2010: You Couldn’t Have Made Any Of It Up

January:  One of the deadliest earthquakes in recorded history levels Port Au Prince, Haiti; I would imagine things are pretty much back to normal down there by now.

February:  Olympic organizers plan well for a lack of snow in the Vancouver area by having it trucked in from 160 miles away; pleased with how well everything turned out, the IOC then awards the 2022 Winter Games to Houston, Texas... A magnitude 8.8 earthquake kills nearly 500 people in Chile; Americans complain that if you give one third-world country $100 million in earthquake relief, pretty soon all the other third-world countries want to have their own earthquakes.

March: For our anniversary, my wife and I decide to go on our third real “date” since we became parents five years ago; we end up napping through half of it.

April: An eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull (I think my spell check just exploded) spews ash all across Western Europe, grounding a lot of airplanes and prompting everyone to wonder why the Earth seems so darn mad at us lately... The Deepwater Horizon oil platform explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, BP assured the public that they’ll have everything tidied up right quick, nothing to see here.

May: President Obama nominates Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, prompting a whole lot of really creative and forward-thinking people to make fun of her appearance and question her sexuality... A horse named “Super Saver” wins the Kentucky Derby, no doubt starting a new tradition of thoroughbreds being named after corporate sponsors (my money is on Sears Auto Center in the next Preakness).

June: As it becomes apparent that no one knows how to stop the Gulf Oil Spill, which has the potential to become the worst environmental disaster in human history, with potentially apocalyptic ramifications for ecology, climate, and the economy, Americans decide to “do their part” by making sure their tires are properly inflated.

July:  The Obama Administration sues to block Arizona’s new immigration law, arguing that corrupt and inefficient border patrol is the federal government’s job, thank you very much.

August: Russia bans grain exports after the worst heat wave in 130 years destroys enough crops to cause a major food crisis; Fox News declares climate change a hoax... President Obama announces the end of combat operations in Iraq, though continued U.S. support and involvement will be necessary for a smooth transition; Americans decide to “do their part” by turning down thermostats one degree.

September:  Government lexicographers discover there is no word in the English language for the back of one’s knee... The Gulf Oil Spill Disaster finally ends as BP engineers manage to cap the well and declare it “effectively dead;” I’m sure things are pretty much back to normal down there by now.

October: The 33 miners trapped 2300 feet underground in Chile become national heroes after rescue workers pull them one by one through a precariously winding, narrow shaft to be greeted by their loving families and by President Sebastian Pinera, who instructed them to get the hell back to work... 200 million gallons of toxic sludge spill from an aluminum plant in Hungary; the plant manager who ignored warnings about the weakening reservoir is immediately chosen as the new director of FEMA.

November: A human stampede at a water festival in Cambodia kills 347 people, despite being dwarfed in size and intensity by the line outside Wal-Mart on Black Friday.

December: The world ends at midnight on the 31st.

Let’s hope I’m kidding.

The Real Problem

“The last time the oceans endured such a drastic change in chemistry was 65 million years ago, about the same time the dinosaurs went extinct.” -- Dr. Ken Caldeira, Stanford University

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster has already produced a surface slick larger than Delaware, along with vast plumes of oil of untold size lurking beneath the surface. The spill, when and if BP manages to stop it by drilling relief wells (God, I hope that works), will probably total about 1 percent of the total volume of the Gulf of Mexico, based on current estimates.

We’re talking about a arge problem here, and I started researching for this column with the idea that the media were not covering it to the extent that it deserves. If BP does not manage to stop this leak (and they haven’t proven terribly adept at anything except making asses of themselves so far), there is no telling what irreversible damage could occur.

This could conceivably bubble into a 9/11-scale disaster, but we are not seeing 9/11-type coverage of it in the media, and the government is not showing a 9/11-type response. What gives?

Looking for facts, I stumbled into the above quote from Dr. Caldeira, a leading global ecologist. At first, it seemed to affirm my fears.

But, it turns out, he was not referring to the oil spill.

He was actually referring to ocean acidity. As oceans become more acidic, sea life finds it harder and harder to survive.

Why does this matter? Oceans absorb about 30 percent of all human-produced carbon, making them the largest carbon sink in the world. Microscopic plants called plankton are largely responsible for absorbing carbon and turning it into oxygen, much like land-based vegetation does.

Plankton, along with coral, mollusks, and everything that feeds on them, are vulnerable to increased acidity. The Pacific is already In fact, ocean water may become acidic enough over the next 50 years to corrode sea shells.

What is causing the increased acidity?

You guessed it -- too much carbon.

Too much burning coal and petroleum, in other words.

We’re fortunate to have plankton to clean up that mess for us, but it looks like we’re overloading their capacity. The result: worldwide plankton growth has steadily declined for the past 20 years.

The Gulf of Mexico situation, estimated at 500,000 to 800,000 barrels spewed into the ocean so far, is a colossal disaster. But Americans consume 25 to 50 times that much oil every single day.

Dr. Caldeira appeared on Good Morning America April 22, two days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, before anybody knew about oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. He said, “We’re risking something that will change the way oceans are for the rest of human civilization.”

That seems optimistic. Without healthy oceans, there could be no human civilization.

At some point, the majority of us are going to realize that we depend on the Earth in a lot of ways we haven’t even discovered yet. We survive thanks to a delicate balance of unique circumstances.

Then again, those windmills are kind of an eyesore.

Accountability: A Quaint Fantasy

I just got a telephone call asking me if I thought Obama is doing a good job.

"It's not going to matter anyway," I replied, "once the mother ship returns and my Beloved Overlord makes slaves of your entire species."

You can imagine the pollster's response: nothing, since I was being polled by a recording.

Robot calls take the fun out of everything. My grandfather once convinced a telemarketer he could not buy his vacuum cleaner because he had dirt floors.

Ah, the good old days.

Anyways, had I been talking to a live human being, my most honest answer would have been, "How the hell do I know?"

Say what you want about George W. Bush, but at least his incompetence was obvious. He defied common sense in a way everyone could understand.

Going to kill a bunch of innocent people on the other side of the world instead of hunting those who attacked us? I'd rather you didn't.

Giving tax breaks to oil industry cronies? I object.

Taking funding away from schools that don't function well because they're underfunded to begin with? I question your logic, sir.

But with Obama, everything requires outside expertise to form an opinion.

You have your bank bailout. Virtually no one understands economics well enough to know if this was really necessary to avoid a depression.

I wish all the taxpayer money given to banks could have come with more strings attached. At the same time, though, the whole plan seems to have worked. Not only did we avoid a depression, we don't even have a recession. Instead we have an "economic downturn." Phew!

Health care: Everyone agrees it's broken. No one knows how to fix it. Even supporters had to water down their argument to, "some change is better than none."

The oil spill disastrophe -- another shining example of how wonderful things could be if we would only scale back government and let free enterprise do its thing -- is ultimately Obama's fault, right? 

To his credit, Obama has shown himself willing to acknowledge the crude on his hands as this ugly situation drags on, and the best minds available work their way through one futile idea after another, like the Keystone Cops trying to stop a bank robbery in progress.

"I take responsibility," the President says, as if preparing to don SCUBA gear and swim down there himself with a giant cork.

You can blame him for the disaster only if you think one person should have his finger on the job performance on every single federal employee.

He's not a subsurface drilling engineer. He hires people who hire people who hire people, and eventually you get down to the federal regulators watched porn and snorted crack on the job, while they were supposed to be making sure drilling platforms followed safety procedures.

Of course, heads are rolling. But that won't solve the real problem. The next heads won't work any better.

The amount of specialized knowledge in the world is growing exponentially. Layer upon layer of bureaucracy is required for government to keep up. Accountability has become a quaint fantasy.

But there's still cause for hope. The Beloved Overlord is on his way.