On Global Warming

I'm sitting here watching the movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", and thinking about things as the night goes by...

I guess I'm late when it comes to this movie and the issue of global warming, but hey, better late than never. And as I'm watching this movie, I'm looking up random shit on the internet about this issue, and I'm finding out interesting things... like how ExxonMobil has been funding a whole bunch of different global warming skeptics, for example. It makes me wonder just what the hell is going on out there.

That being said, I kind of take issue with the movie because the whole thing just screams "correlation does not imply causation" to me. A lot of the arguments in the movie do this -- there are charts and graphs that show that the amount of CO2 in the air and the temperature of the planet sort of go together, correlate, and for another example, there's another part in the special features part of the DVD where Al Gore talks about this study that came out that shows that the amount of wildfires has been increasing along with the CO2 and the temperatures. And then, the movie takes all of these correlations and says that the amount of CO2 in the air is causing all of this.

On Wikipedia, this sort of thing is called a cum hoc ergo propter hoc argument, but that sounds fruity, so I'll just say this: you can't just say that because two things go together that one's causing the freaking other. You just can't. Things don't work that way. What if there's something else making the earth hotter? Hasn't that possibility ever been considered by anyone who isn't either halfway biased or lining their pockets with ExxonMobil money?

I don't know. I guess maybe I missed something with the science somewhere. I know about the greenhouse effect and how gases like CO2 trap the sun's heat in the earth's atmosphere, but it's not the only thing that does that. Hell, water vapor is what traps most of the heat, not just CO2. And methane gas does that as well, shouldn't that be considered too? What if more CH4 or water vapor is being put into the air, and is causing some of the heating? What is the data out there that connects CO2 to the temperatures besides all of the... cum hoc ergo propter hoc stuff? How does more CO2 alone make the earth hotter?

I'm not saying that I doubt that the temperature of the planet is rising and that Biblical-plague weather shit isn't happening because of it. I don't deny that we, as a species, have the technology and know-how in order to change this and keep us all from being cooked to death. But I just don't think you can really put all of the blame on one thing like that. You have to look into other causes, too, but I know damn well that's not going to happen because of idiot companies like ExxonMobil who are trying to distort all of the science on this because they refuse to get with the times and look into producing other things besides oil-based products.

Now that I think about it, however, I do wonder why oil companies don't just do that. I guess this sounds ignorant, but all they basically do is make stuff that's supposed to be used for energy, why not make something else besides oil into fuel? Why be so stubborn? Why stick with something when it's so seemingly nonsensical to do so? What's the purpose, what's the reason? Is there something else going on behind the curtains or something?

I guess I'm going to piss off a lot of people on both sides of the fence by saying this, but all I want is the truth. Not something that seems so... thrown together... not stupid shit that was made up to make businesses look good... just the truth.

As I write all of this, I sit here and I puzzle over what exactly can be done to remedy this confuzzling conundrum. We can all certainly agree that the earth is getting hotter and hotter, right? And we can all agree that these warmer temperatures are making the weather all wonky, right?(I'll buy that much.) But what can we really do about it?

I guess if you go on the assumption that CO2 is causing all of this heating, then the most obvious thing to do is to stop all of the things that are putting more CO2 into the air, like cutting down forests, burning coal/oil, using cars that burn gas. But the only way you're going to stop all of that is with a collective effort, one person can't really do much alone, especially with the cars thing -- most places don't have any gas stations that provide E85 or pure ethanol or other things like that, and most people don't have tens of thousands of dollars just lying around to go buy a new fuel-efficient car with. It all seems like a spinning cycle of doom. People won't buy alternative fuel cars because there's no place to fill them up at, and most places won't support E85 and things like that because nobody's buying any damn cars that use them, so what's the point?

If I was the head honcho of some stupid fuck car corporation or something, here's what I'd do -- I'd set up a trade-in program where you can trade in your old car for a new, alternative fuel car, and if you were still paying for your old car, you wouldn't have to start any payments all over again, you'd just go on as you already were, so there'd be no real difference. Or, if your car was a piece of shit, you could trade that car in, and have its value taken off of your... car bill? So instead of paying $15,000, you could trade in your $5,000 old used car and then only have to pay $10,000. And then, everybody would hop on the get-a-hybrid bandwagon and before you know it, we'd be up to our necks in electric and E85 stations.

Hell, don't even get me started on the cutting-down-the-forests thing. How are we supposed to stop a bunch of assholes in Brazil from burning down all of the beautiful rainforests and killing all of the animals that live there for farmland? I mean, they have to eat, too, and from what I understand, that's basically the reason why they chop down all of the rainforests, because they're poor and they need the land for farming and the wood to sell and stuff. Maybe if there was some other way all of those countries that do this could make enough money to live off of, they wouldn't have to cut down all of the trees. I don't know, maybe somebody could build a solar or a wind power plant over there or something and get people in the countries in question to work there. Then, they could sell the power to places like Mexico, some parts of the U.S., or whatever the hell halfwit country happens to be nearby. That way, their economy could be bolstered up like hell and we'd save the rainforests at the same time. Double win.

I guess all of these solutions of mine sound hackneyed and are undoubtedly very flawed, but if you have a better solution, I'd like to hear it.

In the meantime, I guess I'll go and plant a tree or something.

Not Another Stupid Political Blog!

So, it's been a long time since I've been involved with politics, but after some recent events, and after a lot of thinking, I decided that I need a place to vent my political opinions, however ignorant and unfounded they turn out to be. So, I started this blog, in the hope that by doing this, I'll feel better.

I don't know. Maybe this is just a stupid waste of time. After all, I'm just a regular jackass floating down the stream of life and affected by the ebbs and waves of the tide like everyone else. I don't have a doctorate in sociology or political science or whatever. I don't even claim to be particularly smart. I'm just a faceless nobody on this blue gem in the black miasma of space. But just because I'm faceless doesn't mean I have to be voiceless.

Maybe I'll be fortunate enough to find somebody who agrees with me on these "oh-so-serious hot button issues". Maybe I'll inadvertantly piss off the entire blogosphere and set off a political firestorm of unimaginable proportions. Maybe I'll just end up getting a cold, hard lesson on why I should keep my idiotic political opinions to myself. Who the hell knows?

Anyway, the bottom line is that I need a place to rant, and what better place to do that than the internet?

So here we go. I guess.