no emissions, the coal plant that produces its electricity certainly does.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How Clean Is Natural Gas?

In theory, natural gas is a considerable improvement over coal. There are almost no particulates when natural gas is burned. Considerably less CO₂ is released in creating the same about of energy. The problem is natural gas aka methane aka CH₄ when it floats around in the atmosphere for a decade or so, has 80 times the warming effect of CO₂. If 3% or more of the methane leaks, it makes natural gas worse than coal in terms of climate change. In the Unita basin in Colorado, the leakage is 11%. In Los Angeles it is 17%. This just accounts for the leakage during mining. In addition there is even more leakage in the transportation and in homes. The bottom line is, unless a way can be found to stop all the leaks, natural gas is a very dirty fuel, much worse even than coal.

The American government has been ignoring this drawback. They are so excited that fracking to mine natural gas made the USA a net energy exporter.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How Crazy are Humans?

Styrofoam is the most durable material man has ever made, other than diamonds. It will not degrade even after millions of years. Yet, oddly, we use it for drinking cups that have a useful life of one day.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How Extensive Will The Extinction Be?

It is all but certain man will go extinct within the next century or two. The interesting question is, how much of the rest of the tree of life will he take with him when he goes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How To Kill The Amazon

It take only 2.0°C (35.6°F) of global warming and the Amazon rainforest will die back. Economists bleat it would be too expensive to reduce CO₂ emissions sufficiently to avoid this. I ask, but what cost do you place on the earth losing its lungs?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How Long Can You Tread Water?

Trump withdrew the USA from the Paris Climate change agreement. He plans to have the USA put as much greenhouse gas as possible into the atmosphere. Will Americans change their mind when a typical August day in Phoenix Arizona is 150°C (302°F), Louisiana and Florida have sunk beneath the waves and there are no more coniferous forests to burn?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How Many Kids?

The planet is so badly overpopulated, if you add an extra child, you are pushing someone else’s child off. Ideally you should have one or fewer kids. Two is the absolute limit. If you have three or more, like Justin Trudeau, you are for all effective purposes a murderer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How Oil Corporations Behave Under Laissez Faire

If you think environmental laws are unduly restrictive on oil corporations, that they can be trusted to police themselves, consider that Chevron/Texaco had an oil spill in Ecuador, then just left it there for over 30 years, killing birds, causing cancers and covering children in festering sores and lesions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Crude

How Old Is The Earth?

Science tells us the earth is 4.543 billion years old and the universe is 13.82 billion years old. Christians tells us both the earth and the universe are 6000 years old.

Christians believe as they do because it says so in a book written by bronze age desert dwellers. This book makes the preposterous claim it was written by the creator of the universe, even though all the science it in it is completely wrong. A creator could not have built a universe of quarks, gravity relativity etc. labouring under so many delusions. It is clearly counterfeit.

Scientists have thousands of way of measuring the age of the earth. Most require technical knowledge to understand. Some of the simpler-to-understand ways we know the earth is older than 6000 years include:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How People Know Global Warming Is Not Real

I find it most peculiar that right wingers assure me based solely on their guts, that there can’t possibly be global warming triggered by mankind. However, they accept the idea volcanoes pumping out CO₂ could produce such an effect. There are lots of ways of measuring how much humans and volcanoes spew. We know humans, burning fossil fuels, year after year add up to a much bigger effect. We can see it is the extreme, unprecedented increase in global CO₂. If you think nature by itself can create such a catastrophe, then surely one is also possible with man pushing earth over the brink to help bring it on even faster.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How We Know about CO₂

We have very good records of how much coal and oil we humans mined, sold and burned each year. We have known since the 1800s how much CO₂ that would release and how much that CO₂ would raise the temperature of the atmosphere. There is nothing cutting edge or controversial about those basics. The fine tuning is computing how much of the CO₂ dissolves in the oceans and the effects of other even more potent greenhouse gases such as methane.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How We Know It Was Us

The notion that man did not cause the recent rapid rise in carbon dioxide is absurd. We know how much of the various kinds of fossil fuel we burned, so we can calculate how much carbon dioxide we released into the atmosphere.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How We Know It Was Us

The notion that the measured, rapid CO₂ buildup came from something other that man’s is absurd. We know how much fossil fuel we, as a species, burned each year. We know to at least three decimal places how much CO₂ each kilogram of gasoline, natural gas, coal etc. is produced on burning. So we also know quite accurately how much CO₂ mankind has created with fossil fuel burning over the last hundred years.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

How We Know We Made the CO₂

How can anyone get away with claiming CO₂ levels have nothing to do with man’s activities? We have records of production of coal, oil, bitumen, methane and natural gas by country. We have receipts for fossil fuel sales. We know how many acres of forest we leveled. We know how may cubic meters of wood there as in each hectare. We know how much CO₂ is emitted with each cubic metre of wood is burned. We have a very good idea how much CO₂ we have released as a result of our industrial activities. We know how temperature and CO₂ solubility in water works. Ask Coca Cola.

We have Svante ArrheniusSvante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68)formulas from 1896 for computing the expected temperature rise given the amount of CO₂ released.

It is not as though the rise is unaccounted for by our own activities. We are not talking predicting the third decimal place here.

In 1860, levels were about 260 PPM (Parts Per Million). Now they are up to 400, up 54% an astoundingly huge change in the composition of our atmosphere. We have past records of the drastic changes in climate from much smaller swings than that. It just takes a while for the hysteresis to manifest.

At this point we are hosed. All there is left to decide is how royally we are hosed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Huh?

Mayor Morley Forster of remote Hornepayne, Ontario wants a nuclear waste dump in his town because more people would come and a McDonalds might open there.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

I thought people moved to small towns to get away from crowds, McDonalds and pollution.

Human Chauvinism

One of the most odious things about humans is their extreme species chauvinism. Nothing else counts but humans or human convenience. Humans steal the ancestral lands of elephants then shoot the elephants and call them thieves when they try to feed off their own land. When a bear kills a human it is labeled a dangerous rogue. When a human kills a bear, he is labeled a hunter. Human treat other species as chattels, much the way they treat slaves. Even when humans argue for the preservation of endangered species they argue purely in terms of human benefit. Nothing but a human has any inherent right to life, not even species more intelligent than humans.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Human Conceit

Humans will happily wipe out an entire species to save a single human life or to make life slightly more convenient for a community. Even though humans are just a species of primate, one unimaginably overpopulated, humans hold themselves in god-like esteem. This arrogant attitude make humans forget how dependent they are on other species of plant and animal. They don’t even act in their own self interest.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Human Extinction

Homo sapiens: never was there a species more deserving of extinction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Human Extinction

If there was ever a species that deserved to go extinct it is homo sapiens. We are throwing other species off the planet faster than the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs.

1/8 of all birds are headed for extinction. We humans know that birds eat insects for us, without poisoning us in the process.

According to Dr. Boris Worm, all large food fish will be extinct by 2048. We know that with rising populations, we will desperately need those food fish, yet we deliberately overfish and drive them to extinction.

Honeybees are on the way out. We know that honeybees are necessary to pollinate crops, yet we persist in doing a dozen things we know puts extreme stress on them.

Frogs are disappearing all over the world, e.g. the golden frog. We know they are the main consumers of insects, particularly mosquitoes.

105 years ago, prairie dog towns contained millions of individuals. Today they contain no more than 100. We can’t blame all of this decline on the Trump boys using them for target practice.

The black rhino was just declared extinct.

We permit Mitsubishi to traffic in endangered blue-fin tuna. We permit the Japanese to hunt endangered whales.

We have known for decades we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but what to we do? frantically dig up and burn the Alberta tar sands and fraq for natural gas to emit more CO₂ than ever before. Trump is dismantling the EPA and all environmental regulations. He is working to maximise fossil fuel burning, especially coal. We are like Germans in the 1930s who voted in madmen. It is as if we had an unconscious death wish. We trying very hard to drive ourselves extinct and if we succeed, we most certainly have deserved it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Human Extinction May Not Be So Bad

I eagerly await the discovery that life is everywhere in the universe. The current destruction of earth by runaway corporations and religions will then not feel nearly so tragic.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Human Family

All modern humans descended from a group of 2000 people who lived 70,000 years ago and most of us descended from an even smaller group of 150 people. 2000 is about the enrollment of my high school. It amazing how so few people notice how alike we all are and that you can’t help but marry a not-that-distant cousin.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Human Fossils

Despite our flash-in-the-pan short stay of our species on earth, humans will still leave ample evidence in the sediments of our passing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Human Parasites Killing Earth

Our earth is in such bad shape right now, it cannot survive with people actively trying to harm it or doing nothing to protect it. Earth can no longer afford to support parasites who dedicate their lives exclusively to selfish pleasures or trivia such as fashion, shopping, money, sports, cars, video games or hunting. Caring for planet earth is like chores needed to maintain a house. It works fine if everyone does their bit.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Human Plague

Some day earth will look back on this era as a short but nasty case of humans.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Human-produced CO₂

Climate-change deniers claim there is no possible way to know if the CO₂ in the atmosphere was the result of human activity. We have two ways of knowing.

  1. We know how much fossil fuel of each type we burned each year. We know precisely how much CO₂ is released for each gram of each type of fuel burned.
  2. We can capture CO₂ and trace it back to the source via radio-isotope signatures.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Humans are Animals

Humans suffer from mass snootiness that deludes them into ignoring the fact that humans too are animals. They want to believe, contrary to evidence, that the ordinary rules of life for animals do not apply to humans, for example, that humans can have a population explosion without a corresponding environmental collapse and ensuing population collapse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Humans Are Not Intelligent

Humans constantly brag they are the most intelligent creatures on earth. What sort of intelligence destroys the very planet that sustains it?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Humans From The Point of View of Bears

From the point of view of bears, humans are like new kind of very territorial superbeaver that drastically transforms the landscape with its burrows.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Humans vs Wolves

Wolves hunt the weakest and sickest individuals in a herd. Humans hunt the strongest and fittest. Wolves act like animal breeders to improve the stock. Humans…

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hummingbird on Christmas

I saw a hummingbird on Christmas here in Victoria BC. Birders confirm this is a recent trend caused by warming winters. Every denier needs to get outside and have a look for himself what is actually happening rather than consulting his wishful thinking and ideology.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hunger

There are 1.3 billion people suffering from obesity in the world, but only 900 million suffering from hunger.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hurricane Patricia

Hurricane Patricia 2015 is the biggest hurricane we have ever had in the western hemisphere (i.e. in the Americas in either the Pacific or Atlantic). It started out at 90.28 metres/sec (201.95 mph). Thankfully it has been weakening as it approaches land. Imagine the wind if you stuck your head out of a car window traveling that fast! What is making Patricia so huge?

The bad news is:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hurricanes Are Caused by Heat

2005 was the most destructive hurricane season on record up to 2008. 2008 was second. The longest lived hurricane on record was Bertha in 2008. Hurricanes are fueled by warm ocean water. In 2004-03 the first-ever reported hurricane in the South Atlantic hit southern Brazil. The record 11 hottest years have all been in the last 13 years. It amazing how many people pretend to deny global warming in the face of such facts.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Husky Energy

Husky Energy built an oil pipeline along the North Saskatchewan River. They installed the latest digital pressure sensors. One night the sensors went off. Husky ignored them. Oil poured into the river. The people of North Battleford have not been able to drink from the river ever since. Why bother installing sensors if you ignore them?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hybrids are Not Enough

If we converted every car to a hybrid, within 5 years we would be right back where we started because the economy is growing and the population is growing. We have to drop the idea that growing the economy and growing the population is a good and sane thing to do. The only thing in nature that grows without limit is cancer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hydrogen is Not a New Energy Source

Many people are under the delusion hydrogen is a new energy source. It is not. It is merely a clean way of transporting energy. To make hydrogen, you need natural gas and steam (created by burning oil).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Hypoxia

All the fish and crabs have died in a dead zone off the coast of Oregon. The problem is not pollution, but hypoxia — lack of oxygen O₂. Global warming is interfering with the processes that oxygenate the oceans and stimulating bacteria that consume oxygen. The oxygen levels are zero on the bottom. For details see the Changing Sea One Ocean episode of the The Nature Of Things.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

I Can’t Die Because I Have Not Died Yet

Imagine a man with twenty terminal diseases who refuses to stop smoking, heavy drinking and taking recreational drugs. He is insanely optimistic about his chances, based on the observation he hasn’t died yet despite a lifetime of abusing his body. He is like a Republican facing a world in environmental collapse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

I Told You So

I almost certainly will not have a tombstone, but if I did, it would say I told you so. I am referring primarily to four things:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ice Melting

There is as much water trapped in the ice of Antarctica as in the entire Atlantic ocean. Are you still so sure it does not matter if it melts?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ice Melting Faster Than Expected

The latest figures on Antarctic ice melting are much larger than formerly expected. Instead of 60.96 cm (2 ft), we are talking 1.83 metres (6 ft) to 60.96 metres (66.67 yards). This means coastal cities will have to be abandoned, nuclear power plants and military bases will have to be relocated. If you look at a map of China, it is one giant green, easily-flooded, coastal plain. Yet in all this, Canada insists on stimulating greenhouse gas emissions with government subsidies. We are flipping crazy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ideal Clean Power

The holy grail of energy would generate unlimited power, produce no pollution, not interfere with climate, require no fuel, take up no real estate, be free, freely accessible to all countries and reliable for billions of years. Guess what. We already have it, the sun.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Idiot Logic

Climate change denier Lord Nigel Lawson assures us that oil will never run out. Why does he think that? In the 1930’s, scientists predicted oil would run out in 40 years. They were wrong. They failed to account for offshore oil. Therefore they must be wrong now and Lawson’s guts must be right. That’s a bit like refusing the advice of today’s cardiologists because of an error doctors made in the 1930’s. Lawson pretends to ignore the fact that today we have much better instruments to measure the remaining oil. He also pretends to ignore there have been no significant new finds since the 1970’s. We are burning oil far faster than we can find new oil. That cannot go on indefinitely. The man is a scoundrel.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Idiotic Bragging

Subaru bragging that its Forester, or Ford bragging that its Escape is the most fuel efficient SUV is a bit like McDonalds advertising that their quadruple McBacon & McCheese burger with jumbo fries and 1500 ml Coke is the most health-conscious meal in its class.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Idiotic Oil Sands

What about the oil sands?

  1. Extracting the oil releases 3 times as much greenhouse gases as extracting conventional oil.
  2. You need huge amounts of energy to extract the oil. You have a big energy investment with only a marginal return. As the price of oil rises, so does the cost of extracting it.
  3. When the consumer burns the oil, it releases unacceptable amounts of greenhouse gases.
  4. It costs three times as much as ordinary oil to produce, so when oil prices drop, not a barrel of it can be sold.

Let’s stop dicking around with short-term solutions that destroy the environment and get on with clean energy, even if it is difficult.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

If Humans Went Extinct, It Would Not Matter

If humans wiped out most other species, the earth itself would die, taking humans with it. If humans wiped themselves out, the earth would carry on much better than today.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

If Your Child Is Dying

If your child is dying, do you call for more study or do you do what you can then worry later if every effort you made to save its life was strictly necessary? I just wish people would treat an entire species, the entire environment and entire planet similarly.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ignorant Arrogance

The funny thing about ignorant people is they learn a tiny bit about science, then start claiming they know more about the subject than the scientists who taught them the little they know.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ignoring Abundant Energy

The Sun emits millions of times more clean energy that we could ever use, but we largely ignore it, preferring instead to grub around in the dirt for pathetic, filthy fossil fuels that kill us all with global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ignoring Advice

In the USA and Canada, the people subsidise the education of environmental scientists who learn how to decide which chemicals are safe for various purposes. Then we ignore their recommendations and instead trust businessmen, who know nothing about chemistry or product safety, who make their decisions based purely on profit, who then bribe and threaten politicians to implement the these suicidal policies.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ignoring the Fire

Imagine you saw flames engulfing a house. You broke in and saw a family seated around the dinner table. You shouted Your house is on fire. You have to get out immediately. However, the people just sat there. The mother said, But we haven’t finished dinner. Besides I don’t see any flames yet. That is how the bulk of the population reacts to the danger of global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ignoring Global Warming

The way Americans ignore global warming is a bit like a family who continues to argue what colour to paint the kitchen while the house is on fire.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ignoring a Monster Oil Spill

During hurricane Katrina, the oil refineries of New Orleans spilled as much crude oil as did the Exxon Valdiz, but because the people of Louisiana are so loyal to big oil, the spill was quietly ignored.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ignoring Your Doctor

When a PhD in cardiology tells an American he must stop smoking cigarettes and scarfing a six-pack of Krispy Kreme donuts each day, that American has little trouble understanding. However, when a PhD in climatology tells an American he must give up fossil fuels and cut his CO₂ emissions to zero, he just does not get it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Illusion of Safety

Imagine a group of people trapped in a rickety elevator and the cable has snapped. They are plummeting down ever faster. The Republicans and Christians reassure the others that there is nothing to be concerned about. It is perfectly safe. See, nothing too painful has happened yet. God would never let anything terrible happen. They are like Americans facing a world in environmental collapse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Illusions of Ownership

Americans imagine they own the Louisiana wetlands and they have the right to destroy them with oil, pesticides, fertiliser runoff… in their insane drive for production. Americans are the sons of illegal immigrants from Europe who came in droves and robbed, killed and enslaved the people who were there already taking reasonably good care of the land.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Imagine No Overpopulation

Imagine if the churches of the world instead of preaching go forth and multiply had preached bring children into the world only when both you and the planet can support them. Imagine the world population were only one billion instead of 7.601 billion. Instead of having used ½ the world’s oil, we would have used only 1/14th. We would have 7 times as much water per person. We would have 7 times as much land per person to grow food. There would be 7 times as many tons of minerals per person. There would have been no need for the Afghan or Iraq resource wars. Countries would not need nuclear arsenals since the competition for resources would be so much more relaxed. There would be 1/7 as much pollution. The oceans would have 7 times as much fish per person. Humans are no different than other animals. They make themselves miserable by mindless overbreeding. We behave with no more intelligence than tent caterpillars, locusts or lemmings on course for a 30% growth in population by 2050.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Imagine Sufficient Habitat

Imagine a future where every species has sufficient habitat to guarantee its continued survival.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Imagined Experts

There are millions of Canadians who are incredibly arrogant twits, including Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister. They cannot even remember what they learned in science class in grade 2, yet they imagine themselves expert in global climate change and pontificate on it based on the latest daily weather report.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Immigration Criteria

There are so many refugees and immigrants wanting to come to Canada, we need some sort of criteria to choose which ones to let in. Increased population brings all sorts of problems, including degraded environment, the need for more housings school, hospitals… yet there are reduced resources to support the extra people. Immigration acts much like an increased birth rate. How can you reduce the damage?

I suggest adding family size to the list of criteria for immigrants.

Family Size Notes
10+ These families have a cultural or religious tradition of keeping the wife perpetually pregnant. Canada has the duty of educating these immigrant children and giving them health care. When they become adults they will likely continue the tradition of large families, putting even more pressure on the environment. This unrestrained breeding also has the effect of rapidly changing the cultural balance of the country which leads to social unrest. These families are hard to house, since Canadian housing is designed for much smaller families.
Two adults plus two kids These are environmentally responsible people, assuming they do not have even more children.
sterilised singles or couples with 0 kids These families bring two workers. Canada has no obligation to educate or care for any kids. They put minimal impact on the environment. These would be prime immigrants.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Imperfect Gas

ANGA (America’s Natural Gas Alliance)funds ads claiming natural gas is completely safe. They have conveniently ignored that natural gas (methane CH₄ ) it is a potent greenhouse gas and burns to form CO₂ the major greenhouse gas causing global warming, a threat according to Environment Canada, second only to global nuclear war. They also forgot to mention that an LNG tanker igniting would create an explosion big enough to wipe out the core of major city.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Imperfect Solutions

When you have a serious problem, you cannot afford to wait for a perfect solution. Global warming is a serious problem.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Importance of the Rule of Law

The problem with allowing abrogation of legal procedure for terrorists, is that the government is free then to declare anyone it does not like a terrorist. Nobody is safe. Gordon Brown of Britain took this to ludicrous extremes by declaring the entire nation of Iceland as terrorists when the Prime Minister of Iceland did not handle a banking crisis to his liking.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Impossible Leaks

The Enbridge pipeline people have tried to assure people who live along the route of their proposed oil sands pipeline or the tanker routes along the BC coast, that modern science makes a leak almost impossible. This is Titanic think. What they mean is, if an untoward event such as an earthquake, deep freeze, storm etc. that they anticipated happens, the pipeline will hold up if it were build perfectly to spec, by a contractor who took no shortcuts and substituted no inferior materials.

If those condition do not apply, e.g. if the earthquake is one notch larger than built for, all bets are off. Designers may fail to consider what will happen if an angry farmer take pot shots at the pipeline with a rifle or some terrorist decides to blow it up, or a runaway tractor smashes into it, or a horny moose is attracted to its warmth. Only a tiny core of tidy problems are considered in the computer simulations.

If this degree of safety were attainable, we should not have seen any leaks or tanker spills in the last five years or so. But we have, on 2012-06-07, 3,500 barrels of light sour crude oil were released into Jackson Creek, a tributary of the Red Deer River north west of Calgary Alberta.

I wrote the computer program that designed BC Hydro’s high voltage transmission lines. Before you start, you have to decide what are the worst case conditions you will build for. Then you seek out the cheapest design that will survive them. You close your eyes to what will happen if the wind is 20% bigger or the ice is 10% heavier than you planned for.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Incentives to Overpopulate

Imagine a couple came to you and told you they going to double the size of their already overcrowded family with mega-fertility treatments from 7 to 14. You might ask How you going to provide and care for them all? They answer, We never think about that. God will provide. You might consider them somewhat irresponsible. Yet politicians offer incentives to have more babies in an attempt to double the population of their state. Clergy harangue their flocks to double the population of their sect (and as a consequence, of the entire planet) and almost nobody even politely asks them to stop.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Incoherent Opposition

If you work to protect the environment, avoid wars, persuade corporations to treat their customers fairly, push for equal civil rights for all, work for economic opportunity all over the planet or call for the ethical treatment of animals, you will find that the majority of people oppose you and for reasons even they don’t understand. They will often be furious with you and claim they are going to kill you, again for reasons they seem incapable of articulating. We are one peculiar species. I know this from first hand experience.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Incompetent Fishermen

Fishermen have over and over driven fish species to near extinction, yet still they claim to know better than the scientists how much pressure they can safely put on a stock.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Incompetent Science

What would you think of a first world country whose education system was so deformed that the majority of adults did not know the basics of science, things the earth is a sphere, rain is caused when water evaporates and recondenses in the clouds or matter is made of molecules and molecules are made of atoms? The USA is just such a country. Its people don’t have the first clue about climate change, evolution, or the big bang. The problem is Christians and oil companies spending billions to fill their heads with nonsense for their own personal gain.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Incompetents In Government

When I go to the dentist, I have a basic trust she knows what she is doing. When I travel on the roads, I have a basic trust the drivers will for the most part avoid colliding with me. But when I watch governments, I feel despair that completely incompetent, defective and deluded people have managed to take charge. They delight in starting wars. They destroy the environment. They make war on the homeless and poor. They refuse to address the energy crunch. They try to force various religious delusions on the populace. They spend billions on frivolities. They subvert the constitution. They torture people. They do all they can to leave the average citizen powerless, at the mercy of wealthy elites and corporations. If that is the best we humans can do, we fully deserve extinction

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Inconsistency In Adoption Strictness

We are unusually inconsistent in that we, as a society, are extremely careful about who adopts a child, even a fetal alcohol syndrome child compared with the way that we allow anyone to create as many children as they please by traditional mating or in vitro fertilisation or and in some countries, cloning, without requiring the parents to even take a course or get a licence, or prove they can support the children financially. We don’t even insist they refrain from harming the child in the womb with drugs, tobacco or alcohol. We even assist 70 year old women to have children they can’t possibly live to raise.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Increasing Poor Genes

Let’s look at bear hunting from a genetic point of view. Trophy hunters go after the biggest, strongest, healthiest bears. Unfortunately, those bears are technically called papas. These are the bears that provide the prime genes to sire the next generation. Hunting removes the best genes from the pool forever. Hunting is like reverse natural selection. Normally, predators preferentially pick off the sickest, weakest, most malnourished, most deformed individuals, thus pruning their defective genes from the pool. Normally the fittest survive. Now the fittest are shot. This drives the quality of the genetic stock down.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Incredulity

I find it extremely disheartening and unbelievable that the majority of humans are completely willing to trash the planet making it unlivable. It is like learning that the majority of astronauts get a kick out of trashing the life support systems.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

India and Climate Change

India is like the slightly retarded youngest child in a family who insists on burning down the family house so she can cook.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Indigenous Delusions

I applaud the first nations people holding Stephen Harper’s feet to the fire over his abandoning the environment to the short term financial interests of big oil. However, First Nations people have been infected with a truly nutty delusion. They imagine if Harper were out the way, they could hunt and fish without restriction the way they did traditionally before the coming of the white man. That is utterly impossible. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Indigenous Hunters

Politically correct people tend to defend indigenous First Nations, Inuit, Sami etc. when they demand the right to hunt, fish and kill whales in the same unrestricted way their ancestors did 200 years ago. Indigenous demands are just as greedy and foolish as anyone else’s. They ignore the fact there are only a tiny fraction of the animals left and their own populations have exploded. You can have unrestricted hunting and fishing only when the animals far outnumber the people. But even when the buffalo covered the prairies to the horizon, unrestricted hunting wiped them out.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Indigenous Whale Hunting

Some argue that whaling by indigenous people must be harmless since whales flourished before the coming of the white man. They forget there are many more indigenous people hunting now and that they now use modern speed boats, guns, exploding harpoons, sonar etc. It is no longer a fair contest.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Indispensable Wall Street

Amazingly, our planet survived for millions of years without Wall Street. Yet this upstart imagines it is indispensable and the environment that sustained us all that time is not.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Inefficient Cars

A car weighs 20 times more than its passenger. Get serious! Imagine an egg cup that weighed 20 times more than an egg. Imagine a bicycle that weighed 20 times more than its passenger. Imagine a canoe that weighed 20 times more than its passenger. Imagine an elevator that weighed 20 times more than its passengers. Imagine an horse that weighed 20 times more than its rider. There is no need for cars to be anywhere near that heavy (and hence consuming anywhere near that much fuel). Some bicycles weigh as little as 1/50 the weight of the passenger and use no gas at all.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Inefficient Parcel Delivery

If you track a parcel on its way to you from the other side of the continent, you will watch it meandering around an extremely indirect route. You would think with automated sorting equipment and so many flights and trucks it should be possible for parcels to go pretty well directly to their destinations. Instead, UPS (United Parcel Service of America) for example takes all its parcels to one central point, sorts them, then fans them out to their destinations and makes no use of any flights but its own.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Inertia

Most pleasure boaters have the sense to stay out of the way of a ferry, tanker or cruise ship. They know large ships can’t turn on a dime to avoid them. They know large ships have to plan their turns sometimes miles/kilometers in advance. The earth is far far larger than the largest ship ever built. It too has inertia. It too cannot turn on a dime. If humans take action on climate change, they will not see any significant results for decades. You are idiotic to wait until it is too late to take action.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Inertia

Planet earth has enormous inertia. By the time the abuse we have been heaping on it leads to visibly unacceptable conditions, it will be far too late to change it back without centuries of extreme effort.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Inertia

Supertankers and ocean liners have huge inertia. If you want to turn or stop them you need to act 1.61 km (1 mile) or more ahead of time. The entire atmosphere is hugely larger that the largest ship. If you want to change it, you need to start a century or more ahead of time. Humans are not used to controlling such huge systems. The problem is, if humans insist on waiting until a decade or so before some problem is apparent even to the lay person, they are already hosed. There is simply not enough time to effect any shift. Human intuition is useless in deciding what is dangerous and when you need to take action.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Inevitable Population Growth

When scientists say the world’s population will increase to more than 9 billion, as if they were discussing the inevitability of the tides, I want to pull out my remaining hair. New humans don’s just materialise. Existing humans have to more or less deliberately create them. Creating more humans on an overpopulated planet is insane. We must convince people not to do something so stupid. We are still behaving as if it were the year one when most of your kids died and it was necessary to have a bundle of them just to maintain the population.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Insect Extinction

Insects outnumber humans 200,000,000 to one. The good news is, no matter how hard we humans try to drive ourselves extinct, we will unlikely take all the insects with us.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Instability, the New Norm

The climate change scientists predicted freakish weather events and tell us to get used to them. Instability is the new norm. We will have to build more robust infrastructure to deal with the new extremes. Unfortunately, this will be very expensive. This expenditure is a direct result of refusing to cut back on CO₂ emissions. Therefore the cost should be put squarely on the shoulders of the culprits in CO₂ emission.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Insufficiently Wary Of Earthquakes

Volcanic activity has increased three times in the last thousand years. City-dwellers are much more vulnerable to earthquakes than hunter gatherers. As a result, people don’t have a sufficient built-in wariness of earthquakes and volcanoes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Insurance Companies

Insurance companies are the main lobbyists to deal with climate change. If insurance companies cannot accurately predict the future 60 years out or so, they go broke. They cannot run their business by gut feel like Trump does. They have to be unbiased, unemotional. They are the ones with trillions riding on being right about climate change. They are the ones who have invested most in researching the truth. They are the ones most likely to be right.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Insurance Companies

Insurance industries have to know precisely how many fires are coming for decades to come. They have announced that both are increasing because of climate change. Their rates reflect their calculations. Unlike fossil fuel companies, insurance companies have no pressure to lie.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Intelligent Species

Humans keep calling themselves an intelligent species, but they have put themselves on the brink of extinction by dozens of different means. No beaver is that stupid.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Internal Curbs on Reproduction

Single cell organisms normally do all they can to split and become two. However, in multi-celled organisms this urge has to be curtailed. When cells refuse to behave and consider the life of the organism as a whole, they reproduce at will and become a cancer. Similarly in civilisations, there are some groups that refuse to curb their reproduction. Christians and Muslims who resist birth control are the analog of cancer on the body politic.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Internet Wastes Power

Internet servers waste 90% of the AC (Alternating Current) power they suck from the grid. Intelligent power management should reduce power consumption when traffic is low. Since AC power is such a huge percentage of the cost for ISPs (Internet Service Providers), you would think they would refuse to buy equipment that did not cleverly manage power consumption, to hell with saving the environment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Interpreting Statistics

The easiest way to reduce the number of deaths due to cancer is to increase the number of deaths due to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. So take care interpreting statistics.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Intertwined Technology

Technology has become so intertwined that if the power goes out, you can’t pump gasoline to power the backup generators because there is no electricity for the gas pumps.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Inundation

Pakistan will be one of the first countries hit hard by climate change. It will start with country-wide floods and graduate to permanent inundation as sea levels rise. Pakistan is my least favourite country. Its Muslim fanaticism and its violent intolerance for anything other than Islam means I have almost no compassion for them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Invader Timeline

A tiny foreign species of water plant invades your pond and it doubles the area covered each day. Let’s say it takes 6 months to cover ¼ the pond. How long will it take it to cover the entire surface? Answer: two more days

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Invaders from Earth

Imagine being one of the more intelligent denizens of the deep. You see coming at you a giant clear sphere, making rrrr noises. What would you make of it?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Invasive Species

Invasive species are species that move into a new habitat and wreck havoc by overpopulating and displacing many other species. They don’t have a natural predator. Examples include zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, cane toads in Australia, the brown snake in Guam, flying silver Asian carp in the Mississippi and, of course, humans out of Africa.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Invasive Species

When Americans accidentally introduced an Australian snake to Guam in WWII, it wiped out all ten species of bird on the island. Then, without birds to keep them in check, the population of spiders exploded.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Investing

I find it bizarre the way Canada, BC and Alberta want to invest in fossil fuel technology and pipelines that are rapidly going obsolete. Are they blind to what China and Germany are doing? This is like investing heavily in buggy whips in 1908 when Henry Ford introduced the Model T.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Irony

It is ironic that the parts of the USA with the most extreme weather events caused by climate change are also the home to the most climate change deniers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Irrational Warming Skeptics

If you encountered a controversy about the French Revolution, about which you knew nothing and you discovered 99% of historians held one view and 1% a dissenting view. On what grounds, could you justify asserting with absolute certainty that the majority view was wrong? I would think you would have to do some study first. This is what Republicans refuse to do about global warming. But then, they are not confused, just lying because they are paid to.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Islamic Climate Change

By the end of the century, global warming will make the Persian Gulf states uninhabitable with 77°C (171°F) temperatures. Because of high humidity, nobody can survive such temperatures. This means no more pilgrimages to Mecca. This means the middle east will have to stop selling oil. This means much higher oil prices than now. Of course, the obscenely rich Muslims who run the middle east may just ignore the problem presuming they personally will survive by living a 100% air conditioned life.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

It Does Not Matter Where Fuels Are Burned

When you burn fossil fuels, they give off CO₂ which goes into the air and causes climate change all over the planet. It does not matter where they are burned. So it is just as irresponsible and suicidal to let China burn the tar sands as to burn them yourself. What we are doing with the Enbridge pipeline is effectively selling our grandkids’ lives so we can buy Chinese trinkets.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

It Does Not Take Much To Really Screw Things Up

Lay people pooh-pooh the predictions of a 6.0°C (10.8°F) increase in average temperature. However, recall that the little ice age in 1650 where there was mass starvation because it was too cold for crops was only an average of 2.0°C (3.6°F) cooler. 6.0°C (10.8°F) is a massively big deal! Billions of people will die. A small increase in average temperature generates a huge change in maximum temperature.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

It has to be Painless

Let’s say you had a heart attack and your doctor said You have to loose 13.61 kg (30 lbs) or you will die. You reply But I don’t wanna. It will be painful. It will be inconvenient. The doctor replies Survival is your choice.

This is similar to the usual reaction to climate change. People refuse to take action unless in is totally painless. It may not even cost anything. They don’t care if it destroys the environment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

It Must Not Work

When it comes to the planet’s big problems such as climate change, insufficient water resources, species extinction, pollution, soil erosion… mankind is only willing to consider remedies that will not work. He insists on considering only remedies that require no inconvenience or sacrifice.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

It Would Be Best If Man Went Extinct Quickly and Quietly

I am so revolted by my species, its greed, its warring, its sadism, its poisoning of the environment, its cruelty to other species, its refusal to think ahead more than a few months, its superstition… It is best humans go extinct as soon as possible. I just hope we can take ourselves out cleanly without wiping out nearly all the other species in the process.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Italians Have The Lowest Birth Rate

The Italians have the lowest birth rate in the world. If even they can tell the Pope to stuff his suicidal birth control policy, surely other Christians can too.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Jamie Oliver, Ecological Vandal

Jamie Oliver, aka the Naked Chef, who worked tirelessly to improve nutrition in Britain, prepared an endangered species, the bluefin tuna on one of his shows. Imagine the uproar had he prepared spotted owl casserole or giant panda shishkebabs.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Jeep Grand Cherokee

A Jeep Grand Cherokee has a 3.6 litre engine. That is 70 times bigger than needed to transport a human. Americans stress that a vital part of defence is reducing dependence on foreign oil. Why is a Jeep Grand Cherokee owner not pelted with eggs as a traitor?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Jeep’s Lie

Jeep Wrangler advertises their SUV is a wind-powered, solar-powered driving machine. That is a lie on all three counts. It is not even a hybrid. It is gas-guzzling, greenhouse gas-spewing, completely conventional SUV.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Job Creation

Anyone who comes along and promises jobs, even jobs that last only a few years, makes politicians go ga. I am surprised someone has not sold them on the idea of rendering grannies for their oil. There are thousands of ways of creating jobs. Not all of them are equally destructive. They don’t get much worse than jobs in the fossil fuel industry. A side effect of fossil fuel jobs is massive climate change to the point of making earth uninhabitable starting in the tropics and working out. That should rule such jobs out as least as much as bottled water flavoured with arsenic or making baby powder with DU (Depleted Uranium). Traditionally, fossil fuels have been a source of jobs. However, it no longer makes any sense. We have to look elsewhere. Albertans have no right to kill British Columbian (and themselves) just so they can afford a new TV. Screw ’em! It is a completely different order of inconvenience we are demanding of each other.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Jobs

Climate change deniers sell fossil fuel projects on the grounds they create jobs. However, those jobs have contracted by 18%. While jobs in solar energy (not even counting other renewables) already greatly outnumber fossil fuel jobs, and they grew 6%. Renewable energy jobs are growing 12 times faster than the rest of the economy. What is the matter with so many people wanting to put all their investment eggs in a dying technology?

The fossil fuel people know this, but they spin and spin to trick people into destroying the planet for a few paltry extra years of profit for dried up old men like Koch brothers.

Contrary to Trump’s claims, China has already embraced clean energy far more strongly than the USA. There are millions more Chinese workers in clean energy than fossil fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Where will Trump get the promised 25 million new jobs? click to watch

Jobs

Even in 2014, the clean energy sector created more direct jobs than the Alberta tar sands. Further, the tar sands are a sunset technology and clean energy is a sunrise technology. It will not be long until clean energy dwarfs the tar sands in terms of creating employment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Judgment Day

We have two massive problems bearing down on humanity, that for the most part mankind is ignoring. I refer to:

Without solutions to these problem, the earth will be able to support at most a billion people. Perhaps 7 billion will have to go. Who gets to starve to death, or die in wars over resources? Hint: it won’t be the richest citizens. In fantasy I get to decide. Here is how I would choose who lives and who dies:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Jump Starting America

On 1957-10-14 the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) launched Sputnik, the planet’s first satellite. Prior to that, America has no interest in space. The day after Sputnik, the US made space a top priority and surprised everyone by landing on the moon 11 years and 9 months later. Something similar happened when the Japanese started producing cars of superior quality to those produced by Detroit. I would hope it happens yet again when China demonstrates some spectacular solar and wind energy equipment or India does the same thing with mind-boggling electric commuter vehicles. It obvious to me the US is already badly lagging in alternative energy, held back mainly by the evil machinations of big oil. What is it going to take to jump-start the USA one more time?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Just don’t Get It Department

Ford created a hybrid then jacked up the horsepower to discard the advantages of greater mileage and lower pollution. Because urban roads are more congested every year, you need less, not more horsepower.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Keep On Plugging

When you look at global warming, mass extinctions, overpopulation, nuclear proliferation, mass pollution, soil erosion, corporate control, the wealth gap, religious extremism and man’s complete refusal to deal with any of these problems, it looks sure mankind (or at least civilisation) is doomed. However, the best strategy is not to give up. That is guaranteed to fail. The best strategy is to keep plugging. It has some small probability of success.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary

The Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary restores my faith in human nature. In 1995, the BC government reserved the drainage basin of a major river as a sanctuary purely for the benefit of grizzly bears. Human access is severely limited. The prime real estate they chose was bear heaven, with abundant vegetation and salmon. Usually humans donate only castoffs that have no value to them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Kicking an Oil Addiction

On the matter of oil addiction, climate change and the need to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, North Americans are like a 4-pack a day smoker whose cardiologist has told him he must quit cold turkey or die. Quitting is highly unpleasant, so he pretends the doctor does not know what he is talking about, or he may say to himself I’ll take a mature, reasonable, balanced approach and cut down to 3.5 packs a day. However, that’s nowhere near sufficient. He will die anyway of stubbornness, foolishness, self-indulgence and self-deception.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Killer Air Pollution

22% of the people killed in the world from air pollution died from manufacturing goods to be exported.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Killer Cheeseburgers

In the USA the average person eats three cheeseburgers per weeks. Creating these produces more greenhouse gases than SUVs.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Killer Farts

One of the theories about what wiped out the dinosaurs was their own flatulence. The methane CH₄ in their mighty farts disrupted the ozone layer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Killer Lawnmowers

A lawnmower produces more emissions per hour than a car. They have no emission controls.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Killing Dragonflies

Monsanto happily kills dragonflies, but if it created tiny drone helicopters that pursued and killed insects, fuelled by the sun or by the meat of the insects killed, it would market them as the ultimate pesticide.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Killing Environmental Vandals

If you are in a hospital and someone stands on your oxygen hose and refuses to get off, giggling with glee, you might be able to claim self-defence if you shot him. Yet lunatics endanger even more people by releasing greenhouse gases and the law prohibits you from even whacking them across the knees with a baseball bat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Killing by the Numbers

A single virus or bacterium can’t hurt anything, but when they multiply into the billions, all doing the same thing, purely as a side effect of their existence, they bring down elephants. Similarly, when humans breed into the billions, our daily activities kill a planet in a couple of centuries.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Killing Off The Mammals

There are about 5000 species of mammals. Mankind as a whole has decided to wipe out half of them in the coming few decades, the rest we will wipe out later. How do we plan to do it? The main way is by a population explosion of humans who the encroach on habit formerly used by other species. We pollute their water. We flood their habitat with massive dams. For the coup de gràce we use global warming by releasing CO₂ and other greenhouse gases, in a mad race to burn up the remainder of earth’s fossil fuels.

It comes down to this. We humans would rather share the planet with another 3 billion humans than with the other mammal species. That is what the pope is demanding when he condemns contraception.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Killing Two Billion

Here are ways, most likely first, that man will kill off at least 2 billion people in the next century.

  1. Global warming.
  2. Running out of oil and not having alternative energy in place. We will have to stop using oil and coal even before they run out because of greenhouse gas emissions. Our agriculture is currently based on fossil fuels, for both energy and fertiliser.
  3. Monsanto carelessly buggering around with genetic engineering of plants and releasing freakish genes into the wild. They already made one world-killing error that someone else caught in the nick of time.
  4. Nuclear war
  5. Unexpected side effects of destroying or altering habitats, most importantly anything that kills off the plankton.
  6. Chain reaction from wiping out species to include lowly species upon which we unwittingly completely depend.
  7. Genetically engineered plague.
  8. Poisoning of water, air and soil with chemicals more deleterious than we ever dreamed.
  9. Artificial intelligence smarter than man that decides we are expendable.
  10. Breakdown of social order, triggered by food shortages, water shortages, terrorism, war, corrupt governments, selfish/bigoted/racist philosophies, or corporatocracy.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Kinder Morgan

Kinder Morgan is a company building a bitumen pipeline from Alberta to Vancouver on the BC coast and from there by tanker the rest of the world. The Canadian federal government and the Alberta provincial government are strongly promoting it on financial and jobs grounds. The BC provincial government is strongly opposed to it on environmental grounds. Alberta has banned some BC imports into Alberta to put pressure on BC. (This is illegal by the constitution. BC has not opposed them, nor taken countermeasures.)

Why is this pipeline a bad idea?

If Premier Notley and Prime Minister Trudeau are so sure there is no danger whatsoever to the environment, let them put up a bond sufficient to compensate for the loss of BC’s fisheries and coast-tourist industry. Notley wants all the benefits for herself and all the risk to go to BC. This is selfish and unreasonable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Kinder Morgan

Richard Kinder is the CEO of the anti-environmental conglomerate Kinder Morgan that among other things plans to spill bitumen into the streams and rivers of BC and Alberta and the seas of BC and to massively increase Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. He is also a climate change denier. Why? To increase his fortune, already far larger than he could spend in many lifetimes. He is a man with terminal greed.

He is not the guy who makes those toy-filled Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs. If he did, he would probably poison them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Koch Brothers

What motivates the Koch brothers (Charles and David) to spread disinformation about climate change? They try to convince people there are no changes to our behaviour necessary:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Koch Murderers

If anything deserves to be a capital crime, using lies to induce billions of people into committing suicide should surely be such a crime. This is what the Koch brothers Charles and David, Trey Parker (South Park) and Jim Inhofe do openly, tricking people into doing nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to ameliorate global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lack Of Assassination Attempts

There were 42 assassination attempts on Hitler’s life and zero, as far as I know, on the lives of oil company executives. This is odd given Hitler merely wanted to dominate the earth, where the oil executives want to destroy it with greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lack Of Testing Of Chemicals

When humans consider allowing sick people to take a new chemical/drug, they test it for many years before accepting it, even when the people who need it will soon die without it and even when only a few people will ever be exposed to it. However, humans happily pour known toxic chemicals into the environment without any testing, exposing not only all creatures in the environment including humans, but also humans who eat plant and animals from that environment. Only when some wealthy and altruistic soul funds the research to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that trouble detected is 100% caused by one particular chemical dumped into the environment, will humans even consider restricting it. We have our cautions backwards.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lame Excuses from Canada and the USA

Britain and Germany have already reached their Kyoto targets. Canada and the USA lamely bleat it is too difficult to even try. How can you help but be ashamed to be a citizen of such loser countries?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Land For Cars

In some US cities, 70% of the land area is devoted to automobiles. I think this constitutes an unwelcome pest.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Land Requirements per Human

Every American born takes about 0.40 hectare (1 acre) of land out of food production to house him, provide stores, provide an office, provide roads… Even at a modest growth rate of 1.1%, the population will double by 2050. We will have double the people to support and 1.21 sq megametres (468,750 sq miles) less farmland to do it on. The Christian notion be fruitful and multiply is suicidal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Landfill

A garbage landfill is sort of like a storage locker for your junk that you never retrieve. If you use five times as much space as average, surely you should have to pay some extra rent.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lawn, the #1 Crop

More land in North American is devoted to lawn than any other crop, even wheat or corn.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lawns are Ecologically Nuts

The lawn is the strangest form of agriculture. It consumes huge amounts of labour, fertiliser, pesticide, herbicide and water; yet the weekly crop is discarded at great expense. Its function is conspicuous waste, i.e. status display. This vanity makes humans into ecological morons.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Least Favourite Places

Three of my least favourite places are Las Vegas, Nevada (world’s navel of crass materialism), Houston, Texas (world’s navel of dirty energy) and Phoenix, Arizona (epicenter of racism in the USA). It is pleasing to contemplate that all three of these cities will be among the first to be destroyed by global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Leona Aglukkaq

On 2015-05-16, Evan Solomon interviewed Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq on The House on CBC Radio. He asked her straight-forward questions about Canada’s revised targets for greenhouse gas reductions. She repeatedly pretended not to understand the questions and rambled off babbling about completely unrelated matters, randomly quoting from press releases. She was so smug. She believed she outsmarted Mr. Solomon and her audience with this infantile dodge. I wanted to strangle her. It was as if she were giving me the finger in addition to stonewalling. I know politicians often pull this stunt. Politicians are so naïve if they imagine nobody notices they are dodging the questions. They should check the reaction. They may well be digging their political graves. We might forgive them if they said, I don’t know the answer or I am not prepared to answer that just now. That at least is honest and respects the audience.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lethal Force To Protect Life Support

If you were on a space ship and you caught someone sabotaging the life support systems, would you feel justified in using lethal force to stop them? Well you are on a spaceship, albeit a very large one, termed spaceship earth by Buckminster Fuller and there are quite a few people tampering with its life support systems. These people include Christy Clark (premier of BC), Alison Redford (premier of Alberta), Stephen Harper (Prime Minister of Canada) and the CEOs of the major oil companies. Just what are you prepared to do to stop them? Nothing? Not even yell at them to stop?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lethal Plastic Beads

Albatross chicks are starving to death because their parents are mistaking discarded plastic beads for fish eggs.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Letter to the Next Incarnation of Intelligent Life on Earth

I am a human, writing very close the extinction of my species. We humans are our own worst enemies. The two most immediate causes of our demise are climate change and nuclear war.

We humans have done so many things leading to our early extinction. Perhaps you can avoid some of them:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Levels Of Climate Change Denial

There are three levels of climate change deniers:

  1. The climate is not changing.
  2. Yes the world in warming, but people have nothing to do with it.
  3. Yes the world is warming and humans are causing it, but there is nothing we can do about it.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Levels of Irresponsibility

If you buy a new Ford Taurus, you will emit the 17 tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere. However, if you have a child, the net effect will be 688 tons of CO₂ irresponsibility.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything

Liars and More Liars

Even relatively sane Republicans like Mitt Romney claim that global warming is a matter of belief, like whether you accept the holy trinity. It is not opinion or belief, it is hard science. Corporations who imagine procrastinating action will help their profits have been spreading FUD using the Republicans as their mouthpieces. Even back in the 1800s science knew the greenhouse heating effect of CO₂ ways:

  1. Drastic overfishing, legal and illegal.
  2. Polluting the oceans, legal and illegal.

The good news is, when humans go extinct, within a century, the remaining fish species will bounce back to abundance unseen since the days of Columbus. Whales and dolphins too will bounce back, if we have not totally wiped them out by then.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Licence To Destroy

Imagine you owned a forest. A guy came up to you and said, Tell you what. I will clearcut all the trees in your forest, leave slash all over and give you $5 per tree. Whadaya say? You would probably tell him to do something impossible and obscene with his head. But what if your family owned the forest? Same thing. What if you had a club that had bought the forest? You used it for hiking, fishing, hunting… Same thing, right? But what if you worked for the government. With a tiny bribe for yourself, you would say Deal!, but don’t talk too much about this, OK?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Lie

Crooked news media spread the lie that global warming reversed in the 1990s. Its relentless rise temporarily slowed, but it did not stop or reverse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Life After Oil

It looks like mankind has decided to procrastinate dealing with the end of oil and with climate change. The reason is extremely short term thinking from big oil. So it looks as though we are going to be forced to live with very little energy. What will life be like?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Life Support Trasher

What would you do with someone with no medical training who barged into an Intensive Care Unit and started barking orders, loudly proclaiming that all the doctors in all the world’s hospitals were involved in a conspiracy to kill the patients and steal their money. That is precisely how you should handle the global warming deniers like Sarah Palin, Jim Inhofe and Rush Limbaugh.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Life Trumps Jobs

I don’t care how desperately Albertans want the jobs and wealth from the tar sands. They don’t have the right to kill me and billions of others like me in the process. The riches have so entranced them, that they ignore the price is climate change megadeath of this and subsequent generations. Religious faith is falsely assuring them there are no serious consequences.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Life: Inevitable

I predict that we will find that the creation of life initially was no big deal. It is a necessary consequence of biochemistry. It probably happens all the time, but quickly dies because it cannot compete with life that got an evolutionary jump on it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lifeboats

You might think the Überrich are all global warming deniers. That is just their public stance. They have been quietly buying up properties in parts of the world they trust will act as lifeboats. For example the Bushes are buying vast tracts of land in Patagonia and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, is bought the entire island of Lanai in Hawaii.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lifetime Cost of a Car

When you calculate the cost of a car, you need to factor in the cost of fuel and maintenance over its lifetime. If you plan to keep the car more than a few years, you probably should find some estimates of rising future fuel costs based on the Hubbert curve. You might find that you won’t be able to afford to drive a conventional vehicle anywhere near its usual lifespan. It will become worthless because the fuel is too exorbitant. You may need to think about small, fuel efficient, electric and hybrid vehicles, man-powered vehicles, car sharing or public transport augmented by rental.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Limiting Procreation

Traditionally, people have had the right to have as many children as they wanted. However, humans are now overflowing the planet. Overpopulation is causing environmental collapse, famine, mass pollution, global warming… Technology now allows 60 year old spinsters to push out babies 8 at a pop, then dying and leaving them for others to raise. Religions still command their adherents to breed to the max. We simply can’t continue as we did.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Link Between Energy and Food

Every calorie of food grown requires 10 calories of fossil fuel energy. The bad news is, as energy runs out, food supplies will inevitably decline in step.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Live Anywhere

Even as it is, there are millions of people who could live anywhere on earth they pleased and carry on their livelihood with electronic communications. They could pick where to live based on climate, low cost of living, pristine environment, picturesque vistas, recreation opportunities… It won’t be long before people start leaving countries that interfere with the net neutrality of Internet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Live Octopus

At least three times the CBC has aired an piece on the The Current extolling the adventure and thrill of eating live octopus. A live octopus can sometimes kill you by choking you to death as happens often in Korea. Octopus are highly intelligent creatures. The CBC is treating them like oysters. They would not advocating eating puppies or kittens alive, enjoying the death throws in the mouth, though the adventurous might eat them cooked. This is depraved.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

To Live, You Must…

If you have a heart attack and the doctor says you have to give up your daily lunch of a pair of supersize Big Macs, it doesn’t matter what you want; you have no choice. Similarly scientists are telling you that you have no choice but do a number of things you don’t feel like doing, including limiting family size, reducing fossil fuel consumption and recycling rather than disposing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Living in a Desert

Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Scottsdale, Tucson… were all built in the middle of deserts. They survive only because water is pumped in from hundreds of miles away. If anything were to happen to the pipes, pumps, computers or electric power, those cities would revert to deserts overnight. They are clearly not good places to be any time the infrastructure of civilisation is unstable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Living in the End Times

I am becoming resigned to living in the last century when man was the dominant life form on planet earth. Man is far too self-centred, far too concerned with instant gratification, far too willing to impose suffering on others for trivial gain to himself, to do what he needs to do to survive. I do my best to goad my species to appropriate action while I simultaneously console myself with thoughts of how quiet and beautiful earth will become again without him.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Living Off The Interest

Up until 1980, mankind lived mostly off the interest of earth’bounty. By that I mean they grew crops without destroying the soil for the next year. The caught fish without reducing the stocks. They drank water without draining the aquifers. However, after 1980, lived off the capital, depleting the resources each year, ignoring that they were dragging them down to zero. What the heck are future generations supposed to do if we leave them nothing?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Living With Global Warming

For most people, a global average temperature rise of 3.0°C (5.4°F) does not sound alarming. They don’t understand that the warming is uneven, mostly over the continents which will rise 6.0°C (10.8°F). The maximum annual temperature will increase considerably more. Paris will have the temperature of Algiers, Moscow the temperature of Paris, San Francisco the temperature of Tijuana and New York the temperature of Charleston and Houston the temperature of some obscure dusty town in southern Mexico.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Local Food

CSA (Community Shared Agriculture)is a system for consumers to arrange with farmers to get a box of locally grown organic food each week. The consumers pay at the beginning of the growing season. If a crop fails, the consumer bears the risk and simply goes without. This costs more than imported food. Imported food is cheaper because it uses pesticides and low cost labour. Governments sell it cheaply to raise cash, while their own people go hungry.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Locust Philosophy

If locusts had an explicit economic philosophy, it would be capitalism.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Locust Swarms

Locusts have population explosions, like what humans are doing but on a smaller scale and shorter time span, where they swarm in billions and eat everything in their path. They keep moving on to new resources until the population reaches its peak and the resources are gone, then there is a sudden population collapse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Look on the Bright Side

Humans have been driving species after species of ocean fish to extinction two ways:

  1. Drastic overfishing, legal and illegal.
  2. Polluting the oceans, legal and illegal.

The good news is, when humans go extinct, within a century, the remaining fish species will bounce back to abundance unseen since the days of Columbus. Whales and dolphins too will bounce back, if we have not totally wiped them out by then.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lost Our Right To Exist

Mankind has so little respect for the environment that sustains him and for the welfare of other species that the homo sapiens has lost the moral right to continued existence.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lost Survival Instinct

Humans have lost their survival instinct. They have plenty of money for oversized cars, video games and drugs, but none for cleaning up global warming, clean water and clean air.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Low Population Means Prosperity

In the middle ages, between 75 million and 200 million people died in the Bubonic plague. After it was over, with low populations, there was a period of high employment, prosperity, equality and plenty. Woodlots regrew. There was plenty of food to go around. Religious people pretend that if we overdid it and reduced birthrate and dropped it below replacement rate that would be a terrible catastrophe. The only terrible thing would be reduced numbers of Christians conned into tithing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Low-Hanging Efficiency

The good news is there a lot of low-hanging fruit to be gathered in terms of improving the efficiency (mileage) of the automobile. Because, up-to-now, gasoline was so cheap, nobody bothered to make cars efficient.

When you also consider other classes of transport such as trains, subways, buses and one or two-passenger vehicles, the outlook for higher efficiencies are even better. In contrast, a bicycle weighs about 1/8 of the weight of its rider and it can get as low as 1/50.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lower Quality Through Science

Over the last 58 years plant breeders have drastically reduced the flavour and nutrition of foods in the pursuit of other goals such as shelf life, appearance and resistance to jostling. Potatoes, for example, no longer contain any vitamin A at all. No wonder today’s kids are suffering from nutrition related conditions

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Lying About Climate Change

Global warming deniers, such as the Conservative Party of Canada, are like smokers who claim smoking is harmless. They like smoking so they lie to themselves and others about its dangers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mad Diet

Americans do something their ancestors of 100 years ago would consider barking mad. Instead of grazing cattle on grasslands as any sane rancher would do, they pack them cheek by jowl in buildings and feed them corn, soybeans, dead chickens and chicken manure. I think they have stopped feeding them dead cows. Cattle have evolved over millions of years as highly specialised grass eaters. This diet is as goofy as trying to raise your baby on titanium paint and turpentine. To do this, farmers have to stop growing food on the fertile plains and waste those lands in growing animal feed. It gets even sillier. The whole process is uneconomic. Animal feed production is heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. To top it off, the final product is so full of fat that it is a hazard to your circulatory system.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Fresh, The Movie

Magnificent Ignorance

I kid you not, a friend of a friend refused to participate in the Earth Hour lights out because she believed global warming was caused by undersea volcanoes and that it would thus be more natural to leave her lights on.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Making CO₂ 600 Times Too fast

Each year, our species burns fossil fuel that took nature 300 years of sunlight to create. Because we have cut down half our rainforests, we are making CO₂ 600 times faster than nature can capture the carbon back into new fossil fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Making Oil Companies Behave

If lawsuits and other liabilities from the oil spill bankrupted BP, other oil companies would ever after do whatever it takes to ensure they don’t have a similar major spill. The trick to making companies behave responsibly is to ensure the behaviour you want from them is optimally profitable and the behaviour you don’t want is extremely expensive.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Male Bimbo

A parable: There was once a man who sold one of his kidneys for $50,000 US. He was very enthusiastic about this as a way of earning money. He was planning to sell his organs one by one. His friends pointed out, Don’t be an idiot. You can’t donate your other kidney or your heart or your liver. You will die! You are such a worry wart! I read on the Internet you don’t need any of your internal organs. Senator Jim Inhofe and Dick Cheney both survive without a heart. No they don’t. That is just a figure of speech. They don’t even have artificial hearts. By the time I sell my heart they will have perfected artificial ones. You can always count on scientists to invent anything we need.

This parable is about twits who want to continue using fossil fuels even in the knowledge it will be fatal. They just can’t give up the money.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Malthusian Crunch

The world population is still growing, probably to at least 10 billion. The world is growing less food each day. We are using up our energy faster than ever before. He are on course for the classic Malthusian catastrophe. To stave it off, we have to learn how to grow food on the land we currently do not grow it on; this includes cities, oceans, mountains, deserts’.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Maltreating Bees

Monoculture means bees are needed only a few weeks of the year. There is nothing for them to eat the rest of the year so they have to be imported. Processing bees like factory products to serve the interests of monoculture is weakening bees. Queens now live for only 1/5 as long as they used to. It would be much better to plant a diversity of crops so bees had food year round and could settle in permanently. The current mixing of migrant bee populations rapidly spreads diseases and parasites, much like the camps in WWI.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Man The Expert in Mass Destruction

When it comes to mass destruction, locusts are insignificant compared with man.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Man Made CO₂ Rise

The climate change deniers have for the most part stopped denying that CO₂ levels are higher than they have been in 40 times the span that human civilisation has been on earth. Humanity has never seen anything like this before. Ice ages are commonplace by comparison. Deniers now claim the levels are natural and normal.

How do you know that is BS? Scientists have calculated that humans are putting 100 times more CO₂ into the air than volcanoes are. We have business records of how much fossil fuel we are burning and we can calculate how much CO₂ that generates. Further, when fossil fuels burn, they consume oxygen. When volcanoes spew CO₂ they don’t. There is a corresponding measured decrease in oxygen that jibes with our computation of CO₂ effects of burning.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Man Is Uniquely Selfish

No animal but man sacrifices future generations of its species for its short-term pleasure.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Man Wastes Energy

The main difference between man and animal is that man deliberately wastes energy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mankind’s Biggest Mistake

Most people think that creating the thermonuclear bomb was mankind’s biggest mistake, the invention most likely to lead to his demise. I have another candidate, the corporation. With an effect similar to absentee landlords, corporations blind those who run and own businesses to the consequences of their actions. Corporations are happily destroying their own and man’s life support system — the biosphere. They have no more common sense than tent caterpillars.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Manly Oil

Oil-using Americans imagine themselves more manly than those who use clean energy. What is so manly about using decomposed plants for energy?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Marine Navigation

If you pilot a row boat, you don’t have to think that far ahead. The boat is not going very fast and it responds quickly to a turning oar. However, if you pilot a cruise ship, you have to think kilometers ahead because it takes that long to stop and that long to respond to a turned rudder. Mankind evolved for millions of years when we lived in small bands where we just dealt with the problems of the day. Now that we live in a giant global civilisation with massive inertia, we absolutely must learn to think centuries ahead.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Maritime Navigation

To prevent maritime accidents, we need something like air traffic control. Large ships would register a course. Computers would continuously cross check courses of all vessels for safety. The position of the ship would be electronically monitored by GPS and by satellite to make sure the ship stayed on course. Further, the ship would be electronically monitored to ensure watertight container doors and bilge vents are closed appropriately.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mass Biking

If people could visit the Netherlands or Paris and see how mass biking improves a city, they would demand it for their home city too. It is cheap, clean, quiet, takes you exactly where you want to go, gives people of all ages some gentle exercise and extends life by five years.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mass Extinction

We are in the middle of a man-caused mass extinction. We will have wiped out ⅔ of species by 2020. We are doing it mainly by taking over habitat for our own uses. We hunt/harvest species to extinction. We kill them off with pollution and climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mass Murderers

Who comes to mind when you think of someone eager to kill billions of people? Usually someone deranged like Hitler or Pol Pot or sadistic like Cheney. But a fat, stupid, twit like Canada’s climate-change-denying Environment minister, Peter Kent? Ironically he will succeed where others failed. His greed-motivated actions will result in the genocide of billions, all without really intending to. I heard this planetary traitor argue on the CBC that Canada doing nothing will better help reduce emissions. He further argued that because Canada was a small country, it did not matter if Canadians reduced their monstrously high emissions footprints. The atmosphere does not care what country you live it. All it cares about his how much you pollute. From space you can’t see any borders.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mass Suicide

Mankind is unconsciously plotting a mass suicide. It will be a one-two knock out punch. Global warming disrupting agriculture followed by extinction of all the ocean food fish.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mass Transit

Mature mass transit has no problem competing with cars. It is faster and much cheaper. However, a fledgling system has problems competing. There are not enough riders to justify frequent cars and car to destinations. The city planners have to resist the temptation to keep building more roads. They also have to be prepared to heavily subsidise mass transit, both with low fares and frequent cars to jump start it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Massive CO₂ Increase

With the Industrial Revolution, we humans have already increased CO₂ more than the increase that ended the last ice age. That is the degree of change we have already scheduled for ourselves. Because the earth is huge, it takes a while for the consequences of such foolish actions to manifest in their full glory.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Masters of the Buggy Whip

Some nation (or nations) will become the leaders in clean energy in the coming century. Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have decided Canada will not be among them. Canada is like a company in 1908, eager to clean up in the buggy whip industry. We refuse to look ahead. We refuse to admit the energy business is rapidly changing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Materials For Takeout

What kind of nincompoops build single-serving take-out containers of a material that lasts forever?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Max Carrying Capacity

You can keep pushing more and more and heavier and heavier traffic across a bridge, but eventually you hit its max capacity and it collapses. At that point it can carry no traffic at all. The earth has a max capacity too.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

McDonalds Terrorists

If terrorists were adulterating the food with something that caused 11% of the population to develop diabetes, there would be a hue and cry to stop the bounders. But when McDonalds, Wendy’s and Burger King are doing it, it is ho hum.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Me Generation

If people believed that technology was likely to extend their lives to 200+ years, then they would be much more willing to make the sacrifices necessary to reign in global warming. Westerners have almost completely lost the traditional prime directive concern for future generations.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Meaning of Conservative

Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than even the most optimistic computer climate models predicted. Oddly, the scientists refer to this as the computer models being too conservative. They don’t mean conservative in the sense of erring on the side of safety. They mean erring on the side of predicting too little change. You could also say they mean conservative in the sense of too much conservative, Christian-right, god-will-rescue-us-from-any-folly, wishful thinking.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Measuring Wellbeing With The GDP

The Harper government used but a single measure of how well Canada is doing — GDP. Thinking only about economic growth makes no sense.

Other countries use indexes that include human happiness and sustainability.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Meat and Greenhouse Gases

Given that 51% of all greenhouse gases are released in livestock raising, scientists have suggested developing a meat patch, analogous to a nicotine patch to help people lose their taste for meat. Perhaps watching videos of how livestock are cruelly raised, slaughtered and processed would be sufficient to put them off.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Meddling With Planetary Life Support

If you went to visit a friend in hospital, would you cut his oxygen flow in half, reduce his IV drip in half and double the morphine pump rate without first asking a doctor if this were a wise thing to do? Of course, not! Yet humans, as a whole, have done something far more irresponsible to spaceship earth’s life support systems without consulting experts, namely cutting down half the planet’s forests, draining half the wetlands and doubling the amount of green-house-gas-producing nitrogen entering the soil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Media Betrayal

The media have deliberately sabotaged action on climate change by treating whether climate change is real as a serious scientific debate. What they do is analogous to having on a flat-earther to debate every time space exploration, GPS or satellites were mentioned. This has given the naïve public the notion it is a toss up, and only deep pessimists believe in climate change. The most likely reason they do this is to mollify their fossil fuel advertisers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Media Denial

Even though scientists predicted the global-warming drought, extreme heat and wildfires in western Australia, when the 2009-02 wildfires exploded through New South Wales fanned by the 47°C (117°F) heat, the media never once mentioned global warming. Why would they do that? Because their advertisers asked them to. Why would they do that? To make more money in the short term.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Medieval Delusion

Economists have the same naïve world view as medieval Europeans. They believe the earth has an infinitely large surface with infinite resources that can sustain endless economic growth. If the world were the size of a basketball, the biosphere would be thinner than a layer of varnish, hardly infinite.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Megaburp

Harper wants to mine and burn the entire Alberta Tar Sands. This will release twice the greenhouse gas than has heretofore been released in history. The earth will be toast. Harper imagines his god Yahweh, will magically repair the damage. Get rid of Harper or Harper will get rid of you.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Melting Ice Sheets

Greenland ice sheets are 3 km (1.86 miles) thick. If they melt, sea levels will rise by 7 metres (7.66 yards). This will flood out ¼ of the world’s population.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Melting the Permafrost

The melting of the permafrost in Russia and Canada is more of a big deal than you might imagine. As they melt, they release methane CH₄ which as a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than CO₂. This warms the atmosphere further in a vicious circle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mercury Concentration

When mercury gets into the water, each level of the food chain concentrates it. The top level (e.g. beluga whales or tuna) is 10,000,000 times more concentrated than in the water.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Military Are Not Climate Change Deniers

When Gwynne Dyer came to Victoria he told us stories to illustrate his point that the US military does not indulge in the least in global warming denialism. They are planning for the wars it will inevitably bring as parts of the globe become uninhabitable one by one. Their working assumption is the politicians will do nothing to ameliorate it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mindless Rejection of Science

Many of the global warming deniers hold their position for reasons nothing at all to do with global warming science. They don’t like the politics of Al Gore or some of the other champion of taking action on climate change. They reflexively reject anything the champions say. They can then find an Exxon-funded, FOX-managed echo chamber where the wisdom of that choice is validated all with no science to back it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mineral Buildup

Natural rain is almost pure water. Irrigation water, unless you source it from mountain or glacial streams, contains various salts that plants do not absorb. Over time they build up in the soil and make it impossible to grow crops, even ones bred for salt tolerance.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mining Capitalism

Capitalism forces global mining companies to maximise profit, damn the consequences. This leads them to mine in a way the leave behind devastation, poisoned water and soil, no more plant, fish or animals. People living there or downstream have to move elsewhere. The governments do not regulate them because they want crumbs of economic advantage or because they have been bribed, especially in the third world.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
book cover recommend book⇒Mining Capitalism: The Relationship between Corporations and Their Criticsto book home
by Stuart Kirsch 978-0-520-28171-4 paperback
publisher University of California Press 978-0-520-28170-7 hardcover
published 2014-06-07 978-0-520-95759-6 eBook
  B00KGUQJ4A kindle
This explains how global mining corporations leave environmental wastelands behind without plants, fish and animals, where everything is so poisoned, people cannot live. Economic advantage and cost saving trump everything.
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The Miracle Health Product

How much would you be willing to pay for a product that:

It exists. It can be had for as little as $50.00 CAD . It is called an ordinary bicycle. The only catch is, for it to work, you must also get rid of your car. I did this back in 1975 myself. I thought I was being quixotic at the time, but it turned out to be one of the wisest things I ever did. Even an electric bike or any human-powered vehicle will do.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Misplaced Fear

Humans are afraid of sharks even though only about one person per year is eaten by a shark and humans kill 100,000 sharks. Similarly, Americans are afraid of Afghans and Iraqis with similar kill ratios.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Misplaced Fear

Humans go to great lengths to protect their offspring from germs, sexual predators, terrorists and drugs, but do utterly nothing to protect them from dangers even more likely to seriously harm them such as global warming, environmental collapse, nuclear war and junk food.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Misplaced Purchase Priorities

Humans will spend a fortune to impress their friends, but won’t spend an extra 5% for poison-free, non-manufactured food for their children.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Misplaced Scrupulosity

How long will it be before humans are as scrupulous about reducing their environmental footprint as they are about their futile religious ceremonies?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Missing Links

The missing links have been found. At least we have a complete set of intermediate fossils for humans, horses and whales.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Misuse of Antibiotics

80% of US antibiotics goes to boosting farm animal growth. This is the perfect medium for bacteria to evolve resistance making the antibiotics useless for humans. It is should be illegal to use human antibiotics routinely in livestock.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mitsubishi, Ecological Vandal

Mitsubishi, the Japanese car maker, is also world’s biggest trafficker in endangered bluefin tuna. They are building up frozen tuna stocks to sell at astronomical prices after they have driven the species extinct.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) The End of the Line

Molluscs

Molluscs include slugs and snails, oysters, squid, octopus and cuttlefish. They do not fare well as poster animals. The map below shows mollusc species at risk. The fatter a country is shown relative to its actual size, the faster the country is wiping out its mollusc species.

molluscs at risk

© Copyright SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan)

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Monkey Trap

Every child has seen the monkey trap. A monkey puts its hand into a box to grab a banana and then is trapped because it refuses to let go of the banana which is too big to pull back through the hole. Humanity has similarly been trapped by the lure of free market economies and globalisation. We would sooner die than give them up. We will indeed die because free market economies and globalisation are incompatible with dealing with climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

The Monkey Trap

You have heard of a monkey trap, where a monkey grabs a banana and cannot withdraw his hand without letting go of the banana. The monkey is trapped by his own foolish greed. There is an equivalent trap that humanity has fallen into — addiction to fossil fuels. Profit means they can’t give them up even though they know continued use means extinction of the human race. It reminds me of the self-destructive behaviour of heroin addicts. Oil is nature’s way of testing humanity. We have been found wanting and are consigning ourselves to the bone heap of history.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Monoculture

In the Irish potato famine, within weeks, a spore wiped out all potato plants of the Lumper variety. Since the Irish planted nothing but Lumper potatoes, an eighth of the Irish starved to death. You’d think we would have learned the lesson about putting all our eggs in one basket and the danger of monoculture. Yet today, we are repeating the same mistake, this time world wide, with the Russet Burbank, the potato variety used for French fries.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Monoculture

The Irish potato famine killed one in eight people. The Irish caused it with monoculture, growing but a single species of potato, the Lumper. When a fungus came along it was susceptible and the entire crop died. Today, we are still very big on monoculture, growing the Russet Burbank potato.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Monoculture

Monoculture is destroying the earth. It causes erosion, pest explosions, pesticide contamination, low yields, concentration of wealth and power, monopolies, destruction of genetic diversity… What is the alternative? Traditional mixed plantings of different species that benefit each other, e.g. fixing nitrogen, repelling pests, holding water… The catch is traditionally, manual labour is required to tend such crops. However, advanced computer robots could now do this task. They could also do the task for in-yard and in-home gardens.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Monsanto = Most Evil

Monsanto is the most evil corporation on earth. It denied polluting even when fish died in three minutes in the water it contaminated. It claimed Roundup, its herbicide that kills all plants except those genetically modified by Monsanto as good for the environment.

They bribed and bullied the various US government agencies into treating genetically modified crops as equivalent to crops developed through traditional selective breeding, therefore not needing any testing of any kind. This is crazy. Even a new food colouring used in minuscule quantities requires extensive testing. Monsanto doses you with GMO s by the kilogram without any testing at all. GMOs introduce fish, spider and scorpion genes into plants and from there into all other plant species.

They inject genes into plants that cause them to make poisons inside the produce you cannot wash off, that don’t degrade by harvest, intended to kill insects. Surely if an insecticide must be tested, one made genetically you can’t get rid of should too.

You can’t recall a gene let loose into the environment. We should not be doing something irreversible without knowing the consequences. Then Monsanto bribed and bullied politicians into passing laws to help them force this crap down an unwilling public’s throat. They got caught trying to bride the officials at Health Canada. Then they got all the whistle-blowers fired.

Not only don’t Monsanto have to label their foods as GMO, nobody else is allowed to label their food as non- GMO ! Monsanto gets away with this by keeping the public from knowing which foods contain Monsanto crops. Much of the public detest them, but don’t know how to boycott them. We need Monsanto-free certified foods and guerilla labeling of Monsanto-contaminated foods.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Monsanto Bogus Patents

Monsanto has managed to sell a schizophrenic view of its genetically modified foods. They are sufficiently revolutionary to merit patents, but allegedly with no different from ordinary produce, thus not meriting a label. Monsanto is arguably the most evil corporation on earth. They will stop at nothing to force GM food down our throats, even if they have serious health consequences, just like a tobacco company. They have bought the politicians to permit them to sell their products without informing consumers they are buying experimental foods. I think the way to fight back is to create inexpensive test kits to allow consumers to detect various types of GM foods in the supermarket and make a fuss. Supermarkets will then either start labeling the products or dropping them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Monsanto is a Dud Investment

Anyone who invests in Monsanto is a fool. Monsanto sells all manner of products that do serious harm to people and the environment. They use all manner of treachery to temporarily cover up their malfeasance. This is a idiotic corporate strategy. It is only a matter of time until they are sued into bankruptcy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Monsanto Evil

Monsanto has infiltrated the government and lobbied/bribed successfully. In the USA, genetically modified foods do not have to be labeled. What is worse, it is illegal to label food as GMO-free even if it is. This makes it impossible for consumers to boycott GMO foods as happened in Europe. Perhaps euphemisms and code words can be used, Chinese style, to bypass these regulations, e.g. made with ancient grains, heritage seeds, European ready… Perhaps some organisation could certify food as enjoyable or time-tested which is a code word for non-GMO.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Monsanto Failure

Nature gave Monsanto a swift kick in the pants. Monsanto makes genetically-modified canola seeds that are immune to Monsanto’s patented herbicide, Roundup. However, via the pollen, genes jump to mustard-relative weeds in the field, conferring on them resistance to the herbicide.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Monsanto the Liar

Big business has pretended to pooh pooh climate change as a hoax, but between 2008 and 2010 they patented 261 climate ready crops, designed to withstand extreme weather conditions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Monsanto Lock-In

Monsanto’s goal is to lock farmers in and make them buy more and more insecticide or patented terminator-gene genetically modified seed each year. For a bug or fungus, Monsanto’s vision of monoculture is ideal. An enormous army of bugs focuses all its efforts on breaking the defences of but a single variety of plant. Once even one bug cracks the defences, they get the entire crop. The way out of Monsanto’s grip is to give up monoculture.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70), source National Geographic video The Human Footprint.

Monsanto Shill

James D. Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, says we should ignore the economics and behaviour of GMO companies like Monsanto when evaluating the wisdom of GMO crops. He figures you should base your decisions purely on abstract science. He gives no reason to support this. The only reason I can think of is he is shilling for Monsanto. Obviously, the way Monsanto has openly striven to monopolise all seed production on the planet is quite relevant. Obviously, patents and costs are important, especially in a monopoly.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Montréal

Montréal is a large Canadian city that dumps its raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River, presumably to finish off the endangered beluga whales. I think that is sufficient reason to strike it off the list of tourist cities.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Morbid Fecundity

Anthropologists tell us that whenever humans experience even a temporary bounty, they celebrate by increasing the population. The problem is, when the bounty ends, it brings chaos that often sends a culture totally extinct since the population has become completely dependent on the bounty. The green revolution has brought planetary abundance and in usual manner, humanity has exploded its population. Since the green revolution depends on cheap oil, it will end in the not too distant future. Humanity will be gnashing its collective teeth at its idiotic fecundity.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

More Cars Implies More Roads

There is not much more point in building more cars if the roads are in hopeless gridlock. There is no room to build more roads. We have to use the roads more efficiently by:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

More CO₂ Than All The Cars

The Alberta Tar Sand mining operations produce more greenhouse gases that all of Canada’s automobiles combined. And that is not even counting the emissions when the bitumen is burned.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

More Important than Life Itself

Even a child understands that you can’t run into a furiously burning house to retrieve a painting. It does not matter how much it costs. You can’t do it and even if you could, it would not be worth sacrificing your life in the attempt. Yet only one person is a thousand seems to understand the same principle also applies to global warming. Most people are quite happy to sacrifice their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren for some relatively trivia economic advantage. They are behaving like the passengers on the Titanic who refused to take action to save themselves because they had convinced themselves it was impossible for anything terrible to happen to them and because taking such action would have been inconvenient.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

More than Cheating

Boxes of cereal, cookies, razor blades etc. only half full is not just a matter of cheating consumers; it is a matter of deliberately wasting fuel transporting half empty boxes around the planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

More than One Planet Needed

The world is using the equivalent of 1.5 planets to support life on earth.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Imagine your brother-in-law were spending 1.5 times his income. You know that is the road to ruin. So why are you doing it too?

More That Enough Solar

The solar energy hitting the deserts of Algeria is sufficient to power the entire world economy. Those who claim their only priority is growing the economy will never do it with dwindling non-renewable resources like oil and coal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Most Actively Destroying the Environment

Mankind is slated for early extinction because it contains so many members who take pride in actively trying to destroy the environment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Most Children Are a Big Disappointment

People who have children take such a huge risk. The odds are pretty poor for having a child who is a net benefit to the planet. Most of the time they spawn an airhead consumer whose biggest concern is how they look.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Most Ecological Damage

About the most damaging thing you can do to planet earth is to have a child.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Most Important

Here are some of the most important things you can to do protect our planet.

  1. Reduce your carbon footprint. Use extreme persuasion to stop others from releasing greenhouse gases such as CO₂ and CH₄ (methane).
  2. Reduce the amount of pollution you release into the water. Use extreme persuasion to stop others from polluting the water.
  3. Reduce the amount of pollution you release into the air. Use extreme persuasion to stop others from polluting the air.
  4. Stop using fossil fuels.
  5. Use energy as efficiently as possible.
  6. Stop using cars, especially SUVs. Use bikes or electric vehicles.
  7. Push for incentives to limit to two children.
  8. Insist on no commercial activity in national parks.
  9. Insist that water be priced to encourage conservation.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Most Important Fact Of Our Existence

We are in the middle of the biggest mass extinction event in 65 million years. We humans are feeding it by clearing land to feed our exploding population and by releasing greenhouse gases. It proceeds with the slow, smooth, relentless inevitability of a glacier. That is why so few people pay attention to the most important fact of our existence.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Motive For Environmental Destruction

Many men choose environmental destruction, e.g. poaching and overfishing to demonstrate their masculinity.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Motor Racing

Motor vehicle racing is a disgusting sport. It is a poster boy for environmental vandalism. It is noisy, smelly and it emits huge amounts of greenhouse gases. I think it should take place on land zoned for the purpose far away from people’s homes and offices. It think the race vehicles should all have to use the same standard fuel that does not emit greenhouse gases.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Motoring Pigs

I am spitting angry with motorists for flatly refusing to reduce the size of their vehicles, buy more fuel-efficient vehicles, plan trips more carefully and share the roads with human-powered and low power vehicles. They don’t give a damn than they are polluting, guzzling the earth’s last oil and pumping out greenhouse gases causing global warming. Something about cars makes people ten times more selfish than normal. They are creating a hell to punish themselves. Cities are already gridlocked and in a decade there will be seven times as many cars on the roads. Perhaps gridlock will pry these bastards out of their pollution machines.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Moving Water

Water is heavy. A 1 cubic metre (1.31 cubic yards) weighs 1 tonne (1.10 tons). You don’t want to waste energy shipping it around needlessly, especially since every household uses several cubic meters a day.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Multiple Causes of Climate Change

It is not only burning fossil fuels that is creating climate change. For example, overfishing sardines near Namibia, for fish farm food, means they no longer keep phytoplankton in check. When the phytoplankton die, they release bursts of methane CH₄ (a superpotent greenhouse gas) and hydrogen sulphide H₂S (a foul-smelling poisonous gas) in sulphur events which kills off all species of fish.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Murder For Trivial Reward

It is remarkable that corporations will routinely commit murder by lying about the safely of their activities and products with no more motive than increasing sales a tad. Those same executives would never dream of killing for such pittance in their private lives.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Murders

Technology allows man to live cheek by jowl in densities nature never imagined for hominids. The result is man spends much of his time mulling over the murder of his fellows. TV dramas have evolved to almost exclusively depict grisly murders. Sitcoms are about verbal insult. Reality TV is about injury.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Mutant Animal

There is a mutant animal that deliberately contaminates watering holes with feces, that deliberately covers trees and plants noxious substances to kill them, that breeds so quickly it wipes out all other species everywhere it gets a toe hold. It frequently kills members of nearly every species, including its own, then oddly does not eat them. What do they look like? Look in the mirror.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

My Dad’s Horse

My dad used a horse named Roanie for transport. It could find food and water for itself. It could find its own way home. It could automatically avoid obstacles and collisions. How long before cars get that smart? Will people start treating their cars as pets, buying them treats, grooming them? We have enough auto-eroticism already.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

My Furnace Thermostat

In 1975 I invented a dual furnace thermostat that automatically turned down the heat when people went out or went to sleep. It used people sensors instead of timers. It cut the gas bill for my four bedroom home in half. To my frustration, I could not even give the idea away. Nobody was interested. Today the idea might be reinvented at even lower cost using wireless sensors and cheaper electronics. Can you think of a cheaper way to effectively double fuel production?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

My Monkey Brain

I feel so overwhelmed. I am just a silly monkey, whose attention leaps from the profound to the trivial. It is embarrassing the personal trivia my mind blows up to cosmic proportions and dire threats to my entire planet that I deliberately block out because they make me feel too uncomfortable. I am nowhere near up to the task of being a responsible citizen of planet earth, but my monkey brain, is all I have.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Myth of Riches

When Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, announced on 2013-12-20 he was ramming through a bitumen pipeline, many Canadians expressed great joy. Even ordinary Canadians imagined it would somehow make them fabulously rich. When I pointed out some of the downsides, they thought I was crazy, and that I must want to live in the age before electricity. That is dichotomous thinking.

Here are a few of the reasons why I think the pipeline is not a good idea. These people are so focused on the imagined coming wealth, that they refuse to even consider the drawbacks.

Even this promised wealth for average Canadians were real, what good is having a fleet of Rolls Royces and $100,000,000 in the bank if you and billions of your fellow humans are dead?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

NAFTA

The problem with NAFTA has nothing to do with trade. It is the way it hands veto power of environmental legislation to foreign countries. Governments must compensate corporations for any imagined profit losses caused by legislation. For example, Canada had to make legal a carcinogenic gasoline additive that was banned in the USA. Disputes are resolved by secret tribunals of businessmen, not the courts.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Naming Rights

The environmental movement was suckered into using terms that could easily have been coined by a fossil-fuel PR (Public Relations) department or a lawyer who writes disclaimers for a living. For example, global-warming sounds like a swim in Jamaica. Climate-change sounds refreshing, something to break the monotony. How about we start using terms not quite so soporific, such as Thermageddon, climate collapse or planetary heat death.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Narendra Modi

Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, argues India should be free to burn fossils fuels without concern for greenhouse gas emissions. His reasoning is the western nations did this, and became prosperous, before they discovered the dangers of doing so. This is like Mr. Modi demanding the right to molest children because the Catholic Church got away with it for millennia. World citizens cannot tolerate behaviour that causes the imminent demise of the planet. It does not matter whether it is fair or unfair. Damn you India. You have no right to commit planetary suicide on behalf of the planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Narrow Focus

In Canada or the USA an architect designs for the cheapest possible cost and spews out yet another strip mall. The builder is rewarded with a small profit. Yet the millions of people who suffer from having to look at this eyesore over its lifetime seem to have no say in the matter. This is surrender to the God of Commerce on a mass scale.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

National Geographic Sell-Out

The National Geographic has sold out. They present Christian myth as scientific fact. They present phony disaster scenarios, such as what would happen if the earth suddenly stopped spinning or the sun suddenly went nova. They ignore real environmental issues like global warming. They have arguably become the largest purveyor of scientific FUD on the planet. They do this simply because Christians like to read that their myths are true.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Natural Causes

There is a common variety of loon who claims that we should do nothing about global warming because it has natural causes. Leaving alone for a moment the absence of evidence for a natural cause, this woman presumably would refuse to call the fire department if her house were set afire by a natural cause e.g. lightning. She could only permit herself to act if the cause were man-made, e.g. An arsonist.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Natural Climate Change

The Afar region of Kenya is one of the driest places on earth. Yet when we study the fossils, we know it was once a lush region of lakes, rivers, grasslands and woodlands. If nature can change the climate this drastically, surely with jet assist from humans with greenhouse gasses it can do it even faster. Why are so many people in denial the climate can change?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Natural Gas

Natural Gas is a dead end. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Natural Gas is also a Carbon-Based Fossil Fuel

ANGA has swamped the air waves with propaganda promoting natural gas as the solution to the energy crisis. Promoting natural gas in place of coal is like an alcoholic touting wine in place of whiskey as the solution to alcoholism. Natural Gas is a fossil fuel. It emits CO₂ just like any other fossil fuel (though less than coal) and as such has to be 100% eliminated. At best, it is short term stop gap.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Natural Gas Basket

Mr. Rich Coleman, B.C.’s Minister of Natural Gas, is gambling with BC’s financial future by putting all our economic eggs in the natural gas basket. There are a number of things that could blow his plans out of the water long before his dreams of riches have materialised. For example:

The market for natural gas will disappear but not the mortgage on the infrastructure. We will be left holding the bag and it will be Mr. Coleman’s fault. You can tell just by looking at him he is a pig, who is concerned only with satisfying short term lusts. He has no concept of sustainability.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Natural Gas BS

On 2012-06-21, BC Premier Christy Clark announced natural gas is a clean, green fuel, but oddly, only if it is burned in northern BC. Granted natural gas, is cleaner than coal, but when it burns, like coal, it creates greenhouse gas that affects the entire planet. Further, if it escapes into the air without burning, it is a potent greenhouse gas in its own right, 40 times stronger than CO₂. Politicians are too clueless and too corrupt to trust with crucial energy decisions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Natural Gas Lifetime

Companies promoting natural gas projects presume they will be functioning for 40 to 60 years into the future. This is preposterously optimistic. Every year the effects of climate change get harder and harder to ignore with floods, droughts, record temperatures, death of trees, animal extinctions, plankton collapse, wild fires, more severe storms… At a certain point there will be snap, and the public, in a panic, will demand we do something about climate change. The main thing we can do is stop burning fossil fuels, namely LNG. LNG is mostly methane a greenhouse gas in its own right 25 times more potent than CO₂, the result of burning LNG.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Natural Gas Is No Solution

The natural gas industry has been deceiving people about just how wonderful natural gas is as a fuel. It is certainly cleaner than coal or oil, but we can’t continue to use it because of greenhouse gases. The industry suggest that the CO₂ can be removed at the well site and sequestered. Yes, dissolved CO₂, could potentially be removed, but that would do nothing about the CO₂ produced when it burns which is the much bigger problem. They keep referring to it as a clean fuel as if there were no problem with the products of its combustion. It turns into pure CO₂, the #1 greenhouse gas. It has nice qualities such as abundance in North America, easy to ship by pipeline and low sulphur, but we still can’t use it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Natural Gas Is Not A Suitable Fuel

It does not matter how cheap the natural gas is. Burning it releases massive amounts of greenhouse gases. Further, the natural gas ( CH₄ methane) itself is a super-greenhouse gas. This plan is suicide. No amount of money would convince me to commit suicide or let someone, who insists on ignoring this unfortunate side effect, kill me.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Natural Gas — Not So Clean

The natural gas companies lie that natural gas in the safe clean fuel of the future. Granted it does burn cleaner than furnace oil and it is cheaper, but it is far from safe or clean. If natural gas tanker were to blow in a harbour, the effect would be similar to small nuke going off. It would obliterate the core of the city. Natural gas is very flammable, similar to hydrogen. Everyone has seen how even a small gas leak can level an entire apartment block. Further, natural gas, just like oil, when it burns, creates carbon dioxide ( CO₂ ) the main greenhouse gas that causes global warming. When natural gas leaks, the 95% methane ( CH₄ ) in it acts as a greenhouse gas in its own right 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide. It is an interim, temporary solution at best. Given the current levels of CO₂, we should not be burning any natural gas at all at this point.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nature’s Solution to the Energy Crunch

If we don’t solve the alternative energy problem, nature will solve it for us. Before we discovered oil, the planet was able to support 1 billion people. We will have a sharp die back of 8 people in 9. The odds are you will be one of those who die.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Navy Kills Orcas

The navy is charged with protecting the shores of America. How do the assholes do it? By killing off the endangered orcas with super-sonar.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Navy Terrorists

The US Navy goes out of its way to torture and kill orcas. The irony is, if the Taliban had been attacking the whales, the Navy would pull out all stops to protect them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

NDP Losing Its Way

The NDP is going off the cliff, thinking it can ignore climate change. You can no more ignore it than you can ignore your house is on fire. Rachel Notley ( NDP premier of Alberta) sounds like Stephen Harper when she claims dealing with climate change is a nice frill you can indefinitely postpone.

Politicians love to pretend they are sensible and want a balanced approach where you can increase fossil fuel exploitation and simultaneously reduce green house gases. You cannot. They are mutually exclusive. If you improve one, you necessarily hurt the other. You have to choose. It is a law of chemistry.

I have been supporting the NDP since 1970. I am waiting for the dust to settle. If the NDP does not get back on track and make climate change #1, I will cancel my monthly donations and switch to the Green Party.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Necessary Pesticides?

Agribusiness claims chemical pesticides are absolutely necessary. How then do organic farmers deliver they produce to market without any sign of insect damage?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Necessities for Survival

Most species have been thriving on earth for millions of years before the advent of humans. They don’t need our help or interference to survive; they just need us to leave them alone with adequate pristine habitat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Necessity of 100% Recycling

Nature has learned that anything less than 100% recycling is not sustainable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Necessity Of Going Green

Those opposed to going green think of it is something nice to do, politically correct but highly inconvenient and impractical. They still don’t understand it as a matter of survival. We have no choice but to go green even if it were highly inconvenient and nearly impossible to implement (which it is not). Going green is primarily a political problem, not a technical one. Further, the pro-fossil fuel forces fight even exploiting the low-hanging fruit — namely energy efficiency that would give the additional financial benefit of reduced dependence on foreign oil because it would reduce their sales.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nematode Worm Nerves

The most amazing thing I ever read was Bernard C. Till’s Masters thesis about nematode worms. He used a computer to simulate the interconnections of the approximately 300 neurons in the worm, including the S-shaped trigger functions in the synapses. What blew me away completely was the simulated worm exhibited all the known behaviours of real worms. He discovered that nature uses a control program for animal behaviour that is encoded incredibly compactly compared with the way computer scientists usually do it. It also means that animals are much less complicated than we suppose.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Neonicotinoids

On 2013-04-29 Europe banned neonicotinoid neurotoxic insecticides because they are wiping out the bees needed to pollinate crops. The Harper government in Canada refused to follow suit because Bayer profits from selling the pesticide for almost every conceivable crop. Perhaps Harper is unaware of how many crops need bees for pollination. As the bees wane, so do yields. In the meantime, Canada will gain a reputation for pesticide-tainted honey and pesticide-tainted crops. This will be hard to undo later. In the sort term, we may well be banned from exporting our agricultural products to Europe.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The New Big Question

Now the most common question people ask before they do something is How much does it cost?. We have to get to the point that question is What is its carbon footprint?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

New York Times Anti-environmentalists

The reason the New York Times mocks environmentalists is they don’t want anyone complaining about just how many trees they turn into pulp each day.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Newfoundland Seal Hunt

I have talked to people who have viewed the Newfoundland seal hunt. It is not a hunt in the ordinary sense where hunters kill animals for food or pelts. They kill to punish the seals, to make them suffer as much as possible. Look at the original weapon they chose — the hakapik, a sharp hook on a stick. Why? Because fishermen/hunters refuse to take responsibility for overfishing and destroying the cod stocks. They foolishly blame the seals, even though 200 years ago there was no commercial seal hunt and there were astronomically abundant fish, even though seals eat the sickest and slowest fish, thus containing disease and improving the stocks.

The international market has all but disappeared for seal pelts, but the Newfoundlanders continue to kill seals. They have an in-your-face attitude to the rest of Canada concerned about the brutality of the hunt or the bloody reputation (that hurts all exports) this tiny band is giving all of Canada. They are furious with the government and the rest Canada for not trying to force other countries to buy the bloody pelts.

As a poke in the eye to those who oppose the hunt, they held a nauseating public feast where every dish contained seal — even the ice cream! What will the Newfoundlanders do next to gross out fellow Canadians — hand out sugar cookies drenched with menstrual seal blood at elementary schools?

They are behaving like selfish unusually-immature children. The irony is, the more boorishly they behave, the faster the irrational seal scourging ritual will disappear entirely.

Have a look at some Google Images of the seal hunt. Turn off Safe Search. I am so annoyed with these people I am to the point I wish Newfoundland left confederation. To make matters worse Conservative Prime Minister Harper approved yet another seal cull, even though scientists told him there was no scientific evidence it would help fish stocks. He ignored science and instead bowed to emotional superstition. He despises science and worships irrational religious beliefs. So his decision is no surprise. Let’s hope the new Liberal federal government will be more rational.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nitrogen Swamping

Humans fix nitrogen by introducing artificial fertilisers into the ecosystems and by burning fossil fuels which creates nitrogen oxides. Human activity now dwarfs the amount of nitrogen fixed by bacteria. The planet has gone from nitrogen starved to nitrogen swamped in a few decades.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

No Controversy

In the years 1991 to 2012 there were 13,950 articles published in peer-reviewed scientific magazines on climate. Only 24 of them rejected global warming. There is no controversy among scientists. The controversy is FUD created by big oil and their creatures like Stephen Harper.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

No Evidence for Climate Change Denial

Global warming deniers have no evidence whatsoever to back up their position. It is based purely on wishful thinking. They simply refuse to believe that seriously bad news could be true. They are the sort of people who refuse to vacate their homes before a forest fire or serious flood. They won’t act until the flames are licking at the front door. They are the sort of people who would deny that an asteroid were headed for earth, even if they could see it in a telescope. They claim that catastrophic bad news is never true, but what they mean is, when religious cranks predict the end of the earth, they are always wrong.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

No Impact Sustainability

When Americans call for a sustainable, green culture without any impact on lifestyle or consumption I pull out my hair. That is like asking for a healthful, weight-loss, donut-based diet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

No More Children

There are several reasons couples should avoid having children after age 35:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

No Point In Environmental Sacrifices

It is foolish to make environmental sacrifices for big oil and big gas because fossil fuels will become obsolete any day now. The price of fossil fuels rises every year. The price per watt for solar power drops every year. The day those price points cross, if not before, the oil age will be over even if there is still plenty of oil in the ground. Big oil is doing everything it can to delay that day.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

No Sympathy

I have almost no sympathy for people who earned their living for decades in the fossil fuel industry polluting the air and ignoring the effects on climate change now that these industries are shutting down.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nobody Looks After Safety

When determining the safety of some new drug, food or technology, the creator’s interests are solely in its profitability and ability to lower costs. They really have no place at the table of scientists determining whether the new product is safe. Yet the public tends to leave such concerns totally up to the corporation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Noisy and Overpowered

Right now Americans associate noisy and overpowered with masculine. We need instead to associate noisy with farting and overpowered with obesity. Instead, we need to associate silence with futuristic.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Non-Darwinian Behaviour

Environmental pig: You’re telling me I should inconvenience myself by driving a smaller car, by using a bicycle and by walking for short trips just to save the lives of my grandchildren?
Roedy: Of course, you ninny! Every animal with any intelligence will even sacrifice its life to protect its offspring.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Novel Stars

We are so cut off from the natural world, that when there was a large power outage in southern California, the Griffiths observatory received thousands of calls from people alarmed by mysterious lights in the sky. They did not know what they were. They had never seen stars before.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nuclear Accidents

The three big nuclear accidents, Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island involved three different designs and three different causes. In each case, something happened the designers did not foresee. It is impossible to foresee every eventuality and even if you could, investors would never approve the costs of a design to handle them all. Yet, any failure is completely unacceptable. It is thus impossible to win and that does not even count the problem of storage of nuclear waste for millennia.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nuclear Annihilation

When we talk about Obama and Putin wiping out all life on earth with their nukes or bioterror weapons, it is just a figure of speech. There are hardy, primitive life forms deep in the earth or deep in the sea which would probably survive as would many plant species that have long-lived seeds. What we mean is wiping out the humans and the coffee-table book animals.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nuclear Is Not Very Green

Some environmentalists are promoting nuclear power as green energy. We may have to resort to that simply because the demons who run the corporations have stalled all the other alternatives. It has a major problem. As a nuclear plant ages, it becomes less profitable. It becomes harder and harder to find the funds to maintain the plant properly to keep it safe. Similarly, nuclear waste must be managed for thousands of years. During that time it generates no income to pay for the upkeep. Corporations, being the profit seeking automatons they are, just abandon messes when they cease to be profitable. Because of this corporate irresponsibility, nuclear power appears to be much less expensive than it really is when you factor in the cost of eternal mothballing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nuclear Power’s Reliance on Electricity

A nuclear power plant contains as much radiation as 250 nuclear bombs. To prevent the stored spent fuel from releasing radiation requires it to be continuously cooled with refrigerated water. Without an uninterrupted source of electricity, the water will boil off in a few days and the spent fuel will overheat and vent.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nuclear Power’s Reliance on Oil

4% enriched uranium cost about $1,000 per pound or $2,200 per kg. (In contrast, weapons grade is 90% pure U-235.) Why is it so expensive? Because it takes so much fossil fuel energy to mine it and enrich it. The process is just as dirty and emits just as much greenhouse gas as any other use of fossil fuels. It also implies, we can’t currently mine and enrich uranium without oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nukes and Whales

Humans kill sperm whales partly for their spermaceti. To humans, it is a high quality lubricant used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It is ironic that humans who mindlessly kill whales use their corpses to suicide themselves.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Nutty Prostitution Laws

Canada has absurd prostitution laws. Prostitution is legal, but if a prostitute tries to assess the danger of a potential client before hopping into his vehicle, she breaks the law. If she tries to protect herself with an alarm system or shared premises with other prostitutes or a bodyguard she breaks the law. If she pays a driver to watch out for her, she breaks the law. If she even spends some of the money she makes on raising her children, she breaks the law.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

N₂O

Nitrous oxide ( N₂O ) is 296 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO₂. Yet the world agrifuel corporations plan to triple the amount of nitrogen entering the world’s soil, a process which releases N₂O. Even as it is, almost half of greenhouse gases come from agricultural monoculture and its attendant long distance transportation and fertilised production. Nitrogen fertiliser is made using natural gas, whose production has already peaked in North America. The world adds the equivalent of the entire population of North America every 6 years. We are already seriously short of food. Agrifuel diverts food from feeding people to feeding SUV s for the conspicuously-consuming wealthy. The bottom line is agrifuel is a dead end, pun intended.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Obama’s Blindness

You have to wonder why an intelligent man like Obama is encouraging increasing oil and natural gas burning and does almost nothing to help along alternative energy. It is as though he has glued his eyes shut to the consequences of global warming. Any fossil fuel we burn now we are later going to have to unburn to capture the CO₂. It is a lot easier and more energy efficient to avoid burning something that to try somehow to unburn it later. The problem is the Citizens United crooked Roberts Supreme Court decision has made it legal for corporations to bribe politicians with unlimited amounts of money. The oil industry is very short sighted and has bribed Obama to behave like a raving asshole. No matter what else he does, future generations will spit on grave for caving.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Ocean Conveyor

According to Dr. Peter D. Ward in  Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future one of the great mass extinctions of the past was triggered by global warming stopping the ocean conveyor (large ocean currents). The oceans stagnated and gave off hydrogen sulphide H₂S, (a gas more toxic than hydrogen cyanide HCN ) in such massive quantities that it killed off 90% of all life on earth, both plants and animals.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ocean Flooding

Global warming means more ocean flooding for at least three reasons:

  1. Ice caps and glaciers melt raising the water level.
  2. Warm water expands raising the water level.
  3. The extra heat energy fuels bigger storms and hurricanes.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ocean Plastic

In some parts of the ocean, plastic outweighs plankton 40:1. Light breaks it up into tiny particles that fish cannot tell apart from food. It also clogs their gills. The plastic contains toxic additives. These poisons concentrate on their way up the food chain.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ocean Rise

If the average temperature of the earth heats up 6.0°C (10.8°F), the effect is much bigger than it sounds. 70.8% of the earth is covered by ocean. The air over the ocean will not heat up much, meaning the air over the continents will have to heat up much more than 6.0°C (10.8°F) to create that average. The heating is uneven over the latitudes. The poles and the equatorial regions will heat up much more than the average. Further, the peak temperatures will rise much more than the average temperatures. And to top it off, just a bit of extra heat gives hurricanes massively extra punch.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oceanic Fuel Efficiency

We can drastically reduce the fuel needed to ship containers around by using bigger ships and by slowing them down slightly and using more ships to compensate.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Addiction

Addiction to oil is an apt term. A heroin addict is concerned only with the short term pleasure of consuming his drug. He ignores the fact his habit is destroying his health and will eventually kill him. He discards all decency in his quest for the drug and has no concern for the effect his habit is having on others. The oil-addicted society is concerned only about the price of gasoline and tooling around in cars today, deliberately ignoring the fact they are killing the entire planet with the consequent greenhouse gases. They send soldiers into third world countries to steal oil from people who have nothing else, then deliberately waste it with status displays such as gas-guzzling SUVs or Hummers or commute to work alone in overpowered vehicles capable of seating eight, like a heroin addict going on a binge.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Addiction

Have you ever tried to talk someone out of an addiction that was destroying their life? They might have been an alcoholic, a drug addict, a gambler or a child molester. All they see is the pleasure of their addiction. They deny the negative consequences. How much worse are carbon addicts, people who are so entranced by the profits from selling fossil fuels they will destroy ecosystems, poison their own children and, through greenhouse gas emissions, destroy the entire planet, not just themselves.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Addiction

Popular wisdom now understands that America (and Canada) are addicted to oil. An addiction to alcohol, cocaine or oil are similar:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Addicts

Meth, heroin and cocaine addicts focus completely on the pleasures, energy and sexual pleasure they get from drugs. They blank out all concern for the deleterious long-term effects. That is the way Albertans regard oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Oil is Already Found

We already have perfected tools for finding oil. We have not found a significant new basin in decades. New technology to find oil can’t help unless there is some oil there to find.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Companies Need To be Shut Down

The public are still idiotically concerned with stimulating and coddling the oil industry. It must be shut down and replaced, now. That cannot happen if the law makes it more economic for energy companies to avoid change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Company Lies

The American Oil and Gas industry is swamping the airwaves with dishonest ads telling people that cap and trade taxes on oil or gas would destroy jobs. They repeatedly lie that these would be heavy new taxes rather than a shift on how taxes are collected. They break no law with these lies, but they destroy the entire planet with them by encouraging a torrent of greenhouse gas emissions and flagrant waste of fossil fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Company Lies

From leaked memos, we know that oil companies knew all along (since 1981) that, without a doubt, burning fossil fuels caused climate change. We also know that they put out false information to confuse the public to make them think it did not. I think those planetary traitors responsible should be tortured to death. After all, they are doing more harm to the planet than any terrorist could ever dream of doing. The odd thing is, even though the oil companies have been caught in fraud, Republicans and Christians still believe the lies and imagine the scientists lied for unknown reasons as part of some global conspiracy. It is though they are too embarrassed to admit they were part of the fraud or were taken in by the fraud.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil as Crack

Crack addicts can’t stop consuming until every last grain of the cocaine is gone. Even though we don’t even have enough oil to pass on to our grandchildren, we still consume it frantically with the same uncontrolled desire of the crack addict. It is greedy, selfish and self-destructive.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Easter Egg Hunt

Oil exploration is a bit like an Easter egg hunt. To start, you gather the easy-to-find eggs and then work your way to the harder-to-find ones. You can always find one more egg, but it takes increasingly more time and effort until it reaches a point the game isn’t worth the candle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Ghost Towns

If you can’t imagine the world running out of oil, go visit the oil ghost towns in Texas, Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela or Baku. The USA was the Saudi Arabia of the world for 150 years. No one believed it would ever peak.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Is Here For a Short Time

We are so used to oil as a fuel and oil as an ingredient to make massive amounts of plastics and fertilisers that we forget that the availability of oil is just a tiny blip on man’s history that will soon be over. Like an algae bloom, it has triggered an order of magnitude explosion in population. We will be back to business as usual in the horse cart era unless we set up all the infrastructure for some replacement fuel, mostly likely solar.

This is not something you can leave to the last minute. It will take massive amounts of time, capital and oil to retool society away from oil (and to deal with climate change). It is not that oil will literally run out, but that the cost of extracting the remaining oil in energy, manpower and equipment will creep higher and higher to the point it costs more to extract than you can sell it for.

Even today, the Alberta tar sands, to produce one gallon of bitumen use 4 gallons of glacier water leaving it so polluted with arsenic, cadmium and carcinogenic compounds it must be permanently stored in tailing ponds. The Alberta tar sands mining operations produce three times as much greenhouse gases per barrel and require three times as much energy per barrel, as extracting ordinary crude oil.

The penalty for procrastination is usually quite minor, but on this issue, it is the death of most of the people on earth. If we don’t get off our butts, population will crash back down to less than 1 billion, its capacity to support humans without oil or equivalent. Even if you think you will be one of the lucky ones to survive, sharing a planet with hordes desperately wanting to kill you for your resources will hardly be pleasant.

Unfortunately, the elderly financial backers of the Republican party do not want the USA to take any action on climate change. I think they imagine they will die slightly richer if it does not, even if it condemns the country to the worst disasters in its history.

In an effort to bankrupt its competitors who have higher production costs, Saudi Arabia is flooding the market with cheap oil. This gives the illusion oil will last forever. The very opposite is true. Cheap oil means we are running out even faster.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Leaks

Every 8 months, cars in the USA leak enough oil that makes it into the oceans as were spilled by the Exxon Valdiz.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Running Out is Not All Bad

Is oil runs out, inefficient vehicles such as aircraft, cars and trucks will fade away to be replaced by trains/subways/skytrains, sailing ships and human-powered vehicles (including human-powered vehicles with a small electric assist). Computers will guide trains and sailing ships with much greater safety than we enjoy today in any form of transport.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Spill Recovery Rate is 3 to 5%

The key fact that gets overlooked in every oil spill debate is that even under the best conditions once crude oil hits the water, the best recovery rate you can expect is 3 to 5%. That percentage will be even lower in the Arctic. How could this be? The density of gasoline is .72, making it float on water, easy to skim. The density of crude oil is .973, making it almost the same density as water, so waves churn it into the water. The density of bitumen (Alberta tar sands crude) is 1.060, making it sink in water where it cannot be skimmed at all. So, all this talk about rapid response cleanup of crude and bitumen is just a red herring, to fool the public into thinking the spill is actually being rectified. Even a perfect response will recover only a tiny fraction of the spill because it can only collect the oil on the surface. Such efforts, especially for tar sands, are only marginally more effective than praying.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Spill Treatment

Straw Interviewees on the CBC Radio One keep talking about Enbridge’s high-tech, first class system for cleaning up spills of bitumen that make worry over tar sands pipeline or tanker spills obsolete. I wondered how this technology might work, given that bitumen is heavier than water and would sink immediately in a river, lake or ocean. It sounded impossible. By greasing some palms, I have persuaded an Enbridge insider to divulge the details of their proprietary technology. See the image at the right. All you have to do is drain the water out of the river, lake or ocean, then throw straw on the bitumen covering the bottom. Stir with rakes to cover the straw in bitumen. Then collect the filthy straw using a machine that looks like a giant leaf blower. Repeat 417 times. With luck, you can recover up to 10% of the bitumen spill.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) details

Oil Spills

The proponents of the tar sands pipeline and tankers to China claim their technology will ensure there will be an oil spill no more often than every 15,000 years. This is nonsense. These same companies spill oil hundreds of times a year. What they mean is, if the technology were always used per spec and the technology never failed and nothing unexpected ever happened that the technology was not designed to handle and the climate stayed the same as it is now and there were no human errors and no captain got drunk and no navigators abandoned the bridge for a quickie and all contractors will never dream of substituting cheap, poor quality materials, then the technology could in theory give that level of protection at least for spills bigger than Deepwater Horizon. Smaller ones are negligible. It is a bald lie for oil companies to promise better safety than they can demonstrate. Why should we be destroying our environment so that China can pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases from tar sands oil and roast us all?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oil Spills

There are two things you need to know about tanker oil spills. The best state of the art cleanup can do is recover 5% of oil and 5% of bitumen. The problem with bitumen is it immediately sinks. The pro-pipeline people dissemble outrageously to trick you into thinking the recovery rate is much higher.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Olympics Venues

The Olympic committee is scrambling to find future venues for the Winter Olympic games. Climate change is making traditional venues like Oslo too warm. Yet Republican conspiracy theorists funded by the like of David Koch, want us to believe this is part of some IOC (International Olympic Committee) conspiracy to convince people that climate change is real.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

On Death Row

What’s the best news a war criminal on death row could hear? An Everest-sized asteroid will plow into earth three days after his scheduled execution.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

On Other Planets

The universe is so huge, that I suspect it is true that whatever those things you want to do but refuse to do for whatever reason, are mandatory on some planet in the universe.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

One Country Pollutes the Planet

Just as any one country pumping CO₂ into the air harms the climate of the entire planet, any one country capturing and sequestering CO₂ benefits the entire planet. What counts is the net emissions. You don’t have to capture at the source of the emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

One Gallon Of Tar Sands Oil Permanently Destroys 4 Gallons of Water

The Alberta Tar Sands, to produce one gallon of bitumen use 4 gallons of glacier water leaving it so polluted with arsenic, cadmium and carcinogenic compounds it must be permanently stored in tailing ponds.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The One Horse Shay Effect

In times past when a civilisation wore out its soils and poisoned its rivers it just quietly died. It had almost no effect on any other civilisation. But now with globalisation and world trade at twenty times what it was in the 1970s, it ties the earth together in one unified global civilisation. When it goes, the whole thing will go down more or less simultaneously.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

One Idea People

People do the stupidest things when they have but one idea and they try to apply it as ultimate truth, unmodified in all situations. The idea might be religious, philosophical or economic.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

One Rider, One Horse

When people used horses, if three people wanted to travel together, they would take three horses. They did not breed superhorses, each capable of carrying 8 people, then riding them mostly with one rider. Two of the horses would automatically follow the lead horse. Artificial horses, aka cars, oddly can’t do this. It is not rocket science, just a lack of imagination.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

One Tailings Pond = 300 Exxon Valdizes

If the Alberta Tar Sands tailing ponds were breached, say by a massive storm that overflowed them or a terrorist attack, it would be the equivalent of 300 Exxon Valdizes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Only 100,000 Years to Recover

The good news about global warming is, if we went extinct today, it could take nature as little as 100,000 years to undo the damage we have done so far.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Only 500 Years

I found it greatly comforting to learn that if man disappeared, it would take only 500 years for our suburbs to be replaced by forests. Our suppression of earth requires daily frantic busy-ness.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Only Cancer and Humans Grow Without Limit

In nature, things grow to maturity then stop. Only cancer and human business aspire to continuous, endless growth.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Only Goats and Humans

No others species but humans and the domestic goat do something to the environment that prevents future generations from living there, and we humans made the goat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Opinions on the Value of π

There are a few ignorant people who imagine it makes sense to have an opinion on the value of π that differs from 3.141415. Those that do are simply wrong. In like way, global warming is not a partisan issue, any more than the temperature at which water boils should be. Foolish Republicans reject the solid science of global warming purely on the grounds Democrats whole-heartedly accept it. They often reject their own proposals when Democrats accept them. That is so childish all Republicans should be spanked and sent to bed without their supper.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Opponents of The Environment

The opponents of the environment are brain damaged. They can think no further than 3 months into the future. They are, like babies, attracted by baubles, who scream and scream if they don’t get what they want. They are incapable of thinking about the big picture or the long term consequences. It is up to adults to keep things away from babies that would hurt them and the same with these adult babies. Like Alzheimer’s patients they can at first glance look powerful and functional, even intimidating, but we must be firm with them. Since they are fixated on money, it is of primary importance to make sure they lose most of their money every time they harm the environment. They are waging war against the planet that sustains us. You don’t have to fight with Marquis of Queensbury rules in such a war.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Organic Food

The main reason to insist on organic food is not to protect yourself from pesticide, but to protect the earth from being poisoned wiping out species after species, particularly bees.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

There are three basic responses to global warming:

Which are you?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Our Choice

We have a choice. We can have clean, renewable energy without pollution or we can burn the last of our legacy of coal and oil bought from dictators who hate us and put up with the pollution and contend with the unprecedented nightmare of global warming. It would be a no-brainer if it were not for oil and coal companies muddying the issue with disinformation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Our Energy Needs Are Smaller Than We Think

Our energy problem looks much bigger than it really is because we have allowed our habits of squandering energy in the service of conspicuous consumption to masquerade as need.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Our Filthy Age

If we survive this global warming crisis, people of the future will look back on this filthy age of oil with the distaste we look back on the squalor and coal filth of Dickens’ London.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Our Tar Sands

Americans refer to Canada’s tar sands as our oil sands. Excuse me, but the last I checked, Canada was still a separate country. The sands are coated with bitumen tar not oil. These Americans are trying to make it sound as if the oil is just lying on the ground waiting to be scooped up. It requires astronomical amounts of natural gas to make steam to melt the solid tar. This is low grade, high-environmental impact fuel.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Outcomes

Consider the outcomes of humans making big changes to the environment. How many improved it? How many made it worse? How many utterly destroyed it?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overcoming Intermittent Power

ANGA funds ads promoting natural gas a necessary adjunct to solar and wind energy because the sun sets and the wind does not always blow. This is not true. Because people sleep you need to generate much less energy at night. When the wind is not blowing here, it is blowing somewhere else. By networking with a power grid, you have continuous power, without any energy from greenhouse gas-producing natural gas. Further, we are learning so store energy in molten salt and massive batteries.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overpopulation

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overpopulation

During the Gadafi ouster, a man from Libya mentioned that he had 70 cousins, a number of whom he had never seen. To avoid a population explosion, you must not have more than 4 first cousins.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overpopulation

Go back 10,000 years. It would be very common for you and all your offspring to die. You have to go for broke reproducing just to avoid going extinct. This the life of most animals.

Today technology has improved health so much you can pretty well count on all your offspring surviving, and if you don’t do something stupid like sky dive, guzzle cholesterol or take drugs, you will live to 80. The new threat is overpopulation. However, our genes have not changed. We still think we have to breed our brains out.

Religions feed this breeding insanity by telling everyone keeping it down to two kids (the replacement rate) is evil. They want lots of kids indoctrinated to tithe for a lifetime. This is so selfish and irresponsible.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overpopulation

Housing prices are rising because you have too many people chasing too few homes. Every politician is under the delusion you can increase the population indefinitely and it would be a Good Thing™.

Ask any mathematician. You cannot grow indefinitely on a finite planet. As Mark Twain observed, they are not making any more land.

The problem is too many people. As we can see, more people are making the problem worse. Prices in Kelowna and the Okanagan are spurting too.

Politically, we must stop encouraging population growth. We have to stop subsidising children. We have to slow down the flow of immigration.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overpopulation

Overpopulation destroying the planet is an obvious evil, but when you look at any individual child, it is almost impossible to say It would have been better had they not been born.



~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overpopulation

Today, the world is seriously overpopulated at 7.601 billion. It hit 1 billion around 1825. Prior that, people needed large families to ensure descendants. Today those ancient outmoded attitudes still persist. People with children scorn those without. Parents press their children to marry and multiply. Those who drive an SUV damage the environment for a decade plus the thousand years it takes for the earth to deal with the CO₂ emitted. Yet those who have excess children damage the environment not only for lifetime of their children, but also for the lifetimes of all their tree of descendants, each driving their SUV s and heating their homes. It is time to make life as unpleasant as legally permitted for prolific breeders, especially selfish freaks like the octomom.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overpopulation Downside

One of the sad things about overpopulation is the most selfish, stupid and superstitious people gradually prevail, making matters even worse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overpopulation In Animals Such As Humans

Overpopulation People have no problem understanding how animals overpopulate and destroy their environment and suffer a population crash, but they are absolutely blind when the exact same thing happens to humans

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overpopulation in the Root of All Evil

Overpopulation is the root evil. When there is not enough land, water, fuel or minerals to go around people kill each other for them. When people live on an overpopulated earth they rapidly destroy the ability of the earth to sustain life by polluting its waters and stripping its soils.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overshoot

Animals on an island often overshoot the carrying capacity of the island, even by three times. Then the shit hits the fan and they go extinct almost overnight. We humans have way overshot the carrying capacity of our planet. Once you overshoot, any growth leads inevitably to collapse. Ask any biologist. There are no known counter examples. There is no such thing as sustainable growth. That is a fiction that exists only in the mind of an economist whose idea of the deep future is one year hence.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Overwhelming Plastic

In the waters off Los Angeles, there are 600 times as much plastic in the oceans as plankton.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Oxygen Balance

Over earth’s history, the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere has varied from 0 to 30%. Right now it is 21%. We humans need it to stay put. That’s why we have to pressurise jets to provide extra oxygen when we fly. The ratio is not some god-given constant. It is delicately balanced by the actions of trillions of tiny plants and animals. We can screw up the balance by inadvertently killing off insignificant tiny creatures.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Oxygen Depends on Cyanobacteria

Originally, earth’s atmosphere had no oxygen. It was the activity of cyanobacteria that cranked it up to 21%. If through some idiocy, we bumped off the cyanobacteria, the level would drop back down again.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Panic! Not Enough Babies

If you were in a car driving at 44.70 metres/sec (100 mph), would you fear the driver taking his foot off the gas even a little, least you be stranded? This is effectively what people do who panic when the birthrate goes below 2. They imagine suddenly the 8 billion humans here on earth are in danger of going extinct from too few people. There is plenty of time to bump the birth rate back up again after the population drops to something sustainable. We are far more likely to die from overstressing our planet with overpopulation or from fights over resources than we are from refusing to breed once the population drops. Animals always breed once the population drops. Look at history, humans are no exception.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Paraguay Meat

When you eat soy from Paraguay or meat from cattle fattened on that soy, be aware that there are no environment protection laws there, (or most other third world countries). Agribusiness kills third world children with careless spraying and handling of pesticides. You are effectively hiring them to do that. You are also taking a personal risk since those agribusinesses are equally careless with your life.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Parking Space

The big problem with cars is they take huge amounts of expensive real estate for roads and parking. There is no more urban land, so the only way to escape gridlock is to use computer-controlled cars that can be safely packed bumper to bumper, door to door, at high speeds. Cars can drive themselves to high-density parking when they are not needed, or cars can be shared in various types of pool so they don’t need to be parked, just used by someone else. The problem is by the time the political problems are solved to allow such a system, the price of fuel and greenhouse gas emissions will force us to abandon cars and trucks of any description. The car wastes huge amounts of energy with its rubber tires and dragging about a massive power train/batteries relative to the payload. In contrast, the electric train does not have to generate energy on-board because it can tap into the electric grid.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Parking Spaces

Each parking space costs $10K to $50K to build. The cost of mandatory parking space shoves up the price of rent and restaurants. It forces people to buy parking spaces who do not even own cars, or who would not bother with a car if parking were not bundled in the rent. Because parking is cheaper to build in the suburbs, mandatory parking promotes urban sprawl.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Parking Sprawl

The largest user of urban land is parking.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Partly Filled Boxes

The Nature’s Path cereal company bragged they saved enough trees to build 38 homes by cutting the size of the box on their Ginger Granola box by 10%. There is still more than enough space for settling. What would happen if Kellogg’s decided to shrink their boxes so that they were filled more than 40% full? Not only would they save trees, they would save on transportation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Passing the Climate Change Buck

I hear people say it’s the federal government’s responsibility to get on top of global warming, not mine. That is foolish for three reasons.

  1. The Harper government is dedicated to increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Waiting for them is like waiting for penguins to take up residence in hell.
  2. In the end, what has to change? Mostly the habits of individual citizens, making their homes, cars, buying and food more energy efficient.
  3. Governments are loathe to coerce industries since corporations pay their campaign expenses. Individuals on the other hand are free to boycott egregious global warming corporations.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Past Climate Change

In the 1300s, famine and the plague wiped out half the population of Europe. The underlying cause was climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Past Global Warming

The last time, 3 million years ago, when CO₂ levels were 400 ppm (what they are now), average temperatures were 8.0°C (14.4°F) higher than today and the seas were 40 metres (43.74 yards) higher than today. We are on target for much higher 450 ppm by 2050. Because the oceans are so huge, like a giant heated swimming pool, they take centuries for them to warm up, so the drastic effects will not be immediately noticeable. On the other hand, if we eventually take corrective action, it will require centuries for that to take effect too.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Patriotic Waste

Americans think the best way to prove you are red-blooded American male is to waste gasoline. Nothing is more harmful to their country.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Peak Oil

Peak oil is pretty scary. Modern agriculture requires 10 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food. Then you need to transport and refrigerate the food. Our whole civilisation depends on cheap fossil fuel energy. We have already used up about half of the total supply.

However, long before we run out of oil, climate change from burning fossil fuels will make the planet uninhabitable. We will have to leave most of the rest of it in the ground. In other words, we have to learn to do without oil much sooner than we thought. If we cannot think of something better, the default way to handle it is a massive population crash, the same way nature handles such problems.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Peak Use

I would hope electric utilities soon start charging for the maximum usage in the month during a peak period. This is what ultimately determines how many rivers will be dammed or coal plants built.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Peat Bogs

Canada has massive areas of peat bogs. Just lying there, they sink 20% of Canada’s CO₂ emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Peer Pressure

Why is man so susceptible to believing nonsense, or pretending to believe nonsense, just because his peers do? Man is a social animal. In times past, if he expressed deviant views he would be outcast from his group. That meant death. Man thus evolved the ability to suppress common sense in favour of group consensus. The key then to dispelling religious superstition is just to let everyone know there is a sizeable number of people to think it is bunk.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Penis Substitutes

With cellphones, we are learning to do more with less. This ethic has not yet caught on with cars. With cars, bigger is better, perhaps because males see them as penis substitutes. In another couple of decades, I expect today’s cars will look as preposterously over-sized as a 1970 car phone.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

People of Fort Chipewyan

The government of Alberta and the developers of the Alberta Tar Sands have so harmed the people of Fort Chipewyan, I think they would be justified in assassinating or torturing anyone involved with the project.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) H₂Oil

The People Running The Planet Are Incompetent

Just because the people running the world are old and rich does not mean they know what they are doing. They are trashing the planet in a sort lease-breaking party where they are blowing earth’s capital trying to get some jollies into their miserable flaccid lives using bloated spending. You young people are going to have to clean up as best you can and live in this mess after they have died. Don’t be shy. Do everything you dare to stop these bastards.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

People Who Want to End It All

Think how many people there are, who, for religious reasons or personal despair would bring about the end of the world if they had the power. That is one of the reasons it is such an uphill struggle to get people to protect the environment, stop polluting, deal with greenhouse gases, get on with alternative energy, renounce wars of aggression, preserve the habitats of species other than humans…

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Percy Schmeiser

In Alberta, Canada, Monsanto was experimenting with new strains of genetically modified canola (an oil seed). Pollen drifted to a neighbour’s field contaminating his organic strains. Monsanto then abused its power and successfully sued the farmer, Percy Schmeiser, for stealing their patented genetic materials. This is a bit like man who lets his dog roam the neighbourhood inseminating females, then claiming he owns all the puppies. It seems to me, it was Monsanto hurting Mr. Schmeiser, not the reverse. It is disgraceful that the legal system sided with Monsanto. It makes so sense unless you presume Monsanto bribed the necessary officials.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Perfect Recycling

Do the math. Anything less than 100% recycling cannot be indefinitely sustained.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Permian Extinction

The biggest extinction event on earth was not the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. It was the earlier Permian extinction that wiped out 85% of all species. It was caused by runaway CO₂. The CO₂ acidified the oceans killing most of the life in the oceans and it also caused massive global warming. The CO₂ came from volcanoes in Siberia. This same ocean-acidification is happening today from man-produced CO₂.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Perpetual Styrofoam

Styrofoam is a hazard to the environment because it never breaks down. It breaks into tiny pieces clogging the gills of fish. We don’t need to use it at all, but we do. We could use a bio-degradable replacement made of cellulose.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Personal Energy Consumption

You use a lot more energy than you think. If you totalled up all the power (energy/per second) expended on your behalf, it would be about 3,500 watts. If you pedaled a stationary bicycle connected to a generator you might be able to generate 100 watts of electricity. If we still had a slave economy, you would need 35 slaves pedaling away to generate your electricity. How does it get so high? see PowCost Applet

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Personal Mortality

One way to avoid being overwhelmed with the probability that humanity will fail to protect the environment sufficiently for civilisation to persist, is to look upon it the way you look upon your personal mortality. You do the best you can in the time you’ve got.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pessimists Right About Extinction

When you hear controversy about just how endangered a species is, consider that in past, the pessimists were invariably right. How could that be? The optimists are usually biased by a short term financial interest in overharvesting, polluting or habitat destruction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pest Heaven

Imagine being a corn borer coming across Iowa where cornfields stretch in every direction to the horizon. You would think you had died an gone to heaven. Imagine being an E. coli bacterium encountering a feedlot where tens of thousands of cattle are tightly packed snout to anus, knee deep in feces. You are in heaven. Within hours, you and your trillions of offspring can infect them all. Monocultures don’t occur in nature because when they do, they became easy targets for pest and disease. Americans do their agriculture that way because it maximises profits for the three companies that monopolise food production in the USA. Farmers have to buy special seeds, special fertilisers and special herbicides and special pesticides just to hold the pests and diseases at bay. If they don’t play ball, they can’t market their products.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Fresh, The Movie

Pesticide Danger

Pesticides designed to kill mammals (e.g. mice) are the most dangerous to humans, since we too are mammals. Israelis are replacing them with owls.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pharaoh’s Denial

The way Americans deny the severity of the coming global climate change reminds me of the bible story of Pharaoh denying that the plague of frogs was anything out of the usual.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Phony Catastrophes

The National Geographic channel broadcast a rather silly episode of Aftermath about what it would be like if the planet Earth slowed its rotation to a standstill over five years. Given there is no mechanism by which this could happen, this is a bit like the fairy tale The Three Sillies. It just distracts attention about real environmental problems.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Phony Corn Biofuel

Corn-based biofuels are a phony green energy solution because:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Phony Debates

Because media like to frame news items as debates, they have to dredge up a crank to pollute 50% of the air time. Christian fundamentalists are required to explain creationism, why their god Yahweh’s hatred of gays should be enacted into civil law, why Yahweh will really really hurt you if you avoid end-of-life torment with suicide, why global warming in a conspiracy, etc. people who once had a sick child who once had a vaccination making them an expert. I am surprised the media don’t think they need one for every Hubble telescope or Mars lander story for balance.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Phony Threats In the Movies

There are horror movies about every improbable threat — giant spiders, bees, ants, rats, snakes’ but there are almost none about real threats — global warming, liquid natural gas tanker explosions, soil erosion, massive earthquakes, water shortages, nuclear war… About the only real threat that gets much coverage is bioterror.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Phytoplankton

Plankton make up the bulk of the biomass. This means most of the photosynthesis that is cleaning up the greenhouse gas CO₂ and producing the oxygen we breathe O₂ is being done by plankton. We really should be careful when we make changes to the ocean or the atmosphere that we do not disturb the plankton.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pipeline Danger

There are two facts the pipelines companies and BC Premier Christy Clark have swept under the rug:

  1. The best possible recovery after an oil spill is only 5%.
  2. A bitumen spill cannot be recovered at all because it quickly sinks.

They both talk about state of the art recovery, without letting on how lame that is.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pipeline Lies

The pro-pipeline people resort to bald-faced lies, endlessly repeated. My every attempt to debunk them on the CBC has been rebuffed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pipeline Spills

Almost every day in the news there is another pipeline or tanker spill. What is the problem? The problem is capitalism. The pipeline company makes all decisions based on maximising profitability. Spilling oil costs money. So does safety and reinforcing the pipeline. Economics requires them to spend not a penny more on reinforcing than it saves in lost oil and cleanup costs. They decide how much reinforcing to do based on making the most money, not protecting the environment. The only way to get them to behave better is to legislate better behaviour.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pipelines

We have no business building any more pipelines until we can reduce the spills and damage from the spills to insignificant levels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pipelines

When you build pipelines to carry fossil fuels such as oil or LNG there are some things you need to consider:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pity the Caribou

Global warming is making life miserable for caribou. First, the long hot summers drive them nuts with mosquitos so they spend so much time avoiding mosquitos, they don’t have enough time to eat. In winter, climate change means deeper snows covering the lichens they eat. It also means rain, which freezes shutting the caribou off entirely from the lichens under the snow. Further, the ice cuts their legs and makes them bleed. Further, climate change means violent storms. Their numbers are steadily and rapidly dropping.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pity the Young

It used to be the aged always envied the young. This has changed. The aged now pity the young because the young will have to live with the consequences of the environmental collapse, a result of the irresponsibility of the older generations. The young despair and hold the older generations in contempt for their eco-crimes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Plain Facts about Global Warming

Millions of years ago there were alligators living at the north pole. It never froze even in midwinter. What caused this? High levels of CO₂. 121 years ago Svante Arrhenius Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68) discovered that CO₂ causes global warming. This is hardly controversial. We have been accurately measuring CO₂ for 60 years. We can tote up how much carbon-based fuels we have burned to determine how much of the CO₂ increase is man-caused.

If we continue as we have been, we know exactly the unpleasant fate that awaits us. The only wiggle room is how drastically we humans reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It seems we would sooner die than face the tiniest inconvenience. Unfortunately, it is already too late to change our ways and avoid major pain. The CO₂ we have already emitted stays in the air for a thousand years.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Planetary Betrayal

It is not so much profit vs planet as short vs long term thinking.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Planetary Collapse

Our planet is rapidly headed for environmental collapse. There are two broad causes:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Planetary Modifications

We humans have made some drastic large-scale modifications to our planet including:

The planet’s ecosystems have reacted with such things as:

We watch in horror. But perhaps we are watching earth’s well-rehearsed reaction to massive disruption. It might well take a million years to recover, but the earth is in no hurry.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Super Species: The Creatures That Will Dominate the Planet

Planetary Traitors

In WWII, any person or corporation who cheated in a way that hurt the war effort was looked on as a traitor, even if they cheated in a way that exploited a legal loophole. Since global climate change is far more likely to exterminate us than Hitler ever was, we need to revive this same scornful attitude toward people and corporations who try to subvert carbon reduction, including cheating on cap and trade credits, spreading FUD and bribing politicians to derail CO₂ emission reduction efforts.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Planetary Traitors

People who claim climate change is controversial are just as much planetary traitors as creationists who deny it without evidence, based purely on wishful thinking.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Planetary Traitors

People who will sacrifice the survival of their entire planet for some petty personal temporary gain are planetary traitors. This is a crime worse than murder, worse than genocide. It is an attack on all the species of earth. A suitable punishment for this crime is beyond the human imagination. Planetary traitors include Charles and David Koch, George W. Bush, Stephen Harper, Dick Cheney, Ted Stevens, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Hayward, Tony Blair, Fred Singer… Punishment comes way too late to be any use. These bastards have to stopped from committing their crimes, by hook or by crook. If they are not, it is game over.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Planetary Traitors

There are large numbers of mostly very wealthy people working extremely hard to cause environmental collapse of planet earth. They probably see it that environmental collapse is inevitable and to ensure survival of themselves and their families, they are justified in doing absolutely anything to accumulate wealth which they hope will help them survive while others perish even if that anything pushes the biosphere toward collapse sooner. They gleefully spread misinformation to eliminate the competition from survivors for scarce resources in a post collapse world. These people are utterly ruthless and without morality. That’s how they got rich in the first place. I think it is fair to play hard ball with them, for example publicly ridiculing them, working to unearth embarrassing financial and sexual scandals, boycotting their businesses, publicly shaming them and the using the same sort of dirty tricks they pull on others.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Planetcide

Lazy slobs who have made up their minds on climate change based on oil company commercials and rumours are committing a crime worse than genocide, namely planetcide.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Planetcide

You would think that attempting to trigger a mass extinction event would be an extremely serious crime. It is more damaging even than murder, torture or genocide. You would think lethal injection would be far too gentle a punishment. It would require a torture such as burning at the stake or being slowly torn into four pieces by four tanks. This is actually a quite common crime and it is still perfectly legal — not directing a comet into the earth, but convincing people to emit ever more CO₂ by lying to them it is perfectly safe. It is a similar lie to selling people wood alcohol to drink and claiming it is grain alcohol. The earth has already weathered many extinction events caused my runaway CO₂, similar to what is happening artificially now. Such mega-criminals include David and Charles Koch, ExxonMobil, George W. Bush, Frank Luntz, Stephen Harper, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Plankton

Plankton are tiny plants and animals that live in salt and fresh water. They produce 40% of the planet’s oxygen. In the process they remove a matching amount of CO₂ greenhouse gases from the air. When the phytoplankton die, they release bursts of methane CH₄ (a superpotent greenhouse gas) and hydrogen sulphide H₂S (a foul-smelling poisonous gas) in sulphur events which kills off all species of fish. They also form the food base of all fish and marine mammals. Their numbers have been collapsing rapidly because of warming waters caused by climate change. The entire ecosystem depends on them. Just because they look insignificant does not mean we can destroy them thoughtlessly.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Plankton

As we release CO₂ into the atmosphere, the oceans tend to absorb it. The catch is this makes the oceans acidic. This makes it difficult for plankton to create tiny shells. The acid dissolves their shells as fast as they can make them. The plankton are the base of the ocean food chain. If they die off, everything in the ocean dies. Further, phytoplankton produce about 85% of the oxygen we breathe, and in the process remove CO₂. We definitely do no want to kill them off.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Plant Technology

Plant breeders have astounded us with their increases in crop yields. To succeed, they have created plants that need specialised fertilisers, precise climates, large amounts of water and chemical protection from pests. These crops often leave the soils impoverished through erosion or absorption of minerals. The basic game is to capture an ever higher percentage of the sun’s energy and turn it into food energy. I hope it obvious why this improvement cannot continue indefinitely as Christians promoting population growth often imagine. Once they approach 100% efficiency, there is nowhere to go.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Plastic Grocery Bags

I saw a woman wrestling with plastic grocery bags that broke and spilled tins of food onto the side-walk. Why did she resist using reusable canvas bags? They won’t break. They carry much more. They would be easier on her hands. They wouldn’t breed under her sink like coat hangers. They wouldn’t clog land fills for generations. Perhaps it is some remnant of Veblen’s conspicuous consumption that drives her to suffer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Plastic Litter

In 1950 there was no plastic litter anywhere on earth. Today it touches every square inch, even the most remote like Mount Everest and the centre of the Pacific Ocean.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Plastic Planet

Plastic debris kills 100 million marine mammals each year. Even when a plastic is not toxic in itself, it acts like a sponge concentrating pesticides and toxic chemicals such as DDT and PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenylses). It then photodegrades to tiny particles that outweigh plankton. Fish eat it and concentrate it up the food chain, to predators including humans.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Please Leave!

If you don’t want to help preserve the planet, please leave.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poetic Justice

It is poetic justice that the insanely greedy Canadians who sold their grandkids down the river, turning their lands into a toxic waste dump for the lure of riches and jobs will get nothing. The only people who will benefit from these jobs will be the Chinese. They will get the jobs because they work at 50% pay. The whole exercise is to benefit China and let it pollute the planetary atmosphere with CO₂. We do this to let them stall getting on with clean energy. A few people will get rich, but not the people who live in the tar sands and pipeline regions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poetic Justice

Planetary traitors converged on Alberta, lured by high wages, to work on the dirtiest fossil fuel project on the planet — the tar sands. It is a major contributor to greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Now political infighting has caused oil prices to plummet and the Canadian dollar to tank. Most of these people are being suddenly laid off. It serves the bastards damn well right. They deserve far worse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poetic Justice

Thousands of people moved to Fort McMurray, Alberta to take jobs mining the tar sands and transporting the bitumen to be burned to make greenhouse gases. These gases are a major contributor to climate change. Climate change lead to drought, and the drought to unprecedented forest fires which destroyed most of the homes in Fort McMurray. I have no sympathy for these people who betrayed their planet for an overpaid job.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poetic Justice for Florida

It comforting to know when Floridian Republicans claim climate change is a hoax without a stick of evidence to support their view, that they will be the first to go under water.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poetic Justice For GM

There is a certain cosmic justice in the bankruptcy of General Motors. People at every level of the economic spectrum who, for economic motives, helped GM pummel the environment with deliberately inefficient automobiles are being punished both severely and economically.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poetic Justice for the Koch Brothers

For their efforts in delaying mankind’s response to the threat of global warming, I suggest the following poetic justice would befit the Koch brothers, David and Charles: that they be kidnapped and crammed into a pine coffin intended for one, and cremated alive.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pointless Muscle Car

What’s the point of a muscle car if it spends most of its life stuck in gridlock?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poison the Commons

Nobody has the right to poison the commons.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poisoned Potatoes

American potato farmers, more than anyone, know how saturated their products are in pesticides. They don’t eat them. They grow organically for their own families.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poisoning Squirrels

Few people would go to the local park to poison the squirrels and birds. But these same people would not think twice about driving an SUV that belches CO₂ which will build up and wipe out entire species.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poisoning Their Own Food

Americans pump 80,000 different industrial chemicals into the environment. They don’t seem to get it that their food and water comes from that same environment they are treating as a toxic dump site. They close their eyes tight and even refuse to even test the effects of the chemicals. It is like someone pouring their waste household chemicals into the cornflakes and wondering why they don’t feel as chipper as they used to.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Politician Lying

Politicians are congenitally incapable of delivering bad news. The best they can do is lie. All we hear is silly wishful thinking that it is possible to burn tar sands faster than ever and still reduce CO₂ emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Politicians’ Delusions

Almost every politician is under two delusions:

  1. Increased economic activity is a good thing.
  2. Increased population is a good thing.

Increased economic activity has the following deadly consequences:

The earth has a population of 7.601. It can sustain only 1 billion. We are already way over the edge. We are destroying our soils, stripping our fuels, consuming our resources, polluting our air and water to temporarily squeak by.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Politics of Climate Change

I wish I could strangle every politician who composes their environmental policy based purely on politics without any concern whatsoever for the fate of planet earth, e.g. Christy Clark, Rachel Notley, Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Polls

Media love to do polls on what the public think about scientific matters such as the age of the earth, or how much damage climate change will do. They present this statistical information raw to the world, as if it were a reliable guide for forming personal opinions. They rarely tell the public the scientific truth along with the poll. Opinions have no effect on the truth, only on how humans act.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pollution Taxes

Voters tend to object to carbon or other pollution taxes even more strenuously than traditional taxes like income tax and sales tax. The intent of these taxes is make the polluters pay. Polluters are primarily industries. The voters seem to think they are the culprits and there is nothing they could do to reduce their pollution footprint. Where would they get a strange idea like that? Hmm…

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Poo Treatment

Imagine your partner went to the supermarket and bought a head of leafy lettuce. They brought it home and dunked it in an odour-proof Tupperware™ container of liquid cow manure, rinsed it briefly under the cold water tap, put it in a plastic bag and popped it in the fridge. You would think they had gone mad, but this is what the meat packing industry and the Harper government consider normal procedure for handling meat. Cattle are covered in feces in the feedlot, then given a quick squirt of a hose to remove it after they are slaughtered.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poor Fuel Choices

When I was a boy in the 1950s, we heated our house by shovelling coal into a furnace. On 1952-12-07 a killer smog from coal smoke killed thousands of people in London. We have far better tools today to predict the consequences of our fuel choices, but corporations are more powerful and ruthless at keeping us entrenched in poor choices.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Population Bubble

Our current world is a bit like an algae bloom. Oil has allowed us to balloon our population up to 7 billion. But when the boom is over, the population will have to drop precipitously to 1 or 2 billion at best. The sooner we switch to alternative energy, the larger that number can be.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Population Collapse

Because we have temporarily exceeded the earth’s carrying capacity of 1 billion, it is only a matter of time until the population drops back down. The question is, can we make this a soft landing? The most likely scenario is plagues that attack once they develop resistance to our antibiotics due to overuse in animal husbandry. Just as with animals, crowding promotes disease. Many of the chemicals we release into the atmosphere reduce fertility or interfere with gender. We could have wars, civil wars and terrorism. We could have social breakdown, a sort of Mad Max world, something like Syria on a much wider scale. People could simply refuse to breed, not wanting to bring children into an increasingly bleak world. The collapse could happen through infant mortality going through the roof. Our agriculture depends on oil. As oil depletes, the green revolution will end. Further it will leave the soils eroded, unsuited for other types of horticulture. Famine will become a global problem, unlike the local famines we deal with now that can be solved by bringing in food from the outside.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Population Explosion

Looked at globally, there is a population explosion going on that is stripping the earth of its resources. It is especially acute in subsaharan Africa, India and China. But ironically, there are some places where populations are projected to drop precipitously as populations age and young people delay marriage, in particular Japan and Europe. These places will have to import young people to help care for the aging population. However, this will make barely a dent in the overpopulated regions of the earth. Religious fundamentalists interfere with family planning everywhere on earth, deliberately blind to the harm they are doing. They mindlessly pursue strategies that were appropriate in the iron age.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Population Explosions and Crashes

When an animal finds a new food resource, it reacts with a population explosion. When the food supply is exhausted, the population crashes. Just like rats, humans population exploded when they discovered that oil could be used to drive farm machinery, pump water and make petrochemical fertilisers — make food. We humans knew full well the resource was limited, but reacted as instinctively as a fruitfly. The oil resource is already declining. It will effectively be gone in decades. In addition global warming is forcing us to abandon fossil fuels even before they are exhausted. Insane Christian optimism deludes Americans that something will rescue us from our folly of driving the earth’s population to 9 times normal. Humans are treating earth the way young folk having at party on the last day of the lease treat the premises.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Population Growth

If humans throughout the world limit themselves to 1.5 children per couple, we will keep our population under 8 billion. If they limit themselves to 2 children per couple, we will keep our population to 10 billion by 2100. If we bring it down to 2.5 children per couple, we will keep our population to 14 billion. However, if we maintain our current birthrate where some people in the third world and Muslims keep their wives perpetually pregnant, our population will explode to 27 billion. We won’t actually reach that. There will be a global environmental collapse first.

Humans, Biodiversity, and Habitat Loss — HHMI BioInteractive Video click to watch
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Population Problem

Every time you double the earth’s population, you more than double the difficulty of solving global problems. You have to make do with even fewer resources, since some have been consumed by previous generations. It is like a housewife trying to figure out how to feed more and more people with less and less money each month.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Poverty as Challenge

Any idiot can sail through life with a $10,000 in the bank. However, it takes exceptional skill to live on $500 a month or even $30 a month the way people in the third world routinely pull off. Yet, oddly, we most admire the deadbeat who coasts through life without effort who inherited wealth and contribute nothing to society at large. Oddly, we admire most those who most trash the environment with energy-wasting lifestyles. It is irrational to revere those who act counter to your self interest.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Power of CO₂

Scientists know that CO₂ is extremely powerful. 635 million years ago, over a span of a mere 200 years, CO₂ from volcanoes raised the average temperature of the earth from -50°C (-58°F) to 50°C (122°F) .

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) One Ocean

Power Needs

The power industry say that America must double its capacity in the next few years. This is nonsense. What they mean is, if the power were available, they would have no trouble selling it. With even token efforts we could reduce the per capita electric power usage each year. Power industry people focus only on how to produce more power and how to stimulate demand for it. They close their eyes wide shut to the drawbacks of doing so.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Powerlessness of Science

Those who blithely assume science will come up with a miracle solution to global warming that lets us continue to burn fossil fuels should recall that science still cannot do jack about drought, floods, heat or cold.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Predictable Floods

What bothers me most about the Calgary flood of 2013 is the assumption of victimhood, as though none of this was predictable and there was nothing that could be done to prevent it.

Climate scientists warned for decades of the dire consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. What did Calgarians do? Burn the tar sands as fast as possible.

The 2005 flood was a major warning. Did they reinforce the infrastructure? Only a little. Now tornadoes are coming, as predicted.

Finally rich Calgarians built right on the edges of the rivers. That was just plain stupid. Other cities such as Edmonton and Winnipeg reserve those fragile banks as parkland.

Canadians have traditionally been happy to lend a hand in a natural disaster, but I don’t know how much longer they will want to bail out Calgarians from their wilful stupidity.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Predicting Climate

One of the big mistakes people make is imagining the climate will, for well into the indefinite future, be like it is today. Baring man-made effects like greenhouse gases, it will vary as it has in past.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Prediction Bias

Math is much more reliable than intuition in trying to predict the future. It tends to avoid a optimistic/pessimistic or personal interest bias.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Prediction Depends on What We Choose To Do

Climate change scientists cannot predict what will happen, only if we do X then Y will happen. Climate change deniers unfairly ridicule scientists by pointing out various predicted results that did not happen, failing to note the condition X which did not apply. They also point to the inaccurate early computer models working with sketchy data, failing to acknowledge the huge strides in mathematics, computers and data collection.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Preparation for Parenthood

Before a couple tackle the difficult job of raising a child, they should cut their teeth on something easier like integrating an alcoholic homeless person back into society.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Prescient Darwin

Given that Darwin had no knowledge of genes and DNA, it is amazing he was able to figure out his theory. He also figured how genetics would have to work in general, even though he had no knowledge of the details.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Preserving Fish

Fixing the problem of all the world’s ocean fish species going extinct is not rocket science. It is not like developing alternative green energy. We know exactly what to do:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Preserving Salmon

Anyone who has raised tropical fish knows how incredibly sensitive they are to temperature, pH, hardness, light, precipitation, clarity, presence of special foods… If everything is not right, they do not spawn, or the young die right away.

We treat salmon as if they were people. We humans can handle a huge range of environments, especially if we have a variety of clothing, heat, artificial light, imported food… but salmon cannot. Salmon take on the temperature of the water. They have no means to cool themselves. We are screwing them up with climate change, stripping the forest cover of their spawning streams and overfishing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Primal Guilt

The Christians have the concept of Original Sin. There is an analogous concept primal guilt when considering the environment. Just being alive, you damage the environment every time you flush the toilet, have a bath, eat agribusiness-produced food, ride in a car…

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Priorities

Christy Clark, the premier of BC, pleads poverty when it comes to funding reductions in greenhouse gases. Yet when 150 wildfires spring up, she finds the money. She does not understand that climate change is a much bigger threat than the wildfires.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Prisoners’ Dilemma

Reducing greenhouse gases is like a deadly, global prisoners’ dilemma game. We are all best off if everyone does their bit to reduce emissions, but for any individual person, they are best off to be a deadbeat and do nothing and benefit from everyone else’s efforts. Unfortunately, Harper and Obama have both decided to employ the deadbeat strategy for the entire country they lead. The catch is, their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is so large, if they don’t play ball, the whole world dies.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Probable Early Death

For most animals, the odds of an early death are overwhelming, yet they are not discouraged. The odds of the human race going extinct in the next century are high too, but if we allow ourselves to become discouraged, we will have no chance at all.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Problem With Bitumen

My concern with Enbridge is that pipelines and tankers will carry bitumen rather than crude oil. Bitumen is a death sentence for anything that touches it, but the big problem is it sinks in water. The existing technologies for recovering crude after a spill work on the principle of skimming the oil floating on the top of the water. I have never heard of anything that can deal with a spill that immediately sinks. David Black, who promoted refining the bitumen before shipping, alluded to the problem. I think we must see technology demonstrated for cleaning up 95% of a bitumen spill before we would consider going ahead with the project.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Problem With BT

Michael Pollan wrote extensively in  The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World about Monsanto’s New Leaf genetically engineered potatoes that generate their own BT insecticide. He left out two key facts.

  1. Every part of the New Leaf plant is always saturated in BT. Yet, when you spray BT, you only apply it when it is needed and you don’t apply it near harvest.
  2. Pollan listed the horrifying list of pesticides applied in sequence to ordinary potatoes to control a dozen different pests. One of the pesticides is so toxic no one can even enter the field for 8 days. He then compared that horrible soup with the allegedly pesticide-free New Leaf. But the New Leaf built-in BT handles only one of the pests, the Colorado potato beetle.

It makes me wonder if Monsanto somehow corrupted Mr. Pollan and his poet’s soul.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Procrastination

Procrastination is the national sport of the USA. They dilly dally about energy efficiency, in particular rail transit, naïvely hoping the problem will go away. They are wasting money now on inefficient trucks. When they finally relent and build the rail, they will have to do it with energy that costs many times what it does now.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Productivity Without Fertiliser

When a group of 5000 African farmers were sent off to experiment, they discovered a way to raise 20% more crops than using fertiliser.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

The Project To Kill Earth

Most of my fellow humans are diligently engaged in a project to kill planet earth by climate change, releasing poisons into the environment, farming methods that strip soil, overpopulation, overfishing, war etc. I think we should be doing whatever it takes to preserve the earth for future generations. Pundits refer to my position as extreme. I am baffled. I would think, logically, sustaining life would trump everything, even next quarter profits.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Proof of Danger

If you found a 2 metres (6.56 ft) snake under your daughter’s bed, would you ignore it until experts had reached consensus that they were absolutely certain the snake was seriously poisonous? The very idea is absurd. Yet this is the policy of the Harper government to toxic chemicals in our food, water, homes and work places.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Prophesy Fulfilled

Climate scientists warned that the world was getting warmer as a result of CO₂ emissions and that we should expect all manner of extreme weather as a consequence, including hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, glacier melting and ice cap melting. This is exactly what is happening. We can even measure it objectively with the rapidly growing cost of insurance claims for weather-related damage.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pudding Head Deniers

Imagine being one of the few adults on a space ship outnumbered by hundreds of children. The children have got it into their heads that not only is the life support system unnecessary, but also it is evil. The kids do all they can to interfere with repairs. They bite holes in the tubing and set fires. This is like life on earth today living with pudding-heads befuddled by climate change denier propaganda.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pumping Poisoned Water

Numerous chemicals most of which are toxic, carcinogenic as well as teratogenic (they include benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, xylene, ethylene glycol (antifreeze), diesel fuel, naphthalene (moth ball) compounds, boric acid, arsenic, poly nuclear organic hydrocarbons, only to name a few of 500-odd chemicals used), are pumped into boreholes at high pressure to release natural gas (called shale gas) trapped in layers of underground rock. How can pumping all that much poisoned water into the ground water possibly be harmless? Further this is the dirtiest form of energy vis a vis greenhouse gas emissions since it releases methane CH₄ greenhouse gas more than an order of magnitude potent than CO₂.

The oil industry excuses the environmental damage of tar sands and shale fracking on the grounds of energy security. But guess who actually benefits from the drilling? China is buying the tar sands oil. Saudi Arabia owns most of the off shore drilling.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Punishment

Christians claim their deity will make life exceedingly unpleasant if you don’t join their church, if you have sex out of wedlock, or if you ever experience a burst of lust for someone of the same sex. They can offer no evidence this is true. In contrast, scientists can offer all the detailed evidence you want what emitting CO₂ will make your life untenable. Oddly, Americans mindlessly believe the Christians and ignore the scientists.

Why? Christians are terrified of personal death, and so convince each other, without evidence, that death is a hoax. American find the idea of the end of their lifestyle unthinkable, so they band together and tell each other that climate change is a hoax, again without evidence.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Purple Oceans

After a greenhouse gas mass-extinction, the oceans are purple, from the H₂S emitting bacteria, with a pale green sky. The microbes take over. Plants and animals die off. We have had four of them already in the history of earth and are working hard on precipitating a fifth also known by the grim understatement climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) One Ocean

Purpose of Humanity

The purpose of humans is to convert plant matter into sewage.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Pursuit of Stuff

The fundamental problem in the first world is that advertisers have convinced us to seek happiness in more stuff instead of in relationships. In chasing stuff, people become isolated and hence seek still more stuff to fill the void. In consuming stuff, people destroy the earth that sustains them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Quick Results Impossible

Now that droughts, wild fires and a floods are permanently driving people from their homes, people are beginning to demand society do something about global warming, expecting results within a year. Yet we have pushed it so far, it will be hundreds of years before even the most strenuous effort could put things back to normal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rampaging Corporations

Corporations mindlessly seek profit. They trample the environment, but that is just a side effect. If we consumers arranged things so that corporations made more profit when they behaved responsibly, they would be model citizens. It is thus up to us to avoid buying products and services that damage the environment. We are in control, but suffer under the illusion that corporations desperately want to harm the environment to spite us.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rapid DNA Analysis

If you go to the doctor, he sends you to a lab where they culture the bugs ailing you. A few days later he finds out what they are. Until then you must suffer along without treatment. What if he could do a rapid DNA sequencing to find out what you have. Perhaps you could get your prescription right on the first visit.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rapid Extinction

Why are species going extinct so rapidly?

Hmm. It seems the root cause is corporations.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rapid Glacier Melt

James E. Hansen of The Goddard Institute for Space Studies, when he studied the paleontological record, discovered that when the world’s glaciers start to melt, they melt very quickly resulting in a rise in sea level of 1 metre (3.28 ft) every 20 years. Even a rise of 2 metres (6.56 ft) would inundate many cities including London and New York. The Vancouver International Airport would have to be abandoned. The current planning is based on overly optimistic estimates made before this was known.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rapid Use Of Oil

The Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia, was the largest ever found. At today’s rates of consumption it would be gone in 11 days.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ratio of Dead To Alive

In 1968 there were 30 dead people for every person alive. By 2012, the population had exploded so quickly there were only 15 dead people for every person alive.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reaction to Climate Change

The appropriate response to climate change is not fear, but action, e.g. reducing greenhouse gas emissions or planting trees and other plants to absorb CO₂.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reactor Weakness

The problem with pressurised water nuclear reactors like the General Electric reactors in Fukushima, is they need power to keep them cool. If something goes wrong with the reactor, you have to get that electricity from somewhere else. If you have an earthquake or a tsunami, that can cut off the supply from elsewhere. If you have a battery, you have to arrange another source of power before its loses its charge. If you have a generator, you have to keep it fuelled. The meltdowns in Japan happened because of a failure to arrange sufficient power to keep the damaged reactors cool.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reagan: ecological Judas

President Carter reduced oil consumption in the USA so that imports of foreign oil dropped from 8 million barrels a day to 4 million. His successor, Ronald Reagan, at the urging of the oil companies, dismantled all his conservation measures, even the White House solar panels. Now it is up to 11 million barrels a day. Most Americans look on Reagan fondly. I see him as a traitor to his planet, an ecological Judas.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Real Cause of Meat Recalls

Canada keeps having massive meat recalls because of E. coli contaminated beef. What bothers me most is the blindness of everyone to the real source of the problem, simply because it is a long standing tradition. The cattle are kept in feedlots covered in feces all over their bodies. Their food is contaminated with feces. You cannot rectify that with a quick swish of a hose on the carcass no matter how expertly or diligently applied.

Imagine children had covered you head to foot in a shower of cow pies. What would you consider sufficient cleanup before you were ready to cook dinner or have sex?

The cows should never be permitted to get that dirty in the first place. They should be kept at least as clean as dairy cows.

Consumers should avoid buying feedlot meat altogether for three reasons:

  1. Packing companies are refusing to clean up the feedlots which inevitably results in contaminated meat.
  2. Grass-fed beef is much more nutritious and less damaging to your circulatory system.
  3. Feedlots are a form of animal cruelty.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Recent Lucky Climate

We’ve been spoiled. The last 600 years had the most stable climate in human history.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Recession is a Reprieve

From the point of view of the environment, a recession is a minor reprieve in man’s attack on it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Recycle Everything

Nature teaches us that to be sustainable, you must recycle absolutely everything.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reducing Consumption

Obama and the Republicans have done a great thing for the environment without meaning to. To repay campaign contributions they have allowed Wall street to speculate in oil futures without regulation. Even though oil supplies are way up, which would normally lower gas prices, the speculation has sent gas prices through the roof. Americans are environmental pigs. The only thing that will induce them to conserve gas and energy is high prices. So ironically Republican greed will stimulate the growth of green alternatives and efficiency technology that they despise.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reducing CO₂

There are several reasons to reduce CO₂ emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reducing Emissions

Until driverless cars show up, what could we do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reducing Fertility

Our planet is in dire straights from overpopulation, yet mankind keeps working hard to increase fertility. We should be trying to reduce fertility. We should be discouraging:

For a start, health insurance should not cover increasing fertility and should cover contraception. That is good business sense since the costs of contraception are so much less than the health costs of a pregnancy and an additional infant.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reducing Fuel Consumption

What do humans do when you give them a high tech car that uses only half as much fuel? They go on pointless drives so they spend the same amount each month on fuel as they did previously. It is not enough to double efficiency, you must double fuel prices at the same time if you want to reduce consumption.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reducing Litter

I don’t like litter, but I am practical enough to know that unless mothers teach their kids not to do it, no amount of nagging is going to deter adults. It does not take long to clean up a block with a grabber and bag. The bonus is you encourage other people to do so, especially when you clean up parks and people seem less likely to litter when there is no litter already on the ground.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reducing Meat Consumption

Simply cutting your meat consumption by 20% has the equivalent beneficial impact on greenhouse gas reduction as getting rid of your SUV and buying a hybrid.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Refillable Containers

It is environmentally irresponsible to use our limited supplies of oil to produce plastic bottles to contain soaps and shampoos then toss them away into land fills after only one use. We should be refilling reusable containers, glass or plastic, at the stores, or recycling the containers the way we used to with glass pop bottles back in the 1950s. What we are doing is malicious grand theft from future generations.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reformed Vikings

There was a time when Vikings from Norway pillaged the lands of my ancestors. Today they lead the world in ethical behaviour, forswearing cruelty to children, gays, women and the poor. They are one the most serious countries about creating new technology to curb greenhouse gas emissions, demonstrating on the bottom line their concern for the whole planet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Refusal To Adopt

Creating yet another child, where there are still abandoned children without parents, especially when that child is created through artificial means to stimulate fertility such as in-vitro fertilisation is cruel, hard-hearted, vain, selfish and anti-environment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Refusal To Defend

Global warming presents more of a threat than all terrorist and military threats throughout history combined, but the USA refuses to act because it might cost money or be inconvenient. I don’t imagine anyone refused to defend against Japan in WWII on grounds it would cost money or be inconvenient. The problem is the term global warming sounds so benign and Hollywood has played wolf so many times before that the public think of global warming as not even as serious as killer bees or the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Refusal To Reduce The Birth Rate

Science has drastically reduced deaths. The price of using this technology is to use the corresponding technology to reduce the birth rate. However, just as Darwin would have predicted, people, egged on by religious leaders, have selfishly refused to reduce birth rates and are destroying the planet ecology which is leading, just as it does with locusts, inevitably to a mass die off.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Refusing Efficiency

Even with the technology of 2011, we can create buildings that use 90% less electricity, 90% less fossil fuel and 90% less water than usual. If by some magic all buildings were replaced by green technology, that would be equivalent to having ten times the electricity, fossil fuel and water at 90% less cost. Americans have a hang up. They think doing more with less is effeminate. A major piece of the solution to the energy crunch is right under their noses, but they refuse to consider it. Why? They would sell less energy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rejecting the Carbon Tax

Rejecting the carbon tax is the adult equivalent of refusing to eat your vegetables.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Relative Danger

Those who lobby against getting on with alternative energy and reducing greenhouse emissions on the grounds it might have some minor deleterious effect on the economy are like a child who refuses to run from a tiger because she does not want to spill her ice cream cone. We have absolutely no choice but get on with it, no matter how much it costs. Then again, as W. Edwards Deming noted Survival is not mandatory

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Relative Harm

How do you know a disinfectant is less harmful than the bacteria it purports to kill?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Relative Pollution

Natural gas is cleaner than other fossil fuels, but it still emits 50.30 grams of CO₂ greenhouse gas per megajoule of energy produced. Green energy sources produce none. To compare, automobile gasoline emits 67.07, fuel oil emits 81.26 and anthracite coal emits 97.59 almost twice as much as natural gas. source. A megajoule is sufficient heat energy to boil dry about 400 mls (1.69 US cups) of water.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Relative Reek

The markets of Morocco reek of urine from the donkeys that carry goods. A Moroccan visiting Canada might wonder how we tolerate the reek of automobiles in our markets.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Relinquishing Water

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have betrayed Canada by relinquishing the right of Canada to keep its own water. If the US wants it, we have to pump it to them even if we need it to sustain our environment or for our own needs. What is even more disgusting is what the Americans will do with it — squander it watering desert golf courses, polluting it with industrial processes that make no attempt to conserve water and flushing it down toilets 15 litres (3.96 US gallons) at a time just to flush away a 50 mls (1.69 fl oz) of urine. 15 litres (3.96 US gallons) of water is all it takes to sustain all needs of an African for a day. Harper is to the environment what Hitler was to Jews. His manic destructiveness must be fueled by some deep-rooted insanity. It is too hateful and contemptuous to be explained away by purely accepting bribes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reluctance To Protect The Environment

Why are people so reluctant to take even token actions to protect the environment?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Relying Or Rescuers

I am amazed how many people are convinced disaster can never befall them personally, even if they flagrantly ignore the danger signals. They imagine a god will come to rescue them, even though this has never happened to anyone before, (except in urban legends). They imagine their government will come to rescue them, even when they saw Katrina, a disaster than affected only a small fraction of the USA, completely overwhelm its government. Those who cheerfully do all they can to trash the environment will be the ones screaming loudest a the unfairness of the universe when they get smacked in the chops when some part of the environment collapses under the strain.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Removing Dependence on Foreign Oil

For many decades, politicians have been decrying American dependence on foreign oil. What they really want is unregulated offshore drilling. What would work much more effectively is energy conservation, energy efficiency and green energy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Renovation Better

Should you renovate your old house or tear it down and start over? From a carbon footprint point of view it will be much better to renovate and it will probably be cheaper too.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Repealing Environmental Laws

Surprise! Harper is repealing six major environmental laws. There is not a single environmentalist, biologist or botanists in the country who thinks this is a good idea. The public has not called for it. Even two ex-Tory cabinet ministers have expressed their outrage. Harper is doing this purely on behalf of the bastards who violate these laws. He is doing it because they give him money to fund his elections. Harper belongs in prison if not worse.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Repeated Action

Humans nearly always underestimate the cumulative effect of repeated action.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Repercussions of Electric Cars

The electric car takes 25 times as much energy as an electric kettle. If the electric car were to replace the gasoline car, the electric grid could not sustain the immense extra load to recharge them. A much bigger change is required, namely using much smaller, lighter vehicles, perhaps more along the lines of the Segway, the electric bicycle or a small single-passenger pod, computer-driven at densities impossible for human drivers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Repercussions of Peak Oil

Because of peak oil, the price of fuels have to eventually rise out of sight. This means food imported from more that a few kilometres away will be prohibitively expensive. This means the new trendy will be growing vegetables in your front yard and raising chickens, rabbits and ducks in the back.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Replacing Oil

Whether it is economically feasible to flip from oil is irrelevant. Oil is going away. If we continue as we are, the default is to live without energy. The universe does not care if most of us will die as a result. We are idiots if we don’t get off our butts. We are aiming now for suicide by laziness.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Republican Morons

In the 1950s we used to tell little moron jokes. In the interest of political correctness, I am going to ridicule the little Republican instead. The little Republican was driving his car. He asked his son, How much further do you think our gas will last?. His son responded 400 miles. When 400 miles clicked by, the car kept going. The little Republican said What an idiot you are! You are wrong. You don’t know anything. He then asked his wife. She said The needle is reading empty. I don’t think any more than 10 miles. You stupid bitch the little Republican said. What do you know? When ten miles came up the car started coughing, but it was still moving forward. See he shouted. I told ya. You liberal wienies have been wrong twice. That proves this car obviously does not need gas. It will run forever without ever being filled! Its the same as this phony peak oil shit. It will last forever. God would not let us run out.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The little Republican is fully aware his tank holds a finite amount of gas and he is emptying it at a finite rate. It has to run out, ditto for global oil. You can be wrong estimating various milestones, but not about the fact the gas has to eventually run out. But the little Republican decides to cling to his comforting delusion instead.

Republicans

The American Republican Party are the only political party in the world that denies human-caused climate change. Of course, they assert they are the mainstream and everyone else, including the world’s scientists are extremists. They claim (presumably on religious grounds) that it is impossible for man to change the environment, so it does not matter what we do to the air, water and soil. There is no need for regulation of any kind. This is wishful thinking gone mad.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Republicans

Republicans refusing to curb green house gas emissions are like bratty children who refuse to take life-saving medicine claiming it won’t be effective when their real objection is they don’t like the flavour.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Resistance

If it is justified to throw someone out of a lifeboat for endangering the lives of its occupants, then it is also justified to throw a climate change denier off lifeboat earth. Offering no resistance is like a Jew going meekly to Hitler’s death camps.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Resource Shortages

Every day I am bombarded with news that there is some resource shortage: lack of clean water, food, living space, clean air, fish… This is the wrong way to look at things. We live on a finite planet. We are like college kids trying to cram 17 students into a VW beetle. There is nothing wrong with the car. The problem is too many people. Until we learn to live off the planet, the only practical strategy to live within out planet’s limits is to stop breeding like rabbits.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Restraining Population Growth

Nearly every animal species tries its hardest to leave the maximum number of offspring behind after it dies. This is the Darwinian imperative that drives evolution. Humans are the exception. We can use reason to warn us that unrestrained population growth is supersaturating the finite resources of our planet and is pushing us to global catastrophe.

Some humans, from primitive cultures, or from religions such as Islam, still attempt to keep their females perpetually pregnant. Their motives are selfish. They want to predominate over other groups. They want to expand the power of their religion.

We have to start thinking about how to discourage these superbreeders, with argument, incentives and disincentives. They are ruining the planet for everyone. For a start, we should reject them as immigrants, based not on culture or religion, but on breeding history and willingness to limit family size.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Retiring Hurricanes

I think the name of any category 4 hurricane or higher should be retired for 50 years.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Retreating Glaciers

Glaciers are rapidly retreating even on the northernmost tip Canada, the coldest coastal region in the world.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reusable Shopping Bags

FOX News clowns, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have been campaigning against reusable canvas shopping bags. They advocate double bagging in plastic even for light loads. They gave two reasons for this anti-environmental anti-common-sense position:

I think they are stark raving nuts. They are like a Saturday Night Live skit. It would be poetic justice if a sea turtle assassinated the pair, at the seashore, with a plastic bag.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Revamping Planet Management

If we humans had colonised earth 200 years ago and noticed that half the corals had died, that a species was going extinct every 20 minutes, that all the food fish were headed for extinction by 2040, that the polar caps and glaciers were all melting as a side effect of our technology, that we had used up in that short time over half the fuel, that the soil was rapidly thinning, That rivers were drying up all over… do you think we might be a little more concerned than we are now? Would we not be making frantic plans to abandon this planet or drastically revamp our planet management practices?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Revenge

If you were on a jury of man who whose community water had been poisoned by the Alberta tar sands development, who had in revenge deliberated contaminated the water drunk by the politicians who allowed that contamination, could you convict him?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Revenge

If you were on a jury, would you convict a father who drowned an oil executive in bitumen who authorised the poisoning of the water that gave his 17 year old daughter cancer and killed her?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Revenge of the Nerd

Man is such a pathetic animal. He is a Don Knotts latecomer with a bad back, small dull teeth, without claws, without armour, not particularly good vision, hearing or smell, unable to outrun any predator, not prolific… Yet he prevailed, taking over the earth then taking revenge for his relative inadequacy by kicking most of the other animals and plants into extinction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Reversing the Big Melt

You have undoubtedly heard that if the ice in Antarctica melted, the oceans would rise 60 metres (65.62 yards). But perhaps even more alarming, we could not reverse the effect since it has not rained/snowed in Antarctica for two million years.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Right to Violate Immoral Laws

Paul Watson has the same moral right to violate Harper’s laws to save whales as Schindler had to violate Hitler’s law to save Jews.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Rise of Acquisitiveness

Before civilisation, acquisitiveness was limited by how much you could carry. Today, technology has allowed people to accumulate mansions full of stuff, not to mention storage lockers full. Before civilisation, your energy footprint was limited by how many calories your could burn with your muscles. Today, technology lets you burn hundreds of horsepower with your vehicle, not to mention your furnace, hot water heater and electric appliances. Some people have private jets, heated pools, multiple homes and many other imaginative ways of deliberately and extravagantly trash the earth with the help of technology. The truly odd thing is people do this to impress their fellows. Surely we should spit on, if not incarcerate, such planetary traitors, not envy them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rise of China the Polluter

China has many times the population of the USA, but it has much less impact on the global environment because its citizens live a Spartan, low-tech life style. The Chinese are both growing in population and becoming more affluent. They are turning in their bicycles for cars. They are burning coal and pumping out CO₂ to beat the band. They are filling their apartments with electronic gadgets. Very soon China will surpass the USA as the world’s biggest polluter and biggest users of resources. Already cities on the west coast of the USA are suffering from Chinese air pollution.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Rise Of Locally Grown Food

As the price of oil rises, locally grown food becomes cheaper than food flown in. There is a tipping point and suddenly locally grown food becomes the economic mainstream. People looking ahead will buy up local farmland.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rising Oceans

In 2013-09, the National Geographic published a map showing what parts of the world would be under water if the polar ice melted. The shocking part is nearly all the agricultural land will be under water. Prime agricultural land tends to be flat low-lying land, especially on river deltas. It is far more than just high temperatures we will be dealing with. Florida will be completely gone. Most of Louisiana will be gone. Denmark, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Thailand will all be under water.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source. To view other continents on the map, use the slider. Don’t click the continents.

Rising Oceans

The oceans will rise at least 1 metre (3.28 ft) over the next century displacing 140 million people. We will lose the rich coastal plain farmlands where they lived. We will have to find some place for them all to live and some place to grow food for them. It is unlikely they can be accommodated without heavy duty violence. This is just the tip of the iceberg of population displacements caused by global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rising Oceans

We have set our course for oceans 40 metres (43.74 yards) higher than now. We have already released all the necessary CO₂. We are planning to release an additional 12.5% just to make sure. It is just a matter of waiting for the cake to bake.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Run Collapse

In 2013 the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery had to be totally shut down. Bureaucrats scratched their heads about what caused the run to completely collapse.

Gee. I wonder what the problem could be. The bureaucrats idiotically imagine it has to have a single cause.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Run-away Intelligence

Our run-away evolution of intelligence was a very bad idea. It lead us to invent nukes, corporations and all manner of tools for destroying our planetary ecosystem. We have no restraint. We do it because can.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Runaway Greenhouse Effect

Every school child knows that Venus has runaway greenhouse gas warming from CO₂ in its atmosphere, so severe it melts lead. Yet when they become adults they decide that CO₂ accumulation on earth must be harmless, despite what climatologists tell them. Why? Because, to avoid catastrophe, they would have to reduce CO₂ emissions and they don’t want to be bothered and they believe a baby-sitter god will clean it up for them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Running Out Of Fresh Water

We are running out of fresh water. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Rush Limbaugh: Environmental Traitor

Rush Limbaugh has successfully spread the notion that Snowmageddon disproves global climate change. How dare this ignoramus sell such lies for the coal industry! What he has done in tantamount to genocide. Antarctica gets no snow because it is too cold for moisture to evaporate. Washington DC had simultaneously the warmest and snowiest winter ever. Such extreme weather is exactly what the climatologists predicted. He is a murderer is the same sense as a psychopath who convinces people that it is safe to return into garage filled with carbon monoxide. In sane world he would be jailed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sacrifice

If you can make big sacrifices in war, then you can make them for climate change. Climate change is hundreds of times bigger a threat to your country’s continued existence than any war ever was.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sacrificing A Grandchild

Most grandmothers would brave a grizzly bear to save a grandchild. Yet it is a rare grandmother who will make a few sacrifices to take up a green lifestyle to save her grandchildren from climate change, projected by the Canadian Department of the Environment as second in horror only to global nuclear war.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sacrificing Lives

Oil executives are happy to sacrifice lives to squeeze out a few extra dollars profit. They are lucky that environmentalists don’t share that same casual disregard for human life or they would all find themselves assassinated in various amusing ways.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sad Motivators

I find it extremely depressing that the only time humans protect the environment is when they believe some nutty superstition.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Safe Cleaning

You can download a wallet card to help you shop for cleaning supplies. It explains which chemicals to watch out for and why. Sometimes perfectly safe ingredients go by scary sounding names.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Safe Fusion

We already have a working, completely reliable, extremely overengineered fusion reactor, at a safe distance from everyone. It requires no extra fuel. It produces no noxious byproducts. It is highly unlikely it will fail for billions of years. There are no annual maintenance costs. It makes most sense to our focus major efforts on collecting its (the Oracle’s) effectively limitless energy to use on earth.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Salinity

Climate change is raising the sea levels, but long before you are inundated, the sea contaminates the water table making the soil too salty to grow crops. Unfortunately, the best agricultural lands are on the river deltas, the land most susceptible to salinification.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Salmon Leukemia

Nearly all BC Chinook farms are infected with salmon leukemia virus. It is 100% lethal when it infects wild Chinook salmon. It is the salmon equivalent of AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome). The usual response to such a threat is to quarantine infected animals and possibly even kill them all. But for some reason, (probably because of political donations from fish farms) the Liberal BC government just ignored the problem.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Salmon Quotas

When the salmon stocks dwindle the DFO lowers the quotas. The fishermen scream that the <-- macro Acronym DFO --> is trying to hurt them. They can’t earn a living on such low quotas, therefore they must be raised, as if that would magically restore the stocks. The native people chime in that they have an inherent right to catch as many fish as they did 200 years ago, even if such fish long longer exist and even if that means nobody else gets any fish at all. The fishermen are so incredibly stupid I would like to whack them over the head with a shovel. The stocks are low because they all overfished and because of man-made climate change. The only known way to recover is to lower the quotas to give the populations a chance to recover. The fisherman are like bratty children refusing to take the only medication that can save them. According to Dr. Boris Worm, by 2048 all the food fish in the oceans will be gone, simply because fisherman insist in taking more that a sustainable catch.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Same Crooked Lobbyists

Big coal and oil hired the same companies who provided shills for big tobacco to testify to the safety of tobacco. In turn, those consulting companies hired the same shills, this time posing as climate scientists, to spread FUD about global warming. The media, especially FOX News, helped sell these shills as experts to befuddle the public. They were successful. Their crime will result in the death of billions of people, the extinction of millions of species and untold misery for those who survive. Surely prison, the death penalty or even torture would be a mild punishment for a crime of this magnitude.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Everything’s Cool

Same Shills

The exact same people who shilled for the tobacco companies and posed as experts to testify tobacco was harmless hired themselves out to the oil companies to pose as experts to tell lies about global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Save Seeds

Consider saving seeds each year for next year’s garden. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) How to save seeds

Saving The Earth

If all the climate change deniers, those indifferent to climate change, all Republicans, fundamentalists of all stripes and those who make their money building weapons dropped dead of ebola, it would be a good thing for the survival of planet earth.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Saving Water

The world will be facing a 40% water shortage in 15 years if we don’t start conserving water. What can you do to start saving water?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Science Deniers

What would you think of someone who said, Those rocket scientists don’t know the first thing about rockets. They are using the wrong fuel. They are all conspiring to keep us from discovering the aliens on the other side of the moon. This almost never happens.

People defer to expert scientists on medicine, aircraft design, metallurgy, particle physics, navigation, chemistry… There are a few exceptions — the anti-vaxers, the homeopathy enthusiasts and the faith healers.

But when it comes to geology and biology, the majority of Americans flat out reject science and embrace a preposterous religious myth. But the most dangerous of all are the climate change deniers, most notably Donald Trump and Senator James Inhofe. They work hard to ensure planet earth commits suicide by doing nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Why do people who have never read a book, never taken a university course, suddenly think their gut intuition trumps the detailed study of hundreds of thousands of scientists?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Science Is Not Morally Neutral

Science is not morally neutral. Without scientists we would not have:

Like Nazis claiming they were just following orders, scientists blindly create whatever their employers tell them to.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Science Speak

When the theatre is on fire scientists don’t consider it lying to say, the combustion threshold has reached 233°C (451°F). Further, study could confirm the need for evacuation. In fact they consider it their duty to be conservative, not in the sense of prudent/safe, but in the sense of refraining from implying anything out of the ordinary has happened or raising any sort of alarm no matter how serious the situation. They would find it immensely embarrassing if they raised a false alarm. They are happy to sacrifice an entire planet to avoid even a 1 in 10,000 chance of embarrassment from even a thoroughly hedged false alarm.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Scientific Killing

On 2014-09-15, Iceland excused its slaughter of endangered whales by claiming it was scientific. What is scientific about drilling a harpoon into a heart the size of a car and silencing a brain many times larger than your own?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Scientific Understatement

People do not realise that scientists are trained to be extremely careful never to overstate their case, or to overgeneralise. So when they debate right wingers who have no qualms about outright lying it is like a bare knuckle boxing match when the scientist has both hands handcuffed behind his back.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Scientific Understatement

Scientists are extremely embarrassed about showing emotion. They are fond of British ironic understatement. For example, they refer to an extinction event that wipes out 1/3 of all species on earth as a disruption. An earthquake, 9 on the Richter scale, is a tectonic shift. The beginning of the universe is the big bang. A hydrogen bomb is a thermonuclear device. The collapse of a country’s economic system is called an adjustment. Addiction to methamphetamine is called an substance abuse. Targeting children in war is called collateral damage. Torture is called enhanced interrogation. So it is no surprise they selected the terms global warming and climate change to describe what ordinary people would have called climate chaos, climate collapse or climactic Armageddon.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Scientists Debate

It drives me crazy watching scientists trying to debate with climate change deniers. It is like watching an Olympic boxer up against a no-rules cage fighter. Even if something is true 99.9% of the time, scientists can’t assert it is true, without mentioning the apparently disqualifying exception. Deniers can assert whatever they please, regardless of the facts. Scientists must refrain from ad hominem attacks. Deniers can accuse scientists of being part of a giant conspiracy without offering any evidence for it.

Deniers have giant budgets funded by oil companies and religious cranks to spread FUD. The scientists have none. Scientists need credentials and decades of study before they can speak. Deniers can pontificate knowing absolutely nothing about the topic — basing their beliefs on economic wishful thinking or religious prophesy.

Arguments sail over the heads of lay audiences because scientists are constrained to use unemotional language, understatement and technical and extremely precise language. Deniers are free to simplify and tell whatever story they imagine will appeal to the emotions and subnormal intelligence of their audience. Scientists play by Marquis of Queensbury rules. They are deeply ashamed and apologetic if caught doing anything not strictly on the up and up. Deniers play by Karl Rove rules. They have no shame no matter what they are caught doing.

The deniers are a far bigger threat to planet earth than Hitler ever was. We must take off the gloves in dealing with them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Scientists were not the Ones behind the Mayan Calendar Hoax

Non-scientists tell me they think global warming is a hoax because Y2K fizzled. In 2012 when the Mayan calendar ends its cycle probably nothing will happen either despite predictions from flakes like Greg Braden. The H1N1 flu epidemic did not turn nearly bad as Fox news said it would. So all predictions of catastrophe are false. The difference is, the consensus of climate scientists are warning you about global warming in understated terms. The other crises were manufactured by a hysteria-loving media.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Screw My Offspring

Humans are behaving in a bizarrely self-destructive way. A normal animal will happily sacrifice its life to ensure the survival of its offspring. Even a spider, salmon or an octopus will do this. Humans used to do that, but for some reason they have stopped. They happily destroy the environment in hundreds of ways, knowing full well the damage will make life very difficult or perhaps impossible for their descendants. All they seem to value is short term personal financial gain and often not even personal gain, just financial gain of some corporate third party. From a Darwinian point of view, this is a fatal defect.

What happened? Here is one hypothesis: Grandparents used to live in extended families with their grandchildren. People used to become grandparents at a much younger age. They bonded strongly with their grandchildren by caring for them. Today, with the rise of nuclear families, grandparents have relatively no interaction with their grandchildren other that phone calls and emailed photos. They don’t bond properly. In non-technological societies, your social standing as a grandparent is determined by the size and health of your collection of grandchildren. They are also your financial support system.

Grandparents have ceased to be primarily concerned with the long term survival of their grandchildren. They focus mainly on immediate personal needs. Advertising encourages this new pathological value system. Even in technological societies, grandparents are the ones who primarily make the decisions in business and government. The disruption of the natural family structure of our species has made grandparents lose their concern for future generations and become Republicans.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sea Level Rise

Estimates of sea level rise by 2050 vary from 30.48 cm (12 in) (Dr. Dan Cayan) to 8 metres (8¾ yards) (Dr. Tom Lovejoy).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sea Level Rise in Victoria

Experts from various disciplines convened to plan how to handle climate change in my city, Victoria. They estimated sea level will rise by 56 cm (1.84 ft). There will be more heat waves and more flooding. The city has a disproportionate number of elderly people, which makes adjusting more difficult.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sea Levels

The last time CO₂ levels got this high, sea level was 21.34 metres (23.33 yards) higher.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sea Rise

According to Nova, over the next 100 years, as the oceans warm, they will expand, raising the ocean level by about 33 cm (12.99 in). All the mountain glaciers will melt, raising it by another 33 cm (12.99 in). Much of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will melt raising it by another 33 cm (12.99 in), for a total of 1 metre (3.28 ft). That does not sound like much until you consider that 100 million people will be flooded out. It will cost trillions to built coastal defences. There will be millions of refugees creating political turmoil. And that is the most optimistic scenario.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Seal Hunt

The seal hunt gives all Canadians a bad name. I resent that. It hurts all Canadian exports. They are metaphorically tainted with seal blood. There is no pressing economic reason for the hunt. It continues for the joy of killing, to thumb noses at the rest of Canada the hunters perceive as meddlers and to uphold tradition. Those are not sufficiently valid motives. You selfish Newfoundland brats, grow up! You are even hurting your fellow Newfoundlanders by tarring their world reputation as being barbaric as you.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Seal vs Moose Hunter

What’s the difference between a BC moose hunter and a Newfoundland Seal hunter?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

A Seat For the Spectacle

Some of the people who lived at the time of the end of the Roman empire probably relished having a seat for the spectacle. I think we are in a similar time. Global civilisation is winding up. We are turning the earth into a wasteland whipped on to ever faster extinction by Republican/corporate ideology. I will be one of the last people to see a verdant earth. Blue Gold, World Water Wars I could hardly think of anyone I would less like running my country that Stephen Harper, (perhaps Luka Rocco Magnotta or Dick Cheney). Harper is intent on destroying the earth and he has the means to do it — simply by selling/burning all of Canada’s fossil fuels turning them into greenhouse gases. He is an extremely evil bastard and he will most likely get his way. I will continue to try to foil him simply because I would feel more ashamed for giving up than for failing to defeat him. And of course, you never know. I have been successful before even when I thought the odds were 1,000,000 to 1 against me.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Seed Crystal Wanted

Concern for climate change is growing from all over. It is like a super-saturated solution of concern. All we need is a seed-crystal for the practical work.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Seeing Climate Change

Many people think climate change is something that may happen in the distant future, but you can see it happening right now right under your nose.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Seeking Bogus Information

Global warming deniers are like smokers, on being told they have lung cancer, they scour the Internet for 1950s tobacco company propaganda and crank speculation claiming smoking is harmless, then add another pack a day.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Self Delusion

Imagine a man who received a phone call warning him that one heckuva forest fire was threatening his mountain cabin. He responds by saying I haven’t the time, energy or money to deal with this, so it must be a hoax. You would think he was bonkers. Yet that is how nearly half the population reacts to warnings of global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Self Punishment

It is as though humans realise what a scabrous species they are and so have set out to punish and eliminate themselves.

When I watch them doing this, I feel furious that they hurting innocent kids and innocent species, but on the other hand, I suppose it is best they do themselves in before they damage the planet so badly it would take millions of years to recover.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Self-driving Cars

The media are already waxing nostalgic for driving your own can in the coming days of self-driving cars. There are advantages that more than compensate:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Selfish Republican Psychopaths

Only a psychopath who deeply hates children could vote Republican. He is willing to level the forests, pollute the rivers, radically alter the climate and erode away the soil for a tiny personal financial gain, while leaving the coming generations bereft. That is the typical absurdly selfish behaviour of psychopaths.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Selling Bitumen

Harper’s goal to rapidly sell off Canada’s bitumen resources is flawed for several reasons:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Serving Endangered Fish

The finest restaurants in the world openly sell endangered fish species.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Settling Scientific Questions with Partisanship

American are such fools they attempt to settle scientific questions by political affiliation. Republicans are dragging their country to hell simply because reject anything that liberals believe. Liberals are generally well educated and believe science. Republicans thus mindlessly reject the findings of science on such matters as peak oil, global climate change, water conservation and extinction of species because they are liberal ideas and liberal ideas have cooties.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sex Hormone Mimics

Hormones are incredibly potent. The sum total of all testosterone in all men on earth is only 35 kg (77.16 lbs), yet we dump trainloads of chemicals that mimic human and animal hormones into the environment. No wonder male frogs are producing eggs and boy children are now rare in some communities.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sex Selection

In some societies, parents prefer to have male children. It might be wise not to interfere. Why?

It is hard enough to get people to control their rabbit instincts. Let us not interfere with sex selection as a means of population control that does not need a hard sell.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sharing

Common wisdom says we need to invent high tech storage technology, such as superbatteries, before clean technology can be implemented. But it turns out somewhere water is flowing, sun is shining or wind is blowing, so all we need is a global grid to share energy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Shark Fin Soup

Chinese restaurant goers in Vancouver BC impress their guests with extravagantly expensive shark fin soup. Fishermen strip the fins off the living endangered sharks and throw them back to die. Canadians tried vainly to get them to give up the barbaric practice. Poetic justice is served. The sharks pick up neurotoxins from algae that cause ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) learning more

Shedding Humans

It is a bleak thought, but by far earth’s best shot at recovery is to shake off humans like a bad case of fleas.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Shellfish

Shellfish are not fish; they are molluscs.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Shills and Polar Bears

There are some zoologists who are making the rather strange claim that global warming will help the polar bears. I think these people are most likely lying shills for the petro-fuel business. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Shooting a Coke Machine

In 1964 Stanley Kubrick directed a movie called Dr. Strangelove. In one scene, Peter Sellers, playing Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, tries to persuade a soldier (played by Keenan Wyn) to shoot a Coca Cola machine to get dime to phone in the recall codes need to prevent an inadvertent nuclear war. At first the soldier refuses. Finally, he relents and says You’ll have the Coca Cola company to answer for this.

The environmental movement as a whole remind me of that soldier. They all insist on playing politely, strictly by the rules, rules that have been rigged against them, even when global climate change threatens an imminent mass extinction event. The Republicans with their mindless fixation on money, that overrides even the survival instinct, have managed to persuade the Christians to trust that their god would never allow such a thing as climate change to happen because he only allows the awful things in Revelation to happen.

There is no time left. As a result of Republican/big oil/big coal stalling, no matter what we do now, at least millions will die as will the Great Barrier Coral Reef. If we play hardball, perhaps we can avoid billions more dying and wiping out 95% of earth’s species. Recall that people were reluctant to assassinate Hitler. That sort of thing was simply not done. I think history will look back on the environmental movement as far too timid given the danger. Because the effects are still off a bit into the future does not mean efforts to stop them should be wishy-washy.

Imagine what you would be prepared to do to stop some Republican pervert from burning a child to death before eyes in your back yard. Prevention is so much preferable to revenge. There is not much you can do to punish Republican than is worse than the actual global warming effects of their own greed and stupidity. I am not suggesting mindless violence like 2001-09-11, just fighting fire with fire, using tactics comparably nasty and dirty to the ones the Republicans use, escalating as necessary. Imagine what Karl Rove would do if he were on the side of planet earth. We have to win this one. This is a fight for your and your descendants’ survival. In this situation, it is ok to fight dirty.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Short Term Thinking

In 1859 there was a solar storm three times bigger than the one that wiped out Québec for weeks. Even though we know events like this happen randomly every 500 years or so, our technological society would collapse at such as assault. Again and again we see corporations totally incapable of looking ahead more than the current quarter. This deliberate blindness is an aberration in the human species. The people who built Stonehenge, the pyramids, Machu Picchu, Mont Saint Michel… certainly did not think that way.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Short-Term Tenancy

Fruit flies will happily colonise an orange, even if it is out for only an hour. Similarly we humans have colonised the earth, without any guarantee it will continue to sustain us. We kid ourselves the free ride will last forever.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Siberian Traps

The Siberian Traps was an enormous volcano that covered an area the size of the USA 1.61 km (1 mile) deep in lava for 100,000,000 years. It emitted about the same amount of CO₂ that we humans are emitting over a couple of centuries. It was the biggest extinction event in earth’s history, even bigger than the asteroid that ended the age of the dinosaurs. It drove 95% of species extinct. What we are doing with greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels is even more destructive because we are releasing the same amount of CO₂ 500,000 times faster.

The Permian Extinction click to watch
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sick Fish

Because of severe overcrowding, almost all farmed fish are diseased. Aquaculturists have to get them to market before they die. They extend their lives with high doses of antibiotics in their feed. One unfortunate side effect of this practice is bacteria develop immunity to the antibiotics making the antibiotics useless for curing disease in humans.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Side Effects of Population Density

Humans refuse to accept that when they increase population density, they can’t continue to behave as if they had no neighbours. Some of the changes include:

If you find such restrictions onerous, stop having so many babies.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Silence on Floods

Insurance claims for flood damage have doubled in the last five years. Yet I have not once heard media mention the fact this is one of the predicted effects of global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Silly Excuse

Idiots on the media say things like We have to do something about global warming, but only if it has no impact on prosperity. That’s like saying I refuse to vacate my house threatened by raging wildfire because I don’t want to spend money on a motel. Get serious! We have spent two centuries working 24/7 creating this problem. We are not going to wriggle out of it without spending big bucks, bigger even than Iraq war bucks.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Silly Excuses for Inaction

Dr. Hoople: Mrs. Smith, your son is clearly dying. We suspect it may be your habit of putting rat poison on his cornflakes each morning. Of course, we have no proof other than all the other children in your son’s class at school who eat rat poison are dead or doing poorly and the Europeans have banned the practice. The manufacturer of the rat poison is doing a 20 year study on the matter, after which we can take definitive action. We recommend wait and see. Rash action could affect rat poison sales (Drat! That would be terrible for my portfolio.). Even if we stopped the poison and your son got better, that still would not prove the poison was the culprit (Egad, lawsuits!).

How is that any different from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s do-nothing bee protection policy?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Simon Kuznetse

Simon Kuznets was an economist who claimed that when a nation first industrialises, it creates a wealth gap and massive pollution. But as affluence grows, wealth becomes more equal and the newly affluent citizens demand and get a pollution cleanup.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Site C

Building Site C Peace River hydroelectric power project in BC Canada 40 years before it is needed makes no sense. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Skeptic vs Denier

Some media outlets, e.g. Fox, improperly use the terms skeptic and denier. AP has a style guide to keep its writers using them correctly. Skeptic usually refer to someone who doubts the claims of the religious or superstitious. He insists on evidence. A denier is someone ignores overwhelming evidence, such as someone who denies climate change, the holocaust or that vaccines do not cause autism. Deniers typically have no evidence to support their views. They adopt them based on emotion or hunches.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Ski Resorts

Within 7 years there will be no ski resorts left below 1.52 km (0.95 mile) altitude. Global warming is wiping them out. Most of the runs I skied in my youth will all be gone: Stowe, Mount Baker, Crystal Mountain (Enumclaw), Grouse (North Vancouver), Seymour (North Vancouver), Hollyburn (West Vancouver), Tod Mountain (Kamloops), Red Mountain (Rossland), Silver Star (Vernon)…

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sleasebag Speculators

It is ironic that sleasebag speculators cranking up gas prices are providing the pressure that may finally persuade America to go green.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sliding Off The Roof

When I was a boy, I climbed on the roof. It was made of cedar shakes made slippery by the daily rain and slime molds. I started to slowly slide down the slope. Nothing I could do would stop my slow inevitable descent to the edge. The emotions generated by this slow motion disaster unfolding reminds me of what has been happening at the six Fukushima nuclear power plants.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sloppy Use of Word Terrorist

The word terrorist gets thrown around pretty loosely. Christians call atheists terrorists and industry calls environmentalists terrorists, simply because they are vocal and opposed. The historian Caleb Carr defines terrorism as killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation. So if nobody is getting killed, there is no terrorism. It does not mean you are afraid of what will happen if the opposition gets its way. The term terrorist does not apply to a resistance trying to evict an invader except when they are trying to change someone’s political affiliation (e.g. of collaborators). It’s terrorism even if your side does it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Smart Meters

People have been burned so many times by corporations lying to them they are reacting to electrical smart meters as if there were some sort of bugging scheme. These new meters will eventually allow environmentally friendly things such as:

The electrical system is vulnerable during peak hours since there is so little spare capacity. Even a small disturbance can bring down the whole thing as happened on 2011-09-08 in Arizona. I consider it a serious ecological crime to spread misinformation about these meters. This is one of the rare times when a technology is both profitable for the electric utilities and good for the environment.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Smart Meters

There has been a lot of hysteria about smart meters being some secret plot to kill people. This makes about as much sense as fearing electrocution from your pocket calculator. Smart meters put out much less radiation than a cellphone.

However, I smell a rat — Accenture, the company that handles billing for BC Hydro. I used to work for the BC Hydro Computer Department and learned how incredibly complicated the computer billing is. With all the extra data coming in from the smart meters, the centralised computer billing to handle it would become many times more complicated still.

Almost everyone noticed a huge spike in their bills when the smart meters went into effect. Most likely this was caused by an error in the central billing program created by inadequate testing, incompetence in testing the program or fraud. Then bills dropped back to normal, but without any rebate. BC Hydro/Accenture should come clean and give everyone rebate for the period when they were generating erroneous bills. If Hydro continues to insist they made no errors, we need manual audits by an independent body. They know perfectly well they made an error, because they corrected it. Computer programs don’t just fix themselves.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Smashing SUVs

People love to smash things and feel virtuous about it. It is thus odd that eco-vandalism against overpowered or oversized vehicles is not yet commonplace.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Smell Of An Ecological Vandal

If your house smells as industrially clean as a mall washroom, your guests will know you are an ecological vandal. You do the most damage to the environment with detergents, degreasers, stain removers and pesticides. Look for green alternatives.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Smell Of Strawberries

If you were a child who had access to the world of odours only through artificial flavours, you might think that strawberries smelled like vomit and grapes smelled like paint thinner.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Smelling Contaminants

Humans can smell H₂S, the gas that makes sewage stink, at 0.00047 ppm. CO₂, the main greenhouse gas, humans cannot smell it at all, even though as of 2012-10 its concentration was 391 ppm. In 1955 it was only 310 ppm. It is rising faster than at any time in the history of the earth.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Smelling Gas

Smelling gas won’t usually in itself kill you. However, it is a sign of a serious problem developing. It would be suicidal to ignore it. Polar ice melting is like smelling gas.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Smug Vandals

Even more infuriating than man’s mindless destructiveness is the way he is so smug about it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Snow and Global Warming

People who like to deceive themselves that global warming is a hoax when they see snow in their back yards forget that Antarctica gets almost no snow because it is too cold.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Socialite Pigs

It absurd that we exploit people in the third world, trigger wars and dig giant eyesore pits. Why? So that fat socialites can drape themselves in diamonds in a game of conspicuous consumption to lord it over their peers. This is the supposed economic necessity that overrides all other concerns.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Societal Problems

There are two sorts of serious problem a society can have:

  1. An environmental problem: e.g. lack of food, water, resources or buildup of pollutants.
  2. A social problem: humans acting like assholes, e.g. wealth concentration, religious conflicts, booms and busts in economies, gridlock, corrupt governments, arms dealers fomenting wars. Both types of problem are notoriously difficult to solve, but the social problems can be affected much more quickly. Environmental problems require actions now that may not show appreciable improvement for half a century.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Soil Bank Account

Everybody knows what happens when month after month you take more out of a bank account than you put in. The same is true in nature. We are eroding topsoil 30 times faster than it is being replenished. We are emptying aquifers 160% faster than they are replenished. The giant Ogalla aquifer will be unproductive within decades.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Soil Loss

Factory farming in the USA is losing about 5.08 cm (2 in) of topsoil a year. It takes 500 years for even 2 cm (0.79 in) of it to replenish. The problem is much worse in other countries, particularly China. Economics pushes farmers to plant slopes which erode much faster. When the top soil is eroded away that land will no longer support crops at a time when there will be far more mouths to feed than today. We are idiots completely ignoring the consequences of our rapacious farming methods all to chase a quick buck.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Soil Rapists

Because agriculture is now based purely on short term profit, it been committing suicide, destroying the soil 40 times faster than they rebuild it. How long would a house last if you had 40 wreckers and one builder? It is insanity to ignore the problem simply because there is some soil left.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Solar Cells

Today’s solar cells are about 12% efficient. They collect 12% of the solar energy hitting them. That does not sound that impressive until you remember that is about four times better than plants do with photosynthesis.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Solar Energy

Every second, the sun produces more energy that all the energy generated by man since the dawn of time.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Solar Panel Lies

Energy experts tell us that solar panels are too expensive, even though all you would need is a few square meters per person. What they means is humanity is too stupid to save itself by spending a penny more for energy than they do now for dirty fossil fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Solution to Climate Change

We could turn climate change around overnight. All we have to do is stop subsidising fossil fuels. Even with the subsidies, fossil fuels are aleady more expensive than clean energy. Dropping fossil fuel subsidies would rapidly redirect the money invested in fossil fuels to clean energy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Solving Traffic Congestion

Building more roads to deal with congestion won’t work because of the increasing cost of real estate. In many urban areas roads consume the bulk of the space as it is. The solutions I think will work include:

The big problem fixing gridlock is primarily a political problem, not a technical one. Much as people hate gridlock, they are unwilling to make the tiniest sacrifice to be rid of it. They want other people to sacrifice, but not them. They will object to the congestion tax, object to losing the right to drive a car 100 times heavier than necessary to prove their manliness and wealth, object to losing the right to drive manually any way they please (e.g. rapidly changing lanes, which triggers freeze) and object to losing the right to have a permanent office away from home to escape to each day. When the gridlock pain gets bad enough, perhaps some cities will implement some of these ideas. Then tourists will see the advantages and take the ideas back home.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Son In a Street Gang

Ironically, after an environmental collapse, it is the people with sons in street gangs who have the best chance of survival.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sonic Pollution

A hundred years ago, if you went into a forest you would be aware of sounds over an area about 5.18 sq kms (2 sq miles). Today your urban sonic world will collapse to about 225¾ sq metres (270 sq yards).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is perhaps the best metaphor to describe the plight of a primate that learned a few tricks that enabled it to dominate and in the process, destroy the earth. The human experiment is a classic example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Source of Man’s Problems.

Most of mankind’s problems stem from his monumental conceit and self-centredness. On an individual level, this is called by stuck in the entitlement life trap. He believes in religions that preposterously flatter him that the entire universe was created solely for his benefit and he is the center of it. He believes no other species matters at all. He steals lands from them and enslaves them, and even tortures them without even allowing the interests of those other species to be heard. In the process, he forgets that he too is an animal just as dependent on the other animals, plants, water, air and soil as any other animal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Spaceship Life Support

If you were on ten-year return voyage to Mars, you would want to make very sure the life support systems created oxygen at least as fast as you consumed it and absorbed the CO₂ at least as fast as you breathed it out. For a twenty-year voyage, you would be even more careful. Yet back here on earth, we pay no attention that the earth can’t anywhere near absorb our exploding CO₂ production. It takes 7 trees just to handle the CO₂ breathed out by one person. We are destroying trees and creating humans an accelerating pace. And those seven trees don’t begin to cover the CO₂ we create with cars, furnaces and electric generation plants. We are living on borrowed time. What we are doing is not sustainable.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Species Survival

For a species to survive long enough to spread to other planets it has to survive for about 400 years after it invents technology. During that time it must:

We humans have made it about 200 years so far, but are on target for extinction long before we leave the planet. We are playing a game called capitalism which is rapidly destroying the earth and we would sooner die than give it up.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Spectacular Failure Due

Archaeologists can tell you about all manner of civilisations that suddenly went extinct because they destroyed the natural environment that sustained them. The difference is, we are now doing the same thing they did, but on a planetary level. When we fail, we will fail spectacularly.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) For details see  Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition by Professor Jared Diamond

Speedy Glacier Melt

Glaciers are melting so fast, if you plant a stake at the edge of the glacier and come back a day or even a hour later you can see the receding.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Speedy Glaciers

When I was a boy, glacial means something so slow, you could only detect the change over centuries. However, climate change has progressed so quickly that a glacier in Greenland now flows 17 km (10.56 miles) a year.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Spitting On Green

There are so many foolish businessmen who spit on going green. They don’t seem to understand that doing more with less energy increases profit. They don’t seem to understand that recycling saves on disposal costs and saves on purchasing new materials, i.e. increases profits. They forget that every time industries have been forced to clean up, profits increased because they discovered how to make money from materials they formerly discarded. They think they hate green just because left-leaning people like it. That is a childish reason for throwing away profits.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Spoiled Carbon Brats

The intent of carbon credits and carbon taxes is to penalise those who emit carbon to discourage them from doing it. Those who oppose such measures want to keep emitting carbon as usual. Further, they refuse to pay any penalty for doing so. They are spoiled, clueless brats who don’t get it that business as usual is no longer a viable option.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Spreading the Blame

Even the most mild-mannered human will commit the most dastardly crimes from torture, to murder to planetcide, if only they can spread the blame sufficiently widely so that they feel their share of the responsibility is insignificant. As Voltaire put it, No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Spreading Blather About Climate Change

On 2012-08-19 the CBC Cross Country Checkup aired a radio phone-in show about what people believed was true about climate change, as if that had any relevance to what was actually true. They allowed dozens of people who knew nothing at all about the topic, who had no credentials, to have a microphone to spread complete nonsense to Canadians coast to coast. The CBC did this supposedly in the interest of fairness. Do they similarly give more than equal time to boobs to pontificate faulty information about CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway), infant health, the effect of cigarette smoke, fire safety or household finance?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Spreading Disease

When the Mongols opened up trade routes between Europe and China, they inadvertently created the means for the bubonic plague to sweep west across Asia into Europe. Today we do the same thing on a far grander scale with airlines that can spread a pathogen or pest across the globe within a day.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

St. Boniface

St. Boniface ordered ancient holy oaks felled in the 8th century as way of smiting pagans who revered them. You might say he is the patron saint of Republicans and other anti-environmentalists.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

St. Patrick

St. Patrick was made a saint because he allegedly got rid of all the snakes in Ireland. The pagans there venerated snakes because they were so helpful keeping down the rodents that ate their crops. That is why he got rid of them, as a sort of ecological warfare, fueled by a Christian phobia of snakes. So St. Patrick is the patron saint of species extinction, vandals and poachers.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Star Trek Thinking

In Star Trek, the more improbable an event, the more surely it will occur to rescue the crew. This belief in a benevolent universe infects otherwise sane people and leads them to imagine they can ignore global climate change because somehow the problem must fix itself at the last minute.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Start With the Kids

The most successful recycling program on the planet started with two years of educating the children. They in turn educated their parents.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Status Quo

The current political and economic system has had twenty years to deal with climate change and it has done nothing but dither. We have a choice: try a different political/economic system or die.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

A Step At A Time

If you did something each year to reduce a pollutant by only 1%, within a century, you would have eliminated 63% of it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stephen Harper as Bugs Bunny

Stephen Harper is like Bugs Bunny yanking pieces out of a car engine because he does not understand what they are for. If you wipe out a fish species you can’t get it back. You need to be very very sure it is a wise thing to do. Harper wants to do it without any study and for the most trivial of reasons. I harbour fonder feelings for Adolf Hitler than Stephen Harper. Harper is crazy and dangerous. Gutting fish protection is just one of the outrages in bill C-38. I have summarised some of them. Every scientist opposes Harper. Harper is incompetent to legislate these matters. His enormous ego and religious ideology makes him think can do it single-handed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stephen Harper, a Bigger Threat to Earth Than Hitler

Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, is hundreds of times more of a threat to planet earth that Adolf Hitler ever was. If Hitler had got his way, he would have eliminated perhaps another 6 million Jews. Harper’s goal in life is to convert all the fossil fuel in Canada, including the tar sands and natural gas into greenhouse gases as rapidly as possible, triggering runaway unstoppable global warming. Environment Canada has said that would be second only to global thermonuclear war in its devastation. This will kill many billions of people. It is imperative to stop Harper from succeeding in his mad plan.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sterilisation Benefits

We need a program where women anywhere in the world are paid for each year they accept a safe reversible sterilisation. Without that, there is no hope of bringing the world population back down to a sustainable level.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stopping Greenhouse Gas

There are basically three things you have to do to stop greenhouse gas emissions.

  1. Stop burning fossil fuels including coal, oil, natural gas, gasoline and methane which emit CO₂.
  2. Stop using synthetic fertilizers which emit nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 296 times more potent than CO₂.
  3. Convert to a largely plant based diet. Livestock fart methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than CO₂.

Survival is not mandatory. The last time, 3 million years ago, when CO₂ levels were 400 ppm (what they are now), average temperatures were 8.0°C (14.4°F) higher than today and the seas were 40 metres (43.74 yards) higher than today. It looks like mankind has decided cutting emissions is more onerous that flooding the world’s coastal cities river deltas not to mention the freakish weather.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stove Electricity Consumption

Turn on your stove and count 12 light bulbs for each small element you have on, 18 light bulbs for each medium element you have on, 25 light bulbs for each large element you have on and 30 light bulbs if you have the oven on, Where a light bulb is an old style 100 watt incandescent equivalent. Factor that into the cost of preparing your various recipes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stranded Assets

You might wonder why people like the Koch brothers are willing to stoop so low to block efforts to contain global warming and the switch to clean energy. The problem is stranded assets. Many people invested in fossil fuel mining and transport and fossil-fuel electric power generation under the assumption the assets would be generating revenue for at least another 60 years. The catch is clean energy is free, once you install the equipment. Further, the cost of the equipment is plummeting. In other words, all the fossil fuel infrastructure is becoming obsolete much sooner than the expected 60 years. However, the mortgages on that equipment still have to be paid. The sunset fossil fuel industry will soon go bankrupt. The Koch brothers and friends are trying desperately to stave off that day long enough to divest. China and Germany are going full bore converting to clean energy. The Koch brothers are ensuring the USA and Canada will eat their dust.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Strange Food

Originally, cattle were fed grass and hay. Now they are fed up to 90% high-starch corn. This cause acidosis (high acid) which causes ulcers and death. Animals are slaughtered just before they would die naturally from this defective diet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Strategic Energy

Russia is squeezing Europe, putting political pressure on them by raising prices of gas and oil. They could not do that had Europe already converted to clean energy as Germany is doing

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Stupid Deniers

How is it possible that so many people believe the lie that all the scientists in the world have conspired to create fake data and fake papers to perpetrate a hoax that it would be wise to reduce greenhouse gases to prevent global warming? Don’t these twits know the effect of CO₂ on global warming was discovered back in the 1800’s? Don’t these idiots know there has never been a conspiracy of scientists involving more than a handful of people? Don’t these loons know there is zero evidence to support this mother of all conspiracy theories?

How do they explain why every peer-reviewed scientist is on board if there were not solid science behind what they were telling you? What flaw has anyone found in their published literature? None! Why would every peer-reviewed magazine risk its reputation perpetrating such a hoax, including ones established for hundreds of years?

Don’t Americans notice that the main conspiracy theorist shill is Fred Singer, a man without credentials who sold his soul to big tobacco to testify second hand smoke is harmless? Only a people whose brains have been softened by creationism could fall prey to such a flimsy scam. The fossil fuel people are funding the conspiracy theory FUD.

There is no comparable group with the motive or money to fund a hoax. Finally, when was the last time the fossil fuel corporations told you the truth about anything? Recall the BP oil spill. When was the last time the world’s scientists lied to you en masse? Never! It is odd. Americans trust scientists with their lives in every other sphere. Why do they suddenly distrust them on global warming and greenhouse gas emissions?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Subsidising Extinction

Even though all ocean food fish are rapidly headed for extinction, the governments of the world are still subsidising ever faster exploitation to the tune of $50 billion a year.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) The End of the Line

Sue the Polluters

Runaway greenhouse gas emissions will end after we get some massive lawsuits of those damaged by climate change against the big CO₂ emitters such at the Alberta tar sands project. Big insurance companies or governments could take on big oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Suicidal Fracking

Switching from coal to fracking is still suicidal. It is like switching from spraying your house with gasoline to kerosene. It does not matter how rich is makes some people, it is still suicidal. We must stop burning fossil fuels completely and switch to clean energy. Even that is not going to save us from the consequences of our folly provoking climate change with manic burning through the entire legacy of fossil fuels.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Suicidal Ignorance

Here in BC Canada in 2015 we just had:

Yet the government and industry have completely shut their eyes to climate change. They announce that BC will be producing fossil fuels as fast as possible for the next century. The only concern is spills.

If were watching this in a movie, you would be sure something serious was up.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Suitable Uses For Durable Plastics

Plastics are about most indestructible things mankind has ever invented. It is insanity to use them for disposable products. They endure for thousands of years after being discarded in landfills or the ocean. The fossil fuels used to make them are far too valuable to waste this way. Here is how to avoid discarded plastics:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Message from the Gyre click to watch

Sun Power

People tend to pooh-pooh solar energy as if it were feeble. Yet 1000 watts falls on every 1 sq metre (10.76 sq feet) of the surface of the earth, enough to run a microwave. Oil is just solar energy that was captured by a particular type of plant and fossilised for a short period in earth’s history. Almost all the energy on earth came from the sun, including calories from food, wood, hydro power, wave power, wind power, coal and oil. It makes sense to get it direct from the sun without the penalty of middleman pollution.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sunday Drive

In this age of global warming, the once wholesome recreation of a Sunday drive has become an ecological crime.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Superior Blue Window Cleaner

You can make a powerful yet environmentally friendly glass cleaner similar to Windex. Here is a recipe for a three 650 mls (1.37 US pints) sprayers full:

water 1.65 litres (1.74 US quarts)
isopropyl alcohol 70% or 99% 240 mls (1.01 US cups)
sudsy ammonia 60 mls (2.03 fl oz)
Dawn dishwashing liquid 2½ mls (0.51 US teaspoon)
blue food colouring. 1 drop (1 drop)

The blue food colouring is optional; it helps identify the sprayer contents as window cleaner. Use a microfibre cloth.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Supplies of Coal

The coal lobby has told everyone that there is enough coal to last 200 years. That is true only if:

How long will the coal really last? See the  calculator.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) click to watch see lecture by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett.

Survival Is Not Mandatory

To prevent dangerous global warming, we need to get our CO₂ emissions down to 1 tonne (1.10 tons) per person per year. The average North American emits 20 tonnes (22.05 tons) to 30 tonnes (33.07 tons) a year and stubbornly refuses to cut back by even 1%. As W. Edwards Deming put it, You do not have to change: survival is not mandatory.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Survival Is Not Mandatory

We have quite a number of global problems to face. If we fail to deal with even one of them adequately, we could be goners or at least severely inconvenienced.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Survival Trumps Comfort

Survival trumps comfort. And survival of my entire planet trumps everything. Until we get greenhouse gas emissions under control, everything else, including jobs, has to be secondary. Environment Canada says the effects of global warming are second only to thermonuclear war in destructiveness. Yet the term global warming sounds so benign. Even if Harper keeps his word, we are on track for a 5.0°C (9.0°F) rise by the end of the century. I am a glad I will be dead by then. Selling tar sands oil to China cheaply is really no different from burning it ourselves. It all goes into the same atmosphere.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Surviving Bear Attacks

Note how often humans survive cougar, bear and lion attacks. Deer and cattle don’t fare nearly as well. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sustainability

The earth cannot sustain its current population or all the economic activity necessary to support them. It is insane the way politicians cheer every time economic growth goes up another percentage point. It is simply another nail in earth’s coffin. It brings the day of reckoning that much closer. We are sacrificing our children and grandchildren to pay for our party. No other animal does that.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sustainability

If you treat the earth sustainably, you leave it unchanged, no worse, no better. The problem is, we always screw up from time to time, so over time, we leave the earth in worse and worse shape. Just to break even, we have to aim for something better that sustainable, namely improving and regenerating the earth, the way nature does.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sustainability of Fossil Fuels

The fossil fuels that man burns through in one year took nature 5 million years to create. No wonder they are running out so quickly.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sustainable Abundance

In a precapitalist society, people attempt to create sustainable abundance. If they notice game getting scarce, they hunt elsewhere to let them replenish. In a capitalist society, people attempt to create scarcity. The more endangered a species of tuna is, the higher the price it will fetch, so the more intensely it is hunted. In Africa, the more endangered a species of bush meat is, the higher the price it will fetch in the city, leading to its rapid extinction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sustainable Population

For the human species to be sustainable, couples must have an average of 2.00 children surviving to adulthood. If they have less, the population dies out. If they have more, you get environmental collapse, war, pestilence and famine. Religions, pressing for greater market share, irresponsibly urge their adherents to breed as much as possible. If some couples have more than two children it necessitates others having fewer. Only China seem to understand just how anti-social overbreeding is.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Sustained Growth Is Impossible

Sustained growth on a planet is mathematically impossible.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

SUV ⇒ War

If you want to drive an SUV, the only way there will be gasoline for it, is if your country invades oil-producing countries and steals their oil. Your oil habit is the cause of wars. If you get your fool head blown off as a side effect, you damn well deserved it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Swallowing Camels

Canadians are strange. They have no fear of climate change even though science tells them it is the biggest threat going save global nuclear war. But they will panic over all kinds of things for which there is no evidence of harm such as WiFi, smart meters, immunisations or for things that happen very rarely such as child abductions by strangers or shark attacks. People fear what the media report, not what is actually a major threat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Takeover

At the dawn of architecture, 10,000 years ago, if you weighed all the people, all the livestock and all the pets, it would be less than 1% of all the wild vertebrates on earth. However, if were to do that today, you would discover humans and livestock constitute over 98%. This is the most astounding biological takeover in the history of earth. It also means there is no more land to expropriate. We have already taken all the land useful for supporting vertebrates.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Takeover of Earth

10,000 years ago, man and his domestic animals constituted 10% by weight of all animals on earth. Today it is 98%. Man has swamped the earth.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Taking Fish Off The Endangered List

Harper’s new fisheries policy removes 80% of endangered fresh water species from protection. Former Tory fisheries ministers John Fraser and Tom Siddon have both blasted Harper’s changes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source

Tar Sands Are Incompatible with Survival

If we want to survive, we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050. That is impossible if we develop the Alberta tar sands. That takes us in the diametrically opposite direction. Harper has lied to us promising both. He does not care if the planet dies as a result. His cholesterol will long ago have carried him off.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tar Sands Economics

The Tar Sands will not be a good deal until:

But, then the whole thing could blow up overnight when the public tipping point on global warming happens and people insist the tar sands be shut down, and a massive switch to clean energy start.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tar Sands No Go

In the Enbridge tar sands pipeline debate, everyone is in denial that burning the Alberta tar sands deposit, anywhere on earth, would be suicidal because of the massive greenhouse gas emissions. Even trillions of dollars are useless if you and your descendants are dead. Even millions of jobs are useless if there are no people left to take them. You won’t die directly from the heat; you will die from disruption of global agriculture and global civilisation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tar Sands Three Times Worse

The Alberta Tar Sand mining operations produce three times as much greenhouse gases per barrel as going after ordinary crude oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tax Incentives to Breed

The world is overflowing with 7.601 billion people. It can only sustain about 1 billion. We are killing ourselves with all those people driving cars, heating homes, consuming manufactured goods and invading native habitat. The last thing we need is more people. Thus it is insane to offer government baby-making incentives.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tax on CO₂

If we want to stop climate change, we have to put a tax of $200.00 CAD per tonne of CO₂ emitted. That would amount to an increase of about $0.50 CAD per litre in the price of gas. The whole point of the tax is to get people to reduce consumption by driving less and using more efficient vehicles so you would not pay that much more. You would not see people using an SUV to go get a litre of milk.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Technological Aliens

It would be nice to know for certain, before I die, there is an intelligent technological species somewhere in the cosmos. Man is far from an intelligent species. The first thing he did when he developed technology was kill his fellows in ever more cruel ways, seek to drive every other species extinct and then destroy the planet that sustains him. He effectively harnessed technology to the goals of a cave man. Man is a cosmic ass.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Technologically Backward Americans

Americans pride themselves on being the most innovative people in the world, yet they are behind China, India, Europe and the OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) nations in developing solar technology. American are clinging to the energy technology of the 19th century. They even cling to the inefficient reciprocating combustion engine invented in 1862. Their stupendous conceit and pride hides their predicament from them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Temperature Sensors

Imagine a fleet of temperature sensors, spread over the entire ocean reporting back every hour. They might be powered by wave action to keep themselves in position. You might be able to get long range warning of hurricanes and ability to accurately predict their path.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Territoriality

If humans were as territorial as Australian magpies, we would have far less problem with overpopulation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Terrorist Attack on Tar Sands

Oddly, a terrorist attack on the Alberta tar sands would be about the best thing that could happen to Canada, the USA and the planet as a whole, though it would be quite unpleasant for Alberta. Making the area radio active for a century would delay exploitation of the fields until we had the technology for carbon sequestration. It would be the kick in the pants the USA needed to deal with its oil addiction and get on with alternative energy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Texan Climate Change Deniers

With its escalating droughts and wildfires, Texans have more in-your-face evidence than most Americans for the reality of global warming. Yet they are the ones most in denial. Why? They are cowards, conditioned from birth by Christian wishful thinking, who can’t face the reality that protecting the planet from climate change means no more using (or selling) oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Texas Assholes

Texas is the center of global warming denial. It is no co-incidence that Texas emits more CO₂ than any other state.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

There Is No Away

Imagine you lived in an apartment without garbage collection service. The only thing you could do with your waste was pile it up in a corner of your apartment until you could think of something better to do with it. Well, that’s the way planet earth works. There is no away to throw stuff to.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

There is No Cleanup Technology

Oil executives testified they can safely deep water drill in the Gulf of Mexico. This is bald-faced lying. If this is indeed so, let them demonstrate this skill by rapidly cleaning up the BP spill. The have already admitted they have no technology to deal with a deep water leak.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

There Is No Plan B

Gordon Brown, when he was Prime Minister of the UK, pointed out that the Copenhagen Climate Conference is the last chance mankind has to get its act together on global warming. There is no Plan B. Logically, Brown should have ordered Mi5 to assassinate any world leaders who fail to co-operate. I can’t imagine a better justification for murder/war than preventing the extinction of mankind. If, out of squeamishness, climate change deniers are permitted to prevail, they will kill us all.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

There Is No Such Thing as Sustainable Growth

Sustainable growth is an oxymoron. Unfortunately, even the green technology sectors don’t understand that.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

There is No Way To Clean Up Bitumen

The best thing that could happen is a massive pipeline or tanker spill in BC. We discover that industry has no tools to deal with a bitumen spill. All along, they carefully dissembled and never told us they did. The province of BC gets stuck with the cleanup bill. The taxpayers are furious and put an end to all such projects. Let’s hope this happens before we have too many other projects going to shut down.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

These Are The Good Old Day

These are the good old days! I can dial in any temperature I want the apartment to be. Clean hot and cold water flows in abundance out the taps. The stove, fridge, microwave, TV, stereo, computer, lighting… all work just fine. The supermarket a few blocks a way stocks thousands of foods I have not yet got around to tasting. The local hospital has all the electricity and materials it needs to heal its patients. The seasons come and go much as I remember them from childhood. There are still a few bees, frogs and fish, however, we are on track to lose all that by sitting with our thumbs up our butts doing almost nothing to develop alternative energy (as Exxon wants us to do so they can make stratospheric profits in the dying days of oil). And we will face much worse deprivation if we don’t mount a top priority (above even national security) campaign to deal with global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Thin Atmosphere

The atmosphere is incredibly thin. If you shrank the earth down to the size of a billiard ball, it would be so smooth you could not feel the contours of the mountains or oceans. The oceans would be just a damp slick. The atmosphere would be just a thin film.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Think of Your Kids

Forget grand children, if you had a daughter in 2008, statistically she will live until 2100. Do you really want to leave her a world trashed by industry and climate change? You have to think about the effect you are having on the world in 2100.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Thirsting

I was once captured and tortured by withholding water. I wished with every bone in my body they would just get it over with and kill me. It is at least a thousand times more unpleasant than you would ever imagine. I would far sooner be eaten alive by tigers than repeat the experience. The way the world is going, you make get to experience water deprivation for yourself. Overpopulation, global warming, profligate use of water, depleting our water capital in glaciers and aquifers and pollution means even now means there is not enough water to go around in many parts of the world. Unless we shape up in a major way, this will only get worse and worse. Even if fear of personal water deprivation does motivate you, wanting to avoid the violence fighting over dwindling water supplies may.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Three Approaches to the Future

There are three basic approaches of dealing with the future:

  1. The grasshopper: Do what would be optimal if you hit by a bus tomorrow.
  2. The gambler: Do you best to predict what is going to happen, the bet the farm you are right.
  3. The boy scout: Be prepared.

Are Americans grasshoppers or gamblers the way they ignore global warming?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Time For Clean Energy

We have already put far too much CO₂ into the air. We are now trying to figure out how to get it back out. This no time to be exploring for oil that we will never be able to burn. Put the money instead into new clean energy that will not fan the flames of global warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tinkerbell Thinking

Polyanna futurists who subscribe to the Tinkerbell theory of manifestation are such idiots. They claim, for example, that because people like cars, guaranteed cars will be a major part of our future. All that is necessary to ensure this is that we like cars. Similarly they say we need abundant clean energy, therefore it will automatically manifest. We need not make any effort or even concern ourselves with how. But consider how many other things we like: e.g. clean oceans, rivers, lakes and streams teaming with fish. They don’t happen without major effort and sacrifice. These futurists remind me of the Swedish preacher in the The Emigrants who assured the flock God would make them all speak English without effort as soon as they stepped off the boat into America.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tiny Changes

If everyone shrank their word processing margins a tad, or reduced the type a point size, we would save millions of tons of trees every year.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tipping a Delicate Balance

I’m glad scientists are studying weather on other planets. We are learning that earth’s relatively mild conditions are not the universal norm, but rather a delicate balance that man is busy tipping.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tipping Point

Even in Texas in 2013, 72% of people acknowledge climate change. They can’t deny it any more. They can see the effects for themselves.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Tipping Point

The reason scientists are so eager we no not emit so much greenhouse gases that we go above 2.0°C (3.6°F) average global temperature increase, is not because humans would find it uncomfortably warm, but because that would cause a tipping point, where ice caps, glaciers, permafrost and methane clathrates melt which would accelerate the runaway temperature increase. Once we go past the tipping point, nothing we do to reduce emissions will be able to stop it. It will be like a well-stoked furnace.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Tipping Point

A report by the UN (United Nations) World Meteorological Organization on 2012-12-04 talks of a tipping point. We humans have triggered a runaway warming process in the Arctic with our greenhouse gas emissions. It has two components:

  1. The albedo effect is causing runaway warming because as ice melts it exposes ocean water which is a much better absorber of heat than the white ice which then accelerates the melting in a vicious circle.
  2. As the permafrost melts, it releases methane ( CH₄ frozen swamp gas). Methane is 25 times as potent greenhouse gas as CO₂. This causes runaway greenhouse gas warming in a vicious circle. These natural emissions dwarf the original man-made ones that triggered them.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tobacco Downsides

Tobacco is a soil-robber crop, draining it of minerals and promoting soil erosion. Further, tobacco must be cured with smoke from rare hardwoods, so it harms not only those addicted to it, but everyone else as well.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Told You So

Ever since I was a child, I have been hectoring my fellows on global issues such as nuclear war, protection of the environment, debunking religions, reigning in corporations and more recently, climate change. Other than gay lib projects getting the church off the backs of homosexuals, I have not made much progress. In my remaining years, bit by bit, as our civilisation collapses around our ears, my greatest joy will be saying I told you so! You conceited idiots fully deserve your fate.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Too Late Already

It is already too late. Even if we cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero today, we are still screwed. Global warming will continue from the effects of all the gases we have already emitted. All we can do now is make our fate somewhat less hellish.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Top Priority

The top priority for humanity is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to get on top of climate change. This includes making life as unpleasant as you dare for those who block this work.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Toward Veganism

It is only a matter of time until we are all vegans. The change will not be precipitated by a wave of compassion to combat animal cruelty. It will be because artificial meat will eventually be much cheaper, better tasting and better textured than animal meat. These few who insist on eating animal meat will be looked on as eccentrics, much the way be might look on some survivalist today who insisted on killing game with spears and drinking the blood and eating the meat raw.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Toxic Cleaning Products

What could possibly motivate a parent to store toxic cleaning products in the house when they had toddlers about?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Toxic Confluence

Mankind has got itself into an environmental predicament with a toxic confluence of religion and economics:

I elaborate on these ideas in a series of essays about religion and money.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Toxic Corn

The main crop in the USA is high starch corn. You can’t eat it as corn on the cob or as nibblets. The corn is suitable only for making high fructose corn syrup and ethanol. It is also used as cattle feed, even though it is toxic to cattle. It is heavily subsidised.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tracking Food Poisoning

Advances in genetics are letting us prove the source of a food poisoning. This will open the door for victims to sue sloppy food processors. That will lead to much greater care in sanitation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tragedy Of the Commons

In the 1800s in England there were shared pastures. They tended to be overgrazed, making them useless to everyone. If ethical farmers refrained from exploiting the commons to let it recover, unethical ones exploited it and ruined it. So it became a race to get a tiny share before the pasture were ruined.

The atmosphere, like the commons, is shared by everyone. When everyone pumps CO₂ into it, we all die from climate change. If one ethical country refrains, it costs them to find alternatives and unethical countries continue to pump the pollution and we all die anyway.

We need a group of powerful nations to impose severe sanctions on the polluters. The alternative is death by selfishness.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tragedy of the Commons

Philosophers refer to it as the tragedy of the commons. In Britain, pastures used to be held in common. If farmers grazed too many cattle on them, the pasture was destroyed. If an individual farmer reduced the number of cattle, he did not benefit unless other farmers reduced as well.

We have a similar problem with CO₂. If one country cuts back, but other countries continue to emit, the entire atmosphere is still poisoned.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Tragedy of the Commons

When I was in my twenties, I wrote the philosophy department at UBC (University of British Columbia) and asked them if anyone had researched a particular class of social problem. They sent me back a paper called The Tragedy of the Commons about when pastures were owned in common in England, individuals would overgraze to the point the pasture was ruined for everyone. Greenhouse gas emission is another problem of that same class. Because each individual’s emissions are diluted and affect the entire earth equally, people see no necessity to cut back, even though it means destruction for everyone. If emissions were such that only the culprit felt the consequences and the culprit bore the full consequences, we would not have that much of a problem. It is a problem similar to littering, except the consequences are much more dire.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Traitor To My Species

In one sense, I am a traitor to my species. I want to see far fewer humans and far more of every other species. We humans have been overly successful in the short term in taking over. In another sense, I act like a parent to my species. I constantly cajole the population to think about the long term.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Transfat

Back in the 1950s and 1960s every household had a giant blue can of Crisco used mainly for making pie crusts. It was pure trans fat. Why? Hydrogenated fats gave the pies a longer shelf life.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Transition

When the tar sands run out, there will be no money to fund the promised reclamation. Further, there will be no energy to do it either. We would be much better off to transition to clean energy now while we still have some dirty energy to use for the transition.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Translating Corporate-Speak

When a corporate executive tells you that it will cost too much to clean up his company’s pollution, what he mean is my golf club fees, my Ferrari, my coke habit and my bi-annual gastronomy tours of France are more important that your child’s life.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Transporting Alien Species

300 million years ago there was only one giant continent called Pangea. It split up and the animals of each continent evolved separately. Now ships and planes accidentally transport almost every species daily between the continents effectively reuniting them. Every species everywhere now has to deal the with planet’s fiercest predators and toughest competitors.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Trapping Heat

The CO₂ that we have already emitted causes the atmosphere to trap heat each day equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. That is not negligible. The atmosphere absorbing all that heat is only 100 km (62.14 miles) thick, with most of it within 11 km (6.84 miles) . Think about that for a second. You can see mountains 400 km (248.55 miles) away. The atmosphere is just a thin dusting on the surface of the earth. Outer space is closer than you can drive in a couple of hours.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Travel To See How Things Can Change

North Americans are confident their comfortable life styles will never change. If they traveled in the third world, they could see just how different things can become when populations rise and supplies of oil dwindle. If they read about the other planets of our solar system, they would appreciate just how inhospitable a planet can get when the delicate balances are disturbed.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Traveling Pants

The average pair of blue jeans have already logged over 41.84 megameters (26,000 miles) in the air before you put them on.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70), source National Geographic video The Human Footprint.

Trawler Vandals

Trawling is like a farmer ploughing 7 times a year. What could possibly grow with that much disturbance?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) The End of the Line

Tree Rings

There is a guy in California who has collected 2 million tree ring samples. Do you think he knows anything about tree growth, fire damage, droughts and temperature over the decades? Do you think he knows anything about the trends so he can tell you where we are likely headed? Oddly, Christians and Republicans prefer to trust a guy without any forestry education who has not collected even a single ring.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Trophy Hunting

Trophy hunters like Walter Palmer, Ted Nugent and Clayton Stoner kill the most mature, prime, strong animals and fish. This leaves weaker, inferior animals to sire the next generation. This is a stupid thing to do. It is a breeding program to weaken a species.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Trucking vs Rail Economics

The fact that there is a trucking industry is a consequence of politics, not engineering. The trucking energy pays nothing for the road bed. It is provided free to all vehicles by government subsidy. Gasoline would have to be taxed $3 a gallon $0.80 a litre more to cover the cost of buying and maintaining the road beds, as it is in Europe. If the costs of wars to take oil from third world countries were factored in, it would cost $7 a gallon. Competing technologies are at a competitive disadvantage because they have to fund their own roadbeds. The real estate devoted to road beds in the USA is huge, 160,000 sq kms (61,776.35 sq miles), almost as much area as used to grow wheat.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Trump the Phony

People who think Trump is the champion of the middle class are deluded. He is the ultimate fat cat. He has never done anything for the little guy in his life. He pledges to charity, then does not deliver, or pays off the pledge with other people'’ money. He routinely stiffs the people he hires. He even stiffed his campaign workers. He outsources his manufacturing to Asia. He has not paid taxes in 20 years. He is all talk and no action. His big tax promise is massive cut taxes for the superwealthy, not the middle class. Wake up!

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Trump’s Climate Change Lie

Trump tells a lie without any evidence that the Chinese invented climate change as a hoax to harm the USA. How plausible is this lie?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Trust

In the climate change debate it is the climate scientists vs the Republican politicians. I find it astounding that anyone would trust a politician over a scientist.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Trust

It makes no sense to believe the scientists when they plot the track and intensity of hurricanes and simultaneously ignore them when they tell you what is causing them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Turkey Jelly

Whatever Maple Leaf Meats did to some poor turkey to convert it into the jelly they sell as canned turkey is surely stranger than anything aliens are ever alleged to have done.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Turning Their Backs on Green

The Canadians and Americans have turned their backs on green technology. They would rather exploit the tar sands and pretend that global warming is a Communist conspiracy to trick them into polluting less. Happily, the rest of the world is not so stupid. The Japanese, Chinese, Indians and Europeans are creating the next generation of efficient green technologies and innovative transportation. We are falling behind. We will be technology beggars having to licence the patents from them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Twelve Step For Addiction To Oil

The west is addicted to oil. We refuse even to make feeble attempts to cut down our consumption through more efficient machinery. We need something like a twelve step program to break the grip of the addiction. The eighth step is Make a list of all persons we had harmed and become willing to make amends to them all. They would include the Mexicans, Venezuelans and the Iraqis. It would also include the Afghans and the Palestinians, indirectly hurt in America’s mad scramble for oil.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Twilight of Fossil Fuels

In 90% of the world, solar energy is now cheaper than fossil fuel energy. In 10% of the world there is not enough sunlight. The cost of solar energy depends on manufacturing. The more you manufacture, the cheaper it gets. The cost of fossil fuel depends on resource extraction. The more you use, the more expensive it gets. It no longer makes sense to make electricity from fossil fuels. It is now only for transportation. That too will disappear with the tide of electric cars.

Alberta will pay severely for putting all its economic eggs in the tar sands basket.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Two Killer Species

In the four million year history of planet earth, two species stand out for their ability to make it unusable for other species, cyano-bacteria and man.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Two Sides of Alaska

When you think of Alaska, what comes to mind? The mountains, the wildlife, the fish, the glaciers? or the people who worked tirelessly to destroy all that: Sarah Palin, Ted Stevens…

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Types of Climate Change Denier

There are many types of climate change denier:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Types of Efficiency

CEOswork hard trying to cut costs. The easy way to do it is to fire people, or replace them with computers and trust people will work harder. Another way is to figure out how to use materials and energy more efficiently — figure out how to do more with less. This approach has the added benefit of making a company a better environmental citizen. Using computer hardware designed to use less power and using virtual machines slash the main computer operating cost — AC power and cooling.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Types of Meat Matter

Beef is an order of magnitude harder on the environment than other types of meat. For example, it takes 27 times as much land. It takes 3.3 times as much feed. It takes 9 times as much water. It produces 2.5 times as much CO₂ greenhouse gas. Further because of their special cellulose-digesting four-chambered stomachs, cattle burp up enormous quantities of methane CH₄ a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than CO₂. If you don’t want to give up meat entirely, at least switch to pork, lamb, goat, rabbit, chicken, eggs, fish… or even dairy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) National Geographic source.

Ugly Movies

Twenty years from now, people will have difficulty watching movies and TV from our era (2010). They will want to wring the necks of all those assholes mindlessly bombing about in overpowered SUVs and speed boats, wasting oil and spewing greenhouse gases in a vandalous fuck you to the future.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unable To Comprehend Global Warming

Mankind is setting himself up for some unimaginable grief because he cannot understand global warming. The layman personally experiences a wide local temperature swings throughout a year and so can’t appreciate what a catastrophe even a few degrees change in average global temperature implies. To the willfully ignorant, global warming sounds a bit like Monty Python’s comfy chair torture device. Were it not for Hollywood, he would similarly pooh-pooh the global havoc a meteorite a small fraction of the size of the earth can do.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unbalanced Reaction

9/11 killed 3500 people. In response, the USA spent over a trillion dollars. In 2005, global warming killed 14,000 people in France alone. In response, the USA decided to pretend there was no such thing as global warming so they could procrastinate any action.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unclear on the Concept Department

I kid you not, some lunatic is selling prepeeled bananas with a styrofoam wrapper. If there were a death penalty for eco-crimes, I think he would rate it for sheer malice.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Understatement

Global warming is typical scientific understatement along the lines of the K2 event when nearly all life on earth was wiped out.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Undeserving Americans

It is inconceivable to me than anyone who had ever walked along Oregon’s incomparable beaches would want to ruin them with oil spills, but the majority of Americans do. Barbarians like that don’t deserve to live amid such natural wonder.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Undeserving of Life

I desperately want my species to grow up and start taking proper care of this beautiful planet. However, I think the odds of that happening are remote. The majority of humans are irrationally selfish. They take a perverse pleasure in ecological vandalism. So I hope humans go extinct quickly, before they take most of the other species with them. Once humans are gone, the earth will recover, mind you without a full complement of species, within a millennium.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unfair To Chad

The average citizen of Chad has a carbon footprint 1/200 the size of a Canadian citizen’s. This is so unfair. The citizen of Chad will watch his country turn to a desert and his family die long before serious effects hit the culprits in Canada who refused to make any effort whatsoever.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Universe Boggles

There are many things in science that boggle the layman’s mind: the immense size of the universe, the fact the universe has a finite size, that you eventually get back to where you started if you head off in a straight line, that space itself expands, quantum mechanics, that time is not universal, that the Grand Canyon was dug by a river, that satellites don’t fall down, the big bang, evolution… That does not make them any less true. There is no law that says the universe has to be simple enough for even a willfully ignorant Southern Baptist high school dropout to understand.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unlimited Growth

When a city runs out of water, you would think it would simply limit growth. But it does not. It encourages unlimited growth and unlimited consumption. It gets extra water by damming rivers, draining aquifers and other ecologically damaging and expensive means, in the process turning other people’s lands into deserts.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unnatural Diet

A normal chicken pecks around the farmyard for insects, weeds and seeds. Somebody got the weird idea of feeding chicken a high-calorie artificial diet of pure wheat (which was cheap). Most of the chickens did not actually die. The marketers declared the meat and eggs veggie fed, as if it were a Good Thing™. Obviously such meat and eggs cannot be as delicious or as nutritious as those fed a natural diet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unnatural Diet

A normal cow grazes around in a pasture eating weeds, flowers and grass. Somebody got the weird idea of confining cattle to a feedlot and feeding them a high-calorie artificial diet of pure wheat (which was cheap). Most of the cattle did not actually die. The marketers declared the meat grain fed, as if it were a Good Thing™ Obviously such meat and milk cannot be as delicious or as nutritious as those fed a natural diet. Milk and meat from grass-fed cows contains vitamin K2 which is necessary for getting calcium into your bones rather than your arteries.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unrecyclable Lead

The glass tube in an old TV or computer CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitor contains 3.63 kg (8 lbs) of lead that no one knows how to recycle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unstable Climate

If we look back over time, we have seen the earth’s temperature is unstable. When it starts to warm for any reason, it triggers a runaway warming because warming soil releases greenhouse gasses into the air and because the reflective icecaps shrink. Similarly if something cools the earth, a runaway cooling can happen. We humans are just about to trigger run-away warming. It will accelerate on its own, even if we do not release any more green house gases.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unstable Ice

The ice cover of earth is inherently unstable. If the earth gets colder, the ice formed becomes both whiter and more extensive. This in turn increases the albedo (reflectivity) of the earth, making it colder still in a vicious circle. Conversely if the earth warms, from increased CO₂ levels, the ice formed becomes both greyer and less extensive. This in turn decreases the albedo of the earth, making it warmer still in a vicious circle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unsupportable Civilisation

Planets can’t support continuous civilisation; it is too exhausting.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Unsustainable Living

For millions of years, man lived sustainably, then suddenly, in the name of progress, he got it into his head to burn oil and coal, to poison the water and air, to bloat the population, to level the forests, to despoil even the remotest parts of earth and to inject massive quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to wipe out more species than the asteroid that ended the age of the dinosaur. Man bleats I have no choice. The economy makes me do it. And this suicidal loon dares to call himself more advanced than his predecessors?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Untested Monsanto Poisons

Monsanto says its genetically modified crops are so safe they don’t even need to be tested or labeled. They insist irrational consumers should not be permitted to avoid them. I am not convinced. What’s with so many people developing wheat allergies late in life, myself included?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Until I Need Glasses

Many people want to postpone taking action on climate change once the consequences are too unpleasant to bear. The catch is CO₂ hangs in the air for a century. Even after you reform and stop putting more CO₂ into the air, your sins of the last century continue to haunt you.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Untouchables

An intelligent species monitoring homo sapiens would likely avoid contact for the same reason they would avoid interaction with inmates who had taken over a prison or asylum.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Upside of Predators

Predators go after the weakest, slowest, smaller prey. By natural selection, this makes the prey healthier, faster and bigger in subsequent generations. Human fishers and hunters go after the biggest, healthiest and fastest prey. By natural selection, this makes the prey smaller, sicker and slower in subsequent generations. Man has become the dominant predator. The result is smaller fish and smaller fish populations all over the world. Humans, of course, like to blame the other predators such as whales, seals and sharks for the decline.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Upside of Procrastination

Procrastination saves you a lot of work. You wait until the need is pressing before taking action. Much of the time situations change and you may not need to take action. However, this strategy is lethal in dealing with global warming. If you wait until the results are painful, it is far too late to take action. The earth has astounding inertia. For now that inertia is protecting us. Later it will prolong the punishment of our descendants for our crimes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Uranium is Not a Solution

If the USA flipped overnight from oil to nuclear, the world supplies of uranium would last only a couple of decades. It would just be a bridge.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Urban Sprawl

People love to complain about urban sprawl and how the farmlands surrounding cities are being paved over to build strip malls. They moan about the rising cost of housing as more people chase a fixed pool of housing. Yet when I point out urban sprawl and spiraling house costs are caused by population growth, and the way to slow population growth is to have fewer babies and invite in fewer immigrants they stare at me as if I had suggested cannibalism as the solution.

As Mark Twain observed Buy land. They aren’t making any more of it.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The Urge

Humans resist all attempts at population control because they have a deep-seated biological urge to fill the universe with copies of their own DNA, damn the consequences to their offspring or anyone else.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

US Going Irrelevant

One of the few cheerful bits of news about the future of earth is that the USA is making itself more and more irrelevant. It is abandoning technological innovation to other countries. It is rapidly going bankrupt, so its influence as a world power is waning. It currently gets a free ride from all other countries because they all use the US dollar as the petrodollar (to buy and sell oil and oil futures). That won’t last much longer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

User Pay Motor Vehicles

Municipalities are looking at various ways of lowering their subsidy of the automobile, turning it more into a user-pay system. They want reduce the need for highway construction/real estate, reduce congestion, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce toxic fumes. Federal government want to reduce the cost of fuel imports. One way of doing this is raising gasoline taxes:

Another way is to put transponders on cars and send them a monthly bill depending on their usage of roads:

Driverless cars will offer another solution. When you want to make a trip, you summon a driverless car the exact size you need. It picks the route to your destination and drives in order to optimise mileage.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Vaccine Refusal

We don’t allow people to ignore quarantine for religious or philosophical reasons. It makes no sense to allow them to refuse vaccines on those same grounds. By doing so, they infect many others.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Valuing Whales

I value the life of a whale much higher than the life of a human, especially a Republican.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Variety in Humans

Humans are such contradictory creatures. Some blast endangered whooping cranes out of the air with shotguns. Others dress up in crane costumes and spend endless hours in ultralight aircraft teaching the cranes to fly and migrate. Some shoot harpoons into whales for the sheer joy of killing. Others risk their lives to help free beached whales or whales caught up in nets.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Vicious Melting Circle

We have a vicious circle. As the arctic ice melts from global warming, oil companies extract more oil from the arctic. When the oil burns, it releases CO₂ which melts the ice further. The oil companies lobby for this as a Good Thing™, (short term profit) even though it means megadeaths for the next generation. Not even pea-brained birds or alligators are that casual with the lives of the next generation.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Violent Climate Swings

We know that the norm for planet earth is violent swings in climate. We also know that the last 10,000 years have been unusually stable. Why then are we so resistant to the idea that massive changes we humans make to the biosphere can have drastic effects? The earth can change even without our tinkering for heaven sake.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Voting

It is foolish to vote if a nuclear power plant feels safe, or whether a bridge is well constructed enough not to fall down. You ask experts to tell you. In a similar way, what people feel about climate change is utterly irrelevant.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Voting Off

If the animals of earth could vote a species off the planet, there is no doubt about which species they would pick — homo sapiens.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Vulnerability to Earthquake

Japan is the home of the most earthquake-savvy engineers in the world. Yet five of their nuclear power plants failed to maintain cooling of the nuclear fuel after the 2011-03-10 earthquake, something that was supposed to be all but impossible. It seems logical to presume nuclear power plants in North America would be even more vulnerable to a big one.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wait Until It Is Too Late

What is the matter with humanity that is insists on waiting until it is too late to deal with global warming?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Waiting for Proof

If your house were on fire, would you wait for absolute proof with no possibility you could be wrong before you started spraying water on it? Most Americans would. Wishful thinking and unfounded conspiracy theories have so addled their brains, they refuse to take any action on climate change despite overwhelming evidence, including evidence even the most uneducated people can see with their own two eyes. Such aggressively stupid folk deserve extinction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Walking to Work

People who walk to work are happiest, then those who take the train, then cyclists, then drivers, then subway users, then bus users.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Want ≠ Need

A documentary promoting nuclear power explained that we have no choice but to go nuclear because we need to increase electric production by 50% in the next few years. Granted, if we destroyed the environment to produce this electricity, we would have no trouble selling it. On the other hand, if production dropped by 50%, nobody would die. We would simply find ways to use electricity more efficiently.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wants vs Needs

A major block to solving the energy crunch is confusing energy wants with energy needs. We humans have been hosting an extravagant energy party. We burn energy primarily for demonstrating status with conspicuous consumption, e.g. 400 horsepower cars to transport a single human to work. Those are energy wants, not energy needs. We idiotically equate parsimonious use of energy with lack of manliness.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wants vs Needs

Much of our energy use masquerades as need. As oil runs out, everyone is going to have to drastically cut back on their energy use. Forget cars. Forget heated/cooled homes. Forget lighted rooms. You don’t like it? That’s irrelevant. If we haven’t developed an alternative, there will simply be no energy to squander.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

War on Climate Change

Climate change is many times more serious a threat than conventional war. We should be willing to bend the rules, just as we do in war to protect ourselves.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

War On Fish

If an intelligent species were watching man, he would have to presume for some reason man was at war with the world’s fish and would soon succeed in eliminating them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Warming Is An Understatement

Global Warming is a misnomer. Houston in July now averages 34°C (94°F). Jacking that up to 41°C (106°F), with spikes up to 49°C (121°F) is not what I would call warming.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Warming Obvious to Some

People in the Canadian north have no doubt at all that climate change is real. They can see the dramatic and rapid changes for themselves just by walking outside.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Waste

Economists will tell you that if a commodity is abundant, its price will drop and people will consume a lot of it. Much as people like to complain, gasoline is cheaper than almost any other liquid. People waste it with deliberately fuel-inefficient cars. The waste itself is a form of status display. Engineers imagine they have to find some replacement for all the energy now provided by fossil fuels. No they don’t. Much of that demand is a preference and deliberate waste, not a necessity.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wasted Energy Money

Over the last decade the US military spent well over $2 trillion dollars trying to ensure control of oil in the middle east. I will leave it up to you to decide just how well they succeeded. How much further ahead would America be if instead they had invested that $2 trillion in alternative energy — clean nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal… then sold the technology to an energy-hungry world? The way it is now, the US has no clean technology and is just as reliant on OPEC oil as ever. They will have to spend trillions more to buy the new technology from China, Europe, India and, surprise, OPEC.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wasteful Cars

Cars travel with 80% of their capacity unused. Could you image a bus, truck, ferry, airplane or train operating that wastefully? In some countries nearly every car acts as a taxi, picking up paying hitch-hikers, on its way to its destination. The fees pay for gas and maintenance. Before they would do likewise, North Americans would want some technology to let the driver and passenger have some assurance of safety and to handle payment without the danger of cash. The reward for the driver could also be access to HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wasteful Farming

One of the crazy features of fish farming is you need 5 pounds of fish to feed your fish to produce 1 pound of farmed fish.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wasting Energy Is Fatal

In nature, any creature that wasted energy would soon find itself extinct. Humans are no exception.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Water For More People

The average American family uses 870 litres (1.14 cubic yards) a day, not counting the water used for agriculture, grazing and industry. When the population of America doubles, where is double the clean drinking water to come from? How are the sewers to handle double the amount of feces? Where is double the housing to come from? Where is double the food to come from? How are the roads to handle double the traffic? Where is double the electric power generation to come from? Where will double the oil come from? What will it be like with more than double the pollution as energy converts to coal? American cannot even house the people it has now. Without any solutions in hand, the priests and imams whip their flocks to breed ever faster in a mad race to hell on earth.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Water Planet

Watch some film of earth taken from space such as The Earth — Blue Planet click to watch. A few things stand out:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Water Poisoners

In the USA, a corporation can dump anything it wants into the drinking water. The only thing that can stop them is some third party who does the research to prove the chemical is harmful. Whistle blowers have no budget for this research and have to face the full force of the corporate legal team who will stop at nothing including getting the complainers jailed. For example, atrazine in drinking water causes frogs to flip genders, but nobody has been able to stop the polluter.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Water Shortage

Global warming and water shortages will soon leave half the world without enough water to grow food. Wasting water becomes tantamount to murder. Think of all the ways people most extravagantly waste water … golf courses, lawns, living in a desert, 30-minute showers, chowing down on beef… It takes 8,952 liters of water to raise 1 kilogram of beef (5,214 gallons per pound).

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Water Shortages

All over the USA the dam reservoirs have been drained and the aquifers will soon be dry. There simply is not enough rain to satisfy America’s demand to irrigate the California deserts and desert cities such as Los Angeles, Tucson, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Los Vegas. There are only two sources of supply left — conservation (doing more with less water) and recycling — reusing water rather than dumping it down sewers. Eventually Americans will have to give up irrigating the California deserts and grow vegetables in another region whether there is naturally more water. They may even have to abandon the desert cities simply because there is not enough water and electric power to sustain them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Water Shortages

All over the world there are water shortages. Lakes and rivers are drying up. There is not enough water for irrigation. Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Water Use

An African uses 15.14 litres (4 US gallons) of water a day. An American uses that much every time he flushes the toilet.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Water Use

The mincing and burning of coal to product electricity is the #1 user of water in the USA.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Water Vapour As Greenhouse Gas

Water vapour is the main greenhouse gas. You don’t hear much about it because it is not one we humans have much control over. The catch is, as the world warms up from the other greenhouse gases, there is more water vapour, in a vicious circle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Waterworks Analogy

What if the city engineer said, We’ve done an inventory of the pipes that deliver water. We have discovered a major problem. About 90% of them are in danger of rusting through in the next few years, which would allow pathogens into the water supply. We need to do some major maintenance work. What if then a citizen poured himself a glass of water and said I don’t see any problem. The engineer is lying. Without doubt, there is a conspiracy of everyone in the engineering department to get overtime hours. Then the local fair and balanced radio station gave the city engineer and the pipe denier equal time and treated them as equally credible. This is what happened with global climate change.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Watery Cheese Sandwich

It takes 2.40 cubic metres (3.14 cubic yards) of water to make one cheese sandwich, when you include the packaging and the water for the plants to make the feed for the cows.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

We Are Already Screwed

Even if it were possible to stop all CO₂ emissions, the CO₂ we have already emitted in the past would continue to heat the atmosphere for another 1000 years.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

We Are Fucked

Global warming, mass extinctions, overpopulation, corporatocracy, religious mania, soil erosion, mass pollution…
We are fucked.
However, the optimal strategy is to keep on plugging.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

We Do To Ourselves

Whatever we do to the air, we do to ourselves. Whatever we do to the water, we do to ourselves. Whatever we do to the earth, we do to ourselves. It is so odd that so many humans so love money and so hate themselves and their offspring.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

We have Studied CO₂ in the Past

Paleontologists have studied effects on animals and plants of various extremes in CO₂ and O₂ over millions of years. It is absolute folly to imagine that somehow the laws of nature have changed and the earth will no longer react as it has in past to greenhouse gases.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wealth Beyond Dreams of Avarice

Anyone who swallowed BC Premier Christy Clark’s big lie that untold riches would flow from selling natural gas for the next 100 years is too stupid to live. Fossil fuels are on their last legs because:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

We’re Extinction Bound

The more I study, the less likely it appears rational people will be able to stop mankind’s mad suicidal dash to extinction. The question is not will man go extinct soon, but precisely when and how many other species will he take with him? We all have seats to watch this bizarre spectacle. If it happens after you die, it is not a personal catastrophe, but it still distressing. If you are young, it is a personal tragedy. It will cut short your life.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What About China?

People ask What point is there is reducing gases now China is emitting so much? There are two answers to that question:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What About Coal?

As the oil runs out, what about coal? Optimists imagine that higher energy prices will make it economic to exploit those high-sulphur, hard-to-extract, impure coal deposits enough to last us another 200 years. However, the giant machines needed to mine coal consume 757.08 litres (0.99 cubic yard) of diesel fuel an hour. If you can’t get back more energy than you spend mining, processing and transporting the coal, no matter how high the price of coal climbs, mining coal is still not an economically viable proposition. According to John Gever in  Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades, if current trends continue, by 2040, it will cost $1.00 to extract every $0.50 worth of energy from coal. This means coal will buy us only a few more decades. Further, coal it is about the worst fuel imaginable when it comes to greenhouse and toxic gas emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What is Extreme?

We call people who march in the street to call attention to the destruction of rainforests, or global warming, extremists. We treat the corporate types in suits as if they were moderates. Yet they have done some very radical and violent changes to our earth — cutting down 95% of the old growth forests and released enough CO₂ to trigger a mass extinction event and wiped out food fish fast enough so all of them will be extinct by 2042 and poisoned most of the world’s rivers. Imagine some terrorist organisation did what industry has. We would be beside ourselves with rage.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What the Fuck?

⅓ of Canadians think climate change is a hoax. This is completely irrational. How do you know they are wrong?

Why then are there so many people who ignore this evidence?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What Industry Does When Given Free Reign

We have seen the results when you let industry have its way. Does we need any more proof these vandals have no right to make any more decisions for us?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What About Mars?

Mars is not the answer to our teeming billions, at least not the whole answer. Humans already need 1.6 to 8earths (depending who you ask) to sustain them. Earth is 510 sq megametres (196,912,100.88 sq miles). Mars is 144.80 sq megametres (55,907,592.56 sq miles) Mars is just 0.28 of an earth, just a drop in the bucket compared with what is needed now. To make matters worse, by the end of the century, our population and needs will have grown considerably.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What No Climate Action?

Even though global warming is the biggest threat to human existence, it is extremely difficult to get people to take seriously, Why?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What Is Oil Made Of?

Oil is mostly formed of dead fish and plankton.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What Is Special About Earth?

Imagine a planet about 75 light years from earth, just next door by astronomical standards. From that vantage point, what is special about earth? Earth is just one of nine planets circling around one of the 5000 suns within 75 light years. However, since emissions from earth that left in 1934 are just arriving, it appears that earth has just started to emit radio waves after 4.543 billion years of silence. Also the atmosphere has suddenly started to change with drastically increased CO₂ and methane, presumably a side effect of the activities of lifeforms there.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What about Uranium?

The main reason nuclear power could not take over from fossil fuels to power the planet is that our global supply of uranium would last only 8 years. Further, there are eight other reasons.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What Will It Take?

Just what will it take for the public to stop kidding themselves about global warming, imagining if they ignore it will cease to exist?

Noah, how long can you tread water?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

What’s Important

Nothing is less important in the planetary scheme of things than which team wins a baseball game. Nothing is more important than global climate change. You would never guess that from what gets people excited.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wheelbarrows and Cars

Let’s say you needed a wheelbarrow and you went to you local garden supply store. The salesman showed you a bright red shiny model capable of toting 50 kg (110.23 lbs) of soil, except the wheelbarrow itself weighed 1 tonne (1.10 tons). You would think they were utterly mad. Yet when you go to your local car dealer to buy a device to tote a person to work, that is roughly what they try to sell you.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

When is Action on Climate Change Necessary?

It is similar to when should you stop smoking? The longer you procrastinate, the worse the permanent damage.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

When All Cars Are Driverless

The big benefits of driverless cars don’t come until nearly all vehicles are driverless:

Some come right away:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

When Man Goes Extinct

When man goes extinct, the planet will give a gasp of relief.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

When The Mine Closes

Mining companies promise to clean up after themselves when the minerals run out. But when the minerals run out, they have no money, so plead poverty and bugger off. What do you think the companies mining the Alberta tar sands are going to do when the mines close? It will be the last oil on the planet. They will do the exact same thing as the gold and copper miners.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

When You Buy A Car

If you buy a car, particularly an overpowered or oversized one, you are saying I am a selfish pig. My convenience is far more important than subjecting everyone in my city to the fumes from my car and everyone on my planet to its CO₂ emissions. I don’t care if my car contributes to gridlock and makes other people’s cars almost too frustrating to drive. Fuck everyone else. I don’t give a damn about anyone but myself.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Where Are The Aliens?

Consider that on earth every day we make weapons more deadly. There is no end point when we decide they are deadly enough. We are working hard to create artificial intelligence smarter than we are to take over the management of earth, for the benefit of AI, perhaps without humans. We are using our technology to destroy the natural world. It is a suicidal path and we seem incapable of doing anything but bringing it on. We will be extinct within 200 years. Presumably this also happens to any other species on any other planet that steps on the technological treadmill. The reason we never see other technological civilisations is they exist for just a few centuries before going extinct. Nearly all the time, habitable planets have either not yet evolved technology, or have gone extinct from it.

Because of the speed of light, even long-surviving aliens cannot visit us. Instead they would send light or radio waves or other radiation signals to each other or to us. The catch is fully compressed and encrypted data looks almost identical to static. It requires us to be mathematically clever to decode the signal. Nearly all communication would be point to point perhaps with lasers. We would not see it unless it were specifically intended for us. The cosmic CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Commission) would strongly discourage broadcasting to the entire universe.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Where did the CO₂ Come From?

How do we know that humans are responsible for the recent drastic rise in atmospheric CO₂?

  1. There are three isotopes of carbon C₁₂, C₁₃ and C₁₄. There are correspondingly three types of CO₂. Each source of CO₂ has a characteristic profile of the three types of carbon. For example, volcanos have no C₁₃. Fossil fuels have no C₁₄. Living plants contain C₁₄. By looking at the profile of atmospheric CO₂ we know it came from burning fossil fuels.
  2. For hundreds of years, governments have been keeping track of the production of various fossil fuels. You can accurately calculate how much CO₂ was produced when the fuels were burned.
  3. Starting in 1896, scientists have been warning that burning fossil fuels would affect the climate in deleterious ways from excess CO₂.
  4. There is no natural process to explain the sudden bloom of CO₂.
  5. There is no natural process to explain all the CO₂ from burning fossil fuels disappearing. We know half dissolved in the ocean and half is accumulating in the atmosphere.
Are humans contributing only 3% of CO2 in the atmosphere? click to watch ~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Where Fertiliser Comes From

A simple chemistry lesson: The basic building block of nitrogen fertilisers is ammonia NH₄. Ammonia is created by the Haber process, discovered in 1908. The nitrogen N₂ comes from the air. The hydrogen comes from methane (natural gas) CH₄. They are combined under high temperature and pressure in the presence of various catalysts. The important point to take away from this lesson is, when you run out of natural gas, you run out of cheap fertiliser.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Where the USA is Headed

Where will the USA be in 20 years if they develop their remaining domestic oil and natural gas reserves now?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Where We Are Going

We are in the middle of a global extinction event, the biggest since the end of the dinosaurs. Where are we headed? Toward a very simple ecology of a few species, a world of algae, dandelions, cockroaches, jelly fish and rats.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Where’s The Boycott?

I am surprised that anyone would ever buy a Kraft or General Foods product knowing their parent company Philip Morris Tobacco, aka Altria, lied to its customers about the dangers of tobacco, thus killing them off. Similarly I am astounded anyone would ever again trust Nestlé after they lied to their customers about infant formula in ways that killed their infant customers. Why would you ever give a company that tried to kill you a second chance?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Which Car You Buy Is Not Just Your Business

Since global warming hurts us all, what cars people buy is no longer purely a personal decision.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Who is Lying About Global Warming?

I took an honours program in mathematics, chemistry and physics at UBC. I have enough science under my belt to understand the global warming processes and to decide for myself who is telling the truth on global warming. I am 99.9% sure global warming is real and a serious danger. Other people don’t have that advantage, but that does not stop them from pretending they do when they argue for ignoring the problem. What I find so infuriating is people without a clue argue passionately for suicide based on nothing more substantial than wishful thinking.

It should be a slam dunk. Scientists have a good reputation for telling the truth. They may sometimes be mistaken but they rarely lie. When one does, e.g. Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit Priest and his hoax, Piltdown man, we are still talking about it a century later. Fred Singer, a pro-tobacco lobbyist, posing as a climate expert, does not have a reputation for truth. The Koch brothers do not. Check the credentials of climate change deniers. Rarely will you find anyone with even a BSc or experience in climatology. Deniers will try to pass of some TV weather guy as an expert.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Who Will Save Us?

It has become abundantly clear than no western politician has any interest in saving us from climate change. The best we can hope for is pious unfulfilled promises. From their point of view, losing the next election from a lack of contributions from industry is an equally serious catastrophe to the entire planet frying to a crisp a few decades later.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Who Is Your Tribe?

Man is a tribal animal. Inside tribe: good. Outside tribe: evil or doesn’t matter. Most people’s tribe is their generation in their country. Some people’s tribe is their generation, planet earth. A few people’s tribe is the next 500 years, all life on planet earth. On the other hand, there are people whose tribe is drastically narrowed to their race, economic class and neighbourhood. Each widening in the definition of tribe mandates a new stricter morality, to take into account the welfare of the extended tribe.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Whom Should You Trust

Whom should you trust to advise you on diet? A couch potato? A person who looks ten years older than their chronological age? Someone who works for the government, meat, dairy, nutrition supplement or pharmaceutical industry? How about someone who looks the way you want to look and seems to have the energy of someone much younger?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Forks Over Knives

Whom To Trust on Climate Change

One of the best sources of information on climate change are the insurance companies. If they underestimate the severity of climate change, they will go bankrupt paying out claims. If they overestimate the severity of climate change, they will crank up the cost of policies and go broke by not being able to sell them. Look at the rising cost of policies and how they are refraining from selling long term policies, and that sorts of policies (e.g. flood) they are refusing to sell to glean what they really think is going to happen.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Are We Waiting?

Imagine we muddle through the end of oil badly. Billions die. Coastal cities are flooded and abandoned. However, eventually we will implement clean sustainable energy. Solar energy is free once you set up the collectors. Imagine quiet streets, just the swish of air. Imagine plants growing everywhere there is asphalt now, on the tops of buildings, on roadways. Imagine air than smells like it does in the national forests. Imagine being able to fish and safely eat what you catch anywhere there is water. Why are we waiting?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Believe The Climate Change Deniers?

Why do some people believe the global warming deniers, even though they know the deniers have no credentials, are paid by industry to spread FUD, have a history of being wrong and express an extreme minority position that does not even agree with other deniers?

  1. The news from the legitimate scientists is disturbing. People would prefer it if the news were reassuring. So out of cowardice, they choose to cling to lies.
  2. The dire consequences are off in the future. The inconvenience dealing with global warming is right now.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Bitumen Is So Dirty

Extracting a barrel of bitumen from the Alberta tar sands emits three times the greenhouse gases as extracting a barrel of conventional oil. Harper and Alberta are in a race to extract all the tar sands and pocket the money before Canada wakes up to the fact doing that is suicidal.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why China Surpasses the USA

China doubles its output of wind power every year. They surpassed the USA long ago. The USA’s democracy has been hijacked by the oil industry who have done all they could to block alternative energy. The key problem is the Citizens United Roberts supreme court decision to allow corporations to buy politicians with unlimited secret funds.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Climate Change Is Much Worse Than You Think

There are two things about climate change that most people do not understand:

  1. irreversibility: Once climate change gets going, you can’t stop it.
  2. tipping points: Many features of climate change do not change gradually. Nothing seems to be happening, then suddenly nature adjusts e.g. a huge ice sheet slides into the ocean, the Gulf stream stops, snow does not melt in summer…
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Corporations Cheat and Lie

Drug cartels happily kill off their customers with adulterated and dangerous drugs. Consider that, legally, the sole purpose of a corporation is profit. It should not be a surprise when they resort to lying and spreading disinformation about global climate change, motivated solely by profit, even though they know their actions will eventually kill billions of people and wipe out thousands of species.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Deniers are Old

Its no coincidence that the majority of people blocking action on climate change are older, wealthy males. They don’t care what happens to our planet. They will soon be dead. What matters to them is the incremental prestige of making a bit more money out of the old economy.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Do Christians Deny Climate Change

Your average Christian, is essentially a believer in wishful thinking. Think of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio singing:

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you.

Wishful thinking is the essence of pop Christianity. Though Christians fantasize about Jesus destroying all the heathens, they also believe God would never let humanity seriously hurt itself. They forget Noah and the many other biblical acts of genocide not to mention catastrophes of real history.

The other reason Christians are prone to climate change denial is a bit of an accident. The fundamentalist Christians have allied themselves with Republican who also allied themselves with the oil lobby. Christian are thus oddly tied with the oil lobby who don’t really deny climate change, but works to fool everyone else to.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Humans Deserve To Go Extinct

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Ignore Climate Change?

Why do Americans reject the science of global climate change? For two reasons:

  1. For the same reason they reject evolution and believe in talking snakes and that they will live forever.
  2. Because the coal and oil lobbies have lied to them. They choose to believe the lies because they are addicted to wishful thinking.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why It Is Best Man Went Extinct

If you are feeling depressed at your inability to save mankind from its folly, consider what mankind has done to this planet and what it would do to an entire galaxy if it managed to avoid extinction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Lawns Were Invented

The suburban lawn did not catch on until 1875. It was a status display to let others know the home-owner was prosperous enough he did not need his land to grow vegetables.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Mostly the Elderly Care About Global Warming

Meetings about global problems such as war, global warming, water conservation, clean energy are attended primarily by the elderly. Most of these people will die before the effects of these problems manifest. People of that age care less about themselves and very much about the future generations. The young are too busy with selfish pursuits to may much attention. To the young, the heavy effects of global warming being 20 years in the future are about as relevant as the extinction of the Sun. To the elderly, this is just an eye-blink of time.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why the Right Hate the Environment

People often wonder why the left tend to be pro-environment and the right anti-environment. How could that be? Doesn’t everyone like to take their grandson fishing? There are two main reasons:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Should You Care?

Why should you care if the ice melts in Antarctica? That’s where 90% of the world’s ice is.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Should You Care?

Why should you care if the oceans rise and flood the low-lying land? Because billions of people grow rice in such land. They will have no food and nowhere to live. They will want yours.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why Tar Sands Are 3 Times Worse That Oil

The tar sands have a carbon footprint 2 to 3 times that of ordinary oil. This is because the separation of the oil from the sand takes so much heat, pressure and chemicals.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why we are Fucked

The other reason we are so fucked is that Christians ignore the scientists and trust charlatans in the church who tell them tall tales about in an invisible man in the sky.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Why We Are Screwed

Earth is facing an extremely serious problem. Scientists are not professional persuaders. They publish their findings in journals read only by other scientists, written in highly technical language. They describe. They don’t proscribe what our species must do to survive. The professional persuaders (which include: politicians, shills who pose as scientists and media people) have nearly all been bought, directly or indirectly, by big oil and big coal to deny, lie or confuse global climate change. The environmentalists, largely volunteers without skill in the arts of persuasion, are left to extol the truth, on a mite-sized budget compared with big coal and big oil. Naturally, the liars are prevailing. The shills are foolish people who see only the money. They don’t realise they are planetary traitors condemning their grandchildren and descendants to death or never being born.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wild Fires Increasing

Are wild fires threatening your home or vacation cottage? Are wild fires hurting your economy with the costs of controlling them and the cost of lost timber? Expect the incidence to double and the severity of fires to increase as the concentration of CO₂ continues to rise.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wild Fish Protein

In the coming decades, wild ocean fish will become increasingly important as a source of protein. Why?

So let’s not be idiots and destroy the resource. We have to follow the best science to conserve it or we will surely lose it. Unfortunately, the Harper government, for religious reasons, decided to eschew science. Fishers often lobby for policies to drive the fish extinct within a few decades.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wildlife or Excess Children

We humans can have a choice: We can either continue to have wild animals larger than a housecat on our planet or we can continue to permit people to have two or more children. We can’t have both. Hint: the second choice will lead to our own demise too, just as it does for tent caterpillars.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Windy Vehicles

Walk along a highway and feel the wind from each type of vehicle. Those that produce a wind that could knock you off your feet are wasting fuel moving air about. They could use some streamlining redesign.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wiping Out Blue Whales

Manunkind wiped out 99% of blue whales. You can’t justify that even with the most extreme capitalistic values. Capitalism would maximise profit, which would still require a substantial population of whales. Humans would rather have less than someone else have more, so they deliberately destroy resources. I don’t know of any other species that does that.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wiping Out Disease Causes Overpopulation

If you wipe out a disease, you necessarily put additional pressure on the population explosion. You should not do it without a companion offsetting population control program.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wiping Out Large Animals

Whenever man invades a new territory, the extinction of most of the large animals soon follows. Man is a full-court-press competitor both for prey and plants. Further, he competes for territory by destroying the native vegetation and replacing it with plants particularly suited for human consumption.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wiping Out Other People’s Wildlife

The Louisiana wetlands are the homelands of birds that migrate over the globe. By deliberately destroying the wetlands, America are effectively shooting other people’s wildlife over the fence.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wiping Out the Salmon

The Columbia River used to be the biggest salmon river in the world. When the USA government installed the first dam on it, they knew there would never be another salmon in the river ever again. They made a tradeoff. They figured the electric power was worth losing the salmon fishery.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wiping Out Seafood

Man is rapidly wiping out all the food species of fish and seafood. If you want to eat responsibly check the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Guide.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wishful Thinkers

What sort of person votes to do absolutely nothing to prevent global warming?

Usually people kill those trying to kill them. For some reason they excuse those who promote greenhouse gas emissions.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Wishing Away Climate Change

Global warming is not a monster under the bed. It won’t go away if you refuse to believe in its existence.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Without a Population Explosion

If we did not have a population explosion, all manner of global problems would become tractable, from energy shortages, to pollution, to food shortages, to climate change, to water shortages, to habitat destruction to collapse of the oceanic ecosystems, to the death of the Amazon jungle. But there are people who fiercely promote overpopulation, demand that people raise children who don’t like children, demand people have more children than they can afford and interfere with any form of birth control. These people are motivated by religious superstitions. They are far more dangerous to mankind than any serial killer.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Working Fusion Reaction

There is a working giant fusion reactor, complete with fuel, sufficient for all energy needs for the foreseeable future, located safely distant from the earth. It beams its energy to earth mostly in the safe 580 nanometer band. We call it the sun.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Worldfire

Imagine being in a small town and someone’s house is on fire. What do people talk about? What do people do?

Figuratively speaking, the earth is smouldering all over. The oil lobby call it the dismissive name of global warming or climate change. That should be what everyone is talking about, what everyone is working on. You should hear about it several times a hour on the radio and TV.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Worse than Raping a Child

Those who work to derail efforts to curtail climate change are guilty of a crime with far more dire consequences than raping or killing a child, yet the law offers no plea similar to self-defence to those who use extreme measures to stop them.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Yahweh Will Not Help

I don’t know where Christians get the idea the god Yahweh can, with complete certainty, be counted on to counter the effects of greenhouse gas emissions through some miracle and rescue us all from global warming. He did not intervene in the black death. He did not intervene in the Irish potato famine. He did not intervene in the Holocaust. He has even been reputed dislike humans so much he drowned nearly all of them on purpose in a giant flood.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Yangtze River Dolphin

Because of its insane desire to be the world’s most consuming nation, the Chinese have driven the Yangtze River Dolphin all but extinct down to about 20 animals, first through noise pollution and then by damming the rivers in which it once lived. I don’t think I will ever feel comfortable in the presence of any Chinese official, knowing they had a hand in this.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Yellowstone Supervolcano

There is a super volcano under Yellowstone that erupts about every 600,000 years. The last time it erupted was 640,000 years ago. So it is a bit overdue. It could be coming soon. The land around Yellowstone has started rising over the magma bubble three times faster than ever recorded before. The last supervolcano that erupted (in Siberia) wiped out 95% of all species on earth, the biggest mass extinction event ever.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

You Have To Act If You Want Results

Carter mandated improved fuel efficiency. It improved 50% in a few years. Subsequent presidents did nothing in that regard. The result, no improvement since. Clearly leaving fuel efficiency up to the car companies does not work.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Your Choice How Population Growth Will Stop

The laws of physics won’t allow the population of earth to keep growing indefinitely. Guaranteed, it will stop. We humans have no choice in that, only in how it stops. We can limit our birth rate, or if we refuse to do that, nature will stop the growth for us with starvation, epidemics and wars for living space and resources.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Your Personal War on Climate Change

While the bureaucrats haggle, what can you do on your own to defeat climate change? The most important techniques are near the top:

  1. The most important sacrifice is having fewer children. Every extra child introduces another person into the world consuming roughly the same as you. Adopted children do not have this problem. You need not worry about humanity going extinct. We are in the midst of a population explosion. Humanity is in far more danger from the effects of over than under population.
  2. Reduce your transportation footprint. Walk or bike more. Use public transit more. Trade in your old gas guzzler for a high mileage car, e.g. a small, hybrid or electric. Join a car-sharing service and select the smallest vehicle that will do for your current purpose.
  3. Cattle belch methane out of their mouths and fart it out of their anuses. Methane CH₄ is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO₂. Cattle contribute almost as much to global warming as automobiles. Just reduce your beef eating. Other animals such as pigs, goats, sheep and poultry are not nearly so bad. You don’t have to give up beef, just eat smaller portions and enjoy some beef-free meals each-week. You can also ask your federal and provincial governments to reduce the astronomical subsidies they pay on beef to encourage others to reduce their beef consumption.
  4. There are now houses in Canada that use net zero energy. They cost nothing to heat. The electric bill is zero. They use things like solar panels, double glazed glass, heavy insulation and large windows. You can retrofit these techniques onto your own home. The payback can be remarkably quick. You will be richly rewarded for your contribution to ending climate change.
  5. Eat food grown locally. With globalisation, the average piece of food travels 4 megameters (2,485.48 miles) before landing on your plate. The engines that transport it exude greenhouse gases. The worst are planes and trucks. Trains are good. Boats are very good.
  6. Eat field-grown produce in preference to greenhouse produce. Even considering the extra cost of transportation, field-grown produce has a much smaller energy footprint.

Every little bit helps.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Your Share Of the Problem

If you work to save the environment, you might manage to put out 1 billionth of the effort needed for success — six times your fair share of the job. If you despair and do nothing, you have become part of the problem, implicitly discouraging others from taking action. Even if you fail, you will feel much better about failing if you have put out your best effort. You won’t have to kick yourself for inaction.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

Zero Footprint

If a poor third world country like the Maldives can get their carbon footprint down to 0 in 10 years, why is Canada bleating it is impossible to reduce ours down by even 10% in 30 years?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

zipcar

Zipcar

zipcar is a fully computerised car rental scheme that lets you use a vehicle for under $9.00 USD per hour including fuel and insurance. The advantages include:

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

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