"Solving" the Pollution Problem and Fallout From Japan
by Joel Carlinsky
In the 1970s and 80s, Trevor Constable ``solved`` the pollution problem in Los
Angeles. He
made it all go out of the Los Angeles Basin into the desert. He told
radio talk shows he had gotten rid of the pollution. He wrote articles
about it in Borderlands magazine. He asked all his fans to write to the
Los Angeles County Commissioners demanding they hire him to protect the city
from pollution.
On the weather maps, you could see the polluted
air streaming out into the desert. The 5,000 year old Bristlecone Pine
trees at the Joshua Tree National Mounument, the oldest living things on
earth, were dying that summer from pollution from Los Angeles. The Grand
Canyon was so polluted you could not see one rim from the other. Airborne
sampling by Project Lighthawk, an environmental group of volunteer private
pilots, showed the pollution was from Los Angeles. But
Trevor Constable thought he had solved
the pollution problem in Los Angeles.
He told his radio
listeners the small, grass-roots, under-funded environmental movement
was actually all nothing but a plot by the big auto companies to force
people to buy expensive catalytic converters for their cars, and there
was no need for any laws to prevent pollution because he was now able to
clean it all up with his cloudbusters.
Now we are seeing a global crisis caused by over 40 years of reckless dependence
on nuclear power. A cloud of radioactive particles from at least one, possibly
several, Japanese reactors is moving around the Northern Hemisphere, and the
inhabitants of America and Europe are rightly concerned about their health and
that of their loved ones. In this crisis, some of the hunderds of people who
have read about cloudbusters on the internet are almost certain to think of
diverting the fallout away from where they live with a cloudbuster.
And, since almost all of those people are likely to be humans, we can be sure
none of them will think of the fact that wherever they divert it to, someone
else lives there. Wherever it goes, it all ends up in the same atmosphere of the
same finite planet.
So, look on the weather maps. Look for sudden unpredicted shifts in the wind,
with the main body of fallout suddenly going to someplace other than where it
was first predicted to go. Especially if it diverts away from a
heavily-populated area to one with lesser population. That is a clue that
someone with a cloudbuster has been at work.
And look on those same weather maps for sudden, unpredicted shifts directly
TOWARD a populated area. That is a clue that someone with a cloudbuster has been
at work who did not know what they were doing. Because there are very likely to
be several cloudbuster operators at work, and most of them will not know what
they are doing, and mistakes will inevitably be made by at least some of them.
But even if none of them made any mistakes, which is very unlikely, the risk of
compounding the problem by having several cloudbusters operating in the same
area at the same time, with none of them knowing about the others, is much
greater than the risk of one of them making a mistake. In fact, it makes causing
greater problems almost certain.
If cloudbusting is to be done responsibly, one of the first and most basic
safety precautions must be that no operation is kept secret. That all data must
be shared. That any potential operator in your area must be informed of what you
plan to do. And that rule must have no exceptions. Nobody, not even a
radioactive Muslim Communist Emotional Plague Character from outer space, should
be left uninformed of any planned cloudbusting operation.
Because, as this global emergency amply demonstrates, we are all in this
together. We all live on the same small planet. And we had better all learn that
now.
Feedback will be appreciated. Please send any comments to
joelcarlinsky@yahoo.com
by Joel Carlinsky
In the 1970s and 80s, Trevor Constable ``solved`` the pollution problem in Los
Angeles. He
made it all go out of the Los Angeles Basin into the desert. He told
radio talk shows he had gotten rid of the pollution. He wrote articles
about it in Borderlands magazine. He asked all his fans to write to the
Los Angeles County Commissioners demanding they hire him to protect the city
from pollution.
On the weather maps, you could see the polluted
air streaming out into the desert. The 5,000 year old Bristlecone Pine
trees at the Joshua Tree National Mounument, the oldest living things on
earth, were dying that summer from pollution from Los Angeles. The Grand
Canyon was so polluted you could not see one rim from the other. Airborne
sampling by Project Lighthawk, an environmental group of volunteer private
pilots, showed the pollution was from Los Angeles. But
Trevor Constable thought he had solved
the pollution problem in Los Angeles.
He told his radio
listeners the small, grass-roots, under-funded environmental movement
was actually all nothing but a plot by the big auto companies to force
people to buy expensive catalytic converters for their cars, and there
was no need for any laws to prevent pollution because he was now able to
clean it all up with his cloudbusters.
Now we are seeing a global crisis caused by over 40 years of reckless dependence
on nuclear power. A cloud of radioactive particles from at least one, possibly
several, Japanese reactors is moving around the Northern Hemisphere, and the
inhabitants of America and Europe are rightly concerned about their health and
that of their loved ones. In this crisis, some of the hunderds of people who
have read about cloudbusters on the internet are almost certain to think of
diverting the fallout away from where they live with a cloudbuster.
And, since almost all of those people are likely to be humans, we can be sure
none of them will think of the fact that wherever they divert it to, someone
else lives there. Wherever it goes, it all ends up in the same atmosphere of the
same finite planet.
So, look on the weather maps. Look for sudden unpredicted shifts in the wind,
with the main body of fallout suddenly going to someplace other than where it
was first predicted to go. Especially if it diverts away from a
heavily-populated area to one with lesser population. That is a clue that
someone with a cloudbuster has been at work.
And look on those same weather maps for sudden, unpredicted shifts directly
TOWARD a populated area. That is a clue that someone with a cloudbuster has been
at work who did not know what they were doing. Because there are very likely to
be several cloudbuster operators at work, and most of them will not know what
they are doing, and mistakes will inevitably be made by at least some of them.
But even if none of them made any mistakes, which is very unlikely, the risk of
compounding the problem by having several cloudbusters operating in the same
area at the same time, with none of them knowing about the others, is much
greater than the risk of one of them making a mistake. In fact, it makes causing
greater problems almost certain.
If cloudbusting is to be done responsibly, one of the first and most basic
safety precautions must be that no operation is kept secret. That all data must
be shared. That any potential operator in your area must be informed of what you
plan to do. And that rule must have no exceptions. Nobody, not even a
radioactive Muslim Communist Emotional Plague Character from outer space, should
be left uninformed of any planned cloudbusting operation.
Because, as this global emergency amply demonstrates, we are all in this
together. We all live on the same small planet. And we had better all learn that
now.
Feedback will be appreciated. Please send any comments to
joelcarlinsky@yahoo.com
