Kit Stolz

A great reporter tells her father’s story on the front page

Julie Cart is a terrific, award-winning environmental reporter, whose work I have been reading and admiring for many years in the Los Angeles Times. Today she tells, on the front page, the story of her father's secret life as a project manager in a top secret surveillance satellite system.

But there's more, and it's mostly sweet, with a lovely conclusion, in which the plot is left behind and Cart speaks directly to him, and to us:

When I visited my parents after the reunion, I sat by my father's bed and held his hand and told him that the endlessly curious daughter who wanted to know everything had been researching his life.

I told him: We know now what you did all those years. No more questions, dad.

Did Truman Capote set off the breast implant craze?

From George Plimpton's vastly engaging oral biography Truman Capote: In which various friends, enemies, acquaintances, and detractors recall his turbulent career.

In this interview, Maria Theresa Caen, married to the famous wit and columnist Herb Caen, recounts how in the 60's she and Herb took Truman Capote to the first legal topless bar in San Francisco.

We took him to the first topless bar in San Francisco. It was called The Condor. The first topless dancer in San Francisco went by the name of Carol Doda. We watched her dancing for a while and Truman turned to me and said, "How can she be dancing up there when my breasts are bigger than hers?"

So he had a few more drinks and he jumed on top of the table and decided that he was going to dance. There was a lot of whoop and hollering and dancing and what have you. The word spread about who he was. He had taken off his coat and tie and was unbuttoning his shirt, beginning to scare the patrons, when we stopped him. After Herb wrote about it in his column, Carolo Doda, who's a very sweet woman,was so hurt that she went out and had silicone implants. Maybe we should credit Truman with starting the entire craze!

This picture of a young Truman was taken in l949 by his photographer friend Cecil Beaton. It's one of many pictures and stories of Truman in the biography at play.

Extreme temperatures shock climatologists Hansen, Mann

Michael Mann is a climatologist famous for bringing together a complete chronology of warming over the last 1000 years, using both instrumental records and historical proxies. Everyone has seen his "hockey stick" chart, though not all have been able to face the facts. The attacks motivated Mann to write a fierce response, called The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. which has been very favorably reviewed.

But forget all that for a moment: In a column for Daily Climate, Mann tells another story, about a time when he did not believe the prediction of leading climatologist James Hansen that we as a species had launched the greenhouse effect and begun to create a hellish-at-times climate.

It's really quite striking.

The first scientist to alert Americans to the prospect that human-caused climate change and global warming was already upon us was NASA climatologist James Hansen. In a sweltering Senate hall during the hot, dry summer of 1988, Hansen announced that "it is time to stop waffling…. The evidence is pretty strong that the [human-amplified] greenhouse effect is here."

At the time, many scientists felt his announcement to be premature. I was among them.

I was a young graduate student researching the importance of natural – rather than human-caused – variations in temperature, and I felt that the "signal" of human-caused climate change had not yet emerged from the "noise" of natural, long-term climate variation.

That was one shift: into the greenhouse. Now, James Hansen warns, we're turning up the dial.

Big time.

Back in December at the American Geophysical Union meeting, a huge meeting of physicists, climatologists, and other earthly scientists, Hansen alluded to the shocking nature of his research into extreme warming today. He said he and his colleagues had charted a "three sigma" (standard deviation) jump in warming/drying heat on the surface of the land in the U.S.

Today with his colleagues at GISS/NASA he has some more words with us, this time introducing his new paper, published in that most respected and open of journals, PNAS. Hansen, like Mann, thinks back on that fateful summer of l988.

He too can't quite believe it:

When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.

But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.

My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.

In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.

is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks’ time, it’s likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.

Maps in the study, which shows that extreme heating now reaches over 10% of the earth's surface, have the same coloration as a cover from The New Yorker's contest for a depiction of global warming.

Some scientists think Hansen has yet to prove the link between global warming and the kind of heat waves and drought that hit the Midwest this year, Texas last year, and Russia the year before.

But Hansen has a history of being right, from his seminal paper on the physics of cimate change, in l981, to his testimony, in l988, and in countless smaller instances. Veteran reporter Seth Borenstein for the AP nails down the details, making Hansen's point all the more convincing. :

In a landmark 1988 study, Hansen predicted that if greenhouse gas emissions continue, which they have, Washington, D.C., would have about nine days each year of 95 degrees or warmer in the decade of the 2010s. So far this year, with about four more weeks of summer, the city has had 23 days with 95 degrees or hotter temperatures.

Life in the greenhouse.

A great recipe, thirty-five years later: Gypsy Soup

They say a classic is revealed through its ability to stand the test of time. Well, this recipe came out in the original Moosewood cookbook/restaurant in l977, some thirty-five years ago. Yet to me it's new, because I "discovered" it this year, while looking for inexpensive but hearty vegetarian dishes.

Better late than never. And, after all, it may far older than Moosewood. No matter. It's still great:

Recipe By: Mollie Katzen, "Moosewood Cookbook"
Serving Size: 4 Preparation Time: 1:30

3 tablespoons olive oil — up to 4T
2 cups chopped onion
2 cloves chopped garlic
2 cups sweet potatoes — chopped & peeled (Or winter squash)
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped fresh tomatoes
3/4 cup chopped sweet peppers
1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas
3 cups stock or water
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon salt
dash cinnamon
dash cayenne
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon tamari soy sauce

In a soup kettle or large saucepan, saute onions, garlic, celery and sweet potatoes in olive oil for about five minutes. Add seasonings, except tamari, and the stock or water.
Simmer, covered, fifteen minutes.
Add remaining vegetables and chickpeas.

Simmer another 10 minutes or so – until all the vegetables are as tender as you like them.

NOTES : The vegetables used in this soup are flexible. Any orange vegetable can be combined with green…for example, peas or green beans could replace the peppers. Carrots can be used instead of, or in addition to the squash or sweet potatoes, etc. Note that if you want to use uncooked garbanzo beans/chickpeas, you should think about boiling them the night before (sez forgetful me).

All wholesome food is caught without a net or trap. — William Blake

(from the frontispiece of the original Moosewood cookbook)

Arguing in the Senate over global warming: Good times!

Best coverage of a Senate hearing on the subject of global warming yesterday goes to a post at Science magazine's Insider blog, which also links to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders epic (forty-minute) take down of Oklahoma senator Inhofe, for his absurd "global warming is a hoax" claim.

The real news is that Senate Democrats have all but given up on the issue:

[California senator Barbara] Boxer and the Senate's other senior Democrats—who control the [subcommittee] body—have largely deemphasized the issue since 2010, when they abandoned a major effort to pass legislation aimed at curbing U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. And the environment committee, which plays a central role in writing climate and energy legislation, hasn't held a hearing on climate science since early 2009. But with much of the nation suffering from a fierce drought as well as record high temperatures, Boxer apparently decided the time was right to shine a spotlight on the issue.

The headlines did emphasize a connection between weather extremes and global warming. Chris Fields of Stanford, after a lot of complex discussion of attribution, stated:

“There is no doubt that climate has changed,” Fields said. “There is also no doubt that a changing climate changes the risks of extremes, including extremes that can lead to disaster.”

With more than 50% of the counties in the country declared disaster areas, that should resonate, though no action beyond generating a few headlines is expected.

To Inhofe, this arguing was like "the good old days."

New study reconfirms warming, makes papers b/f review

With publication of a column in the NYTimes over the weekend, the "cantankerous" former skeptic on seriousness of climate change, physicist Richard Muller, announced his team at Berkeley Earth's latest findings.

Here's the central graph, correlating greenhouse gas emissions to the rise in temps:

Muller writes:

"The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth’s surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the “flattening” of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice."

"Just as important, our record is long enough that we could search for the fingerprint of solar variability, based on the historical record of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent. Although the I.P.C.C. allowed for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the “Little Ice Age,” a period of cooling from the 14th century to about 1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes. This conclusion is, in retrospect, not too surprising; we’ve learned from satellite measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun very little."

"How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn’t change the results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase."

The superb Knight-Ridder Science Journalism Tracker at MIT comments:

What stands out is that many major [media] outlets did not cover it. Perhaps they regarded this as politics, not science – paying big attention to Muller's turnabout may be like giving big headlines to the fourth-from-last finisher in a huge field of marathoners. Perhaps they are right.

Probably they didn't report it because the Berkeley Earth results haven't actually been peer-reviewed and published in a recognized journal. Though Muller is a well-known scientist who has won huge awards, he didn't wait for that process to go to completion, saying he didn't have time, and the press would report on the paper whether it was published or not. Hmmmm.

Create drama, then use said drama to get unreviewed results published in the press, against journalistic rules requiring peer-review first. Clever!

By sheerest of coincidences, his former supporter, prominent climate change denier, er, self-declared "lukewarmist" Anthony Watts, brings out a paper days later arguing (as Muller once did) that the temperature record is overstated, due mostly to the unaccounted-for influence of the urban heat island index on temperature stations. Ignoring the Berkeley Earth results, in other words. This earned him a lot of scorn from veteran scientist/bloggers such as William Connelley (aka Stoat) who called Watts a "drama queen" for heralding a paper before it's even been submitted for peer-review.

Connelley also pointed out that Watts previously refused to talk about the Muller/Berkeley Earth results because they hadn't been peer-reviewed. Now he wants the same coverage, w/ or w/o peer-review. Hypocrisy?

Or just practicality: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?

Muller has dominated the coverage to date, as seen in the Los Angeles Times, which appears never to have heard of Watts.

Among scientists, Muller has received praise for his work from Michael Mann, famous for creating the so-called hockey stick. And he's' heard trash talk, also (in this case) from Mann:

At this rate, Muller should be caught up to the current state of climate science within a matter of just a few years!

It's true. Muller is late to the consensus, which is that we are are far up the creek, and not even — so far — looking for the paddle. That's why Watts' red herring matters — because we still have a chance to make a difference, if we want to avoid a 7C rise by 2100, as seen in the chart below.

We're currently on the highest possible path — A1F1, a "Business as Usual" scenario.

From the Copenhagen Diagnosis, a consensus statement from about twenty-five climate scientists, on what sort of climate we are looking at for 2100, w/discussion at AmericanBlog.

Climate change apologist calls for a hotter planet

It's hard to keep up with the latest in climate change denial: it's just so far out. Last week Paul MacRae, a pro-climate change author associated with climate change denier central, Watts Up With That, boldly called for more planetary warming.

No, really.

Specifically, he sees the goodness of a time when CO2 levels in the atmosphere were vastly higher than they are today, and temperatures were far hotter than today. When the north and south poles were ice free, and the temperate regions (like the continental U.S.) tropical as the Amazon.

Of this era he writes admiringly:

This geological age was at least 10°C warmer than today, free of ice caps, and with CO₂ levels, [Donald] Prothero suggests, of up to 3,000 parts per million, which is almost eight times today’s level of about 400 ppm. Yet Prothero calls the Eocene a “lush, tropical world.”[8]

At the end of the still very warm Oligocene (33-23 mya), Prothero puts CO₂ levels at 1,600 ppm, or four times today’s levels.[9] Prothero’s 1994 CO₂ estimates may be a high, but no one—not even [James] Hansen—denies that CO₂ levels were several times higher than today’s in the Eocene and Oligocene and, indeed, right down to the Miocene (23-5 mya).

For Prothero, the boundary between the Eocene and Oligocene was “paradise lost” because it was then, about 33 million years ago, that the planet began its slide from a “lush, tropical world” into its current ice age conditions (see Figure 1), with glaciations every 85,000 years interspersed with brief, 15,000-year warm interglacials.

Who wouldn't want to live in the tropics? Well, sea level researchers have some concerns. Imagine Manhattan, Florida, and much of the eastern seaboard underwater, and sea level up to five feet higher along the California coast by 2100, according to a June study from the National Academy of Sciences.

But MacRae sees it as "paradise regained." Perhaps it might look something like this, from The New Yorker's recent cover contest on global warming.

One species paradise is another species hell.

Will 21st century be the end for professional writers?

According to a fed-up journalist Ewan Morrison, writing in the Toronto's respected Globe and Mail newspaper, even well-established authors such as himself are working essentially for nothing now.

The economic trajectory of writing today is “a classic race to the bottom,” according to Morrison, who has become a leading voice of the growing counter-revolution – writers fighting fiercely to preserve the traditional ways. “It looks like a lot of fun for the consumer. You get all this stuff for very, very cheap,” he says. But the result will be the destruction of vital institutions that have supported “the highest achievements in culture in the past 60 years.”

In short, he predicts, “There will be no more professional writers in the future.”

I'm not sure the exaggeration helps. Fundamentally, this is about a few fairly well-paid professionals, working mostly for the established media, a handful of big names like Jon Krakauer and the like, and the 99% of the rest of us. Professional writers in Canada's union for writers make about $11,000, on average. That's pretty pathetic, and right on the mark, in my experience.

It's a bit like acting. According to Screen Actors Guild stats, about 95% of actors in movies make less than $5000 a year. A tiny percentage — less than 1% — make over 100k a year.

How hard would you work for virtually nothing? What if your identity was part of your work?

Stoneface: or, the comedy of dignity, by Buster Keaton

Sacred Fools is a little theater in Hollywood with a big hit: Stoneface: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Buster Keaton. Wonderful to see the spirit of Keaton brought back to life in the 21st century. Critics and audiences both love this show, and that too is wonderful to see — a truly delightful success on stage.

This is a show that brings to life countless classic gags (stunts, we would call them today) from the silent era of silent movies, all the while gracefully, amusingly, touchingly, telling the true story of Buster Keaton. The gags are so physical that the show — a charmer — becomes almost pure dance for much of the time, and about half the first act.

The storytelling lets us see the angst in Keaton's life, but his joys and his uniqueness too. Even though Keaton's life was as sad at times, in many respects, as the fictional tale of The Artist last year, this story (as the subtitle indicates) is funnier and a lot less melodramatic.

What makes the show work, most of all, is the immense dignity of French Stewart (best known as one of the stars of Third Rock from the Sun). With his inimitably dry voice, the gravity of his stony expression, and the way his stoneface sometmes cracks up. Turns out there's a reason for the depth of his portrayal.

In the program, the writer Vanessa Claire Stewart explained that when she happened to meet the actor, and learned he had always wanted to portray Keaton, but feared he had grown too old, she set out to write a play to allow him to become Buster Keaton. In the process, evidently, they fell in love and married. Another wonderful twist to a unique story.

It's a triumph. And the play includes Buster Keaton's most famous gag, an incredible feat on stage. (Buster's original classic version can be seen at the end of the delightful video poem extolling his comedy by Dana Stevens, film critic for Slate, below). Amazing.

These are not your grandfather’s thunderstorms: Masters

For over a decade climatologists have been saying, and I have been reporting, that we will be seeing more extremes in weather. This goes unnoticed in the here and now of daily reporting, but it's true.

Here's a map of yesterday's thunderstorms over Gotham and the East:

Jeff Masters commented this morning:

The severe storms covered an unusually large area, erupting along a 1,500-mile long swath of the country from Texas to Connecticut. The intensity of the thunderstorms was increased by a very hot and moist airmass; temperatures in the mid to upper 90s were common across the region Thursday. A number of record highs for the date were set, including a 98° reading at Washington D.C.'s Dulles Airport.

Last year Hurricane Irene hit New England, which was unusual (but certainly not unprecedented) behavior for a tropical cyclone spawned in the Atlantic. What made Irene really striking to the experts was not its ferocity nor its path but its magnitude — the size of Europe.