Happy Sunday folks,

If you follow this blog regularly than you already know all about the fine work of Michael Fountain. If you don’t, then you should go check out his awesome work over in our web-comic, THE UNDERGROUNDS. Today I wanted to share another piece of Michael’s work with all of you from his blog, Songs of Love, Destruction, and Other Synthetic Delusions. Enjoy!

Tepidus Plagiarius

So, climate change scientists have been having a rough time of it lately. Some of their data is missing, some of it they skewed to get better results, and the “Global-Warming” skeptics have been all over it like flies on rotting meat.

Notice how I put “Global-Warming” in quotes (twice)? Yeah, there’s a reason for that. The real issue most climate scientists are trying to deal with is not really whether the planet is getting warmer (though a lot of data and an obscene amount of glacier melt suggests it is). What climate-change scientists are really attempting to determine is how much the activities of humans change the climate.

Where “global-warming” comes in is in the vast amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that humans have been pumping into the atmosphere in greater and greater doses. But global-warming is not the whole issue. Not even close.

One skeptic argument I’ve heard a lot is that the world has been around millions (or thousands, if you are a conservative Christian) of years, and humans are so insignificant that to think they could affect this planet is like thinking flies could bother an elephant.
First off: what a dumb argument. Yes, a couple of flies would hardly bother an elephant, but if every fly in the entire world swarmed around one elephant, that elephant would suffocate to death.
Second: The most rudimentary chemistry and geophysics prove that humans affect the environment. There is no question about it, it is a fact. What Climate Change Science attempts to figure out is “How” and “How Much”. Every time a species becomes extinct due to the direct influence of man (ie. hunting or destroying their habitat) we’ve changed the global environment. Every time we divert the natural flow of a river or chop down a forest we’ve changed the global environment. The only question to ask is “how bad will the consequences be?”

Skeptics don’t ask that question. They either ignore it or assume there won’t be any consequences. Why? What’s so bad about wondering what the consequences of stripping and polluting our planet?
The reason is obvious: pure selfishness.

The other main problems skeptics have is they bury their heads in the sand, metaphorically speaking. They will point at all the graphs, and all the data, and say something like, “the world warms and cools in cycles, and it’s been doing that for as long the world has been around, and nothing we can do will change that.“
Except there is one graph they aren’t looking at.
So, recorded history shows that civilized human beings have been around for around 6 thousand years. Let’s say we add another millennium for the time that didn’t get recorded, hasn’t been found yet, or destroyed, and we’re looking at around 7,000 years of civilized human history. In those 7 thousand years, man has polluted, harvested, and destroyed the natural resources of this planet.
The skeptic jumps in at this point and says, “Exactly! And the planet hasn’t deviated from it’s cycle of warming and cooling in all that time.“
But here’s a detail that often gets overlooked:
It took humans 6,950 years to reach a global population of approximately 3 billion people. And then it took only 50 years to double.
There is no data we could possibly look at to suggest how doubling the global population in 50 years has affected the environment. And in twenty years, the global population is expected to increase by another 3 billion people.

And now, do you really expect me to believe that taking 6,950 years worth of pollution, doubling it, and then cramming that into the space of merely 50 years is not going to cause environmental problems? And this iswithout taking into account the rapid increase of carbon consumption associated with the Industrial Revolution.

Look at our oceans. 50 years ago, you would never have found an area of the Pacific Ocean, twice the size of Texas, filled with garbage.
Over the past 50 years, the demand for freshwater has increased 600%, even though global population has only doubled. Extreme water shortage is definitely one aspect of climate change.
While recycling and recovery has helped reduce the rate of our waste, the size and number of landfills increases along with the global population. More and more of our landmass is getting filled with more and more garbage. There is no way to look at that other than as “bad”. Bad for our health, bad for our environment.

And I haven’t even mentioned “global warming” yet. And really, if you look around at our rate of consumption and waste, do I really need to?
Man-made climate change is a reality, and just because there is a lack of data as to what the consequences may be doesn’t mean there won’t be any. It’s time for a change folks. It’s no longer at the point where we can ask our children to clean up our mess. We’re at the point where we should ask if our children are even going to survive our mess.

That’s it for today folks, thanks for stopping in, and stop by tomorrow for the latest installment of THE UNDERGROUNDS!

Happy Sunday readers,

Today in the writer’s block I want to introduce you to the writings of Michael Fountain. Michael is one of the amazing writers that we have on THE UNDERGROUNDS, tasked with making Frankenstein’s monster funny every month. Now, I’ve known Michael for years and it is no secret that the man is a master of the pun (which is why he was chosen to write UNDERGROUNDS), but Michael also has a more serious side, one that he shares on his blog “Songs of Love, Destruction, and Other Synthetic Delusions”. It is here that Michael looks at a variety of serious social issues with a critical eye, and does a damn fine job of it. Check out his latest piece:

Quoque Turba

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
— Frank Herbert

Pick up a newspaper, turn on the news, and almost daily you can read about climate problems, air pollution, water pollution, land pollution, war problems, political discord.

To me these only appear to be symptoms; the problem seems clear to me. The dangers that scientists, environmentalists, and political commentators warn of are symptoms of this much larger problem: there are too many people.

Even were the majority of the civilized world to cut their rate of consumption and waste and pollution and war in half, in another forty years the population is expected to double, which will obliterate any gains we make in the half century previous.

If humans one day become extinct…there would be no greater tragedy in the history of life in the universe. Not because we lacked the brain power to protect ourselves but because we lacked the foresight. The dominant species that replaces us in post-apocalyptic Earth just might wonder, as they gaze upon our mounted skeletons in their natural history museums, why large headed Homo sapiens fared no better than the proverbially peabrained dinosaurs.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

Picture the city you live in. Try to grasp a clear mental picture of how many people live there. Perhaps a crowded mall or grocery store may help you get a good picture. Now take all those people in your mental picture and double it.
Does it seem crowded?

Do you remember those old television shows of the 1950s? Small towns where everybody knew everyone else. In 1950, the global population was half what it is now. There is a direct correlation between population and crime. Perhaps because higher population means a greater number of strangers. Not only do most most people remain suspicious of strangers, but perhaps it is also easier to commit a wrong against someone you don’t know. An already underfunded and understaffed police force (check your inner city statistics) will not be able to keep up with the civil unrest wrought by a higher population density.
I predict it will come to a boil likely even before the population doubles in forty years.

From a diplomatic standpoint, world governments appear to be doing little to reduce the heat. On the contrary, some governments, the United States and Israel in particular, continue an unyielding, hard-line stance with other countries which all but guarantees violent confrontation.

Perhaps that is just what we need to save us: a war of large — perhaps even global — proportions would drastically reduce a large portion of child-bearing aged adults from the breeding population. Post-war, the damage to social infrastructure would endanger much of the globally poor, perhaps even to the point of decimating large numbers of them.
Global war is, of course, a horrific suggestion, and to suggest that it may be what is best for humanity is cynical to say the least. Additionally, there is the very real possibility that a global war would include the use of nuclear weapons, which pose a threat of wiping us all out.

If we survive, our time will be famous for two reasons: that at this dangerous moment of technological adolescence we managed to avoid self-destruction; and because this is the epoch in which we began our journey to the stars.
— Carl Sagan

Clearly, however something must be done to prevent the widespread chaos and destruction certain to result from the doubling of the global population by 2050. One possibility is that Mother Nature will settle things herself. Arizona Bay, anyone?
As the population increases, natural disasters prove to be more devastating. Consider the inevitable bottleneck during a fire at a crowded theater. Fewer people mean there is a better chance all of them get out alive. Larger disasters scale the loss of life appropriately (or inappropriately, as it were).

As natural resource consumption and waste and pollution increase so too do the odds of natural disasters resulting from climate change. The more rabbits you cram into a cage, the harder it becomes to clean up all the rabbit shit (and, incidentally, the less happy the rabbits become). But again, a climate-change caused natural disaster solution to the problem of global population involves humanity killing itself.

The final solution I can foresee to this problem is also the most difficult to implement and maintain. Humanity must make a voluntary reduction in population growth. What this means is a commitment to bearing one child per adult. Incentives to bearing one child per couple. Enhanced support for adoption and social services for couples that can’t bear children (such as those in the homosexual community).

I can imagine the many scoffs that will result from this suggestion, and no wonder. Really, such a suggestion seems not only unreasonable (especially in our “freedom”-loving America) but impossible to enforce as well. Yet I posit that such measures will be the only way to limit population growth without humans killing themselves.

This is not a pretty picture I paint, and let’s face it, there have been prophets of doom and naysayers before (and will be again, probably perpetually). What makes my “prophecy” so special that one should pay attention to it over any other?
I don’t have a good answer to that question.

I will say that short of a global natural disaster (like the one killing the dinosaurs) or a global nuclear war humanity will survive. But at what cost? There’s the question.

The entire world exists in a symbiosis, one in which humans are currently grossly overbalanced. It is only the natural order of things that humans sink back into balance. It is merely my opinion that it is better to control the descent rather than to succumb to it.

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” King James Version, Genesis 1:28

I’d say we pretty much have fulfilled the charge of God to Adam and Eve in this verse, with the exception of the “replenish the earth” part. Perhaps we can stop the “be fruitful and mulitply” and “subdue” parts that everyone likes to focus on and turn our attention to the rest of our duties to this planet.

Welcome to day 4 of our introduction to THE UNDERGROUNDS. As I did yesterday, I will start with yet another character introduction. So far you have had the chance to meet Dracula, Frank, and the Wolfman. Who could possibly be left? Why, The Mummy of course!

Yesterday, I got the chance to introduce you all to two of the five writers that will be penning our comic. Today I want to introduce you to the other three writers that will be working on THE UNDERGROUNDS: Derek Johnson, Michael Fountain, and Marcel Losada.

Derek Johnson received his BA in English from Hamline University in Minnesota, and his MFA in screenwriting from Chapman University located in the much warmer Southern California. Derek is currently up in Hollywood, making movie magic, but he has taken time out of his busy schedule to write THE UNDERGROUNDS.

Michael Fountain has a BFA Theater Technology from Chapman University. Mike has written several plays as well as several short films, but to date, THE UNDERGROUNDS is his first comic book work. Mike is currently hard at work at a number of projects, but if you want to get in contact with him, he suggests you try his facebook page. He eagerly awaits pokes.

Marcel Losada has obtained his BA in English Education from Cal State long beach, and currently works at shaping the fragile young minds of the next generation. Marcel is also a newcomer to the field of comics but has a great deal of experience in poetry and short fiction. Marcel also has a deep love of all things food; when asked what food he enjoyed, he simply responded “Everything!”.

Tomorrow you get to meet the last of the regular characters on THE UNDERGROUNDS, and get to know series artist Daniel Touchet a little better. If you missed any of our previous character introductions, you can find them at the links just below.

Dracula

Frank

The Wolfman

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to share some very exciting news with you all. One week from today (that’s March 1st for all of you without a calender handy) Semantink Publishing will be offering a free weekly web comic to all titled THE UNDERGROUNDS.

THE UNDERGROUNDS is a comic strip that takes some of your favorite classic monsters, characters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Mummy, and The Wolfman (as well as everyone’s favorite vampire hunter Van Helsing) and puts them to work at a coffee shop.

The strip is written by Marcel Losada, Michael Fountain, James Ninness, Joe Pezzula and Derek Johnson, with art by Daniel Touchet.

Now that you know about our latest project, it’s time to introduce you to the characters you will be seeing there every week. Each of the monsters that work at THE UNDERGROUNDS recently filled out a very telling dating survey for Monster Match, and I thought I would share their answers with you. Today we get to learn a little bit more about Dracula:

From today until Friday I will be introducing you to a new character each day. Enjoy, and mark your calenders for next Monday and THE UNDERGOUNDS #1!

Benjamin Glibert