Northern North American Road Trip
Posted by Noah | Filed under the great outdoors
I’ve often dreamed of taking a north to south road trip across the whole western hemisphere but that’s not going to happen. You see, as it turns out there is no real road to Barrow Alaska and no road to South America thanks to the Darién Gap and even if there were, I don’t speak Spanish, so making it to Punta Arenas Chile alive would be nearly impossible. I refuse to take a boat on a “road trip”, it’s cheating. So I’m setting my sights a little narrower and dreaming about a Northern North America Road Trip of ~10,500km.
- Edmonton, AB
- Yellowknife, NT
- Whitehorse, YT
- Prudhoe Bay, AK
- Anchorage, AK
- Prince George, BC
- Calgary, AB
- Edmonton, AB
View Map, I’m not even going to bother trying to embed a Google Map in an XHTML Strict document and get it to work in the major browsers, you can click a link; besides itty bitty maps are silly.
Tags: automotive, travel
Why We Need to “Solve” Global Climate Change
Posted by Noah | Filed under politics, technology, the great outdoors
I don’t think man kind is causing global climate change, at least not through our cars and industry, I’m not sure the planet is even getting any warmer (or more energetic)…but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and solve the problem.
No we need to fight it like we fought the World Wars because of what it will do for us. That kind of human effort results in new technologies, new ideas, improvements in all areas of life. No the wars were bad, don’t get me wrong; but look at all of the fantastic technology that came from them and what they did for the human spirit.
“War bad, passionate effort good.”
So what if all of our efforts don’t change the climate? Can you really argue that it’s going to hurt for us to “green up”?
I want hydrogen powered electric cars that don’t need major service.
I want homes that only require a fraction of the energy to maintain a temperature and are safer. Fiberglass insulation has as much to do with not burning to the ground as it does with keeping you warm, think of what we might develop in the future! I’m sure glad we aren’t filling our walls with pop-corn anymore (no really, people used to do that).
I want a replacement for concrete that doesn’t require nearly as much energy to produce. Not so much because of the use of the energy is bad in and of itself, but because it would be cheaper, how do I know it would be cheaper? Because even if it was more energy efficient it wouldn’t catch on if it wasn’t cheaper. That, and because energy is expensive. The same way that stone went out when fired bricks came in and fired bricks went out when cement blocks came in. Better, safer more efficient homes for more people.
I want there to be oil left in 2108 so my grand children can have quality plastics and lubricants and “just in-case” they need it.
I want energy efficient bio-degradable cellphones and computers, not because I want to use less energy but because less energy means lower EMR and less EMR means less cancer, and biodegradability means I don’t have to pay someone to handle it’s toxic carcass.
We need to pursue this “green thing” because it’ll make our lives better, not because it’ll make it worse if we don’t, loafing around as a people will make our lives a lot worse.
Tags: economics, environmentalism, global warming, the future
