Comments on: It’s Not Easy NOT Being Green

By: Ferg

Ferg — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:37:52 +0000

“Rather than bowing to environmental fascism, religious fundamentalism or any thought system not based on reason, I choose to embrace logic and balance. I have full confidence, when we go too far as humans, a little something God built into nature called homeostasis will bring everything back into balance.”

Interesting that you invoke scientific terms like homeostasis as a reasonable idea, but yet when there is very good evidence for human-made climate change based on exactly the same principles as any other scientific idea.

You claim to base your point of view on reason, not emotion, but reading your blog it’s quite clear that you’re going with your gut feeling after all.

Also, your (irrational) argument is based solely on the threat of climate change. But this is just one part of the environmental crisis. There is indisputible evidence of rapid species extinction and habitat loss comparable to that of global mass extinctions in prehistory. This alone should be reason enough to stop and think about what our consumption is doing to the planet.

There is also a massive body of evidence that globally, pollution levels are not falling. Ever been to the Niger Delta? (oops, forgot, only America, correction, the United States of America, is worth seeing).

Your problem appears to be not that you don’t approve of environmentalism. It’s that you don’t approve of it when it threatens to effect your lifestyle in any way at all. That attitude IS incompatible with trying to make the world a cleaner, healthier place to live, for all life, and is a rejection of reason, and deeply rooted in emotion.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 02:42:07 +0000

Thanks for standing up for what’s right Neal. The whole environmental movement has been hijacked by the same breed we were fighting back in WWII.

By: marion wren

marion wren — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:22:48 +0000

sean cavendish, was a great trailblazor, he`s still here, i find, it quite amaze`ing all the people riding on his name, on google and yahoo,all advertising, and his site dosent come up, but he would say over the past 20yrs he`s done what he set out to do create, an industry, and still backing renwables, climate change, hundreads, of PV and hot water systems installed, as he says !! collective action for gain!!but there is still much more to do.. his partner marion and what about question 64 we`ve lobbied did you

By: Random

Random — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:34:13 +0000

@Paul:
You wanted links, here you go:
http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/index.php?showtopic=2050

By: Neal

Neal — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:43:48 +0000

Dom – We don’t own a house. We’re renting an apartment. We’re selling and giving away furniture, and electronics not relevant to the trip.

Just like I said on your blog, people are buying ads on paidbypixels rather than donating to the trip. For every block a person purchases, they get an ad rotation on our network. I think people are getting results because they keep returning to purchase more space on the pixel board.

No one has ever been quite so interested in our personal or business finances before.

It’s not hard to know how or where we spend money we make. All you have to do is watch the shows, read the blogs, and follow our twitters. The same will be true for the trip. The more money generated by paidbypixels, t-shirt sales and DVD sales, the more money we’ll put into technology on the bus.

One of the cool things that would dramatically impact the kind of video we would produce on the bus would be Iconix HD RH1 cameras. They are the world’s smallest HD cameras and they can be mounted anywhere. The cameras themselves are inexpensive, but the cost of the gear to control them adds up quickly. If we can afford it, we will install the cameras along with a computerized switching system that would enable us to shoot from anywhere in the bus (except the bathroom).

Our goal is to figure out a way to share as much of the trip with people who are interested as possible. Fully realized, people could bounce over to BigTrip.TV and see whatever is happening live. That’s almost impossible technically at this point, but we’re working to land as close to that target as we can.

By: Dom

Dom — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:09:47 +0000

@Robbert: Selling their house just makes it more confusing and raises more questions.

If they’re selling their house, why are they trying to raise $400k with PaidByPixels? What’s that going to be spent on?

There’s no delineation between personal finance and business finance (and we’ve already established the Big Trip is a business venture.) On top of that, they’re asking for “donations” through PaidByPixels, which implies it’s a charitable venture. You don’t “donate” money to a business.

And again, I’m not saying they shouldn’t do it. But it’s simple common sense to tell people where the money is coming from and where it’s going. They *must* have already figured this stuff out, because it’s basic information that the tax man needs to know.

By: Robbert

Robbert — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:24:45 +0000

@Neal,
Small heads up. Across Europe, the term Fascism is quite serious. It’s offensive, and points to people willing to kill large parts of the population in order to get their way. I don’t think that’s a claim you can make about Al Gore and his followers.
In the terms you are using it, your current federal government actually comes much closer in their actions and inactions regarding science, the patriot act, suspension of habeus corpus, the use of torture to secure confessions, detainment of foreign nationals without legal representation or even such a simple matter as securing gay and transgender rights.
No doubt this isn’t to comfortable for you either, thus I suggest that people avoid the term.

As I’m Dutch, I can’t say much about what happens in the US other than what my friends who life there tell me. That, and the American media.
Like almost anything else, things do tend to polarise in the American Media. Positions are extreme while the truth tends to lie in the middle.

Global Warming is a fact. that in turn does not mean that temperatures will rise everywhere. If for instance the icecaps melt, this will change the salt content of the ocean, and slow or perhaps even halt the Atlantic conveyor. This in turn will make Northern Europe a lot colder.
My own country (the Netherlands) is pouring billions of euros into reinforcing and increasing dikes because the sea already has risen, and will continue to do so. For us, the prediction of ice-free polar caps in the near future ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm ) is not a happy one, and not just because of the polar bears.

@Dom,
Concerning the Money for the RV. Neal and Lucia are selling their house (and most of it’s content) in order to buy the RV. What is going to happen to it? It’s their house!

By: rehafer

rehafer — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:46:08 +0000

I find these discussions are often more interesting than debate among scientist.
I have been an environmental scientist, a research chemist and amateur mathematician. I am also old enough to remember the Global Cooling scare of the 1970s. [notice that the 70s was also the start of satellite data that many global warming models are based on] The climate of the Earth has been known to change dramatically. Google “little ice age” for a recent change. The sun is known to have an 11 and a 17 cycle, if not others, that means we need at least 187 years of good solar data to accurately know the effects of these cycles.
The term fascism refers to a politic (ala Merriam-Webster) ‘that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition’. You can see how that can apply to Al Gore et. al. In that the solutions they support to combat Global Warming are ones that put them in power and that are often calling for suppression of opposition, labeling them ” deniers”. Notice that at the upper echelons of this movement, the solutions are rarely scientific or technological, but instead social; we have to change. The “we” usually being we Evil Americans, whereas the elites simply buy indulgences in the form of carbon credits. Rational environmentalist, I include myself in this group, are a small voice drown out my media hype. There is a large middle between “fascist” and “polluter” where actual solutions lie. Alternate fuels are good, but not when they lead to world-wide famine. Is replacing a low efficiency bulb with one that contains mercury really a good idea?
Thanks to all for allowing me this rant.

By: neal

neal — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:04:33 +0000

I posted a lengthy answer to Dom’s concerns on his blog. It’s worth reading what he said, and hopefully my response, if you’re interested in the conversation.

http://blog.domramsey.com/tech/shiny-happy-environmental-fascism/

We also returned his Geek Brief Paypal donations.

By: neal

neal — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:01:10 +0000

Sean, I like the idea of naming the RV. Thanks for the suggestion.

Cali said people were asking what they could do to support the trip. I had always been intrigued by the Million Dollar Home Page project. The guy who did it sells the script. Value of pixels can be adjusted, so we cut the value in half and set aside $50,000 worth of ad space for Heifer International. That makes the total potential of the page $450,000.

It’s essentially a market place for advertising on our network of sites. A block of pixels = an ad rotation. You see those ads in the upper right corner of GeekBrief.TV, iCali.TV, DearCali.com, Carnivore.TV and nealcampbell.com. It’s an easily accessible, inexpensive way to get exposure across our network.