Hi Dr. Waug!
My name is Bell. You may have heard of me. I'm from an age that came before you, and you can thank me for inventing the telephone, which led to the connections that you used to call home from college, pay your tuition fees, and even shop for airline tickets and buy them using the Internet! I did not invent telecommunications as it is today, with videos you can upload and download, and all that, but I did get it started.
I wanted to state my importance because I want your visitors to the WAUGkidsWeb to know that I'm not just some old grumpy dead guy. I'm as alive as you are, but in a different dimension. Without further palaver, then, let me tell you, when you read that this president or that prime minister or some writer is pushing the idea of battery powered cars, or even hydrogen powered cars, because they are "clean," and don't burn gasoline or diesel fuel, they are leading you astray.
Hydrogen is what powered the Saturn rocket that put American human beings on the moon. When ignited in the presence of oxygen, the product is heat and water. All that "smoke" the Saturn made as it lifted off was actually steam and dust. But before you can put hydrogen in an automobile and burn it to get the heat and steam, you first have to get it from somewhere. You can get it in two major ways: You can cool off air until it becomes a mixture of a lot of liquids, including liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and liquid nitrogen, but then you'd have to separate the liquids and isolate the hydrogen. The hydrogen would be a tiny portion of that, and all that would take a lot of work, and the amount of energy consumed would be enormous and costly. So it won't work. Then you cold separate hydrogen from oxygen by the "electrolysis of water," which means literally using electricity to split water into its component elements, hydrogen and oxygen. This is really expensive too, and is usually done using fossil fuels or nuclear energy. Both of these power sources pollute the earth. So powering a car with hydrogen is a basically stupid way of saving the earth. Sorry about that, but it's the truth.
Sincerely,
A. Bell
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Dear Ted of the Wind Generator family,
Hi, Ted. I really appreciate hearing from you. I will look in the Wall Street Journal later today. They give it away her at the university for free, and I try to read it as often as I can.
Mr. Schellstede is very famous because he worked on offshore oil drilling rigs even when we were in high school, and he got the idea that he could put big towers on the old drilling platforms after the oil company can't get any more oil out of it, and replace the oil well equipment with his wind turbine equipment, so nature turns the big blades and the energy is converted into electricity. He plans to bury cables in the seabed and run them to shore, where they will hook up with the existing power grid to help cut back the amount of oil, gas, and coal the power companies have to burn to give power to the people on the land. Anything that can be done to reduce what we burn will be a good idea, but Mr. Schellstede told me that if a flock of migrating birds takes off in Mexico headed toward his big fans, they will appear on radar, and he can set his fan blades to "zero power," which means they are parallel to the wind, and will not spin. He also said they won't spin very fast, so they won't make too much noise or vibrate too much. I think he told me each blade will be about 120 feet (about 35 meters) long. That's a very big fan!
This idea, and the great ideas William Kamkwamba has, will help everyone on earth.
Mr. Schellstede is very famous because he worked on offshore oil drilling rigs even when we were in high school, and he got the idea that he could put big towers on the old drilling platforms after the oil company can't get any more oil out of it, and replace the oil well equipment with his wind turbine equipment, so nature turns the big blades and the energy is converted into electricity. He plans to bury cables in the seabed and run them to shore, where they will hook up with the existing power grid to help cut back the amount of oil, gas, and coal the power companies have to burn to give power to the people on the land. Anything that can be done to reduce what we burn will be a good idea, but Mr. Schellstede told me that if a flock of migrating birds takes off in Mexico headed toward his big fans, they will appear on radar, and he can set his fan blades to "zero power," which means they are parallel to the wind, and will not spin. He also said they won't spin very fast, so they won't make too much noise or vibrate too much. I think he told me each blade will be about 120 feet (about 35 meters) long. That's a very big fan!
This idea, and the great ideas William Kamkwamba has, will help everyone on earth.
Thanks for writing!
Dr. Waug
Guess what William Kamkwamba did to make light!
Dear Dr. Waug,
Have you heard about wind power? Have you heard about William Kamkwamba in Masitawa, Malawi? He’s only twenty years old in his life now, like I’ll be in 2060, but he has begun something that can really make a difference in the lives of the people there in Africa. My name, by the way, is Ted Kamkwamba, and William is our most famous relative. I don’t know much about your friends, Herman Schellstede and Dr. Sim, but they seem to be very nice people and I know they are working hard to leave us a better earth in what you call "the future." It is "my lifetime" for me, of course, but I'm not born yet, the way you see it.
If you don’t know about William Kamkwambe in Africa, you can look up his story on the newspaper calld the Walled Stree Journal. The story of his wind generator is on the b ack bage. Don’t ask me know I know because you don’t understand how time works yet. You used to before you were borm, but you forgot everywhting because in an embryo, there’s not enough brains to remember details. You can remember things like how to eat your mothers milk, and how to breathe, and how to cry and smile, but not too much else.
Anyway, my relative William is famous because he made a lot of wind generators to make people have TV and give the young children electric light so they can study better at night before they go to school. Everybody in his family is happier with a little electricity. Maybe he can make more windmills like Herman Schellstede and they will work really well and people will know thay have a way of making electricity without hurting the birds and the bats and the fish and so on. You live when the earth is almost out of control but because you and Dr. Sim and Mr. Schellstede and Professor Daniel J. Jacob are all working together it looks like the world will be better when I get born in 2044. I bet you have to work everyday to make the world better. /Thanks you, dr. Waug, and Plesa keep yup the good work.
Ted KamKwamba P.S. We don’t have a real good connection anymore because sometimes my understanding of your language is not good, but I know what I know real well, and thank you sincerely. Ted
Have you heard about wind power? Have you heard about William Kamkwamba in Masitawa, Malawi? He’s only twenty years old in his life now, like I’ll be in 2060, but he has begun something that can really make a difference in the lives of the people there in Africa. My name, by the way, is Ted Kamkwamba, and William is our most famous relative. I don’t know much about your friends, Herman Schellstede and Dr. Sim, but they seem to be very nice people and I know they are working hard to leave us a better earth in what you call "the future." It is "my lifetime" for me, of course, but I'm not born yet, the way you see it.
If you don’t know about William Kamkwambe in Africa, you can look up his story on the newspaper calld the Walled Stree Journal. The story of his wind generator is on the b ack bage. Don’t ask me know I know because you don’t understand how time works yet. You used to before you were borm, but you forgot everywhting because in an embryo, there’s not enough brains to remember details. You can remember things like how to eat your mothers milk, and how to breathe, and how to cry and smile, but not too much else.
Anyway, my relative William is famous because he made a lot of wind generators to make people have TV and give the young children electric light so they can study better at night before they go to school. Everybody in his family is happier with a little electricity. Maybe he can make more windmills like Herman Schellstede and they will work really well and people will know thay have a way of making electricity without hurting the birds and the bats and the fish and so on. You live when the earth is almost out of control but because you and Dr. Sim and Mr. Schellstede and Professor Daniel J. Jacob are all working together it looks like the world will be better when I get born in 2044. I bet you have to work everyday to make the world better. /Thanks you, dr. Waug, and Plesa keep yup the good work.
Ted KamKwamba P.S. We don’t have a real good connection anymore because sometimes my understanding of your language is not good, but I know what I know real well, and thank you sincerely. Ted
Monday, December 10, 2007
I hope you live a long, long time, Dr. Waug!
Dear Dr. Waug,
You are soooooo nice to do this for us. I’m Natalie, and I’m going to be born on February 23, 2037. That’s exciting, because it’s exactly 100 years after you! I hope you live a long, long time, because I want to meet you. I want to say thank you for working so hard to make my life better than what it was going to be without your help!
Actually, what I like about the WAUG kid Web approach is that it’s not about sending money to you to help kids that are alive right now. There are other organizations that do that. You are really trying to make a difference in the way the whole world works, right? You are trying to get people interested in thinking about doing the right things for all of us who are going to come along into the time/space existence in what you call the “future.” It takes a wonderful person to think of that!
I wish I could have thanked Dr. Sim for all the research that got you into this WAUG thing, because that must have been great. I don’t understand all that stuff about “philosophy journals” and all, and what she studied that made her care about us, but I sure wish I could say thanks to her too.
Well, try to lose weight and stay healthy so you live to be over 110, because when I’m born I’ll forget all the stuff I know now, and won’t really “get it” until I’m at least ten, if I ever get it. So if you live a long time, I can be big enough to appreciate your work. Thanks a lot.
Natalie Brown (I picked that name myself, but I don’t really know what they’ll name me when I’m born.)
You are soooooo nice to do this for us. I’m Natalie, and I’m going to be born on February 23, 2037. That’s exciting, because it’s exactly 100 years after you! I hope you live a long, long time, because I want to meet you. I want to say thank you for working so hard to make my life better than what it was going to be without your help!
Actually, what I like about the WAUG kid Web approach is that it’s not about sending money to you to help kids that are alive right now. There are other organizations that do that. You are really trying to make a difference in the way the whole world works, right? You are trying to get people interested in thinking about doing the right things for all of us who are going to come along into the time/space existence in what you call the “future.” It takes a wonderful person to think of that!
I wish I could have thanked Dr. Sim for all the research that got you into this WAUG thing, because that must have been great. I don’t understand all that stuff about “philosophy journals” and all, and what she studied that made her care about us, but I sure wish I could say thanks to her too.
Well, try to lose weight and stay healthy so you live to be over 110, because when I’m born I’ll forget all the stuff I know now, and won’t really “get it” until I’m at least ten, if I ever get it. So if you live a long time, I can be big enough to appreciate your work. Thanks a lot.
Natalie Brown (I picked that name myself, but I don’t really know what they’ll name me when I’m born.)
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Belinda's letter about Bali, begging, and her fears
Blog Post 7 WAUGkidsWeb
Dear Dr. Waug,
I’m nine. I mean, I’m like pretending to be nine. Actually I’m going to be nine in 2048. You seem to be old, and will probably be dead when I’m born, so I thought I sould contact you in order to get onto your blog before you’re dead. I hope you don’t mind.
Anyway, when I’m actually nine, I don’t want to be poor. I don’t want to be like those beggars you walk by in downtown Bangkok, the ones with faces hanging down like melted wax, really horrible, or like the poor guy who has to drag himself across the sidewalk to get to his begging place every evening near the Cineplex. I want to be okay, to be able to walk, look okay, and all that.
I heard from somebody that in a place called Bali near Thailand, there is a big meeting going on where all the nations have representatives and they are talking about what you call “soiling the nest,” like a chicken who poops in her nest and the little chickens have to live in there until they can fly away.
The countries must be really stupid or ignorant. They don’t seem to give a darn about the kids like me who will come along in thirty years or so. If I manage to live as long as you, I won’t die until maybe the year 2109. I will be seventy then, and that’s a long time to be eating bad food and breathing polluted air, especially when the law says you have to use those crazy mercury light bulbs to save energy. Who decided to do that, and how do they plan to recycle the mercury so I don’t have to eat or drink or breathe it?
Please put in your blog how I don’t want to live to be old if my central nervous system is poisoned with all that mercury. See if you can get the people interested in controlling the mercury in batteries, light bulbs, and street lights. I’m scared to be born into the world you guys are preparing for me. Please, please do something now, while you have the chance.
Belinds Brooks
I’m going to be born in Concord, Massachusetts, but I will eventually move to Atlanta shores around 2087 and live on the beach. Love, Belinda.
Dear Belinda on the Beach,
I hear you, Belinda, and I’m contacting everyone I can. Lots of us really care about you, and wish you well. I wish I could promise you that we’ll be successful in getting people to wake up and fix things, but right now we have not accomplished much.
The meeting in Bali is not where things will be fixed, so don’t be too discouraged. The people there are basically like hand-puppets arguing and debating. The hands are those who actually have the power to do something, but need to do what we call “posturing” in order to make a good impression on the people who actually sent them there. Things will only change when enough everyday people express their anger and disappointment about the way the earth is deteriorating and finances are out of control, and so on. Once the people catch on to what’s really happening things will begin to change. Hang in there, Belinda. We’re working on it!
Dr. Waug
Dear Dr. Waug,
I’m nine. I mean, I’m like pretending to be nine. Actually I’m going to be nine in 2048. You seem to be old, and will probably be dead when I’m born, so I thought I sould contact you in order to get onto your blog before you’re dead. I hope you don’t mind.
Anyway, when I’m actually nine, I don’t want to be poor. I don’t want to be like those beggars you walk by in downtown Bangkok, the ones with faces hanging down like melted wax, really horrible, or like the poor guy who has to drag himself across the sidewalk to get to his begging place every evening near the Cineplex. I want to be okay, to be able to walk, look okay, and all that.
I heard from somebody that in a place called Bali near Thailand, there is a big meeting going on where all the nations have representatives and they are talking about what you call “soiling the nest,” like a chicken who poops in her nest and the little chickens have to live in there until they can fly away.
The countries must be really stupid or ignorant. They don’t seem to give a darn about the kids like me who will come along in thirty years or so. If I manage to live as long as you, I won’t die until maybe the year 2109. I will be seventy then, and that’s a long time to be eating bad food and breathing polluted air, especially when the law says you have to use those crazy mercury light bulbs to save energy. Who decided to do that, and how do they plan to recycle the mercury so I don’t have to eat or drink or breathe it?
Please put in your blog how I don’t want to live to be old if my central nervous system is poisoned with all that mercury. See if you can get the people interested in controlling the mercury in batteries, light bulbs, and street lights. I’m scared to be born into the world you guys are preparing for me. Please, please do something now, while you have the chance.
Belinds Brooks
I’m going to be born in Concord, Massachusetts, but I will eventually move to Atlanta shores around 2087 and live on the beach. Love, Belinda.
Dear Belinda on the Beach,
I hear you, Belinda, and I’m contacting everyone I can. Lots of us really care about you, and wish you well. I wish I could promise you that we’ll be successful in getting people to wake up and fix things, but right now we have not accomplished much.
The meeting in Bali is not where things will be fixed, so don’t be too discouraged. The people there are basically like hand-puppets arguing and debating. The hands are those who actually have the power to do something, but need to do what we call “posturing” in order to make a good impression on the people who actually sent them there. Things will only change when enough everyday people express their anger and disappointment about the way the earth is deteriorating and finances are out of control, and so on. Once the people catch on to what’s really happening things will begin to change. Hang in there, Belinda. We’re working on it!
Dr. Waug
"I don't understand your blog," with Reply by Dr. Waug
WAUGkidsWeb
December 9, 2007
Dear Dr. Waug,
I don’t understand your blog. Who write it? What’s a WAUG kid? Who are you? What’s going on? I am fascinated by the ideas presented in the letters from WAUG kids, but I can’t follow the time frame. Please explain everything for me.
Confused in Cincinnati
(I don’t like being referred to as a member of the “GDNG.” What does that mean, and how can someone call me a “GDNG” person?)
REPLY FROM DR WAUG
Dear Confused non-GDNG person,
Your letter asking for help in understanding the WAUGkids idea reminds me that most people are not really in the GDNG (Great Do-Nothing Generation), but are doing nothing for the WAUG kids because they simply don’t understand what’s happening today, and why I feel compelled do something, like start this blog, for them.
WHAT THIS BLOG IS ALL ABOUT, AND HOW IT GOT STARTED
This blog is about real human beings, living, breathing, walking, talking, loving and living and dying.
The difference between them and “us” is the same as the difference between the people of the United States in 1946, for example, and those of who are alive now, but who were not even dreamed about in 1946. For example, my wife was not living in 1946, but she’s alive now. Tom Hanks, Hillary Clinton, Tiger Wood, Peyton Manning and Jay Leno were not alive in 1946, but are very much alive now.
WAUGkids are those who are not living, breathing, walking, and talking right now, but are just as real as the celebrities named above. It’s just that the world, which is all bound up in a time/space matrix, has not gone through the changes it needs to go through with reference to some kind of cosmic Center Point to allow the WAUGkids to actually inhabit the molecules and tissues and skin that will be theirs in the next ten, twenty, fifty, or even one-hundred years. So for example, if you are my age, 70, and your kid is expecting a child, that child is as alive as my mother used to be, and will develop into a living, loving, caring, and eventually dying person, like all previously alive people did. So your are making a little gift, say, a small investment in an IRA, that will be there when your as-yet-unborn grandchild arrives at maturity, say, in the year 2028. That will be part of your legacy for your future grandchild. You may set aside two or three of these little legacies. There may be children who receive them later, though we are not fortune tellers, and can’t know for sure. But the idea that someone will inherit this planet in the future is pretty sound. Even if that future inhabitant is not a descendant of mine, or of yours, does not mean he or she is not “real.” It just means the future person is not here yet because the proper alignments and configurations of DNA and RNA and cytoplasm and all the other necessary components have not all arrived in the same place at the same time yet.
So the WAUG kids are those who will “for sure” be born in the future.
They will inhabit the earth. No matter how much you’d like to believe in some kind of cosmic escape hatch or “wormhole” or other device, there is little likelihood that a new planet will develop nearby for our use. There is also little chance that human beings born anytime in the next 100 years will actually set up a new existence somewhere else that is self-sustaining and comfortable.
At present, this planet is still self-sustaining from the point of view of human beings. There is water, food, sunlight, wind, weather, and abundant animal and plant life to sustain human being for a long time, currently.
The birthrate, however, is climbing in exponential numbers, so that we can expect that demand for the basic necessities will continue to grow faster than the supply, which will lead to much competition, vast migrations, and a lot more human problems than we have today.
The quality of life depends a great deal on the quality of our air, soil, and water, and the workings of weather. Whether we like it or not, the human race has steadily been soiling the nest, like a hen who continues to hatch new chicks everyday without taking a stroll to drop her droppings. The “soiling the next” behavior of human beings is both visible and invisible. Visibly, we can see rusting cars, collapsing factories, falling towers, crumbling stonework, cracked roadways, leaking drains, oil spills, clouds of smoke from power plants, chemical plants, oil refineries, deliberate burning of sugar cane foliage, forests, and trash, and many other ugly sights. Invisibly, nitrous oxides, carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen sulfide, and a host of aerosols, halogenated hydrocarbons, and volatile compounds, and even the vapors of mercury, which has a density thirteen times heavier than water, are mixing and diffusing through the earth’s atmosphere at ever increasing rates. These gases do a number of unwelcome things, but most threatening is their ability to trap infrared (heat) radiation in the atmosphere the way the closed windows of an automobile raise the temperature inside a parked car in the summer time.
This atmospheric heat and the incessant solar heat that cannot be reflected back out changes the temperature of the water and soil on the earth’s surface and creates ever more active weather extremes, with the resulting increase in storms and the heating of the seas and oceans. This in turn melts the ice caps and enables various insect and parasite borne diseases to find new homes in what have been temperate zones in historical times. As malaria, dengue fever, and other warm weather diseases move from equatorial regions toward the poles, we can expect that more and more lives will be affected or terminated by them.
Lakes and rivers are drying up, depriving human beings of fish, which for many is the main source of animal protein and vital oils. This is not an imaginary tale, but a fact of life.
The reason I decided to start the WAUGkidsWeb was that unless everyday people become aware of what “climate change” and “pollution” and “irrational finances” and “unjust arrangements” really mean inhuman terms, this current generation will be remembers forever as the last generation to live on a really nice planet in relative comfort, where terrorism and war, disease and poverty were often “other people’s problems” and people in advanced societies like the USA, Canada, the UK, Europe, Japan, Russia, and other major countries could get along pretty well.
Without realizing it the generation currently alive and able to “do something,” is like a great family celebrating a wedding or a birthday in a huge mansion which is teetering on the edge of a cliff. When a little kid shouts, “Look at the fireworks!” and points his finger out the rear window, the crowd shifts ever to slightly toward the rear of the house, and the entire house and its human contents plunge into the chasm.
We are on the edge of a historical precipice. Yet we do nothing. Today’s news tells us that when the leaders of the world met in Bali to discuss pollution and climate change, China and the USA clinched, deadlocked on who is to pay for the damage and the clean up necessary to slow (not stop, only slow) the destruction. Oh boy.
That why the current generation is seen, or will be seen, as the GDNG, or the Great Do Nothing Generation.
All I’ve done is committed myself to doing something about it. So, Confused in Cincinnati, if you don’t like being called a member of the GDNG, you have to get out and do something for the “What About Us? Generation.”
That’s what this blog is all about. I hope you join the Great Get it Done Generation or GGID Generation before it’s too late.
To Get it Done, write your newspaper editor when you see mention of the Bali or Kyoto agreements, or disagreements. Tell them you expect action, and ask for other readers to contact their representatives in their governments, their presidents, prime ministers, finance ministers, and so forth. Make phone calls. Send
E-mails. Forward the WAUG blogs to your friends, and have them contribute their ideas, have them forward the WAUG blog to their teachers, preachers, mayors, managers, stockholders, partners, mothers, sisters, brothers, fathers, grandparents, enemies and friends. We have to get this thing going, and the Internet is the best and fastest way to do it.
Dr. Waug, Advocate for the What About Us? Generation kids who are begging, pleading, demanding, and writing their little hearts out hoping that someone in this generation does something to help them before its too late.
Write me at WAUGkids@gmail if you have feedback or suggestions.
December 9, 2007
Dear Dr. Waug,
I don’t understand your blog. Who write it? What’s a WAUG kid? Who are you? What’s going on? I am fascinated by the ideas presented in the letters from WAUG kids, but I can’t follow the time frame. Please explain everything for me.
Confused in Cincinnati
(I don’t like being referred to as a member of the “GDNG.” What does that mean, and how can someone call me a “GDNG” person?)
REPLY FROM DR WAUG
Dear Confused non-GDNG person,
Your letter asking for help in understanding the WAUGkids idea reminds me that most people are not really in the GDNG (Great Do-Nothing Generation), but are doing nothing for the WAUG kids because they simply don’t understand what’s happening today, and why I feel compelled do something, like start this blog, for them.
WHAT THIS BLOG IS ALL ABOUT, AND HOW IT GOT STARTED
This blog is about real human beings, living, breathing, walking, talking, loving and living and dying.
The difference between them and “us” is the same as the difference between the people of the United States in 1946, for example, and those of who are alive now, but who were not even dreamed about in 1946. For example, my wife was not living in 1946, but she’s alive now. Tom Hanks, Hillary Clinton, Tiger Wood, Peyton Manning and Jay Leno were not alive in 1946, but are very much alive now.
WAUGkids are those who are not living, breathing, walking, and talking right now, but are just as real as the celebrities named above. It’s just that the world, which is all bound up in a time/space matrix, has not gone through the changes it needs to go through with reference to some kind of cosmic Center Point to allow the WAUGkids to actually inhabit the molecules and tissues and skin that will be theirs in the next ten, twenty, fifty, or even one-hundred years. So for example, if you are my age, 70, and your kid is expecting a child, that child is as alive as my mother used to be, and will develop into a living, loving, caring, and eventually dying person, like all previously alive people did. So your are making a little gift, say, a small investment in an IRA, that will be there when your as-yet-unborn grandchild arrives at maturity, say, in the year 2028. That will be part of your legacy for your future grandchild. You may set aside two or three of these little legacies. There may be children who receive them later, though we are not fortune tellers, and can’t know for sure. But the idea that someone will inherit this planet in the future is pretty sound. Even if that future inhabitant is not a descendant of mine, or of yours, does not mean he or she is not “real.” It just means the future person is not here yet because the proper alignments and configurations of DNA and RNA and cytoplasm and all the other necessary components have not all arrived in the same place at the same time yet.
So the WAUG kids are those who will “for sure” be born in the future.
They will inhabit the earth. No matter how much you’d like to believe in some kind of cosmic escape hatch or “wormhole” or other device, there is little likelihood that a new planet will develop nearby for our use. There is also little chance that human beings born anytime in the next 100 years will actually set up a new existence somewhere else that is self-sustaining and comfortable.
At present, this planet is still self-sustaining from the point of view of human beings. There is water, food, sunlight, wind, weather, and abundant animal and plant life to sustain human being for a long time, currently.
The birthrate, however, is climbing in exponential numbers, so that we can expect that demand for the basic necessities will continue to grow faster than the supply, which will lead to much competition, vast migrations, and a lot more human problems than we have today.
The quality of life depends a great deal on the quality of our air, soil, and water, and the workings of weather. Whether we like it or not, the human race has steadily been soiling the nest, like a hen who continues to hatch new chicks everyday without taking a stroll to drop her droppings. The “soiling the next” behavior of human beings is both visible and invisible. Visibly, we can see rusting cars, collapsing factories, falling towers, crumbling stonework, cracked roadways, leaking drains, oil spills, clouds of smoke from power plants, chemical plants, oil refineries, deliberate burning of sugar cane foliage, forests, and trash, and many other ugly sights. Invisibly, nitrous oxides, carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen sulfide, and a host of aerosols, halogenated hydrocarbons, and volatile compounds, and even the vapors of mercury, which has a density thirteen times heavier than water, are mixing and diffusing through the earth’s atmosphere at ever increasing rates. These gases do a number of unwelcome things, but most threatening is their ability to trap infrared (heat) radiation in the atmosphere the way the closed windows of an automobile raise the temperature inside a parked car in the summer time.
This atmospheric heat and the incessant solar heat that cannot be reflected back out changes the temperature of the water and soil on the earth’s surface and creates ever more active weather extremes, with the resulting increase in storms and the heating of the seas and oceans. This in turn melts the ice caps and enables various insect and parasite borne diseases to find new homes in what have been temperate zones in historical times. As malaria, dengue fever, and other warm weather diseases move from equatorial regions toward the poles, we can expect that more and more lives will be affected or terminated by them.
Lakes and rivers are drying up, depriving human beings of fish, which for many is the main source of animal protein and vital oils. This is not an imaginary tale, but a fact of life.
The reason I decided to start the WAUGkidsWeb was that unless everyday people become aware of what “climate change” and “pollution” and “irrational finances” and “unjust arrangements” really mean inhuman terms, this current generation will be remembers forever as the last generation to live on a really nice planet in relative comfort, where terrorism and war, disease and poverty were often “other people’s problems” and people in advanced societies like the USA, Canada, the UK, Europe, Japan, Russia, and other major countries could get along pretty well.
Without realizing it the generation currently alive and able to “do something,” is like a great family celebrating a wedding or a birthday in a huge mansion which is teetering on the edge of a cliff. When a little kid shouts, “Look at the fireworks!” and points his finger out the rear window, the crowd shifts ever to slightly toward the rear of the house, and the entire house and its human contents plunge into the chasm.
We are on the edge of a historical precipice. Yet we do nothing. Today’s news tells us that when the leaders of the world met in Bali to discuss pollution and climate change, China and the USA clinched, deadlocked on who is to pay for the damage and the clean up necessary to slow (not stop, only slow) the destruction. Oh boy.
That why the current generation is seen, or will be seen, as the GDNG, or the Great Do Nothing Generation.
All I’ve done is committed myself to doing something about it. So, Confused in Cincinnati, if you don’t like being called a member of the GDNG, you have to get out and do something for the “What About Us? Generation.”
That’s what this blog is all about. I hope you join the Great Get it Done Generation or GGID Generation before it’s too late.
To Get it Done, write your newspaper editor when you see mention of the Bali or Kyoto agreements, or disagreements. Tell them you expect action, and ask for other readers to contact their representatives in their governments, their presidents, prime ministers, finance ministers, and so forth. Make phone calls. Send
E-mails. Forward the WAUG blogs to your friends, and have them contribute their ideas, have them forward the WAUG blog to their teachers, preachers, mayors, managers, stockholders, partners, mothers, sisters, brothers, fathers, grandparents, enemies and friends. We have to get this thing going, and the Internet is the best and fastest way to do it.
Dr. Waug, Advocate for the What About Us? Generation kids who are begging, pleading, demanding, and writing their little hearts out hoping that someone in this generation does something to help them before its too late.
Write me at WAUGkids@gmail if you have feedback or suggestions.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Message from WAUG kid born without a homeland - Tuvalu
WAUGkidsWeb
December 6, 2007
Hi!
My name is Sadeeyah Touli. I will be a girl born in 2094, and I won’t be from Tuvalu, but from someplace called St. Louis, in Missouri. I think that’s now in the United States of America, but I’m not sure. Sometimes I have a hard time thinking about my coming life because I’m not born yet. I’m not even an embryo yet! But anyone with a heart cares for me, because I’m going to be a human, just like the humans that are walking around right now thinking, “Hey, I’m alive. That’s everything!” It is important to be alive, but it’s even more important to be someone, period. A lot of not-yet-alive people will be coming along by the year 2094, when I’ll be born. The “alive” people of 2007 have to remember that.
I want to ask all of you alive people of 2007 to think about what you could do to help make my life, and the lives of all of those not-alive-yet people who will inherit the planet Earth in the future, decent and safe.
I’m not here to talk about the morality of terminating a pregnancy. That’s not what troubles me personally, since, if I’m going to be born, no one in my direct line of ancestors will be terminated in the womb or shortly thereafter. I know that’s a highly emotional issue, but what I’m really concerned about is not the “here-and-now” issue a person in 2007 or 2008 faces regarding a pregnancy. I’m thinking of the welfare of all the millions and billions of living people who will occupy the planet in the future.
Imagine for a minute that everyone born in 1980, for example, were places in some magical kind of boat, and they would find some things on the boat pleasant, and some unpleasant. There would be abundant bread, for example, but not enough green vegetables. There would be a lot of chicken, but no beef, and so on. The same with all the other goods like clothes, money, water, and so forth. The supplies would be finite, and would be available in some parts of the ship but not in others. Let’s say that all the people born in 1980 would have teachers and medical doctors and a crew of sailors to sail the ship and tend to their education, health, and so on, but when everyone born in 1980 got to age 70, they would be asked to transfer to another ship, and leave their magical ship open fro people being born in, say, the year 2000.
Those being born in 2000 and just entering the ship would find it had been lived in for a long time, and a lot of the resources on the ship would be missing, right? The ship might be in need of paint, electrical work, new plumbing, and a good scrub-down. It may have to be de-bugged and disinfected. It might seem more crowded than it was when the 1980 people go on it.
Now suppose that they were served by a new group of doctors, sailors, teachers and professors, and so forth, born before them. The same kinds of rules applied as before, but the ship could not be expanded using outside materials. Suddenly the huge Trash Room would be scoured for useful materials. The immense amounts of aluminum foil, plastic bags, foam cups and discarded bottles, cans, newspapers, wrappers, and string would be picked through by enterprising people keen on re-using the materials and perhaps building an annex on the ship to house the wealthier. Perhaps tennis courts and even a modest golf-course would be designed and built from “trash.” This would go on until the born-in-2000 reached age 70, and they would transfer to a different boat and depart for destinations unknown. There would be speculation and even cherished doctrine shared by the people being born in 2020 referring to the nature of life in the mysterious boat that takes away seventy-year-old people, but since no one had ever sailed away and returned, the descriptions of life on the mystery boat were never able to be authenticated, and remained the object of personal or community belief or speculation or simply skepticism or denial. What actually occurred was unknowable by those getting on the 1980, 2000, or 2020 boats, and all those in-between.
Now let’s suppose you are on the boat hosting the Born in 2000 group. If you were perfectly certain that one generation comes after another, and you really had a heart for those will be born in each of the following years, would it make any difference to you how people in your Born in 2000 Group behaved? If you knew the next group coming aboard will have to cope with a diminished store of basic supplies. They will have to find a way to cultivate crops, raise animals, and so on if their generation is to survive, and if they want subsequent generations to have what’s needed.
So it is with this planet, Earth. When I’m born and come of age to look around, I’d really like to be able to look at mountains unmarred by ski slopes, and huge glaciers, and deep, crystal clear lakes; I’d like to wade in rivers filled with spawning salmon, rainbow trout, and fresh water clams.
I’d like to be able to travel to Chile or Argentina without having to worry about solar radiation spoiling my visit as it pours in through a huge hole in the ozone layer.
I’d like to travel to Antarctica and watch the Emperor Penguins play on the ice. I’d like to actually stand on the Arctic Ice Cap and see Polar Bears and seals coming up to breathe, but the way things are going, I’ll never be able to do that because the ice everywhere is missing.
My ancestor’s native Tuvalu will be completely submerged when I’m born, so I’ll have to be somewhere else.
Your newspapers today say the United States and China are deadlocked over who will pay the price for all the disorder caused by climate change. Businesses in the country that has done the most to cause the problem and find technical ways to bring some of this trouble back under control do not want “give away” their technology to poor or developing people so that everyone in the world can have a better chance at having their great-grandchildren live decent lives.
It’s hard for me to see this happening, because it’s people like me and the other What About Us? Generations of kids who will have to breath the bad air, deal with the floods and winds, and the starvation and jealous rivalries that pit one culture against another and end up with bloodshed and terror.
I really would like it, Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. 2007, currently alive, if you would get to work and do something to convince your cousins and nephews, aunt and great-grandmothers to take an active part in convincing your government to cooperate with the Kyoto and other groups in order to make tomorrow, not a more “money making” age, a but a more “livable” age. This is not a matter of life or death as much as it is a question of “will it be worthwhile living is a world of disease, famine, and war?”
Please take me seriously, even though I’m not alive yet. There will be billions like me, and well all need you help now. Tomorrow will be too late!!
Sadeeyah Touli
Descendent of Tuvaluvian people.
December 6, 2007
Hi!
My name is Sadeeyah Touli. I will be a girl born in 2094, and I won’t be from Tuvalu, but from someplace called St. Louis, in Missouri. I think that’s now in the United States of America, but I’m not sure. Sometimes I have a hard time thinking about my coming life because I’m not born yet. I’m not even an embryo yet! But anyone with a heart cares for me, because I’m going to be a human, just like the humans that are walking around right now thinking, “Hey, I’m alive. That’s everything!” It is important to be alive, but it’s even more important to be someone, period. A lot of not-yet-alive people will be coming along by the year 2094, when I’ll be born. The “alive” people of 2007 have to remember that.
I want to ask all of you alive people of 2007 to think about what you could do to help make my life, and the lives of all of those not-alive-yet people who will inherit the planet Earth in the future, decent and safe.
I’m not here to talk about the morality of terminating a pregnancy. That’s not what troubles me personally, since, if I’m going to be born, no one in my direct line of ancestors will be terminated in the womb or shortly thereafter. I know that’s a highly emotional issue, but what I’m really concerned about is not the “here-and-now” issue a person in 2007 or 2008 faces regarding a pregnancy. I’m thinking of the welfare of all the millions and billions of living people who will occupy the planet in the future.
Imagine for a minute that everyone born in 1980, for example, were places in some magical kind of boat, and they would find some things on the boat pleasant, and some unpleasant. There would be abundant bread, for example, but not enough green vegetables. There would be a lot of chicken, but no beef, and so on. The same with all the other goods like clothes, money, water, and so forth. The supplies would be finite, and would be available in some parts of the ship but not in others. Let’s say that all the people born in 1980 would have teachers and medical doctors and a crew of sailors to sail the ship and tend to their education, health, and so on, but when everyone born in 1980 got to age 70, they would be asked to transfer to another ship, and leave their magical ship open fro people being born in, say, the year 2000.
Those being born in 2000 and just entering the ship would find it had been lived in for a long time, and a lot of the resources on the ship would be missing, right? The ship might be in need of paint, electrical work, new plumbing, and a good scrub-down. It may have to be de-bugged and disinfected. It might seem more crowded than it was when the 1980 people go on it.
Now suppose that they were served by a new group of doctors, sailors, teachers and professors, and so forth, born before them. The same kinds of rules applied as before, but the ship could not be expanded using outside materials. Suddenly the huge Trash Room would be scoured for useful materials. The immense amounts of aluminum foil, plastic bags, foam cups and discarded bottles, cans, newspapers, wrappers, and string would be picked through by enterprising people keen on re-using the materials and perhaps building an annex on the ship to house the wealthier. Perhaps tennis courts and even a modest golf-course would be designed and built from “trash.” This would go on until the born-in-2000 reached age 70, and they would transfer to a different boat and depart for destinations unknown. There would be speculation and even cherished doctrine shared by the people being born in 2020 referring to the nature of life in the mysterious boat that takes away seventy-year-old people, but since no one had ever sailed away and returned, the descriptions of life on the mystery boat were never able to be authenticated, and remained the object of personal or community belief or speculation or simply skepticism or denial. What actually occurred was unknowable by those getting on the 1980, 2000, or 2020 boats, and all those in-between.
Now let’s suppose you are on the boat hosting the Born in 2000 group. If you were perfectly certain that one generation comes after another, and you really had a heart for those will be born in each of the following years, would it make any difference to you how people in your Born in 2000 Group behaved? If you knew the next group coming aboard will have to cope with a diminished store of basic supplies. They will have to find a way to cultivate crops, raise animals, and so on if their generation is to survive, and if they want subsequent generations to have what’s needed.
So it is with this planet, Earth. When I’m born and come of age to look around, I’d really like to be able to look at mountains unmarred by ski slopes, and huge glaciers, and deep, crystal clear lakes; I’d like to wade in rivers filled with spawning salmon, rainbow trout, and fresh water clams.
I’d like to be able to travel to Chile or Argentina without having to worry about solar radiation spoiling my visit as it pours in through a huge hole in the ozone layer.
I’d like to travel to Antarctica and watch the Emperor Penguins play on the ice. I’d like to actually stand on the Arctic Ice Cap and see Polar Bears and seals coming up to breathe, but the way things are going, I’ll never be able to do that because the ice everywhere is missing.
My ancestor’s native Tuvalu will be completely submerged when I’m born, so I’ll have to be somewhere else.
Your newspapers today say the United States and China are deadlocked over who will pay the price for all the disorder caused by climate change. Businesses in the country that has done the most to cause the problem and find technical ways to bring some of this trouble back under control do not want “give away” their technology to poor or developing people so that everyone in the world can have a better chance at having their great-grandchildren live decent lives.
It’s hard for me to see this happening, because it’s people like me and the other What About Us? Generations of kids who will have to breath the bad air, deal with the floods and winds, and the starvation and jealous rivalries that pit one culture against another and end up with bloodshed and terror.
I really would like it, Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. 2007, currently alive, if you would get to work and do something to convince your cousins and nephews, aunt and great-grandmothers to take an active part in convincing your government to cooperate with the Kyoto and other groups in order to make tomorrow, not a more “money making” age, a but a more “livable” age. This is not a matter of life or death as much as it is a question of “will it be worthwhile living is a world of disease, famine, and war?”
Please take me seriously, even though I’m not alive yet. There will be billions like me, and well all need you help now. Tomorrow will be too late!!
Sadeeyah Touli
Descendent of Tuvaluvian people.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Hi. My name is Philo and I'm going to be Greek when I finally get to Earth. I understand that somehow the islands are not going to stay as nice as they are now because the sea is getting more acid and the sea level is rising and some nice little places along the shore will be underwater by the time I'm old enough to swim. All I can say is, I hope you nice people alive in 2007 and 2008 will be able to plant more trees and cut down on the amount of methane and carbon dioxide that is pumping into the air. I don't know how you can do it, because there are several billion people in Asia alone who don't have motor bikes yet, and many more who want them, or want to upgrade to automobiles and SUVs, vans, and trucks in the next ten years. That's going to mean a lot more people will be burning gasoline or alcohol or other fuels, and that will create more heat and more "greenhouse gases" that trap heat in the atmosphere of the planet. I'm not born yet, but even now, with just a little common sense, I can see that things will be getting much worse before they ever get better, so I'm asking Dr. Waug to put this in his blog for me.
Take care, and please see that you wake people up to see this problem. It's a matter of what philosophers call "the just savings principle." You guy have an obligation to leave us something of value as a legacy, and one thing I'm really concerned about it the quality of life in Greece in the year 2082. I'm not sure when I'll be born, but if I'm alive then, and able to go to the beach by myself then, to swim or fish, I hope things will still be decent enough for us.
Oh, I almost forgot to say I'm a WAUG kid, part of the What About Us? Generation. We're not being selfish, we're just hoping to live decent lives on a decent planet, and we have to depend on you earlier arrivals to set up things so Earth does not get a lot worse as the century progresses.
Best wishes,
Philo of Athens
Take care, and please see that you wake people up to see this problem. It's a matter of what philosophers call "the just savings principle." You guy have an obligation to leave us something of value as a legacy, and one thing I'm really concerned about it the quality of life in Greece in the year 2082. I'm not sure when I'll be born, but if I'm alive then, and able to go to the beach by myself then, to swim or fish, I hope things will still be decent enough for us.
Oh, I almost forgot to say I'm a WAUG kid, part of the What About Us? Generation. We're not being selfish, we're just hoping to live decent lives on a decent planet, and we have to depend on you earlier arrivals to set up things so Earth does not get a lot worse as the century progresses.
Best wishes,
Philo of Athens
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