AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH GUEST EDITORIAL BY ACD Natural History Magazine this month documents a looming global crisis, driven in part by the U.S., but far more by China, whereby skyrocketing coal use will greatly accelerate the already alarming pace of global warming. The cover says Cooking the Earth with Coal. It is long, but well worth reading, if you're in a bad mood and have no wish to remedy it. [The article is not currently available online. - Jerky] First, an aside re Scientific American, Natural History, The Scientist, etc. I have been reading these journals, month in and month out, for nearly 25 years. I have never seen anything approaching the level of frustration and alarm conveyed among all of the country’s foremost scientific organizations and publications over the neo-luddite rejection and suppression of science by the current administration. That every other edition includes lamentations over the suppression of science at top levels is absolutely not an indicator of liberal bias of any sort, but is instead a plea for sanity and American ambition. I have mentioned my disgust that our country has lurched, in five short years, from a longstanding commitment to lead the world in science, progress, research, breakthroughs, achievements, education, cures, to a childish bumpkin attitude toward all those eggheads and their fancy gizmos and fancy talk. America no longer wants to be the smartest nation on earth. We no longer want to have the best doctors and engineers and chemists and biologists and physicists and professors and textbooks and laboratories and clinics. Jesus and guns, Jesus and guns, Jesus and guns – that's our national slogan now. How very sad. Now, I understand the principle of deferring hard decisions, to later administrations or later generations. It’s tawdry, but hard to avoid. And I also appreciate that notwithstanding the idiot obstinacy of the Far Right in claiming that global warming and acid rain are merely myths of tree-hugger snake-oil salesmen, there is a sensible centrist line of thought that asks: "how many caribou will actually die if we dig for a bit of oil in Alaska – it might be worth a few caribou". The Left cannot continue to be against acid rain AND against nuclear power – solar won't cut it yet, nor will cow farts. So, to the degree that global warming gets lumped in with cancelling hydroelectric dams to protect the snail darter, there is a broad swath of America that understands that it's a problem some time down the line, and who might be willing to downsize from a Navigator to an Xterra – just as we gave up spraycans in the 80s – but who are not willing to undergo the massive economic dislocations required to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. China and India and Brazil have every right to say to the U.S. and Western Europe: "Hey, YOU industrialized on the cheap, using coal and oil and trees – don’t you dare tell us that we have to go much slower and not use those selfsame resources in our own industrialization process." All we can do is hope that voluntary commitments, such as the Kyoto Accords, will prompt the other big burners to burn a little less. Oh… except we refused to burn less, and didn't sign, so we have no moral authority whatsoever. Still, there is vigorous and healthy debate to be had on how fast Detroit must come around with better fleet mileage and how soon modern scrubbers must be on every single coal plant smokestack and what sort of safety protocols must be established before we increase nuclear plant construction, etc. But what is just plain ridiculous is an administration who stakes out America’s energy and climate policy as being the following: "We reject all science that might reduce ExxonMobil’s profits. Not only do we claim that none of that bad stuff is happening, but we forbid our best government scientists from researching it or even discussing it. We will never ever do or say or permit anything to happen that will question our reliance on the Bush family business, ever. Ever. And in fact we’ll claim just the reverse, and accuse scientists and the rest of the world of being bad stupid baddie stupidies for suggesting that global warming and pollution even exist." Honestly, my Righties, it’s time for even the rightiest of you to concede that saying global warming is a hoax and silencing people at NASA and NOAA who point out the obvious is really a foolish and even dangerous way to run a country. It's time for debate, not chimp see-no-evil pantomime. In my not uninformed view, the current climate acceleration is, with the possible exception of the disappearance of all the world’s frogs over the past 6 or 8 years, one of the direst bellwethers for humanity. Asian flu, despite its vaccine being produced by the company whose CEO is Donald Rumsfeld, is but a wart on a toe compared to the disastrous consequences of unbridled coal and oil burning by the U.S., China, and India, in the next quarter century. Sic. Twenty-five years, not a century. If Avian Flu in a suspended droplet vector (cough transmission) hits California, the entire country will be infected within 35 to 40 days. If the kill rate remains at 5 percent, I bet America's vaccination programs and public health quarantines will halve that. So I bet we'll see a kill rate of closer to 2.5 percent. With 280 million Americans, that’s 7 million deaths. Wow. Big trouble. Probably 60 or 80 million worldwide. Worse than a world war. A likelier scenario is that to spread quickly enough, a variant of Avian Flu would need to have a much lower kill rate, since dead people don’t travel or cough. I'd bet one tenth the kill rate, meaning three quarters of a million American deaths and under 10 million worldwide. That's still bad, and we're admitting it, preparing for it, paying Don Rumsfeld a lot of money to protect us against us. Now, let’s imagine a world where all coastlines are ten miles inland. Where Category 4 and 5 Katrinas hit a dozen times per year. Where droughts and wildfires rage across continents. Where overcrowding in the third world is aggravated to the breaking point by the refugees from the coast. Where Manhattan and Hong Kong and Singapore and LA have been forced to relocate. And where the thawing of dead organisms buried under glaciers for eons will unleash new plagues among far denser populations with over-taxed medical infrastructures. And all that thawing releases, ahem, CO2. And then there’ll be the algae blooms, decimating fisheries and shellfish beds. Is this apocalyptic scenario likely? Sadly, yes. And the arrival date keeps moving closer, as we keep ignoring the warnings, But here’s where the Greenspans of the world need to be heard. There will be tremendous economic dislocation and hyper-inflation if we abandoned coal and oil too quickly – but they pale beside the economic catastrophe of a crockpot atmostphere and a 15-foot rise in sea levels. Economists must begin calculating the cost of doing nothing. Currently we produce half of our electricity with coal, and the administration has fostered new rules and abandoned old ones that allow much more leeway with pollution and environmental degradation, so coal mines and coal plants are proliferating at a remarkable pace. The new "mountaintop removal mines" may be fabulously efficient at getting to coal, but they annihilate ecosystems and weather systems that have co-evolved through geologic time. They also ruin communities for miles around. The industry slogan "increasingly clean" tells you all you need to know about smokestack emissions. The American suburb originated courtesy of Henry Ford, and we will not give up our automobiles either, so we can expect auto emissions to be utterly dependant upon fleet mileage and exhaust-pipe inspection standards. But there is not just a tipping point for the climate and the biosphere, at which point all control over the simmering Crockpot-Earth is lost. There is also a much nearer tipping point at which the dollar saved by not acting to control emissions will cost a dollar ten, a dollar twenty-five, two dollars, five dollars, ten dollars of economic hardship when the tides sweep away the coasts and the hordes rush inland and the ancient plagues awaken. We've faced such critical junctures before, at a national level, if not an international one. At a certain point we accepted the increase in the price of cotton and sugar that would be the inevitable result of ending human bondage. At a certain point we saw what happened to the passenger pigeon and the bison and we enacted some conservation laws that undoubtedly increased the price of fur and grazing land. At a certain point we saw Lake Michigan catch fire and we saw Love Canal babies die and we decided that the increased cost of goods due to forcing manufacturers to dump their wastes safely was worth it. We already make efforts, perhaps half-hearted, to protect the longevity of our fisheries and our logging. Every ten or fifteen years, it seems to me, we decide as Americans to undergo some fiscal hardship in pursuit of a more promising future. The government tosses bones to the dislocated industries and workers. Life goes on. We gave up freon and lead paint and asbestos and DDT and PCBs and PVCs and a host of other substances that were really useful and made people a lot of money and allowed a lot of good things to happen cheaply. Because we recognized the downside, and were willing to adapt. Roll-on deodorant and paint that chips easier and insulation that’s not quite as cozy. The cost of anaesthesia has soared since the introduction of pulse-ox monitors. Never waking up from surgery doesn't happen anymore. The cries from the threatened dinosaurs are ever the same. The yellow peril of unionism at the turn of the last century was going to keep America in the Dark Ages. The GI Bill was going to ruin American education. First seatbelts and then airbags were going to permanently cripple the auto industry. The Marshall Plan would leave America paralyzed at the expense of socialist experiments in Europe. And every increase in the minimum wage is to be the end of small business as we know it. Yet the new thrives where the old rots, and tack shops, railroads, and billion dollar dot-coms relying on advertising alone are all bygone drivers of the American dream. It's the very depths of pessimism to dismiss battery-powered cars, efficient solar panels, failsafe nuclear reactors, smokestack super-scrubbers, vat-grown meat, high-yield agriculture with nitrogen substitutes, and something we haven’t even considered yet, maybe fabricated tree-quality wood, as opportunities that can support enormously profitable capital returns and become viable economic sectors, as coal and oil and crazy-grazing and crazy-logging fade. Poor whatsisname at Digital (Olsen, maybe?), who pounded his fist on the podium and yelled that computers will never be a part of the American home – his vision was myopic. And this was in 1980 or so, less than a decade before Commodore 64s storing recipes were replaced by useful machines that talked to each other over an academic and scientific communication network. Things change. America will survive its transition to energy sources beyond fossil fuels. Count on it. But we return again to the stubborn pigheadedness of current orthodoxy on Capitol Hill, where the problem is ignored, and more gallingly, denied. As Americans, we get the notion of trading off current comfort for future prosperity. We also get that trading off requires trade-offs. They are the fodder for debate, tugs and tussles, turf wars, compromise. Politics is the art of the possible, not the ideal. We get it!!! So if the Bushistas and their Oil Oligopoly want to advocate the tail-dragging side of the argument, okay, fair enough. Detroit and Galveston and Pittsburgh have their priorities. If the fleet average mileage must go to 50mpg rather than 60mpg in the short run, okay. If emissions must be reduced by 3 percent per year rather than 8 percent, okay. But admitting you have a problem is half the battle, so they say. To deny global warming and other emissions issues, to trot out manufactured scientists from this or that "institute" – meaning a fraud-tank funded exclusively by oil companies, to prohibit NOAA from researching the weather, to muzzle NASA officials, and to label the other 99 percent of the world "the radical eco-lobby" is the lowest, meanest, and stupidest sort of response to a genuine crisis. By 2020 the worldwide volume of CO2 emissions, which are already cooking the atmosphere pretty well, will more than double, driven primarily by China, with the U.S. helping out a lot. The Greenland ice sheet, which slipped toward the sea at 3.5 miles per year in the 1990s is now sliding at nearly 8 miles per year. By 2030 it may have melted entirely. There's an ancient fella by the name of Archimedes who once cried "Eureka!" after he sat in a bathtub. Get the picture? It’s time to talk. Send all Jokes, Letters and other stuff to Jerky: jerkyleboeuf@gmail.com

ON THIS DAY April 18 On this day in the year 1875, Sir Neville Chamberlain invents snooker, a silly variation on the already quite silly game of billiards. (and, just FYI, Jerky's bad attitude about pool has absolutely nothing to do with all the money he's lost playing that rotten game...) On this day in 1902, Denmark becomes the first nation to begin using fingerprinting to capture and convict criminals. Eventually, the practice became more popular than the previous favorite policing method, which consisted of picking a convenient scapegoat and pinning the blame on him or -- very occasionally -- her. On this day in 1906, in the early morning hours just before dawn, a monster earthquake -- estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale -- hits San Francisco, killing hundreds as it topples buildings and sparks numerous uncontrolable firestorms. The carnage inspires billionaire food tycoon R.J. Kraft to create his now-famous Shake 'n Bake chicken and pork chop coating system. On this day in 1980, the nation of Rhodesia becomes the Republic of Zimbabwe, with Canaan Banana serving as the country's first President. That's right... for a while there in the 80's, Zimbabwe was Banana's Republic!

THEY SAID IT! "What I don't like -- and you must feel this, too -- is: So William Buckley finally speaks up, right, and Francis Fukuyama speaks up ... Suddenly, people are saying, Oh, this is extraordinary! And, you know, we've been slogging away for four years. Where is the accountability? Where is there any notion of people standing up and saying not, You were right, because it's so ugly what's happened, but God, you understood the debacle this would be early on!" - TomDispatch interviews "The Nation" editor Katrina vanden Heuvel about the frustrated satisfaction of watching the rest of the world catch up to what you've known and been screaming about for years. As a proud "September the 12th eight percenter", yer old pal Jerky groks. *** **** *** "McClellan is a flea on the windshield of history. ... Inside the Bush White House, he was a non-player, a factotum, the instrument of Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist and deputy chief of staff. McClellan played no part in the inner councils of state. He was the blank wall erected in front of the press to obstruct them from seeing what was on the other side. ... He was a vessel for his masters, did whatever he was told, put out disinformation without objection, and was willing to defend any travesty. He is the ultimate dispensable man." - Sidney Blumenthal eulogizes dearly-departing White House Press Secretary Simple Scotty McClelland.

JOKES! Today's jokes were sent in by McTubers! Yo mama's so fat, when she ran away, they had to put her picture on the milk truck. Yo mama's so fat, when she hauls ass, she has to make two trips. Yo mama's so fat, when she dances at a club, she makes the band skip. Yo mama's so fat, on Halloween she trick or treats two houses at a time. Yo mama's so fat, I had to take a train and two busses just to get on her good side. Yo mama's so fat, when she ran away, they had to use all four sides of the milk carton. Yo mama's so fat, she fills up the bath tub, and then she turns on the water. Yo mama's so fat, they had to grease a door frame and hold a Twinkie on the other side to get her through. Yo mama's so fat, when she gets in an elevator, it HAS to go down. Yo mama's so fat, when she was diagnosed with the flesh eating disease, the doctor gave her 5 years to live. Yo mama's so fat, her picture takes two frames. Yo mama's so fat, when your dad climbs on top of her, his ears pop. Yo mama's so fat, every time she wears high heels, she strikes oil. Yo mama's so fat, her blood type is Ragu. Yo mama's so fat, when I climbed up on top of her, I burned my ass on the lightbulb. Yo mama's so fat, the back of her neck looks like a pack of hot-dogs. Yo mama's so fat, she DJ's for the ice cream truck. Yo mama's so fat, when she takes a shower, her feet don't get wet. Yo mama's so fat, she can't wear Dazzey Dukes. She has to wear Boss Hoggs. Yo mama's so fat, the shadow of her ass weighs 50 pounds. Yo mama's so fat, the bitch jumped in the air and got stuck. Yo mama's so fat, her lipstick comes in a spray can. Yo mama's so fat, she sat on a dollar and made change. Yo mama's so fat, her skates went flat. Yo mama's so fat, when her beeper goes off people think she is backing up. Yo mama's so fat, when she was born, she didn't get a birth certificate, she got blue prints. WORST JOKE OF THE DAY Today's groaner was sent in by Dave... A rugged cowboy from Brokeback Mountain, Wyoming, goes into the doctor's office and has some tests run. The doctor comes back and says, "I am not going to beat around the bush. You have AIDS." The cowboy tugs at his Stetson and sets his jaw and says, "Doc, what can I do?" The doctor says, "I want you to go home and eat 5 pounds of spicy sausage, a head of cabbage, 20 un-peeled carrots drenched in hot sauce, 10 Jalapeno peppers, 40 walnuts and 40 peanuts, 1/2 box of Grapenuts cereal, and top it off with a gallon of prune juice." The cowboy squares his rugged shoulders and asks, "Will that cure me, Doc?" "No, but it should leave you with a better understanding of what your ass is for."

READER'S SOAPBOX! Got a gripe? Pet peeve? Have your say in the Daily Dirt! Columns can pretty much be about anything, as long they meet the following criteria: 1) don't write shit that'll get us in trouble. 2) Keep it interesting. 3) Keep it short. 4) We don't edit your mistakes. Oh yeah! feel free to send a picture of yourself if you want. TOPIC: RULES FOR DATING MY DAUGHTER care of: The Mickster They have worked for me, so I am passing them on for posterity. Rule One: If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure not picking anything up. Rule Two: You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them. Rule Three: I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open- minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, In order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist. Rule Four: I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate, when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you. Rule Five: In order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is "early." Rule Six: I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry. Rule Seven: As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process that can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car? Rule Eight: The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter. Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there are no parents, policemen, or nuns within eyesight. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka zipped up to her throat. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies which feature chain saws are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folks homes are better. Rule Nine: Do not lie to me. On issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me. Rule Ten: Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy outside of Chu Lai. When my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. As soon as you pull into the driveway you should exit your car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, then return to your car. There is no need for you to come inside. The camouflaged face at the window is mine. - The Mickster FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE / ASK JERKY! MopJ, Hope yer guts are doing OK - yikes! Reminds me of a funny story... Back in 1990 we had a major pot drought, which led to experimentation with other stuff - the most extreme example being my friend John, who smoked a big bong hit of crushed red pepper. He was incapacitated for almost twenty minutes - it was the first time it occured to me that drugs might well kill someone (sadly, I know a lot about this today). His experience was much like yours- only longer and non-gastric. It was also the second dumbest act I've ever witnessed - red pepper contains capsicum, the active ingredient in 'pepper' spray - smoking this cannot be a good thing - but that didn't stop my Marine buddy "B" from following John's lead. He did a second pepper hit - the single dumbest thing I've ever seen. After 20 minutes, B was able to speak. "At least it won't show up in my pee test", he gasped. Allan [ROTFLMAO. Seriously. - Jerky] *** **** *** MOP Jerky, After reading of your wasabi encounter of the 3rd kind I felt compelled to write... Your political pundrity is non-pareil in the sphere of published prose, but, if there were a laureate prize for the recounting of horseradish induced gastro-intestinal distress, you sir would be wearing the wreath and waving to the throngs. I laughed me fookin' arse off in spite of an abcessed tooth. Thank you my man, keep up the good work, YOP Rick [Thank YOU sir! - Jerky] *** **** *** Honest to Godzilla, that wasabi story had me in tears, and several attacks of the giggles when I thought about it later. Thanks for a good laugh... those are too few and far between! Mark [Thanks, Mark. I appreciate the kind words. - Jerky] *** **** *** Hail Jerky One, Haa! Wasabi. Ah yes Grasshopper. I too can still remember the days of being young and dumb and full of cum. Shame you didn't get the pic. I can understand since my own experiences with the root (yes. more than one as the first was in Japan on a pass and it somehow was introduced by a different name) left me in no condition to even think of a camera. Or it may have been due to the many Acadama (SP) cocktails enjoyed before and during the escapade. On second thought, I don't think you are all that young anymore. If that be truth, shame on you, you should have known better. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Cheers, YOPMick [It's better not to know better. - Jerky] *** **** *** Jerky, My friend, I have not laughed so hard in such a long time. I visit your site pretty regularly and you generally get a few chuckles out of me, but I could totally relate to your ummm... situation, as a big fan of the sushi with wasabi. My children and pets pretty much thought I had lost my mind as I was crying before I was done reading because I knew EXACTLY how it was going to end (puns and all intended!). Now I have to explain to my four year old how mommy "not getting to the potty on time" is not as bad as when she doesn't make it... On a serious note, my husband is currently serving in Iraq and we would visit your site for news and laughs pretty regularly before he left (in November). I've even linked to your site on my blog, occasionally. But, what with our Idiot-In-Thief pretty much declaring open nuclear season on Iran, I have had few laughs in the last couple of weeks. Thanks for breaking the reverie and breaking with the laughs, buddy! I needed that! Dizzy Dezzi [No, thank YOU Dizzy. And thanks to your husband for his service. - Jerky] *** **** *** Hey J, What's with the April 17th edition of the DD?? everything in it is shit it must be the worst edition ever It's true ! everything in the USA has also gone stupid... by catering only to the illiterate youre no better with nothing to offer et tu Jerkus? [I can't argue that. - Jerky] *** **** *** Howdy Jerky, When someone prefaces their comments with "I'm not a racist but…", that’s a pretty good indication that some racist remark is to follow. I believe that Sofaking is missing the bigger picture. All of us, immigrant or citizen, are slaves of this runaway system of greed. Just because immigrant populations have been willing to whore themselves out to this pool of consumers in the past, doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually want to petition for a better living. And in doing so, some under-educated laborer decides to attempt to utilize a couple of well-known symbols, and the next thing you know there’s a moron showdown… a slave riot. The skilled slaves turn on unskilled slaves and start tossing around racist remarks, and everyone forgets that our real trouble is the unchecked capitalism that is polluting our world. Sagebrush [So what to do? - Jerky]

Send all Jokes, Letters and other stuff to Jerky: feedback@dailydirt.com