Not cooling off

Updated One of the cheapest arguments raised against global warming is to point to some place somewhere where it is unusually cold at that moment and sneer something like "oh, yeah, global warming, sure, tell it to" whoever is cold just then. The argument is, naturally, bogus, as the warming is an overall average, not something that applies to every single place every single day. Even year-to-year comparisons are really too short-term to be truly revealing. But when there is an overall pattern over a longer term, it tells you something. Here are a few data points to add to that pattern.

- January 5: AFP reported that Australia had just had one of its hottest years ever

and climate experts have warned that the higher temperatures are likely a taste of things to come as weather patterns change.

The country has already kicked off 2008 with a spate of extreme weather - several cities, including Perth and Melbourne, have suffered summer heatwaves, while bushfires have raged on the east and west coasts,

along with flooding and heavy rains in areas. While overall, it was the sixth warmest year on record in Australia,

[i]n the southern states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, as well as the major agricultural zone, the Murray Darling Basin, the effect was more pronounced.

These areas, which account for the majority of Australia's 21 million people and 75 percent of the country's irrigated farmland, experienced their hottest year since records began in 1910.

- February 7, again via AFP, comes news that 2007 was the hottest year on record for Shanghai, where the records go back to 1873. The average temperature of 17.8C (64F) was a full two degrees above the long-term average.

Temperatures in China in 2006 were the warmest in 55 years, according to official data, while large swathes of the country last year endured devastating droughts and floods that Chinese scientists linked to global warming.

- March 20, the first day of spring, was observed by The Independent (UK) by describing how spring

is starting to dissolve as a distinct season as climate change takes hold.

According to documented observations throughout 2007 and 2008, events in the natural world that used to be key spring indicators, from the blooming of flowers to the appearance of insects, are now increasingly happening in what used to be thought of as mid-winter, as Britain's temperatures steadily rise.

The increase in winter temperatures has been "startling," the paper says, and is

clearly visible when current monthly means are compared to the average for 1961 to 1990.

To take the figures for last winter from the Central England Temperature Record, the world's oldest, which dates back to 1659: January 2007 was 3.2C warmer than the 1961-90 average, February was 2.0C warmer, March was 1.5C warmer, and April was 3.3C warmer. So far this year, January has been 2.8C above the 1961-90 average for the month, and February, 1.6C.

Those are substantial rises.

They are indeed and they are already contributing to shifts in natural patterns of nature, mostly in southern England, affecting when flowers and trees bloom, insects appear, birds lay their eggs; they're even changing the migratory habits of some butterflies. It may seem quaint to hear spring birds all winter long, but the fact is that if some cycles - say, the life cycle of some insect - get out of sync with some others - say, birds that feed on those insects - the results could be very serious. Say, farm fields innundated with insects. Or starving birds. Or both.

Like the commercial used to say, it's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

- April 17 saw the release of a report from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center that March 2008

was the warmest March on record over land surfaces of the world and the second warmest overall worldwide.

Land temperature was 1.8C (3.2F) warmer than the 20th century average.

Overall land and sea surface temperatures for the world were second highest in 129 years of record keeping, trailing only 2002, the agency said.

Of course, one hot year does not prove global warming any more than one cold year disproves it. But again, these are just more data points on top of a mountain of other data points.

Footnote the Oneth: The nanny-nanny naysayers might insist on pointing out with their familiar snicker that after completing its hottest year on record, in January Shanghai and the rest of southeast China suffered snow and ice storms that crippled power and transport networks. What they likely won't point out is that because of a warm March, snow cover on Asia was at a record low.

Footnote the Twoth: This doesn't really relate to current temperature data, but it's the most appropriate spot for it.

- February 1 brought news via UPI that

[i]ce cores from Greenland and Antarctica show that Earth warmed faster in the 20th century than at any other time in the past 22 millennia, researchers said.

What's more, the concentration of greenhouse gases is increasing much faster than in times past. The fastest growth in CO₂ concentration before the industrial era was an increase of 31 parts per million over some 1,600 years - an increase matched over the last 20.

Updated with links to NOAA and to its National Climatic Data Center, which I forgot to include originally.

Getting warmed up

In the fall of 2006, Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank and an adviser to the British chancellor Gordon Brown, produced a 600-page report calling for global investment in new technologies to head off the worst of global warming. The alternative, he said, was a global recession by the end of the century that would cut the world's wealth by as much as 20%.

He forecast huge disruption to African economies in particular as drought hits food production; up to a billion people losing water supplies as mountain glaciers disappear; hundreds of millions losing their homes and land to sea level rise; and potentially big increases in damage from hurricanes. The economic cost of failing to act could approach $4 trillion by the end of the century, he [said].

Last week, he declared that his assessment had been too rosy.

“We underestimated the risks ... we underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases ... and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases,” Lord Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, told the Financial Times on Wednesday.

In retrospect, he said, he would have taken a much stronger view in the report on the drastic changes that would come about if greenhouse gas emissions were not abated.

The costs, he said, should have been much higher.

At the same time,

he defended his estimates of the cost of taking action on emissions, which he put in the report at about 1 per cent of global GDP.

“Subsequent reports, [from] McKinsey, the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have pointed to the [Stern report’s] costs of action being roughly in the right ball park. Nothing [since] has led me to revise the cost of action,” he said.

The costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of action. Then again, they often do.

Burning Bush

In a desperate attempt to avoid complete irrelevancy without actually having to do anything, President George Shrub last week presented what according to the BBC he claimed is

an "ambitious" new target of halting growth in US greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. ...

Mr Bush said the new target should require emissions "well below" projections given in the 2002 climate strategy.

"There are a number of ways to achieve these reductions, but all responsible approaches depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies." ...

The new technology would combine with nuclear power and "clean coal" to help meet the targets, Mr Bush said.

Right. Unspecified "new technologies" plus nukes and the mythological "clean coal," the latter of which was offered up, presumably with a straight face, just over two months after the DOE canceled plans to build a prototype "clean coal" power plant. What's the line about old wine in new bottles?* Newsday quoted Edmund Chang, a professor of marine and atmospheric sciences and a member of the IPCC, as saying this was a step in the right direction but added the program is vague and contains "no concrete steps."

Other experts were equally critical.

"In his eighth year, the president has just proposed a path on global warming weaker than the campaign pledge he made in September of 2000 and broke three months into office," said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In fact, even allowing for full implementation of all the pledges about energy efficiency and the like, under Bush's program in 2025 the US's output of greenhouse gases will be nearly one-quarter above the level it produced in the UN benchmark year of 1990.

"With current policies, the greenhouse-gas emissions of the US will increase by 18 percent between 2005 and 2025," [International Energy Agency] chief economist Fathi Birol told AFP.

"If you compare this with 1990 levels, by 2025 there will be plus 38 percent.

He added: "If the (newly announced) policies and measures - energy efficency, renewables, all the policies - are implemented, you can take off about 15 percent from this."

"So it means an increase of about 23 percent between 1990 and 2025, but only if the policies are implemented and respected."

Meanwhile, the European Union has promised that by 2020 it will cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 20% below its 1990 level and has offered to make it a 30% cut if the US and other rich nations follow suit. (Even at that, it's at the lower end of the cuts the IPCC has called for.) Some, in fact, have done better than just promise: The UK, which apparently is serious about addressing climate change, has a level of greenhouse gas emissions that is already 16.4% below 1990 levels.

But instead and despite that, we have before us in this country an "ambitious" and "responsible" proposal from the Shrub gang that will leave us pumping out 23% more climate-screwing pollution than we did 35 years earlier, an "ambitious" and "responsible" program that was coupled with a warning to Congress to go no further on regulating emissions.

Asked in Paris on Thursday as to the likely figure for 2025, the head of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, Jim Connaughton, said: "It will be slightly above where we are now and significantly below where the analysts have projected where we would otherwise be."

Where we are now is 16% over 1990 levels and even Bush's own people are openly admitting that under his "ambitious, responsible" program, emissions will actually increase. No wonder the Beeb was able to quote Carl Pope of the Sierra Club as saying "Under the president's plan we'll need a real miracle to save us from global warming."

And so, following are a few post-its about global climate change. All guaranteed Earth Day-friendly.

Footnote: Something the articles didn't cover and about which I still have to wonder is how the WHS** intend to count "reductions." The 2002 plan to which Bushie referred used a measure of "greenhouse gas intensity," which was a ratio of greenhouse gas emissions per million dollars of GDP. I wrote a couple of years ago:

Get it? As long as GDP increases faster than the output of greenhouse gases, you get to say that you are cutting emissions even as they continue to grow. It's like saying that if one year I make $30,000 and have $5,000 in debts and the next year I make $33,000 (an increase of 10%) and my debts are $5,250 (an increase of 5%), I owe less money than I did before. Unfortunately, nature doesn't count it that way. Just like my debtors are concerned with how many dollars I owe them, not with what portion of my income it represents, so, too, nature is only concerned with how much CO₂ and other greenhouse gases are being produced, not with the size of the economy that produced them.

Perhaps this newer-than-new, grander-than-grand, "ambitious, responsible" program counts actual emissions, not some bogus and meaningless ratio. But until I see it confirmed, I'll have my doubts.

Another Footnote: Clinton, McCain, and Obama have all called for tougher policies, including caps on emissions. Which is good. Then again, Shrub made a lot of similar promises in 2000. So don't count on it.

*Actually, the original saying was about new wine in old bottles, but it works this way, too.

**WHS = White House Sociopaths

Stargeek Atlantis, Episode Five

John Wheeler, one of the foremost physicists of the 20th century, has died of pneumonia at the age of 96.

You may never have heard of him, but you've heard of the term he famously coined: black hole.

Stargeek Atlantis, Episode Four

It's so cool it's hot. Except it's not hot, which is why it's cool. Well, it is hot but it's not hot by what's actually hot, so it's actually cool, which is what makes it cool. Or so SpaceRef.com told us a few days ago.

An international team of astronomers has discovered the coldest brown dwarf star ever observed. This finding is a new step toward filling the gap between stars and planets. ...

The brown dwarf is named CFBDS J005910.83-011401.3 (it will be called CFBDS0059 in the following). Its temperature is about 350 degrees C and its mass about 15-30 times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet of our solar system. Located about 40 light-years from our solar system, it is an isolated object, meaning that it doesn't orbit another star.

To give you an idea of how small and cool that is for a star, the Sun is well over 30 times as massive and its surface temperature is more than 17 times hotter. Indeed, the dwarf's surface temperature is only moderately above the ignition temperature of a safety match and is about one-fifth of that of a blast furnace.

Brown dwarfs are intermediate bodies between stars and giant planets (like Jupiter). The mass of brown dwarfs is usually less than 70 Jupiter masses. Because of their low mass, their central temperature is not high enough to maintain thermonuclear fusion reactions over a long time. In contrast to a star like our Sun, which spends most of its lifetime burning hydrogen hence keeping a constant internal temperature, a brown dwarf spends its lifetime getting colder and colder after having been formed. ...

To date, two classes of brown dwarfs have been known: the L dwarfs (temperature of 1200-2000 degrees C), which have clouds of dust and aerosols in their high atmosphere, and the T dwarfs (temperature lower than 1200 degrees C), which have a very different spectrum because of methane forming in their atmosphere. Because it contains ammonia and has a much lower temperature than do L and T dwarfs, CFBDS0059 might be the protoype of a new class of brown dwarfs to be called the Y dwarfs. This new class would become the coldest stellar objects, hence the missing link toward giant planets. Astronomers could then fill in the domain from the hottest stars to the giant planets of less than -100 degrees C.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." There is a whole lotta crap out there still to be discovered. I just said it but I'll say it again: That's what makes science so cool.

Stargeek Atlantis, Episode Three

Spirit and Opportunity, meet Cassini-Huygens. This via Space.com:

The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft's mission at Saturn has been extended by two years, NASA announced today, allowing the plucky probe to continue scouting the planet and its exotic medley of moons.

Launched in October 1997, the nuclear-powered Cassini spacecraft spent seven years journeying to Saturn and has orbited the ringed planet since June 2004. The mission's end was originally set for July 2008.

The extended mission will include a number of additional close looks at Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus - both of which are thought to have liquid oceans beneath their surfaces - including one pass planned to come within 15 miles of the crust of Enceladus.

Scientists think Titan and Enceladus may help construct a picture of what Earth was like before life appeared here, as both moons have been shown to harbor precursors of life. ...

Aside from a few instrument glitches, mission managers said the probe is in good shape. ...

If mission managers decide to extend Cassini's journey yet again in 2010, the craft should have enough propellant to handle a third mission phase.

Since arriving at Saturn, Cassini has beamed back nearly 140,000 images during 62 revolutions around the planet and more than 50 flybys of its moons.

There are a whole bunch of those images available at the JPL link above.

Footnote: You might have heard the news that JPL was going to have to shut down one of the Mars rovers in light of a $4 million, or 40%, budget cut imposed on the program by NASA. However, NASA rescinded the cut when it became obvious that shutting down a rover, which was never an option, was the only way to achieve a reduction of that magnitude. Both rovers are aging, getting creaky, and having software problems and will have to be shut down at some point, but when you've been going 16 times longer than was expected and can still be productive, well, you can be creaky and gripey, too.

Stargeek Atlantis, Episode Two

Here's a discovery that is quite literally full of shit. From the Washington Post for April 4:

Using radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis, an international team concluded that fossilized feces found five feet below the surface of an arid cave [in Oregon] are significantly older than any previous human remains unearthed in the Americas.

About 1,000 years older, in fact, placing people genetically similar to Native Americans in North America more than 14,000 years ago.

The discovery ... is a blow to the widely held theory that the Clovis culture - named after a site in New Mexico where its distinct artifacts and fluted spearheads were first identified in the 1930s - was the first human presence in North America. [Dennis] Jenkins [of the University of Oregon, who oversaw the dig.] said that while the human DNA found in Oregon could be from ancestors of the Clovis culture, none of the distinctive Clovis technology has been found in the region.

The "Clovis first" theory has been challenged by almost a decade of discoveries from Canada to the southern tip of South America that indicate that humans were present before the time of the Clovis civilization, generally dated at about 13,000 years ago. But yesterday's report is considered key because it is the first to involve datable human DNA.

Some criticize the finding, suggesting the human DNA may be the result of later contamination of earlier animal feces, but the team says there is too much human protein to be explained that way.

Besides the sheer coolness of the find, there is another interesting aspect.

If the discovery is ultimately confirmed and accepted by anthropologists, it will also challenge the prevailing theory about how humans spread across the Americas.

Most experts agree that the first American inhabitants came from Siberia, traveling over what was then a land and ice bridge across the Bering Strait to what is now Alaska, probably before 15,000 years ago. Much of Canada was then covered by an ice sheet that would have made it impossible to migrate southward.

Using geological and climate information, researchers have concluded that a corridor of ice-free land opened in inland Canada between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago, and that the earliest inhabitants could have made their way to the high plains of the United States by that path. Humans are believed to have then spread quickly across North America and then South America - doing so in hundreds, rather than thousands, of years.

But if very early humans lived in Oregon, that suggests they either came directly from Asia by boat or traveled down the Pacific coastline after crossing the land bridge.

Of those two, I find the idea of skimming the coast in small craft a more likely scenario than a direct transit from Asia, but either way, it requires a re-think of how early people lived and traveled. Which is what is so cool about science, including the so-called "soft" sciences like archaeology and anthropology: There is always more to learn.

Stargeek Atlantis, Episode One

Have you seen the ads for "Expelled?" The movie is a creationist's wet dream, a so-called and I emphasize both the description so-called and the quotation marks "documentary" that attempts to disprove evolution in favor of the farcical "intelligent design." As is typical, it does not make that attempt by presenting some kind of evidence for ID, oh no. (I started to say they've given up on that, but that's wrong: They never started on it. There is not and never has been any evidence for ID; the entire fantasy is based on attacks against evolution, in fact specifically Darwinian evolution, as if there have been no developments in the field since the publication of The Origin of Species.)

Instead, the film takes the "oppressed truth-seeker" tack, insisting that creationists have been cruelly and viciously repressed and silenced by some conspiracy by "Big Science" (a term the movie actually uses), as well as claiming that, in the words of one reviewer quoted at the film's official website, "Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany."

Yes, it's manipulative, deceitful, inane, over the top bullshit. But it still may find an audience, since it's opening in 1000 theaters and is even running TV ads.

Which brings me to the first part of what I wanted to say here, which is that the one ad I've seen shows a classroom with an instructor saying something about evolution. He is extremely disturbed when he is interrupted by a "student," film narrator Ben Stein, who asks "where did life come from?" The final scene shows Stein sitting outside the principal's office where, we are supposed to think, he has been sent for daring to ask a question.

But the fact is, evolution says nothing about the origin of life! It's not about the origin of life. It's about how life changes over time (evolves, get it?) in interaction with environment. The study of the origin of life is a separate field called abiogenesis - which, of course, the instructor in the ad would have explained to our dimwitted narrator and which the producers of the film actually know since the film itself acknowledges it. Which only goes to prove that the ad, like the movie it pushes, is a manipulative lie that depends on people not knowing the basics of evolutionary theory; it exploits ignorance in other to increase it further.

Which is unsurprising since deception about the science and bluster about non-existent "oppression" are the only weapons the creationists have. Especially when - and here's the second part of what I wanted to say - yet another unique form has been discovered, an animal with unusual characteristics driven by its environment and which thereby stands as a further confirmation of evolution. From AP for April 10 via Talking Points Memo:

A frog has been found in a remote part of Indonesia that has no lungs and breathes through its skin, a discovery that researchers said Thursday could provide insight into what drives evolution in certain species.

The aquatic frog Barbourula kalimantanensis was found in a remote part of Indonesia's Kalimantan province on Borneo island during an expedition in August 2007, said David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore. ...

Bickford said the species is the first frog known to science without lungs and joins a short list of amphibians with this unusual trait, including a few species of salamanders and a wormlike creature known as a caecilian.

"These are about the most ancient and bizarre frogs you can get on the planet," Bickford said of the brown amphibian with bulging eyes and a tendency to flatten itself as it glides across the water.

"They are like a squished version of Jabba the Hutt," he said....

Bickford surmised that the frog had evolved to adapt to its difficult surroundings, in which it has to navigate cold, rapidly moving streams that are rich in oxygen.

"It's an extreme adaptation that was probably brought about by these fast-moving streams," Bickford said, adding that it probably needed to reduce its buoyancy in order to keep from being swept down the mountainous rivers.

He said the frog could help scientists understand the environmental factors that contribute to "extreme evolutionary change" since its closest relative in the Philippines and other frogs have lungs.

That last bit being one of extreme importance because it sums up the difference between evolutionists and creationists: Evolutionists want to understand more; creationists don't even want to understand what we already know.

Reading about that lead me to this

There may be a development in the case of Mordechai Vanunu. He was the Israeli nuclear technician and whistleblower who in 1986 confirmed to a British newspaper what all politically-sentient beings already knew: Israel had nuclear weapons. For that, Israeli agents lured him from the UK to Italy, where he was drugged, kidnapped, taken back to Israel, labeled a traitor, and charged with revealing state secrets. He was convicted and spent 18 years in prison, a dozen of them in solitary confinement. He was finally released in April 2004.

If you can call it released. He was placed under a variety of restrictions limiting his movements, his contacts, and his ability to speak with any non-Israeli. He was not allowed to leave Israel. Over the intervening years, the restrictions have been repeatedly renewed.

Vanunu, for his own part, has been defiant about the restrictions on contacts with foreigners and has been sentenced to house arrest several times and, last July, to six months in jail. A hearing to appeal an additional six month sentence is scheduled for May 13.

The breaking news involves the fact that back in 2004, Vanunu had requested asylum in Norway. Aftenposten (Norway) reported last Wednesday that

news emerged that the Norwegian government stepped in to reject an appeal for asylum from long-imprisoned Israeli physicist Mordechai Vanunu.

Newspaper Bergens Tidende reported Wednesday that Vanunu's application for asylum in Norway had in fact been approved by the country's immigration agency UDI (Utlendingsdirektoratet) back in 2004.

UDI was overruled, however, by Norway's center-right government at the time. Political considerations, not least Norway's efforts to remain on good terms with Israel and the US, were more important than Vanunu's human rights, critics now charge.

UDI officials are supposed to be free to make decisions without political interference. But like a lot of other "spoz-ta"s, political expedience overruled both policy and justice.

In the wake of the revelation, Vanunu renewed his request for asylum. However, Reuters reported on Friday, Norwegian officals "held out no hope that he would be accepted." One reason why:

Norwegian daily Dagsavisen on Friday cited an Israeli diplomat as saying that giving Vanunu asylum would be considered interference in Israel's internal affairs and a "sign of the generally anti-Israeli sentiment in Norway."

That is, pulling out the same sort of bullying tactics that always get pulled out: Any action, any statement, anything of which the Israeli government disapproves is proof of "anti-Israel" - and by inferred and sometimes explicit extension, anti-Semitic - "sentiment."

However, and this is the real breaking news part, a group called We Are Wide Awake quotes a statement from Fredrik Heffermehl of the International Vanunu Committee, saying that on Sunday night the Socialist Left Party, one of the parties in Norway's three-party ruling coalition, decided to invite Vanunu to come to Norway in May.

That of course is not the end of his problems; first and foremost, Israel has to be willing to let him go, which it has shown no inclination to do. But the existence of a formal invitation, in essence an offer of asylum (and a standing offer of a job, removing another potential snag), does serve to increase pressure on Israel to at the very, very least, explain just what it is that this man, who has served his sentence, could possibly know and reveal after more than 20 years that justifies the continued attempts to gag him - or is it, as I suspect, a combination of simple spite at their inability to intimidate him into complete silence and a desire to send a message to other would-be whistleblowers of the consequences of disobedience?

The meaning of the phrase has changed since 2004, but its significance hasn't: Free Mordechai Vanunu!

Footnote: Haaretz (Israel) reported on Monday that

Israel and the United States signed an agreement several days ago to step up cooperation in the field of nuclear safety.

The new agreement broadens and upgrades previous accords between the two countries in this field, which were signed over the past two decades. It will enable the Israel Atomic Energy Commission to access most of the latest nuclear safety data, procedures and technology available in the U.S. ...

Even though the agreement is essentially technical in nature, it has much greater significance, as many countries, including the U.S., are inclined not to cooperate with Israel on any aspects related to the nuclear field, because Israel is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Apparently, this is another area where Israel gets special treatment.

He should eat lead and die

Or so, it would seem, is the official Israeli attitude toward Jimmy Carter. Reuters reported on Monday that

Israel's secret service has declined to assist U.S. agents guarding former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during a visit in which Israeli leaders have shunned him....

American sources close to the matter said the Shin Bet security service, which helps protect visiting dignitaries and is overseen by [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert's office, declined to meet the head of Carter's Secret Service security detail or provide his team with assistance as is customary during such visits.

"They're not getting support from local security," an American source said.

Another source described the snub as an "unprecedented" breach between the Israeli Shin Bet and the U.S. Secret Service, which protects all current and former U.S. presidents, as well as Israeli leaders when they visit the United States.

(Link via Raw Story.)

Carter aroused the anger of the Israelis by referring to its policies in the occupied territories - quite accurately - as "apartheid" and by including in his plans for his current Mideast trip a meeting with Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, in Syria. Carter remarked that

I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process....

But Israel has no interest in meeting with Hamas or even in reaching any sort of agreement. I charged last October that

it has been some time since Israel showed a genuine interest in peace - provided we assume that "peace" can be differentiated from "dominance."

For one egregious example (beyond the several at the above link), just over a year ago, I observed that Olmert had shortly before told Time magazine that Israel "could not accept the return of even a single Palestinian refugee to Israel." That is, his government rejected the "right of return" in toto. As I said at the time, that is a deal breaker: The "right of return" is as deeply emotional an issue among Palestinians as the nature of Israel is among Israelis, and a demand that Palestinians give up on even a limited, symbolic right of return has the same impact on them as a demand that Israel cease being a Jewish state would have on Israelis. The point here is that there is no way in hell Olmert does not know that. His government's policy makes a real settlement impossible.

(Yes, I am aware that Hamas's founding charter called for destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. I also know that the existence of that 1988 document has been used to reject as lies any less-radical statements in the years since. So if you either feel as many Israelis do about what that document says or understand how they feel, you should be able to understand how Palestinians feel about a rejection of the right of return and understand, then, why an outright rejection of it is a major roadblock to long-term peace.)

So Israeli authorities, who shunned Carter except for a pro forma meeting with President Shimon Peres, whose position is largely ceremonial, decided further to show their displeasure with the man who brokered the first Arab-Israeli peace agreement by denying him the usual security assistance shown to foreign dignitaries. They thereby knowingly increased the risk to his life - especially as his itinerary took him to a southern Israeli town with "problematic" security. The actual risk to Carter's safety was doubtless small and the difference made by the lack of cooperation smaller still, but it did not make zero difference. Being a critic of Israel apparently makes your life less worthy of protection.

It's a lesson about which Rachael Corrie could have taught him.

Footnote: The Israeli government's stand was not universally approved. The Israeli daily Haaretz praised Carter in an editorial, saying

[t]he boycott will not be remembered as a glorious moment in this government's history. ...

Carter's method, which says that it is necessary to talk with every one, has still not proven to be any less successful than the method that calls for boycotts and air strikes. In terms of results, at the end of the day, Carter beats out any of those who ostracize him. For the peace agreement with Egypt, he deserves the respect reserved for royalty for the rest of his life.

There are rejectionists and realists, the cruel and the compassionate, on both sides of the Isreali-Palestinian divide. We must never forget that.

There is some justice

Think Progress reports that Earblot Slagzone has been unable to find work.

A long introduction to make a relatively short point

I expect most of you have heard about the flap that developed earlier this week surrounding Illinois State Representative Monique Davis. In case you didn't, here's the rundown. Local atheist activist Rob Sherman was testifying before the Government Administration Committee of the Illinois House against the constitutionality of a proposal to provide $1 million in state support to help rebuild a church after a fire.

(Sidebar: The justification for the aid was apparently that the church was regarded as a landmark. However, things got a little sticky when it turned out that instead of going to the church, Gov. Rod Blagojevich did some fancy dancing to redirect the money to a private school that rented space from the church. That, however, does not directly impact the story here, to which we now return.)

Davis interrupted Sherman's testimony to deliver an increasingly-angry, anti-atheist diatribe (audio here), declaring (edited):

This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children. ... What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! ... Get out of that seat! You have no right to be here! ... You believe in destroying!

Chicago Tribune reporter/blogger Eric Zorn described the exchange, adding later that other than his own report, it "received no attention whatsoever." Which was true; even the Tribune's own story on the hearing didn't mention it. This despite the fact, Zorn argued, that had similar sentiments been directed against a person of any religious faith, it would "be considered scandalously out of bounds in contemporary society." (Another sidebar: Sherman continued his testimony; however, the Committee chair denied him an opportunity to respond to Davis.)

One rarely really knows why one incident sparks a response and others don't. But after initially being ignored, for some reason, this one did catch some people's attention. It became something of a story; Davis even made Keith Olbermann's Worst Person in the World list on Wednesday.

Subsequently, Sherman reported that Davis had called him to apologize and that he considered the matter closed.

Personally, I think she should have apologized publicly; after all, the denunciation was quite public. It could be cogently argued that since Sherman was the one assailed, it should be entirely his call, but the fact remains that the clear meaning of Davis's statements were not that Sherman is "dangerous" and has "no right" to be taking part in civic affairs, but that atheists are dangerous and have no such right. It was, that is, more than an attack on just Sherman personally, with a meaning to more people than just him. So I remain unsure that a private apology is adequate.

Still, leave that aside and with the news of the apology, private though it may have been, I'll accept that it was a one-time outburst and withdraw any support I might have offered to calls for her resignation, such as that from the Council for Secular Humanism. I did, however, want to offer a comment on another aspect, one that is at least a little encouraging.

In initially discussing Davis's blowout, Zorn said "I know from experience that many of you will side with Davis." Sherman, it seems, is something of a gadfly and has sued or threatened to sue some towns around Chicago to force them to remove religious symbols from city property or in some cases from official city insignia, leading him to be regarded as an "outsider" and a "pest" by those more concerned with the possible cost of changing stationery than with upholding the principle of church-state separation.

However, to Zorn's (and my, I admit) surprise, the comments in response to his post were overwhelmingly critical of Davis and there were even some people who said they didn't like Sherman but still he shouldn't have been treated that way and (more importantly) that he has as much right to be there as anyone else.

Now, it's an illustration of the kind of hostility that atheists have routinely met (I still remember being told to my face that I could not have any morals because I don't believe in God) that Zorn had felt it necessary to say in raising the issue,

I ask you to consider what the outcry would have been if a lawmaker had launched a similar attack on the beliefs of a religious person.

It's an indication of the continued existence of that bias that I was able to say last year that

[b]ack in the first part of February [2007], USA Today/Gallup did a poll about American attitudes towards certain groups of people as possible presidents. The question was "If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be [fill in the blank], would you vote for that person?"

There were 10 characteristics mentioned, touching on race, gender, age, religion, marital status, and sexual orientation. Of those, there was one, just one single case

in which a majority of Americans were willing to say they would refuse to vote for a candidate based solely on that one characteristic: if he or she was an atheist.

There may be a constitutional separation of church and state, but the idea that there is a practical separation between being churched and state is a fantasy.

However, and this is the entire point of this discussion, is that it is also a measure of true progress that Zorn's expectation was wrong and his caveat, unnecessary. Perhaps the recent string of books and the discussion they've generated - despite the wildly varying quality of both - has had some impact, if only by making "atheism" something that real people actually believe in and other real people actually talk about rather than something creepily alien you've sort of heard of somewhere. I don't expect to see a time when atheism is the common fare of society - and frankly, I really don't even care if it ever is. I do care about an understanding - and about people reaching an understanding - of the difference between faith and knowledge, between the physical laws of nature and the moral laws of humans, and on a very practical level between church and state. I do care about people breaking out of the trap that morality = religion = morality, particularly because so tragically often that shifts to morality = my religion = morality.

And I do care about the statement "I am an atheist" ultimately turning no more heads than "I am a Lutheran" or "I am a Jew" or "I am a Buddhist." It's nice to know that just maybe we're a half-step closer to that than I thought.

A Veritable Plethora of Footnotes: Start with the observation by some that Davis's reference to "the Land of Lincoln" has at least a degree of irony, as it is very unlikely Lincoln held anything like the beliefs Davis imagines that he did. Despite the attempts of some to ascribe the modern understanding of "atheist" to Lincoln, he would more properly be a Deist, a believer in some vaguely-defined form of providence. But he was by no means a Christian.

Next, a commenter on Zorn's post mentioned that

[e]ven Mother Teresa, it turns out, spent the greater part of her life with huge doubt about her religious faith. Most people who are believers spend their lives without really much examining closely what it is they think they believe. When they do examine it closely, the doubts begin.

The latter part of that may be true; indeed examining my own early faith is part of what lead me to be an atheist. But the first part gives me cause to regain some of the respect I used to have for Mother Teresa (before I learned how her help for the poor often resulted in if not involved keeping them that way). It was not quite 40 years ago (!) that I said on my college radio show that

[m]aybe I'm one of those playing at his beliefs, who can't hold to them when the chips are down - or maybe I'm one of those who's trying to believe things he can't live by. I hope not, but these are doubts - self-doubts - that I have had. And maybe it's better than I have such doubts, for the one who's lying to himself can't afford the luxury of self-doubt. [Emphasis added.]

Even as I reject the policies she pursued as misguided, often arrogant and condescending, and ultimately ineffective, knowing that she struggled with her faith gives me some respect for the determination she showed in trying to live that faith as best as she understood it.

Third, speaking of arrogant and condescending, there are a lot of atheists who display both qualities in reeking abundance. In February, making a comment on an atheist website, I referred to people whose religious faith enabled them to "live lives of justice and courage." In response, a self-described "freethinker" - a term I despise - made some snide remarks about my having embraced superstitions and said I should ask such people as I mentioned to explain how their beliefs could be distinguished from them. I replied

As for the people living lives of justice and courage, it was in reference to people I have known personally, in some cases for many years. You are utterly ignorant of their lives, their convictions, and their actions and so utterly incompetent to judge them - and it is you, not I, who have equated their beliefs with “not stepping on cracks” and “knocking on wood,” neither of which beliefs, to my knowledge, have ever inspired anyone to go to prison rather than violate their consciences or walk into the middle of a riot in an attempt to calm things down.

No, it is by no means necessary to believe in a god to live such a life, nor did I in any way suggest that it is - still, such actions, which I have witnessed, do seem to point to that “difference” about which you proposed I inquire.

There was no further response.

Finally, if for some unfathomable reason you want to know something more of my beliefs, you can look here and here. Be aware that there is, perhaps to be expected, some overlap. Specifically, the quotes in the second half of the first (earlier) post are largely repeated in the second (recent) post.

Just passing through

I want to apologize to anyone who's come by here of late and been disturbed or disappointed by the thin posting. I know that there are at least a few folks who come by maybe twice a week to see what's doin' here and to those friends and colleagues I offer particular apologies.

The truth is, I've been pretty sick of late and literally have not felt up to doing anything constructive. The necessities of such as grocery shopping and the laundry are about all I can handle. The majority of my time at the computer has consisted of mindless game-playing.

But I'm on the mend, so that's good. My spirits remain low - the dark cloud I've referred to a couple of times - but I recently learned that it could be (could be) a side effect of a medication I take for my heart. So I'll be addressing that next doctor visit, which is next month. Keep a good thought for me.

In the meantime, I'll keep on trying if you'll keep on dropping by from time to time. Carry it on.

Battlestar Galactigeek

If back very early on March 19, at about 2:12 AM Eastern Time, in fact, you happened to be outside looking at the night sky, and if you happened to have very good viewing conditions, and if you happened to be looking toward the constellation Boötes, perhaps looking for Arcturus (remember to "arc to Arcturus"), and if you didn't close your eyes at the wrong moment, you might have seen a brief flash of light.

You likely would have been surprised. You likely would have wondered what it was. You likely would not have guessed.

What you would have seen was a gamma ray burst from the most distant object ever to be seen with the naked eye: Some 7.5 billion light years away, more than halfway across the visible universe.

"It was a whopper," says [NASA] Swift [satellite] principal investigator Neil Gehrels of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "This blows away every gamma ray burst we've seen so far." ...

Most gamma ray bursts occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. Their cores collapse to form black holes or neutron stars, releasing an intense burst of high-energy gamma rays and ejecting particle jets that rip through space at nearly the speed of light. When the jets plow into surrounding interstellar clouds, they heat the gas to incandescent visibility. It is this gaseous "afterglow" which was visible to the human eye on March 19th.

GRB 080319B's afterglow was 2.5 million times more luminous than the most luminous supernova ever recorded, making it the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe. The most distant previous object that could have been seen by the naked eye is the nearby galaxy M33, a relatively short 2.9 million light-years from Earth.

So this was over two and a-half times further away. Scientists aren't sure why this particular event was so bright; it could have been intrinsically brighter or perhaps its energy release was in a narrow stream pointed directly at Earth.

You can see an animated .gif of the flash (from which the picture here, showing the flash as the dot of light in the center, is taken) at the story link and more info about the burst itself (and a larger animated .gif) at this link.

Oh, if you wonder about the name it was given, it's simple:
GRB = gamma ray burst
080319 = March 19, 2008
B = second (of four) gamma ray bursts detected that day

A quick hit on something that irritated me

Several folks have commented on an exchange between Cokie Roberts and Katrina Vanden Heuvel on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, during which Roberts avowed that "Americans would prefer to win" in Iraq. D-day at Hullabaloo slapped Roberts for

blather[ing] on about what Americans would prefer. Not that she's likely to have talked to anyone who's had to serve in this war or felt the burdens of this war, of course, but she just feels it in her very sensible and serious gut.

In a similar vein, Glenn Greenwald described Roberts as being in line with

the bulk of establishment pundits [who] regularly deploy the same method - simultaneously holding themselves out as Spokesmen for the Regular People while showing complete contempt for what they actually think by lying about their views.

He punctuated the last point being by referring to polls showing in one case that 60% of the public supports sticking to a timetable for withdrawal regardless of what is going on in Iraq at the time and in another case that 61% say that the next president should withdraw most US troops from Iraq within a few months of entering office.

Which is all good and to the - or at least a - point, but neither of them address what I think is a more basic point about Roberts' assertion: It is a fundamentally idiotic argument. Not because it's wrong (which it is) and not because it's presumptuous (which it is) but because it tells us absolutely nothing.

"Do you want to win or do you want to lose?" Who the hell is going to say they want to lose? Hey, you're taking a vacation in Las Vegas! Play some slots! Do you want to win or do you want to lose? Your favorite team is playing today! Do you want them to win or do you want them to lose? Do you want your preferred candidate to win or to lose? Any question phrased that way about anything, including Iraq, is going to get a heck of a lot of support for "winning."

But particularly in the case of Iraq, unless the question is followed up by asking you what you think constitutes "winning" (which Vanden Heuvel raised, to her credit), what you think are the chances of that happening, what you think it will cost to achieve that end, and if you think the price in blood, treasure, and disruption is worth it, any statement about a "preference" for "winning" is utterly vacuous, devoid of both meaning and useful content. Not that much of what people like Roberts have to say has either, but this one just ticked me off and I wish that instead of replying by asking "What is winning?" Vanden Heuvel had said "Don't be stupid."

Comment post #3

In response to a post at Lean Left citing a report about new research dismissing the claim that increased solar activity is the cause of global warming, a commenter brought up the speculation that Mars and Pluto have also warmed, which supposedly shows that people aren't involved in global warming because, of course, there are no people on Mars and Pluto. Someone else linked to a story positively refuting that contention, but that of course was not the end of it. The first person came back with:

We also don’t know why the oceans stopped warming this past 4-5 years even though CO₂ output continued to increase.

He also linked to a story published in The Australian citing a radio interview with a woman from a think tank arguing that the Earth is actually cooling "if you take 1998 as your point of reference." (Which is a ridiculous argument; of course the Earth is cooling if you take as your stating point the hottest year on record. It's interesting how conservatives always want to get to choose when the clock of history both starts and stops.) The commenter insisted "we really don’t understand how climate works very much at all. It casts doubt on the idea that CO₂ causes warming." That's where I came in.

I did just a few minutes of digging to come up with this regarding that linked bit in The Australian, now to be filed under the heading “consider the source.” Working from the inside out:

- The Institute of Public Affairs, where interviewee Jennifer Marohasy (who is a biologist, not a climatologist) works, describes itself as Australia’s “Leading Free Market Think Tank.” It’s a right-wing, corporate funded think tank that is known as a climate change denier.

- Marohasy’s interviewer, Michael Duffy, is a right-winger hired for Counterpoint[, the Australian radio show which broadcast the interview,] specifically for that reason.

- The Australian, where the column [to which the commenter linked] appeared, is part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. empire.

- Column author Christopher Pearson calls himself a “radical libertarian.”

- His column is cited here by one of our resident deniers.

Kind of a perfect storm of mutually-reinforcing ideology.

As for the other link, about how “the oceans stopped warming,” the article mentions a variety of possibilities, including a “hiatus” in warming, loss of heat to the atmosphere as part of the El Nino cycle, the ocean still warming but at a different depth than being measured, even misinterpretation of the data. None of the possibilities mentioned questions either the overall warming trend or the role of CO₂ and it is at best disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

Indeed, that last bit - misinterpretation - calls to mind another time the deniers harped on a supposed anomaly to claim climate change was bogus: when one layer of the atmosphere appeared to be cooling when the models said it should be warming. It turned out it was warming; the initial results has failed to make a correction required by changes in the measuring satellites’ orbits. So may it yet prove to be here. We’ll have to see.

In any event, as the article does make clear to anyone who reads it without “Gotcha!” in mind, even if it turns out that the oceans have not warmed over the last few years, it provides no evidence at all against climate change because, contrary to what seems to be the notion, there is no straight-line relationship between CO₂ concentrations and global warming in general, much less one aspect (ocean warming) in particular. It is a connection, a pattern, but not one that operates on a precise schedule such that a rise in CO₂ levels in a given period must give rise to equivalent warming in that same period.

(Which, I note in passing, makes it amusing how the nanny-nanny naysayers, who not long ago were saying that 100 years of weather records was “not enough” to argue for climate change are now trying to make flat declarations based on spans of five or ten years.)

Finally, it is true that there is much still to be understood about the incredibly complex fluid dynamics of the Earth’s climate. But some is known - and what is known points in one direction: The planet is warming and if we do not take steps necessary to slow or stop that warming, the consequences will be disastrous for human society.

Which, not surprisingly for anyone who has been through one of these "debates," just generated another, different, set of stale claims, all of them referenced in my next reply. (By the way, I should mention that my quotes of the commenter are only very slightly edited, they are pretty much everything he said.)

It would help if you could obtain a basic grasp of science and scientific method before continuing this conversation.

If we can’t predict things with this scientific theory then how how can it be science? If you can’t make a prediction and test for it you can’t conduct an experiment.

First, stop confusing experiment - which is a scientific method - with the whole of science. Controlled experiment is a way of learning about life, the universe, and everything, but it is not the only way. (If it was, then much of, for example, astronomy, cosmology, and relativity physics would not be science.) Another way is to observe, establish hypotheses, make predictions about what will be seen or found through further observation, then see if you’re right. (Which is why astronomy, etc., are science.)

Second, climatology does make predictions about global climate change and it is another example of disingenuousness to suggest I said anything to the contrary. If you know anything about scientific method, then you are familiar with “error bars” and “confidence levels.” Global warming theory does predict with a very high level of confidence (which is about as certain as scientists ever get about something not already observed under controlled laboratory conditions) that increasing CO₂ concentrations will lead to further warming. But there is a range of uncertainty about how much of an increase in the one will lead to how much of an increase in the other and over what time span. In fact, because CO₂ is not the only forcing (factor tending to push effects in a certain direction) on global warming, it’s clear that there is, as I already said, no straight-line relationship between the two.

That does not mean there is no connection, it does not mean that there is no general pattern, it does mean that you can’t say that “this much of an increase in CO₂ this year will lead to this much warming next year.” Which is why both “the oceans haven’t warmed in a few years” argument and the “we’re not setting records every year” argument are both bogus.

Haven’t ice core samples shown that CO₂ increases have followed periods of warming rather than preceded them?

Apparently so, but it’s irrelevant because it has nothing to do with CO₂ being a climate forcing. The most it would show is that CO₂ concentrations did not initiate those cycles. But they did contribute to them and the facts remain that over the course of history, temperature and CO₂ levels have risen and fallen pretty much in tandem and there is a well-established mechanism for CO₂ to add to the greenhouse effect and so enhance warming. Higher CO₂ levels lead to warming. Period.

[W]hat caused those global warming and cooling periods millions of years ago, certainly not burning fossil fuels?

Again with the ignorance. Large-scale cycles of warming and cooling (with smaller cycles of cooling and warming within them) are old stuff to scientists. Don’t come off like you think you’ve come up with something no one else has noticed; you only make yourself look lame.

The issue here is simple: The Earth has its natural cycles. By pouring unprecedented amounts of CO₂ into the environment, we are screwing around with those cycles. Yes, the Earth no doubt could take everything we throw at it and re-establish its own climate equilibrium - but that could easily take millennia. Suppose it took 10,000 years, no, suppose it took just 1000 years. That’s almost nothing to the Earth, the rough equivalent of 15 minutes to someone who’s lived 100 years. But to us, a thousand years of climate disruption could easily be devastating.

Which brings me to this:

How do we know the consequences of warming will be disastrous for human society?

The IPCC has laid it out in necessarily brutal language. Increased droughts. Crop failures. Hunger. Inundated coastlines - which is where most of the human population lives, leading to a dramatic increase in refugees. Disrupted economies. Resource wars. A greater number of more severe storms, as weather events become concentrated - i.e., you may, for example, get the same amount of rain but get it in a small number of destructive, raging storms rather than a large number of ordinary rainstorms. The spread of disease and crop blights as areas previously too cold for certain pests become warmer. The list goes on.

The IPCC does say that certain areas will actually benefit in the short term but even those areas in the longer term will suffer. The idea that some people advance, that all the “bad stuff” will happen “over there” somewhere leaving “us” unaffected, is not only grossly immoral it is shamefully short-sighted and ultimate delusional.

Will all that necessarily happen? Of course not and no scientist worthy of the name will guarantee that all hell will break loose. But is it, based on best current knowledge, best current understanding, a reasonable forecast of what will happen if we don’t act, even more, one that can be made with a high level of confidence? Absolutely. Period.

Final point:

The Global Climate is always changing.

Don’t be childish.

That lead to the denier grousing that I was "belittling" and "insulting" him and suggesting that as a result he was unable to consider to my arguments. Others chided him for being oversensitive but also noted that it is frustrating to hear the same arguments every single time the issue comes up. My own response on that line:

Perhaps my language was somewhat intemperate, but the truth is, your comments made it clear to me that you are criticizing a scientific result without understanding the process by which it was achieved, something like criticizing the route I drove from Redruth to Mousehole without knowing where they both are - which for for the sake of the illustration I’m assuming you don’t.

Note that this was not a matter of understanding the science - you don’t have to be a climatologist to have a sufficient understanding of global warming - but the process. It certainly appeared, that is, that you were simply reciting arguments made by others without understanding either those arguments or their refutations.

And yes, that made me impatient, as did the arguments based on the frankly banal observations that there was climate change before there were humans and that climate is not static. (Parenthetical note on the latter: I continue to assume you’re not confusing climate with weather.)

As others have said, you’re making arguments we have heard over and over again. It’s hard to stay calm and dispassionate when faced yet one more time with the same arguments that have been positively refuted long ago. How would you feel if every time you mentioned, say, space travel someone responded with arguments about crystalline spheres and how the moon landings were faked?

The bottom line here is that the science of global warming is, in an overall, general, sense, settled. Global warming is real, it is happening, it is related to CO₂ levels, CO₂ is a forcing, we are screwing with the climate. The remaining questions - and there are questions here - revolve around exactly what the effects will be, exactly how bad they will be, exactly when the impacts of various effects will be felt, and exactly how dramatic our response has to be to head off the worst. (That last point bears repeating: It is not if dramatic action is needed, but just how dramatic it needs to be.)

I’ll also second [another commenter's] contention that he and I can both be harsh. In fact, there is one topic I will no longer discuss here because every time we tried we wound up having to apologize to each other a couple of days later. In comparison to some of what we’ve thrown at each other, hell, here I was damned polite.

Finally, a footnote related to your remark about land and growing seasons: A one-meter rise in ocean levels, which is within the range projected for the next 100 years, would inundate one-third of the world’s arable land.

One final argument was raised, a refinement of the "how do we know the warming will be catastrophic" argument. However, it, too was based on incorrect information and a misunderstanding.

Why is it wrong to look at the warming from 1000-1300 and see increased prosperity of human civilization and the population of Europe double in that time period, and then turn around and say, we know that this warming will destroy us?

The so-called “Medieval Warming Period” c. 1000-1300 did not exist.

It was at most a time of some slightly warmer periods in an overall millenium-long (or longer) cooling trend. (Remember how I mentioned small reverse cycles within larger ones?) In particular, what data exists simply does not support the contention made by some of the naysayers that temperatures were as warm or warmer than now; in fact they ranged up to about 1 degree C. (1.8 degrees F.) colder and none were as warm. And even those periods of moderation appear to have been a regional event, unlike the worldwide changes being seen now.

There were various reasons for European growth during the period you mention, including greater political and social stability, improved technology, and the breakdown of the feudal system. A period of global warming such as we’re seeing now was not among them.

And there is one more reason why we shouldn’t use 1000-1300 C.E. for sociological predictions of climate impact: It was, as sometimes it’s necessary to point out these sorts of things, 700-1000 years ago. Politically, socially, culturally, environmentally, scientifically, technologically, we simply do not live in that world. History can be a good teacher - but its wisdom is not limitless and the past remains, as L. P. Hartley famously called it, “a foreign country” with which we must first share a language to obtain what wisdom there is.

Footnote: If you like, you can read the original post and all comments at this link. Most of the links included here were not in my comments at the site and I have corrected a couple of grammatical errors.

Footnote Two: Subsequent to this exchange, I had to retract the assertion that a one-meter rise in sea level would inundate one-third of the world's arable land because while I had seen the figure in more than one place, I could not find any "official" source, that is, one that could cite actual scientific data. I did find figures for certain countries showing a 15% to 20% loss of arable land via inundation, but nothing saying 33% worldwide.

I would, however, note that the actual loss of arable land from sea level rise is more than just what is flooded; salinization of lands, deltas, and water supplies will spread the effects further. Additionally, including all effects of global warming (including such as increased drought) will lead to the loss of far more arable land than sea level rise alone; it could, for example, be a contributing factor to the loss of as much as 75% of Africa's rain-fed cropland.

Comment post #2

Over at The Core 4, a post linked to an article in Salon about the trial of a woman supposed to be an "eco-terrorist." The article focused on how the definition of what constitutes "terrorism" has been expanded since 9/11, in some ways specifically to include environmental and animal rights activists, and raised questions about the government's conduct in the particular case, suggesting other defendants may have been pressured into naming a possibly innocent person.

In response, a commenter, after saying "I know I run the risk of having my moderate-liberal membership card revoked here," wrote:

Why is calling the destruction of property in the name of eco-protest NOT a terrorist act? ... Aren’t the real scumbags in this case ... the other eco-protesters who appear to have randomly chosen Ms. [Briana] Waters[, the woman the article discussed,] to throw under the bus as a way to “cooperate”?

[A]sserting that just because the justice department is using the new terrorism provisions to hunt down destructive protesters it will lead to persecution of non-violent protesters ... is paranoid sophistry. ...

I am all for stiff penalties for anyone engaged in the destruction of life or property, or putting life or property at risk, for the sake of their cause. If this frightens the environmentalists, good! They should keep better track of who they are associating or collaborating with....

Seeing concern with government coercion and threats to civil liberties labeled "paranoid sophistry" certainly didn't sit well with me, so I replied.

Okay, your card can get revoked right along with mine in the “courteous discourse” society.

You are wrong on just about every single count.

You don’t see the connection? How about that the definition of “terrorism” has been changed and expanded dramatically so that things there were previously property crimes are now tossed into the “Terrorism! Terrorism! Be afraid! They’re everywhere!” pot? As the article noted, “terrorism” used to require “violence perpetrated against non-combatants.” Now all that’s required is for a crime to be “calculated to influence ... government.” By that definition, during Vietnam anyone who burned a draft card was a terrorist.

Or how about the fact that “intentionally damag[ing] or cause[ing] the loss of any real or personal property used by an animal enterprise” is now defined in federal law as “terrorism?” Or the fact that three states now say that, in the words of the article, “any act of destruction aimed at protecting animal rights or punishing ecological despoilers” is terrorism? Some radical members of the Humane Society break into a puppy mill one night, photographing and taping the horrible conditions there, which they publicize to advocate for stricter laws. They have broken the law to influence government, they have damaged personal property of the puppy mill, and they have done so to protect animal rights. They are terrorists three times over!

Which makes your sneer about “paranoid sophistry” as bogus as it’s possible to be. Not only because the designation of “terrorist” is already being applied to people who would not have qualified as such previously but also because it is hideously bad public policy to give increased power to government under the assumption that it will never be used. Or are you prepared to assume that only “the bad guys” will be the target of warrantless wiretaps and NSL searches?

As for the “scumbags,” the FBI’s own records say that [cooperating defendant] Jennifer Kolar named four people as accomplices - but it wasn’t until some weeks later, during the fifth or sixth “interview,” that Kolar was able to secure a plea bargain by “remembering” that Waters had been there. Note, too, that the feds had shown pictures of Waters to Kolar and that cooperating defendant Stanislas Meyerhoff was also asked about Waters by name. That reads to me that the feds were for whatever reason determined to get Waters and told Kolar, in effect, “you want the deal? You name Waters.” If Kolar threw Waters under the bus, then it damn well was the feds that dragged her to the curb and damn well the feds that drove the bus.

Finally, you’re glad that environmentalists are frightened that potentially, even nonviolent protests could be regarded as “terrorism?” You’re happy that people can be intimidated from expressing their views (which is exactly what “chilling effect” means) not because of what they say or do but because of what some people or groups they are “associating with” say or do? I find that appalling.

And a footnote, a separate point, a purely philosophical question not related to the above but prompted by your comment: You say “I am all for stiff penalties for anyone engaged in the destruction of life or property, or putting life or property at risk, for the sake of their cause.” What penalty, then, for soldiers in combat, who are most assuredly doing precisely that? Do they get a pass? On what basis? Or is it that what is done by governments gets a pass? On what basis?

I really would have liked to have gotten a discussion going on that last, independent point, but there was no response to it.

Footnote: Again, if you want to see the orignal post, the linked article, and all comments, this is the link.

Comment post #1

Okay, my first case of post-cheating by putting up comments I made at another site. Maybe there's not a real good point to this, but I find, especially when I'm in a funk, that I do much better at responding to statements than originating one. Maybe because what someone else has said gives me something to focus on, I don't know. Doesn't matter.

Anyway, poster child for dipshits Jonah Goldberg had a column in the Los Angeles Times recently, noted at Orcinus, in which he declared the little car attachments displaying fish with feet and saying "Darwin" to be an "offensive" display by people who think they're better than Christians. It was typically petulant and whiny, punctuated by the bizarre assertion that he could take the people with Darwin symbols more seriously if they would attack Muslims. My comment:

I grew up Roman Catholic and while I was aware of the fish symbolism, I do not recall a single occasion when I heard it referred to as, what did Goldberg call it, "a cherished symbol" of Christianity. The only truly "cherished symbol," at least in my upbringing, was the cross.

(Sidebar: According to what I've been given to understand, Goldberg has the origin wrong. It did not arise from the loaves and fishes miracle but from Jesus' saying that the first apostles - who were fishermen - would henceforth be "fishers of men." Thus, as a Christian you were among those who had been "gathered up" into the faith. And, of course, there was been religious symbolism using fish long before Christianity.)

Which means, as would be obvious to anyone less insecure in their socio-political beliefs than Goldberg apparently is, the Darwin symbol is in no way a "mockery" of the fish symbol, although it is in some ways a response to it.

A critical point which Goldberg - naturally - leaves out is that the popularity of the fish symbol as bumper sticker and car magnet arose in conjunction with the increased assertion of right wing Christianity; it's meaning, in that context, was not simply "I am a Christian" but "I am a fundamentalist Christian" with its associated belief in Biblical inerrancy.

The Darwin symbol was a way of answering "I believe in the Bible" with "I believe in science." That is a positive assertion of belief and can be considered a negative attack only in the very narrow sense that any expression of a different conviction can be regarded as such.

Just who is attacking who is illustrated by the "truth" pin [illustrated at the original post]. "Darwin" - shorthand for evolution (and thus most all of modern biology) - is to be swallowed by capital-T "Truth," such "truth" being something that no scientist (or anyone who understands science) - distinctly unlike the fundamentalists - would ever claim to know.

By the way, in the course of checking on my memory re: fish symbolism, I can across a fun site about "the fish wars." This is the link.

Doesn't it seem that for people who act like they have "Get Over It" tattooed on their foreheads for all others to see, right-wingers are awfully quick to gripe and sniffle about some imagined offense? I've called them whining crybabies; someone in comments at the Orcinus post used another phrase I like: drama queens of the right wing. I think I'll be using that.

Footnote: You can read David Neiwert's post and all other comments at this link.

My version of the dream

Now I'm embarrassed. I posted something here only to discover shortly thereafter that I had posted almost exactly the same thing, drawn from the same source, just three months ago. So instead of just saying the same thing over again, I have dumped the post and instead will just link you to that earlier one, where I said that

quoting yet another thing I wrote a long time ago and quoting as accurately as I can from memory, "our strongest, surest beliefs are those we don't even know we have until we find them within us." That is, our deepest, most abiding beliefs and commitments are not born consciously of careful philosophical argumentation and reasoned analysis but grow naturally from our root moral and ethical convictions. That argumentation, those analyses, can give form to those convictions, they can provide them with substance and weight, but they do not drive them - rather, they are driven by them.

So despite my tendency to intellectualization, to try to argue my points rationally with facts and figures and references, still it's important - for me if not for my listeners - to drop away on occasion from "here's the data, here's the logic, here's the conclusion" to the fundamental, baseline, radical place where I can say, simply, I believe.

I believe that life is our highest good and advancing life is our highest ideal. I believe....

You can read the rest there.

Going back to "I believe" is a way for me to center, to, if you will, rediscover my moral roots, something I need to do right now. In that same linked post I made mention of a speech I gave some years ago in which I pledged to never give up on the dream of true justice. Truth be told, I have come close to breaking that pledge a couple of times. But as MLK said,

Keep moving! If you can't fly, run! If you can't run, walk! If you can't walk, crawl! But by all means, keep moving.

I can only promise to do my best. As little as that is and it is surely not above a crawl. But as I said myself, and as I know on my better days, little may be little, but it is not nothing.

Forty years

The video is via Dday at Hullabaloo.

Even at this distance, even at 40 years, I can't watch this without choking up at the fact that this was the last speech he ever gave, coming less than 24 hours before his murder. That the very last, the very last, public words he spoke were:

And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

I remember hearing - I don't know how true this is, but I did hear it - that at that particular time he was physically exhausted and emotionally spent and so either he wasn't supposed to speak that night or that he hadn't prepared a speech. Either way, if so it means the whole speech was extemporaneous, making it all the more remarkable.

Watching the video - and I believe this is without the benefit of hindsight, but of course I can't prove that - you can see the weariness in his face. This is a tired man, a man who needs some time away from the arena but who knows he is unlikely to allowed it. And you can hear the resignation in his tone and in his words, the magnificent resignation of his namesake, who, not knowing what the future would hold and even possibly doubting he would have one, still stood before the assembled power of the Catholic Church at the Diet of Worms and said "it is neither safe nor honorable to act against conscience" and added, at least according to tradition, "Here I stand. I can do no other."

Martin Luther King, Jr. stood in the halls of conscience and could do no other. Unlike his namesake, his resignation, sadly, proved well-founded and we are the lesser for it. But what we are called on to do, still called on to do these decades later, is in the words of a different sort of martyr, "Don't mourn. Organize." To uphold the message, respect the messenger, and deny both to the bigots, buffoons, bozos, and bastards of the rabid right who are trying to reinvent Martin Luther King as Alan Keyes.

Footnote: August J. Pollak of Some Guy With a Website has the text of the speech Robert F. Kennedy gave that night in response to the news. He also provided this link to where you can hear the speech. Knowing as we do what happened just two months later, June 5, 1968, it has its own special poignancy.

Footnote to the Footnote: Listening to the speech, hearing RFK's soft Hyannis accent, noting that he quoted Aeschylus and referred to the ancient Greeks, I found myself wondering what the present-day right-wing smear merchants would have done to this "effeminate, poetry-quoting, elitist New England liberal." How far we have fallen.

The days pass by

Late the other night - or, more exactly, early the other morning - as I was lying in bed wondering why I wasn’t asleep, the line “The days pass by, too quickly it seems” popped into my head. It seemed like it had to be something I’d heard somewhere, a line from a poem or a song or something. I couldn’t figure out where.

I did an online search and found a few examples of others who had used the phrase or something similar (most substituted “time passes” for “the days pass”) but nothing to indicate the source. I still think there must be one because the structure “too quickly it seems” just doesn’t sound like the way someone would ordinarily talk. The closest I’ve come has been a line from Tom Paxton’s “The Marvelous Toy,” which goes “the years have gone by too quickly, it seems.” I suppose that could be where I got it from, but I don’t know - the feel is wrong. In the song, the words are at most a little nostalgic and really not even that. But the way the line played in my head, it was genuinely melancholy with a real sense of loss. So I’m still not sure.

That keeps running through my thoughts as I contemplate the fact that I haven’t written anything here for over a week and a half. Time lost, words lost. It’s hard to explain exactly why. It’s not that I’ve been away somewhere or that I’ve just been completely out of it - I’ve been right here and I’ve kept on reading some of my usual blogs. I’ve even posted comments on some. (I’m actually considering putting some of them up here as a cheap way of getting some posts done. We’ll see if that happens.)

Part of the reason, I have to say, is found in another phrase - but the source of this one I know, because it’s mine. (Well, sort of. I’ve heard others use it but I know I used it before I heard it from anyone else, so even if I didn’t originate it, I still made it up for myself.)

“The world is too much with me.”

The world is too much with me. It describes those times when I become aware. Truly aware. Aware of the level of pain in the world around me, aware of the suffering, the loss, the despair, the desperation, the bloodshed, the mindless hatreds persisting for generations over differences that in the long run of history don’t even rise to the level of petty. Aware that somewhere in the world, right at this very moment, an agent of the United States is torturing a prisoner, a woman in Peru is covered with bruises from a beating by her husband, a child is dying from hunger in Eritrea, a man is being denied medical care and imprisoned in China for advocating human rights, an Afghan family is sitting in a refugee camp in Pakistan, wondering where they will go when the camp closes in two weeks, a Bedouin family in a ramshackle shanty town in the Negev with neither running water nor electricity is fearing their home will be demolished by the same Israeli authorities that forced them off their land in the first place - and everywhere, everywhere, the tears of mourners except where there are no tears left to cry.

Most of the time I intellectualize. I know the numbers, the policies, and the politics; I rant and rave and denounce and decry. But I intellectualize. The ranting is moral, the denunciations are logical, but still there is an emotional distance and both the anger and the hope that lies behind it are driven less by passion than by principle.

Hope? Yes, hope. As I wrote some years ago,

[e]ven many professional grouches (like me) are actually unregenerate romantics whose sharp words are honed on the inexplicable, indefensible, yet utterly unshakable conviction that things not only can be but must be better than they are.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I am aware and that "unshakable" conviction gets shaken. The experience is something like the almost-cliché one of looking at a clear night sky and feeling how small you are compared to the universe. Except without the panache and without the awe. Just with the overwhelming. The feeling is not inspiring. It’s debilitating.

I hope I offend no one by relating it to a description of autism. I have heard it suggested that autism can be understood as a breakdown of the brain’s ability to filter sensory input, so the child is overwhelmed with information, unable to determine what information reaching the brain is more worthy of attention than any another information.

We filter all the time, we couldn’t get by if we didn’t. For example, what is your left little toe feeling right now? If you pay attention, you can sense it, feel it in your sock or your slipper or against the rug or whatever- but until you paid attention to it, you were unaware of it. But that sensory input, those nerve impulses, were reaching your brain the whole time. Your brain just knew they were unimportant and so you ignored them at the level of awareness. It's the same as the experience I imagine almost every one of us has had of being startled by a noise - only to realize that it was actually because the furnace or the refrigerator turned off, had stopped making a noise. The sound had reached our ears which alerted our brain to it the entire time but we dismissed it from conscious awareness until a sudden change indicated something that might require our attention.

How would you, how would any of us, function if we were trying to consciously deal with every bit of sensory input our brain is receiving at any given moment - everything seen, everything heard, everything felt, smelled, tasted? We couldn’t. We'd be overwhelmed. And we well might, as autistic children often do, focus almost obsessively on some object or some simple activity in a desperate attempt to establish some order, some sense of control.

It’s something - a little something - like that for me. And I withdraw to and focus on computer games, Sci-fi channel, and books on some aspect of science. To things that don’t involve dealing with the “real,” present, on-going, events-unfolding, world.

Understand, this is not a feeling that there is only suffering, pain, and death in this life. It is not some sort of hip existential angst about the dark hand of fate. Even at such times I know there is beauty, happiness, even joy; that people fall in love, make love, are loved; that children play and laugh; that friends embrace; that there is learning, growth, discovery; that at this very instant, someone, somewhere, is being amazed by a leaf or a star or the antics of an animal or what they see through a microscope.

So it is not exactly despair in the usually understood sense of the term, although it’s somewhat akin to it. It is, rather and again, an overwhelming, a debilitating, sense, a sense of the sheer enormity of the task before us. The sheer weight of so much needs to be done. It just doesn’t seem possible to do it. That is, it’s not despair in the sense that it seems there is nothing good but it is a sort of hopelessness in the sense of it seeming impossible to have an adequate response to what there is that is bad. And from that bad emerge the cries for help, the calls for justice, the demands to do something, and every cry, every call, every demand, seems as worthy of respect and response as every other. The result is that I feel paralyzed, exhausted, and doing things like writing this blog seem so idiotically pointless that I just don’t have the energy to do it.

Thus my silence.

Which is doubly unfortunate because in a reinforcing cycle it undermines my ability to do here what I want to do.

During another low period, just about three years ago, I quoted something from the very first issue of the print version of Lotus, which came out for a couple of years in the early 1990s.

Some [folks] are good at petitioning. I'm not. Some are good at fundraising. I'm not. I lack both the focused concentration necessary for large-scale organizing and the patience for phone-banking. The list of my inadequacies is embarrassingly long.

My strength happens to be words. Advocacy. Writing. Giving speeches. And like that. So doing this is, simply, something I think I can contribute. My dream for Lotus is that it can be a voice of conscience and a tool in an on-going movement, something of use to the many who keep on keepin' on, something of value to those whose skills in other areas so greatly exceeds mine. Something that helps.

That also was and is the idea of this. To be something that helps. But to do that it has to be read and to be read it has to have some content to read. And when I hit a low period I don’t post so people don’t read so fewer people come by which is discouraging so it’s even harder to find the energy to post, so.... I have to admit that I’m enough of an egoist that it would have made a real difference if over these last, what, 12 days? if someone had emailed me or left a comment along the lines of “Hey, where ya been?” That my absence had been noted, even regretted.

Now I’m starting to whine, which I despise, so I’ll stop except to say that something I am not at all good at is promoting myself. If anyone has any suggestions (beyond reciprocal links and commenting on other blogs), I’d love to hear some.

Oh, and to say just one more thing: What got me going to write this was the realization that today, today, today, today of all days, this day, how dare I on this day say that I am “too tired” to write a damn blog?