Stupid is as stupid does. --Mrs. Gump

As I'm often wont to do, I was watching The Discovery Channel the other evening, specifically an episode of the series Discovery Project Earth. The series bills itself as "eight crazy experiments bold enough to change the world". The experiments are ways to reduce or reverse the effects of global warming.

So, what are these bold, world-altering experiments? Well, I've seen three of the experiments so far.

1. Save the glaciers. The scientists running this experiment propose to save glaciers from accelerated melting -- due to global warming -- by wrapping glaciers with a reflective plastic. The experiment was performed on a glacier in Greenland that was tagged as being endangered by global warming. The glacier actually had a large meltwater lake in the middle of it -- something I had never seen before. To be honest though, I'm not sure how saving glaciers was supposed to reduce or reverse the effects of global warming.
2. Create more clouds. Clouds are much more reflective than water or land. So this proposal is to create automated fleets of ships that will atomize sea water, spraying the mist high into the air to form clouds. The computer simulations of this experiment showed this being performed off the west coast of Africa. In theory, a 10% increase in clouds would cool the Earth to pre-industrial levels.
3. Diffract part of the sunlight that reaches Earth. This was, by far, the boldest idea. The proposal is to launch billions of refractive lenses into space between the Sun and Earth so that a portion of the sunlight that currently reaches Earth will instead be diffracted into space. A reduction of sunlight as small as 1-2% would cool the Earth to pre-industrial levels.

As I'm listening to each of these proposals, I was immediately struck by how amazingly stupid and ill-advised each one is. Not a single one of the ideas suggested discovering and addressing the root causes of global warming.

I know that the popular theory of the cause of global warming is a dramatic increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere. And that might be true. But it's not proven. Yes, CO2 levels have increased along with global temperatures, but correlation does not imply causation. An alternative, tongue-in-cheek, yet statistically valid theory shows an inverse relationship between the population of swashbuckling pirates and global temperatures. Specifically, that a decrease in the pirate population has caused a rapid increase in global temperatures.

I'm not saying the alarming increase of atmospheric CO2 is not the cause of global warming. I'm saying that it appears to be a promising theory with a strong correlation, but we still don't know. The Earth has experienced temperature fluctuations before that were not caused by CO2. Are we sure this trend isn't one of those flucuations? I think these experiments should have been directed at finding the root cause of global warming and not these absurd ideas.

After all, wrapping a glacier in plastic is such a stupid idea that I can't believe it was even discussed -- so, I'm not going to.

As for creating more clouds, let's ask the survivors of Katrina whether pumping warm water vapor into the air off the west coast of Africa sounds like a good idea to them. Our understanding of climatic systems is embryonic, at best, so why even contemplate creating 10% more clouds? How can we possibly predict the global environmental impact?

And diffracting some of the Sun's energy away from Earth? Let me think about that. Hmmm...every bit of the energy used on Earth comes from the Sun. And now we're discussing decreasing that energy source? By spending trillions of dollars to manufacture, launch, position, and maintain billions of strategically positioned lenses? Riiiiggghhhtt.

I have a couple of ideas to reduce global warming that would fit right into this TV series. What if we paint all the cities white! That will greatly reduce the heat absorption of all that pavement. Not to mention stimulating the economy by employing all the painters in the world.

Here's another "great" idea. A person breathing at the average rate of 12 breaths per minute, exhales 1.3 grams of CO2 every minute. What if everyone breathed slower? If every person would cut off 2 breaths per minute, their respiratory contribution to atmospheric CO2 would be reduced annually by over 116 kilograms. If everyone participated, the amount becomes 697,422,960 metric tons (1 metric ton = 1000 kgs)! The average American automobile annually spews 4.5 metric tons of C02 into the atmosphere. So merely by breathing a bit slower, we can effectively remove 154,982,880 automobiles from the road -- that's well over half the number of cars in the United States.

Thank you. You've been a great audience. I'll be here all week.

I guess this gimmick is for people who can't count jumping jacks.

I have a vice of absolutely loving good coffee so I'm familar with Starbucks' The Way I See It campaign, which is, in their words

a collection of thoughts, opinions and expressions provided by notable figures that now appear on our widely shared cups.

And I admit, I've seen more than my fair share of Starbucks' cups. The cup I received yesterday had the following thought on it.

The Way I See It #252
Give me world politics, gender politics, party politics or small-town politics ... I'll take them all over the politics of youth sports.

Brenda Stonecipher
City council member and Starbucks customer in Everett, Washington.

This cup's communiqué conveyed a colossal conjunction of coincidence (I couldn't resist the alliteration). My son's football team has been the stage for truly ugly politics this season.

Before I begin truly ranting, let me say that all of the coaches in his league are purely volunteers and --having been a youth sport coach myself-- I applaud them for their huge commitments of time and energy to what is largely a thankless job.

OK, now let the rant begin.

My son plays football in a league for 11-13 year olds; his team is a brand new, expansion team in the league. Before the season, all new players participated in workouts so that the coaches could grade them. The coaches then held a draft, allotting new players to each team. Normally, this would be a fair system.

But it's not.

First, unlike any of the other youth sports leagues, it turns out that most of the football coaches are also on the board of the football league; therefore, they make their own rules and guard their own henhouse. Second, the best kids are quickly earmarked by some of the coaches, pulled from the tryouts, and quickly assigned to the coach's team -- many times without the knowledge of the other coaches. Third, the expansion team had to fill their roster completely from the tryouts. The team is predominantly 11 year old boys; only 4 or 5 of the boys are older than 11. A better method would have been to randomly pull a few players from each existing team and put them back into the draft.

The result is that the competitive inequities in the league are staggering. My son's team began their season by playing the three best teams in the league in their first 4 games. Despite good coaching, my son's team suffered serious beatdowns in those games. And the natives parents were getting restless.

The kettle boiled over during the 4th game of the season when we played the team coached by the president of the league; he's also apparently one of the worst offenders in regards to stacking his team. His boys were huge, fast, and mean; our boys were taking a beating. At the beginning of the second quarter, our running back was cleanly slobberknocked. He was knocked unconscious for a few moments and when he regained consciousness, he reported that his neck hurt and he was numb and couldn't move! Emergency personnel were quickly on the scene and the boy was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Yes, he ended up being OK -- turns out he received a stinger.

While the injured player was being tended by coaches and emergency personnel, some of the parents began loudly denouncing the inequities in the league. Without input from other parents, they swiftly decided and informed the coach that the team parents did not wish the game to continue. Their dissatisfaction quickly flamed into outrage and they took up torches and pitchforks to become a mini-mob. Now they spiraled out of control to the point that a policeman firmly commanded them to calm down. Their calm lasted only a few moments and only because the injured boy was taken off the field in an ambulance at that moment.

Then the opposing team's coach, who is also the president of the league, ill-advisedly decided to confront the mob. And the keyword there is confront. He was already the focus of the mob's anger and when he confronted everyone with a "write down your issues and we'll address it at the board" attitude, tempers really flared. Some parents were screaming epithets at him. Meanwhile the teams had been dismissed and were wandering around with shocked and scared looks on their faces. The boys were already scared and upset because their teammate had just been carted off the field in an ambulance, and now they were witnessing their parents in a mob situation. It was a sickening disgrace; I quickly grabbed my son and left the field.

A parents' meeting was convened the next night with all sorts of allegations made against the league board and the president in particular. The upshot of the whole meeting was that three representatives would take up the matter with the county commission, specifically to change the league structure so that coaches cannot serve on the board. We'll see how that goes. I used the meeting to chastise the parents that lost control at the game and told them how shamefully I thought they acted in front of the boys; I actually got a few amens and some applause for those comments.

Despite the parents' bad behavior, they do have a point; some of the coaches do stack their teams and it does create a safety issue for a team composed of young, inexperienced players. Competitive inequities exist at all levels of sport, but it's disturbing to think that men who volunteer their time to coach football would essentially cheat to win. Does it stroke their egos? It smells like a person that sets a video game's difficulty to novice level, and then puffs out their chest because they beat the game.

I know it's not the type of person I want my son to learn from or emulate.