So, I’m getting my hair cut yesterday (I know, I’m bald but a good buzz eliminates the mad professor look) and the barber with the chair behind me starts talking to her customer about a show they both saw on Fox about the apocalypse. Apparently the apocalypse now consists of a combo of asteroid hitting the earth, Middle East war, Global warming, volcanos (!), nuclear war and pandemic disease. Sounds like a blast, doesn’t it?

This is where it gets good, or at least weird: The barber starts off on an increasingly fanatical rant about how the end days are coming (I think she mentioned 2028) and then went into incredible detail about exactly how it was going to go down, ending finally with God and Jesus and some archangels swooping in at the last minute and saving our butts. She was pretty ecstatic about having this knowledge.

Lady, I have news for you: God has no track record of pulling our tails out of the fire at the last minute. In fact I think he might be more likely to let the planet’s destroyers get cooked so things can get back to their beautiful previous state.

I don’t remember reading anything about asteroids in the Bible , but then again, I’m a Buddhist so it hasn’t been on my nightstand for a long time.

The whole thing was very weird and even my barber, who can make small talk with the best of them, was silent. I paid my bill and left and so did her customer, all without comment. I wonder if there was any repercussion for her after we left?

California is poised to enact the most far reaching carbon reduction plan in the country with a target of reducing carbon emission by 25% by 2020 which would be equivalent to rolling back to 1990 levels. This is essentially their ratification of the Kyoto guidelines ignored by the Federal government. It is a bipartisan effort (on the moderate side) which will be signed into law by the Governator.

Hopefully my state of NY will be next. We have agreed with several other Great Lakes states to restrict emissions from coal-fired plants. If the Bush people won’t pull their heads out of the sand on this issue then it will be up to local and state governments to take the lead. CA, as usual, is in the forefront.

This rather incredible article about a study commissioned by the travel industry details exactly what our travel plans might look like in 2030 and it’s a huge change. A few key points:
- 1mm of sea level rise translates to 1.5 meters (about 5′) of shoreline lost
- they project a 72mm rise by 2030, translating to 360′ of shoreline loss. This pretty much eliminates Florida as a destination (or anything other than a malarial swamp)
- Virtually every beach or island destination is affected
Given that this is an industry study done to help them plan for changes it can be considered apolitical, and therefore more credible.
Better visit the Med while you still can.
Update: As I noted in this post, we’re currently gaining 1.6 mm of rise annually which means we’re losing, on average, 8 feet of shoreline each year!

As you may have noted (if anyone actually reads this thing) I’m not a big fan of our foreign policy. The war in Iraq is not about terrorism or Saddam, it’s about oil. This administration, even though their official policy is to cast doubt about global warming, knows we have a major energy problem. They went after Iraq because it has one of the largest oil capacities in the world and we needed to get our hands on it to avert a major economic catastrophe here in the US.

Proof? We are building the largest US Embassy in the world in Baghdad: 100 acres, capable of housing 3000 people at a cost of $600 million. It’s larger than Vatican City. We would not be building this compound if we were really planning on getting out of Iraq in the near future. While we invest nothing in alternative energy projects here in the US, we are ‘investing’ $1.5 billion (yes, billion) a week in the Iraq war. Do we really think this is anti-terrorism money? We haven’t spent anywhere near that amount on domestic security.

We’re investing dollars and lives to acquire an oil field.