Showing posts with label transportation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transportation. Show all posts

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Green myths (part 2)

I bet most of you still can't believe how stupid recycling and hybrids were. But have no fear I have more to add to the list!

After I learned this I seriously started questioning the motives of all the green movement which is funded mostly by wait for it... large corporations. Who is dangerous to say but with some research you will find out. They are not really hiding it, they just hide the true motives behind it.

So how many times someone told you to turn off the light to save CO2... Kinda makes sense right? No. Why? it's worth bearing in mind that the total amount of CO2 that can be released by power plants and other industrial facilities across the EU between now and 2012 is fixed by the European Emissions Trading Scheme. This means that if the UK power sector reduces its emissions, extra carbon permits get freed up for use elsewhere, such as German power stations or French cement plants. In other words, the same amount of CO2 will be released, just from different sources.
Now after 2012 honestly I couldn't find if the European Emissions Trading Scheme has extended this but we will find out in the future. I know that by turning the lights off you save money but you don't do anything for the environment. Also the new type of bulbs do save money also but they have mercury inside so if they break they are dangerous to everyone around and the environment. They have to be recycled and disposed in a facility so that means more energy (unconfirmed). So try to understand what is good for the environment isn't most of the time good for your pocket. 

I forgot to mention in the previous post that according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, agriculture is responsible for 18% of the total release of greenhouse gases world-wide (this is more than the whole transportation sector). Now I know it might sound silly but cows farting and burping produce more greenhouse gases than your cars. I don't know the numbers but still... Feeling bad now for eating them? Eat a cow, save the planet!
A recent study brought to everyone's attention (at least those that bothered to research it) that air quality is getting better. One example is that it now takes 20 new cars to produce the same emissions as one car produced in the 1960s. A Gallup poll found that only 17 percent of the members of the Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society think that the warming of the 20th century has been a result of greenhouse gas emissions — principally CO2 from burning fossil fuels. 

More than 100 noted scientists, including the former president of the National Academy of Sciences, signed a letter declaring that costly actions to reduce greenhouse gases are NOT justified by the best available evidence. While atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 28 percent over the past 150 years, human-generated carbon dioxide could have played only a small part in any warming, since most of the warming occurred prior to 1940 — before most human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. I think someone is playing with us here... And I d probably trust the dudes with the lab coats than the suits in any Government.
Christmas are behind us and I got tired listening to people that everyone should get plastic ones and not real ones so we save the trees... Sorry to break it to you my green dumbass friend but for the most part, Christmas trees are not simply cut down from the local forest where Bambi lives. The majority of sold Christmas trees are grown as crops and are therefore grown entirely for this purpose. Secondly, real Christmas trees are 100% biodegradable. Most fake Christmas trees are made from polyvinyl chloride aka PVC, a plastic that is non-renewable and does not degrade.

Lastly, real Christmas trees create insignificant amounts of CO2 in their production in comparison to fake Christmas trees. Real Christmas trees require no manufacturing processes and have relatively low shipping distances while the same cannot be said for fake ones. So if you are aiming to be more eco-friendly, keep going with the real deal and don’t buy a fake Christmas tree!
And of course I have to answer to the smartasses that say that the receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves is proof of global warming. Here you got me you are... well wrong again but it's always fun to give false hopes to people that take no time to even do some basic research about stuff that they are interested in. I guess the same goes with religion... So what the truth is? 

Glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for hundred of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating. It's normal. Besides glacier's health depends as much on the precipitation as on temperature.
Another myth is that as for the earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level is rising. The answer to this is that the earth is variable. The western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to unrelated cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling. Ice thicknesses are increasing both on Greenland and in Antarctica. 

Sea level monitoring in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (Maldives) has shown no sign of any sea level rise. And don't tell me about the floods etc. People that build their houses in areas where stuff like that happened in the past and still happen need to move. Same with people that build their houses near active volcanoes and wonder why they have lava in their living room. (George Carlin)

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Trains and dumb people...

Worse thing about dumb people is you can't really avoid them. It's like those movies with the zombie apocalypse theme. You can run but you can't hide. Trains along with other mass transportation vehicles is a without escape dumb-trap. In 50 minutes I managed to get so annoyed that I was a lab accident away from turning into a super villain.
Although I'd probably be doing a public service... 

So back to the story. I had to be somewhere (I can't say it's top secret) so I took the train to go there. I was lucky enough, because the social workers that work on them, decided to actually work that day. Speaking of which... Why dumb people are never on strike... oh wait... So anyway, it's morning and it's rush hour. The moment I walk down the escalators (because some dumb ass pressed the stop button), people that just got out of the train all rush to the exits like a bomb was about to explode. Of course they don't watch where they walk to, and 2-3 of them fall on me, looking at me angry and without apologizing, while I am on the side, that is supposedly for the people that enter the station, not for the ones leaving it... Again I restrain myself from tackling someone in front of me...
And the moment you say "How many stupid people I will see today..." Murphy ('s law) appears in front of me. The ticket vending machines are all out of order except for one and there is no one in the ticket booth... 15 people wait to get a ticket... The queue moves at super speed... Elderly take their ticket faster than some dumb asses that haven't seen a machine before in their life... Not a vending machine... any machine! At last I get my ticket and go down the (stopped) escalators where a new challenge appears...

The train will arrive in 5 minutes... In rush hour... I won't even begin to describe how many people are waiting for the train... I am not in a hurry to be honest so I come to terms that I 'll get the next train. My problem is that from past experience people tend to not like water that much. So you can imagine what happens inside closed spaces... An announcement says that the next train will be here in 2 minutes, so don't push each other to get in and they should let the people aboard the train to get out before they get in... You can probably see where this is going...
So the train stops and while I don't intend to get in an elderly lady takes matters into her hands...
She tries to block me from getting in so she can enter herself... I try to move back when people from the back don't see that it's impossible to get in. Kinda makes you wonder about the group logic. When people see someone in a group do something good they don't follow him. While if he tries to do something dumb everyone will do it... go figure...

I wait for the next train that arrives shortly and of course there are enough people moaning about the trains being late and so on... I am bothered by it too, but bitching about it won't fix anything, so why don't they shut up? Laughter and bitching brings people together I guess? The whole us vs them psychology thing... 

I get inside along with the rest and as usual someone stands with his back on the central pole where we are supposed to hold. First thought I am having is: 
but I suppress it quickly when someone lifts his hand and I am faced with a smelly armpit... I try to move away before I suicide someone and then is when we arrive on the next station and more people get in... And when I say more, I mean more than the train can carry. So people push and pull and scream at each other to move... Beautiful... When we start moving at last, I listen to an announcement saying, to keep an eye to our "personal" belongings. First off... I can't even move my hands to do anything, so I doubt anyone can actually steal anything. And to quote George Carlin: " What other belongings are there except for personal? Do these people thing I would actually travel with a fountain I stole from the park?".

So we arrive at my station and I have to push some people, since they don't get that there might be someone behind them that wants to get off the train. And when I think everything is over I get a glimpse of who rides the elevator... Two high heeled blondes and an older man staring at their boobs... I facepalm myself and leave... Oh, and yes the escalators don't work also... My day started so good...