China: Frozen Dumplings, Fridges, and Environmental Impact

Here's a stat for ya: 

In the 12 years between 1995 and 2007, China’s domestic refrigerator-ownership numbers have jumped to 95 percent from just 7 percent of urban families.

Turn Turn Turn: Baltimore's Trash-Clearing Water Wheel

40 tons of trash removed from Baltimore's Inner Harbor since the wheel started turning in May!  Wow, that's a LOT of rubbish.  I don't remember the water being that filthy when I was there not too long ago.

China: The Desolation of Smog

YUCK.

Greening the Deserts with Carbon Dioxide

Well, whaddyaknow?  Look at this from the American Geophysical Union:

Scientists have long suspected that a flourishing of green foliage around the globe, observed since the early 1980s in satellite data, springs at least in part from the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Now, a study of arid regions around the globe finds that a carbon dioxide “fertilization effect” has, indeed, caused a gradual greening from 1982 to 2010.

I now expect professionally apocalyptic eco-zealots to complain that greening the desert will lead to the extinction of the sand worms or something.  The Spice global warming gravy train must flow!

Earth Hour? Pffft. FIAT LUX!

The annual idiotic nonsense is upon us again, though I haven't found a response better than this one by a Canadian professor from a few years ago.  Do read the whole thing.  See too what Bjørn Lomborg has to say.  Perhaps celebrate Human Achievement Hour instead?  (Related thoughts.)  Awesome Aussie Tim Blair is treating this Earth Day with his usual panache (see his hilarious writeup from 2012).  As for me, I intend to carry on doing what I had planned to do tonight regardless of silly, sanctimonious publicity stunts.  It's March Madness, people, and my compatriots and I will be in front of the TV!

Quote of the Day: Greenie Hysteria

Heh:

... the habit of reading every warm spike and every storm as fresh confirmation of the coming apocalypse needs to stop. It’s bad science and it’s bad politics. Green hysteria is more likely to paralyze us then help us take the kind of steps we need to take towards sustainability. 

The gravest danger to Earth these days isn’t climate skepticism; it’s the broken, Malthusian and statist green policy imagination. Wedded to grandiose and unworkable “solutions”, greens feel they must push the panic button at every opportunity to stampede the world into embracing an unworkable and unsustainable policy agenda.

Well, I don't feel the urge to panic and adopt a Stone Age lifestyle if the New York Times is shutting down its environment desk and if Al Gore, that blowhard high priest of the Green religion, feels it's OK to sell out to Al Jazeera for a sweet, sweet personal profit of $100 million.  

Suppressing Little Forest Fires Leads to Deadly Megablazes

Well, DUH.

Hey Girl, You're Hotter Than Global Warming

As a rule I'm totally contemptuous of Greenies and celebrity environmentalism, but there are exceptions to every rule.  You go ahead and drive that Prius of yours if that makes you feel better, babe.

Gaia's Health Matters More Than Yours, Mere Human

Good grief.

China Lectures Canada On Environmental Policy

Whatever.  China's the world's biggest emitter.  Go lecture to the mirror, pal.

In Praise of the Incandescent Light Bulb

I remain devoted to incandescent light bulbs.  I tried the new morally superior ones, and I HATED THEM.  As musical satirist Remy does point out with lyrics in his new music video, “If that new light bulb is so amazing, then why don’t people just go buy that light bulb?” 

Quote of the Day: Science and Experts

Here it is:

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

Fascinating!  More here:

"Never rely on the consensus of experts about the future. Experts are worth listening to about the past, but not the future. Futurology is pseudoscience."

California Bans Shark's Fin Soup

Here comes the food police.  Oh, and apparently it makes no never mind that it's got a ton of cultural and culinary significance to the Chinese and Taiwanese communities!  (In case you're wondering: Yes, I've had shark's fin soup.  Yes, I like it.  Yes, I eat it whenever I get the chance.  I like bird's-nest soup too, but I like shark's fin more.  Yes, I'm eeeeeeeeeeeevil.  No, I haven't had that soup in a few years.  It's expensive, and I'm just a penniless nerd!)  Here's a bit from the news story:

Shark fin soup is a Chinese delicacy; walk into certain restaurants in San Francisco's Chinatown, and you're guaranteed to find it--but not for much longer. Last week, California governor Jerry Brown signed a law banning the sale of shark fins. It's a move that is being celebrated by environmentalists, but some Chinese Americans are complaining that the law is an attack on their culture.

Apparently 85% of U.S. shark fin consumption occurs in California.  You know what's bound to happen, though, right?  A black market trade in shark fins and that soup.  Do you honestly think you can stop a food-loving culture from getting what it really wants?  GET REAL.  Hasn't Prohibition taught us anything?  More here, plus this: raaaaaaaaaacist?

Let Them Eat Biofuel

*Sigh.*

Al Gore and the Great Green Meltdown

Well, I'm glad to see that I'm the only one who's sick and tired of Al Gore and his self-righteously shrill, pseudo-cultic, fraudulent greenie crusade.  Its implosion will be a moment of Schadenfreudtastic glee, not to mention relief for serious people who resist the outright politicization and corruption of science for power and profit (including people like ... oh, I don't know ...  actual scientists).  

A Tale of Two Shale States

Read this.  Also this.

Energy Debate Rant and the "Addiction to Oil"

Hear, hear.  Part of the salvo:

You know what I can’t stand to hear about anymore? That we Americans are addicted to oil. It’s a smarmy term  that tries to couch an economic and environmental argument in pathological terms. ... It does nobody any good to try and debate economic and logistical necessities while using terminology to imply people who disagree with your view are mentally ill.

But what do I know?  I'm just another bitter stupid racist clinging to my guns and Bible who wants to push granny off a cliff and destroy the earth by emitting carbon with my Internet searches. Or something.  Hey, I'm just 'angin' onto outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic an' social differences in our society!

Every Time I Google For Recipes and Shoes, Global Warming Kills a Cute Baby Polar Bear

Yadda yadda yadda.  Is there any part of life that the Greenies will not seek to control in their horrendous eco-crusade?  Is there not a single activity of normal life that they do not feel justified in pontificating about, unasked and unwanted?  Killjoy thermomaniac watermelons!  In the name of their implacable pagan deity Gaia, amid lurid visions of greenpocalypse, these frothing fanatics will stop at nothing.  Prius-driving, soy-latte-sipping, humorless little popinjays!  Pathetic, hypocritical neo-hippies with delusions of messianic grandeur and fantasies of power justified by an aggressive sense of moral superiority. What a toxic crew of obsessive miscreants who trade in guilt and misery as the expression of their perverse secular doomsday cult.  GO AWAY.  I don't care if you want to flagellate yourselves over your eco-sins, but I sure as hell mind when you attempt to flagellate me.  Hey!  Can we classify Greenies as an invasive species?

In the meanwhile, I am busy Googling away -- Payless Shoes is having another BOGO sale right now, and MM needs some nice new sassy but cheap sandals for summer!  (Though that too is evil, apparently.)  I'm also doing this while drinking a big vat of non-fair trade, non-organic coffee and frying up some eggs from non-free-range chickens.  Evil!  How many sins can I commit before breakfast?  Heh!  Oh, and Google already put the beatdown on this stupid Internet-search idea back in 2009: "...a typical individual's Google use for an entire year would produce about the same amount of CO2 as just a single load of washing."  Speaking of, I gotta do laundry today -- rack up yet another eco-sin for me, yay!

Apocalypse Not and Profits of Doom

Kyle Smith is basically right.

Hans Rosling in Praise of the Washing Machine

This is fantastic.  Do watch.  The humble washing machine, I dare say, has singlehandedly improved the lives of countless women around the world, and that is a wonderful thing.  As for the delightful Hans Rosling -- he is always worth your time.  (Other lovely inventions: the stove, the refrigerator, the dishwasher, the vacuum cleaner, the microwave...)