Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Screw The Earth

36 Comments

…and screw Earth Day:

Once you realize this, everything changes. You no longer worry about the earth running out of energy resources, because you realize there are no energy resources — there never were — there are only various forms of matter that our minds, the mind of man, transformed into energy resources for our pleasure and convenience. These will never run out as long as we’re here because the mind is limitless and will invent more.

You no longer worry about pollution, because you know that once free people become annoyed by it, other free people will fix it with cleaner fuel-burning methods and filters. Where are the pea soups of London? Where are the smogs of Los Angeles? Where are the snows of yesteryear? All right, I was just curious about that last one.

You no longer worry about the earth, because the earth is here for us, not the other way around. The earth is just our living space — for now. We should keep it reasonably clean and pleasant. But a carping obsession with spotless housekeeping turns you into a scolding fishwife — or an environmentalist — and makes life less comfortable for man, not more.

I’m a lifelong outdoorsman. I hike. I fish. I run through the woods acting out scenes from Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Or I did before the restraining order. I understand that a reasonable caution for the good of the environment should balance the profit motive of those excellent people who provide us with all the wonderful energy we need. I believe we can begin to achieve that reasonable caution by burying every environmentalist we can find up to his neck and then pouring honey on his head to attract the ants. You like ants, don’t you? So there’s a good way to celebrate Earth Day!

I love ants. And the “environmentalists” don’t love the earth as much as they hate humanity.

I celebrate Earth Day by working hard to spread humanity beyond it.

36 thoughts on “Screw The Earth”

  1. It is strange that for the most part environmentalist are opposed to the idea of a space-faring society. You would think they would embrace a technology and philosophy that would move evil dirty humans off the planet. You would think they would be thrilled to let us go, don their hair shirts and live in bliss without us.
    Wait a minute.
    Wouldn’t the lights go out shortly after we leave. Ah…that’s it.

  2. Where are the pea soups of London?

    I once heard a film historian say that the London fogs were a myth created (literally) in Hollywood. When they wanted to show “London” in a movie, it was cheaper to rent a fog machine than build a set.

      1. Hollywood was making low-budget films about London long before 1952.

        I saw some very dense fog when I was in England, but that was out in the countryside and not in London.

        That’s just one data point, which may not be representative, of course, but London fog certainly is certainly less common in real life than in the movies. I suspect it always was. (Even the article you link says the fog of 1952 was thicker than anyone alive could remember.)

        1. London was known for having particularly thick and noxious fogs going back at least to the 1830s. These were recognized at the time as not “country fogs.” It took a lot longer for Londoners to realize that their fogs were caused by burning coal. (Coal particulates provided something for water vapor to condense on.)

  3. Except the London fogs weren’t fixed by “free people” – after the Great Smog of 1952 which killed thousands, Britain passed various laws, including the Clean Air Act of 1956, banning coal fires in homes. (See here for a quick summary.)

    After the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, Richard Nixon founded the EPA in America, which mandated all sorts of clean air and water changes. The catalytic converter on your car is just one result.

    In short, the clean air you’re breathing came to you courtesy of government action.

    1. The “government action” was the result of British citizens exercising their rights at the ballot box. I know that does something to your narrative (I’m thinking a turd in a swimming pool), but there it is. Same goes for the Cuyahoga River. I’m sure you’ve got a link handy showing how there was a distinct coalition in favor of burning rivers, and that only through disciplined government education was that voting block defeated, but you can probably skip it.

      As far as the EPA, I’m guessing that had a Nixon aid informed him that the end result would be the declaration of CO2 as a pollutant, he would have instituted cabinet-level drug and alcohol testing.

      1. The result of British citizens exercising their rights at the ballot box was depriving British citizens of the right to burn coal in their fireplaces, not “inventing a filter.”

        There was no burning river constituency, but there was and is a “dump whatever I want into the river because it’s cheaper” constituency.

        1. It hasn’t been cheaper to dump whatever I want into the river for a long time. You might be able to stretch the “EPA” to cover the reason that is so, but in doing so you also need to include a lot of other stuff at the same time.

        2. Gerrib, why do you persist in throwing up such blatantly stupid straw men? He didn’t say anything about a filter, you are just pulling stuff out of your ass. Again. You are really a pathetic individual.

          The voters decided they didn’t want so much pollution so they elected representatives who did something about it. You know, majority rule and all that?

          And as usual with government, this has now gone too far, with $60 light bulbs and regulating CO2.

          1. So when the extract from the article says, “free people will fix it with cleaner fuel-burning methods and filters,” discussing filters is a blatantly stupid strawman?

            What the elected representatives did was to deprive their constituents of the right to burn coal in their private fireplaces. This is clearly the opposite of free market competition resulting in a more efficient solution.

          2. You do understand that the Clean Air Act predominately was focused on fixing the problems of the air quality in London and that the United Kingdom is significantly larger than London, and that most of the major rules dealt with banning coal fireplaces in London itself, something that was AMAZINGLY unpopular if you happened to live in London and had limited ways to heat your home?

            Why can’t you guys just accept it when you say daft things?

          4. Yes Rand, it does.

            There you go.

            You’ve said something really stunningly daft. Own up to it. Move on. Man up.

          6. Yes Rand, it does.

            Not to anyone familiar with logic or the English language. It’s a symptom of your lack of a sense of irony that you accuse others of writing things that are “daft.”

          7. So when the extract from the article says, “free people will fix it with cleaner fuel-burning methods and filters,” discussing filters is a blatantly stupid strawman?
            Sorry I wasn’t clear. I was referring to your reply to Curt Thompson’s post. Yes, it was an attempt to divert the discussion from “government action”.

      2. So, The clean air act of 1953 was passed by the citizens electing a conservative government led by Winston Churchill in 1951? And not by the deaths of several thousand people dying in London in the winter of 1952…

        I am always gratified at how many facts about the country I was born in that aren’t generally known there, you guys ‘know’…

        1. Because if Attlee had been PM, he wouldn’t have proposed the legislation. He would have felt confident in re-election despite the deaths. Those Labor party rascals.

          Find a new dealer Dave; your current one is cutting the stuff with something unhealthy.

          1. Do you actually understand the British electoral system? Or just how daft you sound at the moment?

            Didn’t think so.

          3. The government quietened public fears by setting up a committee of inquiry. It recommended a Clean Air Act which became law in 1956, gradually bringing an end to open hearth coal fires.

            But of course “the British electoral system” had nothing to do with it. If Idi Amin (Dada) had been in charge, heads would have rolled (pun intended) much sooner. He would have cut through all the bureaucracy in a heartbeat, and cleaned up the air RIGHT NOW.

            Because that’s what leaders who have no need for an electoral system do. You see.

            If Dave would just stop using his shovel to hit himself in the head with we’d probably all be a bit better off.

  4. To echo Chris Gerrib’s point, I cite this NASA page:

    http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/world_avoided.html

    Here’s the first two paragraphs, to help you decide if you want to click:

    New Simulation Shows Consequences of a World Without Earth’s Natural Sunscreen

    The year is 2065. Nearly two-thirds of Earth’s ozone is gone — not just over the poles, but everywhere. The infamous ozone hole over Antarctica, first discovered in the 1980s, is a year-round fixture, with a twin over the North Pole. The ultraviolet (UV) radiation falling on mid-latitude cities like Washington, D.C., is strong enough to cause sunburn in just five minutes. DNA-mutating UV radiation is up 650 percent, with likely harmful effects on plants, animals and human skin cancer rates.

    Such is the world we would have inherited if 193 nations had not agreed to ban ozone-depleting substances, according to atmospheric chemists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Bilthoven.

    1. Given that ozone-depleting substances are real, can be measured, and didn’t exist 100 years ago, this appears to be a valid environmental concern. I don’t think (but after the AGW scandal I am open to the concept) that the ozone layer problem is a hoax.

      But that’s part of the problem – they have destroyed our trust. All their fancy computer models may well be worthless, meanwhile they brag how they “saved the world”. Doesn’t fill me with confidence.

      1. I find it very interesting that any small piece of ‘scandal’ on the right is fully reason to jail anyone who ever voted for a Republican. While these huge things on the Left, like the AGW E-mail thing, is brushed aside because the deceivers ‘meant well’ when they lied, stole or ???, it’s just as interesting.

        To me, it always looks much more like the people on the Left are the ‘hive mind’ or ‘lock step’ group, than are people on the Right.

  5. This brings to mind an old news item. A few celebs including Cameron Diaz had visited a poverty-stricken Nepalese village. Diaz had remarked about how the villagers “continue to live in harmony with the world around them.”

    It never occurs to these people that a goodly part of nature is at war with us. Unsanitary homes and drinking water supplies are not harmony, they are capitulation to the jackboot of nature. At the time, life expectancy in Nepal was 59 years; now it’s 68, so the country is doing something right. (Google charts that statistic from 1960 forward.

    Next Earth Day someone should show up at an event protesting against nature, with “Stand up against the oppressor” signs.

  6. Even though it is tongue in cheek, I don’t like the part of having people buried up to their necks so ant can eat them. There have been too many cases of alarmists saying things like this but not in jest and skeptics don’t need to join in.

  7. Re the “ozone hole” and CFCs: Nice theory all tied up in a ribbon with a bow. Then a few years ago somebody did some actual lab measurements in reaction rates and found one key reaction in the chain ran an order of magnitude too slow.

    There’s actually no way to attribute “ozone depletion” to CFCs. It is made by solar UV acting on oxygen and the molecule is unstable. So during polar nights it slowly goes away to be regenerated in spring.

    Just more green bs.

  8. That would probably be a paper in Nature

    The rapid photolysis of Cl2O2 is a key reaction in the chemical model of ozone destruction developed 20 years ago2 (see graphic). If the rate is substantially lower than previously thought, then it would not be possible to create enough aggressive chlorine radicals to explain the observed ozone losses at high latitudes, says Rex.

    JPL and NASA reanalyzed the reaction rates of chloride and it was an order of magnitude lower than had been thought, forcing everyone back to the drawing boards. As it turns out, halogens coming off the oceans, and especially the Antarctic ice shelves, may be playing a major factor.

    1. That was in 2007. Lets bring the story somewhat up to date:

      http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090507/full/news.2009.456.html
      http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100722092227.htm

      he researcher you quoted was Markus Rex, who is considered one of the world’s leading experts (at least, by the news media!) on ozone in the atmosphere – he is quoted quite frequently. If you google “Rex” and “Ozone” and, optionally, CFCs, you can easily find his opinions on the matter. Here’s one, from the press release :

      “By virtue of the long-term effect of the Montreal Protocol, significant ozone destruction will no longer occur during the second half of this century,” explains Rex.

      http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/arctic_on_the_verge_of_record_ozone_loss_arctic_wide_measurements_verify_rapid_depletion_in_recent/?cHash=ee2ef56e0dedac781a0eddcb73f26bdc

    2. Gee Bob, those are a pair of weak papers. Is the way to accurately measure the chloride spectrum, previous attempts at which were beset by problems with impurities (carefully removed by the JPL and NASA team), to reintroduce the impurities and measure again? That sounds highly dubious.

      But taking the newly measured spectrum (which may or may not be chloride) and finding a matching absorption at only two wavelengths from a ballon confirms – well, not much, other than there are gases in the stratosphere that also absorb at the two wavelengths.

      And your third paper says “Unusually low temperatures in the Arctic ozone layer have recently initiated massive ozone depletion.” Um, yeah. That’s what he said.

  9. The UK Clean Air Act is not a blanket ban in any case. It applies only to towns where there has been a history of poor air quality. As an example, I live in a town with a population of 150,000 (and quite densely packed at that) but AFAIK there is no prohibition on burning coal here. The reason is probably connected with its being on the coast, and quite windy much of the time.

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