The Oil Drum

Too much thinking, too much cleverness on the monkey's part leads it to believe it can come up with rational solutions for what ration itself hath wrought.

I have seen the sentiment above written in many ways, but this version is quite good. Great article.

I just finished Joe's book yesterday. He's a very entertaining writer who isn't afraid to "tell it like it is" and has seen both sides of the track along the way. His book repeats many of the ideas from his essays, after most of the language is cleaned up for that portion of Middle America that still thinks one's mouth needs to be washed out with soap after uttering a four letter word. We need him and many more like him to break thru the Disney World TV delusions that most of us have as a world view, given that we may be only one hurricane away from a revolution. There's a story in today's NYT about the lives of some former residents washed out of New Orleans, people who find their former lives completely gone and no hope of anything other than being kept in a Federal warehouse for the lost.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/nationalspecial/12exile.html

The hurricane season is just winding up for the first big pitch. For the past 3 days, the minimum temperature at Key West set records at around 85 F. Key West is located out in the Gulf of Mexico very near the Florida Current, which drains the Gulf. Those air temperatures are close to the water temperatures seen from satellites. All that thermal energy in the Gulf can be expected to fuel some big storms, when they roll in, producing major damage in their wake. Better get ready and batten down the hatches, as the old saying goes. I'd say we're in for another rough ride.

E. Swanson

There is a quote in a fictional novel I am currently reading (Pompeii: A Novel - Robert Harris) that I found particularly interesting...

Men Mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer - it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us - we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little - a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behavior, that if only we lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virtue would be rewarded. But here was nature, sweeping toward him - unknowable, all-conquering, indifferent - and he saw in her fires the futility of of human pretensions.

Don't misunderstand me - I'm not saying that we don't have something to do with global warming, but at the same time I do think it's a tad conceited to think humans control the planet, that we have all the answers, that the earth is just another large building needing us to manage it's climate control systems...

Food for thought!

Garth