Maybe Joe Biden Doesn't Need to Be So Lucid

Joe Biden is starting to sound more lucid...I'm not sure that's a good thing as he clearly answered a question during Wednesday night's Democratic presidential candidate debate on CNN that yes, he would be willing to sacrifice blue collar jobs in his fight against climate change if elected.  Maybe if he had been a little more confused and incoherent as in earlier debates his answer might have escaped the attention of those many former Obama voters who switched parties and voted for Trump in 2016 in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (and by this electing him president)...I doubt that our former vice-president is even remotely aware that through his comments he's driving them all back into the arms of the Orange Man in 2020.  But the CNN talking heads after the debate thought that ol' Joe had performed really well...of course, none of them are blue collar workers, are they? I'm not against Biden being against global warming and having us as a nation being better stewards of our resources, but you don't just flat come out and say you're bad news for working people and then expect their votes, sheesh.  As for President Trump, it saddens me that he has thrown his lot in with climate change deniers as I thought he could have pushed for a more equitable Paris Accord agreement that actually put some pressure on China to be responsible about its carbon emissions...under the current pact they can keep building coal burning plants and increasingly spew carbon dioxide in the atmosphere until 2030 when they're supposedly going to then "cap it": that is completely unreasonable, in my opinion, especially when other signatory nations had much more stringent standards to uphold.  But unlike with trade Trump doesn't want to negotiate anything about climate change since he thinks it's just another hoax.  I am equally at odds with Democrats who think that by punishing our own economy regarding the use of our energy resources we'll somehow be setting some kind of shining example for the rest of the world to follow: tell that to China and give our own workers a break, please...

Just Finished Reading An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power by Al Gore

Back in 2006 Al Gore released his film/book combo titled An Inconvenient Truth, which presented the basics about the climate change crisis facing the world.  Eleven years later the former American vice-president has authored An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power using the same film/book formats.  I just finished reading it and have my own reactions.  First of all, let me stress that I am not a climatologist or any type of scientist, for that matter.  And if you're not a scientist, I really don't need to hear you or anyone else weighing in on what you think about climate change or whether or not it is a problem...I have a computer and can pull up the same links as you to prop up whatever preconceptions I have on the subject...so don't waste your time and mine going down this fruitless path.  Gore presents, naturally, the view that the vast majority of the scientific community has toward the issue: that human-caused climate change...primarily through the burning of fossil fuels...is adversely changing our climate by warming it through the greenhouse effect of increased concentrations of carbon dioxide, and that a catastrophic level may be reached at some time in the foreseeable future if we don't change how we use energy, as well as in other areas of our economy.  The book shows several examples of the effects that climate change has already had in different areas, but doesn't delve adequately, in my opinion, about the indicators that actually give statistics and hard facts on the subject other than a brief reference on page 42 about the Environmental Protection Agency's 37 indicators of climate change.  And although the book's graphic design of varying fonts, colors, and many pictures makes it more attractive to the general public, there is neither a table of contents nor an index to look up specific points.  The book...and I'm presuming the film...is divided into two parts, the first focusing on the problem and the second a sort of handbook to instruct people-at-large how to engage the issue on different levels such as petitions, town hall meetings, interviews, and so on.  One suggestion the author made was to treat dependence on fossil fuels like smoking and to employ the same kind of ad campaigns that the anti-smoking movement has successfully employed.  Uh, well, only one problem: as the book said in another section, we're still 81% dependent on fossil fuels for our energy needs and last time I checked nicotine isn't the least bit necessary for our survival...big difference!  Also, the book in different sections mentioned that under the 2016 Paris Accords on climate change that Al Gore so highly praises, China, a vast developing economic power dominated by polluting, coal-burning plants, won't have to peak their CO2 emissions until 2030 (meaning they'll be increasing them until then) while elsewhere it's stated that we need to turn around our CO2 emissions by the year 2020 to avoid major negative consequences...say what? Furthermore, the author in the second half of the book has turned fighting manmade climate change...which in the book's first half he stresses has been firmly established to be true by strict scientific research and analysis...into a social cause to be campaigned for along with progressive issues that the Democratic Party has embraced, framing it as a partisan political issue that will dissuade Republicans from engaging in a positive way.  And finally, in that second part of the book, they advise what they call "Climate Reality Leaders" not to inundate people with actual facts on the subject but rather to be more personal about how climate change has affected them in their own lives in order to enhance their presentation's emotional appeal...is that really where we want to go on this?

You're entitled to believe whatever you want on the subject, but I happen to think that climate change is for real.  Does that mean that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause? The late Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear posited that deforestation may be more of a factor and that the scientists have made a false correlation.  Whatever the cause, I want our planet and our life on it to be more sustainable and it makes sense to cut our dependence on non-renewal sources of energy, anyway.  Like a lot of us, though, I think that it's foolish for me to be oh-so-concerned about my personal "carbon footprint" while on the other side of the Pacific Ocean China is churning out the carbon into the atmosphere without any compunction...if this is what "globalism" means then I don't care for it, sorry Al Gore...

Quote of the Week...from Al Gore

The day I made that statement about inventing the Internet, I was tired because I'd been up all night inventing the Camcorder.                                       ---Al Gore

Al Gore, our vice-president during the Clinton presidency from 1993-2001, has for several years been one of the acknowledged leaders in promoting education and action to combat human-induced carbon emissions into the atmosphere that may cause potentially catastrophic global warning in the decades to come.  In 2006 he came out with the film An Inconvenient Truth with its accompanying book...I just finished reading his 2017 An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which accompanied another film of the same title.  This book merits more than just one brief review, and I plan to discuss it in future articles.  For now, back to Al Gore...

His above quote is a humorous response to the ridicule he received from having said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiate in creating the Internet".  Note that he never really claimed to have invented the Internet, yet did he go into an angry fit and start screaming "fake news" and personally attacking his detractors?  No, he made a pretty funny self-deprecating joke instead.  It's sad to presently have as my national leader someone for whom such a capacity for humor...as well as humility...is completely alien and unattainable.  And he seems to attract, as likeminded souls, people with a similar deficit in their own personality makeup, not that all Trump supporters are like that...but I think a few definitely are.  Still, Al Gore has shown his own degree of pomposity at times, and it has been at his worst moments in this regard when he has made statements whose silliness resembles comments that the baseball great Yogi Berra used to say, statements like If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure or A zebra does not change its spots or A low voter turnout is an indicator of fewer people going to the polls.  Still, I feel that Gore,  for whom I did not vote in 2000 (and regret that decision), would have beaten George W. Bush in 2004 had he thrown his hat into the ring during that election...I would have voted for him then.  But I think by then Al had already taken on this climate change issue as a personal commitment...I do have a few reservations about how he is promoting it all, though, and will mention these in a future article...

The Doomsday Scientist

A few days ago I was watching the National Geographic Explorer TV channel and a program was on about global warming/climate change, hosted by Bill Nye (the Science Guy).  I think it was just a year old, so we're talking pretty recently.  Toward the end of the show he interviewed a University of Arizona ecologist named Guy McPherson, who predicted that there will be no more human life on Earth by the year 2030.  Yes, that's what he said...we'll be extinct by then, and it will be due to the cascading effects of human civilization-caused superheating of the planet from built-up carbon dioxide as well as methane gas.  The seas will become lifeless and the oxygen will disappear from the atmosphere.  McPherson didn't explain all of his reasoning to Nye, but I did look him up on Wikipedia and saw his blog page, which goes into much greater detail about his somber conclusion on humanity in the near future...

In looking at the current situation we have with increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, McPherson decided to investigate the Great Permian Mass-Extinction of 250 million years ago, when almost all life on Earth was obliterated.  The trigger event for this seems to have been the eruption of massive super-volcanos in what is now Siberia, causing fires over the area and smoke and ashes surrounding the planet.  But the fires then ignited the masses of coal deposits underneath the surface, and Earth went into a long-term greenhouse effect with mass releases into the atmosphere of methane gas, much more potent in its greenhouse effect than CO2.  The oceans and the atmosphere were starved of oxygen and nearly all of the animal and plant species on Earth became extinct.  Now that process back then, as McPherson recognizes, took place over a much longer time span than the global warming going on in our time.  But in both cases, he emphasizes the concept of "self-enforcing feedback loops" that accelerated the process back then and now as well.  For example, global warming melts ice in the far north, but that ice melting exposes holes in the Earth where large methane deposits have been held dormant for millions of years.  Now they are being released into the atmosphere and speeding up the heating.  The more the heating, the faster the methane is exposed and released, which speeds up the heating further...

Guy McPherson does not place much hope in the efforts taken today to restrain carbon emissions, and he thinks a carbon tax is ridiculous.  No, he believes we have already gone too far, and this process leading ultimately to his predicted doom in the too-near future began with human civilization thousands of years ago with the advent of agriculture...

I just heard about this guy last week and already the world's coming to an end?  Uh, please give me a little more time to ingest this!  But McPherson does seem to have his own following, a growing doomsday cult if you will.  His conclusions show to me how someone, if they package their theories in a compelling manner, can pretty much sell anything.  Listen to the folks who are global warming deniers: some of them sound pretty convincing, too.  Look, if we're all perishing in fifteen years anyway, it won't matter, in terms of our habitat on Earth, what I do now with my time or "carbon footprint", and if there is no human-induced climate change, the same is also true.  So in a perverse sort of way, Guy McPherson, with his presentation of impending and certain human extinction, is making the point for folks who want to just forget about climate change and do whatever they want with the environment, for better or...more likely...for worse...