Remember how Rod Serling described the Twilight Zone as the “land between science and superstition,” a place which “lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge?” That accurately describes the cultural divide in this country. We are a people torn between science and superstition, between good judgement and incomprehensible recklessness. If we were not there would be no issue of masking or not masking, vaccinating or not, and certainly there would be no debate as to the reality of climate change.

What I can tell you from living in the Mojave desert, we are watching the water. Just the other day an article was published in the local press about who are the biggest water users in Clark County and names were named. Some of these people are wealthy celebrities with many houses and they fill their Vegas pools and take care of their landscaping at a rate which is substantially greater than the rest of us who use water for normal things like cooking and bathing. They will be held accountable because in the bigger scheme of things, the water supply, Lake Mead, has dropped precipitously to an historic low and a federal water shortage declared. This is something that money isn’t going to fix and some people do not know the difference. ABC News:

PHOENIX — For the first time in history, the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that oversees operations on the Colorado River, declared a water shortage at Lake Mead.

For 20 years, the Colorado River, which supplies water to 40 million Americans, has been losing water consistently and rapidly. Now, with Lake Mead levels at their lowest on record, mandatory water restrictions will be put in place starting in 2022 for Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico.

According to the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan, if Lake Mead levels are at or below 1,075 feet, Tier 1 water restrictions are put in place, meaning 512,000 acre-feet of water would stay at the lake and not flow into Arizona.

Also for the first time in history, water cuts coming from the Colorado River, affecting both Lake Mead and Lake Powell. CNN:

The federal government on Monday declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time, triggering mandatory water consumption cuts for states in the Southwest, as climate change-fueled drought pushes the level in Lake Mead to unprecedented lows.

Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the US by volume, has drained at an alarming rate this year. At around 1,067 feet above sea level and 35% full, the Colorado River reservoir is at its lowest since the lake was filled after the Hoover Dam was completed in the 1930s.
Lake Powell, which is also fed by the Colorado River and is the country’s second-largest reservoir, recently sank to a record low and is now 32% full.
“It’s very significant,” Brad Udall, senior water and climate scientist at Colorado State University, told CNN. “It’s something that those of us in the climate community have been worried about for over a decade, based on declining flows due to climate change.”
With the lake expected to remain at around 1,066 feet of elevation into 2022, according to the US Bureau of Reclamation’s latest monthly projections, the agency announced that the Colorado River will go into the first tier of water cuts beginning January 1.
“Given ongoing historic drought and low runoff conditions in the Colorado River Basin, downstream releases from Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam will be reduced in 2022 due to declining reservoir levels,” the report said.
Lake Mead provides water to roughly 25 million people in Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico, according to the National Park Service. Under the complex priority system, Arizona and Nevada will be affected by the tier-1 shortage.
Arizona will see an 18% reduction in the state’s total Colorado River supply, primarily impacting agriculture. Although Nevada will need to adhere to a 7% reduction in its Colorado River water supply in 2022, the state had already reduced its deliveries and no change is expected due to the shortage, according to John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Additional cuts — each tier with worsening impact on agriculture and municipal water — are expected if Lake Mead continues to fall. The second tier of cuts, triggered at 1,050 feet, could come as soon as 2023.

Now that you’ve read some sober facts and as thinking adults in your right mind digested the clear import of which is taking place here, take 1:11 to listen to this stupid emm effer rant. I make no apology for my hostility. It is morons like this who pollute the political groundwaters in this country with their disinformation.

I will tell you what I have said to people who cop this “God will save us” drivel. I have said, “No, He’s not. When God created the universe, he created it along basic physical laws. We break those physical laws, we pay the price. These laws are immutable. We decide to jump out the window, the law of gravity will make us wish we had not. We decide to let the planet warm up, when we’ve known for 50 years now the direction things were going, we are going to reap the whirlwind of that bad decision.”

Then I hit them with, “God’s greatest gift to man is free will. If we want to destroy our common home, as a species, God will sit by and let it take place. Just watch Him.” And I sincerely believe that. I also believe that as the sentient species on this planet, with dominion over all the other species, as the Bible tells us, that we have horribly defaulted on that commission and blameless animals have to suffer needlessly for our greed and stupidity. That saddens me more than I can tell you. And I share these views as well. I tell them how all the dots connect and how that big air conditioning unit called the Arctic is in trouble plenty.

Here’s what that looks like.

I have gotten the impression on the occasions when I’ve tried to reason with these morons that they actually fear me more than the atheists, because they can blow off the atheists as “unenlightened.” But somebody who claims to believe in God, to be a Christian even and quoting the Bible talking this way, they can’t handle.

What I have come to believe in recent years, seeing this insane anti-science madness take place in this country is that there is a certain percentage of the population that simply cannot deal with scenarios that are beyond their comprehension and rather than study these situations in a sober and responsible manner, it’s easier to just run for the nearest sandbox, bury one’s head, and claim that it’s all a hoax.

I literally was told by a 20-year-old climate denier, the son of a climate denier — and a flat earther, I might add — that I should watch a movie called “The Climate Change Hoax”  (a title something like that) and “get some new ideas.” So I searched the title and it was a UK film from the 1980’s which had been debunked that long ago by Cambridge University and this conversation was taking place in 2015. But I was the one who needed to take in some new ideas and not this high school drop out. (Maybe he’ll run for Congress. Being a high school drop out didn’t hurt Lauren Boebert.)

Some people are simply too stupid to understand that large instrumentalities, including an entire planet, can face crisis. It’s conceptually beyond them. I recall reading an article written by a survivor of the Titanic and she reported that a lot of the people were not particularly alarmed that night because they could not imagine a ship that size sinking. That was her best speculation. It was simply beyond them — until, presumably, the moment the ship went down and the water came flooding in.

We get a certain amount of comic relief from these morons, but there is nothing comical about the drought we’re in, about the worsening wildfires in California, about the water supply being threatened. And that’s just climate change. I’m sure you read today about how Ron DeSantis, the new darling of Fox News and the GOP opened up the schools and after four days over 5,000 students ended up in quarantine.

You can’t fool mother nature. A virus will take you out. Severe heat can kill. Look at what happened in Portland this summer. Those people are not equipped for 113 degree heat. The houses aren’t built for that.

Maybe the fate of the planet will depend upon whether the smart people can get and stay in control or whether we are overwhelmed by the stupid. And right now, and since 2016 when I saw the impossible occur and the trust fund baby TV pitchman get elected as president, I have to say it’s even money which way this is going to go down.

I don’t know if there are people on other worlds in the universe that keep on eye on this place and lay bets, just for shits and giggles, on whether we’re going to survive as a species. Maybe that’s what the UAPs are, recording devices to capture images of a people who are so insane and self destructive that nobody off world wants to make contact with us. But if there are, they’ve got to be laying some pretty high odds that the whole shithouse is going to go up in flames, as Jim Morrison put it.

It is an unwise human being who decides to sit on the railroad tracks. But it is a truly stupid one that sees the light from the train, hears the whistle and feels the rumbling and refuses to get off the tracks. God won’t save a moron like that. But there are countless morons in this country who cannot see the analogy.

 

 

Help keep the site running, consider supporting.

9 COMMENTS

  1. They’re going to learn, as their states burn, or flood. I suspect that they’re vax-deniers and anti-maskers, though.
    (I think I remember what rain is. But then, I’m old.)

  2. More than any other issue facing humans now, climate change is the most important. I think we may have gone past the tipping point already. I feel very sorry for the poor plants and animals on our planet who will suffer or become extinct when our ecosystems begin to collapse because of human stupidity and greed. It is all so very disheartening and sad what we have done to our planet.

  3. Mother Nature left some time ago.

    I’m not sure when. It might have been as early as the mid-19th Century as the Industrial Revolution got cranking and the coal got smoking. It might have been for the love of fossil fuel as mankind grabbed on to it like Eve’s Apple. It might have been as late as 1945 when it was thought to be a swell idea to nuke the planet.

    But for whenever she left, she’s been replaced. Her replacement is Step-Mother Nature. And as some of us are slowly realizing, she’s from the Old Testament Old School.

    I guess I’m not a half-glass full type of person. I’m more of a half-glass full is leaking because of the cracks. And even if we rush to patch up the cracks, it’s never going to be half-full again.

    I guess Step-Mother Nature wants us to clean up the place while she goes to the Ball.

  4. How about it’s a sin to degrade and damage the eco-system so much the creatures can’t even survive. All this was entrusted into our care when, as the bible says, we were given dominion over it.

  5. I majored in Religion & anthropology. I studied with world class scholars across several traditions. People want simple answers to mysteries, which, by definition, are unknowable. These folks are hypocrites of the highest order. They decry science while using electronic mediums made possible only by science. They will swear God made everything in 6 days. Everything. Well we now know the speed of light(they use in their devices), is 186,000 miles per second. It goes around the earth 7x in 1 second. We know it takes 8 minutes to reach us from the sun. We also know it would take 26,000 years, at that speed, to reach the center of the Milky Way, our galaxy. There are an estimated 350 billion galaxies. The time, distance & speed all are inconceivable. That is God’s math. So these flashpans of protoplasm are ‘experts’ on God. Hell, they don’t even know where they are. Guess that’s why I don’t follow them as they wave their arms shrieking “over here! Salvation is over here! I’m God’s mouth! Over here!”. Sure. My only prayer is I never have to spend eternity with you. My 68 years already feels too long, & it’s not over yet. So, I pray whatever lies beyond our return to dust, we part ways permanently if God truly has any mercy.

  6. Loved “Then I hit them with, ‘God’s greatest gift to man is free will. If we want to destroy our common home, as a species, God will sit by and let it take place. Just watch Him.’” God is indeed a Gentleman and He allows us to make our own mistakes.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

The maximum upload file size: 128 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop files here