Fight Climate Change Instead of ISIS, says Neil Young

mentalfloss

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
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A shame he didn't add Shambola as well.


Fight Climate Change Instead of ISIS, says Neil Young

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorists have beheaded many individuals working for the betterment of the locals in the region. The terror outfit has taken many women and children as hostages, but according to Canadian singer-songwriter and musician Neil Young, fight against ISIS is not worth the release of harmful greenhouse gases from the military vehicles in the region. The singer, who co-founded the band Buffalo Springfield, thinks that environment would be affected with a conflict with ISIS.

While talking to radio host Howard Stern, Young said that government does little things against climate change, but military vehicles that are fighting ISIS are biggest carbon dioxide generators in the world. According to the Canadian rock musician, terror groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda produce less amount of carbon than the Western militaries' vehicles and machines.

He told Stern that since 1950, Earth has lost about 90% of the fish in the ocean, and since 1970, half the wildlife on the planet has been lost, but the population of humans has been doubled.

Young said wars are damaging our planet Earth, and in such way, no one could get freedom. It is not easy to find out what that carbon footprint is of the military, he added.

According to Young, war against ISIS is not to protect people from terror groups. It is all about oil and energy and it is going to be about water, he said.

An American political commentator and author, Joel B. Pollack, said that Neil Young's concerns about climate change appear to be shared by the Obama administration. The United States Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that non-existent climate change causes risks to US national security.

Hagel said, "Our militaries' readiness could be tested, and our capabilities could be stressed. A higher tempo and intensity of natural disasters could demand more support for our civil authorities, and more humanitarian assistance and relief".


Fight Climate Change Instead of ISIS, says Neil Young | Maine News Online
 
IdRatherBeSkiing

IdRatherBeSkiing

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May 28, 2007
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Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow
 
Cannuck

Cannuck

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Feb 2, 2006
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Neil should stick to singing....oh wait....when was the last time he released something relevant to the music industry?
 
petros

petros

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Nov 21, 2008
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mentalfloss said:
Lol

I'm sure he's invited DiCaprio for a session.
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His new David?

 
WLDB

WLDB

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Jun 24, 2011
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Well it is a more long term threat. Isis is nothing by comparison. They cant wipe out the species.

petros said:
Neil smokes waaaaaaaaaay too much indoor unsustainable marijuana.
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Sustainable enough for the time he has left.

Cannuck said:
Neil should stick to singing....oh wait....when was the last time he released something relevant to the music industry?
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When was the last time he stuck to singing? He's been pretty political in one form or another since the 60s both in and out of music.

IdRatherBeSkiing said:
Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow
Click to expand...

Then Ronnie Van Zant went on to be buried in a Neil Young t-shirt. Liked him enough for that.
 
taxslave

taxslave

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Nov 25, 2008
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WLDB said:
Now that is a big IF. They dont have the ability to do so and never will.
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But they can and will cause a lot of problems if left to their own devises. All they need is to get hold of one old Russian nuke to create more damage to the environment than 10 wars worth of vehicles.
 
taxslave

taxslave

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B00Mer said:
Fight Climate Change Instead of ISIS, says Neil Young



LOL my obsession with ISIS?? oh like your obsession with Climate Change, Justin Trudeau and any other lost cause.
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Climate change isn't a lost cause, it is just taking longer to warm up than we were led to believe. Don't sell your parka just yet.
 
mentalfloss

mentalfloss

Prickly Curmudgeon Smiter
Jun 28, 2010
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On a similar celebrity note:


We Talked to Bill Nye about the Tar Sands and the Muzzling of Canadian Scientists


Bill Nye: still a science guy. Photo via BillNye.com
Yesterday, Bill Nye touched down in Toronto to attend the International Astronautical Congress, an annual gathering of space enthusiasts (where, as Nye says, the nerd factor is “turned up to 11”) who share research papers on the future of space exploration. Since his mega-hit show, Nye has taken the reigns of the Planetary Society, an organization founded by Carl Sagan in the 1980s that focuses on science advocacy, research, and outreach.

As the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye is clearly using his powers as a celebrity scientist for good. During a keynote speech at the University of Toronto last night, he discussed a project the Planetary Society was developing to conquer the possibility of an asteroid hitting Earth. Their solution? Laser bees. These “bees” are tiny robots that surround an offending asteroid and by using mirrors, “focus sunlight onto a spot on the asteroid” which can “gently move it.”

Anyhow, I caught up with Bill Nye before his keynote to chat about Canada, the tar sands, and the Harper government’s muzzling of scientists. While the topic was a bit of a downer, Nye was incredibly positive about Canada’s space program—gushing over the space station, which is pictured on our five-dollar bill:

“I really admire the Canadian space program, you guys do so much more with less. Somehow Canada gets involved with every mission everywhere [laughs]. And I guess the trick, if I understand it, is that Canada doesn’t build its own rockets, which is the expensive part. You specialize in specific instruments, and of course the Canadarm. That’s why [the Planetary Society] is very happy to expand our volunteer network into Canada, because the enthusiasm’s there.... It’s on your five-dollar bill!”

That said, here’s how our conversation went.

Bill Nye: I’m hip with VICE; I’m down with the VICE.

VICE: Oh, awesome, that’s good to hear. Let’s jump right into it then… Climate change has been immensely politicized. How do you respond to outside influences, like industry and government, that try to control the message of the scientific community?

The government in Canada is currently being influenced by the fossil-fuel industry. [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper is a controversial guy in the science community because [of] the policies, especially in Western Canada, with regard to the production—that’s the verb they use, "producing," but you’re taking old earth and burning it—of tar sands, oil shale… Is there tar shale? Is there sand goo? Whatever.

I used to work in the oil field, albeit much farther south, in Texas and New Mexico. Oil is noxious, but it’s not that noxious as stuff to spill on the ground. However, when you start taking this tar sand and oil shale, where you’re strip-mining many, many tonnes of earth to get to this stuff, and then you have to burn a lot of it to make it soupy enough to pump—the environmental impact is huge! And there was some trouble with some train cars, and some explosions.

A town exploded.

Yeah. This is all stuff that could be controlled, but part of it, at least for me as an engineer, is that the extraction methods in that part of the world are so aggressive, it’s so hard to get this stuff to [a point where it’s] useful. The bad news, writ large, is that we’ll never run out of fossil fuels. There’s so much stuff, so much coal, so much tar-sand oil shale everywhere around the world that we’ll never use it up. But we will use up the really easy-to-burn gasoline and diesel fuel.

So we have to resort to tougher and tougher extraction methods.

Right, or how about this: What if we had a way to use less? Wow. Or a hundred ways to use less?

Wouldn’t that be novel?

Yeah, so the environmental community generally is pretty disappointed in how Canadian oil companies are extracting this stuff from Western Canada.

Yes, and in Canada now, as a journalist for example, if I am to reach out to a federally funded scientist, I’m put through a PR person who will vet my questions, who may never respond to me, and who will certainly monitor the scientist’s potential responses.
I know! It’s quite extreme. It’s really something.

What do you think about our government limiting the way scientists can speak to the public?

Well, it’s not in anyone’s best interests. So, speaking as a guy from the US, we have a very similar problem. Some people would say it’s the same problem… The thing that’s gone badly is that the people who want to maintain the status quo of fossil-fuel burning have managed to introduce the idea that scientific uncertainty [on climate change] is the same as doubt about the whole thing. And that [trend has] justified in many legislators’ minds, both in the US and especially in Canada, particularly Western Canada, that It’s OK, the science of climate change isn’t proven, and let’s just carry on. And that’s just not in anybody’s best interest.

Do you think the funders of scientific research are entitled to control the publication of the scientists’ results? Obviously the Harper government thinks they’re in a position to say, "No, you can’t tell people what we discovered, because we paid for it."
I think that it’s not in anyone’s best interest. It’s certainly not in the spirit of academia, and it’s this thing where you don’t trust it. That is to say, somebody thinks he or she knows better than the guy or gal doing the research. And that’s obviously wrong.

The suppression of knowledge is why things go wrong. I’m not saying you don’t want to keep secrets for military or national-security reasons, but the science of climate change is, by many reasonable estimates, more strongly proven (or the research is more robust) than the connection between cigarettes and cancer.

Really?

No, seriously. You can suppress that for a while, but it’s going to reach the tipping point. And I will say to the legislators, and the voters who might support them: It’s going to come back to bite you. You’re going to lose political power. And for us, who breathe the same atmosphere as you all, the sooner we change the better. There are going to be huge opportunities. And I appreciate that oil companies feel that they’re doing patriotic things by providing energy, economic wealth to Canada, especially Western Canada. I appreciate that. But it’s short-term thinking.

To learn more about the Planetary Society (they’re looking for members and volunteers) visit their website.

Follow Patrick McGuire on Twitter.

We Talked to Bill Nye about the Tar Sands and the Muzzling of Canadian Scientists | VICE
 
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