Fáilte
In today's podcast, I want to talk about climate change, the planetary environment and how the current war in the middle east plays into all of that.
As we all know around the world, the United States got hit with another major hurricane, or typhoon as they call them in the far east, about a week ago.
It caused a lot of devastating floods up in the eastern mountain range, primarily in the south eastern part of the country. More than 227 dead by last count with still more missing yet.
This is just one of many hurricanes that have intensified in the Gulf of Mexico in the last few years because the ocean waters are so warm. Those warm waters turn most tropical storms into monster storms near instantly, by climate standards now.
This by no means will be the last one and as I broadcast this, there is another one brewing up in the Gulf of Mexico that looks to be a repeat of sorts to Hurricane Helene. Two punches to Florida and beyond within two weeks. Not a good thing.
All of the credible climate scientists are screaming to the world with their scientific papers and journals about how burning fossil fuels is causing the majority of this by shoving tons of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere above us causing global warming.
We have all heard this, unless you have been living with no communication with the outside world for the last twenty years or more. The fossil fuel industry around the world, at first, wanted to dispute that. Then it was discovered that they knew about it as far back as the 1960's but obfuscated the information as long as they could to keep those profits moving upwards.
That is old news. Now, since the cat is out of the bag, they want to gaslight the public into believing that they are on it. They are now all about saving the planet, according to an article I received from their Substack page, Heated by Arielle Samuelson.
She recently wrote that Chevron, one of the oldest and largest fossil fuel corporations on the planet, wants the world to believe that they now have new drilling technology that will be more climate friendly. They want to use a new high pressure drilling technology to go after these heretofore untouched, high pressure oil and gas fields under the oceans.
They claim that this new technology is more environmentally safe and releases less methane and so on. My counter to that, and also so did many others with half a brain, is what happens if something breaks and one of these high pressure wells opens up into the ocean somewhere? Does anyone remember the BP Deepwater Horizon incident from a few years ago in the Gulf of Mexico? They still haven't fully recovered from that to this day.
A high pressure leak from deep in in the ocean would be a Deepwater Horizon disaster on steroids. But the fossil fuel industry assures us that they have this all under control. Until they don't.
Take it from someone who has stood many hours of machinery watches in my much younger years, it doesn't take much to go to sleep in the wee hours of the night, while standing a boring machinery watch. If you are busy throughout, no problem. But if all you are doing is watching a gage board in the middle of the night, that is when the accidents happen. Or, when people are tired after standing night watches and still have to pull an eight hour work shift during the daylight hours.
Human error is the most prominent reason accidents happen. The planet's ecosystems can't afford anymore Deepwater Horizon accidents or worse.
The fossil fuel industry is very old, compared to most corporate industries these days. The first known oil well was erected in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. Oil was first discovered there in 1855. The first oil company was called Pennsylvania Rocking Oil.
Chevron was started in 1879 under the name Pacific Coast Oil company. And that was just the start of the global warming crisis we have now with crude oil.
Of course, people have been burning coal since China started mining and burning it around 3490 B.C. Actually before that for about 10,000 years but at a very low volume. The Chinese started the industrialized process and it went from there.
The middle east, notably, Saudi Arabia, found oil in the late 19th century but didn't do much with it until they went into business with the Americans in 1933. A company called Standard Oil helped start what we now know as ARAMCO, the biggest oil patch in the middle east, or they used to be anyway.
So now that we have had a little history lesson about where the fossil fuel industry got its start, the planet has a big problem with it. There is too much oil and coal being burned and it is killing the planet's atmosphere. Unfortunately, the corporations around the world that are making billions from all of this fossil fuel burning, will do anything to keep it going. This includes natural gas. A byproduct of crude oil extraction
A new study that a journalist in Mother Jones wrote about says that natural gas is actually dirtier than coal. It challenges the fossil fuel industries marketing campaigns that liquified natural gas is a cleaner alternative. Imagine that.
The article talks about how the extraction and distribution of natural gas creates so much methane gas in the process, it is actually worse than burning coal as far as the atmosphere is concerned. Coal is actually just more dangerous to humans and animal life due to its particulate matter from the soot released after burning.
Methane gas is way worse for the atmosphere than CO2. Carbon dioxide. It traps the hot air generated by all of that industry from the planet and keeps it rather than letting it escape into deep space. Which is why the planet is suffering from global warming. Which is causing climate change, such as cat 4 and 5 hurricanes, super typhoons, massive flooding events, F-4 and F-5 plus tornadoes and cyclones.
Eastern Europe just went through a spate of flooding rains in Slovakia. Tunisia just got flooded out in a storm like a hurricane. Droughts are starting everywhere. A lot of people have died.
The Amazon delta is at its lowest point in anyone's memory. The American southwest is losing its rivers and underground reservoirs. The northern plains is also using up its water reservoirs quicker than the planet can replenish them.
There are climate migrants moving out of the danger zones around the world and the global north is having fits over all of the migrants showing up looking for food and shelter.
On top of all of that, there are major wars starting up that are also creating huge amounts of CO2 and methane gas emissions making things even worse.
As I mentioned earlier, the industrialized world economies are heavily dependent on the burning of fossil fuels in order to make insane profits and keep their machines going. Without oil and its byproducts, the world as we know it would come to a crashing halt and humans would be reverted back to a pre-industrialized subsistence until another energy source could be invented and implemented to replace fossil fuels.
Which is happening as we speak but not fast enough. With the wars over oil headed for a fever pitch right now, things could go south very quickly. Especially with the new rumors as of today that Iran may have tested a nuclear device underground this last weekend.
In order to keep up with the amount of energy consumption being used globally right now, there would have to be something invented that could harness the power of the sun or a facsimile thereof. Everyone thought nuclear power would do it but that didn't work out so well. There are a lot of nuclear power plants around the world but not enough to replace fossil fuels. Not enough solar panels or windmills either.
I have another Substack article from Kit Klarenberg that talks about Iran's red line. It simply states that Iran has enough missiles to fire into Israel, at the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the western Navy in the Persian Gulf to cripple the world's oil supply quickly bringing global economies to a halt. China for one, can't afford to let that happen. Russia has a lot of oil but still needs to use the straits of Hormuz to transport it. So does most of the rest of the world.
I remember what the northern Persian Gulf was like when Saddam Hussein burned the Kuwaiti oil wells. The thick black smoke was everywhere and it choked you if you got too close.
Burning oil fields and sinking ships, obliterating Israel and all the rest would be a global environmental disaster the planet has never seen. No to mention bringing all of those economies so dependent on the trade in oil to a halt. A global recession that would reset the world for decades or maybe hundreds of years to come.
To add more fuel to the fire of global depression, there is more and more evidence coming out that the H5N1, bird flu strain is starting to gain ground in the U.S. dairy industry. I have an article from my favorite doomer, Jessica Wildfire, that offers more details.
More cows are getting sick and dying, yet the U.S. government is apparently downplaying the urgency so far. They are not forcing the farmers and ranchers to test their cows so the farmers and ranchers are relying on pasteurization for milk products and advising people to thoroughly cook their meat products before consuming them to prevent catching this bird flu. So far, there have only been a few isolated cases of farm workers who have been in contact with the sick cows but they are becoming more numerous. How long before we have another flu pandemic like in 1918? With way over a million people dead from Covid in just the U.S. now, imagine a flu epidemic would be like?
For those manly men who relish their rare steaks, that is like throwing down a gauntlet to them, telling them that they shouldn't eat a rare cooked steak.
I learned at an early age to cook any meat I wanted to eat at least a medium well done to kill any parasites. This mostly applied to any wild game that we shot for food living on the farm but I have been to a lot of third world countries where food sanitation was not in their vocabulary. Things like decent cook stoves and refrigeration didn't exist.
Now, even though I am no longer traveling to these countries for work, I still cook everything thoroughly. I will be paying even more attention to this as I do not want to catch the Bird Flu on top of Covid still running rampant everywhere.
Monkey Pox is still a thing in Africa even as the vaccines start filtering in. I read recently that nearly a thousand people in central Africa have died so far. It's an ugly way to die. Have you seen the pictures?
With the medical pharma companies in the U.S. and Europe being so slow at rolling these vaccines out, these viruses could take off like Covid has and kill a lot of people while the west dithers around trying to figure out how to contain it without inconveniencing anyone.
Gods forbid the government should go back to telling people to stay home, wear a mask and spray disinfectant on everything. We can't have that again, can we. It's better to just let them die and the corporations can just hire more unemployed people to take their places. It worked so well for them back in 2020 and 2021.
As I leave you with all of these thoughts to ponder, I will give you one last thing to think about. What if all of this happened at once?
What if Israel attacks Iran and Iran keeps its word by eradicating all of the infrastructure in Israel, blowing up the oil wells and military assets in those gulf oil countries that supported Israel and the U.S. and stopped all shipping from passing through the Straits of Hormuz?
What if when the global economy comes to a screeching halt and countries go belly up, a new pandemic starts up because no one has the resources to stop it anymore?
Imagine what North America and Europe would be like if all of that happened within the span of a few months? The world is very close to finding out if someone doesn't stop the rabid dog they call Zionist Israel.
From this point on, if you want to watch or listen to chapter 12 of The Priest, I direct you to the podcast above. There is some graphic language in it so take warning.
Here are the links to the references I used for today’s podcast and blog post.
Exported Natural Gas Is Dirtier Than Coal, Says New Study
The work challenges the industry line that sending liquefied natural gas around the globe is a cleaner alternative.
Oliver Milman in Mother Jones
Israel bombs apartment building in Lebanon's northernmost city
Israel also struck targets in the Beirut suburbs for the third night in a row, and a mosque in a hospital compound in Lebanon's south
In The Cradle.co
The Priest
Formerly known as Bob (part 12)
The Village Oak Tree