Climate Change

22 Feb

John Stewart’s Global Dark-ocalypse and the Tea Party’s Intellectual Divide

in Climate Change, Funny, Republicans, Tea Party, Video

Ali A. Rizvi has an excellent piece up at THP on the anti-intellectual faction that seems to be dominating the Teabaggers.

By painting educated, well-earning, science-embracing, articulate, introspective, intellectual citizens as un-American, the Republican party has built an entire base made up of those who not only don't possess these attributes, but enthusiastically abhor those who do. Not only are these factions now split along lines of educational achievement, socioeconomic status, and cultural and religious values, but most significantly, along an "intellectual divide".

The entire article is worth a read.  This is something that’s been increasingly irking me for the last decade.  I mean, it’s one thing to be ignorant – a state of being with which I am more than a little familiar.  But it’s another thing entirely to wear that ignorance like a badge of honor.  I mean, these are the kids that sat in the back of class throwing spitballs at each other and now they’re on the precipice of public office.

The latest inanity, of course, comes from FOXNews wingnuts gleefully pointing to a snowstorm as somehow debunking mountains of data showing a steady rise in global mean temperatures.  Because, you know … it’s snowing.  And, er , it can’t snow when it’s, ya know, warming out.

On a totally unrelated note, I ate eggs this morning.  That means that I will eat eggs every morning.  And THAT means that EVERYONE will too.  Mu-ha-ahahah!!!

Oh, an for my dear friends outside the United States, check out this link to find out how to view the above clip.

10 Oct

Green Day!

in Climate Change, Science & Technology

Er, no … I mean the other kind.  Actually, a few interesting stories have popped up over the last few weeks.

image

Those wacky Europeans are proposing a massive solar array in the Sahara which, if operating at merely 0.3% capacity would generate enough power to provide for Europe's energy needs.  All of 'em.

Not to be outdone, folks on the Left Coast are building a geothermal generator (in Utah, of course … NIMBY!!) which is hoped to supply up to 20% of California's energy demand. 

And last, but certainly coolest - can the macrobiotic diet come to NYC?  It might if Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, has his say.  He's campaigning for the production of vertical food farms - massive imageskyscrapers capable of providing for wide-scale farming with a tiny geographical footprint. 

Despommier estimates that it would cost $20 million to $30 million to make a prototype of a vertical farm, but hundreds of millions to build one of the 30-story towers that he suggests could feed 50,000 people. "I'm viewed as kind of an outlier because it's kind of a crazy idea," Despommier, 68, said with a chuckle. "You'd think these are mythological creatures."