Author Archives: Kit Stolz

Blogging the Fourth Assessment

From the testimony of Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a leader in the US delegation of scientists to the IPCC, and one of four scientists who just testified before the House Committee on Science and Technology. (For a webcast or more testimony, see the well-designed House website.) But enough of acronyms and official titles. Here’s one littleContinue reading “Blogging the Fourth Assessment”

Greed Got Us into This Mess

With Al Gore and others, billionaire Richard Branson will announce today at a press conference in London today a prize of $25 million to the inventor who devises an effective means to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Although the participants are under a media embargo, American climatologist James Hansen–who will serveContinue reading “Greed Got Us into This Mess”

Global Warming Outlook “More Dire” than IPCC Report, Says Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal on Saturday ran an interesting little new story by John Fialka on why the long-term outlook for global warming may be "more dire than suggested" by the IPCC’s just-released Fourth Assessment on Climate Change. Two reasons: first, as Andrew Dressler already mentioned in a post below, the report doesn’t fully take intoContinue reading “Global Warming Outlook “More Dire” than IPCC Report, Says Wall Street Journal”

What Should I Ask James Hansen?

I’m going this evening to see the great climatologist James Hansen speak at the University of California at Santa Barbara. I will be just one of hundreds of people there, but with a little luck will be able to ask him a question. What should I ask? Here are three possibilities: 1)        AccordingContinue reading “What Should I Ask James Hansen?”

Enviro Songs of the Year 2006

Is it too late for a 2006 music retrospective? Let’s hope not.

I agree with Matt Singer: in popular music, 2006 was a year of nothing much. Unfortunately so, and unlike 2005, which was spectacular. Nonetheless, last year had its moments.

I will list the three that come to my mind, and move on to the bigger questions.

For Best Cover…Is It Like Today, by Eliza Gilkyson. I can’t give you a sample, because she hasn’t posted one on her site, but this brilliant folkie remakes a song by the keyboards band known as World Party to huge effect (and something of a hit on alt-Internet stations such as Radio Paradise).  If you try it (via iTunes) and don’t like it, I’ll repay you myself. The haunting chorus:

How could it come to his?/I’m really worried about living/How could it come to this?/Yeah, I really want to know about this…

For Best Warning…The Eraser, by Thom Yorke. For more, please see Global Warming: #2 on the Pop Charts.

For Best New Discovery: I See Hawks in L.A. This band has a lot of good songs, but start with the eponymous song that made them semi-famous, in L.A. at least, which blends SoCal country into the apocalypse with rare style. A key stanza:

One more day on the 605/What if this place got buried alive/The biggest quake the world’s ever seen/Let the snakes take over again…

But before we go on to the grand prize winner, we must ask the obvious question. Is there such a thing as environmental music, or nature music? If so, what is its character?

Is it music that echoes the sounds of nature? Is it music that binds us to nature? Or is it music that reminds of the worth of the planet, and warns us of what we have to lose?

All these definitions can apply, and we heard examples of each this past year, especially the warnings (see above). But I will follow Beethoven’s example, in his description of the famous Pastoral Symphony, and say that it is "a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds."   

This method describes perfectly the best environmental music of last year, which I think was John Adams’ The Dharma at Big Sur. (Listen to a sample, and read Adams’ notes about it here.)

Although written in 2003, for the inauguration of the Disney Hall in Los Angeles, it was first made available on a recording in the fall of 2006.

More importantly, this is Adams’ hommage to Jack Kerouac and the Beats, and also to their Buddhist love for Big Sur. It’s wordless, driven by an electric violin, and blends a harsh beauty with a great freedom, like a turkey buzzard soaring in an ocean breeze. 

Listen for a moment, and if you’ve been to Big Sur, I think you’ll see what the Beats saw; a nature beyond owning. The wind flowing in over the steep hills, the fog gathering on the ocean’s horizon, the bird in flight. Drift off for a moment, and maybe you’ll be back there, perhaps with a friend or lover, watching the birds’ endless swoop and dive and rise…endless change and perfect stillness in one body…

The_dharma_at_big_sur

Jaw-Dropper of the Week: Dr. Richard Lindzen, Climate Change Denier

Dr. Richard Lindzen, a professor at MIT, and one of the handful of halfway-reputable deniers still around, gives Larry King "his read" on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the issue of climate change: I think it’s mainly just like little kids locking themselves in dark closets to see how much they can scare eachContinue reading “Jaw-Dropper of the Week: Dr. Richard Lindzen, Climate Change Denier”

Global Warming and Yellowstone Grizzly Bears

So much climate change news this week and last. It takes a team of people, as at Gristmill, just to take note. But here’s a great story in The New York Times about the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear, and why global warming may take away its winter dinner, and what one grizzly bear fan is tryingContinue reading “Global Warming and Yellowstone Grizzly Bears”

The Fox and the Butterfly Return: Good News Friday

For a while the "good news Friday" concept got away from me, but this week the VCReporter gives us two great examples of folks caring for nature around here, and finding ways to bring back species drifting towards extinction. On the cover is a  lovely and personal story from Chuck Graham, with his photographs, aboutContinue reading “The Fox and the Butterfly Return: Good News Friday”