More Gore.

First, don't get me wrong, I am not really any fonder of George Bush than I am of Al Gore, but I do find a bit of humor in the both of them. Along with the anguish. George liked to pretend that he really knew what was going on, when sometimes he didn't. You could usually tell when he was uncomfortable in his skin, because he would start using words that didn't fit in his mouth. George was born and raised in Cowboy Country, Texas. They didn't generally use big words there. They are a lot like Italians down there in Texas, they gesture a lot, and used three or four word long, four letter word phrases.

I have a whole lot in common with old George Bush. I was raised using sign language, and used short, small word sentences myself. It's hard to hear over logging Cats and chainsaws, so a person learned how to use fewer words and make yourself real clear without really having to say much. If the cat skinner made a mistake, or wasn’t really paying attention. You could chew him out real good with just a few real good hand signs. With just a few quick hand gestures, you could take the place of several paragraphs, about what you thought about his mother bringing his sorry (posterior) into the world. I’m sorry about coming close to using graphic language, but you can’t talk about logging with out using bad words.

That’s kinda’ like old George finding himself moved out of a Texas cattle ranch into the White House. His old language that he used to speak was just not used in the White House. He was caught up in with a bunch of people that had spent their entire life using big words. And, women that wouldn’t swear even if they broke a nail. So, I figger ole’ George got out his dictionary and started writing down big words with important meanings, that he could use in case he really got cornered on an issue, but sometimes he would just get so frustrated that he would hollar. “bring um on!”

I think that where George Bush lost the American people is where he sold out his “roots”. He tried to talk like a Washington Politician, when he was a Texas cowboy. He tried to cover up the fact that he was from simple roots. Being from simple roots doesn’t mean that you are stupid, but trying to act like you aren’t from simple roots is stupid. Dwight D. Eisenhower always called nuclear “nucular”. Everybody pointed out that he pronounced it wrong, but he never changed, or apologized. Soon most people in the nation pronounced the word as “nucular”. Harry S. Truman was a poor speller, and he used the word ain’t. His only concession to the polite world was that he said “manure”, instead of the word that he would normally use. But, he didn’t sell out on his roots.

I guess what this is all leading up to, is that sometimes you really have to pay attention. Some people use small words but mean what they say. Other people use big important words, but don't really know diddley. I watched a clip of Al gore on Conan O'Brien the other day and I was shocked at his ignorance, which shocked me even more, because I expected Al to be ignorant. I know that most of you are great fans of Al, because you believe what he says. So, I guess that I should ask for forgiveness from the people that dote on Al's words.

If there were two people on this whole Earth that I world never follow, It would have been Gandhi, and now Al gore. If I'm going to stake my life on something, I want it to be based on hard science. I don't think that I could just squat in the road and dare the British to kill us all. Science and history tells me that the British are likely to do that. I think that Gandhi and his people just got lucky, I wouldn't recommend doing it again. Now, we are believing Al Gore! Can you believe that???

Nothing that Al says makes much sense to me, perhaps I read too much. I believe that Al is a charlatan. He knows how to use big words that fool most of us into believing him. First, he went off about the poor Polar Bears running out of ice. Here's a clue for you Al. Polar bears don't eat ice. Being the nice guy that I am, I decided to give Al the benefit of the doubt. The research that I was able to do told me that some Polar Bears groups are increasing in population and some are declining. It seems that food for the bears is in more abundance, because of the global warming, more critters are able to be out and about for the bears to eat. Some groups of bears are in decline because of man infringing on their territory.

There are recent bans for hunting the bears from ice-breaking cruise ships and helicopters. I'm in total agreement with that, somehow it just doesn't seem to be that fair, to cruise in, shoot a bear and go back home to Arizona. I believe that you should have to live in the land of ice and snow and take your chances the the bear might eat YOU before you have the right to kill it. Then, if you kill one, you should eat the whole darn bear, and make your clothes out of its hide. That would seem fair to me. So, I guess that I'll give Al a “bye” on Polar Bear protection. They are an incredibly beautiful creature. So, I guess that it is okay to show the poor Polar Bear swimming in open ocean where the ice used to be. Al and I could just call it a “White Lie” to save the bears.

Next Al says we need windmills, wind powered electric generators and solar panels, electric cars, and hydrogen powered vehicles that only exhaust pure water. Wait a minute! Where is the science there??? Hasn't he heard what a wind turbine does to a chicken hawk? If one flies through the darn things, nothing but feathers come out the other side. The Newcomers call them “Redtail Hawks”, but the reason that I call them Chicken Hawks is because I come from a long line of folks that watched them eat chickens. But, wind turbines have a bad habit of killing birds, and an acceptable level for bird death has not been established. Maybe Al will enlighten us about how many birds is okay to kill before wind turbines are considered to be a hazard. If the turbines were wacking Polar Bears, I'd bet that Al would be having a fit!

Solar panel systems have about a twenty-five year payback on them. So, if you buy them, it will be about twenty-five years before you get your money back. That doesn't cover any interest, maintenance or replacement. Not a very good investment. Oh, but you say that the energy companies will give you a subsidy to install them. How insane is that? They are not practical in the first place, so they allow you a subsidy that is charged to the rate-payers About 1% of our electricity comes from Solar at this point. If the plan was 100% successful, we would be charging ourselves enough to cover the subsidies to pay us to put the in solar panels. My brain hurts! We would never recover the investment. Either that or electricity would cost us about three times what we pay now. But, it's fun to talk about.

I'll skip right through battery powered and hydrogen powered vehicles, because most people have figured out that they are immensely inefficient. It takes way more power to manufacture hydrogen than you will ever get back out of it. Same with charging batteries, you would have to have free electricity to make them practical. Burning coal would be totally out of the question. The smart person would say “Why would we burn twice as much coal to power electric or hydrogen vehicles???” It's a no brainer! I think... Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there with no brain. And if you think dioxin, mercury, and lead are bad for the environment, just imagine if every vehicle had batteries in them. Do you have any idea how toxic vehicle batteries are? When they crash, or go into our rivers and oceans, what happens to all of that pollution. It doesn't just dissipate like petroleum products. The safety standpoint of a battery powered vehicle has not been fully appreciated yet, because not many of them have been involved in crashes. They carry onboard enough power to kill you if you get connected into it. It is an electric system in a metal car. The fire potential is also greater with electric vehicles. Well, that took longer to skip-by than I thought!

Now, what I really want to talk about is Al Gore latest Nobel Prize winning Idea. Geothermal Power. Al has recently discovered Geothermal energy, “a relatively new one”. Humans have used geothermal energy since the beginning of humans, but I guess humans are a relatively new feature on Earth, geothermally speaking. So, Al is suggesting that we tap into it... literally. He says that we should drill down into the Earth a “Couple of Kilometers” and tap into the almost unlimited source of energy. He goes on to say that we have “here in the United States, a thirty-five thousand year supply” of heat. He got that right. Kudos. But, it bothers me when somebody like Al Gore starts bandying words like “Kilometer.” He sounds like a scientist or something. He goes on to talk about “new drill bits” that will take the heat. I fell out of my chair when he said that the center of the Earth is “Several Million Degrees”.... This man just wrote a book on this subject. Shouldn't he know that the center of the earth is four thousand degrees??? He also said that the “crust of the Earth is hot”. Well if you go by the fact that Absolute Zero is four hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit below zero, then the crust of the Earth is “hot”. I always use Fahrenheit temperatures, because I'm not a scientist like Al Gore.

The problem that I have with Geothermal Energy, is that I've read too much about it. Although I firmly believe that Geothermal Energy is in our future, the stuff that we have now is not that great. What Al didn't tell you, is that Geothermal is a sticky wicket. Releasing geothermal steam pressure to the surface of the Earth comes with enormous pollution. The water in the Earth “two kilometers down” is under tremendous heat and pressure. Water is a great solvent at standard temperature and pressure, but down there it is a super solvent. It dissolves sulfur, mercury, iron, calcium, and other minerals that readily precipitate at the surface of the earth. They routinely have to shut down the geothermal plants for cleaning. Getting rid of the pollutants is a major project. If Geothermal was the complete source of our energy. It is not certain that we would be able to deal with all of the left-over polluting solids. A method of bringing the heat to the surface and leaving the rest down there is the only good answer, but as of now, that is NOT the case.

Can we noninate Al Gore for a new Nobel Prize? What should it be in? Greed avarice, stupidity....