You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet. That’s What Happens When YOU’RE the Jackass driving 140 Miles An Hour Totally Toasted

Good old now dead Jackass, Ryan Dunn, never provided me with a single ounce of entertainment, but he has handily provided me with an apt metaphor for all his fellow Jackasses who keep talking smack and moron-level nonsense about global warming and climate change being a hoax.

So he’s got that going for him now.

If we’re not the climate equivalent of a Jackass who already has 23 tickets and still gets drunk off his ass and drives 140 miles an hour and crashes and burns well then, I don’t know who is.

According to court records, Dunn had at least 23 driving infractions over the last 13 years from six different counties, among them citations for speeding and careless driving, driving an unregistered vehicle, driving without a license, two parking-related transgressions and a criminal mischief-damage to property citation.

Damn. Who’d have ever guessed HE’D get hisself terminated by automobile? Who could have possibly seen that coming down the road?…

I’ve been reporting since 2007 that we were headed for a climate collision unless we quickly and radically changed course and drastically cut our use of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases.  It’s been an easy story to accurately report because the colossal majority of the world’s experts on this issue all agree.  

And the people who disagree are either blatantly shilling for the dirty fuel industry or have succumb to the relentless multi-billion dollar propaganda campaign that’s been run on the same model the cigarette industry used for decades.  Either way those people are your worst enemies if you have kids or care about what happens to our young generations or the generations who come after them.

That radical course change needed to start a few years ago, but the exact opposite happened instead.  We just kept burning more and more fossil fuels and emitting more and more planet-cooking greenhouse gas emissions.

So be it. You can’t unring that bell even if you don’t hear it tolling, or know for whom it tolls. Even if you don’t understand that them bells are ringing for you and your gal…

And now just as sure as a drunken jackass going 140 miles an hours is destined to crash and burn, so too is our civilization as our shit hits the fan.  And when you’re speeding that fast you shouldn’t be surprised when you hit the wall a lot sooner than you expected to.

People who know what they’re talking about have been predicting the extreme weather that is now the norm in our world since the 1990s.  That extreme weather is the result of the CO2 and other gasses emitted from burning fossil fuels.  That’s the same reason the frozen parts of our planet are now melting, the dry hot places are burning and why the air, land and sea temperatures are all going up to levels that scare the holy shit out of climate scientists.

2010 was the most extreme year of weather in the history of planet earth and anyone who tells you it wasn’t is just another Jackass who you probably shouldn’t ride in the passenger seat with – even if you ARE looking for a fast and furious thrill ride to brighten up your otherwise dull and dreary existence.

It’s only going to get wilder and wackier from here – or as a recent article on the subject put it:

Epic floods, massive wildfires, drought and the deadliest tornado season in 60 years are ravaging the United States, with scientists warning that climate change will bring even more extreme weather.

The human and economic toll over just the past few months has been staggering: hundreds of people have died, and thousands of homes and millions of acres have been lost at a cost estimated at more than $20 billion.

And the United States has not even entered peak hurricane season.

But hell, that doesn’t mean you have to pay any more attention than you have been – or ever even mention any of this stuff or expect your elected officials to do so. Why put a harsh on your mellow?

It’s the first holiday weekend of the summer, damnit! It’s beautiful out today, gasoline is less than $4 a gallon and the stock market was up over 600 points last week.  Life is sweet and they’re going to explode bright, colorful shiny things up in the sky tomorrow night.  Who gives a flying fuck about climate change and global warming right now?  Certainly not most of the people I know.

Fair enough. I’ll just place my faith in the magic bullet, deus ex machina solution to all of it and go about my business.

Just do me a favor, will you?  Don’t go acting all surprised, shocked and “How could this ever have happened?” on us when the hell and high water (as Joe Romm’s great book of 2006 called it) arrives in your neighborhood and becomes impossible to ignore any longer at your house.