Save the Plants – Build More Coal Plants
January 24th 2008 Posted at Science and Technology, World Politic
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A new past time for me is to listen to the Sirius Radio’s political commentary stations (144 for right, 146 for left). I listen to one and then on commercial breaks I switch over (or I switch over when I am so irritated by what the show is talking about). Yesterday’s drive to work had a few discussion points that really had me worked up.
A trucker dude called The Mike Church Show on Sirius Patriot (the right) and was talking about how he is driving a truck in South Carolina to go pick up logs that have been cut on land that is destined to be a coal burning plant. He was reveling in the fact that he was part of this slap in the face to those ‘Tree Humpers.’ That is all fine and dandy, a man can believe what he wants. Mike Church then went on to say that they should build 30 or 40 more. He then sited this article about CO2 emmissions [ ‘Medieval Environmentalists’ attack CO2 in their efforts to derail civilization. ] In particular, this section:
So, how low would anti-carbon dioxide crusaders consider pushing CO2 levels, if they were able? At 250 ppm, plants suffer and at 150 ppm most die, resulting in no oxygen and no life on the planet. Maybe that answer is the objective, or is it just the people who should go?
He then made an implication that ‘tree humpers’ are so naive, that their CO2 cutting policies are going to threaten the plant life of the planet and that we should be building coal plants to save the earth. You can read part of his rant here : [The King Dude Polar Bear Elimination Expedition]
It seems that modern day conservatives are into besmirching research on global warming, rather than trying to understand it and argue rationally about it. Many arguments against it, including the article I quoted above, seem to have a bottom line of, “Hell, we are humans, put here on earth (by God) and since it is a dog eat dog world, we should take all we can and not worry about the consequences.” A quick Google pointed out tons of articles that seem to take issue with CO2 emissions.
Honestly, I don’t know enough about it, but my gut tells me that this is something to worry about. I have heard good things about this article in the MIT Technology Review [The Messenger - The best scientists, scrutinizing atmosphere, ice, earth, and sea, say global warming is approaching a tipping point. But we still have time to keep it from reaching catastrophic levels.] MIT did not accept me into their undergraduate program, so I have a lot of respect for their work, so I will be reading it, along with some of the dog-eat-dog world articles.
This whole thing makes me really mad, because I see not reason why conservatives cannot be pro-environment. It is unreasonable talk like this that makes the general public stereotype conservatives as uncaring grandfathers.
