A Change in the Wind

No editors? No problem! Except that...

France's most famous intellectual revealed to be inept Googler. From the Times of London:

When France’s most dashing philosopher took aim at Immanuel Kant in his latest book, calling him “raving mad” and a “fake”, his observations were greeted with the usual adulation. To support his attack, Bernard-Henri Lévy — a showman-penseur known simply by his initials, BHL — cited the little-known 20th-century thinker Jean-Baptiste Botul.

There was one problem: Botul was invented by a journalist in 1999 as an elaborate joke, and BHL has become the laughing stock of the Left Bank.

There were clues. One supposed work by Botul — from which BHL quoted — was entitled The Sex Life of Immanuel Kant. The philosopher’s school is known as Botulism and subscribes to his theory of “La Metaphysique du Mou” — the Metaphysics of the Flabby. Botul even has a Wikipedia entry that explains that he is a “fictional French philosopher”.

But Mr Lévy, a leader among the nouveaux philosophes school of the 1970s, was unaware...

Thinking in the 21st century: It's tougher than it looks on the Internet...

Sierra butterflies hit by global warming, habitat destruction

A changing climate has hurt butterfly species in the Sierra Nevada, reducing species richness by about fifty percent in the last 35 years. so reports a team at UCDAvis led by Arthur Shapiro, and reported in the PNAS: Compounded effects of climate change and habitat alteration shift patterns of butterfly diversity — PNAS

Here we present 35 years of data on 159 species of
butterflies from 10 sites along an elevational gradient spanning 0–
2,775 m in a biodiversity hotspot, the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California. Species richness has declined at half of the sites, with the most severe reductions at the lowest elevations, where habitat destruction is greatest. At higher elevations, we observed clear upward shifts in the elevational ranges of species, consistent with the influence of global warming.

Or, in the blunter tones of a story from that wild-eyed lefty journal USA Today:

The unprecedented, 35-year analysis of butterfly populations in the Sierra Nevada details how several species are fleeing to higher elevations to escape warming temperatures.

Those butterflies that already live on mountaintops and can't adjust to the heat have "nowhere else to go but heaven," says Arthur Shapiro, a biologist at University of California-Davis who collected the data.

Climate is clearly one factor degrading populations and pushing species up the mountains, but another agent at work is habitat destruction:

This suggests that some factor in
addition to climatic change has affected butterfly species richness
…We suggest habitat alteration at low elevations,
which has likely destroyed habitat directly (potentially
affecting both larval hosts and adult nectar resources) and
reduced connectivity among habitats.

Next question: How to save these and related species? The authors suggest preservation not just of habitat and species, but of "fauna." Hmmmm....

Even Sarah Palin's best friends don't believe her

From Timothy Egan in his Grifters Tale in The New York Times:

If Palin truly believed in the Tea Partiers and their discontent, she would not be charging $100,000 to stoke their fears [at an upcoming convention]. She can do that for free, on Fox. And what policy solutions does she offer the troubled middle class? Tax cuts, like the ones that caused this massive deficit to begin with? Preventing new regulation of the banks that got us into this horrid economic collapse, under the guise of “less government”?

She has nothing to offer but honeyed words, the syrup for suckers.

Say what you will about Tea Partiers, but many of them can see through this scheme in Nashville. “Smells scammy,” wrote Red State Blogger Erick Erickson, no friend of the media elite. Others are boycotting it, citing the $549 price for the convention, or the single night tab of $349 to hear Palin.

You could even see a bit of suspicion creep into Glenn Beck, Palin’s enabler on Fox, during the strangest of interviews a few weeks ago.

Beck to Palin: “Who’s your favorite founder?”

Palin: “You know, well, all of them.”

Beck was skeptical.

Yes, women can be grifters too.

Guess Beck's not a complete nut, even if he is mad as a hatter.

Brodner brilliantly illustrates this idea, along with the heavy promotion of gold that Beck and other right-wingers encourage, in the Gold Standard, and throws in Sarah as well. It's astonishingly good, I think.

Obama admits cap and trade is dead

This week the President admitted what D.C. insiders have been saying for months about the Democratic plan to control greenhouse gas emissions.

ACES, The American Clean Energy and Security Bill passed by the House last fall, which is intended to control emissions by a cap-and-trade mechanism, is politically dead.

At a town hall meeting in Nashua, NH, Obama said:

The House passed an energy bill, and people complained about, well, there's this cap and trade thing, and you just mentioned, you know, let's do the fun stuff before we do the hard stuff," Obama told former New Hampshire Rep. Dick Swett.

Obama went on to point out that cap and trade is a market-based approach to controlling greenhouse gas emissions, but obviously that fact failed to sway conservative Democrats, far less Republicans.

But is it possible that the failure of cap and trade is not a disaster, but a second chance to pass a better bill? Jonathan Zasloff, of Legal Planet, argues so, saying this will compel Dems to give up on the super-majority, and simply pass a carbon tax as part of a reconciliation deal between the two houses. 

A budget reconciliation bill cannot be filibustered: according to the Budget Act of 1974, the Senate is limited to 20 hours of debate on it.  It does not get rid of the filibuster because you cannot put everything in a reconciliation bill: only those items whose relationship with the budget is more than “merely incidental” qualify.

But one thing is clear: tax bills virtually always qualify, because by definition, they are centrally concerned with the budget.

Neither Waxman-Markey nor Kerry-Boxer would qualify.  But a refundable carbon tax, such as has been proposed by the Carbon Tax Center, clearly would. 

Hmmm. Well, if you listen to our leading climate scientists, cap-and-trade was a bad idea from the start. James Hansen, in his blunt new book Storms of My Grandchildren, argues at length in his book about it:

I almost forgot that I had agreed to provide a proof that the [cap-and-trade] approach pursued by governments today cannot conceivably yield their promise of an 80 percent emission reduction by 2050. It is an easy proof. An 80 percent reduction in 2050 is just what occurs if coal emissions are phased out between 2010 and 2030. This is based on the moderate oil and gas reserves estimated by the IPCC -- implying also that we cannot go after the last drops of oil. First ask if the governments are building any new coal plants. The answer: "Lots of them." Then ask how they will persuade the major oil-producing nations to leave their oil in the ground. The answer: "Duh." Proof complete.

Hansen for years has been arguing against new coal plants, and the science argument, backed by the decades-old Clean Air Act and a threat of some sort of carbon tax, has been surprisingly effective at preventing the construction of new coal plants in this country.

Still, the death of the hopes of the best and brightest for legislation on this issue cannot be considered good news. Maybe it's not all bad, but...as Toles points out, it's not exactly a milestone. 

Teens turn against blogging: more adults like it now

When I grow up, I want to work for the Pew Research Center. They study all the interesting questions, it seems, and all their centers have really long and impressive names, such as the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, the Pew Global Attitudes Project, and many others.

Their latest publication (unless a new one came out in the last five minutes) is a survey of attitudes towards the Internet, blogging, and cellphones, called Social Media and Young Adults. (This is not about sexting, by the way: That's a different report.) 

This one reveals that blogging is no longer very cool for teens, but is increasingly popular among grown-ups.

In other words, my brief flirtation with coolness (as an adult blogger) is now officially over.

Get ready: seven foot sea level rise this century

If there is one question about climate science that went unanswered in the 2007 IPCC report, it was sea level rise. As the EPA notes, the report estimates a two-foot rise this century...at the most. 

But that estimate did not include the possibility of degradation of the polar ice sheets, which in the last two years has been observed by NASA's astounding GRACE satellite:

We use monthly measurements of time-variable gravity from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite gravity mission to determine the ice mass-loss for the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets during the period between April 2002 and February 2009. We find that during this time period the mass loss of the ice sheets is not a constant, but accelerating with time, i.e., that the GRACE observations are better represented by a quadratic trend than by a linear one, implying that the ice sheets contribution to sea level becomes larger with time.

The IPCC could not estimate sea level rise, it said, because the unknowns were too great, so it assumed that warming would result in the same sort of sea level rise we saw in the 20th century. As authors Rob Young and Orrin Pilkey write on the Yale Environment 360:

In the 20th century, sea level rise was primarily due to thermal expansion of ocean water. Contributions of melting mountain glaciers and the large ice sheets were minor components. But most climate scientists now believe that the main drivers of sea level rise in the 21st century will be the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (a potential of a 16-foot rise if the entire sheet melts) and the Greenland Ice Sheet (a potential rise of 20 feet if the entire ice cap melts).

[edit]

Seeking to correct the IPCC’s failure to come up with a comprehensive forecast for sea level increase, a number of state panels and government committees have produced sea level rise predictions that include an examination of melting ice sheets. For example, sea level rise panels in Rhode Island and Miami-Dade County have concluded that a minimum of a three- to five-foot sea level rise should be anticipated by 2100. A California report assumes a possible 4.6-foot rise by 2100, while the Dutch assume a 2.5-foot rise by 2050 in the design of their tidal gates.

The authors, professors at Duke and Western Carolina University, think that for the purposes of urban planning, a seven foot rise is a prudent estimate. 

Miami tops the list of most endangered cities in the world, as measured by the value of property that would be threatened by a three-foot rise. This would flood all of Miami Beach and leave downtown Miami sitting as an island of water, disconnected from the rest of Florida. Other threatened U.S. cities include New York/Newark, New Orleans, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Tampa-St Petersburg, and San Francisco.

They're just saying...that pictures like this one, of the sea hitting St. Ives in Cornwall last September, will become a lot more common in years to come.

I'm a member of an endangered species -- a journalist

It's a small story, as mine often are, but I'm not going to apologize for making a living reporting and writing. Here's a heartwarming local story, thanks to the Star, with nice pics by Joe Garcia. 

A quote from Maria: “Oh man, I wish I could hug all the people who helped me that aren’t here today.” 

Walking with the dogs at sunset

How bad for the environment could one plastic bottle be?

WASHINGTON—Wishing to dispose of the empty plastic container, and failing to spot a recycling bin nearby, an estimated 30 million Americans asked themselves Monday how bad throwing away a single bottle of water could really be.

"It's fine, it's fine," thought Maine native Sheila Hodge, echoing the exact sentiments of Chicago-area resident Phillip Ragowski, recent Florida transplant Margaret Lowery, and Kansas City business owner Brian McMillan, as they tossed the polyethylene terephthalate object into an awaiting trash can. "It's just one bottle. And I'm usually pretty good about this sort of thing."

"Not a big deal," continued roughly one-tenth of the nation's population.

From The Onion, of course. For the rest of the all-too-hilarious story, click here.

Let Poetry Die (and be reborn again, outside academia)

So argues a New England poet:

I love poetry.

But as far as the public is concerned, poetry died with the modernists.

No poets ever filled their shoes. And though there remain a number of minor masters and one hit wonders, few passing pedestrians could name a poet from the last 50 to 60 years – let alone the same poet, let alone the title of a poem, let alone a first line. Even though I’ve never watched a single game of ice hockey from beginning to end, I know who Wayne Gretzky is. And even though I’ve never watched more than two holes of golf, I know  that Tiger Woods is not just a gifted philanderer, but a great golfer.

Ask anyone to name a novelist of the last half century and names will come tumbling.

How about JK Rowling?

Ask anyone to name a contemporary poet and you will be lucky to scrape by with John Ashbery, notwithstanding his much ballyhooed publication in  Library of America.  I know because I’ve asked friends, acquaintances and perfect strangers. Try it yourself.

Patrick Gillespie is right. I encourage you to read his whole essay, which has not a whiff of pretension to it, just plain good sense, but here (below) is another example of a non-academic poet, a Russian named Vera Pavlova, recently published in Poetry magazine. (Which is relevant because the magazine and foundation are at the center of Gillespie's argument.)

Poetry is a terrific publication, but every year, I swear to God, the best issue is the spring translation issue...probably because foreign poets are not supported by the academia industry, so they must be heard and appreciated by the public, if they are to be heard at all. 

Heck, Pavlova has even been known to put out poetry by text, or so the rumor goes. And my God, does she write sexily. When was the last time you heard that from an academic?

Here's an example, from her If There Is Something to Desire:

Tenderly on a tender surface
the best of my lines are written
with the tip of my tongue on your palate,
on your chest in tiny letters
on your belly...
but darling, I wrote them
pianissimo!
may I erase with my lips
your exclamation mark?

(translation by Steven Seymour)

Some good rain...and a "blown forecast"

Ventura County is now at about 200% of normal rainfall for this time of year, twenty inches in our immediate area, which is wonderful, but, as Emily Green and others have pointed out, comes nowhere near the 1 to 1.5 inches of rain an hour predicted for Wednesday of last week. 

In Green's post, forecaster extraordinaire Bill Patzert calls it a "blown forecast," but sympathizes with the National Weather Service. As Yogi Berra famously said:

It's not easy to make predictions, especially about the future.

But the funny thing is, although these storms came in nowhere near what the NWS warned, and were nothing like the "war" mentioned in posts below, no one seems to care. We're all too grateful.

Thank God for the rain. It's lovely to see the streams running again, to hear a few frogs beginning to croak at night, to feel the softness of the ground beneath our feet, and smell the richness of the earth. 

I'll leave it at that...with a picture, for those who might miss the often-soft winters of SoCal....

Football gladiators (regardless of sex)

From the inimitable Jessica Hagy, of Indexed, an appropriate post for a football-heavy day:

Actually, professional football seems about the right sport for the USA today. War-like, rule-obsessed, tending towards blow-out wins, perfect for TV -- what better sport for a nation glued together by electronic media?

Matt the Electrican mocks weather weenies of Phoenix

Went to see a gifted Austin folkie named Matt the Electrician at a "house concert" last night. (He got his name because he took up a building trade to support his music habit, which fortunately has developed well enough to support him and his family, now.) But he's still wry and funny, with a rasky on-key voice to support his unique songs. With one exception none of the ones he played show up on the LaLa, so I went with his story about the streaking "Valedictorian," which gives an idea of his warm, memorable style.

But first! He played Phoenix on Thursday night, and had a little story about the "weather weenies" out there, who sound possibly even more wussy than the Californians. 

Matt said that he and his guitar wiz partner Scrappy were heading for the gig at a coffee house, listening to a classic rock station on the radio. He said:

It's drizzling outside, barely raining, and there's not even a lot of water collected on the ground. And the classic rock DJ comes on the air, and she says the Governor just declared a state of emergency. She says it's really bad out there, and tells everybody just stay home!

Fortunately he said a number of Phoenicians ignored the "emergency" and came out and had a good time at the gig. The house party, for forty so folks in a friends' living room, turned out to be plenty fun for us too.  Who needs cover charges, Ticketmaster, crowds, etc. Just visit with great musicians at home...

Here's Matt:

Valedictorian - Matt The Elect...

Accuweather: Storm is "war on the Southwest"

Oh, c'mon. Now Accuweather is just getting silly:

The last and strongest in the train of Pacific storms will unleash a new round of flooding rain, mudslides, feet of mountain snow, damaging winds and severe thunderstorms on California and the Southwest into Friday.

Is is an all out weather war being waged by the atmosphere on the Southwest.

A rainstorm is "war?" Think the plants and the land and the streams and the fish will disagree...hell, I know they would. When do steelhead migrate into the backcountry? When the water is high, often during storms. This makes their life possible.

Jeez. Does this below look like "war" to you? Because it looks like some happy green plants to me.