“Goodbye Pelosi, the queen of corona…”
— Mitigating Polio Down By the Schoolyard
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I saw this headline in a newspaper:
“Connecting the Dots: The Pandemic and Climate Change“
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Of course. Of freaking course.
The sun has a corona. — The sun heats the earth.
The earth has a corona.
But Man in China did not create corona. It’s man (not woman) who overheats the earth.
I’m as confused as a starving Gretchen at a NASCAR barbeque, I’ll tell you right now.
So, today is Earth Day. And I didn’t buy Earth a card.
Maybe we should all go buy Earth a card. Think of all the trees they’d have to cut down if everyone bought Earth a card.
But, how to deliver the cards? Easy. It’s for Earth, so anywhere outside will do.
At least, that’s my suggestion for celebrating Earth Day.
How will you celebrate Earth Day?
[High Praise! to Hatless in Hattiesburg]
For no reason other than “it’s what nerds do for fun,” XKCD calculated how much power Yoda could output using The Force. All the assumptions and equations are neatly laid out at the link (along with the cute stick figure drawings that are the only thing the ever keeps science from being boring) so you can check his work. But I’ll jump right to the conclusion:
Yoda sounds like our best bet as an energy source. But with world electricity consumption pushing 2 terawatts, it would take a hundred million Yodas to meet our demands. All things considered, switching to Yoda Power probably isn’t worth the trouble – though it would definitely be green.
So to answer the question in the title, I’d say “hell yeah!” Here’s why Obama would back this:
* Yoda is an undocumented alien who speaks English with a funny accent & poor syntax.
* Since there’s only one Yoda, he could never be a significant contributor towards providing for the world’s energy needs, no matter how much of other people’s money you threw at the project.
* You could throw a lot of other people’s money at the project.
* Like all green energy, Yoda is fictional.
What’s not for Obama to love?
NO_MO_BAMA [High Praise!] left this in the comments, and I thought it deserved a little more attention:
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Sources conflict on the number of pounds of coal to create a kWh of electricity:
* Dept. of Energy: 2.1 lbs.
* Arizona Public Service Company: 1.1 lbs.
* CoalEducation.org: 0.8 lbs. (big surprise that the coal industry claims the greatest efficiency)
Transmission and distribution losses are estimated to be 7.2%, so our adjusted figures would be 2.25, 1.18, and 0.86 lbs. per kWh respectively.
An average household uses around 920 kWh/mo. If they got all their electricity from burning coal, that’s 2070 to 791 pounds of coal per month.
(Incidentally, coal-fired plants are only 37-44% efficient at converting coal to electricity.)
The MINI-E has a 35 kWh battery pack but only 80% of the pack is usable which means it has 28kWh of available power. That 28kWh can move the car between 90 and 120 miles depending on how efficiently you drive. It is less in the winter months because the heater uses a lot of energy, but for most of the year these numbers are correct as an average.
Therefore: it takes up to 63 POUNDS of coal to go 90 miles!
hmmmmmmmm… I wonder what pollutes more…burning 63 lbs of coal or 3 gallons of gas?… hmmmmm…
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UPDATE: Linked by TexAgs.com
[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #302,046)
So… using an excavator to drag some plastic thing around in circles, while a couple guys ride said plastic thing like some sort of weird combination jet-ski & dune-buggy.
This appears to have taken place in Russia, and Russians are crazy, so no explanation necessary beyond that.
BUT…
If this had taken place in America, would this have counted as a green job?
I’m going to say yes, because it involved creating something – specifically, “fun” – using the friction and inertia of naturally-occurring ocean water.
UPDATE: per Jeremy in the comments, these are Poles. I had no idea they were as crazy as Russians.
Release the carbon from your entire stack of campfire wood just to charge your iPhone!:
PowerPot Thermoelectric Generator Charges your Gadgets Using Fire
[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #22,071)
A little Earth Day something from Les of Brick Moon [High Praise!]
[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #7,299)
By the way, the Climate Change Prognosticator actually exists, because Les built one, which you can see in action below:
[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #117)
Now I know you’re wondering “where can I get one?”
Well the bad news is that there’s only one, and Les had to design and build the entire thing from scratch.
But the good news is that if you REALLY want to buy it, he said he’s willing to consider serious offers. If you’d like to discuss it with him, you can contact him here.
UPDATE: Linked by I’m 41
Not content with ruining an hour of your life on March 31st, the greenies are back at it again less than a month later with “Earth Day”, which is like some sort of hippie Christmas or something.
Yeah, leave it to the Watermelons to pick a day for celebration when it’s still too cold to hang out in the back yard wearing an apron and a wife beater (pants optional) while drinking beer and grilling steaks. There’s a reason the 4th of July falls on the 4th of July every year, people.
Since no one you know or like knows a damn thing about Earth Day, I’ll get you up to speed so that if you end up talking to a liberal today, you can dish some knowledge and then act like he’s a total moron for not already knowing these…
15 FUN FACTS ABOUT EARTH DAY
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1) Earth Day was invented by Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, on April 22nd 1970, in an valiant effort to make people spend their time caring about the environment instead of snickering at his first name.
2) Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22nd, which, coincidentally, is Russian dictator V.I. Lenin’s birthday. Although Lenin was too busy being dead to directly participate in the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, visitors to his tomb that day swear they heard chuckling.
3) An early supporter of the Earth Day movement was “Population Bomb” author Paul Erlich, whose work presciently predicted the widespread famines and food riots that killed millions of Americans during the Reagan years.
4) One of the most popular Earth Day activities is to reduce usage of water – a rare and precious commodity which few living people have seen outside of pictures – of which barely 400 quadrillion gallons currently remain.
5) Most Earth Day functions you will attend put out “recycling bins” to collect plastic water bottles. This reduces waste and pollution by having the containers hauled away separate from the garbage bins by 20-ton diesel trucks that get 3 miles to the gallon.
6) On Earth Day 2005, over 1000 people stood on a Canadian ice floe to spell out the words “Arctic Warming,” which, unfortunately, local polar bears mis-read as “Free Crunchy Meat Snacks.”
7) The EPA offers a free newsletter with handy Earth Day tips such as “Keep appliances in good working order.” Which is completely useless advice as it doesn’t tell you whether to use a fork or a knife to fix your toaster.
8) Some folks enjoy writing “6 word essays” on Earth Day, like “Many nations. One planet. Our home.” Mostly people who portrayed Indians in westerns during the 1950’s.
9) In preparation for Earth Day, teachers are encouraged to help children learn about global warming by periodically poking them with an “alertness stick” during a screening of “An Inconvenient Truth”.
10) One of the biggest crises addressed during the first Earth Day celebrations was ozone depletion. We don’t give a crap about that any more.
11) Sadly, although Earth Day was founded on an ideal of environmental justice, American law schools still hand out very few degrees to spotted owls.
12) On Earth Day 2003, students in the UK set a world record by planting 4100 trees, which were later cut down by men who skip and jump, like to press wild flowers, put on women’s clothing, and hang around in bars.
13) One of the watchwords of Earth Day is “reuse.” If you see a hobo begging for change using an old Slurpee cup, give him a big ‘ol Earth Day hug of thanks.
14) On the first Earth Day in 1970, activists spilled oil on the sidewalk outside the U.S. Department of the Interior to protest against offshore drilling, completely destroying the crab-fishing industry in the DC metro area.
15) The EPA was founded shortly after, and because of, the first Earth Day in 1970. Since its inception, the EPA has saved enough electricity to power 2 million homes by enforcing laws that prevent power plants from creating that electricity.
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Final thought:
Every time someone makes a list of Earth Day activities, they’re really just telling you how you can make hippies cry by doing the opposite.
[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #189,480)
Excellent parody of the above video. Unfortunately, it’s not embeddable. Just follow the link.
[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #497,013)
Bacon! There’s nothing it can’t do!
Except maybe get eaten by terrorists.
REMINDER: Alpha Proxima Day starts at midnight. Remember to turn on all your lights so we can make up for all the darkness-worshiping hippies who will kneel in supplication to Earth Hour tomorrow at 8:30pm.
Electric power plants create good-paying American jobs. Especially the filthy coal-fired ones. Keep the economy stimulated.
Man discovered that chickens were tasty.
Then he discovered that the wings made a delicious snack.
And now, finally, he has discovered how to eat that delicious snack without having to gnaw on tiny bones like his caveman ancestors:
[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #1,524,212)
I guess we know what’s on the menu for Alpha Proxima Day.
Coinciding with Earth Hour and Alpha Proxima Day, I declare this “Human Achievement Week” on the theory that the best response to uncivilized barbarians trying to drag you into the dark ages is a disproportionate response.
Let’s kick it off with a brief review of what Man has done so far to lift himself out of the lightless world the hippies want to drag us back into.
Note that it starts with fire.
[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #3,228)
As Howard Roark said:
“Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth.”
There was a bunch of fear yesterday when the earthquake hit northern Virginia near Washington, D.C.
In fact, when Wall Street heard about the earthquake, the Dow rose over 300 points. Which says a lot about the economy. When there’s a chance that something will stop Obama and the Democrats, the market goes up.
There were reports that the Washington Monument was tilting, but that was not true. Washington politicians, though, were found to be crooked, but it’s too early to tell if the earthquake is to blame.
But the earthquake did do some isolated but terrible damage: it interrupted Obama on the golf course and made him miss a putt. Really.
So, despite early fears, the earthquake did little overall damage. Unlike Barack Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress. Their damage is still being assessed.
Anyway, you don’t normally hear about earthquakes in that region as happened yesterday. Most earthquakes are in Japan, California, or other places foreign to America. Why on earth (or under earth) did one occur where it did?
I dunno.
Some people — mostly scientists — will tell you that earthquakes are caused by the plates of the earth moving in different directions or at different speeds, building pressure, and suddenly releasing, but I think they’re making it up as they go along. We need to find out what causes earthquakes, then stop them. Or use them to our advantage, like Gene Hackman tried to do in that Superman
So, what causes earthquakes? Or, failing that, what caused yesterday’s earthquake?
Here are the leading candidates:
Maybe it is the whole tectonic plates thing. Or maybe Teutonic plates. Probably so. I never did trust the Germans.
You may recall a week or so ago when word came out that Cleveland was putting high-tech trash cans out that would rat out people who don’t recycle.
The trash cans have chips inside that can tell when you take the recycle can to the curb … and when you don’t. And that’s the key. When you don’t … and if it thinks you’ve gone too long without taking out recyclables, it will contact the city and tell them. Then they send a trash cop out to look around in your trash.
I don’t think I like the idea. Because, well, what has Cleveland ever done that was a good idea? No, really. Okay, they signed Jim Brown to play football, but that was 53 years ago. And he quit playing football after nine years. Even a bad-ass like Jim Brown couldn’t stomach Cleveland for too long.
Smart trash cans isn’t along the line as sign-Jim-Brown-to-play-football smart. It’s stupid. The trash cans are smart, but the whole idea is stupid.
Really, do you want your trash can calling and telling on you? I bet even Oscar the Grouch wouldn’t want a tattle-tell trash can.
But, maybe, just maybe, we can use that technology for something good instead of narcing on you about recycling.
For instance, we could put those chips in Obama’s golf clubs. Then, if he goes too long without taking the clubs to a golf course, then me might be in Washington trying to screw up the country some more. It could call someone who would send him a free pass to a golf course. As long as Obama is hitting the links, he’s not hitting the economy in the nuts.
There could be chips placed on Democrat Congressmen. When too many get together at one time, you know they’re planning something bad. So, it would call Fox News or Andrew Breitbart and they’d show up with a camera, scaring the Democrat Congressmen back into their little holes in the ground.
They could put one on Rosie O’Donnell. That way, whenever she showed up somewhere, it could call anyone in the area so they could run away.
One on Al Gore could call the police whenever he got near a masseuse.
One on Barney Frank could call the police whenever he went out in public.
One on Roman Polanski could call all the parents of teenage girls so they could hide their daughters.
One on Ron Paul could call everybody whenever he went somewhere. His supporters would all show up, and the rest of us could go somewhere else, confident that we’d be free of them for a few minutes.
So, maybe we could take the technology Cleveland is using to play trash police and put it to some good use.
This needs mentioning, since “Earth Hour” is Saturday at 8:30pm
Help Soylent Green celebrate Alpha Proxima Day.
Which, as we all know, is the day where you turn on enough lights in your house to outshine both Alpha and Proxima Centauri
Yes, I know that for the IMAO readership, EVERY day is Alpha Proxima Day, but feel free to make a special effort Saturday night, because a bunch of eco-dipnuts and their gullible and trendy college-age acolytes aren’t going to be doing their part to keep America’s generators humming and her power plant workers securely employed.
Hey, here’s a thought. If you live next to someone who actually participates in Earth Hour, cut their power lines so that when they go to turn their lights back on at 9:30, the electricity that they just denigrated will appear to have gotten their rude little message and granted their wish to live forever in the dark like cavemen.
Maybe next time they won’t take electricity for granted.
I got a spam from World Wildlife Fund asking me to save the Amur Leopard:
What a cutie! Let me open up my wallet!
But wait… what if they’re secretly planning to use my money to save an UGLY endangered species?:
ewwwwww… them’s for stompin’, not for savin’…
I think I’ll save my money… just to be safe.
