Saturday, September 01, 2007

Wordsmith's Practical, Selfish Solution to Offset Global Warming

Well! My days working summer camp at the gym are over; if you haven't noticed, I've been able to blog a tiny bit more substantively in the last few days (due also in part to the holiday weekend).

It's certainly not an Iraq-roasting 130 degrees out here in Southern California; nevertheless, I'm sweating buckets in the shade.

Ok, I'm throwing in the towel and hereby renounce my global warming skepticism; and I make the following pledge of faith: "Global Warming is the One True God, and Al Gore is his Prophet."

Here is how I have been doing my part to offset global warming through the summer heat:

This is a Japanese watermelon popsicle. Simply the best. Ever! Those little seeds are chocolate; on the melon version, it's white chocolate. Mmmmmm....

I had one of those American versions today. I actually had to spit out real seeds. I hate those healthier popsicles!

When I was in college, the student store had sodas from a company called "St. Thomas". They had watermelon sodas, and on the bottle it made it a point to describe the soda as "seedless". I kid you not!

Although this and the watermelon popsicle photo were found on the internet, I really do have a Hello Kitty fan (and two popsicles left in the freezer). I'm just too lazy right now to take pix myself.




No, this is not me. This is a fellow coach at work, taking cuts in front of the kids to cool off. Our head coach sets up a makeshift slip n slide that runs straight through the gym.

There's no air conditioning in the gym; so it can sometimes feel like a sauna. The slip-n-slide only got set up about 3 or 4 times; on some of the other days, we allowed the kids to toss water balloons. Sometimes, things would get carried away...




Today's LA Times:
The star of "An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore, says he and his family are carbon neutral
Al Gore shouldn't be "carbon neutral"; he should be running "carbon negative", if he's so convinced about the apocalyptic threat to the planet.


I haven't been staying on top of the current debates on climate change; I know there was some recent hoopla over James Hansen of NASA. (James Lewis at American Thinker has been writing a series of articles on it). And I know Curt has been on a tear , with global warming posts through August.

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4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

First of all, Happy Labor Day Wordsmith. Second, where in the heck do I find Japanese Watermelon Popsicles???????? Chocolate for seeds, yo, I'm there!!!!!!! Now all I have to do is find some!

We are currently experiencing a climate pattern that my parents and grandparents experienced in the 1930's. We have learned how to minimize the damage due to this climatic change. It has happened before and we must remember the lessons that were learned. One of things that was learned from this period is over farming of our fertile lands does damage to the topsoil we rely on to plant crops. Anyone ever heard of the "dust bowl" in the Midwest during the 30's?

Now they want to use huge portions of land to grow corn and sugar beats to manufacture alcohol to supplement gasoline. That is not a good answer if we are going into this period warmer weather. Despite the dangers of mining coal we are going to have to rely more upon it until we can further develop hydrogen power technology. Alcohol supplements are not a feasible or reasonable alternative to synthetic fuels using coal as the base. This is the stop gap I propose knowing the things I know about internal combustion engines, alcohol fuel supplements, historical weather patterns and mistakes made during those times of warmer climate changes.

I've never doubted that it's possible for the climate to change. I have always doubted the reasons that algore is giving. We've had Ice Ages, mini Ice Ages and warmer temperature changes that have been observed and recorded as far back as medieval times and before.

My question to algore has always been; how many Suv's and Jetstream's where cruising around when the planet warmed enough to melt the ice from the ice ages? Only algore would consider that to be a very tough question.

Sunday, September 02, 2007 9:54:00 PM  
Blogger The WordSmith from Nantucket said...

where in the heck do I find Japanese Watermelon Popsicles????????

I sometimes find them in Japanese districts of the city. Look for some sort of Japanese grocery market. They're very yummy.

I agree with you on climate change. Change is a natural consequence of life. People are afraid of change; but whether we can control the environment or not, we often learn to adapt. And who's to say that the climate we've been living under for the last century is the ideal global climate temperature? Who's to say a one degree warmer Greenland, isn't a good thing for Greenlanders and Siberians? Experts and intellectuals are often wrong, and changing their positions on matters. I still question how much of climate change is influenced by man's activities.

As for Al Gore, as leader of the "movement", he should lead more by example and go above and beyond mere paying offsets to his polluting the planet. But I don't see him making the kinds of enormous sacrifices that would be required by every single individual on the planet in order to make the kinds of significant impact that would be required to influence climate change.

Monday, September 03, 2007 5:34:00 AM  
Blogger Gayle said...

Al Gore would never make any personal changes to improve the planet... he only wants the rest of us to drive tiny cars and make sacrifices for his imaginary cause. The weather is going to change one way or the other whatever we do or don't do. The earth happens to be a living, changing creature, that's why we call it "Mother earth." Every once in awhile she goes through menopause! ;)

Besides that, can you imagine him even surviving without all of his creature comforts? Or any of the GW crowd, for that matter. If our economy ever goes bust these people are going to be in deep doo-doo! I wonder how many of them even know how to milk a cow or grow a garden? That's a statistic I'd be interested in seeing.

I've never seen a popsicle like that before, Wordsmith. It looks yummy, and that water slide looks like great fun.

Monday, September 03, 2007 7:03:00 AM  
Blogger Dionne said...

You have been busy this weekend, I can't believe how many new posts you have up!!

Monday, September 03, 2007 10:29:00 PM  

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