Wednesday, September 26, 2007

General grumblings of the week....

Ok, so the whole Ahmadinejad visit scandal? No, he shouldn't have been allowed at Ground Zero out of respect for the families, although it being a public spot and this being America, who was going to stop him? I'm also fine with him speaking at Columbia. Hell, I'd probably have gone if I went to school there. Nothing like getting inside the mind of a dictator to perhaps learn something from our adversaries, which indeed, is one of the things we're in college for; you know, that whole "two sides to every story" thing? However, the lambasting that he took at the hands of the University's President? Not really necessary. He said what we all know, and do you really think Ahmadinejad cares what an American college president thinks about him? I didn't think so. I'm thinking the Prez was lobbing a pre-emptive strike to counter the demonstrators who thought Columbia was wrong to have the guy in to speak to begin with. Just a hunch....

Alec Baldwin hits the nail on the head though in his blog today ....Ahmadinejad does seem oddly familiar.

And now for Bill O'Reilly, who claims that eating at a restaurant in Harlem is just like eating anywhere else in [white] America. Good god, man...surely you know that that comment is only going to stir the pot. Or perhaps that is what you're hoping would happen (that's my guess). Makes for good blog reading while I'm bored anyway.

And finally, I've been thinking a lot about the greenhouse effect since Bill Maher had Bjørn Lomberg on to discuss his book "Cool It". Among other things, Lomberg pointed out that while we may lose Florida to higher ocean levels, and the Northwest Passage is finally wide open, this is not the climate crisis that it seems. While there are more heat-related deaths, there are far fewer cold-related deaths, so overall we benefit there. And while ocean levels are expected to rise 10 inches this century, that is the same that they they rose in the previous century, and that didn't cause nearly the concern. Lomberg dare says "we didn't even notice." So if all this is true, and what all the greenhouse proponents says is true, what are we to think? Lomberg suggests we refocus on things we can cure, like AIDS, poverty and hunger!

1 comment:

Robert said...

Nice equation by Lomberg but it doesn't quite work in the real ecosystem. The rise in temps is being absorbed by the oceans, which in turn is killing the tropical coral reefs.

Doesn't sound like a disaster? About 80% of the world's fish species depend on corals to survive and, more importantly, about 1billion people derive its primary protein from coral-inhabiting fish. No coral = no fish = no food = no people.

On top of that, between the increased African heat and the heat sink of the Caribbean basin, and you've got yourself a perfect hurricane factory belt.

Fortunately, only 0.1% of scientists negate human-induced climate change. Unfortunately, far too many people believe that minority...