The cats, they amuse me, to the point of tears. This annoys the wife greatly, as she cannot hear the television. When I show her the pictures, she does not grok.
I am in her brain, giving her migrainz.
Just reading. Not writing. To my mind, far too many bloggers spend their days serving up slight variations on stories they told/positions they established eons ago. The constant serving of warmed-over rehash just doesn’t appeal to me.
Or perhaps I’m just lazy.
In a couple of hundred years historians will be comparing the frenzies over our supposed human contribution to global warming to the tumults at the latter end of the tenth century as the Christian millennium approached. Then as now, the doomsters identified human sinfulness as the propulsive factor in the planet’s rapid downward slide. Then as now, a buoyant market throve on fear. The Roman Catholic Church sold indulgences like checks. The sinners established a line of credit against bad behavior and could go on sinning. Today a world market in “carbon credits” is in formation. Those whose “carbon footprint” is small can sell their surplus carbon credits to others less virtuous than themselves.
The modern trade is as fantastical as the medieval one. There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world’s present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind’s sinful contribution–and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed.
Now imagine two lines on a piece of graph paper. The first rises to a crest, then slopes sharply down, levels off and rises slowly once more. The other has no undulations. It rises in a smooth, slow arc. The first, wavy line is the worldwide CO2 tonnage produced by humans burning coal, oil and natural gas. It starts in 1928, at 1.1 gigatons (i.e., 1.1 billion metric tons), and peaks in 1929 at 1.17 gigatons. The world, led by its mightiest power, plummets into the Great Depression and by 1932 human CO2 production has fallen to 0.88 gigatons a year, a 30 percent drop. Then, in 1933, the line climbs slowly again, up to 0.9 gigatons.
And the other line, the one ascending so evenly? That’s the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, parts per million (ppm) by volume, moving in 1928 from just under 306, hitting 306 in 1929, 307 in 1932 and on up. Boom and bust, the line heads up steadily. These days it’s at 380. The two lines on that graph proclaim that a whopping 30 percent cut in man-made CO2 emissions didn’t even cause a 1 ppm drop in the atmosphere’s CO2. It is thus impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from people burning fossil fuels.
Given the controversy du jour, I should probably point out that Cockburn’s is noteworthy not becuase of the sketchy claims he makes, but rather because it’s an extremely rare example of an attack on global warming from the political left.
Welcome to Silflay Hraka, where we’re all Carnival of the Vanities, all the time! Yes, that seems to be all the blogging I and brother Bigwig have time for these days, much to our mother’s chagrin. This blog is also one of the best ways of keeping friends and family up to date on our lives because we’re not terribly good at phone calling, emailing, etc. We’re busy, busy, selfish people. Sorry, ma, and all other loyal readers of this particular bloggy blog.
Too bad I have nothing new to offer my mother in the way of life-updating. Work is busy, life is busy, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Tonight is my one free night this week. Yesterday was a planning meeting with a group of pals with whom I’ll be traveling in a few weeks. Tomorrow is a planning meeting with my church group co-leaders. Thursday is Bible study group, Friday is movie night, Saturday is some concert or other, Sunday is church group meeting and Monday starts it all over again. Tonight, I blog.
On with the Carny!
***
We’ll start with Andrew Ian Dodge. Andrew defends Commercialism in the blogosphere. He finds no problem with profiting from a blog and neither do I…as long as it doesn’t cause you to self-edit or skew opinions to support advertisers or those who pay you to write. If you’re partisan simply because someone is paying you to be so…well, you destroy trust in the medium. Of course, trust in the blogging medium has probably already been destroyed and actually probably should be destroyed. You shouldn’t believe something just because you read it on the internet. If you base all your beliefs on things you read in blogs, you should probably seek some other form of information.
Maybe this is how traditional news sources will survive. As the market for news segments, traditional media will retake the moral high-ground from bloggers as bloggers become less trustworthy and become tainted by the stain of paid-for opinions.
Curiously enough, I think everyone who submits to this Carnival is doing so with an eye on eventual wealth. Good luck with that, all.
Paul Sunstone doesn’t say we should profiteer from blogging but he does claim that it’s Your Moral Duty To Blog In the Nude. I am not currently blogging nude but I have done so in the past. Tonight, it’s boxers and little else. There’s a pretty picture for ya.
Wayne Hurlbert re-presents Disaster prevention: Learning to bike ride. He missed last week’s Carnival by submitting this particular article at 5:04 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Note to Wayne and everyone else: I write up this post on Tuesday night. I don’t typically check the CoTV email account except for that evening. If it ain’t in on Tuesday night, it waits a week.
I’m just sayin’.
David thinks Payless might be guilty of trademark infringement. Payless and American Eagle Outfitters Soon In Court. For my money, I immediately thought Payless and AEO had formed some kind of partnership or were owned by the same folks. Could spell trouble for Payless.
GrrlScientist asks a question that’s on all our minds: What is “Disturbing”? Some of you will find it disturbing that I’m blogging in my boxers. I do fear an over-reaction against “disturbing” writing after the recent Virginia Tech shootings. There are probably things that have been written on this blog in the past that could be considered “disturbing”. Ever read any of Bigwig’s conversations with Zod? ‘Nuff said.
Speaking of someone who talks to the voices in their head, Madeleine Begun Kane sings us a song in Serenade For The First Sufferers (Political Song Parody). Methinks she has a point.
Jack Yoest thinks the world needs another partisan news site in The Majority Accountability Project: New (Im)Media and The Long Tail of Journalism. Didn’t somebody already do this? I’m sure someone has. Speaking as someone who works in the world of ad agencies and ad serving, 5000 page views a day is going to be a very hard sell. But it could happen.
Lastly, Adam Graham says we should support John Cox for President and says that Integrity is a forgotten word in Washington D.C. John Cox just might get my vote. I hate all my other choices thus far.
***
And that’s another week of Carnival of the Vanities gone by. While searching for Bigwig’s conversation with Zod, I came across some older Carnival editions. I thought it’d be interesting to share what they used to look like. Take a look at the ninth edition. I think we’ve fallen far.
But the Carny goes on. CoTV may limp and lag along, but it does keep going. Number 242 will be right here in this space next week. If you don’t believe it, come back and see for yourself. If you’d like to get in on the action, please send your post to Carnival the Vanities, c/o Blog Carnival.
Until then, I’ve got stuff to do. Have a good week. Ma, I’ll call soon!