Music can save the world, we’re often told. This information is usually distributed, not so surprisingly, by musicians or some attempted semblance thereof. This theory is put to the test every time somebody tries to feed a starving child a Duran Duran album, but somehow this “truth” still manages to perpetuate and grow.
Those most interested in saving the planet, for its PR value alone, are often a breed known as rock and pop musicians. These are people who can be some of the most immoral, degenerate, greedy and repugnant individuals on the planet who yet get off on pointing out what ghastly, uncaring capitalist pigs the rest of us are.
The latest in this long line of people who will take their private jets to your town in order to let you know that the amount of toilet paper you’re using is destroying the environment can be found at Al Gore’s “Live Earth” concerts.
Gore’s concerts to raise global warming awareness (and thanks for that Al, we wouldn’t have known about it otherwise) are set to take place on July 7th. Attendees and performers will sit in the hot July sun and long for the days before man burned fossil fuels and it was cool in the summer.
NBC will provide 75 hours of air time and lug tons of equipment in huge diesel trucks that spew enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to help do their part in making us aware that our lawn mowers are killing everybody.
According to the Live Earth website, the purpose of the concerts is this: Live Earth will use the global reach of music to engage people on a mass scale to combat our climate crisis.
Step 1: Cancel the event.
The concerts, which will take place in New York; Tokyo; Shanghai, China; Johannesburg, South Africa; Sydney, Australia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Hamburg, Germany; and Istanbul, Turkey and Antarctica, will burn God knows how much energy in order to tell us all that burning energy is ruining the planet.
Between the television trucks, crews flying all around the world, band equipment trucks, electricity (to power the concerts, not to mention the 2 billion televisions expected to be tuned in), stage construction/destruction, attendees cars — all simultaneously occurring at various parts of the world — Gorestock is bound to be one of the most earth unfriendly days in the history of the planet.
True, it often takes a nasty forest fire to make us aware of forest fires, but Gorestock is flat-out ecological arson.
Organizers say these events will be “green,” such as “sourcing all electricity from renewable sources (utility-supplied renewable energy, biodiesel generators, renewable energy credits), issuing carbon credits for air travel by staff and artists, and reducing waste from concessions.”
Are you familiar with the concept of “carbon credits” (otherwise known as “rich liberal guilt deferments”)? This is when an environmentally unconscious person will, for example, slash and burn some forest to build a mansion, and “offset” this carbon footprint by paying money to someone or some entity to “save” an equal amount of carbon.
To me, the concept of “carbon offsets” makes about as much sense as “murder offsets.” In other words, a homicide could be justified as long as the killer offsets the death by impregnating another person. If that makes sense, jump on the carbon credits bandwagon.
Every non-musician on the planet will have to keep their motors off for a long time to help neutralize the carbon cost of Gore’s concerts. It’s been estimated that the Wembley “Live Earth” concert alone will emit over 3,000 tons of carbon — 4,000 if Madonna prattles on in a fake British accent and Genesis does the extended version of Abacab.
If Gorestock organizers and the bands really believed that this problem existed and wanted to do something about it, they’d cancel the events, shut off the trucks, ground the planes, turn off the stage lights, unplug the guitars and microphones, and urge everybody to turn their televisions off for the day. Then they’d go home and shut up to stave off CO2 emissions. Here’s their genuine opportunity to do something about global warming, but it seems that ego trumps Mother Earth each and every time.
The cruel irony of Gorestock is that, though it’s a claim made over and over, there is no hard evidence that humans are to blame for the latest in a long historical line of slight planetary warming trends (and subsequent declines). But, by God, if the problem doesn’t exist on the morning of July 7th, Al Gore will make damn sure it does on July 8th.
Note: My entire blog is at DougPowers.com
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tonysprout said,
June 14, 2007 at 8:08 am
MartianBachelor said,
Right. And none are so blind as those who will not see.
Sheesh, even The Newt is able to see the evidence. I guess you’ll have to sentence him to an hour of listening to Madonna.
As a good capitalist pig, certainly you can see the investment aspects of those CO2 spewing planes and diesel trucks when the millions of people subjected to all the PR change their lightbulbs, forgo driving somewhere needlessly, etc. You only seem to want to consider one part of the equation, which is lousy analysis.
Trying to equate carbon offsets with “murder offsets” is nothing more than not-very-clever sophistry bordering on sheer lunacy.
June 14, 2007 at 8:28 am
Doug Powers said,
This sham is yet another “follow the money” situation. People like Gore have a vested financial interest in some of these carbon credit companies. If Gingrich were the “pioneer” of the global warming movement, we’d sure be hearing about how he’s profiting by getting carbon credits paid to a company he owns, but since it’s Gore, it’s okay.
The hypocrisy from the Gore bunch is so thick that it just must be man-made.
Some of those on the Gore warming train just hopped off Paul Ehrlich’s “coming ice age” bus in the early 70’s — the latter of which was “iron clad scientific fact” too.
How many times will people fall for the chicken little routine? “Lots” is the answer, apparently … at least until they’re drained of their money.
June 14, 2007 at 8:53 am
S Baker said,
June 14, 2007 at 9:44 am
Virtue said,
How do you explain the global warming taking place on Mars and Europa (at similar rates to the earth when distance from the sun is taken into account).
My fundamental question is: Is it possible that increased solar activity is primarily responsible for the global warming we are now experiencing?
June 14, 2007 at 10:08 am
Doug Powers said,
S. Baker, Gore’s private jet exhaust is justified because it’s offset, as whenever he flies he and Tipper pay themselves not to drive that day.
June 14, 2007 at 10:14 am
barkingdog said,
In Crichton’s story, the global warming gurus actually go around the world manufacturing natural crises to further their mission of power acquisition. They kill a few people along the way, but so what? The ends justify the means, right? Same as not allowing oil drilling in ANWR increases our dependence on Arab oil, which indirectly costs us many lives. The hypocrisy of the GWP (Global Warming People) makes me sick. And that give me gas, which in turn contributes to you-know-what.
June 14, 2007 at 10:56 am
markc said,
June 14, 2007 at 11:15 am
Doug Powers said,
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period…
…I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
June 14, 2007 at 11:26 am
kenzrw said,
There are too many who think the IPCC does a lot of the scientific work on examining global warming/climate change. They do NOT (from their website): “The IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters. It bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature.” Check out their website:
http://www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm
June 14, 2007 at 11:54 am
Roger Knight said,
200 petagrams of carbon cycle in and out of the biomass each year, to which we add but 6.5 petagrams of carbon through the use of fossil fuels.
According my 3rd grade teacher, 6.5 is 3.25% of 200.
Petagram is a high falutin impress the plebes way of saying billion tons. For those who don’t like the metric system, it means 1.1 billion short tons or 2.2 trillion pounds.
Thus according to Woods Hole, 440 trillion pounds of carbon in carbon dioxide are generated by combustion, decay, and metabolism in the biomass. To which we add a mere 14.3 trillion pounds of carbon by using fossil fuels. Then the plants and phytoplankton photosynthesize most, if not all of this 454.3 trillion pounds of carbon back into the biomass.
What is the biomass? Phytoplankton turns carbon dioxide into fish food, provide us with halibut, salmon, and cod, by God! Crabs, lobsters, and clams, even whales for Alaskan Eskimos. On land the plants that farmers grow provide us with apples and oranges, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and potatoes, wheat, barley, and rye, tobacco to smoke, marijuana to toke, and rubber, sisal, flax, and hemp for clothing and other purposes. While we can eat the seed of corn the rest of the maise plant we feed to cattle, horses, and pigs, and what plants are eaten by other animals supplies us with eggs, milk, and meat, along with feathers and leather and other good things we need and use. And Douglas firs and pines alike turn that carbon dioxide into building material.
So what we are really doing is taking carbon that has been buried for millions of years and sending it into the air where through the magic of Sun, water, and photosynthesis, it is added to the biomass.
Which is not a bad thing. That is, if you like food, clothing, and shelter and such.
The Earth warms up, it cools down, sometimes it stays the same for a while. But the idea that our 14.3 trillion pounds of carbon we add to the 440 trillion pounds cycling in and out of the biomass has any effect on the climate, is as plausible as the theory that sacrificing virgins will keep a volcano from erupting.
Shoud the glaciers melt and raise the sea level, we just build our seaports on higher ground and grow more wheat in Alaska and the north end of Alberta. Perhaps even grow crops along Erik’s Fjord in Greenland, where crops were grown a thousand years ago, by Erik! If the opposite happens, we just might find the city of Atlantis. Their global warming treaty with Mu did not do them any good!
June 14, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Squiggy said,
Roger Knight, I’ve said this before - when Greenlanders start exporting crops (like they did during the MWP), I’ll start believing in anthropogenic global warming.
June 15, 2007 at 5:08 am