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Last updated on August 8th, 2017 at 10:36 am
Charles Krauthammer asks:
Is there anything more depressing than yet another promise of energy independence in yet another State of the Union address? By my count, 24 of the 34 State of the Union addresses since the oil embargo of 1973 have proposed solutions to our energy problem.
The result? In 1973 we imported 34.8 percent of our oil. Today we import 60.3 percent.
That is depressing. Yet more so is the Melbourne Age’s front page confession:
We’re ruining Earth
Well, only for those few earthlings who read the Age. In other Melbourne depression news:
With just $3.3 million in public funding, [Sydney Festival] boss Fergus Linehan smashed two successive records – last year his first festival made $4.1million, the first profit in 30 years, and this year earned $5 million with a program 30 per cent bigger.
Meanwhile, Melbourne’s International Arts Festival last year sucked up $5.5 million and raised just $1.6 million …
- I know a place where the organisers of the Melbourne International Arts Festival can go to recover with some Aroma-therapy, or Colour Therapy, or Mud Empathising. Maybe they can charge it to the festival, too? I mean, it will help them improve next year’s attendance numbers, I’m sure.Posted by andycanuck on 2007 01 26 at 12:22 PM • permalink
- Don’t forget the Clay Therapy and Sand Play, andy.Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 01 26 at 12:25 PM • permalink
WHAT THE DRAFT UN REPORT SAYS
■It is more than 90 per cent certain that human activities have caused global warming.
■Global temperatures will rise by 2 to 4.5 degrees.
■Earth will be increasingly unable to absorb rising carbon dioxide.
■Sea levels could rise by between 20cm and 60cm in the next 100 years, and will continue to rise for 1000 years.
■Snow will vanish from all but the highest peaks.
■More extreme, violent weather.
The UN has spoken. That settles it then. We should all just kill ourselves now.
Put the Earth on the world historical site list, is my advice.
And put homo sapiens on the endangered species list. Maybe then we can get these people off our backs.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 01 26 at 02:10 PM • permalink
- Here’s a good ‘un:
Meat and Livestock Australia is spending $1 million to encourage us to eat lamb this Australia Day, but one animal liberationist is running a “bare bones” campaign against it. Jodi Ruckley is travelling from Brisbane to Sydney wearing a bikini made of lettuce leaves. She hopes it will make people think differently about intensive farming practices and embrace a vegetarian lifestyle.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200701/s1834338.htm
Sure hope nothing wilts…
- #7, 91B30,
It isn’t just Krauthammer, of course, who has obviously been inside the beltway for too long. Notice that no one offers the solution of lifting the 10,000 regulations, arbitrary environmental roadblocks and onerous taxes that plague the energy industry. You know, actual solutions that work. Can’t have that!
- Last month Popular Mechanics compared the alternatives (pdf) to fossil fuels. PM also looked a the infrastructure needed for the USA to replace fossil fuels and create a hydrogen economy (scroll down). An extra 2000 nuclear plants?
I dont’ know about nuclear accidents, but I am sure building that many would cause a moonbat meltdown.
- The Age today claims those damn Sydneysiders are unhappy money grabbers and they have “scientists” to prove it. So you know its true!Posted by curious george on 2007 01 26 at 05:30 PM • permalink
Sea levels could rise by between 20cm and 60cm in the next 100 years, and will continue to rise for 1000 years.
Utter BS. Complete and utter BS. One thousand years ago, the climate was warmer. Then it cooled. It started bouncing back—and we’re supposed to believe that state of affairs will continue, unchanged, for another 1,000 years? That you can take two points on the temperature graph (late 70s—“The Coming Ice Age”—and late 90s) and draw a line out to the year 3,000 and that it will have ANY correspondence with what will really happen?
In ten years we’ll be hearing about another Coming Ice Age.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2007 01 26 at 05:42 PM • permalink
- #7: I like, and greatly admire, Krauthammer, but I agree that he’s on the wrong track with respect to a huge increase in the gasoline tax. The only reason he’s pushing that is because he is pessimistic about the federal government ever doing anything sensible with respect to opening up the North Slope for development and/or pursuing the nuclear facility option. However, I believe the answer there, ultimately, is to elect representatives who will gird up their loins and do the right thing. I’m not overly optimistic about that prospect, myself, but the kind of tax he’s talking about, in my opinion, is neither feasible, politically, nor desirable, economically.
- #18: Dons coke-bottle eyeglasses and scientific-type white lab coat. Lights pipe.
Elementary, my dear Dean (puff, puff, puff). In medieval times, there were far more polar bears in existence, and they were able to absorb the excess water from the melting Arctic ice cap with their fur (puff, puff, puff). Now that they are dying out, (bumps into table) – ooph! – I say, now that they’re rapidly dying out (puff, puff, puff), the planet’s net absorbency is declining; hence, the sea levels are rising. These are facts, which you will find in the abstract of my book, The Predictive Absorbency of Carnivores, Outlined. Permit me to give you a rundown of the general concept . . .trips over potted palm and falls off balcony
…but at least I think we can all agree that if the government collected all that gas tax money it would be put to good use.
You know, like sand castle and clay therapy classes for the organisers of the Melbourne International* Arts Festival.
*BTW, was there anyone from abroad there to make it actually, you know, “international”? Just wondering.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 01 26 at 07:09 PM • permalink
- # 12 Sydneysiders don’t need to be crass money-grabbers to find Melbourne a little bit dull and easy to send up (with images).
- Um, could someone, anyone, please tell me why a dead man in a white lab coat is lying spread eagle across the hood of my Volkswagen Passat?
MarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrkL !
Posted by wronwright on 2007 01 26 at 08:24 PM • permalink
- People, please don’t post long urls like that. I’m looking at you, mojo.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 01 26 at 09:42 PM • permalink
- Ha!. You got spanked, mojo!. Wear those welts on your buttocks with pride, son.Posted by Daniel San on 2007 01 26 at 10:07 PM • permalink
- Here in blue-state Maine (where the leftard geniuses of the Portland City Council are holding a meeting to [A] refine the new law banning national chain stores from opening stores in the city, and [B] investigate ways to reduce the increasing retail property vacancy rate), we are very serious about energy independence and reducing fossil-fuel use. To this end, we have:
1) Closed down our only nuke plant, with the chances of building a new one in the negative integers;
2) Breached dams, and informed a local mill that they would not be allowed to build a dam without providing half a million dollars’ worth of fish-fuck stairs;
3) Killed a plan to build an LNG terminal;
4) Opposed the building of wind turbines in some local “pristine” mountains (approximately 98% of our state is referred to as “pristine.” It’s a wonder we don’t require tourists to wear plastic booties.)
But I’m sure that bumper stickers and giant puppet heads will solve the problem.
- It doesn’t seem to matter how “right” people are, when they address public policy issues they continually forget the operation of the market. A politician like the President says that the US will be more independent in fuel he really means independent of the current nutcase suppliers. What he may know or not is that the nutcases are well aware that they are funding their highjinks through sales to the US. It is in their interest therefore to keep the landed cost of oil well below the alternative energy supplies. This means that “energy independence” continues to be largely rhetoric and perhaps even a bargaining tactic.
- #4
Hey, Becky – all this sounds like pretty good news for all north of the 49th parallel.
I hear from my beloved wife that it’s currently -20°C in Montreal. On the other hand, it’s a comfortable +28 here in Saigon.
All i can say is that if GW fucks you lot – we don’t need you environmental despoilers here.
Posted by Jack from Montreal on 2007 01 27 at 06:12 AM • permalink
- #19 & #24: Good Lord! I just heard the news, is it true? Are you sure? The dear Professor, dead!
How terribly sad. He could be a pompous old woodwind at times, I know, but he always meant well. And he remained so dedicated to his work even as he grew old and dithering.
It’s rumored that he had an ongoing association with a top secret, government-contracted ‘research’ organization. Nobody seems to know what they actually do, but it’s said he kept some strange insects and very toxic plants up there in his rooftop conservatorium. Bizarre things, collected during his legendary expeditions deep into the Amazon jungle. Out back of his estate the professor had vast ponds of reticulated ocean brine in which he grew a thick, rancid algal slime he claimed could fuel the world’s trucks.
It seems insensitive now, but locals would laugh as they told how they would see the old fella pacing about in his white lab coat, pipe clenched between his teeth. He would go outside at odd times of the day and night to rake through the oily green ooze, grumbling repeatedly “a man’s not a camel, a man’s not a camel!”
Poor chap, he’ll be greatly missed.
- What the… KERRY? SADDAM? Dang it people, QUIT MESSING WITH THE FREAKIN’ TIMELINE ALREADY!* It’s bad enough trying to keep up with all the residual Butterfly Effect stuff from Wronwright’s little pre-Columbian moonshining operation, but THIS… You know how hard it is to come up with that many Diebold machines on such short notice? I’m warning you people… The next person to mess things up like that gets marooned in the Mesezoic era for a whole MONTH. And don’t think I wouldn’t do it either. Now haul your lazy carcasses over here and help me load up those Butterfly Ballots…
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