Sunspots.

Things change. Global Warming is a big deal. Why argue about its cause? Is it bovine flatulence? Is it coal-fired power plants? Is it sunspots? Is it the good intentions of do-gooders? What does it matter? Whatever it is, the puny efforts of 7 billion people won’t change things one bit. Except for the worse. Besides, the Doomsday Vault is ready for anything. Including seabottom methane.

As luck would have it, we don’t have that long before it’s all over.

Which leads to the obvious question: how much money can Missoulians afford to spend on streets and parks and sidewalks and pools and police and open space and such? It’s just common sense that there’s a limit, right? What is it? Should a majority of voters get to decide what it is? Should they get to vote? Or should their elected representatives decide not to let people make that decision for them?

If Missoula is now poor it’s time to stop buying amenities. No more sidewalks. No more paved roads. No more parks with grass. Lay off all those firefighters and police and truck drivers and computer techs and such.

Everybody except the elected people. We need them. A lot.

7 billion people

Figure 100 pounds each. There’s young ones and old ones, and most of them are hungry.

700,000,000,000 pounds. 350 million tons. 18% of that is carbon (per a wiki), or 63 million tons of carbon. .038% of Earth’s atmosphere is CO2. The atmosphere weighs 5.1361×10¹⁸ kg, per Wikipedia. You’d think they’d use pounds, eh? that’s 11 times 10 to the 18th power pounds, or just, like, 5 or 6 times 10 to, say, the 15th power.

Heck, I have no idea how much a pound of carbon weighs… oh, yeah, I get it.

So there you have it, all worked out. What? Oh. The atmosphere has 1 trillion 900 billion pounds of carbon dioxide

To convert carbon to co2, multiply the carbon times 44/12.

To see if human beings have  helped ward off global warming, do the calculation backward.

Or watch the Grammys.

Miscellany

Some stuff I just might write about if I ever get around to it are,

What is the weight of 7 billion people?
What is the weight of their carbon content?
What happens to the carbon when people die?
What portion of that carbon is permanently fixed by embalming?

Tipping point: seabottom methane.
Only 7 billion years until the earth is engulfed by the sun.

How much money can Missoulians afford to spend on streets and sidewalks and pools and open space and such?

How much money does it cost to do all the things that need to be done?

70,000 people.
half are renters.
half own.
Most owners are actually buying their homes. Most owe more than 3/4 of the cost of their homes(?).
Many owners’ homes are worth less than the owners owe.

Do we have more than we can afford to maintain? Should we stop putting in sidewalks? Should we have more buses?

7 billion years and it’s all over for sure.
Krakatoa - stone age.
Cretaceous meteor - yow.
Paleozoic meteor - start again.

9 trillion dollars plus what? soc sec? vet bennies? Medicare/aid?
Who’s gonna pay all that back? Me? Why me?

al-qaeda wants everything.
- support from our crucial source of oil, Saudi Arabia (Bush’s Friends)
when Bush is gone, will S.A. still be our friends?
Oil sources
Venezuela, Russia, Canada?, Iran, Kuwait?,
All our manufactured goods come from - China?! Friend? Will China always take chits for manufacturing our stuff? What if they stop?

wealth comes from? adding value!
What added value does the US provide/create?
ideas? used to provide ideas. Then sold them to other countries/multinational corporations

Is the human race becoming smarter? or dumber?
(is it a given that the human race isn’t staying the same?)
Are the smartest humains becoming smarter or dumber? Are the human race’s smartest people alive today? Or not?
If the smartest humans are alive today, are they powerless because of the aggregate stupidity of the rest of us? Is that an Ayn Rand thing? How do you pronounce Ayn?

**just what is a “regressive?”