why do the geico cavemen wear 70s fashions? it's not like there were cavemen in the 70s.

first off, labelling it "global warming" was a mistake. the general public is naturally going to interpret "warm" as "not cold" - and can you blame us, really? the folks dedicating their lives to studying climate change had to have known that all the change was not going to be warm - that it was bound to involve some decidedly not warm things such as increased off-season snowfalls. second, acting like it's entirely a man-made phenomenon dilutes the sources' credibility. there's no way any responsible, thinking adult-type person can deny that the industry of man has a detrimental effect on the earth's environment, but at the same time, no one can deny that the earth has a life-cycle of its own, outside of man's effect. it's the confluence of this life-cycle and of our effect -- these dual factors -- that are leading to the earth's demise. it's a natural death, but we've put a bit of a kink in the intravenous drip.

we were watching this movie on the sundance channel - a documentary about climate change narrated by keanu reaves and alanis morrisette. they should have just got alanis or perhaps her and another male voice because keanu always comes off as a pompous ass and it's just hard to get around that.

the film was good in the sense of being informative, alerting us to the issues, but i believe we're past the point of alert. we are now at the point of action. like i said before, there's really no denying it - we effect [affect?] the environment plus the earth is dying. what we need now is not to be told what we already know, but to be told what we can do about it. enough algebra - let's get to the mechanical engineering.

there are things we can do to be more kind to the earth, but each individual thing seems just so small as to be worthless. drive a fuel efficient car. eat less meat. plant a tree. buy local. i don't know... it just seems to be so much pissing into the wind. even al gore, mr global warming, won't quit eating meat. where are the real solutions? in southern california, 55% of the water supply goes to non-essential outdoor uses. i will translate that for you: watering lawns. these people live in the desert. why the hell do they even have lawns? maybe keanu could step off his soap box and turn off his neighbors' sprinklers. in inner mongolia, there is a nomadic tribe of goat herders who live mostly off the grid, except when they [i kid you not] plug in their entertainment center. but anyway they are mostly living off the grid and it's all "yay for them" until you learn they and their fellow tribesfolk are some of the worst air-quality offenders what with their wood & dung burning stoves smoking up the air. it's my contention the movie overblew their offenses just a bit. you cannot really compare a dung-burning stove designed to cook for 20 to a coal-burning factory making whatever it is coal-burning factories make.

the movie did offer one solution - a structure that removes CO2 from the air. this huge -- 300-ft tall by 180-ft wide -- metal structure is meant to capture CO2 out of the air and convert it to sodium carbonate which through a series of further chemical reactions is turned into a concentrated form of carbon dioxide that could be buried. from concept to design, it's less orwellian that suessian. is this really what it has come to -- the construction of ginormous synthetic trees designed to bury the wind?