I don't know why, but a question I've been asked a lot lately is, "Joe! If you were the President, what would you do about Iran's threat to build a nuclear arsenal?"
Like I could do anything about it. I don't know. There must have been something out there in the zeitgeist, or else this mustache and goatee of mine make me look like I would be an expert in that particular field.
So I don't know why I've been asked this question so much lately. But I know what my answer has consistently been, ever since Ahmadinejad started rattling the plutonium saber: "Nothing. Israel will take care of it."
And sure enough... the balloon hasn't gone up yet, but it's certainly being inflated.
Hmmm. Maybe I should join Predictify after all.
-- Item #2 --
When I wrote about Carbon Recapture and Sequestration, one of the things I hinted at was the fact that the environmental movement found global warming such a scary thing that nuclear power was actually starting to look pretty tame by comparison.
Enviros may not be ready to drink from the uranium cup yet, but the Scare crowd is due to take a long, hard look at the world they're going to create if they get their way.
I'm not talking about the goofy, dystopic world I described in the aforementioned post. I'm talking about a world where the real solutions to the global warming question are not necessarily the ones that environmentalists want. Specifically:
- Nuclear reactors are the most green producers of electricity, putting out a fraction of what the next-cleanest source does.
- It takes more carbon to produce a hybrid car than it does a regular car. And if you buy an old gas guzzler, it has already paid for its own carbon footprint.
- It's greener to run your air conditioning than it is to heat your home. Florida, here I come!
- Old growth forest? Not green! A tree is a massive carbon sucker-upper for about 55 years. Then it sits around waiting to rot or get burned up, at which time all of that carbon goes... where? (Maybe we should bury dead trees, too.)
- It takes far more carbon to raise up organic beef and dairy products than their mass-produced brothers and sisters. PETA take note - you now have Sophie's Choice when it comes to saving the planet.
- City living? Green. Think about it. All those people stacked on one another in apartments, walking and bicycling and taking mass trans to work.
- Carbon Credit Trading = Spit in the Ocean. There's no guarantee the traders will live up to their end of the bargain and grow those trees for 55 years, and if they did... they'd only buy us another 6-1/2 days.
Meantime, I know what my answer to the Global Warming question is, too. "Wait a while and we'll all be worrying about glaciers again."
But nobody asks me about that.
