Any resemblance between the above comic and the entire freaking energy and environmental online community is purely coincidental. Really.
(And if you aren’t visiting xkcd, the source of the above strip, on a regular basis, you should be forced to give up your connection to the Intertubes.)
Some of my favourites: http://xkcd.com/675/ and http://xkcd.com/669/
heh.
The next variation has higher comment numbers, but all participants come from the same small group with whom we debate endlessly. You know you are being successful when you can initiate an angry response spiral within the choir, right? 8)
Don’t feel too bad about this. I found your blog while looking for something interesting to read on my Kindle. Your work popped up on the Amazon store in the blog genre I was interested in and you compare favorably to the others. I’ve lurked for a few months, so now I’m saying ‘hello’ and ‘keep up the good work’. You help arm me when I’m talking to folks who aren’t in the choir.
Alfred: Welcome to the conversation.
Seconded on Alfred’s comments. Lou’s work, as depressing as it can be, is a concentrated goldmine of environmental and energy pragmatism. I’ll go days avoiding it in a childish attempt to make the impending catastrophes go away, but my inner realist brings me back. And I’m sure we all understand the denialists have their own choirs just across the street — I’ll refrain from naming any examples (*cough* Sean Hannity’s forum *cough*) of how far a blind disregard of climate science can go.
Thanks, guys.
I’ve been meaning to address the whole issue of optimism vs. realism vs. pessimism thing for a while, and I probably will pretty soon in a standalone post, but the thumbnail version: I’m still relatively optimistic, in that I think we can and will take action. The crucial question is how much time we’ll squander, and much more human and economic impact will we sign up for by waiting too long. The only way we’ll take action before Mother Nature puts a gun to our head and starts to squeeze the trigger is if more people know what’s really going on in the scientific realms, not what the utterly clueless media or the deniers tell us.
Perhaps I’m naive, but I still believe in the overwhelming value of accurate information to influence people.
Hehe brilliant stuff. One pic really is worth a thousand words sometimes, including on the blogger mentality!