Tag Archives | climate change

Ask General Kang: How do you beat high gas prices?

Ask General KangI have never owned one of your quaint “internal combustion engine” vehicles, so I have not had to worry about the high price of gas, but I have been getting nailed on the cost of most foods appropriate for the Thringian Keg-Beast that I ride to work every day.

On my home planet, I fed my Keg-Beast leftover hyper-bananas from the über-chimp orgy the night before, but since I’ve been on Earth, there has been a dearth of both hyper-bananas (apparently they won’t grow in your frigid Earth climate) and über-chimp swinging events (this explains why I am so cranky). So, I’ve found alternatives; the Keg-Beast works best on a mixture of corn syrup, mescaline and the sweat of writers living in a state of quiet despair. Most of those elements are plentiful and relatively cheap, but do you have any idea how costly corn syrup is?

You humans are stupid! You’re burning fossil fuels to grow corn, which you turn into ethanol to burn along with your fossil fuels. Why don’t you just cut out the middle-man and take a flamethrower to your cornfields when they’re ripe? You will lose only a fraction of the energy value and most of the vegetable matter will end up adding to global warming. As an added bonus: big fire!

Then your planet will be able to grow hyper-bananas, and all will be well.

… Assuming we can get a few female über-chimps down here too.

Next time: I’m trapped in the Andromeda galaxy because my hyper-drive engine is asking for a better benefits package — how do it get it back to work without giving it full dental?

Alltop would try this, but it’s allergic to bananas.

Ask General Kang: How did you deal with climate change on your planet?

Ask General KangAn interesting question. Because my planet is so far advanced of yours, we experienced our major climate changes about a millennia ago.

Like you are currently experiencing, on Neecknaw we discovered that our oil and coal-based economy increased the carbon dioxide load in our atmosphere past the point of the planet being able to deal with it. (Unlike Earth, the main culprit was not the car but our massive fez and tutu industries.)

As is happening here on Earth, the primitive nation-states of Neecknaw were unable to agree on ways to reduce the carbon emissions and so, ameliorate the changes. We did use a few mitigation strategies, such as seeding the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide to block solar radiation, but this had the effect of killing many of our freshwater lakes and waterways with massive storms of acid rain. The acid rain also played hell with everyone’s tutus and fezzes, which meant that we had to produce more tutus and fezzes, resulting in an unforeseen positive feedback loop.

So we all agreed that seeding the atmosphere with SO2 was a bad idea. (You must understand how attached the average Neecknabian is to their fez/tutu.)

But we didn’t ever tackle the CO2 problem, and the warming continued.

Eventually, there was a massive spike in temperatures, which happened very quickly. Most of our coastal cities drowned, the equatorial regions became uninhabitable, and even then, most of our resources went into fez and tutu construction. Roughly ninety percent of the Neecknabian population died, civilization collapsed, and the scarcity of food resulted in a somewhat loose interpretation of cannibalism. (These are sometimes referred to as the “Tasty Ape Age”, though I would never be so crass.)

Luckily, this die-back had the effect of weeding out the weakest of our species, and when Magnok the Foot-Eater conquered the continent of Floog, he was able to quickly rebuild society. Eventually, a brilliant gorilla invented fusion and our economy was based on that power source instead of carbon.

But you know, even though everyone understood the fez and the tutu were the cause of this disaster, Neecknabians are still devoted to the sartorial splendor they impart; however, a series of brutal conquerors have reserved these items of clothing for only the most elite troops.

Next time: Is it possible to hot-wire a faster-than-light vehicle with a tube of toothpaste?

Alltop and humor-blogs.com wear beanies and kilts.

WTF? Harper ditches Summit on Climate Change!

So let’s be clear about this. A hundred world leaders gather at the UN to discuss climate change, and our PM decides to meet with the mayor of New York instead?

Lest you have any trouble deciphering the hidden message, Harper is saying: “I don’t give a shit about this so-called climate change thing.” He’s not even going through the motions.

And yes, the magnetic Environment Minister Jim Prentice attended all day, and Harper went to the dinner, but that’s kind of like sending Forrest Gump to take notes at the Mensa meeting, and then coming for the post-chess whiskey tasting. It might be more fun, but it certainly isn’t taking the endeavour very seriously.

(Obviously, I have no idea what happens at Mensa meetings, though I’m sure they’re more interesting than climate change conferences held at the UN. Even so: Shame, Stephen Harper. Shame!)

At least one journalist took notice:

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If the embedded video craps out worse than Harper, you can find the story here: Bob Fife calls out Stephen Harper for not showing up to UN climate change meetings. Also, you might want to check out this page, which has another report by Fife linked under the video screen.

A special thanks to Scott for alerting me to this one.

Alltop and humor-blogs.com have no idea where Canada is.