1. The Fossil Fuel League
OILERS: They provide energy from liquid petroleum products. Their oilfields are able to tap into liquefied hydrocarbons that are continually produced far beneath the surface of the earth. They fight the other teams and leagues, as well as supporting environmental movements, to keep new wells from being drilled. Victory in providing transportation energy has gone to them. They battle with the
COALERS: This team provides power from solidified hydrocarbons. They have defeated the OILERS in the wars to generate generate electricity, but still battle with the
GASSERS: Using gaseous hydrocarbons, GASSERS have won a few games in providing electricity, but have largely victorious over the COALERS and OILERS in taking over the Heating Battlefield.
2. The Atom ReArrangers
NUKIES: Have taken over about 20% of the Electric Battlefield. Unable to cope with the huge bribes and campaign contributions of OILERS (mostly Arabian players wearing the most distinctive costumes in the League), NUKIES are unable to bribe large numbers of Western legislators, and have lost ground in the game.
FUSERS: So far, the least successful team in this league. Demonized as “crackpots” by all other teams in every league, those who work on getting energy from fusion have made no progress except in being ridiculed. That leads many to believe that this team has a real future.
3. The Energy Wannabes
BLOWHARDS: Simpletons, often from the lunatic fringe, largely subsidized by OILERS and COALERS to distract the dumber taxpayers from the NUKIES, BLOWHARDS believe that windmills are, for totally imaginary reasons, better alternatives than the far cheaper power from the NUKIES. Team goes into long huddle every time someone asks, “And, what are we to do when the wind isn’t blowing?”
BIOFREAKS: Using primitive stills to make ethanol and biodiesel which cost, before taxes, six or seven dollars a gallon, those who pretend that Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics don’t apply to them, the BIOFREAKS are able to get (bribe) legislators to obtain vast subsidies to pretend to be doing something useful.
TIDERS: They differ from the more popular BLOWHARDS in that they use moving tidal water instead of moving air to obtain power. They have never come up with anything that works, but are still able to obtain subsidies to distract people from the overall superiority of the NUKIES’ power sources.
BLOWHARDS, BIOFREAKS, and TIDERS are all subsidized by the OILERS’ huge profit margins. They are the best, but not the biggest, liars in The Energy Game.
All Teams in all Leagues specialize in bribing legislators, politicians, and anyone who can help pass laws against other forms of energy. Most news broadcasts have a great deal of misinformation about what the teams in The Energy Game are doing.
Best lies so far:
1. Polar bears are being wiped out by Global Warming. This lie is infectively countered by ice core analysis showing that polar bears have lived through much warmer periods of time in the past. And, of course, we may want to remind them that there are more polar bears than ever, despite increased hunting of them.
2. Penguins are being driven into extinction by Global Warming. So far, this lie has been unaffected by fact that there is more Antarctic ice than ever.
3. Penguins are being blinded by sunlight streaming through the ozone hole. That’s a wonderful lie that has not been meaningfully contradicted by the facts that the ozone hole has been around forever and penguins are still able to see.
Part II
One reason the Global Warming lies are immensely popular is that they provide an opportunity for those who like to meddle in every single human activity. There’s nothing that can’t be said to “cause global warming”. Therefore, Global Warming is, finally, the huge, pseudo-intellectual umbrella, the “unholy grail”, with which a state-gone-mad can justify taxing and controlling virtually every human activity, inactivity, and endeavor.
The “unholy grail” of Global Warming holds within it the entirety of every Babylonian dream, the power to mandate Lies, Death, and Suffering upon us all. For our own good.
