Most people who want to help in a disaster actually make things worse.
The United States just legalized corruption. Really government, corporations AREN’T PEOPLE.
If a person was knowingly endangering the water supply of so many people, he/she would get more than a slap on the wrist fine.
Interestingly, corporations fight hard for their own personhood, but not for the personhood of actual people, like Yemenese women and girls.
This really just makes me want to accuse fervently praying people in airports of suspicious behavior.
Solving complex networking problems with slime mold is genius.
Rita Trudgett, wicket keeper, Australia, 1930s by Sam Hood
Overpopulation and lack of family planning services in Pakistan hurt education and breed religious fundamentalism.
Cops and prosecutors in New Orleans are disgusting.
A great post on what patriarchy is and why getting rid of it is good for women AND men.
A recent study on why men pay for sex turns up a whole lot of misogyny. Interestingly, while feminists are often blamed for the idea that all men are potential rapists, some men in this study make a similar, but more disturbing claim – that without sex, men can’t help but rape. Most feminists today would argue that men are actual human beings, as opposed to animals that can’t possibly contain their “urges.”
Debunking the “God must exist because Earth is perfect for life” myth.
Losing species can create dangerous feedback loops. The loss or decline of a number of plant species has created a poorer diet for honeybees, leading to a decline in their population. Fewer honeybees means fewer pollinators means fewer seeds means fewer plants.
This week I was glad I have a steep roof.
A very good account of the Creation Museum. Especially good, I think, is the way it describes how the particular breed of Christianity that promotes creationism is very, very far from what could be considered good things in religion – a sense of unity, beauty, and a universe bigger than ourselves – and is instead “more replete with proof than a Soviet show trial” and “bereft of any soul.”
Prison rape isn’t funny and it’s a real problem. This is a fantastic ad campaign dealing with the issue.
Tags: 1930s, child marriage, climate change, corporations, corruption, creationism, earthquake, ecology, haiti, honeybees, hydraulic fracturing, networks, new orleans, oil, pakistan, patriarchy, police, prison, rape, religion, security theater, sex workers, slime mold, snow, supreme court, yemen |
Leave a Comment
Scientists are masters of understatement:
Findings of relatively slow tree migration rates in response to historical changes in climate (potentially < 100 m per year) are unfortunate in light of model predictions of how fast tree species will need to migrate to track current climates under climate change scenarios.*
Dead Conifers on West Mesa after Cedar Fire (May, 2004) Photo by Heather Karnes-Schmalbach
Dead trees in Thornham, Norfolk
Aerial view of the once lush forests of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska.
Dead trees show the beetles' paths through an otherwise healthy forest. (USDA Forestry Service)
Peter Essick/Getty Images
Dead ponderosa
*Aitken, S N, S Yeaman, J A Holliday, T Wang, and S Curtis-McLane. “Adaptation, Migration or Extirpation: Climate Change Outcomes for Tree Populations.” Evolutionary Applications 1, no. 1 (2008): doi:10.1111/j.1752-4571.2007.00013.x.
Climate change is a big, big problem made worse by population pressure on scarce resources and strong, worldwide interdependence. This recent article in the Guardian does a good job of connecting problems in one part of the world to those elsewhere and outlining the very large scope and scale of the disaster we’re facing.
There are many, many things we can do to make our future better and reducing our birthrate is one of the best. Luckily, discussing this strategy is becoming less taboo. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a topic in Copenhagen and is violently opposed by major religious groups who can’t bear to give up the idea that women are baby making machines.
I was hopeful that Copenhagen would lead to real progress. Unfortunately, our world’s leaders couldn’t pass a binding agreement on limiting emissions and temperature increases, even to levels that are still far too high. Goodbye, Tuvalu.
People don’t want to deal with climate change if it disrupts their lives and the number of people in the US who don’t believe in climate change is increasing (despite the availability of information like this). This is silly because climate change is going to disrupt their lives a lot more than increasing public transportation or switching over to a green economy ever will.
Scientists studying climate change are frequently described as alarmist or criticized for coming up with wildly unrealistic scenarios. In reality, we’ve exceeded the IPCC’s worst case scenario for emissions. If anything, our models are far too conservative. A recent study suggests that global warming could be 50% higher than current models predict.
Here are just a few things scientists have under-predicted:
Sea level rise is already creating climate refugees and Bolivia is considering moving people because of its climate change induced water issues. Immigration is a difficult issue in most countries. Climate change will create refugees directly though things like sea level rise and changes in precipitation that convert livable areas of the world to desert. It will also create refugees indirectly – climate change will make already scarce resources scarcer, causing violent conflicts.
Science is describing what’s happening to our world and trying to predict what we should prepare for. But dealing with climate change isn’t a scientific issue – it’s an ethical, economic, and political issue. The science is being politicized, but science can’t tell us how to prepare for climate change or how to convince people to do something about it.
I attended a conference on water issues a few weeks ago and left feeling like there’s no way to implement successful policies before it’s too late.
My research focuses on a tree that is quickly being extirpated from my state and is likely to go almost extinct in the next century or so, and lately I’ve been wondering why I’m devoting so much time to something that there’s so little chance of saving.
I’m writing a review paper on predictions of climate envelope models and am coming to the conclusion that they are much, much too conservative.
And almost no one is willing to take the steps that need to be taken to deal with climate change. I can’t even complain to my friends – they think it’s all just “doomsday talk.” So, today, instead of doing more (incredibly depressing) reading for my paper, I reread this poem a few times.
Rearmament
Robinson Jeffers
These grand and fatal movements toward death: the grandeur of the mass
Makes pity a fool, the tearing pity
For the atoms of the mass, the persons, the victims, makes it seem monstrous
To admire the tragic beauty they build.
It is beautiful as a river flowing or a slowly gathering
Glacier on a high mountain rock-face,
Bound to plow down a forest, or as frost in November,
The gold and flaming death-dance for leaves,
Or a girl in the night of her spent maidenhood, bleeding and kissing.
I would burn my right hand in a slow fire
To change the future … I should do foolishly. The beauty of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain.
Floods in Cumbria
E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
:
To suppose that the living standard of the rest of the world can be raised to that of the most prosperous countries, with existing technology and current levels of consumption and waste, is a dream in pursuit of a mathematical impossibility. Even to level out present-day income inequities would require shrinking the ecological footprints of the prosperous countries. That is problematic in the market-based global economy, where the main players are also militarily the most powerful, and in spite of a great deal of rhetoric largely indifferent to the suffering of others.
Today is Blog Action Day and the hope this year is to get people blogging about, talking about, and discussing climate change. I talk a lot about climate change on here, but I approach it as a scientist for the most part. I grew up with people who flat out denied that climate change could be occurring, and I still feel like people need to be convinced that something is going on. I’ve believed for a long time that if people understood the problem, they’d act to solve it.
I’m beginning to think that’s not true. Most people do believe that climate change is occurring. Most people even think we need to do something about it. But most people either don’t do anything about it or think we can solve our problems with CFLs and recycling. Those aren’t bad things to do, but it’s so far from what we need to be doing as to be laughable.
We need to be implementing fast and efficient public transportation everywhere, not encouraging people to get new cars. We need to reorganize our cities so that work and services are mixed with residences so people and stuff doesn’t need to travel as far every day. We need to stop using fossil fuels, period. We need to be promoting contraception, women’s rights, and good education for women here and across the globe to get our population down. We need to dramatically change our farm subsidies so that they aren’t just increasing profits for agribusiness and consumers see more realistic costs for things like beef, dairy, and corn. We need to eat a lot less meat and dairy. New buildings should have far less environmental impact and old buildings should be made more efficient. Our fuel efficiency standards are still much too low. We need to change people’s focus from consuming things to doing things.
If we managed even some of the things in that list, we’d not only be doing a lot to decrease carbon emissions, I think we’d create a world that we’d prefer to live in. We’ve already passed the point where we could have made changes and avoided the consequences of climate change – we’re going to be facing sea level rise, drought (and famine), worse hurricanes, and all sorts of unpleasantness no matter what we do now, but we have the opportunity to make the future a lot less painful.
The trick is figuring out how to get people to care enough to act – even appealing to a sense of self-preservation hasn’t done much good so far.
We’ve waited so long to do anything about climate change, that sea level rise of more than 6 feet (and half of that predicted in this century) is pretty much unstoppable now. Things are going to go pretty badly for most countries, but island nations will be faced with (proportionately) far more land loss (forcing more people to depend on less land) along with a sharp decline in fish populations, one of their main food sources. In other regions, burning wood fires and inefficient diesel engines is causing rapid melting of the glaciers that feed river systems that more than 3 BILLION people depend on.
Climate change is increasing hunger and poverty. The green revolution fed many more people, but also led to a higher population (and increased energy use). We should have listened to the man responsible for the green revolution and worked at reducing (or at least just maintaining) population levels. Then we’d have plenty of food for everyone.
I’ve got some hopes for Copenhagen – I don’t want to believe that our society is going the way of Easter Island – but so far climate pledges are far too little and much too late.
Chatter