We lost the first battle in the war on climate ignorance...

The science on "global warming" was clear enough for scientists to be alarmed 20 years ago but fossil fuel lobbies, Detroit and charlatans eager for the cheap votes of ignorant fundamentalists found it easy to cloud and bury the issue. The science never had a chance in the political and media arena...the very name of the problem didn't sound like a problem. Recognizing that framing an issue is where science often looses the war in the first battle , New York Times climate blogger, Andrew Revkin gathers comments from several climate scientists who bemoan the semantic paper sword fecklessly brandished at the denialists. Revkin invites suggested alternatives for labeling the issue in such a way as to make its title conjure up more realistic and conscientious apprehension of the subject.

That sounds like a fun game, here are some of my alternatives to "Global Warming"

• CRISP: Climate Ruined for the Interests of Selfish People


• ICaBODD: Industrially Created Business Opportunities in Drought and Drowning


• DEATH: Degradation of Earth's Atmosphere by Thoughtless Humans


• SCORCH: Saving the Climate is Out of Reach to Corporate Humanity.

The time scales really are a serious problem as Revkin and the scientists he quotes try to explain in that NY Times blog post. The laboratory demonstration of delayed impact of applied heat recounted in the post very accurately presents an analog to what is actually happening in the Antarctic according to this post at the authoritative RealClimate.org site.


Problems requiring 50 years of foresight, planning and discipline will never be solved by politicians with a four year time horizon, nor by businesses with a mantra of increasing profit in each three month period.

The politicians think time itself will end in November unless they can throw meat to the wolf pack of lobbyists. The CEO's think [their] time could end at the next annual share holder meeting. Despite the empty gale of glad yammering about their "green" intentions, by design, corporations think the world of the their profits and cannot think of what would profit the world. They live large this year on externalized costs the mass of humanity will have to pay back during [ or with ] the lives of their children. To be fair to the politicians, that "mass of humanity" includes a good many who can't think very far ahead either because they have few options for this month's meals if they don't grind up a little seed corn.

Note: some "green" is actually "a greenish glow in the dark". I am not categorically against the use of nuclear energy to alleviate our carbon burden on the climate but I trust the well funded industries who are behind most of the PR for nuclear energy about as far as I could toss a reactor. Until there is complete transparency of the relations between the science, the industry and the government involvements in nuke proposals, I am not supporting it as an alternative. Populism playing to fearful ignorance about nuclear energy does us no favors either.

When you are an addict, tapering off the drug is always a better idea than finding an alternative drug.

"Better" does not mean psychologically or physically easier, it just means better long term outcome. Who's in it for the long term, eh? Just consider the juxtaposition of the two posts I have linked here. One describes a laboratory demonstration that, though perfectly accurate in its analogy, and repeated for decades, only persuades the scientifically literate handful. The other describes an effect in the Antarctic scaled up from that demonstration to global proportions and well under way. The one says we could have known, the other says it may be too late for the knowledge to do much good.

looks like a mob boss, sounds like a mob boss

...and works for Bush.

I know its not like there isn't plenty to write about. I've been laying low to work on a new look and maybe break in a new voice or two but some shit passes all powers of forbearance.

Driving home today [its a car pool OK? and it was 10 degrees F here this morning] I caught a minute or two of NPR's coverage of an interview Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scolia gave the BBC. If I let this go without remark, however repetitive that may be, I have winked at my country's debauched new cruelty.

To get right to the point, I was disgusted to hear Scolia mincing words about torture. He wriggles around like any other Bush Leauger, finding that somehow, while torture is cruel and unusual punishment for those convicted of crimes it might be OK to "smack somebody in the face" to prevent an act of terror. Such emotionalogic from a Supreme court justice? He steals lines from that idiot we can't manage to impeach. Just think what he is saying:

• To say it is not OK to hurt people convicted of crimes but it might be OK to hurt people you suspect have information about an as yet uncommitted crime is ridiculous and uncivilized.
• His words presume the culpability of the torture victim when in fact we usually have the wrong guy. [Six are to go on trial for the events of September 11 2001...HOW many more than that have we tortured?]
• It is true that US laws and that tattered doormat under Bush's feet, the Constitution, only explicity protect US citizens from cruel and unusual punishment but what is the value of US law if the US rips up international laws like the Geneva Conventions. Isn't the idea "rule of law", not "rule of some laws some times and mostly whatever Prez sez".

I got home and found that Froomkin and others writing at Talking Points Memo were incensed. Listen to the interview if you pop up the sound player on the NPR page [and if you can stand it] because I cannot convey the tone, the glib and slippery equanimity with which the man is excusing torture. He is horrific in that ho-hum way we often see depicted as a trait of third reich functionaries. You should shudder to think this creature is one of nine who has final say over what the US government can get away with when, in the soul discretion of its executive and the intelligence operatives it employs, it thinks it wants a certain answer from a certain prisoner.

I understand the emotional appeal: what do you do if you are desperate to prevent death and destruction? What Scolia does not seem to understand is that desperation is not a fit policy, not a routine situation and torture condoned from the top and from the outset makes us as evil a nation as the evils we claim to be fighting: We Lose! [ or is this more of those "values" that got Bush elected coming to the fore?]
NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND why this election is so important? 8 years of Obama, for instance, and we can hope to see a change in the balance of the court to muzzle these turd-hearted Bush appointees.

[photo credits to BBC]

an open letter to John Edwards

Dear Edwards Family:

The wire services tell me John will bow out of the race in a speech to be delivered mid-day today. I just chipped in another $100 last night. No news in this tumultuous political year has hit me so hard. Though you were behind in the polls all along, that says more about the nation than it does about you. I hope you will continue to stay visible to the body politic and keep opening eyes and ears to your message that the nation cannot make the much needed turn for the better until it opens its worried little heart to the conditions of its very neighbors. You did widen the debate to better include the interests of the class of citizens the Bush years have actively marginalized. I pray that breadth of political debate does not wither in your absence.

The best lives are lived in such a way that the lives of others can be a little less troubled. Your choices all along have been to live that way despite the personal sacrifices required.

A hundred dollars is not much, just ask people how far they expect to get on the desperation dollars to be doled from our nation's nest egg as a "stimulus". But the numbers of us who each put in $50 or a $100 to your campaign should have been bigger. Like I said...thats our shame, not yours. I am confident you know a dozen better things to do with that money than I do.

minor technical note

Might not have occurred to me if I had not accidentally stumbled upon the effect: If you have a hit counter embedded in your template and it gets deleted from the HTML but not disabled at the server of the hit counting service, then your stats page may still register hits from visitors who are running with cached versions of your page. That could include versions squirelled away by search engines. [Ask.com in my case].
Now, as to how a dab of hit counting Javascript could fall out of a template when you had not touched it...that is typical of Blogger providing unsolicited improvements to your template.

BTW, do hop on over to Majikthise and see what a busy week in muck-making it has been for the Corrupt Old Party. One party with no balls, one with no scruples. Do you blame Americans for tuning out politics? I find the report on the stealthy growth of corporate militias that operate with no more oversight that Shiite or Sunni militias particularly alarming. The second amendment applied to individuals, not corporations and it is quite bad enough that corporations already exercise the rights of speech more powerfully than any of you little piss ant voters.

the cocoon is wiggling

I am not sure what will emerge.

some intentions at the moment are

• to keep to the "short attention span is adequate" theme.
• to honor the input a few readers did provide when I queried your preferences a few months back.

Divergence into multiple blogs is the likely and simple solution and it would accommodate my form of multiple personality disorder. Many blogs, all with one author who is writing less and less...you should have no trouble keeping up with whichever, if any, you find to your taste. I'm nothing if not thoughtful;)

but in the interest of actually having some content, one thought short and sour:

Preaching and Bragging: both are calculated to inform "my way is probably better than yours".

That would be the sort of information to which a healthy mind is most resistant.

What I am trying not to be

In the quest not to be an over stressed "name brand" blogger, I am marvelously endowed for success.

I'm Molting

And its not a pretty picture is it?
When we say of something that it is for the birds,
Don't we particularly mean the vulture?

Listless experimentation will continue for a while.
The hit counter has me locked in to the damn Blog Title.

CREDITS:The photo has a link associated with it. Andy takes some great pictures.