“Remember when you could just throw a girl into a volcano?” – The Cabin in the Woods
Did you know that you can put molten lava in your mouth? I mean, only once, but still.
I know we there is a lot of fretting about the current political situation, which may well lead to a dictatorship in the United States (at least temporarily) and that bothers some people, I guess, but thrills others. As Elon Musk noted, “’When did Rage Against The Machine’ become ‘Rage For The Machine’?”
Outside of the impending dictatorship, which, I know, is like saying, “But aside from not knowing where you were, how did the debate go, Mr. Biden?” I think an even bigger problem faced by humanity is that of energy.
Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has become more and more dependent upon vast amounts of stored sunlight in the form of fossil fuels. Even if you’re an abiotic oil enjoyer, the problem is resource replenishment time, which is certainly at least in the thousands of years timeframe except in certain cases that would be dependent on very specific conditions. If it’s all dead plants and stuff, that puts recharge rates in the millions of years timeframe.
This is important because, no matter how you slice it, energy is freedom.
And another scientist came up with a unified theory of seatbelts. He said, “It just clicked.”
The attack on freedom through energy has been ongoing for decades. I think, deep down, those of the GloboLeftElite who love control (which is all of them) aren’t happy when people have freedom. Since I’ve observed an inverse relationship between the amount of freedom in the world and the price of energy, the powers that be love Global Warming®.
No, they aren’t really excited about Global Warming™, they’re excited about the amount of control that it allows them to wield over people. How Dare You Herself admits (see below) that her goal is to destroy all of capitalism. Now, if that’s her goal, why is she funded by capitalist George Soros? It’s odd that Global Warming gets so much of the attention of huge power users like Microsoft® and that those that tout the solution create more sweet, sweet carbon dioxide than Poland.
If Greta Thunberg could rearrange all the letters in her name, that would be great. (Meme as found.)
The concern about Global Warming® isn’t because the GloboLeftistElite love humanity, in fact it’s quite the opposite: they despise humanity and want to watch it suffer.
That being said, even an old, crusty skeptic like myself noted that it was pretty warm in 2023, so I wondered why that would be. Of course, the answer was right in front of my face the whole time, but it took a reminder in the form of a story emailed by Ricky to me to jar the old grey matter enough to recall.
In January of 2022, the volcano Tonga erupted. Now, if you’re going to have a volcano, a good name for it is in order, one that implies that when it erupts it destroyed an entire ancient alien civilization. Mount St. Helens does not fit the bill – it’s “meh” tier at best. Mount Pinatubo is better. But better yet? Tonga, which is more formally known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga, meets that criteria since you could yell “Hunga Tonga-Hunga” at anyone in an elevator and they’d know you were one serious dude. Try it, you’ll see what I mean.
When Godzilla® isn’t destroying cities, I hear he has a business flipping houses.
Regardless, in August of 2022, NASA opined that Tonga’s eruption had launched enough water high into the stratosphere to increase the volume of water there by 10%. Water is, of course, the most potent greenhouse gas by volume. This excludes my deodorant, which is specifically designed to keep me covered in baby oil and smelling like hydrocarbons and also eliminate pesky ozone in the upper atmosphere. It’s a three-in-one product.
Hunga Tonga-Hunga shot the largest amount of water vapor added to the stratosphere that men who record such things have ever recorded. To double the impact, when a volcano normally blows, in addition to water vapor, it often blasts particulates into the atmosphere that block and reflect part of the Sun’s light back into space, leading to a wee bit of net cooling.
I was shocked to find out that six out of seven dwarves aren’t Happy®.
But not Hunga Tonga-Hunga. It was, in fact, perfectly situated to maximize water output and minimize particulate output. And it was just shallow enough to zap out all that water, but not so deep so that the water would be absorbed by the deep water above it. Thus? A warm year.
And, unless Dr. Evil caused this via volcano an unsanctioned experiment in Evil Science®, mankind was 100% off the hook for this, as mankind has likewise done very little during our lifetimes to make the climate warmer. Yes, all the agriculture has an impact, but people gotta eat.
But this is still very, very different than the alarmists indicate. There will be more hurricanes. Oops, did we say more? We meant there will be fewer hurricanes. And it might cause things to get cooler.
In short, Global Warming™ is whatever will make you scared and turn you to full autocratic communism.
The problem with Global Warming® is that it’s distracting us from the real problem: we need energy.
Yes, I’m in favor of Clean™ energy, but it has to make thermodynamic sense – we have to get more energy out of the system than we spend making the energy, which is not the case with most renewables (ethanol, biodiesel, I’m looking at you). Global Warming© is a distraction, and is moving capital needed to create an energy secure future into corrupt projects that loot tax dollars to give to political cronies that are net energy sinks.
I guess it’s a Nguyen-Nguyen situation.
But, hey, I said energy is freedom, and if they don’t want energy, they don’t want us to have freedom.
At least they’re making George Soros happy.
If we want to have all electric cars, we need to commission a nuclear power plant every week for thirty years. The people pushing all-electric everything are the same ones shutting down power production. The goal isn’t “conservation”, it’s extinction and immiseration. They mean to be lords, and to do that, they must have peasants and slaves to lord over.
Yoop.
As far as solar goes, it’s viable due to the supression of silver pricing that’s gone on since the mid-1800s. The cat will get out of the bag pretty soon, and h*ll will break loose. EVs included.
China’s Ag demand is increasing by 20%+ annually (minimum). And Greta, et al also are hard at work to prevent new mines from opening. Solar can alleviate petroleum/nat gas/coal demand, but…
It’s a Clown World when an autistic 21 year old tells the world how to conform. And is accepted by a sizeable portion of the population…and 100% of the Elites.
The Tonga volcano was incredible. Most Americans never even heard about it.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/gif/2022/05/17/tonga.gif
https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/c13/132/eaad1b81e5502dfbe29c663ca8c3b6fb1d-cropped-Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Haapai-2022015.rhorizontal.w1100.jpg
It was the equivalent of a 60 megaton nuclear blast, even bigger than the Russian Tsar Bomba. It shot 400,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and 150 million tons of water vapor ABOVE THE STRATOSPHERE AND INTO THE MESOSPHERE more than 55 miles up. This was unprecedented and a big deal because it literally tore a hole in the ozone layer up there.
Interestingly, there is increasing agreement among scientists that the Tonga volcano has NOT been responsible for the recent “super hot summer” temperature spike, altho it is expected to influence weather for the rest of the 2020s.
https://theconversation.com/tongas-volcanic-eruption-could-cause-unusual-weather-for-the-rest-of-the-decade-new-study-shows-231074
The Tonga volcano produced an estimated 0.0004 billion tons of SO2 and 0.1500 billion tons of water vapor as greenhouse gases. Assuming that water vapor is roughly 5X “more potent” than CO2, then Tonga produced 0.7500 million tons of “CO2 equivalent”. For comparison purposes, people currently produce 0.0260 billion tons of SO2 and 36.8000 billion tons of carbon dioxide greenhouse gases per year from petroleum burning. The reason the Tonga volcano had “oversized impact” was because it was able to inject its output into such a high altitude.
Billions of tiny ants can produce more devastation than one big Godzilla.
For the record, I agree with John that most of the Global Warming hype is more of an exercise in political control than actual concern for the planet. However, I do think people are indeed changing both the short term weather and so some extent the near-term climate.
But I have come to think that carbon dioxide is a strawman proxy rather than the root cause for what is really happening. There is strong evidence that the amount of global cloud coverage is decreasing with time and this is slowly letting more and more solar energy into our atmosphere and environment. Fewer clouds means less reflection of sunlight back into space. This is a totally different cause of warming compared to greenhouse gasses trapping “more” of an assumed constant solar input.
It’s a lot harder to estimate ongoing average global cloud cover than to make a simple measurements of atmospheric CO2 levels at some observatory in Hawaii. Interestingly, one of the two main proofs that clouds are decreasing globally is monitoring Earthshine reflection off of the Moon, which has been done routinely over the past 30 years. Who could have guessed that was a key thing to monitor, not CO2 levels?
To oversimplify, clouds are affected more by increased particulate count in the air than by increased carbon dioxide levels. Burning petroleum causes both. I believe CO2 has become the focal point only because its global average can be easily measured, not because it is necessarily the true problem, which is smog/dust/particles – not all of which is caused by humans.
https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/tracking-massive-dust-cloud-africa-america
While we are still untangling the cause / effect relationships here, The World Economic Forum is already incorporating this into their overall storyline.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/earthshine-reflectivity-dimming-albedo-climate-change/
If you take the long view, the Earth is only returning to normal and humans are only helping Her get there more quickly. The main reason for “stopping global warming” is to preserve and prevent melting of the glaciers and icecaps in Greenland and Antarctica to prevent costal flooding in areas where 70% humanity has settled and built cities. But our current ice age (and yes, we are technically currently still in one) is an anomaly. Core drilling shows that both Greenland and Antarctica was one tundra grasslands. They are not supposed to be covered with ice.
https://xkcd.com/1225/
https://www.spacedaily.com/news/icecores-04c.html
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196516/traces-ancient-rainforest-antarctica-point-warmer/
Life finds a way. The gall of climate protesters, wanting to keep entire continents lifeless! Forget “save the whales” – bring Greenland and Antarctica back from the deep freeze!
“[T]hey despise humanity and want to watch it suffer.”
Just the White part.
Just the white MALE part. The white female American is the most privileged group ever to live on this planet. Including past ‘royalty’.
White females (paging Greta, paging Greta) scream and claw the loudest and hardest because they wish to make damn sure that privilege is retained. It works.
I read the other day that there is some crazy number of sun spots that have occurred that are likely to impact weather and even earthquakes (which I don’t quite understand): https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/sun-doing-something-it-not-supposed-do-and-could-mean-big-trouble-months-ahead
Bottom line, lots of things effect the “climate” and few are because I eat hamburgers.
Off topic: I missed last week’s Bombs & Bants livestream, due to travel. If there’s one tonight, I’ll be absent, due to being “at the movies” (in this case, an antivax documentary called “Authorized to Kill”). After this week, my routine resumes. And none too soon, either: I’m having some MASSIVE CANNIBALISM withdrawal symptoms.
What’s the problem? I get all the energy I need in a bottle of Brawndo.
Yes! It’s got electrolytes. And it’s what plants crave, too.
Most Heritage Americans live so comfortably, securely, and easily relative to the rest of the planet that the norteamericanos don’t quite know each day what exactly to get fretted about next.
Doesn’t stop them from finding endless stuff, though! Human nature, ’tis. Many places in the world say that Americans live in a kind of ongoing fantasy, an abundant dream-world, a disneyvision. Yup.
Where I live, locals look at the U.S. on teevee and internet and wonder, what the hell are those people constantly fussing about? The last rain just flooded them outta their (shitty little) house. My buddy’s dad recently spent a year — a year — with a urinary catheter inserted 24/7 because he had to wait for a surgery slot to open up at the regional hospital. Etc. and etc.
Likewise, the joke here is that America is divided into four castes (their word, castes) as follows:
1) children
2) women
3) household pets
aaaaaand yeah you already know, numero
4) men
Now THAT is clear-eyed in-touch with reality. Not pretty. But reality.
It’s for this reason that I don’t care about global climate warming, in any way. It’s all about control to bring about global Soviet Union. I’d rather live in Water World than a global USSR, so fuck them all.
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Greta doesn’t get enough credit for her contribution to the arts:
Gotta ask some questions here. Frex: “greenhouse gas”
Is this a planet or a glass and plastic box orbiting the sun?
What happens if CO2 gets too low? Are we plant-o-phobic now? CO2 feeds plants that make sweet, sweet O2 that we all need to breathe.. I 😍 plants; which is why I eat cheese. And bacon.
And climates? Can a planet have a single climate? Are not climates different in different regions? What kind of flat-earther kook imagines he can lock down every climate in every region on the planet forever by using toxic electric batteries? And cloth bags? And eating bugs? And genociding cattle?
You get the idea!