Wednesday, June 20, 2007

An Earth Without People

Wishful thinking from the greenies. There are people who think the world would be better off without us and fantasize about it. The only problem with that fantasy, is what’s the point? If people aren’t here, who would care or be self righteous about it. 

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Now THIS is Pollution

The dirtiest river in the world.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Here We Go Again

The world may soon find itself running out of rare metals used to form key components in high-tech devices from cell phones to semiconductors to solar panels, according to a report in New Scientist magazine.

In the respected British publication’s audit of “Earth’s natural wealth,” David Cohen writes that reserves of elements from platinum (used not only in every pollution-reducing automobile catalytic converter in use today but also in fuel cells) to indium (used in flat-screen TVs and computer monitors) and tantalum (used in mobile phones) are “being used up at an alarming rate.” These metals are chemical elements—no synthetic replacement can be developed.

Even more common metals like zinc and copper are in increasingly short supply as they are used in rapidly developing economies like India and China. Over the last year thefts of copper from power lines and electrical substations have soared, as has the price of copper.

Cohen cites the work of researchers like Armin Reller, a materials chemist at the University of Augsburg in Germany, who has predicted that supplies of indium, used in liquid-crystal displays, and of hafnium, a critical element for next-generation semiconductors, could be exhausted by 2017. The world’s zinc will be gone by 2037, Reller contends.

They were saying the same things in the 70s about the 80s. Gee.

The Earth is composed on an insane amount of raw material. All they have to do is find new sources. They’re out there. Copper is still a common metal. But I think we need to come up with something better as a conductor. I believe carbon nanotubes might be one answer. And that’s something we can manufacture. 

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Real Progress Doesn’t Come from “Progressives”

I was a young teen with the first Earth Day happened in 1971. I remember it well. Who can argue with the idea that we need to make the earth a cleaner, greener place? Thr problem is, the environmentalist movement became hijacked by anti-capitalist, crypto-Marxists. In order to deter capitalism, you have to hurt industry, so theyve become anti-technology which actually works at cross purposes to making the world a greener place.

As John Stossel explains, the aims of Earth Day are not based in reality.

John Semmens of Arizona’s Laissez Faire Institute points out that Earth Day misses an important point. In the April issue of The Freeman magazine, Semmens says the environmental movement overlooks how hospitable the earth has become—thanks to technology. “The environmental alarmists have it backwards. If anything imperils the earth it is ignorant obstruction of science and progress. ... That technology provides the best option for serving human wants and conserving the environment should be evident in the progress made in environmental improvement in the United States. Virtually every measure shows that pollution is headed downward and that nature is making a comeback.” (Carbon dioxide excepted, if it is really a pollutant.)

Semmens describes his visit to historic Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, an area “lush with trees and greenery.” It wasn’t always that way. In 1775, the land was cleared so it could be farmed. Today, technology makes farmers so efficient that only a fraction of the land is needed to produce much more food. As a result, “Massachusetts farmland has been allowed to revert back to forest.”

Human ingenuity and technology not only raised living standards, but also restored environmental amenities. How about a day to celebrate that?

Yet, Semmens writes, the environmental movement is skeptical about technology and is attracted to three dubious principles: sustainable development, the precautionary principle, and stakeholder participation.

Earth day is being used as a tool to empower more Marxist type measures to limit and curtail technological development and capitalism. Read the article and you’ll see what those terms mean and why they are bogus.

We live at the most prosperous time in human history. And these people would try to turn back the clock to some 19th century pre-industrial world. A world that was incredibly harsh and life expectancy was much lower.

The resources of the earth, as far as we’re concerned, are far from finite at this point. More importantly, technology provides us with the means to do things cleaner and more efficiently as technology improves. We are a long way from the 1940s, 50s and 60s technology. As a computer person, I can tell you how far computers have come since the 80s. We’re making constant progress. What these people want is regression. They are not progressive at all.

We need took forward, not back. As Bjorn Lomborg once said, “We didn’t leave the stone age from lack of stones.” The real progress in society will come largely from science. And those who would stand in the way, are not real friends of the earth. As we improve our technology it will have less and less impact on nature and will do more to make the world a better place for every living thing. 

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Ha ha

Bush doesn’t need “carbon credits”.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Green Car?

The Prius is worse for the environment than a Hummer? Oh, the shame. The shame.

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the “dead zone” around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside, said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

Saturday, January 06, 2007

George Carlin on Environmentalism

I don’t agree with him all the time, but I like his honesty. Here he and I are in basic agreement.

We’re so self-important. So self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven’t learned how to care for one another, we’re gonna save the fucking planet?

I’m getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I’m tired of fucking Earth Day, I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. They don’t care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

Read the whole thing.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Spiders on Drugs

If you haven’t seen this, it’s pretty funny.