Soap Box – Page 19 – The Wacky World of Chris Knight

2007/06/212007/06/21

Did they have civics class back when Bush and Cheney were in school?

The Raw Story | Cheney tells agency that Vice Presidents office is not part of the executive branch
The Office of Vice President Dick Cheney told an agency within the National Archives that for purposes of securing classified information, the Vice Presidents office is not an entity within the executive branch according to a letter released Thursday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Click the link. Read the story. There is nothing more I can add except that I am shaking my head and applying for immigration to New Zealand.

-Chris

2007/06/07

Irony, it’s not just for breakfast…

Feds to Suspend Border Passport Rule
By MATTHEW LEE and DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writers
Thursday, June 7, 2007

(06-07) 21:59 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) —

The Bush administration is poised to suspend a major post-9/11 security initiative to cope with increasingly angry complaints from Americans whose summer vacations are threatened by new passport rules.

A proposal, expected to be announced Friday, will temporarily waive a requirement that U.S. citizens have passports to fly to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda, provided the traveler can prove he or she has already applied for a passport, officials said Thursday.

I disagree with 95% of the new laws and regulations that are supposedly designed to thwart potential terrorist acts. I also feel that if a law/regulation passed with that intention can be suspended because it is too much of an inconvenience than the politicians who promoted it must not feel it was that important either. If we trade liberty for security we are fools; but if we trade liberty and security for convenience then we are roadkill on the highway called ‘Survival of the Fittest’.

-Chris Knight

2007/06/06

Hiding the problem with smoke and mirrors…

Solar shield could be quick fix for global warming – earth – 05 June 2007 – New Scientist Environment
* 15:35 05 June 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Catherine Brahic

A solar shield that reflects some of the Sun’s radiation back into space would cool the climate within a decade and could be a quick-fix solution to climate change, researchers say.

Because of their rapid effect, however, they should be deployed only as a last resort when “dangerous” climate change is imminent, they warn.

Solar shields are not a new idea – such “geoengineering” schemes to artificially cool the Earth’s climate are receiving growing interest, and include proposals to inject reflective aerosols into the stratosphere, deploying space-based solar reflectors and large-scale cloud seeding.

The shields are inspired by the cooling effects of large volcanic eruptions that blast sulphate particles into the stratosphere. There, the particles reflect part of the Sun’s radiation back into space, reducing the amount of heat that reaches the atmosphere, and so dampening the greenhouse effect.

The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines cooled Earth by a few tenths of a degree for several decades.

While this idea is leaps and bounds better than venting our atmosphere into space… It does have two critical flaws:

It does nothing to help that the rising CO2 levels are causing our ocean water to become more acidic, which is killing off coral reefs.
In fact, the solar shield could reduce the amount of light making it to plants, adversely affecting their ability to bind Carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere. This would only aggravate the problems we already have.

Hey, try these on for size… Close the SUV loophole in the emissions laws! Consume less! Take public transportation more! Require office buildings to turn their computers, as well as their lights, off at night! There are a thousand little things that individuals and businesses can do that are easier, and make more sense, than hiding the planet behind a set of mirrors.

-Chris Knight