Riled Up

From this badass website, the Symphony of Science, here’s more of the lisping genius Carl Sagan and friends.

By Reilly Capps

Even as all these other measurements of ugliness and pain and suffering are spread unevenly across the globe, so that Africa and south Asia owns much of the poverty and struggle heaped on our poor planet, it is almost nice to know that, for all the iniquity, stupidity is distributed fairly evenly.

In China, for example. They get a headache and, instead of reaching for the Tylenol, they go shoot a tiger.

This has continued for years, as China’s lead-paint drinking populace — I like the little guys! I like them! But they use lead paint where it don’t belong! — keeps trying to cure everything from joint pain to droopy boners with tiger parts.

And it’s not just China. It’s Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. All those folks who are so great at science and math and logical thinking that they created the Prius and the Hyundai and the Wii but they don’t understand that tiger bones, hard as they are, will not make their dongs less soggy.

And despite all their massive culture-wide viewing of screen-based entertainment and desire for the latest and newest products on the market, they have somehow missed all the Cialis spots.

So, my message to Asia is: tigers are threatened, Pfizer is not. Tigers could go extinct, Advil will not. Their cure for what ails you is cheap and easy and scientifically proven. But if you really want a tiger-based erectile disfunction cure, try getting advice from the golfer named Woods. That Tiger seems to have no shortage of boners.

– Reilly Capps is a writer at large who is currently out on bail.

This might strike you as a bit corny, but I loved it

Here’s a bit of news that’s not news. China’s gonna keep puking out pollution. Basically, they’re telling the rest o’ the world to stick it.

China “could not and should not” set an upper limit on greenhouse gas emissions at the current phase, said Su Wei, the chief negotiator of China for climate change talks in Copenhagen, at a meeting in Beijing on China’s climate change policies in the post-Copenhagen era.

As usual, you learn more from the Onion:

China Celebrates Its Status As World’s Number One Air Polluter

Hi ya’ll. Here’s something interesting: trees are growing faster cos of global warming and more CO2 in the air.

From the category of “Isn’t Nature Wonderful?” comes this photo from Martin Rietze (Alien Landscapes on Planet Earth), of lightning at the top of a volcano.

What’s weirdest: nobody understands why this happens. I love stuff like that. Stuff that shows that the world is as new as the day it was born, and that we don’t understand even some fairly basic things about it.

I should have linked to this before, but here it is, an open letter from some real heavy hitters about Tim DeChristopher, the daring Monkey Wrencher who kicked sand in the government’s face. It’s about all the events planned for his trial in Salt Lake. I’m hoping to be there, writing about the whole thing.

By Reilly Capps

The folksy genius Berry Tramel, my old boss and hero at the Daily Oklahoman, used to hate the word may. “What does ‘may’ mean?” he used to fume. “What means the same as may? That’s right. May not.”

Berry was right about most things, but I always disagreed about the word may. May and may not can be powerful. Read these imaginary headlines:

“United States may nuke Iran.”

“Your mother may not love you.”

Don’t the possibilities grab your attention?

Same with this actual headline: “World may not be warming, say scientists.”

But, after reading this article, I’m struck by how much Berry was right. Because this article is so wishy washy. Yeah, the world may or may not be warming, but we better pay real close attention either way. (Skeptics, by and large, are not paying real close attention.) And we better hedge our bets. And make some seriously good decisions either way. Like, if the world is cooling, and threatening another ice age, we better pump out some CO2 real freaking fast to heat it back up. If the world is heating, like it seems to be, like it may be, we better drop our CO2 levels real quick.

Right now, most of the evidence is that the world is heating. Could we be wrong? We could always be wrong. But even in the article about how the world may not be warming, are these paragraphs, down near the bottom:

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has recently issued a new set of global temperature readings covering the past 30 years, with thermometer readings augmented by satellite data.

Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “This new set of data confirms the trend towards rising global temperatures and suggest that, if anything, the world is warming even more quickly than we had thought.”

Confirms. Is warming. Those are words that Berry Tramel would love.

So, use the word may all you like. But how about using this word: probably. The world is probably warming.

What you all think about that?

By Reilly Capps

Fact of the day: environmentalists suck at arguing. Given solid scientific, photographic, and anecdotal evidence of warming, they’re still losing the debate because one guy used the word “trick” while talking about something called a “hockey stick,” and then because of a couple cold days in February.

This has caused a bunch of enviros to say that what we green weenies need to do is to try and straighten out the public on the difference between weather and climate, and then they’ll see it our way. Don’t talk about individual weather events, they said. Talk about broad sweeps.

That, of course, is the intellectually honest thing to do, and enviros usually do just that. And they usually lose. And they’ll lose this next round, too. Because do you think skeptics are going to stop pointing out when it’s cold out? No. They are not. Fox News is going to send reporters to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the coldest place in America, and have a permanent bureau there whose entire job is to say: Where’s this global warming I’ve heard so much about? It’s 32 degrees here! It’s literally freezing!

And that will be the end of all that.

By Reilly Capps

Of all the snowjobs in the long history of Washington, D.C., God may have pulled off the biggest one last week.

With just one act of extreme weather, He sent the exact wrong message to the most powerful people in the world, and His snowstorm may have killed cap and trade. Clearly, God has been answering the prayers of the people who own coal-fired power plants.

Follow this logic.

Given that: the world is supposedly warming.

And stating that: snow is not warm.

And seeing that: it snowed in Washington.

And knowing that: Washington is the only city that matters.

Therefore: this snow proved that the world is not warming.

Yep. God shat out snow, and guys like Sen. James Inhofe were there, with open mouths, to catch it.

Verily, I say unto thee, as the firmament opened and fat flakes fell, the Washington Examiner spake: “Inhofe is looking more and more like a prophet.” Yay, though the glaciers melt, Vermont is dry and the snow in Vancouver is slush, Washington’s snow testifies that Inhofe is right — nay, righteous — every time he calls global warming a “hoax.”

As Fox News put it on the bottom of a screen: “Has President looked outside lately?” It’s the simplest and soundest climatological reasoning since the immortal maxim: “Rain Follows the Plow.” This new one is: “Washington is the world’s thermometer.”

Climate is no longer an aggregate. Washington is all that matters. So here’s the deal: if it gets hot in August in Washington — hey, anything can happen — global warming is real again. If Inhofe wipes his brow, asks for a lemonade and says “It’s hotter’n Satan’s dick,” cap and trade sails through.

But, last week, everybody got snowed.