Fragilecologies Blog

“I’m not 24 anymore: Up Close and Personal” Mickey Glantz August 27, 2010

Posted by mglantz | Posted on 27-08-2010

Tags: aging, conflict, mind over matter, Perceptions, sports, tennis

Perhaps this is just a 70 year-old’s lament: alas, he’s not 24 anymore. For those of us at this end of the age spectrum, even for those who are still pretty energetic, there is an on-going conflict between mind and body. As always, the body sets the physical limits on what we can do on a sustainable basis, one-off activities notwithstanding.

mind over matter?

The conflict I am talking about is taking place constantly these days between a 24 year-old mindset and this 70 year old’s bodily constraints. As much as I might hate to admit it, this body is slowly but increasingly imposing new constraints on what I can physically do in a sustained way. Herein lay the source of my particular conflict: I still want to engage in strenuous physical activities, like a typical 24 year old.

I see guys play soccer, shoot basketballs and engage in Frisbee games, and I have the urge to ask if I can join them. Recently, I played in a tennis tournament but refused to be assigned to my age bracket, 70 and over. Instead, I chose to play in the 4.5 level in which a player of any age could compete. I lost, as most people, including myself, expected. But I lost to a 40 year old in a 2-hour, 3-set match that ended in a tie-breaker. Though I thought I would likely lose playing a 40-something, I did not expect the match to take so long or to be so close.

The real reason I decided to play in a tournament, after having been absent from them for two decades or more, was a desire to relive the feeling of one-on-one competition that I used to have in tournaments. Would I feel pressure to win my matches or feel anxiety with each point, game or set? Would I become hungry for victory? The fact is that I just wanted to feel once more the ambiance of tennis competition. I wanted to see if it would be like it had been several decades earlier, when I started to compete as a teenager. Little did I think that I would walk away with a psychological victory. Indeed, I lost but I won. I took a much younger guy to 3 sets and a tie-breaker.

Near the end of the match I started to think “What if I were to win?” I would have had to play another prolonged match in the hot midday sun. It was not an appealing scenario, especially when I had already gotten what I had hoped for by participating in the tournament; I felt like I was 24 again. Subconsciously, I got to thinking that stamina-wise and ego-wise I had already won, so now it was OK to lose. In this instance at the age of 70 I got to relive my tennis youth for a couple of hours.

It's worth a try!

But my mind continues to act like that of a 24 year old, posing other physical tests for my body to endure. For example, during a recent trip to Brazil, I spent considerable time and energy, mine and that of others, trying to find a school for Brazilian jiu jitsu, capoeira, in order to take a few basic lessons. I have been fascinated by its need for balance and flexibility, which is something we seem to have diminishing quantities of at my end of the age spectrum. I can get them at home but wanted to get them in the country of origin of capoeira. Between conference lectures, I tried to find a capoeira master to teach me basic stuff but to no avail. My Portuguese level of fluency was not high enough to make clear that I just wanted to “feel” what capoeira movement would be like (the mind) and to “see” what the body could endure.

The awareness of my subliminal mind-body conflict came to me during a trip to Shanghai earlier this year. Early in the morning on a main pedestrian street I watched people of all ages exercising in unison to chants or to music. I was attracted and amazed watching the most elderly of these groups by their balance and apparent minds over—or at least harmony with—their bodies. As old as they were, they were amazingly agile, and I thought of my early morning ritual of putting on socks while standing, of how lose my balance and fall over most of the time.

typical scene early in a Shanghai morning

I got to thinking that I could learn from them and others on how to maintain physical balance by focusing my thoughts on the need for balance. It seems to me that those elderly Chinese people exercising, like those who engage in capoeira as well as in other sports activities that typically favor young people (volleyball, Frisbee games, soccer, etc.), had been able to find a compromise between mind (what one thinks they can do) and body (what they are physically capable of doing).

Aging is, well, just that, aging. But I’ve come to believe that the conflict between mind and body is a healthy one, until one reaches its limit. Personally, I hope to continue to think like a 24 year old as long as I can and in doing so continue to think about and try to engage in activities that allow me to taste, even briefly, the ambiance of physical competition I enjoyed when I was a lot younger. I am sure that my body will let my mind know when its time to compromise and accept the limits imposed by my age. Only then will I have to settle for watching rather than doing.

Here is a mind-over-body experiment

EPILOGUE

While writing this, an incident came to mind. I was at work one day walking at a fast pace down the hall (my normal pace) when a 20-something researcher came out of his cubicle on purpose to ask me a question as I passed his door: “Why do you always walk so fast in the corridors,” he asked. A weird question, so I had no stock answer. I thought for a second (not breaking my stride) and said over my shoulder as I passed him, “because I have something to do.”

GUEST EDITORIAL: “Spain’s Climate Challenge: A brief reality check.” Lino Naranjo, Meteo Galicia. August 9, 2010

Posted by mglantz | Posted on 05-08-2010

Category : Climate Change, Fragilecologies, Guest Articles

Tags: climate, Climate Change, climate politics, global warming, iberia, meteo galicia, spain

For many people in the World, Spain brings to mind a sunny warm country with beaches along the Mediterranean Coast, with excellent food, friendly people and “Fiestas” with brave bulls. They might also think of Pamplona and the “running of the bulls” on narrow streets filled with young people. It is like talking about a piece of the tropics in the heart of Old Europe. However, the real Spain is much more than that. In fact it is vastly different from and broader than this touristic view.

If we travel across the country from, South to North and from West to East, we come to realize that Spain is like a kaleidoscope with different cultures, peoples, languages, and especially different landscapes and very different climates. From the Mediterranean, passing across the arid, hot land of its South, to the cold and rainy regions of its North, Spain could be considered a paradigm of diversity, far from stereotypes built up over the decades. However, there is one thing where no difference exists among regions; that is, a varying but high vulnerability to the consequences of long-term climate change (a.k.a. global warming).

One of the main pillars of the Spanish economy is its climate; in fact, climate-dependent activities like tourism, the wine industry, commercial livestock, are worldwide signatures of Spain. Climate in the Iberian Peninsula is becoming warmer and drier. Change rates are different among regions but warming trends are roughly the same. Regarding temperatures, The National Agency for Meteorology (AEMET) and others regional meteorological institutions such as Meteo Galicia in the Northwest have been identifying warming trends of between 0.4 to 0.8 ºC since the 1970s. That is about four times the long-term trend for the last 150 years. Precipitation seems to be a trend toward drier conditions in the past decades, mainly in the South and East, although in the North no significant change has been detected. Climatic projections from a standard GEI emission scenario indicate that these trends should continue in the next several decades.

In addition, there is an increasing worry that weather extremes appear to becoming more frequent; severe drought in the South, heavy winds and storms in the North, heat waves in the summer and snowstorms in the winter are becoming usual headlines in the newspapers.

All these changes, regardless of whether they are part of a long-term climate change or simply a multi-decade fluctuation of climate’s natural variability, present a strong challenge now and in the future of governance to the various levels of government in Spain, and more broadly on the Iberian Peninsula.

Aside from the impacts of climate variability, extremes and change, Spain is also undergoing a long- lasting economic crisis along with stormy societal conflicts that compromise its own surveillance as a Nation. Therefore, consequences of the additional stress generated from a changing climate could be devastating, regardless of the regions, landscapes, cultural differences or languages, or people into this kaleidoscope called Spain.

A few centuries of US-Mexico interactions: Going Full Circle? Mickey Glantz. 3 August 2010

Posted by mglantz | Posted on 03-08-2010

Category : Fragilecologies

Tags: history, illegal immigrants, mexico, United States, US

Some months ago I came across a high school world history book (Human Achievement, 1967 by M.B. Petrovich and P.D. Curtin). It was a typical history book in that it began with discussions of the Egyptian, Roman and the Greek civilizations and ending up with the state of the globe in the post World War II era. It was filled pictures, drawings and with maps showing the changes in national political power throughout millennia. While each map merits a book to describe the times it represented, one map captured my attention when I first saw it; and it still does. I think about what it might mean or how it might be viewed not in an historical context of a century and a half ago but in the context of today’s domestic politics of the US and of Mexico.

The map shows that much of the culture if not the territory west of the Louisiana Purchase (that is, west of the Mississippi River) was dominated by Mexico (though, in fact, the territory was inhabited by a wide range of Native American civilizations).

Though all of that land was in some way influenced by Mexican culture or politics, bit by bit it was taken over by war or diplomacy by the United States pursuing as early as the late 1830s its policy of “Manifest Destiny.” All the above is my recollection of American history, inaccuracies notwithstanding.

Today, there is a lot of controversy over the issue of illegal immigrants focused mainly on those immigrants coming from Mexico. The US Government has a Border Patrol spread thin along the 1956-mile (~3200 km) border. Groups of vigilantes have emerged to protect the border against illegal alien crossings. The federal government has built fences/walls to keep people from illegally crossing into the US. The State of Arizona has perhaps taken the biggest step so far, when its legislature passed a state law that seeks to weed out illegal aliens based on how a person looks, dresses, walks, talks or even who that person hangs out with and where.

Police are given extraordinary subjective powers to determine “the illegal aliens among us.” Much of the racial profiling aspects of the law was recently struck down as being unconstitutional, but the federal judges ruling will likely be challenged by the Governor of Arizona. There is a lot of angst as well as racial or ethno-language bias in America these days. During hard economic times, there is a backlash by the dominant culture against minority cultures.

The North America map of 1821 keeps reappearing in my mind. It causes me to wonder if the parts of North America that was lost by Mexico during the 1800s due to war and diplomacy are being regained by Mexico in other ways. In the absence of conquests related to Americans’ Manifest Destiny” policy, might not today’s map of North America been still represented by the map of 1821?

Most Americans likely have not seen that 1821 political map, except for a brief moment in middle or high school. Out of sight; out of mind. In the mid-1990s American Political Scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote about “the clash of civilizations” in reference to his belief that “that people’s cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world” [from wikipedia]. Today, we are witnessing what I believe is really a clash of cultures, and even civilizations, being played out on the North American continent and no one knows how best to address it.

“It’s the 100th day since the start of the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico … But, it’s the 13,000th day(!) since the discovery of the Gulf ‘s Dead Zone.” Michael Glantz. 29 July 2010.

Posted by mglantz | Posted on 29-07-2010

Category : Climate Affairs, Disasters, Environment and Society, Fragilecologies

“It’s the 100th day since the start of the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico …
But, it’s the 13,000th day(!) since the discovery of the Gulf ‘s Dead Zone”

Michael Glantz. 29 July 2010.

Well, the leaking oil well on the Gulf of Mexico seabed has finally been capped. Soon it will be recorded permanently in historical records as the worst environmental disaster in the US history to date, beating out the Exxon Valdez oil spill (where was that spill? Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Most people don’t remember that). Soon, I believe most Americans (except those along the Gulf Coast) will put the BP leak — despite its widespread environmental damage and huge ecological, economic and social costs — in the back of their minds (who remembers the Torrey Canyon spill or the Amoco Cadiz spill?). I call that “discounting the past,” that is, societies think that history is of decreasing value as one looks back in time. It’s the opposite of what economists refer to as “discounting the future” of, say, the dollar.

Back in 1974, Dr. R. Eugene Turner, Director of Coastal Ecology Institute at Louisiana State University, discovered a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead zone is the result of runoff from cities, farmlands, feedlots and factories into the mighty Mississippi River. This River basin drains about 40% of the continental United States. Herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers among other chemicals are released on a routine basis throughout the basin. In the springtime they accumulate of the Gulf Coast forming an 8000+ square mile region, which adversely affects all living marine resources.

Each year the dead zone increases in size and has an increasingly negative impact on the fish population and in turn on the commercial fisheries. As I wondered in an earlier podcast titled “Pick Your Poison!”, why has there been no constant, even deafening, uproar about either the causes or the consequences of the ever-increasing dead zone? Although it is not the only dead zone in the world (there are an estimated 300 of them of varying sizes worldwide), it is OUR dead zone.

While in the midst of having a coffee at a local Starbucks, I began to jot down a few ideas about a comparison between the BP spill and the dead zone. The ideas herein do not represent the results of a systematic review but are only first-order thoughts. Such a comparison would make for an interesting class project or paper. Feel free to send me your thoughts, comments, corrections and additional comparisons related to the chart below.

“Clean Coal: ‘clean’ as an adjective or as a verb?” Mickey Glantz, 20 July 2010

Posted by mglantz | Posted on 21-07-2010

Category : Fragilecologies

Tags: clean coal, coal, environmentalists

The three forms of fossil fuels are coal, oil and natural gas. Coal is the dirtiest and natural gas is relatively clean. When burned, the different types of coal range from dirty to dirtiest with respect to the amount of carbon dioxide released to the air. Carbon dioxide is the leading greenhouse gas of concern.

Clean coal. What a great concept, and timely too, if it works. There is so much coal in the ground just waiting to be burned. Many industrialized and developing economies are heavily dependent on burning coal in their drive toward fulfilling their energy demands as well as needs for economic growth and development.

According to the International Energy Outlook 2009 reference case,

World coal consumption increases by 49 percent over the projection period … from 2006 to 2030. The growth rate for coal consumption is fairly even over the period, averaging 1.9 percent per year from 2006 to 2015 and 1.6 percent per year from 2015 to 2030—generally reflecting the growth trends for both world GDP and world primary energy consumption. Regionally, increased use of coal in non-OECD countries accounts for 94 percent of the total growth in world coal consumption over the entire period.

I’m not sure exactly when the coal industry introduced its concept of “clean coal,” but it advertises the idea a lot on TV in the United States. The industry wants to create an image to the public that coal emissions could be cleaned when burned. Many challenge its claim that coal can be sufficiently cleaned to keep the planet cool, or at least to keep the atmosphere from heating up further.

In fact clean coal is a good “what ought to be” goal, that is, no resulting carbon dioxide emissions from coal on combustion). However, the reality about carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal is that it is no longer acceptable to many governments. Keep in mind that burning coal leads not only to global warming but also leads to air pollution and acid rain with known adverse implications for the health of humans and ecosystems, respectively. I imagine that, if the atmosphere had a chance to vote in the US Congress, it would vote against the use of coal, given the way that coal is burned today.

Obviously, countries will continue to burn coal to fuel their economies. What is worrisome is that some of those countries have large reserves and intend to use them such as China, India, Russia and the United States. Economically, it is the energy of choice because it is relatively cheap and accessible. The use of coal can be slowed down but not curtailed, at last not in the foreseeable future. How then to get on top of the coal burning/global warming dilemma?

I suggest that environmental groups do an about-face and embrace “Clean Coal” as our mantra. It would make the coal industry happy as pigs in mud.

OMG, what’s going on here: Mickey Glantz, an alleged tree-hugger calling for fellow citizens to support a “Clean Coal” movement. Here’s the catch; we have to be careful to use the word ‘clean’ as a verb, and not as an adjective.

Think about it. Ending up (at least hypothetically) with zero emissions to the atmosphere in the process of the burning of coal uses the word clean as an adjective. In this instance “clean coal” sounds like an achievement of the coal industry, a done deal,. But, when used as an adjective it is just a “greenwashing” slogan. Using the word clean as a verb, however, comes across as an imperative or command: (you) clean (the) coal! If Clean Coal can be defined like that, then I can easily support the concept.

The coal industry is close to being on the right path, if it would only emphasize its use of ‘clean’ as a verb. The next step for potential leaders then would be to issue marching orders to engineers around the globe to identify ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere to zero. This would be in line with the recent arguments made Duke University professor Henry Petroski in his new book “The Essential Engineer: Why science alone will not solve our global problems” (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010). As Petroski suggested, “While the scientist may identify problems, it falls to the engineer to solve them.”

I believe that competitive substantial incentives to the engineering community would yield new insights into managing more effectively carbon dioxide emissions from coal burning.

Another point of light has gone out today: Steve Schneider passed away today

Posted by mglantz | Posted on 19-07-2010

Category : Fragilecologies

Tags: Climate Change, points of light, Revelle, steve schneider

I just got word that Stephen Schneider of Stanford University and former colleague at NCAR and forever a friend passed away returning from Sweden. Steve has been a relentless crusader and messenger to the world about the importance of climate-society interactions. Some years ago I wrote an editorial about the passing of another point of light, Roger Revelle. Sadly, and before his time, I find my self needing to write a similar comment about Steve at this moment. It’s a sad day for family, friends and science.

“An IPCC dilemma: Who to trust talking to the media, its critics or its colleagues? ” Mickey Glantz (July 12, 2010)

Posted by mglantz | Posted on 12-07-2010

Category : Climate Affairs, Climate Change, Fragilecologies, International, News You Can Use, Politics

Tags: carr, climate, climategate, IPCC, media, Pachauri, transparency

The title of this editorial is a play on words with a bottom-line message: whom should you keep your eyes on — your enemies (critics) and or your colleagues, when it involves talking with the media about IPCC’s 5th Assessment findings.

A colleague of mine, Ed Carr at the University of South Carolina, received a letter from the Head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) cautioning those selected to prepare the next (5th) Climate Change Assessment Report not to talk to the media, leaving that task to the IPCC Secretariat.

Ed Carr wrote (his blog in just below this one):

So I [Carr] was dismayed this morning to receive a letter, quite formally titled “Letter No.7004-10/IPCC/AR5 from Dr Pachauri, Chaiman of the IPCC”, that might set such transparency back. While the majority of the letter is a very nice congratulations on being selected as part of the IPCC, the third paragraph is completely misguided:

“I would also like to emphasize that enhanced media interest in the work of the IPCC would probably subject you to queries about your work and the IPCC. My sincere advice would be that you keep a distance from the media and should any questions be asked about the Working Group with which you are associated, please direct such media questions to the Co-chairs of your Working Group and for any questions regarding the IPCC to the secretariat of the IPCC.”

It is clear that the IPCC still has a problem. It claims the problem is with the media, or at the very least it strongly hint at that. However, in this day and age, if one type of news medium does not catch IPCC scientists off guard another type will. That is what the media is paid to do. I would argue that secrets are hard to keep from the media and are hard to be kept by the media.

A political ‘rule of thumb’ is that ships of state (eg, governments) tend by metaphor to leak from the top; that is, leak confidential information to reporters either to reinforce a political position or to undermine it. I would argue that the same rule applies to the IPCC as a scientific climate-change- related ship of state. Leaks about scientific deliberations came from within the IPCC science community. Partly it is due to the persistence of reporters and science writers and partly it is because of the egos of some scientists who thrive on media attention. [NB: climategate was the result of hacked emails and NOT the result of loose lips (off-hand comments) by IPCC scientists (as far as we know).]

So, it seems that the email directive and the defense of issuing it by the Head of the IPCC makes little sense. instead of embracing openness with the general public, the IPCC leadership has chosen to cast another shadow about the objectivity of the forthcoming 5th scientific climate change assessment. Is there something to hide? I don’t think so. Will the public be led to believe that there is something to hide? I think so.

Instead of emerging from the climategate situation feeling exonerated and with heads held high, the IPCC leaders seem to haves come out of it paranoid and less secure about how its work presented by the media to the public.

Transparency is the best cure for the IPCC’s image. Even with critics at the door and media as well, the best strategy to pursue is to pursue openness. Good objective science will win out. Policing the comments of your colleagues (eg, friends) will likely generate frustration and resentment thereby converting friends into “frenemies” (friendly enemies who support IPCC science but not the IPCC process).

GUEST Editorial by Edward Carr. July 9, 2010. “Apparently, we have learned nothing . . .”

Posted by mglantz | Posted on 09-07-2010

Category : Fragilecologies

Tags: Climate Change, climategate, ed carr, IPCC, media, Pachauri, science transparency, Working Group II

GUEST Editorial by Edward Carr (University of South Carolina) July 9, 2010

“Apparently, we have learned nothing . . .”

www.edwardrcarr.com/opentheechochamber/

I am part of Working Group II of the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As some of you might know, Working Group II of the previous Assessment Report (AR4) was the one that caught a lot of flak for problematic conclusions and references regarding Himalayan Glacier melt and whatnot. On one hand, these were stupid errors that should have been corrected in the review process (which will be part of my job in AR5). On the other, they really did not affect the overall conclusions or quality of the report – they just gave those who continue to have an issue with the idea of climate change an opening to attack the report.

Part of the problem for the IPCC is a perceived lack of openness – that something is going on behind closed doors that cannot be trusted. This, in the end, was at the heart of the “climategate” circus – a recent report has exonerated all of the scientists implicated, but some people still believe that there is something sinister going on.

There is an easy solution to this – complete openness. I’ve worked on global assessments before, and the science is sound. I’ve been quite critical of the way in which one of the reports was framed (download “Applying DPSIR to Sustainable Development” here), but the science is solid and the conclusions are more refined than ever. Showing people how this process works, and what we do exactly, would go a long way toward getting everyone on the same page with regard to global environmental change, and how we might best address it.

So I was dismayed this morning to receive a letter, quite formally titled “Letter No.7004-10/IPCC/AR5 from Dr Pachauri, Chaiman of the IPCC”, that might set such transparency back. While the majority of the letter is a very nice congratulations on being selected as part of the IPCC, the third paragraph is completely misguided:

This “bunker mentality” will do nothing for the public image of the IPCC. The members of my working group are among the finest minds in the world. We are capable of speaking to the press about what we do without the help of minders or gatekeepers. I hope my colleagues feel the same way, and the IPCC sees the light . . .

“Global Warming ate my homework: In Defense of Legitimate Skepticism About Climate Change.” Mickey Glantz. June 30, 2010

Posted by mglantz | Posted on 30-06-2010

Category : Fragilecologies

Tags: "dog ate my homework", Climate Change, global warming, homework, skeptics

Poor “global warming.” It seems it is getting blamed for everything under the sun! It is blamed for droughts, floods, forest and bush fires, heat waves, disease outbreaks and the spreading of desert-like conditions. It is blamed for the illegal migration of people from one country to another, and so forth.

When I was in middle school, teachers would give out homework assignments with instructions to turn in the homework the next day. One time I didn’t do it. When asked by the teacher why I didn’t give her my homework, I lied. I said, as did many other kids my age across America that “my dog Fido ate my homework.” dog_ate_my_homework

Like Fido, the unruly dog, global warming gets blamed these days for everything unpleasant that happens. That is a disservice to Fido and it is clearly a disservice to the global warming issue. Some people argued that Hurricane Katrina, for example, was strengthen by global warming when in fact it was just a strong hurricane not an extraordinary one.

Opinions about the possible impacts of global warming are rampant in the printed and electronic media and, in many instances, are not based on facts but on subjective opinions. Was this or that specific drought or flood or fire the result of natural variability in the climate system or was it the result of human induced warming of the global atmosphere? When will we be able to identify the actual impacts attributable to global warming: some say we can already see them while others say we’ll never be able to sort it out between what is the result of natural variability versus an actual warming of the global atmosphere.

The media does not help. They tend to seek balance of opinions, even when balance is not really warranted. So, those who believe in global warming’s influence on intensifying hurricanes and in increasing their frequency will tend to state that perspective to the press. Even if a large majority believes it is so, the media still call for an opposing statement that rejects that perspective, seeking to ‘level the playing field’ when it does not need to be leveled. Fact and fiction are presented as are subjectively based wishful thinking and guesstimates.

So, it is no wonder that the public remains confused about the science of global warming, about its real possible consequences. Global warming has become a business of sorts, an industry much like the drought industry (industria da seca) that exists to assess drought-plagued Northeast Brazil. The drought industry is made up of people who come from all social and economic sectors of society as well as from just about every academic discipline at a university. There is money to be made off of hazards. There’s money to be made: by researchers, by engineers, by technologists, by the news media, and especially by those who are savvy enough to capture the media’s attention to expose their views, opinions, whatever on climate change.

We have to become more responsible about how we talk about the global warming issue. We have to reduce the hype, encourage solutions and educate individuals and policymakers about the issue and its relative priority to other pressing issues. We should openly and aggressively challenge knowingly false claims using sound reasoning.

We quote polls and surveys which to me are interesting but relatively useless for action. I say this because accepting a poll’s findings requires trust and I for one have lost that trust for polls and interviews regarding beliefs about global warming. Though I might know better whom to believe or whose views to challenge, many people around the globe do not know how to calibrate the views of commentators about global warming pollnumbers1250985368

In the USA for example, a sizable portion of a survey’s respondents blamed the destruction of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina on God’s wrath because of the corrupt lifestyle of the city’s inhabitants! As another example, the UN Secretary General stated his belief that the violence in Darfur, western Sudan was the first global warming war! Comments like these must be challenged.

Scientists, media, policy makers must be more responsible about attributing various climate-related impacts to global warming (or to denying such attributions). In truth anything that society does is happening under a changing climate; the climate is always changing. The contemporary concern is about the level to which it changes and the rate of that change.

The UN has two definitions of how to look at adaptation as a response to climate change: (1) adaptation of society only to changes attributable directly to global warming and (2) any changes related to climate. The latter makes it easier to respond to climate impacts on the part of society. The former sets up an untenable situation in which human influence on climate must be unquestionably identified before action is to be taken, whereas the latter makes it easier for the researcher.

My teacher knew right away that the homework had not been done and probably knew that I did not even have a dog. She was skeptical from the outset. I think that the attributions that are made by scientists, among others, require closer scrutiny than we have tended to do to date. Global warming like Fido should not be taking the blame for all our inconveniences. As research has shown time and again, the behavior of societies has a lot to do with the impacts of even normal weather. It may take decades before some of the occurrences in Nature can accurately be blamed on global warming.

“’Robocopping’ the Planet: Geo-engineering the Planet’s Climate system,” Mickey Glantz 1 June 2010

Posted by mglantz | Posted on 01-06-2010

Category : Fragilecologies

Tags: Climate Change, dystopia, Gaia, geoengineering, global warming, IPCC, Lovelock, Robocop

Mickey Glantz,

1 June 2010

Almost twenty-five years ago, the Hollywood movie Robocop appeared on the silver screen. The plot summary was quite simple, according to IMDB: “In a dystopic** and crime ridden Detroit, a terminally wounded cop returns to the police force as a powerful cyborg,” part human and part machine. robocop-bigposter-orig

It seems that the scientific community and governments around the world are following the Robocop plot, applying it, by analogy, to plant and animal species around the entire planet. For example, we continue to drive animals in the wild towards extinction but try to save a few for our zoos. Other species, known to be endangered, have continually increased in value to those who seek their products – the rhino for its horn (an alleged aphrodisiac in Asia) and the lowland gorilla for its paws (used as ash trays!) are two prominent examples. Less well known are the wetlands that are everywhere being drained and the rainforests that are worldwide being cut down for political and economic reasons. Indeed, we persistently destroy good, productive farmland and then attempt to grow the same amounts of food in less suitable soils and climates.

These are but a few apt examples around the planet of the Robocop analogy: we destroy different parts of the earth’s surface then we resort more and more to technologies to create artificial environments to replace those environments we have destroyed. This growing trend has led to a nasty cycle wherein artificially created ‘technovironments’ are becoming more valuable to people, both economically and perceptually, than those natural environments that are being replaced. In recent years, this situation has emerged in consideration of the global climate system.

A couple of thousand scientists from around the globe have published their consensus view that many human activities are now producing greenhouse gases that are intensifying the naturally occurring greenhouse effect. As a result, the atmosphere of planet earth is heating up. The concern is that this heating will increase temperatures by at least 2 to 3 degrees Celsius or more by the end of the century if not sooner. The question, of course, is whether or not societies and the ecosystems on which they depend can adapt to the changes that accompany climate change, especially at the rapid rates at which those changes could realistically occur. The consensus of those couple of thousand scientists who participated in the 4th assessment report of the Nobel Prize winning IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) appears to be that societies will be unable to keep up with those changes; even so, there is as yet apparently not enough political will to stop the industrial and land-use practices that continue to produce such greenhouse gas emissions.

Enter Robocop . . . by analogy. The response of some key members of the scientific communities in both the USA and Europe has been to propose various ways (theoretical conjectures, really) to control the planet’s climate, either by ratcheting down the temperature or at least controlling it so that it does not turn into a runaway greenhouse effect. They have proposed mimicking volcanic eruptions by spewing aerosols into the stratosphere, evaporating sea water to brighten lower level clouds that prevent the sun’s rays from reaching the earth’s surface, putting millions of mirrors in space, creating artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, and so on.

The reality is that a field of artificial carbon-sucking tree-like technological devices is not a forest. Nor will it ever be. Pumping ever-increasing amounts of societally emitted greenhouse gases into the air is converting our atmosphere into an artificial (non-natural) environment. The question is when is a cyborg no longer a cyborg? At what point does replacing yet another living part of the planet with yet another technological device, further converting the cyborg – which is, at this point, partially natural life and partially designed machine – turn the entire planet into little more than a crudely assembled technological device? When does the earth as ‘technovironment’ become a much less-than-perfect “Robocopy” of the original living system so well described by James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis?

Geoengineering schemes are being proposed because governments seem to have put on the back-burner efforts to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. They are likely to muddle along until a full-blown climate crisis occurs. They will continue to build coal-fired power plants, while trying to figure out how to suck that excess carbon dioxide out of the air. They will continue to cut down forests and try to manufacture artificial trees. They will do anything they can to continue “business as usual” and therefore they will not reduce the carbon emissions on which they now depend for economic development. In other words, their true interest lies in “Robocopping the planet’s climate.” If adaptations through such science fictions are allowed to continue, humanity is lost.

The reality is that modern humans have not been around very long. Policymakers should be reminded each day of this truism: while we need much of the natural environment kept intact, it does not need us at all.
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** Dystopia: An imagined universe (usually the future of our own world) in which a worst-case scenario is explored; the opposite of utopia. Dystopic stories have been especially influential on postmodernism, as writers and filmmakers imagine the effects of various aspects of our current postmodern condition, for example, the world’s take-over by machines (The Matrix); the social effects of the hyper-real (Neuromancer); a society completely run by media commercialism (The Running Man); the triumph of late capitalism (Blade Runner); bureaucratic control run amok (Brazil, 1984); and so on.

“I’m not 24 anymore: Up Close and Personal” Mickey Glantz August 27, 2010

GUEST EDITORIAL: “Spain’s Climate Challenge: A brief reality check.” Lino Naranjo, Meteo Galicia. August 9, 2010

A few centuries of US-Mexico interactions: Going Full Circle? Mickey Glantz. 3 August 2010

“It’s the 100th day since the start of the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico … But, it’s the 13,000th day(!) since the discovery of the Gulf ‘s Dead Zone.” Michael Glantz. 29 July 2010.

“Clean Coal: ‘clean’ as an adjective or as a verb?” Mickey Glantz, 20 July 2010

Another point of light has gone out today: Steve Schneider passed away today

“An IPCC dilemma: Who to trust talking to the media, its critics or its colleagues? ” Mickey Glantz (July 12, 2010)

GUEST Editorial by Edward Carr. July 9, 2010. “Apparently, we have learned nothing . . .”

“Apparently, we have learned nothing . . .”

“Global Warming ate my homework: In Defense of Legitimate Skepticism About Climate Change.” Mickey Glantz. June 30, 2010

“’Robocopping’ the Planet: Geo-engineering the Planet’s Climate system,” Mickey Glantz 1 June 2010

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