I’ve got a quick rant. I was listening to NPR, and they were doing one of their pro-interviewee interviews of this lady who was running a book store at the Wall Street Occupation.

At the end, the interviewer lets the Occupation librarian explain her philosophical thoughts. She explained that she doesn’t like the way our country treats our weakest members, minorities, etc. Not unreasonable, right? Then she goes on to explain that her biggest issue, the thing she think is the priority, is to transition to a carbon neutral  society, and that the reason we aren’t is because the ‘oil companies’ are preventing it. lol

It’s this kind of utterly ignorant thinking that makes my teeth itch. Earlier in the interview she was saying that the library represents the Occupation movement’s purpose of educating people and educating themselves. lol I guess there aren’t any math books in that library, or books on business or technology.

So, I have some questions about this:

1.       Which “oil companies” is she talking about?

2.       If these oil companies are humans, residents of earth, and they know of a technology that could replace oil – Why do they stick with earning peanuts selling oil??? 

3.       The idea that there’s a secret technology the oil companies are hiding, for several decades has been a favorite random claim of idiots who think making erroneous statements sounds smart. Assuming they’re wrong, we’re left with non-secret non-carbon-releasing energy technology. In that case, remembering that you’re already concerned about how our weak members and minorities are treated, how are poor people going to eat and not freeze to death????

I had an epiphany today, about hillbillies. I thought – well, wait a minute, let me back up…

So the other day, I’m outside doing some work. Down the street, one of my hillbilly neighbors is using a leaf blower to push all his leaves out into the street. This is not necessarily an uncommon practice. Perhaps, some people feel it’s easier to bag the pile once it’s on the pavement. Maybe they plan on burning them? I don’t know.

In this case though, the hillbilly found himself with a huge pile of leaves in the street, and not the initiative one needs to do anything responsible with it. So… With the help of hillbilly resourcefulness, he backs his truck out of the drive and up the road a ways, and, repeatedly, speeds it through the pile, each time, lengthening the pile until it stretches half the block. I guess he figured that was cool. Now even people without trees have a bunch of his leaves all over their easement.

Now back to my epiphany today. I thought “We need to end ‘reproductive rights.’” I’m all for personal freedom and so on… but we have to stop the hillbilly cycle. The trouble is, anyone can become a hillbilly. You just feel self-entitled and turn seriously lazy. But children of hillbillies… They’re screwed. What can they do? Even if they are a naturally industrious type, all they have to follow are benefits-drawing fat smokers.

Pragmatically speaking though, ending reproductive rights isn’t realistic. The technology isn’t there yet, nor is the political will. And even if the political will was there, it wouldn’t, because the big mommy government side of the aisle relies on hillbillies for election.

 So how can we approach this creatively? Let’s outline some knowns:
1.       Liberals like to spend money on useless stupid shit that makes hillbillies happy.

2.       Hillbillies like to do stupid things.

3.       Hillbillies especially like to do stupid things when a video camera is available.

4.       Hillbillies like internal combustion engines.

 Based on these facts, I’d like to propose the development of a motorized unicycle, one that’s affordable enough to package with a video camera. Then, we need to lobby for a program in the next stimulus bill to provide them to hillbillies free of charge, along with food stamps.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Not everyone on food stamps is a hillbilly. Also true, not all hillbillies are on food stamps. However – and this is a point that will be lost on the Liberals – the non-hillbillies will sell their motorized unicycles. And who in the world would buy a discount motorized unicycle? A hillbilly of course.  

 Thoughts?

Here’s an article by John Petersen on why the electric car is a no-go for future energy independence due to the very limited rare earth elements that are required to produce the batteries. It is a great argument for recuperative braking, and a great argument against the obvious, that replacing fuel with batteries is an extremely naïve idea with regard to either environmental concerns or energy supplies. I was bitching about that during the cap and trade debate, if my memory serves.

Innovation is what’s needed though. The key to energy independence isn’t these wild ideas about shifting us from cars to trains, but rather developing technologies like practical energy cells. This requires investment. And fuel cells include more technologies than electric storage batteries, which are horrible.

Hydrogen is a good example. It’s a portable fuel. And it’s made from electricity which could be generated in remote areas of the country, like in mountains from turbines or in deserts from solar panels, and shipped in a variety of was to fueling stations.

Who knows what technology will produce. Hopefully though, the next leap in transportation technology will appear in the US under a US company.

There’s a lot of $$$ locked up in US companies right now, waiting out uncertainty. A lot of people would like to see taxes raised on companies, and that money used to fund research. That’s a better idea than using such monies to fund green projects using today’s piss-poor green technology. But still, the usual process in Washington is to divvy money out to congressman’s districts for supporting the bill, rather than to the most promising research projects. And that’s assuming any of those fools in Washington could determine what’s promising.

Others would like to keep the tax burden off companies so they can do their own research. This is a fine idea, but could take a long time. Such research is risky. A lot of people and corporations will certainly be losing billions before that singularity is found, and no one is in a hurry to do that right now.

Because energy is such an important thing to all of us, and is essential to safety and security, I think government should be finding ways to promote this innovation. Taxing so Uncle Sam can write checks is the wrong way to do it, because as I’ve said, Washington doesn’t reward merit, it rewards votes. So I think the best way to promote domestic fuel cell research is to reduce the capital gains tax, and perhaps the corporate tax, on such research projects.

It’s a matter of overcoming uncertainty, both from the bad economy and the gamble of scientific progress. Lowering those taxes specifically on green energy will increase the reward to investors, and thus overcome some of that uncertainty and move money in. Simple economics – complicated fuel science.

Worst case: Investors don’t move money to green energy and things stay the same, no loss in revenue. Second worst case: Investors move money out of other investments into green energy, tax revenues decrease but carefully targeted green energy investment increase. Best case: Locked up money comes loose, tax revenues rise, and someone invents a practical green vehicle fuel system.

Here is a good article on retirement strategies:

Yahoo Finance

It discusses the differences and weaknesses of the 4% rule and the bucket approach.

I feel as if the people of the Western world have become so comfortable and reached so high expectations that they are unwilling to contribute to society for more than 20-30 years. Many people work 40 years out of necessity, but few do it by choice. Perhaps it is from years of doing a job you hate working for a boss you hate and receiving a paycheck you feel is unfair.

I remember talking to someone who had recently retired from Ford Motor Co. I asked him what he was going to do now. After 20+ years of working a 40+ hour week keeping his mind sharp and using his skills that had been developed from years of schooling and training, his answer was , “What do you mean what am I going to do? I am retired! I’m not going to do anything!” After a few seconds of silence he added, “Golf!”.

I understand you probably hated your job and worked hard. Now you want to enjoy the fruits of your labor. But can one really do nothing for the next 20 years of his life expectancy after being productive for the first 55? Really? Nothing?

I do not believe this guy is alone. Many people really do nothing. Their mind becomes slow and their muscles weak. They age by choice, not by genetics. Not because they want to get old, but because they choose not to live, and part of living is learning and doing, regardless of your age. Maybe if I had a life expectancy of 75 or 80 I would feel differently, but from what I read, if I can continue to run and eat less M&Ms, I can expect at least 100-120 years of life. When I am 55 I may consider going back to school to start my second career. If I do retire early, even at 55, I can’t see myself doing nothing. With the growing apathy and laziness of people around me and the growing power of China, the decline of education, and the decline of our space capabilities, this country needs more output, and people retiring at 55 and then doing nothing with their hard-earned knowledge is not only a waste but borderline treason.

Add to that, the first 18-22 years are also non-productive years spent learning. So you sponge for 18 year, work for 47, then spend the rest retired after age 65. That was reasonable before modern medicine when, if you did manage to reach 65, you probably weren’t able to work. Age 65 was that age where people NEEDED their children or society to look after them. It wasn’t lifetime-reward-vacation send-off day.

America just spent the past decade buying consumer garbage with home equity money. That’s over now. I think it’s apparent. We won’t get that piece of the economy back. Those jobs are GONE. But don’t be fooled. That’s not the transition we need to keep our eye one. ‘Fixing’ the economy isn’t about replacing those borrowed gains which we’re now having to pay for.

It must be becoming obvious to everyone, or will soon, that our economy, the world economy, is making a transition, and has been for the last 20 years. The world is quickly moving from an industrial economy to a technology economy. Steam liberated the horse. The internal combustion engine liberated the farmer. Electricity liberated the housewife. Computers liberated repetition. Networks liberated information. And the combination of computers and networks are liberating the laborer. Liberation = obsolescence.

The new economy doesn’t need the type of jobs that low skilled workers do, the kind that tires a person out by age 65. The new economy needs people who can use their minds and work with information to create systems that do the things that used to take a human’s labor. And as long as you’re not an average recreational eater with an aversion to exercise, 65 is probably not that profound of a milestone physiologically.

We’re so pathetic now. Sponging until 25 or 30 with mom and dad, then we work for 25 or maybe 30 years, and then play golf.

People feel entitled to only work 20 or 30 years before retiring. We’ve got our philosophy on work all wacked out now days. We’re too soft and comfortable, as previously stated. Thats why medicare and SS are killing the economy, because people feel they are entitled to receive it as soon as they reach the ripe old age of 60 or 65. The greatest generation had it right. They worked their asses off until they physically couldn’t get up, then retired, not by choice, but because they had to. And even then, they were trying to do something useful like going up on the roof to fix a leak, fixing crap, etc. All the while their kids were telling them to knock it off or they would fall and break a hip.

We’re so different now. We expect to live like kings and for the government to cater to our every need and whim when the bell dings 60. And if we have to lift a finger after 60, its unjust, unfair, and makes us feel self righteous.

It’s even worse in Europe, where you have 20 and 30 year olds who live in families where no one has ever worked because the government has supported them their entire lives. Then like we saw, they go into the streets and riot saying they will show the business owners who are “rich people” that they will not be told what to do and will forcibly take their wealth because they are entitled to it.

Society has gone upsidedown. Our grandparents understood that the wealthy earned their wealth and they were not entitled to it, but rather grateful for the jobs the “rich” produced. Maybe because the technology age is not as visible as the industrial in its workings, people feel like wealth pops out of no where and strikes the lucky people.

In the industrial age, you saw Ford and edison, and these other rich guys physically using might and brute muscle to create their empires and wealth, while today, you see bill gates and Jobs sitting in their garages smoking weed, “playing on computers”, and making billions from it. So today’s rich guys seem like they just screwed around to become welathy and everyone feels entitled to the same “easy” road to wealth.

This brings up good point about welfare: It’s inherited. Wouldn’t that be weird growing up in a family where no one works? How unnatural it would be for such children to grow up and spend 8 hours a day at a job. And the real problem with people in these welfare-subcultures is, there’s nowhere to go. If all you’ve known is sitting around the house getting a meager check – how could you possible understand what a “Rich Shop-owner” actually is? “E’s goat like fi-ey tellies in e’s shop. That’s like fi-teen thousand quid! I koal that rich.”

But seriously, people in these subcultures can do two things to increase their standard of living. One, they can have more babies. Two, they can enter the criminal economy. Work should be an option too, but unskilled jobs don’t pay a lot more than some benefits, if those jobs exist in their neighborhood at all.

That poses a good question: What do we do with the monkey people? We need fewer and fewer of them every day. So, if your job is simple, if anything you do is at all repetitious, if you rely on your union to keep your standard of living, or if your job requires less than two years’ worth of training — for the love of Bob, STOP F******G AROUND WITH VIDEO GAMES IN YOUR OFF HOURS AND SPEND THEM LEARNING!!! It’s only a matter of time before layoffs come through and you’re helplessly bitching and moaning about Obama and the rich people screwing you.

Oh? Indeed? Your job can’t be replaced by a computer? You drive a fork lift around and retrieve parts per order and pack them in trucks in reverse order of drop-off? Hmmm. Maybe you’re safe… Or, maybe you’re company will do like Art Van did 10 years ago. They replaced a whole mob of warehouse workers with an automated system. Instead of having 50 guys running around, they’ve got one computer, an automated storage and retrieval system (sort of like HUGE vending machine), and one guy that can operate the computer, and a hand full of guys to do minimum wage labor. You might not get canned when that happens, but you probably will, unless you’ve been learning something about computers.

In other words, computers won’t replace people in the way people currently function. The movement, the economy, the knowledge, the way of thinking that created computers and is improving computers will also find ways to do your job without your meaty hands and the expenses and liabilities they incur.

So, to answer that question: “What should we do with this monkey-brained rabble?” Here’s my three-step solution:
1. Stop describing ‘reproductive rights’ as ‘deeply personal’ and start neutering anyone and everyone who receives government aid in any way, even temporarily, including prison inmates or persons arrested. We can set up a little stand next to the fingerprinting station or mug-shot station.

2. Legalize marihuana, tax it, and use the proceeds to fund a secret government program to develop a cheaper, more intense, and more deadly version or meth, and flood the hillbilly market with it, in addition to releasing the recipe.

3. Secretly borrow money from the SS fund in order to fund a secret program that sets up abortion clinics that, instead of killing babies, transfers them into artificial wombs. With the help of gene therapy, we can create a new branch to the military composed entirely of highly conditioned and indoctrinated young soldiers, for purposes of profitable foreign military campaigns and the revitalization of Manifest Destiny.

Darn it. I put the wrong 3-step solution in that message. That’s just my normal boilerplate universal 3-step solution. Here’s the specific solution to the concerns about, “How do we clean society of these more-ape-than-man, shitting, eating, parasitic blobs?”
1. Offer vocational training to the motivated ones.

2. Cut the unmotivated ones off of benefits so they have to take the shitty service jobs from high school kids.

3. Now that the high school kids can’t get jobs, and thus can’t afford drugs or a car to have sex in, they’ll have to learn to masturbate better and will focus on school, get college loans and focus on college, then get a job maintaining and/or developing the systems that replaced mom and dad, hopefully before a bright, young, educated, lives off $2.50 a day Indian or Chinese kid snatches it.

The thing about a FREE market is – it’s irrational. Free markets are very poor at preparing for changes. But interestingly, are good at adjusting to change, after a good hard long deadly panic of course. This is why the best economies are wisely regulated free markets.

There are two big problems with using oil as a critical energy source. First, it’s getting more ‘expensive.’ 100 years ago you could recover oil with an A-frame, a pick-axe, shovel, and a few buckets. Later we implemented mechanical systems to help. We spent a small amount of energy for each barrel of oil recovered. Currently, especially in off-shore locations and in Alaska, or when we ship it half way around the globe or from places we have to defend with aircraft carriers, we spend a large % of that barrel of oil just recovering it. We’re on the path to spending 1 barrel of oil’s worth of energy to recover 1 barrel. It won’t be long before we’re paying for 2 or 3 units of energy for every unit of gas we pump. Second, it’s unstable. Oil requires a LONG messy network to reach the gas station.

Also, there are better uses for oil and natural gas than burning it. Burning it is stupid. We make plastic out of natural gas, yet we burn it inefficiently to heat our homes. Coal is one of our nation’s greatest assets. But like the Liberals say, it is damaging to recover and poisons our environment.

Forcing energy prices up will cause serious damage to the economy. Destroy it – probably not. What we need to cause is energy costs to come down. For this to happen we need alternatives to expensive oil, gas, and coal. For this we need innovation. And for innovation we need investment – which requires a strong economy. People don’t risk money in bad economies with high energy costs, not until they absolutely must. It’s that FREE market irrationality. What we’ve learned from Europe’s ill-fated green energy revolution is to invest in green innovation – and not to pour tax dollars into expensive Chinese-made solar panels and wind turbines.

Increasing costs are inevitable. Taping Alaska isn’t going to do jack-diddly to bring down energy costs. Some have suggested building toll booths and tracking devices on vehicles to charge drivers based on their use of roads.  This is an intriguing idea – but I also find the idea off-putting of building more bureaucracy and unnecessary infrastructure that can track people. It’s far-sighted in that – one day – we won’t be pumping gas but we’ll still need to pay for road maintenance. We’ll be charging up some super fuel cell and driving on it for the whole week. But why make it so complicated? Just tax the damn energy directly. That’s what annoys me about income tax, cap n trade, and all the other business… Just tax it directly. Let us see it on the receipt – ffs. We currently have a cents per gallon tax on gas to pay for roads. Why not just make it a % per dollar? Or tax the miles directly. Or tax the electricity directly.

The market, on its own, will make the transition to green and renewable energies in its own timing and in a way that will not tear the country and world to shreds in the process. The problem is, although we might not be left in shreds, such a free-market transition will probably kill us all or have us riding horses around. The free market will use the cheapest source until a crisis arises, then panic, then crash.

We need more than market forces to get us away from these fuels. I’d rather have all this coal in the ground 100 years from now anyway. What if there’s a world-wide disaster 50 years from now? One so big it knocks us back into the iron age, like a solar flare that fries all our electronics – transformers, cars, and computers. We’ll need that coal to get going again. If we use the energy plan proposed by many of using current fuels until the market naturally transitions to green energires, ALL the energy accessibly without space-age technology will be gone from the earth in our lifetime.

So what’s the solution? Glad you asked. I’ve been pondering this for a while.

First step: Increase efficiency.
We currently use energy in a truly reckless way.
1. Engineer traffic! Replace stop-lights with roundabouts, or at least time the lights in some rational way where roundabouts aren’t suitable.

2. Do you ever wonder why, when you’re sitting there, nudging along in a traffic backup, why the fuck half the miserable freeway is cut off by orange barrels – without anyone doing any ******** work? It’s simple. If you’ve ever chatted with anyone from a civil engineering firm, they’ll explain that basically, they set out the barrels a few days early in an effort to ‘train’ the traffic. They don’t move the fucking barrels before they leave for the same reason. Well – that’s just stupid. Someone be creative for Pete’s sake. Traffic backups guzzle fuel.

3. Let’s figure a way to start converting regular furnaces into internal combustion engines. If you’re burning the gas, you’ll get the heat either way. Burning it through an engine will give you extra heat in the form of friction, and allow you to generate free electricity.

4. We need a smart power grid. Imagine a grid set up like servers on the internet, with internal combustion engines on every node (homes, businesses) – counting the vehicles, maybe more. If a plant goes down, a neighborhood’s power could come from its own furnaces. Regardless, a smart grid would save something greater than 15% on energy waste, I’ve heard. This would also allow individuals to sell energy back with panels and turbines.

5. Move from long-distance truck transit to rail, specifically, develop short-line rail, which is the rail infrastructure that links the trans-continental rail to factories and truck-docks. National passenger rail is as realistic of an idea as ideas relying on unicorns and their magical powers.

Second step: Increase innovation.
Innovation requires investment. And even the Liberals seem to be coming around to the idea that investment in creating new energy technology is a better way to waste other people’s money than dumping it into expensive current green energy. So should we tax people and have congress write a bill and create bureaucracies for the purposes of distributing grants to promising efforts? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! We’ve learned that lesson, haven’t we????? Congress will simply use such power to throw money into their own precious districts and reward contributions.

What about an independent non-partisan board that evaluates and grades promising submissions from green energy entrepreneurs in an effort – blah blah blah…. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously people! Who do you think you /we are?

Here it is. I’m about to tell you how to solve America’s energy problem. Are you ready? I’m not sure you are. Are you sitting down? Go ahead and take a seat. Take a deep breath. Hey, why not go grab a glass of ice-water and give it a quick sip. OK? Ready?

First, we need to define “Green Energy.” Now, this is important. This definition has to be wide enough to encompass the unimaginable ideas of the near future, fuel cells, fusion reactors, algae farms, space elevators, and at the same time not leave accounting holes (usually the result of specific exception for specific congressional votes) that allow any fool business with a sign on a storage room door reading, “Solar Panel Division” to call their body shop a green energy business. Having a pet chicken doesn’t classify you as a farmer – kind of thing…

This definition needs to be simple too. You shouldn’t have to hire an accountant and an attorney to read and follow it.

Once we have this definition, we can deal the death blow to high energy prices and pollution in one mighty scratch of the pen. All we have to do, is create one simple exception in the tax code that makes any investment in “Green Energy” to be totally and utterly free from taxes. Specifically, no capital gains tax, no corporate tax, no income tax on green energy research or production.

We might as well not make the tax code any more needlessly complex. We’d still have retail sales tax on actual green items, panels and turbines and stuff, just not on research investment and manufacturing in the US.

This would be profound. If anything, problems might include other areas being starved for investment. But the speed of green innovation would suddenly turn rapid with billions of highly targeted and well planned dollars being invested. With the new cheap energy, we could stop wasting money on expensive dirty energy and have more to pay off China and the rest.

I just heard a fun story on NPR. It was accidentally so contrary to their usual approach to things. It was an interview of this NGO guy who has spent like 20 years in developing world digging wells and latrines. His current endeavor is to change the way these organizations try to help people – based on his own mistakes.

They tried like hell to frame the conversation in a – we all need to buy compost toilets – type of thing, but the main message that slipped out was a pro-capitalist one.

Basically, what water organizations have been doing is sweeping in, building some kind of well, assembling a little local village committee to control the well, and training several locals villagers to repair and operate it. You know – the ideal social model Liberals so badly want to believe in… Or in the case of one small village, they just put one lady in charge who was then ostracized when the equipment failed in a way she couldn’t fix. Gee… And I get anxious when my web servers are down…

The trouble with this model is the obvious one to any idiot who has spent time outside of a suburban home or university. The people trained to maintain the well die, move away, or just don’t do it, or don’t know how to do the tough stuff. Or, something happens, like a flood, and that’s that.

However, a model sprang up from villages that just wanted to pay someone to maintain their well. Organically, some of the guys trained to care for local wells started traveling around, maintaining wells for a fee. They do a good job because they know what they’re doing, can get the parts, and all that horse shit. So one day, this one area gets flooded. All their water points are destroyed. What happens?

The nasty capitalist traveling plumbers swoop in and get to work – fix like 100 water points in a few days, the only ones left broken are still under water. People are trying to gather up their lives, can’t get to their money, all their shit has washed away – but hell – they got clean water to drink. The bill’s in the mail.

I was watching a show called Future Weapons. There is this company called Pinnacle Armor developing body armor called Dragon Skin that is constructed like fish scales – a bunch of overlapping discs. It works because the discs are about indestructible and because they overlap and spread out the force.

This shit is mighty-serious. The guy was testing it by shooting it repeatedly with 5.56mm and 7.62mm steel-core rifle rounds. Zero penetration. So they put the test dummy on top of a grenade and blew it up. It tore up the rig and made a mess of the armor – butzero penetration. Of course, your brain would be liquid. Regardless, technology has finally given us actual personal armor again. It’s actual bullet proof.

After seeing this show I thought: Why isn’t the military using this armor? Right now we use heavy steel plates and brittle ceramic stuff. Well, of course, it’s bureaucratic political bullshit. First, Dec 20,2006, the National Institute of Justice certified the armor. Then, in August 3, 2007, for some reason, someone reviewed the tests and declared it wasn’t enough data to support Pinnacle Armor’s 6-year warranty. August 20, 2007 the US Test Laboratory tested nine six-year-old Dragon Skin vests. All the ballistics tests passed. Pinnacle resubmitted their vest for certification, but the application was rejected because the tests had not been properly documented. WTF?

I also read hear-say about problems with the armor in hot weather – the scales don’t rebound quickly enough when multiple pieces of shrapnel or bullets are hitting them. FFS though, Uncle Sam, give these assholes some money and stop jerking them around. In the next decade I want to see actual bulletproof coveralls with climate control – talk about saving money on healthcare.

ICANN, the agency that controls internet domain rules and such, like .com, .net, .org, etc, just approved a new rule whereby people and companies will be able to have a fully custom top domain.  ICANN has been loosening restrictions on these for the last few years.  We’ve seen new domains like .biz, .aero, .xxx, etc, but they’ve taken the next step.  So for example, if your company is Noisy Dove Inc, you could apply and get the top domain name of .noisydoveinc, where you can put anything in front of the period, like politics.noisydoveinc.  So .noisydoveinc is just like the typical .com.  Imagine being able to replace .com with anything you want.

There are restrictions on it at this point though.  There will definitely not be a mad rush of every day people applying for and getting these new custom top domains.  ICANN is limiting them to 1,000 new top level domains per year.  And each one will go through an intense application process that will cost $185,000.  The company or person that does this will have to handle the infrastructure of actually owning the domain name.  I bet in 5 years, an 8 year old will be able to hop on line and buy their own top level domain for like $20.

They might as well offer this. With IPV6 there will be enough IP addresses to give every grain of sand their own address. IPV6 is 128 bits, which allows 3.4×10^38 addresses. IPs will be written in hexadecimal form.

I found a really great show. It’s called Whale Wars. It’s this environmental group that somehow got a shit load of financing and have all these fancy ships, a helicopter, and other equipment. They track down whaling ships and harass them. I’m watching episode 1 of season 1. It’s TOTAL armature hour.

Seven days out and they’ve already damaged their helicopter. One of the experienced guys was telling the new people over and over, “If you go overboard, even if we find you, you’ll be frozen to death.” Then, first thing, they dump 4 people out of a zodiac.

Their leader is totally incompetent. He has his friend as second in command, the guy who dumped the zodiac by not keeping tension on the bow line which allowed it to hit the water sideways. Mr. Captain said it wouldn’t have happened if fewer people were in the zodiac. lol It’s like a little club full of self-righteous personalities, and the usual emotional tension, plus expensive equipment and a deadly environment.

Oh yeah. After they dumped the one zodiac, they tried getting a second one in the water to save the people. It wouldn’t start! LOL WTF? And they weren’t surprised it didn’t start. You’re in the arctic ocean and you’re not maintaining your vital equipment?

I was watching the news recently and there was a Clean Coal commercial talking about how they already trap a lot of CO2 from their processes and contain it.  The commercial went on to describe new breakthrough ideas and concepts for storing this trapped CO2, like burying it under the ground and at the bottom of the ocean.  These are ideas that have really gained a lot of exposure lately.  This is apparently the next big hope of the global warming camp for saving the planet.  And why shouldn’t it be?  I mean, hasn’t burying toxic, harmful, and other health hazardous materials always worked like a charm?

If I hadn’t seen hour long specials on Discovery about these methods and didn’t know these ideas were serious, I’d totally think they were the product of some 3rd grade science project with the cute little displays assembled in a half box with paper mache and sand held down with globs of Elmer’s Glue.  This IS the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard for storing the world’s CO2.  Never mind the general idea of trapping all CO2 in the world in the first place, which is completely ignorant for obvious reason.  If we could and then ram-rodded it all underground and pumped it to the bottom of the oceans, we’d destroy the planet for sure.  It would probably cause some global life ending catastrophe.

Hasn’t the history and success record of storing dangerous things underground or at the bottom of the ocean already proved over and over that we shouldn’t purposefully use this as a means of containment?  All you hear about is how these materials stored underground, or even above ground that seeped underground, contaminate ground and drinking water.  There are cases of CO2, having seeped out of the ground and kept pressurized at the bottom of lakes, is disturbed by a landslide and escapes, killing hundreds of people in their sleep, like a cloud of death.  Community organizations and committees always vehemently protest and fight such things as garbage dumps and underground toxic containment sites from being built near their cities.  Everyone knows these things are bad for the environment and will inevitably cause cancer, birth defects, and worse.

Imagine now trapping all the CO2 in the world and trying to find a city willing to serve as the underground storage site for it.  There would be outrage or probably worse, because everyone knows its a horrible idea.  Common sense tells us this is a disaster waiting to happen.  Why has it taken thousands of scientists, engineers, and others to come up with the worst idea possible?  This is elementary stuff.  Common sense stuff.  Even idiot common sense stuff.  But yet it’s the premier storage idea for all this CO2 they want to trap.  Bury it… Seriously?