The thing I don't like about global warming (aside from the fact it's completely fabricated) is the pompousness of it all. That those who "go green" are some how good and noble people and those of us who don't bring a freaking reusable cloth shopping bag when we go grocery shopping are evil. The reality of it is that "going green" is the perfect "crusade" leftists like because it requires no real work, makes not real difference, yet it makes them feel like they're doing something and gives them something to point to to say, "SEE, SEE!!!! I'M RECYCLING! YOU'RE NOT!!! OH SURE, YOU MAY BE AN ENGINEER WHO DESIGNED A MEDICAL DEVICE THAT SAVED THOUSANDS AND I'M JUST THIS WORTHLESS COMMUNITY ORGANIZER, BUT I PICKED UP A PLASTIC BOTTLE! I'M JUST AS GOOD AS YOU ARE!"
Somehow, deep down inside, I don't think even they believe it.
Regardless, society bends over and grabs their ankles to accommodate this insanity and thus I get lectured every day by inane commercials;
"We here at Chipolte are concerned about the environment, that's why our beef is organic."
"We here at Wells Fargo have gone green, saving three sheets of paper per week."
"We here at GM have made flex-fuel vehicles even though ethanol really produces more carbon emissions than gas."
How in god's name does a freaking bank "go green."
Ergo, I came up with something we all can do on the right/sane/capitalist/non-brainwashed side of the force;
Do whatever we can to COUNTER-pollute.
For example, when I'm at the grocery store they ask me "paper or plastic." I say, "both."
Do I recycle them?
Heck no, I burn them, both.
If it's a beautiful day I do go for Sunday drives with my 8 cylinder Dodge that gets 16 MPG.
Styrofoam?
Don't know what the chemicals are when you burn it, but I'm sure it's bad for the environment. That's why when I have a grill out (using charcoal) I buy styrofoam plates and not paper.
Now there are many things we can yet still legally do, to basically undo all the faux environmentalism crap these frauds do just to make themselves feel better. But the best thing to do is be intellectually honest and give them a proposition;
"OK, you are so concerned about the environment and you TELL me to do all these things? How about this? Not only are you going to quit TELLING me to do all these things, you're going to pay me not to do these things. Matter of fact, I'll have an annual gallon o' gasoline burn off every month until you pay me $25,000. Better yet, you think global warming is going to harm the polar bears? How much will you pay me NOT to go and hunt five of them down? You don't like my 8 cylinder car and my Sunday drives while I smoke a cigar? Well, why don't you make a contribution to my environmental fund?"
The solution to this stupidity was so simple, it was easy to miss. Just do the opposite of what these nutjobs say and when somebody says, "Do you recycle? Do you drive a Prius?"
Say, "No, I undo all the "good" you did by doing the opposite. And I will continue to do three times as many damage as you do, until you quit lecturing me or pay me $25,000."
Thus, I think what we should do is set an "Global Warming Day" where we purposely try to emit as much carbon and greenhouse gases up into the atmosphere until my fund receives (Dr. Evil accent)
$1 MILLION DOLLERRRZZZZZ!
How's June 1st sound? Nothing going on June 1st? Let me know. I'll make the more official rules. "JUNE FIRST, GLOBAL WARMING DAY!!!!"
36 comments:
OK, Recycling:
I choose not to do it. Instead, I inter my reusable materials in a central location so that future generations will know exactly where to mine the raw materials they require.
Paper or plastic?
I generally get plastic. Because my kitchen trash bin is sized perfectly to use grocery bags. I have not had to purchase a kitchen trash bag for over two years. While I am all for saving the environment, I am more adamant about saving a few dollars.
Organic beef from Chipotle?
Like destroying 10 times the grazing land in order to avoid using beef from a meat farm is environmentally sound? Please. Organic food is a larger drain on the environment then inorganic.
Banks going green? How's that happening? Sending my statements via the I-net only results in my printing them off at work, complete with the rest of the web page (including graphics) which inflates my 2 page statement into a 5 page document. Thanks for saving a tree there.
I have a nifty idea. How about saving the environment by getting rid of all the jackholes that want to save the environment. The resulting reduction in demand for the planet's resources will more then make up for all the pollution we created in the last 100 years.
Amen Brother! The sheer arrogance of the Left who thinks than we have such a huge effect on the planet makes me think of the arrogance of man when he thought the Earth was flat - it had to be, because that is all he could see. I think the Earth can handle us just fine (aren't we part of it?); if we are not hit by an asteroid on the meantime!
Global Warming Day June 1st.
What are the Vegas odds on SNOW?
I'll place that bet, I am gambling on the GORE FACTOR. (every time the do a Global Warming event it snows or is super cold.)
You live in an urban place. The bag comment makes it obvious. I still show up at my grocery here with ($40 LL Bean)cloth bags and they look at me funny, look inside the bags to see if there's something in there, and then say "you want your groceries in these?"
Oh, but I must have paper bags! How else would I dispose of my dog pooh?
Last year, during Earth Hour, some people celebrated a different event called Power Hour, where they attempted to use as much power as possible. The best story I heard was where a guy set up an air conditioner and a space heater next to each other and had them duel for the full hour.
Your plan, unfortunately, is not unique. For example, Al Gore has been doing it for years. He calls it "carbon credits".
Captain, I hear you. During the most recent recycling push at my employer, it was announced that styrafoam cups for drinks would incur an additional 10 cent charge in the cafeteria. I complained that I was already doing my part to help out the earth: I was helping make that nasty, carcinogenic crude oil into a safer, more stable form. Either because it was my plastic cup (guaranteed to not decompose for decades!), or because I burned it in my vehicle.
Regularly, after someone attempts to lecture me about the environmental cause of the day, I state I'm going home to burn some used motor oil. Or to dump Compact Fluorescent Lights into the local lake so the mercury vapor can be properly disposed of by the fish.
I will have to work on the "Give me money or the baby seal gets it" approach. Rest assured it will be used soon. (Bonus points if you can name the product that was advertised with that slogan.)
Take care!
He's gonna snap.. i seen it comin'
Ha! I've been thinking for a while I should have another "bring something to burn" party (the fire marshall showed up uninvited to the last one - oops), but with a specific burning in mind. Everyone must show up with a big jug of kerosene - I think Menards has a 3 gallon or so size. Then we just light it all up (well, safely of course) and celebrate recycling those dinosaurs back into the environment from which they came. Just 'cause.
Weather permitting I've just scheduled the first bonfire of the summer season. Nothing like ten foot flames to signify freedom!
"I have a nifty idea. How about saving the environment by getting rid of all the jackholes that want to save the environment."
For some reason I'm reminded of Henry David Thoreau's little incident where he tried to cook some chowder and burned 300 acres in a forest fire.
Well, that and Maddox's campaign against vegetarians: "For every animal you don't eat, I'm going to eat three."
That those who "go green" are some how good and noble people and those of us who don't bring a freaking reusable cloth shopping bag when we go grocery shopping are evil
I believe we call that "malignant narcissism".
How about anti-Earth Hour? ;)
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/236423
Brilliant. Count me in. On June the first, my carbon footprint is going to be Sasquatchian.
-Chris
Plastic grocery bags are perfect for recycling cat litter into a landfill.
When time comes to purge my old office files, it pains me to choose between shredding them and dumping them in a landfill, or burning them in a bonfire.
I was once accosted in D.C. by a PETA advocate wearing (I'm not kidding) a beaver costume. I told her that I was a gun-toting, meat-eating hunter, and that I didn't think she really wanted to talk to me. I then threw the brochure she handed me on the ground.
Taking the planet hostage is a nice idea although not quite as good as the guy who set up a Paypal account and demanded $50,000 or he would kill and eat his bunny. (He got it)I must confess that I do turn off the lights when I leave a room and drive a 4 cylinder car to work when I'm not driving my SUV. Why? Because it saves money! The fact that it saves energy is a coincidence. As for the eco-nazis who lecture you: The last time someone expressed concern about global warming where I work there was an audible groan from my co-workers as they sat back to enjoy the ten minute lecture that they knew was coming. I did not disappoint and I finished it by sending the offender home with The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. For those of you not familiar, he's a Danish (socialist) professor of statistics and former (I suspect they booted him) Greenpeace member. He set out to check claims by the Reagan administration that the environment was getting better and found out that it was. The best thing about the book, 2921 footnotes. (and lots of charts)Every statistic is referanced so you can double check his conclusions. It is the perfect answer to "the sky is falling" environmentalists who don't want to be bothered with facts.
Just bought me a used Dodge Magnum R/T with the Hemi V8! I would have gotten the SRT with the 6.1L V8, but it was out of my price range. But, I did put a remote starter on it, so I can let it run when I'm not even near it!
Try that with your Prius!
LOL. Reminds me of a scene from Blazing Saddles where the sheriff puts the gun to his own head and says, 'Drop your weapons or the black guy gets it."
Their goal isn't to save the environment. It's to attack capitalism and to massage their own egos. I'm old enough to remember all of the 'eco-friendly' innovations that actually ended up hurting the environment.
In Germany in the 1980s, they had a saying. It sounded better in German:
The blood of the Greens runs Red.
Don't get me wrong, I'm as conservative as they get both economically, politically and socially. However, I think you're making a fool of yourself Captain.
If you have the option of polluting or not polluting at the most basic level, it doesn't make sense to try to pollute more. You're basically being a petty fool. If I can drag my giant 1$ bag to the grocery store and fit all my groceries into it instead of going home with 10 plastic bags then I'm going to do it. It's easier for me, plus it keeps some garbage out of the landfills to boot. Same thing for recycling; unless I have to fund the recycling company because it's inefficient, I don't mind throwing my tin can in the bluebin instead of the garbage can. Makes no difference to me but cumulatively it will keep some more garbage out of the landfills. As for carbon taxes and all that, pure rubbish. You need to pick your battles.
My favorite are all the people driving a prius (to save gas) who don't realize that the modern home is the largest energy consumer. But, I guess you can't brag about a programmable thermostat in the parking lot at work...
Status symbols pure and simple. Why aren't these people spending the money they're wasting on eco-status symbols on building a company that makes something?
Green is just a fad where clever people can charge stupid people more money for the same thing by marketing it as green.
I really want to find a way to get into the carbon credit industry. They can't charge me with fraud unless they want to go after the whole industry. What I could do is sponsor a bunch of kids through the world relief charity or something, subtract their carbon footprint from the arbitrary "acceptable carbon footprint" and "sell" the remainder to green idiots. The real work would be puffing up my "business" to appear respectable and wrapping it up in so much small print that the only thing the green idiot understands is that they can pay me to feel really good about themselves.
Recycling paper is actually BAD for the environment. Supposably all the CO2 we emit from burning fossil fuels is bad. We take carbon naturally sequestered as oil/coal out of the ground and put it into the atmosphere. The solution is to sequester carbon back into the ground. One way to do this is cut down trees and make paper. New trees grow to replace the trees that were cut down, removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Use the paper. Throw it out and bury it in a land fill were it doesn't rot. The carbon is now sequestered under ground. Use more paper, grow more trees, throw more paper into the land fill. Recycling paper just prevents the sequestering of carbon. If you truely cared for the Earth, you'd stop recycling.
My logic is just as valid as anything the enviro-nuts spew out.
Recycling paper is actually BAD for the environment. Supposably all the CO2 we emit from burning fossil fuels is bad. We take carbon naturally sequestered as oil/coal out of the ground and put it into the atmosphere. The solution is to sequester carbon back into the ground. One way to do this is cut down trees and make paper. New trees grow to replace the trees that were cut down, removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Use the paper. Throw it out and bury it in a land fill were it doesn't rot. The carbon is now sequestered under ground. Use more paper, grow more trees, throw more paper into the land fill. Recycling paper just prevents the sequestering of carbon. If you truely cared for the Earth, you'd stop recycling.
My logic is just as valid as anything the enviro-nuts spew out.
What's even more funny about hybrids, my experience coming from working on the Ford brand of hybrids, is that eventually, the NiCad battery pack will have to be replaced. When I was first trained on the Escape/Mariner hybrids, the retail cost of the "Traction Battery" was $7,500. It does have a 7 year, 75,000 mile warranty on it, so kiddies, I'd trade that bad boy off at about 69,000 miles, if I were you.
Seems to me, the gasoline engine is very clean, with the primary components of exhaust being CO2, water vapor small amounts of HC, and CO. Add to that the very efficient and cost effective distribution of gasoline, the hybrid and electric cars don't have the appeal. Especially considering the "green's" absolute fight against nuclear power.
I'm thinking you can buy a lot of gasoline for the price of a hybrid's battery and added expense at purchase.
Oh no. I must save the environment. Who do I make the check out to?
Cappy,
I have to agree with Anon:
"Anonymous said...
Don't get me wrong, I'm as conservative as they get both..."
They pretty much said exactly what I was about to say. I will also say this... to all of you who think that the cloth bags ($1 cost, not $40) are a waste. Just go and try it out. WOW! They hold about 5x (not exaggerating) as much 'stuff', never rip, last forever and are generally amazing. I was star struck with how much better they were. Seriously.
BTW what is with you Americans and NOT recycling your bottles? For the most 'capitalist' people in the world (cough bailouts cough), don’t you know that up here in Canada individuals receive 5c-25c, depending on bottle size, for taking their bottles to depots? Yet I was in Las Vegas a while ago...and I couldn’t find a bottle recycle bin as hard as I tried.
IMO it’s really just selfish, spiteful, and ignorant to purposefully choose the non-environmental route vs. the environmental route when the have the same cost to the individual.
Not only that Captain...but rant you one of the ones who loves a good stroll through nature? .... I highly doubt you would like to dig for your fossils if you first had to remove a layer of garbage first.
Sigh. This was a very bad post of yours. Almost feels like you are just trying to garner some fanatical attention.
-Brad
To all those pointing out the costs savings to recycling and fuel efficient vehicles, let it be known that the Captain is a bad boy and drives a motorcycle that gets better than 60 MPG and does so for the economic benefits of cheaper gas.
However, my point is not about discouraging habits that help the environment AND save us money too, it's about undoing all the psuedo "good" environmentalist nut jobs do as a means by telling them to shut the ef up with their lectures.
I'm reminded of the joke.
Why is ieland so green.
Look at the map.
If you had a cork in your bottom you'd be green too.
Hey Brad, that nickel or quarter you get for recycling bottles comes from a levy placed on the bottles by the government. In most places, this levy is still not enough to make recycling cost effective. Money and energy lost that could be better spent elsewhere, but if it makes you feel good to pay for a gallon of gas to drive to the recycling depot and get a toony for you empties, good on ya.
You touched on one of my pet peeves.
1) The day when we are supposed to turn out the lights for an hour is coming up, and I plan to turn on every light in my house out of spite.
2) Unfortunately, those lights are mostly CFLs, so my energy usage won't be that great. This is a case where my cheapness trumps my spite.
3) I drive a car that gets about 34 MPG. But I do it to save money, so I don't get to be sanctimonious about it.
4) I've long thought of starting a web site where people can pay me not to do environmentally bad things. For example, I was planning to eat a super bean burrito tonight. We all know that methane is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2. How much will you pay me not to eat it?
It’s back to our mindset, a few hundreds years ago people can life even without any electricity, worst indeed but the point is they can life. I’m talk about being smart and not about being prehistoric, during 1800 until now civilization have lack of respect to environment, which is the fundamental element of our living sphere.
In SF we have a ban on plastic bags. So instead the markets use paper bags with handles that break easily, so they double bag. Great for the environment - kill more trees! Sure the bags are recycled, but the supply of recycled paper bags depends on virgin paper to start with. And as someone pointed out, paper recycling is very bad for the environment from the caustic sludge of de-inking. You also have shortening of fiber length from recycling.
I'm all for environmental remedies that cost less, like aluminum and steel recycling. That's why most of that is voluntarily recycled.
As for plastic bags, an inert piece of plastic in a landfill is no more dangerous than moving a rock from one place to another. We use plastic bags to line our trash cans. I don't see that as waste at all.
If you want to use a cloth bag, go ahead, but don't tell me I have to. And when we shop, we buy more groceries than 1 or 2 cloth bags can hold without breaking your back. So what do you do? Take more frequent trips to the store? Wasteful!
Building a Prius emits more CO2 than it will save in its useful life relative to an SUV. So the people who trade to a Prius are fooling themselves. If Obama replaces all government vehicles with hybrids, what happens to all the old cars? How much CO2 will they emit either on the road as used cars or in the recycling process? Idiots!
Why is everyone so concerned with saving trees?
The majority of paper we use is supplied from trees that are grown on tree farms, not some tropical rainforest as we've all been brainwashed to believe.
These farms have an economic and therefore rational interest to predict the demand for paper and supply it, thus the more paper you use, the more trees are grown, ironic huh?
Check out this episode of Penn & Teller's show where they DESTROY all the recycling myths:
http://www.surfthechannel.com/episode/2749/48394.html
Robert Miller,
In Germany in the 1980s, they had a saying. It sounded better in German:
The blood of the Greens runs Red
And it is true. Many members of the Green party were glowing admirers of the RAF, or worse, they even had personal connections to the terrorists.
Just think of Otto Schily and Joschka Fischer.
Anybody else notice that environmentalism is more or less exclusively a pastime for rich white people?
@ Econmom
you said: "Amen Brother! The sheer arrogance of the Left who thinks than we have such a huge effect on the planet makes me think of the arrogance of man when he thought the Earth was flat"
Um, the reason why some still think the earth is flat is most likely because of a lack of education and ignorance toward the natural sciences... much like those who deny global warming. I am not sure what they tell all of you on fox news, but the majority of scientific research shows the earth is warming at an alarming rate. To excuse that away with the fallacy that only those on the left are concerned with it - and thus, it should be ignored - is simple minded. Go do some research before you spout out musings from Glenn Beck - he is laughing all the way to the bank.
Post a Comment