Meteorology — It’s So Not about You

Robert Peake, Ojai's most distinguished poet this century, thinks deeply and writes beautifully about topics that only poetry has the means to bring down to earth.

Over the summer I happened to see him read the following, which may be of particular interest to the readers of this site, because this poem dares to suggest that we humans may not actually be in control of our climate, nor even of the meaning of the day's weather.

Ever since Chekhov began using elegant descriptions of the weather to describe his characters' inner lives, a certain metaphorical confusion has reigned — when we write about the weather, are we talking about how we feel at this moment? Or the actual air we breathe?

Robert looks at this conundrum head-on, and speaks about it amusingly. When I chatted with him and his charming wife Val about it, he joked about us how we humans are forever imposing ourselves on the landscape, both metaphorically and physically — tainting the very clouds with our moods. According to super-blogger Andrew Sullivan, this is actually a hot topic in psychological research.

Well, leave it to the shrinks to drain the topic of all humor. Here's Robert's version, a rendition you might remember:

Meteorology

And then, it is over—
a break in the clouds,
which were never evil,
and the sun, which is not good,
streams into the wet yard,
glistening, not as a symbol,
but the simple refraction

of light. The rain and I
leave messages for each other
in this way, in the language
of facts: seven drops
on a mulberry leaf, a streak
of mud in the gutter, twigs
for divination, scattered
overlapping and apart. I give

the rain a few stacked stones,
offer up an old chair, one
I never liked much, let it
work away at the varnish.
And my mind, which is also
neither good nor evil,
I offer up now, to the sky's
window cleaner, the one

who summons the worms,
and scatters the trash,
that I might contain, someplace
in my own clay body, the gentle
indifference of rain.

Withholding Is What Gives Telling Its Power

From a wonderfully wandering essay by Ange Milko in last month's issue of Poetry, on motherhood, Pinocchio, nature, and much much more, this central truth:

Over the last half-century, poetry and memoir have served the
function of self-expression, and self-expression is justified as a
necessary truth-telling. “Identity” poetry has even claimed the moral
high ground, since truth-telling by the oppressed is an ethical
imperative. But revelation exists in dialogue with secrecy. Withholding
is what gives telling its power. It’s always what gets left out, in
country ballads as well as sophisticated verse, that
wounds the audience into inquiry. The invisible underwrites the
visible; so it is our jobs as poets to gesture to the world’s infinite
potential at the limits of the actual. This is how we express hope and futurity.

In other words: the infinitely pregnant. The indefinitely hidden.

I wonder: Is this why so many blog posts are so short? To keep something hidden, in a medium that calls for the revelation of absolutely everything?


Beautiful, But Not Paradise (a Nobel for Barack)

Giving the Nobel Prize to our new president, after less than 300 days in office, seems not just surprising but a little too flattering, doesn't it? 

Still, as the Prez said, as a call to action — on climate, as much as any issue — it's a worthy gesture. 

Personally, I would like to give Barack the highest of all praises simply for insisting that we stop playing a game of extremes in our politics. I thank the candidate Obama for endlessly reminding us — and on the campaign trail, no less — that we must not make the perfect the enemy of the good. 

When it comes to adapting to climate, to mitigating its worsts and taking advantage of its opportunities, this maxim cannot be repeated too often.

Along the same lines, a deeper understanding of this concept from Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark has been on my mind.

She's not the only thinker to have walked down this path, but I doubt anyone has expressed this thought as well: 

Judeo-Chrtistian culture's central story is of Paradise and the Fall. It is a story of perfection and loss, and perhaps a deep sense of loss is contingent upon the belief in perfection. Conservatives rear-project narratives about how everyone used to be straight, God-fearing, decently clad, and content with the nuclear family, narratives than any good reading of history undoes. Activists, even those who decry Judeo-Christian heritage as our own fall from grace, are as prone to tell the story of paradise, though their paradise might be matriarchal or vegan or the flip side of the technological utopia of classical socialism. And they compare the possible to perfection, again and again, finding fault with the former because of the latter. Paradise is imagined as a static place, as a place before or after history, after strife and eventfulness and change: the premise is that once perfection has arrived, change is no longer necessary.

To burn this fundamental shift, this crucial idea, into my thought and my memory, I'm going to link it to an image of a city, because if anything human embodies change, it's a city.

This image heralds the premiere of a new composition by John Adams, performed this weekend by the LA Phil under its new conductor…and a reminder that even ever-changing L.A. can be beautiful.

[Note: for those who want to hear the surprising, almost lulling new John Adams composition, the first performance live from Disney Hall can be streamed here up until the 15th of this month.]

John Adams: Official Web Site_1252892065003

The Rapid Peasanti-zation of America

Matt Taibii brings more heat with his words on True/Slant than just about any writer in the country right now. He opens his discussion of Michael Moore's new movie [warn: loads video] by focusing on recent years in the U.S. through Moore's lens:

Even just looking at the historical context provided by Moore’s own
movies, the progression is kind of scary. Back when Moore made Roger and Me, he was describing how blue-collar workers could no longer could find jobs to support themselves. In Bowling for Columbine
he talked about the workfare programs we cooked up to keep those
ex-employed blue collar workers alive, how brutal and inhumane those
programs can be.

In Capitalism: A Love Story we’re now talking about how the
compensation for professional jobs we used to consider upper-middle
class, like the job of airline pilot, have dropped below subsistence
level. This is a portrait of a society steaming toward a feudal
structure.

Taibii then steps back to look at the really big picture. It's not pretty.

The theme Michael Moore is addressing here, i.e. the rapid peasant-ization of
most of the country, is basically a taboo subject for every other major
media outlet in the country. The vast majority of our movies are either
thinly-disguised commercials for consumer products (Law Abiding Citizen), remakes of old shows and movies designed to transport us back to the good old days when life was better (i.e. Fame)
, or gushy nerf-tripe with no hard edges crafted to serve as escapist
fairy tales for stressed-out adults wanting to dream of happy endings (Love Happens).What we call a “good movie” is usually also escapism…

Agreed, but the columnist/reporter/writer goes on to complain:

But we’re living in a time of extreme crisis almost nothing on TV or in
the movies is designed to get us thinking about how to fix our
problems.

Well, first of all, one must point out that Moore himself offers some ideas, including a famous one from FDR, the Economic Bill of Rights he laid out in his l944 State of the Union address.

But more importantly, to imagine that dramas should offer solutions to problems, in the way that candidates offer plans to voters, is mistaken. Dramas seize on ideas in the mass consciousness and bring them to life, and life by its nature can never be predicted. One cannot know where the public consciousness will be led, before the guide appears.

Classic example: the hero of My Man Godfrey. This 1936 hit movie is almost always mentioned by critics and writers as one of the key films of the Depression, and for good reason, but it offers absolutely nothing in the way of "getting [the moviegoers of the era] thinking about how to fix [their] problems."

As a commentator on imdb puts it (well):

What is worth noting
though is that in many ways it is a commentary of the times by
comparing the 'haves' and 'have nots'. I would encourage everyone to
watch with more than a comedic eye. Through Godfrey, director Gregory
La Cava's film speaks volumes about the conditions of the 1930s. The
U.S. was plunged in a depression that forced thousands to the
breadlines. The film opens with a treasure hunt and one of the items to
find is a forgotten man. The rich set out to the city dump to locate
him with no regard for his plight or his dignity.

The message of the movie couldn't be simpler, especially for the distaff half of the population. It's that you might find your dream man — played by Robert Powell, one of the handsomest men in Hollywood history — reduced to abject poverty, living on a pile of ash, and showing a flash of temper when looked down upon. That's it!

After decades if not centuries of Calvinist prosperity-is-next-to-saintliness thinking, for the glossiest of Hollywood movies, starring the biggest of stars, to focus on an impoverished man living on the street, and depict him as an unhappy but utterly sensible and ultimately charming man, well, it's a revelation.

Similarly, the dramatic revelation about our era will probably arrive completely out of left field, and give us a new hero or heroine or heroism we never could have been able to imagine, before his arrival.

Here's William Powell, usually seen in a tuxedo, as Godfrey:

WilliamPowellandCaroleLombard

China vs. the USA: Blaming the Other for Climate Change

This blog person hasn't spent much time on the climate legislation currently stalled in the Senate, not believing — sadly — it has much if any chance of passage. This position was bolstered by a blunt commentary from the NYTimes funniest columnist Gail Collins, who ranted to David Brooks:

An energy bill is much harder than a health care bill because people
do feel in their day-to-day lives that something needs to be done about
health costs, and the possible pain Obama’s plans might inflict is
long-term and theoretical. With energy, it’s just the opposite.

You would need one big whopping dramatic moment to get Congress to
pass an effective energy bill — the kind of moment that only comes
along once in every several generations. We had it after Sept. 11. The
country was totally ready to make sacrifices to fight the war on
terror. It would still have been hard, but we could have done it.

Instead, President Bush decided to invade Iraq and cut taxes. I am never going to get over that.

Still, President Obama is determined to reach an international agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol and, at least in theory, hold down emissions of greenhouse gases, which is to be negotiated this December in Copenhagen. His team is exploring numerous options — including calling it an international trade deal, instead of a treaty, or using the EPA as an enforcer — to make Congress go along. 

Meanwhile Congress seems to be fixated on blaming China, and China seems to be fixated on blaming the U.S.  Notes analyst Michael Levi for the Council on Foreign Relations:

Members of Congress seem to have made the legal form of a Chinese
commitment their overarching priority. They want to see China make
commitments that are technically legally binding in the same sense that
U.S. commitments would be legally binding under an international
agreement. And if that's not forthcoming then they would want symmetry.
So U.S. commitments would also not be legally binding on the
international level. They seem to be less focused on what the actual
content of the commitments is. Some want to see caps that essentially
mirror the U.S. approach. There is no way that is going to happen. It
doesn't make any sense.

And in Beijing, the focus is on blaming the "developed nations" such as the U.S. for global warming. Wrote Li Heng for People's Daily:

On top of the fact that rich countries are responsible for today's
global warming, these countries are even reluctant to give the funds
and technical support that developing countries need to tackle the
problem. Small wonder the United States is criticized by the
international community.

China has been making this complaint for years. At the United Nations a week ago Wednesday, Premier Hu Jintao promised significant reductions in emissions by 2020, mirroring the Senate bill, but added:

Developed countries should take up their responsibility and provide
new, additional, adequate and predictable financial support to
developing countries to enable them to have access to climate-friendly
technologies.

What is the real objective here? Action to reduce climate risks, or to shift blame to another nation?

Obama Won’t Be “Naked” in Copenhagen

So explains The Economist:

Over the past few days, America has moved towards a federal system for
regulating its carbon emissions in three ways. First, several big
companies have broken with trade associations that oppose the
cap-and-trade bill now in the Senate. Second, the bill has moved a
stage further towards becoming law. Third, and most important, the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that if Congress
won’t legislate to cut greenhouse gases, it will regulate anyway.

[snip] 

The proposed rules, which would take effect in 2011, will focus on
the country’s biggest power stations and require them to prove that
they have employed the best available technologies, or face penalties
for not doing so. According to Lisa Jackson, the EPA’s head, “We have
the tools and the technology to move forward today, and we are using
them.” The EPA will start with facilities emitting more than 25,000
tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Ms Jackson maintains that she is not,
as her critics claim, going to regulate “every cow and Dunkin’ Donuts”.

The administration has been holding the threat of EPA regulation
over Congress: if you don’t legislate, the message goes, we regulate.
Businesses by and large prefer the thought of a cap-and-trade system to
the idea of government regulators nosing around their plants and
telling them which technologies to use. The Chamber of Commerce and the
National Association of Manufacturers have threatened to sue the EPA if
it goes down this route. But the administration hopes matters will not
get to that point, and that the EPA’s announcement will help push the
Senate into passing a bill.

The announcement has another purpose, too. The administration was
concerned that, if a bill were not passed before the climate conference
in Copenhagen in December, America would look bad and the chances of
getting a global agreement on cutting carbon emissions would be much
reduced. The administration can take the EPA’s intervention, along with
other measures such as new subsidies for renewable energy and tighter
car fuel-efficiency standards, and argue that they add up to a
substantial package of cuts. In short, America will now not have to go
naked into the conference chamber.

In union lingo, Obama now has "a hammer in his pocket."

Rehabilitating — not Restoring — California’s Rivers

From a thoughtful interview posted on the wonderful Earth and Sky site, a look at California rivers yesterday and today with Prof. Jeff Mount of UC Davis.

At one point he mentions that when Congress gave the "wild and scenic river" designation to a dozen or so California rivers, "they got half of it right — they're scenic!"

http://www.earthsky.org/media/swf/player.swf

http://www.earthsky.org/media/swf/player.swf

Image below is a digital elevation model/map of central California. The large lower river is the San Joaquin.

Yes, California has great rivers, though you wouldn't know it from the way we've treated them.

DigitalelevationmodelofSanJoaquin

First Snow in Yosemite (fall of 2009)

A week ago yesterday, it was 96 degrees in Yosemite Valley. Yesterday it snowed — pretty hard — forcing the closure of the road to Glacier Point, and forcing me to walk up from the valley.

But the beauty of the snow was a fine compensation, as Emerson would say…here's Sentinel Rock, from the so-called Four Mill Trail:

IMG_4180

Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.

George Will Ignores Facts on Climate Change Again

In a column last Thursday, George Will once again ignored one of the most basic facts established this century about climate change.

I'm not talking about his claims that global warming has reached a "plateau" in which it is likely to remain. That canard has already been shot down by a dozen or so reputable analysts, including his fellow Wa-Po writer Ezra Klein. 

No, I want to focus on a simpler claim from Will, which in this case requires no science whatsoever. He writes: 

America needs a national commission appointed to assess the evidence
about climate change. Alarmists will fight this because the first
casualty would be the carefully cultivated and media-reinforced myth of
consensus — the bald assertion that no reputable scientist doubts the
gravity of the crisis, doubts being conclusive evidence of disreputable
motives or intellectual qualifications.

Will goes on to say that the president should appoint such a commission. But in fact the last President, also named George, did appoint such a commission, by our nation's most highly regarded scientific body, the National Academy of Sciences. The commission, whose members included well-known global warming doubter Richard Lindzen of MIT, began its 2001 report with this:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's
atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air
temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures
are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several
decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule
out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of
natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level
rises are expected to continue through the 21st century. Secondary
effects are suggested by computer model simulations and basic physical
reasoning. These include increases in rainfall rates and increased
susceptibility of semi-arid regions to drought. The impacts of these
changes will be critically dependent on the magnitude of the warming
and the rate with which it occurs.

The mid-range model estimate of human induced
global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
is based on the premise that the growth rate of climate forcing

1

agents such as carbon dioxide will accelerate. The predicted
warming of 3°C (5.4°F) by the end of the 21st century is consistent
with the assumptions about how clouds and atmospheric relative humidity
will react to global warming.

Will ignores this inconvenient fact, just as he ignores the long-term warming trend.