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What’s that smell?
Pollution blame game
By Geoff Loper
It is time to stop wasting time, effort and money in research studies that will not solve the problems we face as a global community.
First it was blamed on us human beings.
Then fault shifted to the cars that we drive.
From there, the cows of the world were guilty.
Now, a recent study blames the moose population.
There has not been one clear reason for the global climate change that we have been experiencing over the last few decades, but the blame game needs to stop before it goes too much further.
Perhaps the combination of all the elements has been responsible for the more visible change recently.
But the time, money and effort used in collecting the data that results in someone new being blamed needs to be refocused somewhere else, so that perhaps we can make this world a better place for our children and grandchildren.
There have been studies going back as far as 1984 detailing the worldwide distribution of methane produced by farm animals, and yet there has not been a workable study that would have come up with a way make that energy usable for the general public (Flashbacks of “Mad Max” are now running through my mind).
In 1995, government investigators found that cows in California were responsible for emitting nearly 20 pounds of smog-forming gasses each day. And the growing dairy industry there at the time housed just over 2.5 million cattle, with an additional 400,000 more within the following years.
But the cloud of smog that hangs over Los Angeles has nothing to do with the millions of people there driving each and every day…
From there we jump to the present day, with former Vice President Al Gore jumping all over the country warning us of the impending doom that we all face. That we all need to drive less, switch to solar power, recycle more…. Yet he flies from city to city spreading this message in his large private personal jet.
He helped to organize a concert event to help spread the word about global warming, and more electricity was burned for just one of the six Live Earth concerts than was used for the entire tour that the Foo Fighters ran last summer. Could we get just a bit more hypocritical here?
And now the moose are under fire. Yes Bullwinkle is now the scapegoat for the global heat wave. Researchers in Norway have found that a single moose expels enough methane in one year that its carbon dioxide equivalent would be that of driving your car for over 8,000 miles.
So will Mr. Gore be declaring open season on moose now so that the air over Canada and Scandinavia will be cleaner? Or will we simply ask the moose to cut the flatulence down a bit?
The next logical step for the blame to fall would be either the buffalo or elk. Now, the buffalo have already been hunted to near extinction once in the history to the U.S. and opening a worldwide hunting season on moose to reduce greenhouse gasses is not going to be a feasible answer either.
The moose and cows have been here for years before the car was thought of; perhaps it is time to consider designing a hybrid-moose that can eat less greenery and then output less methane.
Or let’s go more extreme and take a page from Phillip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and start making robotic animals that produce no waste at all.
Does anyone else think that this is getting a bit out of control?
It is time to stop wasting time, effort and money in research studies that will not solve the problems we face as a global community. Areas in southern California have been disconnected from the electric grid by installing solar panels on the roofs of their houses.
A rural farmer in Illinois cut his electric dependency by installing a 50 foot windmill in his front yard. Here in Wisconsin, these options are, right now, just that: options. No one has tried to take a step forward to improving our energy usage in the state.
One great idea I have heard is to build a floating platform in the middle of Lake Michigan covered with windmills that then transmit the energy back to us. It would be much cleaner than the new coal power plant in Oak Creek.
Why is it that we can find the “cause” of a problem but do nothing about it? Why do we continue to waste money on studies that tell us something we already know? Our climate is changing right now; let’s do something to fix it before we can find something else to blame it on.
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