Earth Day

[boomer]

Earth Day Greetings

Since inception in 1970 Earth Day has grown to become the largest secular observance with global reach and 190 countries participating. The issues that prompted organizing the first Earth Day not only remain with us but have taken on the undeniable form of an impending, if not existential, crisis.

There is much we can do. We e have the knowledge and tools available. All we need do is find the courage to act.

Granted, Earth Day is not a traditional holiday but it seems a good reminder of  how much remains to be accomplished if we are to insure those who follow find planet Earth in better shape overall.

[Moe M.]

Earth Day Greetings

Since inception in 1970 Earth Day has grown to become the largest secular observance with global reach and 190 countries participating. The issues that prompted organizing the first Earth Day not only remain with us but have taken on the undeniable form of an impending, if not existential, crisis.

There is much we can do. We e have the knowledge and tools available. All we need do is find the courage to act.

Granted, Earth Day is not a traditional holiday but it seems a good reminder of  how much remains to be accomplished if we are to insure those who follow find planet Earth in better shape overall.

  (Much Fanfare and Applause) I'm quite sure that the UN and the WHO thank you for your fine speech especially the part about having the Knowledge and the tools with which if we close our eyes real tight, tap our heels, quit eating meat throw large wads of cash at that Climate Change problem, and wish really, really, really hard, together we can change the course of nature, that may be laudable in the eyes of some people, but in my opinion it's nothing short of pure arrogance.
 A quick look back at the history of planet earth shows us that the earth has for umpteen millions of years taken pretty good care of itself, it managed to sustain and repair itself through floods, wild fires that burned for decades, it's gone through various stages of warming, the cooling affects of an Ice Age that almost completely covered the earth, volcanoes that blackened the skys for so long that it caused nuclear winters.
 Sure, it didn't always come back to a state as we know it today, and the changes it went through caused some species of life to disappear while others were born and acclimated to the changes, and it will happen again, and do so without our silly meddling into the affairs of God and Nature.
 What has it been, doomsayers have been warning us of the end of the world as we know it including mankind for what, half a century or so, we with our knowledge and our tools and our arrogance have created carbon footprints to tax, instituted regulations against and controlling pollution on all the world's developed industrialized nations, but they (the rule makers) have given a pass to all of the real polluters of this planet like China for example.
 But, Science has been in the forefront of Global Warming right from the get go, they have also been the first to fill their pockets with grant money, because that's what Global Warming is to Science, a great big money tree, and when Science got caught cooking the books by fugging research reports and the earth showed very little signs of actually warming more or less than it has in the past, science and the alarmist changed gears, the problem stopped being Global warming, it became Climate Change, and the money continued to flow.
 So, Science had no way of stopping animals from farting, and they weren't going to convince The People to go vegan, and they couldn't put an end to family BBQ's, but they could slow and eventually stop the use of oil, coal, and natural gas if they pushed Green Energy, that would keep the money flowing into the hands of multi national corporations, corrupt countries, politicians and other big wigs that would stand to profit from green energy.
 So, the only major problem is to convince the folks (who by the way are being made to foot the bill for this new folly) that they need to invest more of their hard earned money into building and paying for Solar and Wind Energy that cost more to build and maintain than it can deliver in power, we need to stop using gas in our cars and trucks, fuel oil and gas to heat our homes, we have to invest in battery power for our cars, lawnmowers and weed eaters, but what they don't tell us is that all of that Green Energy is dependent on fossil fuel energy to build and keep charged, because wind and solar can't handle the demand created by the change over, it's no more than a bait and switch scheme paid for with grants and subsidies paid for with your middle class tax money, and it's funneled right into the pockets of those that support the UN, the WHO, international corporations, and those fellers that created and support Earth Day.     

[boomer]

Interesting post Moe. 

I'll not argue the claims or confuse the issue with facts as we're all entitled to our opinions. What I can offer however, are the widely published photos of the short term changes in our world during the general lockdown due to recent Covid. The before during, and after photographs clearly demonstrate stark differences in air and water quality in cities from Venice, Italy, Los Angeles, USA and large areas of India just for starters. The contribution of human activities is undeniable.

Some might also recall the Time magazine cover in the late 1960s of the Cuyahoga River on fire after pollutants spontaneously combusted. The photo was of the fifth such incident on that river by the way. That mess was cleaned up by taxpayers just as mine tailings, leaking slurry impoundments and other "externalities" are. Tax dollars are the fund in Superfund.

Can't help mentioning one fact though, sorry. The customer cost of alternative energy systems, primarily  wind and solar, are less per KWH than petro and coal based energy production despite the multibillion dollar annual subsidies petro receives in our tax dollars. Source DOE.

Our use of petroleum and coal products is not going away. Maybe we can find better ways of using the valuable resource than burning it or creating mountains of plastic waste. Personally I like to breathe clean air and woods lounge in areas that don't resemble trash pits. But that's just me.

The energy we extract from fossil fuels today is available in part due the initial solar energy input long ago. Our star is still providing that energy and will for a long time. It seems we might make better use of that energy now that we have reliable means to do so. But again, that's just me.

Hope you enjoy our Spring season and all it offers.

[Moe M.]

Interesting post Moe. 

I'll not argue the claims or confuse the issue with facts as we're all entitled to our opinions. What I can offer however, are the widely published photos of the short term changes in our world during the general lockdown due to recent Covid. The before during, and after photographs clearly demonstrate stark differences in air and water quality in cities from Venice, Italy, Los Angeles, USA and large areas of India just for starters. The contribution of human activities is undeniable.

Some might also recall the Time magazine cover in the late 1960s of the Cuyahoga River on fire after pollutants spontaneously combusted. The photo was of the fifth such incident on that river by the way. That mess was cleaned up by taxpayers just as mine tailings, leaking slurry impoundments and other "externalities" are. Tax dollars are the fund in Superfund.

Can't help mentioning one fact though, sorry. The customer cost of alternative energy systems, primarily  wind and solar, are less per KWH than petro and coal based energy production despite the multibillion dollar annual subsidies petro receives in our tax dollars. Source DOE.

Our use of petroleum and coal products is not going away. Maybe we can find better ways of using the valuable resource than burning it or creating mountains of plastic waste. Personally I like to breathe clean air and woods lounge in areas that don't resemble trash pits. But that's just me.

The energy we extract from fossil fuels today is available in part due the initial solar energy input long ago. Our star is still providing that energy and will for a long time. It seems we might make better use of that energy now that we have reliable means to do so. But again, that's just me.

Hope you enjoy our Spring season and all it offers.

 Thank you Boomer, Spring, Summer, and Fall are my favorite of seasons, I used to enjoy Winter just as much but advanced age has reduced my tolerance for cold and snow has gone from a wonder to a PITA that needs to be shoveled, plowed, and spread over with ice melt.
 Anyhow, back to our discussion, facts are a funny things, they can be ignored, they can be interpreted differently, or they can be distracted from by injecting various minutiae, I've seen them all in action by prosecutors, defense lawyers, and defendants in my LE career, but nowhere more than in political discussions.
 You might bee interested (even pleased) to know that I agree with you about the affects of pollution (mostly commercial) have had on this planet and our lives, and yes I agree that activism is probably the main reason that we have made great strides in cleaning up our environment, and that's a good thing, I grew up in an industrial area of the country, Textile mills a few miles away, the shoe manufacturing capital of the world in the first half of the 20th century 20 minutes to the north, and one of the biggest US Rubber processing plants in the country to the west of me.       
 I remember streams running green and yellow with rust colored bottoms, rivers that contained no fish, and ponds covered with scum from industrial waste water, and smoke stacks belching black smoke who's ash would burn through automobile paint on workers cars parked in mill yards, these were eventually cleaned up because they were actual man made pollutants, but natural cyclic changes in the earths temps, weather, and rotation is another problem all together, these types of changes have been going on since the earth was created without the help or hinderance of mankind.
 If you want to make a difference in our environment let the technology of Green energy catch up with the need for affordable energy while supporting the fossil fuel industry until green energy can support itself, a better use of our time and money would be to work against the continual burning of the rain forests of the world, another is to force through sanctions the great polluters of the world like China and others who spew their pollutants and toxins into the air at will and pay no fines or bare no responsibility for the damage they release into our air.
 Don't be fooled, Global Warming/Climate Change today is not about saving the planet, it's all about Money, Power, Politics, feeding the Globalist Industrial Complex, and supporting the Great Global Reset.

[boomer]

Thank you For that thoughtful reply Moe.  I notice a difference in the Winter cold myself.

I agree with your reply. 

Might be a shock but there it is.

With you up until the very end but I don't know much about the reset business so looked that up. Still need to research it though. One thing that's clear is we can't just go on as we have. What the best solutions may be I don't pretend to know.

Likely to be interesting times.

[Mad-max]

We love the seasons.  But hunker down in two very different areas in a year.  Did it for almost 40 years.  Did it when you were required to mask up in the farce of pandemic panic.  Will continue on.

Earth Day has good intentions.  One day a year.  Wanna help?  Buy a hunting/fishing license and add a duck/ lobster/snook / wma stamp.  They actually help our wildlife.

[boomer]

We love the seasons.  But hunker down in two very different areas in a year.  Did it for almost 40 years.  Did it when you were required to mask up in the farce of pandemic panic.  Will continue on.

Earth Day has good intentions.  One day a year.  Wanna help?  Buy a hunting/fishing license and add a duck/ lobster/snook / wma stamp.  They actually help our wildlife.

Agree with hunting/fishing license suggestion. Been doing that for a long time. A lot to be said for voluntary taxes.