Tom Toles for February 19, 2019

CO2 and AKs, two loaded guns.

We have found the REAL “national emergency” and it is climate change. (Okay, also the epidemic of gun violence and the health care emergency.)

As documented in the book, The One Percent Doctrine by Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Ron Suskind, Dick Cheney is famously quoted as saying that if there is even a “one percent” chance a risk could be related to terrorism (the famous “one percent doctrine”) you can invade another country and start a war. Oh and make BILLIONS of dollars sacrificing our brave heroes on the blood-stained altar of corporate profits for “defense contractors” and oil companies of the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about, and Cheney was at the center of and in which he personally profited by the millions.

But if world-renowned scientists IN THE FIELD OF CLIMATOLOGY almost unanimously agree there is a 97% chance of catastrophic climate and environmental devastation if we simply fail to use cleaner technologies, then they call that “ALARMIST scare tactics to make a buck” (oh yeah, remind me again where all those rich research scientists in labs, universities and field studies are) even though it is actually the anti-science crowd of Big Oil Bullies and the “defense contractors” of the military-industrial complex and their gullible suckers who are rakin’ in the big bucks.

FOLLOW THE MONEY. Whether it is destruction by war, climate/environment devastation, or lung cancer, see who is making the BIG money.

I wonder how it is for them living back in the mid-twentieth century?

They have know it is real back in the 1940’s and moved to make sure as little is done on it as possible so that they can make their billions and damn the rest of us. Though more recently they have acknowledged its reality like Exxon-Mobile a few years ago. Because they see that they are living during it. Even so they want that money first and they and the others will burn the last 5 gigatons of carbon first that will tip the climate scales into the very hot. To the 9-11 degrees C (16.2 °F – 19.8 °F) which could mean heat death for most life on this planet.

Even the green Antarctic will start to get balmy by then. We just may give ourselves a Mesozoic climate or worse yet the End Permian climate that killed off most life. All done by human hands. Greed kills everything including us.

Who needs a scientist when you can have a politician?

Yes I saw on the BBC yesterday that a Kansas town went 100% renewable and it’s cheaper!

Speaking of fossils…

This problem has a thoughts and prayers answer – now where’s that virgin we are going to throw into the volcano?

“For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.” – John Greenleaf Whittier.

The annual United States fossil fuel subsidies range from $10 billion to $52 billion annually – yet none of these include costs borne by taxpayers related to the climate, local environmental, and health impacts of the fossil fuel industry.

There is much opportunity for folk to help the environment (God forbid) and also make lot of $ if that’s the motivation in green energy.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar……….

When you look at premature deaths from coal related air pollution ALONE this nation is seeing slightly more than one death for every person employed by the coal industry. If you factor in black lung and silicosis it gets even worse. Add in health risks from water sources polluted by mountain topping and pit mining and it is worse still. Meanwhile, standards for pollution from the stacks have worsened with the Trump administration which will increase the numbers of death, while that industry is increasingly turning to very heavy equipment, earth scarring cheaper mining, and robotics to replace human employees by the droves, so that also worsens the numbers of deaths per job in the coal industry.

https://scienceblog.com/506211/jobs-versus-death-toll-calculating-corporate-death-penalties/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceblogrssfeed+%28ScienceBlog.com%29

Tobacco, BTW, causes four deaths for each person employed by that industry.

Most industries kill almost no one.

If you have not seen the black snow in Siberia from open pit mining of coal and the released dust

https://www.livescience.com/64787-dont-eat-siberian-black-snow.html

https://www.sciencealert.com/siberia-is-being-covered-in-a-thick-blanket-of-black-toxic-snow

https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2019-02-19-black-snow-siberia-russia-coal-pollution

Here is another link for you. In Europe the kids are much more aware. A friend in Belgium says that thousands of kids are active on this issue each Thursday there. Teens here are waking up, finally, and they are trying very hard to make progress:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-a-7th-graders-strike-against-climate-change-exploded-into-a-movement/2019/02/15/e20868e2-2fb4-11e9-86ab-5d02109aeb01_story.html?utm_term=.f6610d0867a5

Ain’t this the truth! And sadly so.

The rich are fools, they believe they will survive, when all others perish.

By that time they’re be living in climate controlled domes served by shock-collar wearing proles.

Meanwhile the world is making profitable investments in renewable energy at about $300 billion annually, and the Denialists have run out of excuses. I haven’t seen a new one since COP21.

We are winning, but nobody is willing to tell us about it.