Big Media, Big Government, and Manufactured Crises

Guess what? I have fun stuff to blog; but while I get the photos ready, lets' get the first of two major "See, I told you so"s out of the way first.

Last month, in a post about the BP-Obama Oil Spill, I shared the following important quote by Rahm Emanuel, mastermind behind the deceptive but brilliant tactics that put Nancy Pelosi in place as Speaker of the House in 2006, and current Chief of Staff to President Barack Hussein Obama (the first racist president in my lifetime, and the first I know of to have declared open war on the United States):

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel

This quote came before the BP-Obama Oil Spill, but was validated as the central tenet of liberal political tactics as Obama's response to the spill consisted of refusing cleanup help offered graciously by foreign countries, forbidding Bobby Jindal from building sand berms, refusing to utilize cleanup boats from other parts of the country because "they might be needed where they are", and delaying BP from testing and using the cap that finally stopped the leak as long as possible. Meanwhile reporters were denied access to "oil-soaked" beaches, while Obama made an appearance between golf trips to a Gulf Coast beach to pick up tar balls (there are always tar balls on those beaches; they are a natural occurrence, due to natural seepage of oil that has nothing to do with drilling, and the recent oil spill consisted of light crude unlikely to form these balls!).

This "crisis", however, shows that the liberal philosophy goes far beyond simply capitalizing on a crisis. Rahm may as well have said "If there's not a crisis, but an opportunity to manufacture a fake one, don't let the opportunity to fool those stupid plebes that voted for us go to waste!" This was the perfect opportunity to use a net of lies to continue Barack Hussein Obama's war against America's private sector, and fire a volley of unconstitutional decrees aimed at destroying the economy of the Gulf Coast.

The BP-Obama Oil Spill was universally throughout the mainstream media and Big Government billed as the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States. The Obama Regime felt secure in making such outrageous claims because Big Media is always on the side of Big Government. In fact, Rush Limbaugh has coined a term far more descriptive of Big Media: Partisan Political Operatives.

There were several voices, either completely ignored by Partisan Political Operatives or dismissed as "anti-environment" or "crazy" or "invested in Big Oil", etc., who insisted that this "environmental crises" was anything but. I summarized it last month, a couple weeks before the leak was stopped:

"The Ixtoc I oil spill, about the same size as the BP-Obama spill and also in the Gulf of Mexico, occurred in 1979, and almost no-one remembers it today. This spill is bad, but it will be little more than a sentence or two in our children's history books. Even with the higher estimates of about 130 million gallons of leaked oil, the Mississippi River pours that much new water into the Gulf every 38 seconds. The Gulf is huge. Even without drilling, millions of gallons of oil naturally seep into the ocean daily, and the seawater destroys it. This is far more concentrated, but even with no action whatsoever on our part, in a couple decades it would be cleaned up naturally. The surface of the Gulf is 615,000 square miles, and the volume is 660,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. That's 660 quadrillion gallons, more than any mind can conceive. This spill is tiny, and the Earth isn't even noticing it."

The current evidence from the Gulf of Mexico seems to show that even that was an understatement! Just days after the leak was finally stopped (by BP, not the government!), there are already very few signs that anything ever happened out there. It's such a drastic contrast that even the Partisan Political Operatives who pretend to report news can't ignore it. All over Big Media, they're all scratching their heads, saying "Where is the oil?", and are desperate to find any evidence they can of environmental harm, but it's just not there! The current media template is that "the oil seems to have rapidly evaporated and been broken down by bacteria, but there has to be some sort of long-term damage, and we need to wait to resume drilling until we figure out what it is." If the media had been doing the job they claim to do, reporting news rather than pushing the political agenda of the Obama Regime, they would have been saying all along that "once this is capped, nature will take care of it far better than we can, and in a few months all will be back to normal". Instead, it's a shock and a surprise!

Here it is from the New York Times, "On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay":

"The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster."

"The dissolution of the slick should reduce the risk of oil killing more animals or hitting shorelines. But it does not end the many problems and scientific uncertainties associated with the spill, and federal leaders emphasized this week that they had no intention of walking away from those problems any time soon. The effect on sea life of the large amounts of oil that dissolved below the surface is still a mystery."

"[...] understanding the effects of the spill on the shorelines that were hit, including Louisiana’s coastal marshes, is expected to occupy scientists for years."

"The gulf has an immense natural capacity to break down oil, which leaks into it at a steady rate from thousands of natural seeps. Though none of the seeps is anywhere near the size of the Deepwater Horizon leak, they do mean that the gulf is swarming with bacteria that can eat oil."

You get the idea. This was known before the BP-Obama Oil Spill, so why were those voicing these opinions treated as fringe kooks? Because that opinion wouldn't hurt Big Oil the way the Obama Regime and his Partisan Political Operatives wanted. Now, the truth is inescapable, so suddenly these people have a voice, but "don't be too hasty saying this is done, 'cause there has to be a problem and we're going to investigate until we find one or make one up!"

From the Washington Post, "Majority of spilled oil in Gulf of Mexico unaccounted for in government data":

That would leave slightly less than 4 million barrels missing.

The best-case scenario is that much of this amount has been eaten by the gulf's natural stock of oil-munching microbes. Several scientists have said they are concerned that these microbes could cause their own problems, depleting the oxygen that gulf creatures need in the water.

But Wednesday, NOAA's Lubchenco said oxygen-free dead zones have not been detected so far. And Ed Overton, a professor at LSU, said he believed the microbial process, supercharged by summer heat, was helping. "We have made a gigantic biological treatment pond in the gulf," Overton said. Because of its work, he said, "we're well, well over the hump. I would say that the acute damage -- we've seen it, it's [already] been done. And that the environment is in the recovery stage."

Notice how they set the tone right from the beginning, suggesting that this is a mystery, and not obvious. The oil is "missing", "unaccounted for", not broken down by bacteria and taken care of by nature, even though the quotes shared say that's what happened. Don't let facts and evidence get in the way of the message!

Another Washington Post article, "Oil in gulf is degrading, becoming harder to find, NOAA head says", says this:

"The light crude oil is biodegrading quickly," NOAA director Jane Lubchenco said during the response team daily briefing. "We know that a significant amount of the oil has dispersed and been biodegraded by naturally occurring bacteria."

Lubchenco said, however, that both the near- and long-term environmental effects of the release of several million barrels of oil remain serious and to some extent unpredictable.

"The sheer volume of oil that's out there has to mean there are some pretty significant impacts," she said. "What we have yet to determine is the full impact the oil will have not just on the shoreline, not just on wildlife, but beneath the surface."

But much of the oil appears to have been broken down into tiny, microscopic particles that are being consumed by bacteria. Little or none of the oil is on seafloor, she said, but is instead floating in the gulf waters.

The head of the NOAA is herself a Partisan Political Operative (that's how you get that job), and so of course is a good source for Big Media, saying here "yeah, looks like the seawater is taking care of it, but... there has to be significant impact, and we're going to look 'till we find it!"

It's not a surprise. Those of us with perspective of history and previous similar events and a dose of common sense knew this was a tiny blip in the big picture, and nothing remotely resembling an environmental crisis. The real crisis is the war being waged on American prosperity by the very man whose responsibility it is to represent the country he despises. Barack Hussein Obama, you and your big ears may have won this battle, but the war will be decided November 2010, and the Last Battle for America will be fought November 2012 (I'm starting to think the Mayans were right, and the world will end in 2012, but it won't be with tidal waves and solar flares, but with the last free country conquered by socialist dictators!).

Meanwhile, here's something ironic: It seems ethanol production isn't so good for the environment, but since ethanol is supported by the Regime and the Partisan Political Operatives, stories like this are rare: From the San Francisco Chronicle, "Dead zone in gulf linked to ethanol production".

(I thought of a clever t-shirt/bumper sticker: "Ethanol: Goes in your mouth, not in your car!")

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste

It's time to name this disaster for what it is. Calling it the BP Oil Spill is not entirely accurate. From now on I am calling it the BP-Obama Oil Spill; BP because that's whose rig it was, and Obama because that's who has assumed responsibility for control of the aftermath and is profiting most from this crisis. Wait, profiting? How dare I make such a claim! Oh, but it's not just me; listen to the man who is the brains behind the Obama Regime in his own words (the relevant quote is in the first twelve seconds of video, but the whole clip is interesting):

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel

These words were spoken long before the current situation in the Gulf of Mexico, but they are revealing of the mindset of not just the Obama regime, but of liberals in general. Crisis = Opportunity. To Barack Hussein Obama, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is not a crisis, but an opportunity to do something he was not able to do before, which is to cut "Big Oil" down to size, and grab power far ahead of schedule. This follows a pattern with this regime: Housing Crisis = opportunity to seize and control banks and loan agencies; GM Bankruptcy = opportunity to gain control over a major car company; Health Care Crisis = opportunity to seize massive, near complete control over private sector insurance, hospitals, and many aspects of the way we live our personal lives right down to what we eat and whether our children are breast-fed, as well as an opportunity for massive tax increases.

The pattern boils down to this: Any crisis is an opportunity to increase the dependence of the people on the government. It is a self-sustaining pattern, as well. The more people depend on their government for help, the more often they will look to their government to bail them out. This is what I meant a year and a half ago when I wrote, as it was announced that Barack Hussein Obama had won the election, that we had officially voted ourselves a totalitarian socialist government. What frightens me is how quickly Obama is dismantling our economy and subverting the rule of law. In fact, it is amazing that I am frightened at all! I have never before had to say that I am afraid of my government, but now I am.

Back to the BP-Obama Oil Spill. How do I justify my statement that Obama is profiting from this? Just look at his (in)action. It was more than a month before he actually began to do anything. Meanwhile, though the CEO of BP gets raked over the coals for daring to participate in a yacht race during this crisis, Obama gets a pass for spending so much of his time golfing or bowling. He was already working on pushing through cap and trade legislation aimed at seizing control of the energy sector when this oil spill gave him the golden opportunity to paint Big Oil as a very visible villain and put this power grab on the fast track. Ever tar ball, every picture of an oil-soaked pelican, every minute of live coverage of oil gushing from the sea floor is another victory for Obama at the expense of the American people.

But it hasn't been complete inaction. To his credit, Obama has acted on this spill. What has he done? First off, he refused aid from other countries, offered as pure good will, to clean up the spill. It is estimated that cleanup using US ships alone will take nine months, as opposed to four months if aid from thirteen countries that offered it had been accepted. Why did he do this? Because the paperwork from the countries offering aid wasn't in compliance with the Jones Act, which was passed in 1920 to protect union jobs from being outsourced to other countries. If Obama cared about the solution, rather than the bad PR for Big Oil the longer this thing lasts, the Jones Act would never have come up.

The rest of Obama's time has been largely spent propping up BP as a villain. Yes, rather than solve the problem, the Obama regime prefers to point fingers. It's bad enough when the president of our country can fire a CEO of an American company, but now Obama has brought his Chicago mobster political tactics against a foreign company. Joe Barton was absolutely right to call Obama's treatment of BP as a "shakedown". Let's hear more of Rahm Emanuel's words:

"BP originally was going to do one relief well. We forced them to do a second relief well. They weren't going to do that. BP originally had a plan on -- on capturing, uh, a certain amount of oil. We forced that, as you know, today's reports they're up to 25,000. They originally weren't thinking about $20 billion and they originally weren't thinking about an escrow account and forcing them to do that. There are certain things that they had to be pushed -- not certain things, a lot of things that they had to be pushed -- to do."

That's right, our government "forced" BP to do what they have done. BP is an oil company. They know about oil. Rahm Emanuel and Barack Hussein Obama are politicians. They know nothing about oil. It's hard to understand, but some people actually believe that Big Oil is evil, that they care for nothing but profits. Even if that were true, it is in the best interest of BP's financial bottom line to have this crisis over and done with as soon as possible. They were already above the obligatory amount paid to victims of the disaster, with more money to come, and were already working to drill the single necessary relief well. No one knows exactly what words were said in their meeting with Mobster Obama, but it was enough to extort an unprecedented $20 billion. Make no mistake, this money was not needed for any relief effort; this money was needed to punish BP. This was not due process of law, this was extortion. Meanwhile, I don't see any fuel tax money going to pay for this, and I don't see Obama offering the one million in campaign donations from BP to clean this up. Thank goodness for "obscene" oil profits, or there would be no money to clean up the spill!

More recently Obama's regime has taken action to stop Louisiana from building berms to protect their coasts from oil, because of a dispute over where they were dredging for sand! So, you can't clean up the environment, because that's... bad for the environment.

Obama's Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, has pulled a page from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's playbook, by requesting a comprehensive report from scientists, and adding at the last minute a recommendation that drilling be halted for six months in the Gulf. This is after the scientists had signed the report! Naturally, these scientists are quite upset, and have spoken out against the moratorium on drilling as short-sighted, and a bad idea.

But if drilling caused this disaster in the first place, how can a moratorium be bad? First, it will completely destroy the Gulf Coast economy, which is dependent on petroleum. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost. Second, the equipment will go somewhere else to drill. It won't just sit there or in a dock, wasted! These rigs will go to South America or elsewhere, and drill wells for Hugo Chavez. Meanwhile, Americans will still need oil, so we'll have to import it! Remember Exxon-Valdez? Tankers are a spill threat, too, and we'll see more of them if we don't drill our own oil. In six months, the moratorium would be lifted, but the equipment would already be engaged elsewhere. Fortunately, we have a hero, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who is willing to declare the moratorium beyond the scope of the executive branch, and a bad idea. Thank you, Judge Feldman! Don't back down!

There is so much more to say, but this post is already running long, so one more thing to close. We need to put this spill in perspective. Yes, it is bad. It is a disaster. There is nothing good about millions of gallons of crude oil spewing into the gulf, and causing damage to the environment, not to mention the economic loss even before Obama capitalizes on this crisis. But we need the proper perspective so we don't panic and handle this poorly. As bad as this spill is, it isn't that bad. It's easy to show pictures of oil-soaked birds and real-time feed of the spill at its source, but it isn't that bad. Here's what I mean:

The Ixtoc I oil spill, about the same size as the BP-Obama spill and also in the Gulf of Mexico, occurred in 1979, and almost no-one remembers it today. This spill is bad, but it will be little more than a sentence or two in our children's history books. Even with the higher estimates of about 130 million gallons of leaked oil, the Mississippi River pours that much new water into the Gulf every 38 seconds. The Gulf is huge. Even without drilling, millions of gallons of oil naturally seep into the ocean daily, and the seawater destroys it. This is far more concentrated, but even with no action whatsoever on our part, in a couple decades it would be cleaned up naturally. The surface of the Gulf is 615,000 square miles, and the volume is 660,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. That's 660 quadrillion gallons, more than any mind can conceive. This spill is tiny, and the Earth isn't even noticing it.

Bottom line, this is nothing to panic over. It is bad, but it's not that bad. Not worth hasty actions that will have a lasting impact on the U.S. economy without any measurable environmental benefit. Many people are calling Obama incompetent. I wish that were the case. Obama is successfully carrying out his real agenda, the strategic dismantling of the United States so it can be rebuilt in His Image. Obama's actions (and inactions) are purely evil. BP is not the villain. Our own government is.

Meanwhile, this man's idea to stop the leak by meditating the well closed is a far more realistic and effective idea than any action taken by our government.

Remember the Obama Regime's philosophy: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

100th Post

Guess what? As of this posting, I have written in my blog 100 times. Funny how this comes in the middle of me hardly posting anything at all... I don't really have any special or amazing Earthshaking topic to write about. I figured instead, considering that my audience of loyal followers has drastically increased since I started blogging last year (increased by several hundred percent if you look at it one way, increased from one to three or four if you look at it another way), I will highlight a few of my favorite posts over the last year and a half. Since every single post is brilliant and worth re-reading multiple times, I will have to be very choosy to select only a few to highlight.

So where do I begin? Google Analytics says that my extra-important post about Velociraptor Awareness Day has recently surpassed my post about the threat imposed on mankind by Polar Bears as my most visited post. Both are masterpieces of online journalism if I may say so myself. Also popular are my report on the Apocalyptica concert my wife and I attended, and the one about the health benefits of rhinotillexomania (eating boogers), even though I only mention eating boogers at the end of the post. In fact, this one gets Googled quite a bit, and it's funny to see how many ways people search for it. I bet most of those people leave as soon as they see I start by talking about the Olympics and Hiroshima.

But what are my favorite posts? Other than all of them, here is a top ten best ever posts in my blog, chosen by me, in reverse chronological order:

Pogonology (8/5/2009): Probably my most (as in only) anticipated blog post ever. Photos of my beard from a couple years ago, photos of my extremely huge five-month beard from this year, and interesting photos of me taking it off in stages. My favorite is the Ambrose Burnside look. As a bonus, more pictures of beards I admire than anyone ever asked for!

Live Free or Die Harder with a Vengeance (5/4/2009): This one mostly makes this list because of how proud I am that I came up with such a clever title for the post, meshing together the names of all four Die Hard movies. I justify putting it in this list because it's an excellent (I say) review of four very good movies.

Velociraptor Awareness Day (4/18/2009): This was just way too fun, and it's fun to see people Google image searching "velociraptor" and ending up here, because I did that search to find those images and put the best ones in this post. I still recommend doing an assessment of your Velociraptor attack preparedness, and joining the Velociraptor Awareness Coalition (VAC) on Facebook. You can never be too prepared.

Apocalyptica (10/26/2008): This is by far the coolest concert I've ever been to, not that I've been to a whole lot of this type of concert. These guys are one of my top five favorite bands of all time, and put on an awesome show, running around on stage with electric cellos, head banging with long hair to speed metal music played on cello. I never thought I could temporarily lose some of my hearing because of cellos, but it's possible. If you don't know these guys, watch some of the YouTube videos in the post (some may be taken off YouTube by now, who knows), and if you do know them, you will still enjoy watching.

Polar Bears: Number One Threat to America! (8/23/2008): This is one of my pet peeve topics, Global Warming. It is one of the four main ways socialists are trying to take over America (the other ways are through government health care, the minimum wage, and the judicial system, though I'm sure there are more ways as well). The science has been pushed aside and drowned in politics, and the issue has been obfuscated to death. It is not, and never has been, about saving the Earth (which does not need saving and we couldn't if we needed to), but about power and control through the redistribution of wealth, and this power is gained by spreading fear and misinformation. This post is still relevant a year later, and will be for years to come, and it was also fun to write. This is a very important issue for every American to be educated on. I like all my political posts, but I try to space them out so this doesn't turn into a purely political blog, and I decided only to put a couple of those posts in my top ten list.

Peace through Superior Firepower (8/6/2008): Another important issue that people tend to be ignorant of. People like to say how horrible it was that we nuked Japan, not knowing how many millions of innocent lives were saved by ending that war as soon as possible with the complete unconditional surrender of Japan being the only viable option. Negotiation only works when you have something to back up your words. "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Or, as the villain in National Treasure says (roughly paraphrased), "the thing about bluffing is that sometimes you have to be holding all the cards." Saddam Hussein made a bad move bluffing to the world that he had weapons of mass destruction stockpiled when he didn't... it led to the toppling of his evil government and his death (better late than never). The world can only be stable if America is holding all the cards, i.e. has all the weapons.

Good Books and Bad Books (8/2/2008): Another great controversial post, about a topic I absolutely hate but can't get away from: Twilight (I like to pronounce it twih-ligt, like Dwigt). I really, really hate these books. They're not just annoying, they are detrimental to society. I am not happy about the fact that all four books are in my house on my bookshelf, but there's nothing I can do about it. I did, believe it or not, watch the movie, but I haven't reviewed it yet. It wasn't so bad, but is still not the amazing better-than-Harry-Potter thing that everyone says it is (that's what brought it to my attention, is that unforgivable comparison). I'm sure I'll have to see New Moon, but at least I don't have to read any more of the books. I may write more on this in the near future, since I have comments on the movie that I think are interesting and relevant to movie critiquing in general. Meanwhile, I will continue to boycott these books (not ban them, I am against banning these things on principle).

Fun with Global Warming (6/29/2008): This isn't the heavy political post you might think it is, though there's a bit of important social commentary that goes along with it. This is actually a humor post. It's a bunch of unintentionally funny statements from college students who, frighteningly enough, will be future elementary school teachers. This is worth a read if you want a good laugh. I actually have a new batch of these coming in the near future. I think so, anyway...

Why Is It So Cool to Hate Wal-Mart? (6/18/2009) and follow-up (6/19/2008): Another one of my pet peeve topics, the blaming of big, successful corporations for all of America's problems rather than giving them the credit they deserve for making our economy go. I hate hearing good companies made into scapegoats. Wal-Mart, Halliburton, McDonald's, every big oil company ever, etc. Without these companies our economy would grind to a halt, but successes like these threaten the dependence of us common folk on Big Government, the true source of all our problems.

Iceland (5/22/2008), More Iceland (6/19/2008), and More Photos of Iceland (10/11/2008): I am obsessed with Iceland. I will visit there someday. I love the music, I love the geology, and I love the scenery. Björk, Emilíana Torrini, Sigur Rós, múm, GusGus, and Ólafur Arnalds are all from there, just to name a few amazing musicians. These are quick reads, because all you really have to do is look at the pictures. You won't regret it. I'll probably find more photos of Iceland in the future.

So what is in store for this blog in the near future? Will I succeed in reviving it from its moribund state? I think so. I have many old posts to follow up on with new exciting things to say, and I have several dozen movies I want to talk about. I've also been very frustrated with the prospect of writing a political post, since things are moving along so fast and the destruction of this country by the most America-hating President we've ever had (i.e. the first one, who still hasn't proven he's even a citizen of the country he is governing) is just depressing to think about. I don't know where to start! This health care fight is the most important war our country has ever fought, and we are fighting our own President. We really may become the American Socialist Republic very soon unless Obama's inevitable overreaching happens soon enough. Enough of that... I'll save it for a future post.

Don't worry, if all goes well this blog will be alive and well very soon!

Earth Day...

...was yesterday. Still, one day behind is much better than usual for me.

It may surprise many of my huge audience to learn that I am not opposed to the idea of Earth Day. I love Earth, I like being here, and I think we should take care of it, and I have no problem with taking a day to celebrate it. What I don't like is that Earth Day was created by and has been dominated by radical environmentalists and tends to be observed with pointless gestures that make people feel good about themselves and superior to others while simultaneously doing nothing at all for the Earth. In fact, I remember growing up in Boulder, Colorado, a very liberal place where Earth Day was a big deal, and it's amazing how much paper (recycled, sure) goes to making Earth Day posters that end up being day after Earth Day litter. I love the term coined by Rush Limbaugh to describe these "environmentalists": watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside).

Contrast that to another Colorado event I remember attending in my childhood: Dan's Bake Sale.  This started as a joke, with Rush Limbaugh suggesting to a caller, "Dan", who couldn't afford a subscription to The Limbaugh Letter, that he organize a bake sale to raise the funds (he was making fun of a school who had held a bake sale to reduce the deficit). Only a joke, yet it ended up a major gathering of conservatives, around 65,000 total from all over the U.S., and Limbaugh himself gave a speech. 65,000 Earth-hating conservatives should have quite the environmental impact, right? Yet hours after the event there was not a trace anyone had been there. No littering, no detrimental impact to the environment. This is a tangent, though...

Why can't Earth Day be a genuine celebration of the Earth, rather than a day of empty symbolism and finger-wagging at people who don't drive a Prius? Why does it have to be a day to call progress and technology and those who use it evil? Let's just celebrate the planet we live on and take care of the bit we live on and stop wasting our time, money and energy on unsustainable and unworkable "alternative" fuels and worrying about our "carbon footprint" which makes no difference in the long run. In fact, let's be glad that because we live (so far) in a successful, capitalist society that we can afford the luxury of taking care of our environment.

Guess what? Affluence and technology are good for the Earth! I read one of the best articles I've ever read on the environment yesterday, from the New York Times of all places! It's called "Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet", and it is a must-read. Here's a paragraph that stuck out to me:

As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy. This global decarbonization trend has been proceeding at a remarkably steady rate since 1850, according to Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University and Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

“Once you have lots of high-rises filled with computers operating all the time, the energy delivered has to be very clean and compact,” said Mr. Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller. “The long-term trend is toward natural gas and nuclear power, or conceivably solar power. If the energy system is left to its own devices, most of the carbon will be out of it by 2060 or 2070.

Makes sense to me. I recommend reading the entire article.

What else did I do for Earth Day? I watched an episode of my favorite documentary: Planet Earth. One of these days I will be affluent (and therefore green!) enough to afford an HDTV and a Blu-Ray player, and the first thing I buy in HD to enjoy on this system will be Planet Earth. I have never seen better footage of Earth, from scenic views of mountains to rare views of exotic animals and environments. There are two versions, though, one narrated by Sigourney Weaver and one by David Attenborough. They have identical footage and scripts, but Attenborough has a much better narrating voice, so if you get the DVDs be sure you know which version (Weaver is Discovery Channel, Attenborough is BBC). There's an occasional irritating environmental destruction comment in the narration, but overall this is an excellent celebration of Earth, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's almost a disservice to show YouTube quality clips when it should be seen in HD, but I will end this post with two of my favorite clips from Planet Earth:

A great white shark attack in slow motion:

A deadly mind-controlling fungus that feeds on insects:

That's it for now. Take some time this week to go burn some fossil-fuels in your car, on a good scenic drive!