Iowahawk, December 27, 2004: Top Scientists Warn: Sea Gods Angry:
Washington, DC – Pointing to the devastating weekend Indian Ocean tsunami that left over 24,000 dead, an international blue ribbon committee of climatologists and ecoscientists today issued a stark warning that man-made pollutants have increasingly “make water spirits angry.”
The blunt conclusion prefaced a 2300 page meta-analysis of hundreds of scientific studies and computer models detailing links between human industrial activity and wrathful eco-deities. Entitled “Fire Bad: Fire Very Bad,” the report warns that the planet faces additional catastrophies unless drastic regulatory action is taken to appease Earthen-furies.
“Unclean money devils anger sacred water spirit Tai-Waku,” explained Martin Knudson of Scripps Oceanic Institute. “He now call angry to son the whale, ‘make slap with anger-tails! Bring vengeance-surf to villagers!'”
While most empirical evidence supports the theory of wrathful whale-tail slappings, some scientists are exploring alternative hypotheses for the weekend tsunami. Ecobiologist Jane Geary of UC Santa Cruz points to mounting evidence that the ocean spirit-world may have been driven to gastrointestinal rage by gas-guzzling SUVs.
“Thunder-wagon make smoke cloud of greenhouse gas,” explained Geary. “hungry Tai-Waku eat smoke from thunder-wagon, pass giant wind with mighty fury.”
Peter Novak, chief science officer of the Sierra Club, dismissed Geary’s “Divine Fart” theory, arguing it was more likely that SUVs had triggered the tsunami via a spirit underword sexual encounter.
“Wheels of thunder-wagons wake up Big Earth Spirit-Mother, make to crazy tingle in hairy child-place. She now go to water lair of Tai-Waku, make big angry love on tectonic plate,” said Novak. “Big Earth Spirit-Mother say, ‘if ocean rocking, don’t come a-knocking.'”
Although they disagree on the precise causes of the wrathful spirit world, scientists were largely unanimous in recommending immediate global regulatory action. Remedial steps suggested in the report include ratification of the Kyoto treaty, elimination of automobiles, volcanic altars for virgin sacrifices, creation of a sustainable urine-based economy, and improved faculty dental benefits.
“If not act now, it too late,” said report editor Paul Erlich of Stanford University.
Erlich, whose 1978 best seller “Ice Time Come Soon” is widely credited with saving millions of lives by warning of the massive age of glaciation that threatened Earth during the 1980s, said inaction might anger the spirit world further.
“Me not know when Tai-Waku make wrath again,” said Erlich. “Me need more grant money.”
Some scientist named Alan Weisman in CNN today: “Is the Earth striking back?”
Both Iceland and the United States exalt democracy as a social achievement worthy of lasting an eternity. Yet the latter’s unprecedented strength has derived not just from enlightened government, but from the release of its own hot clouds: exhaust from its vast industries, fleets and mechanized agriculture.
As we have learned, these gases form an invisible barrier that, like a greenhouse’s glass ceiling, keeps reflected heat of the sun from escaping our atmosphere. The denser that gaseous barrier grows, the hotter things get and the faster glaciers melt.
As they flow off the land, we are warned, seas rise. Yet something else is lately worrying geologists: the likelihood that the Earth’s crust, relieved of so much formidable weight of ice borne for many thousands of years, has begun to stretch and rebound.
As it does, a volcano awakens in Iceland (with another, larger and adjacent to still-erupting Eyjafjallajokull, threatening to detonate next). The Earth shudders in Haiti. Then Chile. Then western China. Mexicali-Calexico. The Solomon Islands. Spain. New Guinea. And those are just the big ones, 6+ on the Richter scale, and just in 2010. And it’s only April.
It’s looking like this may be a long decade. And if we don’t pull carbon out of the way we energize our lives soon, a small clump of our not-too-distant surviving descendants may find themselves, as Gaia scientist James Lovelock has direly predicted, like the first Icelanders: gathered on some near-barren hunk of rock near one of the still-habitable poles, trying yet anew to eke out a plan for human civilization.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Alan Weisman.
So Alan, why are you still expending carbon by publishing on the Internet? And more importantly, why is CNN still expending carbon by broadcasting on television, and ferrying its reporters around via cars and airplanes?
Wait, is CNN still on television? Their far left mindset has transformed them over the years from a pioneering cable news channel to the equivalent of a public access cable show seemingly broadcasting, like Saturday Night Live’s old “Wayne’s World” segment, from their father’s basement. We thought it was low ratings caused by being much further to the left than the American’s public’s centrist views. But now they have a great excuse: unlike those carbon-belching capitalists at Fox News, and NBC, which turned a few studio lights off for a few hours, CNN is cutting back services en masse for the good of Gaia!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member