A very good article in the St Pete Times on Sunday talked about rising sea levels in Florida. It mentioned how you cannot tell this is happening in urban areas due to beach renourishment and seawalls, not to mention manmade additions to coastal islands but in areas where man is not building, water levels are higher, salt water has intruded into marshes turning them into bays, mangroves grow where they didn't used to. Water levels have increased about an inch per decade since 1940 according to this article.
I tend to take a dim view of many enviromentaltwits running around like chicken little telling me the sky is falling. For one thing, knowing the average temp for the last 100 years or so hardly qualifies in my eyes as "knowing" the atmosphere is getting warmer because of what man is doing. The earth has been around something like 5 billion years. There's been ice ages and warm times and this was long before man was walking around trashing everything. Now having said this, do I think it is possible that "global warming" is caused by man. I will admit to that possibility. I will also admit this is possibly due to natural earth cycles too. No one understands climatology, meteorology, geology, etc enough to equivocally tell me either answer is true, or even if it's somewhere in between. But I will admit, in the spirit of leaving this world better for my kids, that we all, including me, should do more to protect the environment.
I am all for renewable sources of energy. As sunny as Florida is, there is no reason more buildings, houses, etc do not have solar collectors. Except that the public utility companies don't want them too because then they would not be dependant on the utilities for power. And we know who has a better chance of influencing the legislature now don't we? I do like the fact that our governor is willing to push for more environmentally friendly ways of doing things and is concerned about these things. Maybe there will be big tax breaks or rebates given to people who buy solar panels and other things like that. As long as he doesn't try to ram it down the throat of the people while living like it doesn't matter to him.
This is what burns me the most about many of the glitterati who go on about how we are destroying the planet and how we need to do this and that to cut down on our energy usage but don't do a damn thing about it in their own lives. When I see some of these famous people who's only knowledge on the subject is what some envirolunatic has whispered in their ear try to tell us we need to cut down on pollution or energy usage or what have you while they go everywhere on private planes and humongous limos, I just turn a deaf ear. Even someone like Al Gore who I think is a pretty smart guy and seems pretty sincere about global warming, just PISSES ME OFF because he lives in a giant house and is using 10 times the amount of energy as a normal person. If you're gonna talk the talk Al, you better walk the walk. And I don't think this: http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/g/gore-bush-houses.htm qualifies you to tell me anything about how much energy I use. And don't even get me started on Michael Moore and his "Documentaries", I'll save talking about the pompous ass some other time when I have more time. If you want to get people's attention, show us you are doing things too like Willien Nelson and his BioWillie fuel or Cameron Diaz who has used bio diesel for quite a while. I read in Rueters that Darryl Hannah travelled across the US in a biofuel car in 2005 and her house is off the electric grid. Now that I can admire. Of course the same story lauded Big Al for "An inconvenient truth" but didn't say one thing about his inconvenient house.
Well that's it for now as I have to make money the old fashioned way and earn it. Will be watching the stock market closely today as I expect it to rise quite a bit today. Hopefully the stocks I own will be part of that rise. At least I have a relatively short drive so I won't use a lot of hydrocarbons or pollute very much today.
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