experiment

When I try to post on this thing, it often reverts on my screen to rows of question marks...so I have no idea if this will work, but--

I want to thank everyone who called KBOO yesterday and sent in ten thousand bucks just like we asked! It was very heartening to see the immediate support. KBOO has proven time after time that we can break the rules and still keep kicking. That's because KBOO really IS community radio and doesn't just claim the title.

Yesterday I broadcast the "news you're not supposed to know," which included a fair amount--okay, a really overwhelming amount of fundraising pitches by yours truly. I got in at least $915 (I know that others mentioned my show when donating later) and I'm proud of that, and thankful. I got to sign a copy of my book "Jeezus"--I still have a few hard copies (if you want one you can use the search bar at lulu.com and order it online, or contact me directly).

I spoke of the ongoing buildup of the coming war against Iran--mostly by following the nuclear aircraft carriers (Stennis, Eisenhower, and Truman) which have gathered in the Persian Gulf (the imperial fascists now want you to call it the "Arabian Gulf" but I won't. Well, maybe if I were waterboarded, but in that case I'd probably mostly say "momeeeeeeeee!!"). I think the Kearsarge is thereabouts--that's an 888-foot-long Marine carrier--but I'm not sure.

I also brought up the Great Methane Death, also known as the "clathrate burp." Clathrates are semisolid methane compounds that layer the ocean bottom. They are unstable at just a few degrees above their current temperature. The articl I read from was four years old, and had the tone of "In the worst scenario"--and of course, events measured by climate scientists now pass the worst scenarios. Long story short: we're all gonna die.

Yeah, I hate to admit it, but that 2012 apocalypse talk might be true. Once these clathrates pop to the surface (they burn on exposure to oxygen, so we have the scenario of the oceans burning--whoa--)they will displace so much oxygen that you and I will be sucking in air that has the reduced availability of oxygen normally found at sixteen thousand feet altitude.

I don't know about you, but I'm turning 50 this year, I haven't been particularly active, and I suspect that if you took me to a mountain-top at sixteen thousand feet, I would turn blue and die. Of suffocation. My spouse and my daughter have asthma. So do a lot of people. We're really looking at a decimation of the human population.

Here's the probable sequence of events: The Northern polar ice cap, which is scheduled to disappear in the next few years under global warming, will simply be gone in the Summer. This Summer? Maybe. Maybe next. In any event, it will go and the albedo--the reflectivity--that was formerly provided by the ice will go with it, producing rain storms that will accelerate the melt of the Greenland ice cap. And the Greenland cap is on the move, baby. It's full of holes that direct water underneath the glaciers, lubricating their slide to the sea.

It would be nice to think that shucking so much ice off of Greenland will then produce so much cloud and storm activity that the polar cap re-forms right away. Why not? It could happen.

My point is that I can see that emergency measures could be taken right now to prevent this catastrophe. A low-orbit cloud of (pick your material) could be detonated over low North Pole orbit, and voila, the ice stays. But no. The governments that could direct that activity are instead sparring over who gets the freaking oil to be found under the melted ice cap!

So, long story short: the Polar ice goes, Greenland slides, the clathrates burst to the surface, massively accelerating global warming and choking us all (mostly) to death. Not my idea of a good time. Not what I would do to my daughter, my love, to all humanity, to what's left of the world's ecosystems. Not okay by me.

But--who's listening anyway?