Tyree's Tuppence

by Tyree Campbell

When Life Gives You Offal, Make Drisheen

If you are expecting a reasonably well-crafted essay that has something to do with anything, you're going to be disappointed this time.  This is a rant.  It is cathartic to write some things off the edge of my soul, as if those things are not actually intended for anyone's eyes and ears but mine.  Don't read this.  I'm just writing it because it is my sworn duty to provide something to this spot every three months.  So go back to whatever it was you were doing.

In 1498 John Cabot sailed up the east coast of Canada in search of the Northwest Passage, that hypothetical channel of water that would lead European merchants to the trading centers of the Orient without having to go around Africa or pass through territory controlled by the Moslems.  Cabot didn't find it.  What he found was ice, the same substance Henry Hudson found a century later when he inadvertently spilled into what is now known as the Hudson Bay.  Turns out there isn't a "northwest passage."

Well . . . yes, there is, now, or there is about to be.  The arctic ice is melting.  There's already a conference planned among the nations that border the Arctic Sea [which would be Russia, Canada, the U.S.A., Norway, Greenland, and Iceland].  There are, you see, new maritime laws to consider, especially as Canada will control most of those shipping lanes for at least the next century, until other areas melt as well.

Thus one of the effects of global warming.  But is there really such a phenomenon as global warming?

Yes and no.

Yes, the Earth is getting warmer.  The empirical data--temperature measurements and suchlike--are indisputable.  The arctic icecap is melting--the empirical data in this case consist of direct observation.  Sea levels are rising--again, this assessment is the result of direct measurement.  The Earth is getting warmer.

But when environmentalists speak of global warming, they blame the increase in temperature on the emissions of civilization--carbon dioxide, to name one--and suggest that global warming is caused by humans.

Maybe.  Maybe not.  All the facts, all the empirical data, are not in yet.

The Earth is about 4,000,000,000 years old.  There's been life on Earth for perhaps half that period, and multicellular life for perhaps a billion years.  There's been life on land for maybe 500,000,000 years.  There has been sentient, self-aware life on Earth for possibly 50,000 years.  There has been a means of recording information permanently [i.e., writing] for some 5,000 years.  The first satellite went up fifty years ago.

Let's look at a year 13,150 years ago.  The Wuerm Glaciation was coming to an end.  Homo sapiens sapiens [Cro-Magnon man] was living in small clusters at the edges of the glaciers, hunting beasties and wearing their skins.  What predictions could you extrapolate from the empirical meteorological data of this year?

Well . . . the Earth was growing warmer, and the glaciers were receding, and doomed.  Rivers were forming, fed by meltwater:  the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, the Rhone, the Dniepr, to name a few.  As long as the supply of caves held out, humans would have places to live. 

Now, from this empirical data only, would you have predicted the general cooling trend of the Earth from the 14th through 19th centuries?  The development of the printing press?  Al Gore?  No.  You might have wondered whether the warming would end with the melting of the glaciers, and you might have wondered where the rivers went.  You might have noticed that the shoreline of a lake, where you catch fish, was gradually changing, rising.  You might have noticed an increase in the intensity of storms [the warming produces more water vapor, thus more storms]. 

And what would you have done about all this?  Not much.  Maybe waited, to see what happened next.  Maybe, if you lived near a river or lake, you might have sought out a cave on higher ground.  That's about it.

See . . . the most recent glaciation, the Wuerm [called the Wisconsin, in North America], lasted from about 100,000 years ago to about 10,000 years ago.  There were periods of warming, and recooling, and warming again, and so forth, but by and large the glaciers persisted for 90,000 years. 

Over the past 1,000,000 years, there have been four major glaciations, of various durations.  The Earth cools, then warms, then cools again.  There is strong evidence to suggest that periods of glaciations have occurred in other geological eras. 

So to examine a slice of life, of a year, or five years, or even 1,000 years, is not going to give you any kind of clear picture of the geological and meteorological trends, of what is going to happen in the immediate and distant future.  The lake is going to rise.  There will be stronger storms.  Temperatures will increase.  That's about it.

But for a group of people--call them "politically active environmentalists," or PAEs--to examine the geological and meteorological trends of the Earth over a five or ten or even hundred year period, and from this examination to demand wholesale changes in our civilization, to be implemented by force if necessary, goes beyond the Pale. 

Look at it more specifically.  It's one thing to seek to reduce carbon emissions, albeit a good thing overall.  It's quite another to tell an individual that he/she must purchase a new, $26,000-car that is environmentally acceptable [40 mpg, for example, and burns fermented corn oil or uses electricity in town] when he can barely afford to buy a three-year-old used car.  Raising gasoline taxes to encourage people to use public transportation--when there is minimal or no public transportation, e.g., in most rural areas--is only going to hurt those people even more.  But PAEs don't care about you.  They care more about grabbing the unquestioned power to tell you what to do.

That's one way to look at it.

And yet, the Earth is warming.  Although I have only minimal data to support this, I believe that it is too late to stop the ice caps from melting.  Yes, I'm in favor of reducing carbon emissions, and yes, I would like to see vehicles in which a minimum 40mpg in the city is standard.  I'm also in favor of a comprehensive federal program to evaluate the potential changes in the coastlines over the next century, and to develop alternatives--new harbors and new seaports, to name but two, and to take steps to help people move further inland--and to prevent the rich from buying up future shoreline land.

Fishing, on which much of the world depends for food, is going to change, because certain species of fish are being overfished [Atlantic cod], and because as the ocean warms, fish will adapt, changing their habits.  There will be--has already been--an increase in shark attacks further north than usual.  Spawning grounds will change, and perhaps some species will be reduced as a result [Pacific salmon].  This needs to be addressed.  But it is not going to be addressed by raising the tax on gasoline so that a gallon costs $8.00.

Weather patterns are changing.  In a recent e-mail discussion with David Kopaska-Merkel, whose science background includes geology, a subset of which involves climate and climate change, I pointed out that if I were a meteorologist these days I would be very excited, because new paradigms in meteorological analyses are evolving.  The recent spate of serious storms across the American Midwest is just one example.  More tornadoes this year are massive.  Is this going to be a one-year deal, or will this become a long-term trend.  The answer is, we just don't know.  But the list of topics for study has just gotten a lot longer.

For example, what is the relationship between warming trends and the strength of hurricanes [and typhoons and cyclones]?  Already one scientist has made a preliminary study that suggests the two are directly related--the warmer the Earth, the more intense the storms.  As one might expect, his work [no, I don't recall his name offhand] has been derided by the "entrenched meteorological community," and perhaps deservedly so.  On the other hand, geologists laughed at Wegener's theory of continental drift back in the 1920s.  Just as subsequent measurements proved Wegener's general concepts, so too will extensive study of warming and weather phenomena prove [or disprove] the relationship between warming and storm intensity.  Right now, we just don't know. 

And, not knowing, we ought to be more prudent in the measures we take to slow the warming trend.  As I've said, there are things we can do.  Having environmentalist martinets ordering people about, is not one of them.

Return to the price of gasoline for a moment.  Right now, here in Iowa, for unleaded, non-ethanol gasoline, the price is $3.84 a gallon, and it has been rising for the past several weeks.  This increase brings tears of ecstatic joy to the PAEs, who hope to make the cost of gasoline prohibitive enough to compel you to cut back on your driving [thus limiting your freedom of movement] and to force you to buy vehicles that get high gas mileage.  Unfortunately for you, the PAEs have the cart before the horse:  there are almost no such vehicles.  The sticker price for such vehicles as do exist is such that banks will be salivating to provide you with the loans necessary to purchase one [and whenever banks salivate, keep both hands on your wallet].  Whatever the PAEs have in mind, you may be certain that your economic well-being is not on their agenda.

There is, of course, a solution.  It's been there all along.  It combines ethanol additives with the development of new oil fields and new sources of fuel.  If allowed to proceed at a normal pace, the solution could very well make us energy-independent within a decade [and allow us to keep our vehicles and our freedom].  How?

First, drill the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve.  Yes, as soon as anyone suggests this, the PAEs become absolutely hysterical.  But we do have--and must use--the technology to perform that drilling at absolutely minimal risk to the environment [an environment which, btw, 99% of the PAEs and 99.99% of the population of the U.S. has never even bothered to visit].

Second, drill the offshore oil deposits.  Again, the technology exists to perform that drilling at absolutely minimal risk to the environment, and it must be used.  Moreover, that almost-zero risk can be reduced even further by drilling farther offshore than usual.  [Note that over 100 offshore drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, yet there were no oil spills.  We do have the technology to make drilling safe, and it is already being used.][Note also that I successfully used "further" and "farther" in the same sentence].

Third, expand the conversion of coal to gasoline.  Yes, the process exists and works, and with minimal environmental impact.  But the process is at the beginning stage of development.  It will be necessary, of course, to mine coal with minimal impact on the environment [which, by and large, we are already doing], but we have far more coal than we have oil.

Fourth, continue to produce biofuels such as ethanol.  I personally do not care to put fermented corn oil in my gas tank, but I understand its general usefulness, and would never prevent others from using it.  Ethanol does come with a warning [which those involved in its production and sale do not want you to know]:  we do not yet know the effects on the atmosphere of burning ethanol in internal combustion engines.  Ethanol has not been around long enough to make determinations, merely guesses--remember what I said earlier about basing a policy on too little empirical and observational data?  That applies in no-trump to ethanol.  We don't yet know.  We hope . . . but we don't know.

Fifth, build at least one more oil refinery . . .

[Okay, I'm going to pause for a moment, because the shrieks from the PAEs just overloaded the woofers and tweeters in my computer]. 

. . . In 1980, the legal population of the United States was 226,000,000.  Since that year the legal population has increased 33%, to 301,000,000.  That's 33% more drivers, and 33% more cars, and 33% more gasoline consumption.  Over that same period of time, the number of oil refineries built to provide gasoline for those vehicles and their drivers is exactly, precisely, no more and no less:  zero. 

That is insane.

It's also a reason why gas prices are so high:  the existing refineries cannot keep up with the demand.

There are two primary reasons why no new refineries have been built in the past quarter century.  First, environmental regulations enacted since 1980 have made it all but impossible to build a refinery, thanks to the PAEs who pushed for the regulations.  The PAEs are therefore partly responsible for the high cost of gasoline--and they are quite proud of this.  Remember, the PAEs don't care about your economic hardships.

Second, Big Oil is quite happy with the way things are right now.  B.O. [is that a great acronym or what?] is making incredible profits.  If B.O. were to build a refinery or two, prices and profits would go down.

The solution here is obvious:  change the regulations, and use Congressional pressure in the form of windfall and other taxes to encourage the construction of another refinery or two.  Unfortunately, the relationship between Congress and Big Oil is metaphorically the same as that between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton.  Worse, it's the same [metaphorical] relationship as that between the Democrats and the PAEs. 

. . . rather reminds me of what Ross Perot said would happen with NAFTA.

[At which point I would add that unless we turn ALL of Congress out on its ear this next election, we're screwed.  But you lot already knew that . . . oh, if only you would act on that knowledge . . . ]

Well, that's it.  For those of you who inexplicably stayed with this to the bitter end, I hope you enjoyed the rant.  I'll be back in three months.  I may not be in a better mood, though.  The election will be just around the corner.

Past Tuppence:
March 2008
December 2007
September 2007
June 2007
March 2007
December 2006
September 2006
June 2006
March 2006
December 2005
September 2005
June 2005
March 2005
December 2004
September 2004
June 2004
March 2004
December 2003
September 2003
June 2003
March 2003
December 2002
October 2002
August 2002
June 2002
April 2002
February 2002
December 2001
October 2001
August 2001

Read more from Tyree Campbell in any of the following:

The Dog at the Foot of the Bed
by Tyree Campbell

Wondrouse Web Worlds Vol. 6

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 5

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 4

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 3

Sex and the Single Alien
An anthology

Nyx
A novel by Tyree Campbell

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 2