Neil Young just let slip news of a record relase, in a paradoxical, almost confusing way, embedding the release in a voice and a raw 1947 technology that has to be heard to be believed (and appreciated). It's called A Letter Home, a reference to the remarks below. It's richly appealing and enjoyable, about asContinue reading “A letter home (on global warming): Neil Young”
Category Archives: climate
On love and global warming: True Detective
The HBO show True Detective included some of the most compelling filmed drama seen here in many a moon. But as much as most critics liked the show, what everyone liked was the credit sequence. Created by an Australian studio called Antibody, the creators told Art of the Pitch what they envisioned: We boarded out theContinue reading “On love and global warming: True Detective”
Kingsnorth: Environmental activism doesn’t work
Because the scientific news about climate change continues to cast a gloomy shadow over our future, and perhaps because the press is bored with the usual happy Earth Day talk, two prominent magazines featured this week scathing denunciations of climate activism.
In Pacific Standard, James McWilliams of Texas State University calls for a Kafka-esque "narrative of complete and utter ruin," as opposed to the false hope offered by the likes of activist Bill McKibben:
…the problem with climate change discourse isn’t the skeptic. It’s the true believer—and the fact that, for him, the slow burn of global warming obviates radical action despite knowing that nothing else will do. This paradox leaves many of us who take climate change seriously more or less speechless—or merely talking about building codes—while the planet cooks due to our hyper-charged consumerism.
Meanwhile The New York Times Magazine features the journey in thought of Paul Kingsnorth, formerly a British environmental activist, now a man who has now simply had it with efforts to slow or halt climate change and environmental degradation. He thinks it's useless.
“Everything had gotten worse,” Kingsnorth said. “You look at every trend that environmentalists like me have been trying to stop for 50 years, and every single thing had gotten worse. And I thought: I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit here saying: ‘Yes, comrades, we must act! We only need one more push, and we’ll save the world!’ I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it! So what do I do?”
Drought comes to Ventura county: VC Star
Drought can be a slow-motion crisis, and that's what it's looking like here in Ventura County, from an in-depth story from the Ventura County Star: During this third year of drought, crops in Ventura County will go unplanted, farmworkers will lose jobs, plants and trees will see more salt-related stress and growers will begin followingContinue reading “Drought comes to Ventura county: VC Star”
New kind of dinosaur discovered (by Tom Toles)
Meet the new dinosaur (aka "the 500-lb chicken from hell.") Tom Toles sees an irony: The new GOP faces the same climate reality as the old GOP.
Follow the Leaders (into climate change)
From artist Issac Cordal: Berlin, 2011 h/t: Barbara Medaille
Leading British scientist links warming to flooding
In this country, scientists have been historically averse to link weather disasters — such as flooding caused by huge storms — to climate change. The scientific cliche is well-known: No single meteorological event can be caused by climate change. A leading theorist of climate communications, Naomi Oreskes of UC San Diego argues that the generalContinue reading “Leading British scientist links warming to flooding”
As trade winds strengthen, more drought for CA?
Much of climate science is settled and doesn't need repeating. We know that injecting increasing amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere leads to warming, for instance. But how that warming will play out in atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns, although often discussed, remains to be seen. Several past studies suggested warming could lead toContinue reading “As trade winds strengthen, more drought for CA?”
Death Dust, or, why I’m on the PCT in winter
Dana Goodyear absolutely crushes the story of valley fever in last week's New Yorker. An excerpt: The regionality of cocci is only partly to blame for the pace of research. In the lab, cocci presents a serious hazard. Early on, laboratory infections were common; a grad student would open a petri dish and, whoosh, millions ofContinue reading “Death Dust, or, why I’m on the PCT in winter”
The Titanic/global warming analogy takes a dramatic turn
Last week The New Yorker led off with an uncharacteristically labored analogy/editorial from Adam Gopnik, who pointed out that the Titanic had a twin sister, the Olympic, which sailed unharmed through the frozen northern seas for decades and (he suggested) so could we. "It reminds us that our imagination of disaster is dangerously more fertileContinue reading “The Titanic/global warming analogy takes a dramatic turn”
Kit Stolz 