environment: denialism idiots IPCC NOAA
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 1, Day 25: We’re Telling You So
The Idaho Mountain Press joins the ranks of global warming alarmists with an article noting that things are getting hotter and it’s going to start hurting us, like, really soon. And the comments on this article are extraordinarily stupid, which prompted this response:
The pattern of online comments responding to articles discussing the very real threat of climate change is predictable. First there are the reflexive deniers — those whose talking points come directly from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. They can be recognized by their reliance on uninformed mockery (ridiculing Al Gore, for example). Then come the conspiracy theorists who would have us believe that all the world’s scientists are attempting to seize our assets, criminalize SUV ownership, and usher in a new socialist world order — a notion especially ludicrous to anyone who’s ever actually known a scientist. Close behind them are the “Climategate” afficionadi, who cling to the notion that a multiply-debunked non-scandal somehow invalidates decades of measurement and analysis. And when a voice of reason points out that the wealthy and powerful petroleum industry is far more likely to distort unwelcome data than climate scientists, he or she is treated to a stream of insults and derision. Meanwhile, the world grows ever hotter.
Warren Senders
India Indian music music Personal vocalists: obituary
by Warren
31 comments
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Bhimsen Joshi, 1922-2011. R.I.P.
At 8 AM on Monday the great Hindustani vocalist Bhimsen Joshi died in Sayahadri Hospital in his home city of Pune. He was 89, and a few weeks shy of his 90th birthday.
One of the most celebrated musicians of the twentieth century, Pandit Joshi was known as an impassioned and technically brilliant singer whose voice could execute anything that came to his mercurial and visionary imagination. His renditions of the traditional ragas of Hindustani music were filled with unexpected twists and turns, and he excelled at the expression of emotional nuance; his uniquely recognizable voice seemed to have its own built-in echo chamber. His last public performance was in 2007, sixty-six years after his stage debut at age 19.
Originally from a small town in Karnataka state, he ran away from home at age eleven, searching for music. more »
environment Gardening: agriculture denialism farming
by Warren
3 comments
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 1, Day 24: The Farmer Is The Man Who Feeds Us All
The Montreal Gazette reports on a new study by the Universal Ecological Fund (sounds like hippie tree-huggers to me) that predicts higher food costs as a consequence of climate change. Damn. Jeez, that’s counterintuitive, all right.
One wonders how many warnings can be ignored by climate-change deniers. The Universal Ecological Fund report simply applies common sense to the relationship of agriculture and weather patterns; while alarming, its analysis is hardly surprising. If the weather is more unusual and extreme, crop failures will be more likely. Climatologists’ predictions have been repeatedly vindicated over the past several decades; any errors are almost invariably ones of underestimation. At this point ignoring climate science requires a readiness to embrace a bewilderingly complex conspiracy theory in which scientists all over the globe are attempting to “usher in a socialist world order” or some similar farrago of nonsense. The facts are in: climate change is here; it’s real; humans (especially industrialized humans) are causing it; it will make our lives enormously more complex, inconvenient and expensive in the coming centuries — and the costs of action are dwarfed by those of inaction.
Warren Senders
environment: denialism idiots NIMBY
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 1, Day 23: The P.O.E. Principle
Based on his other writing, I’m going to assume that William Collins’ piece on climate change (which I found in the Youngstown News (OH), but which was originally published at OtherWords) is in fact written from a scientifically informed position. But the second half reads like…well, go check it out yourself.
Anyway, my letter:
William Collins’ analysis of the climate change issue is a remarkable feat. In the first half of his piece, he explicitly states that the warming atmosphere is a “truly alarming” problem, but his conclusion reads like a skillful parody of conservative thinking. Even assuming that Collins’ final paragraphs don’t represent his core beliefs, they deserve a careful response — because a statement like “we’re not about to inconvenience ourselves over some half-baked fad that says we’re damaging the world’s atmosphere” is representative of much current conventional opinion on the subject. The failure of our media to convey the magnitude of the climate crisis is perhaps the single most damaging consequence of the false-equivalence stenography that we’ve come to call “journalism,” just as the inability of our political system to address the very real possibility of a climate-triggered civilizational collapse is arguably the nadir of the American democratic experiment. Mr. Collins says, snarkily, “In 50 years, we’ll know what we should have done today.” Given that scientists (and politicians) have known about the greenhouse effect and its consequences for Arctic ice (to name just one affected area) since the early 1950s, that statement is a superb summary of a thoughtful position on climate change — from 1960. Our fifty years are already up. Over the next fifty, we’re going to discover that a world racked by water wars, droughts, wildfires and severe political instability (often in nuclear-armed nations) is not something Americans can ignore.
Warren Senders
Education: phonetics spelling
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
The UNIFON Surprise Zoo
This is a children’s book written in the UNIFON alphabet, a phonetic reimagining of English that was developed in the 1950s. I found this in my files a while ago and occasionally pass it out to my students, asking them first to decipher it (takes about 3 minutes), then to imagine a similar approach to music notation (nobody’s gotten very far).
The confusions of English orthography are well known, and complaints about them are hardly new. The UNIFON system is a little more than fifty years old, and while I’m not crazy about all the symbols themselves, I do like the idea — especially as a transitional alphabet for people who are just learning to read English for the first time — either adult illiterates, non-Anglophones, or children.
On the other hand, the glorious mish-mash of English spelling can be wonderfully revealing to the etymologically inclined; I’d hate to think of all the clues to a word’s provenance and semantic overtones being homogenized by a new symbol set that cares not whether the phonemes it’s grinding are originally Latin, Greek, Old Norse, Sanskrit or whatever.
Anyway, here’s a word on UNIFON’s creator:
John R. Malone, a Chicago economist, first developed the UNIFON alphabet in the 1950’s. He was working for the Bendix Corporation and was commissioned to develop a universal phonemic code for International Air Services. As a result of a tragic air crash and an immediate demand for quick communication in the air, English was adopted as the universal language among pilots and ground control. John R. Malone’s contract was cancelled. Instead, he then used his newly developed alphabet to teach his young son to read in one afternoon thereby recognizing the valuable tool he had created for teaching children to read. For many years he worked to pass on this new method of learning and it was used in a number of schools in the Indianapolis and Chicago area. John R. Malone continues to live in the Chicago area and is a devout supporter of UNIFON. He has seen the success of this reading method in classrooms and with individuals.
Here’s the complete symbol set — one symbol per sound with no overlaps or ambiguities.
environment Politics: Barack Obama China Hu Jintao
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 1, Day 22: Good.
Presidents Obama & Hu agree that climate change is a big deal, and that it’s a good idea to do something about it.
Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao of China, who is in Washington on an official state visit, said in a joint statement this afternoon that they “view climate change and energy security as two of the greatest challenges of our time.” In an open letter today, U.S. environmental leaders urged the presidents to adopt “a wartime-like mobilization” to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Haven’t written to POTUS for a while, so what the hell.
Dear President Obama — I was pleased to hear that your summit conference with President Hu of China dealt with the issue of climate change, which is without doubt the most pressing global security issue humanity has ever faced. The rapid acceleration of worldwide climate chaos has already wreaked havoc on millions of lives, and the coming decades will not see things calming down.
Rather, the weather’s only going to get worse. Predictions made by climate scientists a few years ago have now been shown to grossly underestimate both the magnitude of the world’s transformation and the speed with which it is occurring.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the United States (due largely but not entirely to Republican intransigence) has completely dropped the ball on clean energy research and development — and the ball is in China’s court. We’re not going to eliminate the advantages the Chinese now have in the creation of new and critical technologies; they’ve got a substantial head start, while we remain mired in the political quicksand that is GOP grandstanding.
It is imperative that the USA and China arrive at a robust and meaningful agreement on greenhouse gas emissions. The climatic changes we’re all going through are either going to trigger a new era of international cooperation against a common enemy — or they’re going to bring about a rapid and catastrophic deterioration of civilizational infrastructure. If we as a species are to survive the next millennium, we must have enlightened and forward-looking leadership that is capable of tackling this gravest of all challenges without faltering or capitulation to the political agendas of the ignorant and inattentive.
Congratulations to you and President Hu. Now the really hard work begins. Both countries must make deep cuts in carbon emissions, but the United States’ per capita rates are far higher than anywhere else in the world. If we don’t change our way of life voluntarily, it will be changed for us by terrifying force of circumstance.
We must rise to this challenge.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
About The Timing Of Things
Later on this year I will be taking a trip to India. During that time I’m planning on having as close as possible to a climate-free mental environment.
But I don’t want to miss a daily letter. So when I can, I’m writing two letters instead of one, thereby getting a bit of a jump on things.
At the moment, I’m four days ahead. The letter that will appear here on January 25, for example, was sent a few minutes ago.
This explains why the letters may seem to be responding to articles that are five or six days old. They are — but they’ve already been submitted much closer to the original date of publication.
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Ken Cuccinelli Michael Mann University of Virginia
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 1, Day 21: There’s IDIOTS and Then There’s *I*D*I*O*T*S*
C-Ville Weekly, a local paper in Charlottesville, has more on the Cuccinelli/Mann/UVA harassment story.
Since May, Cuccinelli has sought Mann’s documents as part of an investigation into whether Mann violated Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA). UVA hired outside counsel to fight Cuccinelli’s demands, and the case is still before the courts, though UVA won an initial legal victory.
The legal bills for the initial defense cost UVA more than $350,000, paid for through private donations. In a separate request, ATI and Marshall also seek release of documents regarding the funding UVA used to fight Cuccinelli’s demands. The University responded that it has no documents that aren’t protected by attorney-client privilege, according to Horner.
The entire mess stems from so-called Climate-gate, the controversy regarding the contents of a pilfered server from Britain’s East Anglia University published online in late 2009. Global warming skeptics pounced on exposed e-mail chains between climate scientists, pointing to language like “trick” and “manipulation” as evidence of deliberately doctored data. Investigations in the U.S. and abroad have so far cleared scientists involved of wrongdoing.
The only good thing about this whole megillah is that it makes letter-writing easy.
Attorney General Cuccinelli’s continued harassment of Dr. Michael Mann is a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars and an embarrassment to the state of Virginia. Multiply exonerated of any wrong-doing or scientific malpractice by separate independent investigations, Mann has been singled out in an attempt to make the practice of climate science (and perhaps, finally, any and all science) impossible. The cost in Mann’s time and resources required to defend himself against state-sanctioned stalking is ultimately deducted from his scientific work; even in a less critical area of research this would be a shame, but given the magnitude of the problems Mann is investigating, Cuccinelli’s vendetta is particularly ill-considered. The Attorney General is patently unable to comprehend scientific method and practice, and his “climate zombie” stance is clearly designed to ingratiate himself with those voters who are offended by anything they can’t understand — a bloc that is, unfortunately, growing.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots Ken Cuccinelli Michael Mann
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 1, Day 20: There Are Idiots, And Then There Are IDIOTS.
A couple of Democratic state senators from Virginia are trying to get VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to abandon his insane vendetta against climatologist Michael Mann, reports the Charlottesville Daily Progress. Good luck on that one; “Cooch” is about as amenable to sweet reason as Captain Ahab.
It is glaringly obvious that Ken Cuccinelli is ill-equipped to perform an analysis of scientific research; his investigative zeal would be better served in a search for genuine criminality than in a perseverative attempt to harass a climate scientist whose work has been vindicated repeatedly. After multiple investigations into Mann’s work and practices failed to yield any inculpatory evidence, Cuccinelli’s near-obsessive pursuit should have ceased. Given that the processes underlying climate change have been confirmed over and over again by multiple teams of independent researchers, and that Mann’s work has likewise been confirmed repeatedly, it’s time for the Attorney General to call it quits. That won’t happen, of course, since Mr. Cuccinelli isn’t motivated by concerns of rationality or logic; he is a “climate zombie,” ideologically wedded to the idea that global warming doesn’t exist, cannot exist, and will not exist. The state of Virginia deserves better.
Warren Senders
And Now For Something Completely Irrelevant
From the Gentleman’s Magazine, September 1744.
Here lies then old Nick, as dead as a herring,
Full famous he was his flock of teeth for transferring
From his jaws to his shoes; that went things e’er so bad
He was sure, at each turn, to hit the nail o’ the head.
If a grave call’d to dig, he no plea cou’d alledge,
For as well as his spade, he his teeth set on edge.
If the hounds to maintain he the parish must lead,
Such a spur in the heel was worth two in the head.
No doubt but this scheme his brains had a hand in;
How else shou’d his teeth become understanding?
As the heroes of old fell in battle renown’d,
He cou’d stand on his feet, yet, like them, bite the ground.
But the biter is bitten; that wrestler, old death,
Tooth and nail fell aboard him, and beat out his breath,
Then tript up his heels — in the spite of his teeth.
One of my favorite epitaphs. Not that I have a huge stock of them, of course.