Ever since Greenpeace started sending back reports on the massive melting of the ice pack during their trip to the Artic this summer, I’ve been bummed on the subject of weather, and now here’s this little item from NASA, usually an upbeat bunch, via Reuters, with the awful news that 2005 was probably the hottest year in the last million years, with no El Nino to blame it on, and more of the same coming.
In fact, the warming trend is accelerating, and with the disappearance of the Artic ice, so too the polar bears, adorable stars of Christmas-time Coca Cola ads.
Of course, we all knew that the polar bear is doomed to extinction before the end of the century anyway. Most of us will be dead before then, so that’s no big deal to us dinosaurs -- but I think my granddaughter might be a little pissed when she grows up and finds out that her granddad’s generation of pigs helped accelerate global warming, killing off those cute bears by indulging in crap like Cadillac SUVs
On a happier note, sort of, Ford Motor Company has announced that they have been making so many cars that nobody wants to buy that they are laying off 30,000 workers, thus keeping those thirty thousand away from the freeway commute, and thereby reducing their contribution to global warming.
Kinda neat the way capitalism works, wouldn’t you say?
The revenge of Malthus
Still, even a little global warming isn’t shit compared to what physicist Brandon Carter postulated back in the 1980’s is going to happen to us inside the next two hundred years: total human population crash. Yup. Extinction. Zip. Nada.
He isn’t predicting the mechanism; it could be world famine, bad weather, disease, financial markets crashing, total global war, or a combination of any or all of these things – and any of these are likely the way things are going.
His prediction of extinction is based on a rather esoteric mathematical modeling of the so-called anthropic principal. I don’t pretend to understand all of it, but it amounts to Malthus with a vengeance: too damn many people and not enough resources. Esoteric or not, he claims extinction is inevitable.
For a more cosmic view, see here.
In the meantime, Bora Bora is not the answer – it’s going to be under water in any case – you might want to consider the Canadian Rockies. It’s going to be hot as hell up to about 7,000 feet, but when you kick off, you’ll have a hell of a view of the stars.
State of the Union
Bush’s State of the Union speech is coming up, and it looks to be a doozy. Strap on your laugh-o-meters, Gentle Readers, it ought to be a hoot and a half. Remember last year, when he promised a man on Mars? Sigh, if only. With all the money we’ve spent on Iraq, we could have set up a colony on the Red Planet - complete with shopping malls and swimming pools - already.
Insiders are predicting that he’s going for the old slight of hand, and will focus on our glorious economic recovery. Tell that to the folks in Detroit. Notice when he talks about new jobs created that he’ll neglect to mention that those jobs are all in the service sector – jobs at McDonald’s and Taco Bell.
He won’t mention the off-shoring of our high tech jobs, the automobile industry, the entire electronics industry or the telephone centers moved to India, the ruined steel industry here in the States, or the miserable failure of No Child Left Behind, or the absolute mess of his wonderful prescription drugs program – and the potential thousands of dead seniors as a result of it. Or the absolutely dead in New Orleans.
And, naturally, we will stay the course in Iraq, but what that course is exactly, he will be unable to say, because the War on Terror is never-ending.
Here’s my state of the Union: perpetual war, the dollar worth spit, a unilateral executive, a supine Congress, microchips in everybody’s wallet and passport, nuclear conflagration in Iran, the rest of the world declares war on the United States, and crop failure in the Midwest.
They tell me that Norway is stockpiling seed in their mountain forts against the certainty that Shit-For-Brains is taking the whole world down with him. Here in LA, the only thing we have to stockpile is SUVs.
God bless America.
2 comments:
My dear wife is a Republican. I, an Ethical Anarchist. So we don't talk politics much.
When I say "global warming" she says that is a ruse to get the USA to pay for various measures to counteract an illusory threat.
This does not make sense. We don't pay our UN dues, so why should we think the USA would pay for anti-warming controls?
I'm working on mass migration of humanity to the sun, which some speculate has a ferrite surface, and is not a bag of gas on fire, but is more a furnace enclosed.
That's for sun lovers. For all others, who hate heat, we'll get them to Pluto, where its pretty chilly, esp. on those methane ice cliffs.
I personally believe that all political parties are beyond clueless and total wrecks. The myth of "Man Needs Government to Survive and Write Tax Checks To" continues to spread, even to the Amazon natives, who are puzzling their heads about why white jerk offs can steal their land, their timber, their diamonds. OOps. Some whites died, shot, killed by Amazon Indians. Ha ha ha. I love that.
several sf writers have speculated on the possibility of creatures dwelling in or near the surfaces of stars, including our own, and olaf stapleton did in fact point out that stars themselves are sentient, just slow.
also, the anthropic principle mentioned allows for the many-worlds hypothesis, which of course demands that sentient beings do indeed dwell stellar-ward.
in re republicans, you might want to have her check out my friend terrence lyons' post on the devolution of the republican party.
pax vobiscum.
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