Global Heating Is Getting Serious

Salud, Salut, Gesund—As Long As You’re Healthy
By Mort Malkin

Global Heating Is Getting Serious

SSG has spoken of the Earth as the ultimate source of nutrients for our bodies, and we’d better take good care of the soil, earthworms and all. Today, we add another source of nutrients — the sea.

The sea provides food in the form of many kinds of fish and also a number of delicacies worth of shellfish such as lobsters, oysters, scallops, and sea urchins. We all knew that fish stocks were being depleted via overfishing with long nets (miles long) and sea bottom trawling. We must add to the rapacious fishing, the pollution of the sea from urban and farm runoff. Thereby, our rivers are filled with mercury and other heavy metals, fertilizer in the form of N, P, and K, toxic pesticides with ferocious names, and prescription drug flotsam & jetsam. There are many dead zones in the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Coast between Boston and Baltimore …

But, that’s old news. The new news is that the major greenhouse gas, CO2, is imperiling all sea life north to south and around the world. OK, it’s true that CO2 is not toxic like PCPs, PCDFs, and mercury, but the increased carbon dioxide in the air largely dissolves in sea water to form carbonic acid, HCO3. Acid sea water dissolves the shells of clams, oysters, and other shellfish as well as coral reefs where lots of fish hang out.  And then, we don’t know fully the effect of acid seas on plankton and other tiny creatures which are at the base of the ocean food chain. Plankton and other macro and microscopic beasties are breakfast, lunch. and dinner for very small fish, most shellfish, and even some huge sea creatures such as baleen whales. You know how it is out there in the salt water jungle — big fish eat little fish. The fiercest predator, human customers in sushi restaurants, will eat anything wrapped in raw fish. Then, when all the fish are gone, what will the penguins, pelicans, puffins and blue-footed boobies do?

Aside from gastronomy, artists, poets, and film makers will mourn the loss of the chambered nautilus and the giant clam of the South Pacific. Calendar collectors will no longer have sweet sea birds to illustrate January or July.

In the last few years most people became convinced that the atmosphere of the Earth has heated up dangerously, resulting in the shrinking of glaciers, the melting of the Arctic ice cap, and the breaking off of enormous chunks of ice shelves in Antarctica. The cause of the global heating, most of us now realize, is the rapid rise in greenhouse gases, notably CO2. The culprit is mankind — mostly coal fired power plants and transportation contrivances driven by gasoline & diesel engines. The carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, over 387 ppm last we were told, creates a greenhouse effect and so prevents the escape of heat from the land and sea into outer space. The Earth heats up, permafrost melts, ice caps melt, glaciers melt, and environmentalists become mainstream.

For six of eight years, the previous administration didn’t believe the numbers reported by the climatologists and oceanographers or the photos showing open water over the North Pole during summer months and the polar bears marooned on an ice floe miles out in the open ocean. Finally, they admitted to global “warming” and climate “change” while others of us spoke of global heating and climate chaos. Anyway, they said, it wasn’t their fault. Besides, they were certain that technology would provide an easy fix — perhaps spraying  the upper atmosphere with aerosol particles to reflect sunlight away from the planet, perhaps developing white asphalt for the parking lots of shopping malls to reflect the summer sun.

The trouble with such parasolic and reflective schemes is: we will still be spewing CO2 into the atmosphere by the ton as we burn fossil fuels, and the CO2 will still  be taken up by the oceans, producing the equivalent of seltzer (club soda). The acid brine will soften the shells of clams, mussels, scallops, oysters, and the many, more exotic sea animals. We may be approaching a time when the pleasures of oysters on the half shell or a full lobster dinner will become a fond memory. Global heating is getting serious.

Plain Words And Smoke & Mirrors

Gadfly
Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Plain Words And Smoke & Mirrors

Plain words can be slippery. Plain words can be allusive, illusive, inversive, perversive. A quick listen to the talk that emerges from the White House, the Congress, The Pentagon (even with Donald Rumsfeld gone), Wall Street, Exxon-Mobil … can teach our poets a thing or two about metaphor and symbolism.

The Gadfly Revelry & Resaerch team has blown the smoke alarm and made clear the real agenda of the forsoothsayers. Let’s start with “national security” — surely security is a worthy endeavor. National security transitioned smoothly to national security interest and almost as easily to national interest. Dick Cheney, early in 2001, convened his (secret) energy task force of oil companies and thereupon told us that our national security required the invasion of Iraq . He was really interested in the national interest of appropriating Iraqi oilfields on behalf of the Seven Sisters. He then tried to convince us to bomb Iran and achieve regime change so we could take over their/our oil. Cooler minds prevailed and in 2009 Cheney was an ex-oficio.

The Cong gang (coal, oil, nuclear, gas), without a champion in the Pentagon, turned to domestic energy sources. They inadvertently forgot to say that they’d have to a) drill for oil off the coast of resort cities in Florida, b) blast off the tops of mountains in Appalachia, and c) fracture the bedrock of the Earth to pool the gas located a mile deep in tiny crevices and bubbles. I suppose it’s hard for the energy companies to make a living off the sun or wind or tides.

National security brings us to overall issues of war and peace … or, defense and peace. The head honcho of the Pentagon used to be titled Secretary of War. In the 40s, WWII enjoyed broad public support — every family bought war bonds. But in recent wars, Vietnam to Iraq, not even “defense” bonds were proffered. We were reduced to waving flags and displaying bumper stickers announcing support for the troops. But, we were left to wonder whether we should also support all the military contractors of Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Titan, CACI, and Dyncorp. The number of such contractors operating in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds all the US military personnel in those war theatres. I recently discussed this question with a friend who is a British national. I asked abouit the Ghurkas and weren’t they mercenaries who fought for the British? Yet, history gives them favorable press. She replied that the Ghurkas weren’t mercenaries but defenders of the Empire. Blackwater contractors are mercenaries.

Another friend, a native born American, sailed right past the issue of mercenaries to the idea of wars of choice versus just wars. He said “War is just war.” He suggested that Isaiah’s counsel to beat swords into ploughshares would mandate establighing Peace Academies next door to West Point, Anapolis, and Colorado Springs.

The fog of war is relatively transparent when compared to the smoke & mirrors of Wall Street “investment” banks. Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, Bank of America, and their co-illusionists brought us all manner of “derivatives” to create new wealth. Their collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and credit default swaps (CDSs) led to: strangle options, pin risk options, rolling turbos, and iron butterfly spreads, among the most inventive. How wondrous — new wealth without better mousetraps, electric cars, or personal jet travel vests.

Wall Street, as we know, is the bastion of Capitalism. Capitalism is not as highly regarded as free enterprise, and so a little word deviation was in order. Free enterprise was equated with freedom, and freedom with democracy. Ipso facto, democracy became confluent with capitalism. Marx and Lenin missed the boat back in the beginning of the 20th century. They should have known the west would not accept communism. They could have easily put that ism in the same basket as community, barn raisings, and co-ops. Community … communalism … communism. If only power didn’t corrupt so powerfully.

Communism has now disappeared from the planet except in North Korea where the Dear Leader sings its praises. Even Outer Mongolia is now a parliamentary democracy. Outer Mongolia, wedged between Russia and China and once a communist anchor of North Asia! The folks here in the US whose ideology requires the invocation of fear have had to replace communism with socialism. Etymologically, it is difficult to pull off. Our culture in language is positive about church socials, social networks, and Social Security. The poor far-right of the political spectrum — they don’t want to be called anti-social. They must feel awkward to be anti socialized medicine. They are, as well, out of step with the rest of the world that considers health care a right.

Words can be plain and clear once you get through the smoke and mirrors.