Jun 19 2013

And once it’s fracked, vomit it over the landscape

Categories:

Environment

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I know you’re all busy fracking that poll, but this is relevant. It’s all about the oil, and Charles Pierce always puts it so well.

As we await the decision on whether or not TransCanada will get to complete the northern leg of our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death-funnel aimed at transporting the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel from the poisoned moonscape of Alberta down the spine of North America to Texas, where what already hasn’t spilled out and killed ducks and bunny rabbits — and the agricultural economy of half the country — will be put on ships and sent out to the rest of the world, we should check to see how the pipeline system is working elsewhere.

It’s not working so well.

A Northern Alberta pipeline sprung a little leak. A leak that spewed 9.5 million liters of waste water into Canadian wetlands. A spokesman for the company running the pipeline, Texas-based Apache Corp. (do you Canadians know you’ve got fucking Texas oilmen running loose in your backyard, with boldly named racist companies?), said it was just “salty water” with “trace amounts” of oil. Right. Do you believe him?

The substance is the inky black colour of oil, and the treetops are brown. Across a broad expanse of northern Alberta muskeg, the landscape is dead. It has been poisoned by a huge spill of 9.5 million litres of toxic waste from an oil and gas operation in northern Alberta, the third major leak in a region whose residents are now questioning whether enough is being done to maintain aging energy infrastructure.

“Trace amounts”. OK.

“Every plant and tree died” in the area touched by the spill, said James Ahnassay, chief of the Dene Tha First Nation, whose members run traplines in an area that has seen oil and gas development since the 1950s.

Oh. Well that sounds…innocuous.

This is where capitalism fails, among many other places. Look to the future: as gas and oil prices steadily climb, there will be more and more incentive to unscrupulous people to profit at the land’s expense, and there’s nothing to stop them. Furthermore, there will always be lots of short-sighted people who will see only dollar signs and easy comfort, who will chant “drill baby drill” and enable the looters. And then someday we get to live in the wreckage.

Somebody has to actually reckon the cost and say simply, “no.” Even if it discomfits a few Texans.

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30 comments

Jun 19 2013

Go frack this poll

Categories:

Environment, Pointless Poll

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The Ventura County Star has a poll up on hydraulic fracturing in California:

How concerned are you about fracking (hydraulic fracturing) in California?

  • I have little or no concern about it.
  • I’m concerned about its effects on water and the environment.
  • I’m concerned about a possible link to earthquakes.
  • I’m concerned that overregulation of it will kill jobs.

Fracking’s increasingly big news in California. My KCET colleague Char Miller has a good California fracking backgrounder here, but the short version is that the fossil fuel industry is eyeing the Monterey Shale, a Miocene marine sedimentary formation thought to hold as much as 15 billion barrels of oil. That’s twice what the Bakken holds in North Dakota. The stakes are high for the oil industry.

I’ve been informed by one of my geopals that the Western States Petroleum Association has quietly put the word out to its fanbase, asking them to swamp the poll. Right now votes of fracking opponents are about equal to those who either support fracking or don’t care, though the way the answers are phrased makes it look like opponents are well ahead.

I suspect there’s a diversity of opinion on fracking here. That’s fine. (Though those of you who disagree with me are wrong.) To its credit, the Star admits it’s a pointless exercise:

Note: This is not a scientific poll. The results reflect only the opinions of those who chose to participate.

But the oil lobby does seize on spurious polls like this for PR spin purposes, so whatever your viewpoint, go add some noise to the signal.

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39 comments

Jun 19 2013

We’re all doomed now

Categories:

Organisms

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They’ve mastered our technology.

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35 comments

Jun 19 2013

Putting the profit in rape

Categories:

Stupidity

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Kickstarter has a lovely new project to fund: a self-published book on how to seduce women. Well, if you call this seduction.

All the greatest seducers in history could not keep their hands off of women. They aggressively escalated physically with every woman they were flirting with. They began touching them immediately, kept great body language and eye contact, and were shameless in their physicality. Even when a girl rejects your advances, she KNOWS that you desire her. That’s hot. It arouses her physically and psychologically.

And that’s one of the milder recommendations from the author of this book. I am relieved that I was never exposed to these kinds of ‘dating tips’ back when I was a-courtin’—I might be even more of a jerk now, and I’d probably be living alone.

If you’re appalled that such a book should be so grossly rewarded, register a complaint with Kickstarter.

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77 comments

Jun 19 2013

I wish there really were a tree of the knowledge of good and evil

Categories:

Culture, Humor, Politics

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Because there are a heck of a lot of people who need to eat of it.

knowledge

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19 comments

Jun 19 2013

Everything is officially manly now

Categories:

Equality

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You know what’s really manly? Wearing diapers.

If you need to wear some special protection as you get older, there’s no shame in it, and like the ad says, “millions of guys deal with the same thing.” But so do millions of women. Rather than pandering to masculine sensitivities and encouraging people to mentally segregate themselves, why can’t we say these problems are a human thing? All these products with the marketing ploy of “for men” or “for women” (unless, of course, they’re actually dealing with unique aspects of the biology of the sexes) are just shoring up walls between us.

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36 comments

Jun 19 2013

A quick note

Categories:

History, Humor

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You must read today’s xkcd: The Pace of Modern Life. That’s all, gotta go.

I just had to pluck out one example.

The managers of sensational newspapers…do not try to educate their readers and make them better, but tend to create perverted tastes and develop vicious tendencies. The owners of these papers seem to have but one purpose, and that is to increase their circulation.

They do it for the blog hits.

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29 comments

Jun 19 2013

Skepticon makes a principled sacrifice

Categories:

Conferences

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What, somebody is turning down money because it’s a tainted source? That’s standing up for what you believe. Skepticon is turning down a sponsorship from CFI.

Dear Internet,

We here at Skepticon HQ love our movement. We love that we don’t always agree, are wicked smart and have a penchant for awesome hats. Skepticon has always worked hard to cultivate a conference that celebrates such diversity and awesomeness, doing our best to ensure that any and all know that they are welcome and safe at our event.

However, after witnessing the actions of one of our years long sponsors, the Center for Inquiry (CFI), it has come to our attention that, in order to uphold the values that we have come to embody and endorse, we will no longer accept their sponsorship.

So what does this mean for Skepticon? Well, losing a large sponsor is going to hurt a little bit (we’re probably going to have to sell some of those awesome hats were were talking about) but it has made even determined than ever to make a conference that we can be proud of.

Love,

Skepticon

P.S.-Want to help us keep our awesome hats? Donate today and help us make your conference even better.

Yikes. I guess you can’t even buy friends anymore.

See that donation link up there? Let’s ease their pain, and try to send them a few pennies, if you can afford it.

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33 comments

Jun 18 2013

A child can see through it

Categories:

Ethics

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Seth Kurtenbach is on CFI’s Course of Reason, an On-Campus blog. He wrote an essay using very simple words, and he wrote it as A Fifth Grader’s Response to the CFI Board’s Statement. It’s a wee bit elliptical, but read carefully…it’s actually rather seditious.

Sometimes the person being mean or bad is really smart, and will pretend that what he is doing is no big deal. He will say, “hey, let’s be respectful about our disagreement.” This can make the mad person look like the unreasonable one. This will make the mad person even more mad, because they are not the ones being disrespectful, it is the bad or mean person! It is a mean trick that bad smart people play sometimes. You should be careful about this if you ever disagree with someone about something. If you are the bad or mean person, you should try to not be so bad and mean, and you should also apologize for being bad and mean.

Sometimes it is really hard for a person to admit that he was disrespectful. The best thing to do is to do the right thing and apologize for being disrespectful. The worst thing to do is to pretend you weren’t disrespectful, or to ignore the other person’s feelings. This will never make things better. You should keep this in mind if you ever accidentally disrespect someone and make them mad.

I get the impression some of CFI’s people are a little bit displeased.

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48 comments

Jun 18 2013

Darn UK show-offs

Categories:

Atheism, Equality

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The Girl Guides, which is the original name for the Girl Scouts, have just made an amendment to their policies to be inclusive to non-believers.

Girlguiding UK has announced a new version of its Promise – ‘the core expression of values and the common standard that brings everyone in guiding together’ – which is inclusive for the first time of those who don’t believe in any god. The British Humanist Association, which responded to Girlguiding consultation and met with Girlguiding in the course of their work to reformulate the Promise, has welcomed it.

The new formulation will have Guides promise to ‘be true to myself and develop my beliefs’, in place of the previous formulation to ‘love God’. It is the twelfth amendment to the Promise in guiding history, but the first version to open guiding up fully to non-religious girls.

It’s not clear in the article whether this change will translate to the American Girl Scouts, although they stopped discriminating against atheist girls 20 years ago — but I think they still have to promise to “serve God”. I know the Boy Scouts had to be dragged with great drama and breast-beating into allowing gay kids to enroll, and still reject atheist boys.

But good work, Girl Guides. Now we just need to fix America.

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18 comments

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