In the past we’ve been screaming, “Stop bitching about SUVs and Hummers. They make up a fraction of the number of cars on the road. The problem isn’t what you drive it’s the sheer number of drivers out there.” Well, turns out the Environmental Protection Agency has been charting air pollution for the past 30 years and they have a slightly different version. We were right about SUVs and Hummers being irrelevant but we were wrong about the “sheer number” thing. The problem is old cars. They’re the ones that are doing all the guzzling. New cars (big, small, monolithic) are 98% cleaner than their ancestors so go bananas. There are 170% more drivers in the world but, instead of that making things worse, air pollution has gone down 54%. WHOOPS!
And another thing. We used to bitch about The Long Emergency and how we’re all going to die and run out of oil and cook the planet but that’s before we looked into Canadian oil sands and a chart of the weather in the past 4,000 years. There’s plenty of oil and global warming is a myth. Canada’s
always had oil in the sand but it was too expensive to get out. Now that the shit’s well over $50 a barrel we can afford to get it out of there and there’s enough of it to last us for at least another hundred years. And that’s not going to cook the planet either.
You see, most of the planet’s recent warming years went on from 1900 to 1945 yet most of our mass production polluting is recent. That means factories don’t make things warmer, an incredibly random pattern of gases and shifts and weird earth stuff does.
And you don’t believe all that ice cap melting shit do you? It’s just Al Gore inventing a new genre of scare tactics (terrorism’s taken). Sure Arctic ice is melting but for all the edges melting there and in Greenland you can find more ice building in the center and the north. Besides, melting ice on the top of the planet causes overflow about as much as melting ice in your Maker’s on the rocks causes the glass to overflow.
So we were right to call you babies for bitching about SUVs but we were wrong to say: there’s too many cars, we’re running out of oil, and the earth is cooking (actually we never said anything about global warming but we were thinking that).
read "black gold stranglehold." it's about how oil is not a fossil fuel, it's a natural product that exists in the guts of the earth, and of which there may very well be a near-unlimited supply. and then read other books like "the long emergency" or "the end of oil" that say the exact opposite thing. and then make up your mind based on bird intestines and nostradamus, because no one has ever had a fucking clue what will happen in the future.
Posted by: andrew | 15/08/2006 at 18:21
Shouting matches between uninformed parties start...now.
Posted by: Mustache | 15/08/2006 at 18:25
If I had that car, I would put flags* on the front corners of hood and curtains in the passenger windows and hire a man of indeterminate middle-eastern stock to drive me all over the place as I threw dollar bills out the window.
*Anything with the double-headed eagle motif.
Posted by: nice | 15/08/2006 at 18:43
i used to be bothered about this, but then, we all know that we will continue to use all the oil untill it is gone. so we might as well hurry the fuck up.
Posted by: dave | 15/08/2006 at 18:45
maybe you meant the year to year jumps in temperature were bigger before 1945?(there were two world wars) cuz the temperature has risen way more since then if this graph is to be believed, especially the last 20 years. Everybody knows the real problem is china, their main source of fuel is still coal!
Posted by: wikipedia > gavin | 15/08/2006 at 18:55
I agree that global warming is just a "myth". The idea was developed and brought to life by the ever-unstructured and still developing environmentalism movements. In fact, there is more scientific evidence that 'Global Dimming' exists than global warming. Global dimming is the idea that pollutants are being trapped in the atmosphere and ozone layer, and therefore causing a blanket effect on the earth from the sun. According to the global dimming theory, the earth's temperature is realistically dropping, instead of rising, and the amount of light hitting the earth is decreasing. It is alarming that just about anyone with thirty spare minutes to watch a CNN report is suddenly an expert scientist. In my opinion, global warming could very well be a social occurrence of everyday people assuming big ideas that they do not understand.
( http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/dimming.html )
Posted by: Zoltan | 15/08/2006 at 19:01
ok, so 1)global warming isn't really a myth. 2)oil is limited because its made from a process that takes a long time, like longer than it takes to make a grilled cheese. 3)hey fuck off out of canada...insatiable americans.
Posted by: rb | 15/08/2006 at 19:02
The following public service announcement is sponsored by the US oil lobby -
Posted by: naysayer | 15/08/2006 at 19:11
Fifty bucks a barrel? I wish oil was fifty bucks a barrel. It might cost less than six thousand dollars to fill my (non-SUV) gas tank.
Posted by: Jetpack | 15/08/2006 at 20:28
"an incredibly random pattern of gases and shifts and weird earth stuff does" Wow, real scientific! Hey why doesn't the brain-trust at Vice leave science to science people, and Vice can stick with Fashion and Music? You guys don't know jack about that sand oil in Canada, it's not just the cost but the quality of oil it produces, jackasses.
Posted by: Tom | 15/08/2006 at 20:41
Oh relax with the apocalyptic bullshit. Every generation has the "world is going to end" propagahnda because it gets votes and gets grant money and sells newspapers. The truth is things have been getting better since the end of WWII. We are safer than ever. Our standard of living is better than ever and we are more efficient at using natural resources than ever.
Vote for Al Gore or the world will end. Vote for George Bush or a terrorist will take your freedom. Buy this newspaper because you're in grave danger. How about renewing your prescription to chill pills people? We are doing just fine thanks.
Posted by: Randy | 15/08/2006 at 20:45
Even now we get the majority of our oil from Canada. I think they're second on the list. And no it is not a complex process...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/20/60minutes/main1225184.shtml
PS most scientists love to talk about the dangers of global warming because the government has spent 25 BILLION DOLLARS on it since 1990. There's a lot of money in being Chicken Little.
Posted by: Sandrah O | 15/08/2006 at 20:53
Hummers are still totally gay. My next door neighboor just moved in and they've got a big stupid red Hummer. Such an eyesore.
Posted by: steve PMX | 15/08/2006 at 21:21
FUCK YES VICE!!!! I love you guys. Seriously we are supposed to entering another Ice Age so any warming should be encouraged!!!!
Posted by: Greg | 15/08/2006 at 22:30
FUCK YES VICE!!!! I love you guys. Seriously we are supposed to entering another Ice Age so any warming should be encouraged!!!!
Posted by: Greg | 15/08/2006 at 22:30
You, sir, are a dipshit.
Posted by: jimgoad@wifebeater.com | 15/08/2006 at 22:47
yeah dont hate on hummers because of the petrol shit.
hate them because they kill 90% of people they hit, they are pointless & most people who own them only ever drive 5min down the shops in them. twats.
Posted by: dave | 15/08/2006 at 23:45
The science on global warming is pretty solid. And besides the fact that you don't fucking need a Hummer, we should be looking at alternative energies for so many other reasons
besides warming/pollution. I think someone mentioned terrorism. We have every reason
to change the way we do things, but I agree that we won't until it becomes an inconvenience not to.
Posted by: Zeus | 16/08/2006 at 00:28
"The science on global warming is pretty solid"
Hey guess what, give me 25 billion dollars and I'll come up with some pretty solid science too. If it's so serious now explain that chart? Shouldn't it be arcing straight up?
Posted by: Sandrah O | 16/08/2006 at 00:48
that chart is plotted over 4 thousand years, which means the last 100 years are pretty much invisible.
from the NOAA site: "The latest peer-reviewed paleoclimatic studies appear to confirm that the global warmth of the 20th century may not necessarily be the warmest time in Earth's history, what is unique is that the warmth is global and cannot be explained by natural forcing mechanisms."
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleobefore.html
There you go. Global warming, NOT "wierd earth stuff".
Posted by: some guy | 16/08/2006 at 01:18
also, HELLO conspiracy theorists! There is no secret cabal of corrupt scientists that Al Gore keeps in his basement. That's not how it works. You can't be a scientist unless the conclusions you draw come from legitimate, peer-reviewed data, even if they turn out to be wrong or misinterpreted in the end. Actually that's the whole point of science.
Posted by: some guy | 16/08/2006 at 01:36
The point is they are taught to focus on one tiny aspect of the truth. Like the past 100 years for example. If two people died on the BQE today and zero died yesterday I could graph the past two days and say auto accidents are up an infinite amount!
As with all hysterical idtiots you focus on one piece of anecdotal evidence and start screaming "the sky is falling." It's called the big picture asshole. And the big picture is people have been talking about the apocalypse for generations and generations. This isn't even the first oil crisis. Remember the 70s? And the Cold War of the 80s?
Go hide under your desk. The bomb sirens are wailing.
Posted by: Sandrah O | 16/08/2006 at 02:47
Well thats reassuring.
But I still agree with James Kunstler. The cheap-oil age is over and things are just going to get more costly. We're still better off building mass transport systems and living in denser populations (which means illegal aliens need to leave).
Heating up the Canadian oil sands is going to cost a lot of energy and money. I'm just glad we still get to drive and fly airplanes.
Posted by: Mr. Pink | 16/08/2006 at 02:55
The saddest thing is someone will quote VICE in an argument over this.
I swear VICE is the loudest rhetoric spewing conservative rag next to the Post, and the visual rag that is FOX News.
next VICE will be telling me illegal immigrants don't pay taxes... oh wait. they do.
Posted by: al gore's cock | 16/08/2006 at 04:03
Urm, stupid I mean Sandrah, they didn't look at the last two days or last one hundred years. They looked at the Earth's history, highlights mine
"The latest peer-reviewed paleoclimatic studies appear to confirm that the global warmth of the 20th century may not necessarily be the warmest time in EARTH'S HISTORY, what is unique is that the warmth is global and cannot be explained by natural forcing mechanisms."
In other words this period is unique in Earth's history.
Posted by: a | 16/08/2006 at 04:11