Happy Earth Day

Those numbers don't even seem like very much.

Please provide cited references that any of the above "cool stories" EVER actually happened the way you tell them, and aren't just cool stories.

Yeah all those other countries with socialized medicine? yeah they died.

I suppose you would never go to a hospital. They might kill you, after all. Of course, they might save your life, too.

Just pay attention and remember details.

The OMB and CBO didn't make the same prediction about other countries, did they? The analysis was done around 20 years ago and you still haven't heard of it.

At least they practice what they preach (unlike Al 'Diamond' Gore).

"Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the 'composted' body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk."

Hey, recycling!

Cheers, James Arthur

It's definitely a trade-off. My family just saved one of ours, several times, from premature iatrogenic demise. Pretty scary close calls.

Quality-control and error-preventing rigor in a typical bureaucratic, Vogon-run hospital are absolutely terrifying compared to the effort we put into just getting a BOM right.

OTOH, in an emergency they generally perform brilliantly.

Do you feel lucky, punk? ;-)

Cheers, James Arthur

Yeah, I had heard that one of the founders of this newest holiday (Holy Day because it's a religion) had killed his girlfriend and his followers helped him hide out, but I didn't try to look up his name so didn't mention it.

He was the emcee, so obviously played a large role, yet his name doesn't appear on wikipedia's earth day page, which tells me that he probably was the real founder and not the guy they now claim.

"She went out for tofu and bean sprouts and didn't come back." I love that part.

Ever been to a vegetarian restaurant? Worst vegetables I've ever had. They actually had raw string beans as an appetizer, no different from eating them straight from the produce bin. There was a couple at another table that actually ordered it and they were eating them, raw, plain, and dry. I had something that was cooked and required some preparation, but it was almost inedible.

I may have written that too soon. My mom just called me in tears-- from a hopeful, improving situation last night, we are now in an exceedingly dire life-and-death situation from a preventable, quality-control problem that happened last night.

Good people, but disorganized, and we may pay the ultimate price for it.

James Arthur

We have more guns now. When you have more guns, endangered species thrive, crime is reduced, there is less pollution, and global warming can't happen. Plus, everybody gets more beer and better pay, so they can afford a diesel pickup truck, jacked up, with 30" mudgrips and drive it to the yacht club.

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Grizzly H.

You didn't quote the other cool story, about the 50 million dead because of the DDT ban, maybe because the left is now aware of that. Conservatives started talking about it in the 1980's when it first became apparent that malaria had returned. In 2006 I saw a committee hearing on CSPAN where Senator Clinton learned about this and said to the expert witness, "Thank you, we've never heard of this before." The conservatives in the Senate, or at least the most rabid of them, had heard of it many years earlier. The left and the moderates who go along with them still don't want to bring back DDT, so while millions die each year they study alternatives.

"Ecology" itself is probably a massive error. It seems a vast oversimplification.

Read the review first as a sort of map:

And here's part one:

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Les Cargill

I believe your post fits the description of "fear mongering" pretty well.

Actually, it is pretty likely that your Social Security prediction

*will* need to be pushed out as the situation changes. We are currently in the point where the baby boom is reaching SS age and they will have a significant impact for at least two decades. But by the time they are in their 80's they will have dissipated to the point they are no longer such a huge impact. By 2040 I expect the issue will have long been resolved. Then you will be the alarmist that others will point to and laugh about your "dire" predictions.

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Rick

That is deeply incorrect. The only constraint on bulk food production - the only sort that matters - is storage.

Agricultural land is going out of production at a very high rate. In Texas, there are tax abatement trusts for people who have inherited agricultural land that's no longer feasible, so long as they agree to keep it fallow and let it more or less return to a natural state.

Given some measure of ingenuity in the people who produce things, you'll get better and cheaper, and it'll tread more lightly on the Earth. We had the Dust Bowl and we actually learned how to not do that again. That's one in many, many stories related to this.

It's only actually relevant to two or three major cities - mainly LA. Which, I mean [expletive deleted] LA and San Francisco.

Do you not remember how badly "pollution controls" worked in the first generation? Until the advent of microprocessor ECM technology, it wasn't getting any better. And most of the initial "add on" pollution controls were kludges to ameliorate poorly tuned engines or the inability of people to use a manual choke properly.

To some limit, the price of oil itself solved the problem - a Honda put out a lot less smog than a Buick. Too bad the GM, Chrysler and Ford dinosaurs were so slow to turn around. See Detroit for details - the city of trees growing up through houses.

The math is simple - a 22 MPG car cuts emissions over an 11 MPG car by a factor of two. Since that's probably an exponent somewhere...

The greenies didn't fix this; the Popular Science crowd did. And the kids not wanting to drive their father's Oldsmobile.

I don't think you have to worry about that; birth rates are naturally abating. Only where people are free enough to have a standard of living better than the 15th century is this not true.

It took everything Pakistan could muster - including killing millions in the Partition - to get this way. All over identity. That's just one.

Checked the price of oil lately?

And for the last ten years, this is been proven wrong. Shale works to some epsilon.

Perhaps you're familiar with the concept of "technology"? I don't hold that it's a panacea for everything, but it's been shown to fix the problems you're talking about.

There's more gas - at least in the US - than we know what to do with. It'll bridge electricity production until solid state or wind alts catch up.

The best fix for use of motor fuel is higher price.

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Les Cargill

The baby boom is not the main cause of the problem. It's the various benefits that have been added to social security, especially disability. The ADA (thanks to a liberal Republican administration) has the side effect of expanding the number of people who are considered to have disabilities as well.

The baby boom ended when the immigration act of 1965 was passed. The population didn't stop growing.

The air is great in SF. The west wind comes in off the ocean, we add our donations, and pass it on to Oakland and San Jose and the rest of America.

Every now and then a "classic" car or pickup drives by, and it's astonishing how stinky they are. All cars used to be like that.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Well, healthcare professionals are humans, first. Mistakes happen. And if they don't make their quota of mistakes, government bureaucracy is there to insure that they do.

Yep but don't go to an ER if *they* don't think it's an emergency.

No, older. ;-)

Ouch. Sorry to hear that! I hope things reverse again. Quickly.

No, Detroit's failure had little to do with GM, Ford, and Chrysler losing it. The three are doing quite well. Elsewhere. Ford has had its best year ever (GM and Chrysler, likely too). Detroit still has trees growing up through houses.

Don't fix what ain't broke.

Thank you sir. Appreciated.

James Arthur

Seconded.

My grandmother died of neglect in a hospital. She was over her pneumonia and we should have taken her home, but they talked us into keeping her there for recovery. It was then that she died after a fall. At home she probably wouldn't have fallen, as she wouldn't have atrophied in bed. Their motive is to keep the beds full.