My Allergy to the Fans

My Allergy to the Fans: Hosted by Chad Saunders; Fridays from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Next Show: May 24, 2013 @ 2:00 pm

Join host Chad Saunders every Friday afternoon from 2pm to 4pm MST (evening for our friends listening in Hungary!) for ‘Allergy to the Fans’. Don’t be surprised if you hear Guy LaFleur’s disco hockey album one minute and some rare gem from the “who knows when this song was actually recorded” pile the next. Hot [...]

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Chad spoke with James Randi in the lead-up to Randi’s talk at the University of Calgary. The event takes place Saturday, September 24^th 2011 at 7:30 pm in Room ST 140, University of Calgary.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 23rd, 2011 at 4:25 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=107979995892491 Dave Still

Hi Chad. Long-time listener here. I especially enjoy and look forward to my Friday drive home with your show. But I heard your fracking comments on air (Friday Jan 6) and I must say I thought you had more integrity than that. Let me ask you: Who does your laundry? Let me answer for you: a machine does. So now I ask you, to follow up on the first question, and to make sense of it, can you imagine what life would be like if you had no laundry machines, no washer, no dryer? Can you imagine doing your laundry yourself or have someone do it yourself? Like a servant, or a slave or, gasp, a wife? Or your children? Or the guy down the street who does it cheap, but not as cheap as the children, but there are moral questions and laws with regard to child labor? My final question in this three-parter is: If oil and gas are required to produce the machine, and more on that “if” in just a minute, then what then is the alternative to the oil and gas machine? That’s right: As opposed to scrubbing your dirty underwear in a tub full of warm suds and hanging them on a line in the back yard, many would say electricty. From solar panels and wind farms? Unfortunately, machines cannot be made from electricity. Oil and gas are necessary to extract the raw materials from the earth and then turn them into the metals that become the complex parts and components of a washing machine. Yes, you can use electricity to use the machine, but the machine itself must be manufactured and created with the type of energy that can only be derived from oil and gas. Secondly and thirdly, the electricity that you can afford comes from natural gas (and coal,) and (thirdly) the people who make those machines depend on you and I and the next generations buying those machines for their daily bread and butter (bi-monthly paycheck) and quality of life (nice house, good food, clean clothing, worthwhile recreation, electronics, radio, etc.) You may not have noticed, but the human population is increasing rapidly, if not exponentially. This means that all the little kids of today will become adults in a few short years, they will leave home and be in need of a washer and dryer so that they don’t have to spend a lot of time waching clothes by hand and will have more time to pursue personality-building activities such as music and art; this means more laundry machines will need to be produced and manufactured, and furthermore an increase of electricity will be required, all of which will require an increase in oil and gas production, because, as stated, we can’t make machines with electricity. So really, what’s the real, practical alternative to oil and gas? Wood burning stoves? Hewing wood and fetching water? I like your show, Chad, I like your sensibility, so do a lot of people, because you are a true alternative. Or you were. You cut your own path. You don’t follow the crowd. You are neither wolf nor sheep. Or you don’t seem to be. Or didn’t. But you don’t belong on the bandwagon. Or you don’t seem to belong on the bandwagon. Or didn’t. Or maybe you’re just losing touch. Maybe you’re just losing your cynicism. I wish you the best in your retirement. Happy hunting.

Your faithful listener,
Dave Still

Chad Saunders

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your comment. I am glad you are a longtime CJSW
listener and curious about who does my laundry. I do. In fact I do pretty much
all of the laundry in my home for my family. Not so sure on the whole front-end
loader washing machine hype as our towels do not seem to be as clean and fresh
as a top-loader. But I digress…

To recap my thoughts on Friday’s show:

- I never asked for the oil and gas sector to be replaced.
My concern is over fracking and the Alberta government’s decision to work behind
closed doors with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) to
outline a PR strategy to counter “misinformation” about this practice to the
public.

Link here for more info –

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2011/11/28/edmonton-fracking-province-public-relations.html

One can’t help but question the objectiveness of such a
partnership let alone the idea that most Albertans probably are not aware of
all of the impacts that would be associated with this technology. Countering misinformation
when limited information is shared with the public about this subject does
nothing to educate the uninformed. It divides the arguments about fracking into
“for” or “against” with no option for a bridging consensus that could perhaps,
please more rather than only some stakeholders.

- I think we humans have been on this planet long enough and
hopefully have evolved enough to figure out smarter ways to use and protect our
limited resources. I think of what world my son will be inheriting from us
everyday. To address your questions with a question – don’t you think that both
the public and the oil and gas industry can figure out better ways to use our
oil and gas without having to pump chemicals into the ground to squeeze out a
product that consumers should be using more wisely? Pollution is always my
greatest concern and I have been to enough places in this province to know we
certainly can do a better job of managing pollution and waste that is a
by-product of increasing crop yields or getting all of the gas out of the
ground that we have been so far.

- I also talked about carbon capture and compared the
transfer of carbon credits to a system of regulating people with flatulence
issues, thereby allowing gassy people to box up their farts and “trade” them to
those who are not as gassy. This whole idea seems ridiculous to me that air
pollution would be managed like this. It assumes that a) one wants to keep
storage facilities of pollution and b) that the keepers of these boxes of
gas/farts would want to keep them forever, piled up somewhere never to be
disturbed. It is a fools game that is seriously silly.

I am glad you chose the washing machine analogy because it
afforded me a chance to recall the time I got to go to a sewer treatment plant
(I met a guy who said that about 12 sets of dentures slide into the plant every
month. Crazy. Keep those choppers away from the toilet gang). How many people
stop to think about where that soapy, dirty water goes once it is flushed out
of their washing machine into our water treatment systems? The same pipes carry
our toilet water, our sink water as the washing machine water discharge and the
impact that has on our future, our environment, our taxes, etc. is rarely
contemplated by washing machine owners. Has anyone stopped to think about where
all those chemicals go once they are pumped into the ground? Ask a local
rancher or farmer what they think about fracking and you might be surprised on
how many of them would give up a washing machine for the health of their crops
and livestock and how many of them are very concerned about the PR approach of
handling problems instead of a fact-based and transparent approach to this
issue.

Fear not, dear listeners and show blog readers. I am not
losing my cynicism. I am not retiring. I don’t propose to have all the answers
and I am constantly amazed when governments and business leaders pretend that
they do. At the end of the day all I want to know is why certain things happen
and how people make the decisions they do. Issues like fracking and the future
should be an ongoing dialogue.

Dave Still

Thank you Chad. In answer to your follow-up questions: Yes, the information you provided was helpful, Yes, I was pleased with the level of customer service, and, Yes I would definitely use this service again.

Final comments: I have 3: a) I’m sorry to hear that you are forced to do the laundry, but be grateful that you have laundry machines manufactured and operated courtesy of oil and gas to help you out in this ungodly chore (as opposed to sitting in your tub knee-deep in warm soapy water whilst scrubbing a washboard;) b) I don’t think I, the average Joe, is really all that much misinformed or brainwashed by either side, and don’t mind hearing what the industry has to say as opposed to those right-wing fundamentalist redneckers the CBC who just never will shut the hell up, and c) I think the fact that they are going to the trouble and expense of fracking gas sideways and extracting oil from sand is evidence enough that the world’s best minds can’t think of a better way. At least I’ve never heard of one, and my cousin is an engineer. But I understand your concerns. I just wish you wouldn’t get so angry; it spoils the music. God bless, and cheers!

http://twitter.com/stockflo Jeff Hohn

Chad, my voice wants to be yours when it grows up. Especially today, deep in the treches of Sled Island. Where can I get more? Tell me you have a soundcloud page filled with endless dialogue about everything and nothing… all at the same time. – Suasages & Tight Jeans

James Randi on My Allergy to the Fans

May 13, 2013