Big Famine Moon

                                                                                                                                                                  Up, Down.                        Full Moon 

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Contents:   Software:(BookOS, Caveat I (Douglas Adams), Open Source, Caveat II, Handel), ppm & ppb, Honey Bees vs Neonicotinoids, Confusion, Beyond the Zero, Bit of News, Coming Up Soon.

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Big Famine Moon will be full at 5am; aka Crow Moon, Crust Moon, Sugar Moon, Sap Moon, Chaste Moon, Death Moon, Worm Moon, Lenten Moon; & for Hindus, Holi.

A simple confluence of two cosmic events, one solar and one lunar - spring equinox & the full moon ... one really, since every cosmic event has a full moon somewhere within a few weeks - and what do we get? (Another year older and deeper in debt.) Myths of death defeated and life renewed; some in anticipation: Tibetan New Year, Chinese New Year, Bahá'í annual fast and New Year ... (a long list ... Nowruz); some on the date: Holi ... and Easter of course, spanning the zone (or trying to put it in parentheses).

And a confluence of tendencies too: religious co-opting of human physiobiology - the bone-deep flavour of certain irrefutable psychology in our intimate relations with Terra spliced into (essentially Fascist) doctrine. A veritable harmonic convergence!

	Romeo:      Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear      That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops— Juliet:      O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,      That monthly changes in her circled orb,      Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.                                                                         Act II scene 2.

The music is Outlaw Blues; and then (another one from early days) Sixteen Tons: Merle Travis in the mid 50s, and again in the 70s or 80s (he died in 83); and by Tennessee Ernie Ford. 

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BookOS!

[Some things do come clear in the murk, often too late to do any good - I should have followed through on Ryerson's system courses while I could still do them.   :-)   I let that silly woman put me off. ... Oh well.]

A friend mentioned Philip Wylie, two books: The Disappearance and Generation of Vipers; and I wanted to follow it up and ... Lo and Behold! Google steered me to BookOS. Two million books including most of Thomas Pynchon, Charles Taylor's 'A Secular Age', Stephen Gardiner's 'A Perfect Moral Storm', some Northrop Frye ... The interface has some limits - you can't search for all by a specific author easily f'rinstance - but the 'direction' of the interface seems right: towards simplicity, good pop-up window management, language support.

This ranks for me with Wikipedia. It almost makes me hold my breath waiting for the copyright bullies & tyrants to attack it.

And a companion site BookSC (not so much, see below for a test).

It doesn't do to try to read things electronically, just doesn't - those people with e-readers on streetcars busses and trains are ... only pretending to read, and if anyone cared and measured comprehension we could all know this; but electronic copies make some of the very important secondary activity around reading orders of magnitude easier. Particularly quoting accurately during discussions; but also, for (possible) Alz' sufferers, a quick way to verify that some notion actually did come from some book. 

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Caveat I: (Good from far but far from good.)    As I was writing this I took a break and came across something in the NYT: Iceland Baffled by Chinese Plan for Golf Resort. Didn't baffle me: aside from the obvious oil & other commercial alignments, playing golf at the edge of an active volcano, or at least with a volcano in sight, makes perfect sense. I remembered Douglas Adams' 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe' but unfortunately these books are no longer on my shelf so ... naturally, I went looking for it in BookOS. Here's some of what I found:

That's the thing about pdfs - the severe conversion problems - and provenance. Not one of these BookOS offerings looks like it was scanned - they were all (almost certainly) converted from some other format, more-or-less successfully. So I thought ... Google Books! - they use scans surely. Here are comparable pages in some of what I found:

Same schtick. There are no gross mistakes in what I have shown here - but trust me, you inevitably find fragmentary HTML showing up, usually in the vicinity of missing sentences, paragraphs ... who knows? Sometimes it works the other way too - you buy a 'print on demand' and find mistakes created by scanning software. And it is nothing new - there are lots of typos, some quite serious, in the KJV.                         So what. 

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And Open Source:

I have always disliked Adobe. Never quite on spec, difficult to Copy&Paste from, difficult to search, very expensive to modify ... In the experience with BookOS I came across several new formats - open formats with open readers to accompany. So I downloaded a few and played around with them.

All good ... and if you have nothing else to do, or if your energies are consistently directed at learning new (arcane & eminently forgettable) details, then ... even better. 

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Caveat II:    A corollary of Caveat I possibly, or concommitant ... intimately connected let's say.

The advantage of a standard, even a de-facto one like pdf, is that you get to know it and don't have to re-learn it repeatedly. Efficient use of time and all that.

So, a tradeoff then: many open-source replacements, each with advantages - smaller file size etc. - but each with bugs and quirks and shortcomings too. 

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All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.                                                                           Isaiah 53:6.

It begs an addendum to the background Musak® for this post: 'All We Like Sheep' from Handel's Messiah; a version on Vimeo, and one on YouTube showing the choir & orchestra.

[And on the strength of that I go out to The Messiah for Easter at Knox Presbyterian church over on Spadina. It is always thrilling to witness a choir and orchestra working together more-or-less humbly - and indeed, there are some sublime moments in this performance. Unfortunately the music and KJV texts are not enough for the leaders of the gig, Rev. Reinders and the choirmaster Roger Bergs. They have to interrupt with commentary throughout, paraphrasing and recapitulating - redundant sententious nonsense. Trying to understand why they are doing such a thing the best I can imagine is a hard-core Presbyterian fear of any un-certified aesthetic transcendence. (There is worse but I'll spare you.) But really - second guessing Handel & Lancelot Andrewes? Doh! No wonder these churches are empty and being recycled into condos.] 

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(Still) trying to find simple (minded) rules of thumb around ppm & ppb:

Wikipedia gives a 'drop', and says, "in medicine, IV drips deliver 10, 15, or 20 drops per mL for macrodrip, 60 per mL for microdrip." A simple average makes it 25 drops/mL.

A million drops then is 40,000 mL, 40 litres, ~10 US gallons: so ... one drop in ten US gallons is ~1 part per million (ppm). And a billion drops is ~10,500 US gallons: so ... 3 drops in a tank car is ~1 part per billion (ppb). (A tank car is ~35,000 US gallons according to 49 CFR 179.13 in the US Code of Federal Regulations on tank car capacity.)

Another way to go after it is time: 1 million seconds is ~11½ days, call it two weeks: so a second a week is ~2 ppm, or a second a month ~½ ppm. 1 billion seconds is about 32 years: so ... two seconds in a lifetime is something like 1 ppb.

Or how many molecules of H₂O in a drop? Goes by weight. The density of water is 1g/mL so a drop is .04g. Take the molar mass, 18g/mol for water and compute .04g/18g = .0022 moles in a drop; multiplied by Avogadro's number (6.022x10²³ molecules per mole) to get 1.32x10²¹ molecules. 1 ppm is then 1.32x10¹⁵ - many, a lot, too many to count; and 1 ppb is 1.32x10¹²; not intuitively useful numbers.

What about drops in a human body? An average human is 70 kg/150 pounds, close to the density of water makes it 1¾ million drops: so 2 drops is ~1 ppm and 1/500th of a drop ~1 ppb.

Getting there ... tiny amounts but very many molecules in 'em (and we have come full circle). I hope exercises like this are being done in high-school physics courses; probably not.

[If I told you how often I re-calculated these numbers to get even vaguely confident in them ... I won't. But don't trust me, do the sums yourself; and then consider that <5 ppb BPA in their water stops reproduction in trout. (This article is in BookSC.)] 

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Honey Bee vs Neonicotinoid (again):    Last year it was news. In March a Guardian article Pesticides linked to honeybee decline, referring to two (then) recent studies:
1) Pesticide Decreases Foraging Success and Survival in Honey Bees:

Nonlethal exposure of honey bees to thiamethoxam (neonicotinoid systemic pesticide) causes high mortality due to homing failure at levels that could put a colony at risk of collapse. Simulated exposure events on free-ranging foragers labeled with a radio-frequency identification tag suggest that homing is impaired by thiamethoxam intoxication. These experiments offer new insights into the consequences of common neonicotinoid pesticides used worldwide.

2) Pesticide Reduces Bumble Bee Colony Growth and Queen Production:

We exposed colonies of the bumble bee Bombus terrestris in the laboratory to field-realistic levels of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid, then allowed them to develop naturally under field conditions. Treated colonies had a significantly reduced growth rate and suffered an 85% reduction in production of new queens compared with control colonies.

And again in October: Evidence of pesticide harm to bees is now overwhelming, referring to an article in Nature:
3) Combined pesticide exposure severely affects ... traits in bees:

Here we show that chronic exposure of bumblebees to two pesticides (neonicotinoid and pyrethroid) at concentrations that could approximate field-level exposure impairs natural foraging behaviour and increases worker mortality leading to significant reductions in brood development and colony success. We found that worker foraging performance, particularly pollen collecting efficiency, was significantly reduced with observed knock-on effects for forager recruitment, worker losses and overall worker productivity. Moreover, we provide evidence that combinatorial exposure to pesticides increases the propensity of colonies to fail.

BookSC was not much help in finding the source documents. 1) is there; 2) seems to be there but the download gives something else; and, 3) is not there at all. So ... one in three. ... It may improve with use. 

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I eventually found them elsewhere: 2) Neonicotinoid Pesticide Reduces Bumble Bee Colony Growth and Queen Production, and, 3) Combined pesticide exposure severely affects individual- and colony-level traits in bees.

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What I really really REALLY REALLY   do not understand is how most people go on about their lives as if none of this were happening? When I see friends and family getting onto airplanes to go south and get warm - it's not a judgement, I tell you true, but I am shocked, dismayed. As for the politicians and business people, successful ones, admired and respected, who must know what is happening - I am unable to imagine a scenario for them. Their bureaucrats may be driven and confused to stupidity - but Stephen Harper is not stupid; nor Barack Obama; nor these 'honourable' ministers: Peter Kent, Joe Oliver, John Baird; this woman in Alberta - Alison Redford; Rex Tillerson, the Koch brothers David and Charles ...

WHAT THE FUCK'S GOIN' ON HERE?! 

I can understand some struggle over exactly what to do, how best to tackle this enormous problem of which the honey bees are a small part, sure. But ... short of rekindling a superstitious belief in evil and devils I am stumped. All I can come up with is the possibility of some tipping point within the 'social imaginary' (as Charles Taylor calls it) that may trip in their minds and permit them to begin to think properly. Soon I hope.

Lame I know. ... Some time ago I posted a link to the video of Elizabeth May saying, "Any honest person who has looked at this science should be screaming from the rooftops!"; yet she sits in Ottawa (as I sit here) ... doing busy work.
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¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!¡?¿!Back with the 360's & 370's when you tried to divide by zero or multiply a number by a text string you would get an exception and a core dump. Some of us got pretty good at reading hex.

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Dissemblers, hypocrites, thieves, liars, even murderers, rapists, torturers; even the burnt ones with nothing left - I have some idea of how these things work, can work, could work, might work - but this makes so little sense I cannot fathom it. I don't understand kiddie-diddlers either gentle reader. So ...

Maybe Paul Rose understood. D'you think? He died a few weeks ago. Some of the dimwits are trying to lionize him now. You have to laugh.

Here, try the Outlaw Blues again: "Don't ask me nothin' about nothin', I just might tell you the truth." 'Cept in this case I don't know a thing about it.

Be well. 

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Beyond the Zero:    A few more words about 'Against the Day'. (I will have to re-read that last chapter again before I write this; hang on a sec ...)

One could expect to find important things in the last chapter - Deuce Kindred was summarily gotten rid of in the previous one, we do not see Lew Basnight again - what I pick out are four: 1) who remains - Merle & Dally, Dally & Kit, Reef & Yashmeen, Frank & Stray, Yashmeen & Stray, Ljubica & Jesse, The Chums of Chance & consorts, Pugnax & Ksenija ... all in pairs more-or-less, except Professor Heino Vanderjuice, an odd person to encounter (and he disappears, a version of the author perhaps); 2) Yashmeen's sexuality; 3) the cover image explained, una picchiata!; and, 4) Stray's (?) notion of 'good unsought and uncompensated'. There are more: simultaneity, technology, vegetarianism, the Inconvenience becoming its own destination ... but these four stand out for me (for various reasons no doubt).

A memorable sentence: "It is no longer a matter of gravity—it is an acceptance of sky." A-and the last paragraph goes like this:

Pugnax and Ksenija’s generations—at least one in every litter will follow a career as a sky-dog—have been joined by those of other dogs, as well as by cats, birds, fish, rodents, and less-terrestrial forms of life. Never sleeping, clamorous as a nonstop feast day, Inconvenience, once a vehicle of sky-pilgrimage, has transformed into its own destination, where any wish that can be made is at least addressed, if not always granted. For every wish to come true would mean that in the known Creation, good unsought and un-compensated would have evolved somehow, to become at least more accessible to us. No one aboard Inconvenience has yet observed any sign of this. They know—Miles is certain—it is there, like an approaching rainstorm, but invisible. Soon they will see the pressure gauge begin to fall. They will feel the turn in the wind. They will put on smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to part the sky. They fly toward grace.

Shekhinah perhaps, שכינה.

That's it gentle reader. The effort I put into editing the teasers for presentation in HTML may seem wasted, could be; at least what is there is more easily searched with CTRL-F and grabbed with Copy&Paste ... and I am more intimately acquainted with Pynchon's style - so it was useful in that way. And I did not notice one single typo. (!)

The collection of teasers:
                         One: The Light Over the Ranges part 5 - Lew Basnight becomes a detective,
                         Two: Iceland Spar part 12 - Lake Traverse marries Deuce Kindred.
                         Three: Bilocations part 5 - Yashmeen Halfcourt & Cyprian Latewood.
                         Three: Bilocations part 6 - Kit Traverse on the S.S. Stupendica (short excerpt).
                         Three: Bilocations part 12 - Lew Basnight encounters Lamont Replevin (excerpt).
                         Three: Bilocations part 17 - Kit Traverse's choice (excerpt).
                         Four: Against the Day part 4 - Yashmeen & Auberon Halfcourt (excerpt).
                         Four: Against the Day part 7 - overture and possibility (short excerpt).
                         Four: Against the Day part 11 - A trio (an excerpt some may find salacious).
A-and Entropy. 

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Gleanings from the Bin: (Digging about in the oyster-shell midden near the shore.)

* Coast Guard rescuer describes ‘eerie’ scene where Queen of the North sank.
  Karl Lilgert is now on trial for criminal negligence causing death.
  Previously: March 2006, June 2006, May 2007, March 2008.
* Windfarm sickness spreads by word of mouth, Australian study finds (I knew that).
* World Bank told to investigate links to Ethiopia 'villagisation' project (that too).
* Índios e ribeirinhos fazem nova ocupação de canteiro de obra de Belo Monte (source Xingu Vivo).
  Natives and river-side people (fishermen) occupy Belo Monte work sites again. Good on 'em!
- It looks like the cops grabbed one of the demonstrators: PF prende ativista em Belo Monte.
  Seu paradeiro é desconhecido. / His whereabouts are unknown.
- And they are bringing in the army to ensure that this Belo Monte abomination gets built.
  (The Amazônia website is down at the moment - ructions with Cyberbunker apparently - ... link to follow.)
  Força Nacional tenta impedir novas paralisações das obras de Belo Monte, source Agência Brasil.
* This: SA troops killed in Central African Republic: Why, Mr President?, may appear parochial.
  More from Reuters: U.N. chief condemns rebel seizure of power in Central African Republic, and
  NYT: President Is Said to Flee as Rebels Seize Capital of the Central African Republic.
  Another failed state and it has been for quite a while (I didn't know that).
  But nothing on Joseph Kony. What about him? Wasn't he active in Central African Republic?
- The thing about the Daily Maverick newsletter which distinguishes it from all others, puts it in a class by itself,
       is that it includes (up front, at the top) links to other news organizations with relevant stories.
* Even Zimbabwe’s new constitution is waiting for Mugabe to die.
- EU suspends sanctions against most Zimbabwe officials.
- (From 2011 mind you) Marange diamond field: Zimbabwe torture camp discovered.
* Marikana: Under oath, Phiyega’s bald-faced lie exposed.
- Marikana: Sangoma’s death and Phiyega’s understanding of truth.
* Steve Biko, Mamphela Ramphele, & Andile Mngxitama, and the
  offending piece by Jared Sacks: Biko would not vote for Ramphele.
* Pension Funds Wary as Bankrupt City Goes to Trial,
  (map showing Stocton, California). Bankrupt in one way ...
* ... and bankrupt in another:
  Los Angeles Frets After Low Turnout to Elect Mayor.
  Just 21 percent of registered voters turned out.
* Frank’s feet of Catholic clay. Last mention here of the new Pope I hope.
* Haiti recycles human waste in fight against cholera epidemic,
  and a link to the US NGO Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods SOIL.
* Chinese Solar Panel Giant Is Tainted by Bankruptcy.
And finally, I don't know what to make of this:
  U.S. Example Offers Hope for Cutting Carbon Emissions. (?) 

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Coming Up Soon:

Peter Victor - Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster, April 4th 7pm at UofT.

[I wonder if Joseph Kony is 'related' to Séléka? They must know one another, or at least know of one another. What does Michel Djotodia think of Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army? It won't likely be a high priority for his 'government' to go looking for Kony anytime soon. How different are they, Joseph Kony & Michel Djotodia and his allies? How different are any of them from Francois Bozizé?] 

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Down.

For perspective ...

(take two giant-steps back.)
Up, Down, Appendices, Postscript.

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Be it resolved that building an environmentally sustainable society will require an end to economic growth.

Peter Victor, Tim Jackson, Richard Lipsey, & Paul Ekins had this 'debate' (it was really less a debate than a serious discussion among experts) at the University of Ottawa on January 20. Here is the webcast - do not be dismayed, there is no sound in the first few minutes - best to skip to about minute 25; and you may have to download & install Microsoft Silverlight as well.

There is now an improved webcast here.

Peter Victor and Tim Jackson are the real meal deal. Get their books and read them:

Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster (at Amazon.com).

Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (at EarthScan), but in k-k-Canada you are better off to order it by phone from University of Toronto Press Distribution (UTP) at 1-800-565-9523 or 416-667-7791.

Or from the Toronto Public Library:

Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster.

Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet.

What more can I say?

Hahaha ... here's a footnote - I started a discussion over at Rabble, read it and weep. Quelle blague!

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Here is the Preface to Lester Brown's World on the Edge (2010). The whole thing is available here.

This Lester Brown deserves our respect and honour. He sees it all clear as can be and yet he keeps his head up. At one point I thought he was a pollyanna - I was mistaken.

God love him.

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(Keep in mind that this is just a small piece of one particular spectrum.)

We never thought we'd get very old. We thought we'd sit forever in fun, but our chances really was a million to one. (Bob Dylan's Dream, 1963)

Now people just get uglier and I have no sense of time. (Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, 1966)

The party’s over and there’s less and less to say. I got new eyes; everything looks far away. (Bob Dylan, Highlands, 1997)

1997?! Man! Has it been that long?

'Djing' from Miss Jodie, and 'yeezy' from Folasade ... turns out 'yeezy' is just a nickname for Kanye West, too bad - it's a good word and should be more than that - there is a hint of yeast in it.

Looking at this mess I see that I will have to explicitly exclude Miss Jodie & Folasade from any such nonsense as The Bad Girl's Club. I was sort of trying to lay out the four corners of a square montage in time & space - and it has obviously not been successful so now I have to go on and talk about it. Means & extremes you see; with the Bad Girl's Club & the Women's Temperance Union playing the parts of the extremes; and Miss Jodie & Folasade (admirable young women both, in my estimation) as the means. It has not come off at all ... oh well.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that Schwing!

Northrop Frye wrote:

In interviews I am almost invariably asked at some point whether I feel optimistic or pessimistic about some contemporary situation. The answer is that these imbecile words are euphemisms for manic-depressive highs and lows, and that anyone who struggles for sanity avoids both. (The Double Vision, Chapter 2);

and somewhere else, more left-brain:

Antitheses are usually resolved, not by picking one side and refuting the other, or by making eclectic choices between them, but by trying to get past the antithetical way of stating the problem. (sorry, no reference);

but Frye lived in Toronto after all and was pretending to be unnaturally reasonable (as they all still do in Toronto); ... He did loosen up a tad towards the end:

There is nothing so unique about death as such, where we may be too distracted by illness or sunk in senility to have much identity at all. In the double vision of a spiritual and a physical world simultaneously present, every moment we have lived through we have also died out of into another order. Our life in the resurrection, then, is already here, and waiting to be recognized. (The Double Vision, Chapter 4, last few sentences).

Imagine! Putting a modifier on 'unique'!

But ... getting back for just a sec to 'euphemisms for manic-depressive highs and lows' ... some of those of us who can survive the basketball dribble bounce of manic-depression and even thrive on it (what doesn't kill you makes you stronger ... they say) ... well, us nutters gets to see the extremes as well as the means y'see; and often enough and repetitively enough to come to a certain appreciation of it as 'spectrum'. And if it ends up in a kind of atheistic stall; them's the breaks.

Steve Smith knew he was dying of cancer when he wrote God's Kaleidoscope:

when my speck of green
first turned the brown of Job's dunghill
I looked up to curse
but then I saw
that in God's eye
all turns are just as beautiful.

(quoted here from memory, and here and
here - but I have a copy coming in the mail and when it arrives I will correct this if need be)

So ... he got to the same place - all turns are just as beautiful.

(Keep in mind that this is just a small piece of one particular spectrum.) (Eh?)

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The problem with correctitude is not always, or not even most of the time, that the pronouncements (and non-pronouncements) are not desirable - but that ... what?

I have not even scratched the surface of my trite and limited insights into spectrum. I will leave it to you.

Consider the narrow reality of the political spectrum - what are the differences between the Democrats & Republicans in America? Between Conservatives & Liberals & the New Baptist Party & even the Green Party of k-k-Canada? Not very much. How much of this left-right spectrum is occupied? Not very much.

Or consider a two axis spectrum such as the christian cross; and from there the multi-dimensional axes in the arguments of Charles Taylor.

Consider the media as they make meaningless mountains of molehills.

Consider Sarah Palin running against Michele Bachmann for high & powerful office.

Peter Kent is just a puppet mouthpiece for a paranoid power freak. Oh well. Barack Obama spends too much time reading stuff from teleprompters. He's afraid to make a mistake I guess. Oh well.

If he will not other wayes confesse, the gentle tortures are to be first usid unto him, & sic per gradus ad ima tenditur. (King James I, referring to Guy Fawkes, November 1605)

I was built on a Friday and you can't fix me, you can't fix me, you can't fix me. I was built on a Friday and you can't fix me; even so I've done ok. (Bruce Cockburn, Mystery, or have a listen on YouTube)

Next week maybe it will be Sturm und Drang, Fugue, Berserkers, who knows what-all? Meanwhile gentle reader, be well.

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Postscript:

Last week I was having fear & trembling around what I said here, so I thought about it and then went ahead - the organizers are pretentious numbskulls; but this week I am gobsmacked over this.

My little brain has a hard time walking around patterns. Maybe it is time to close the blog for good.

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Appendices:

1. World on the Edge, Lester Brown, 2010.

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World on the Edge, Lester Brown, 2010.

Preface
When I meet old friends and they ask, “How are you?” I often reply, “I’m fine; it’s the world I am worried about.” “Aren’t we all” is the common response. Most people have a rather vague sense of concern about the future, but some worry about specific threats such as climate change or population growth. Some are beyond questioning whether civilization will decline if we continue with business as usual, and instead they are asking when this will occur.

       In early 2009, John Beddington, chief science advisor to the U.K. government, said the world was facing a “perfect storm” of food shortages, water scarcity, and costly oil by 2030. These developments, plus accelerating climate change and mass migration across national borders, would lead to major upheavals.

       A week later, Jonathon Porritt, former chair of the U.K. Sustainable Development Commission, wrote in the Guardian that he agreed with Beddington’s analysis but that the timing was off. He thinks the crisis “will hit much closer to 2020 than 2030.” He calls it the “ultimate recession” — one from which there may be no recovery.

       These assessments by Beddington and Porritt raise two key questions. If we continue with business as usual, how much time do we have left before our global civilization unravels? And how do we save civilization?

       World on the Edge is a response to these questions. As to how much time we have left with business as usual, no one knows for sure. We are handicapped by the difficulty of grasping the dynamics of exponential growth in a finite environment — namely, the earth. For me, thinking about this is aided by a riddle the French use to teach schoolchildren exponential growth. A lily pond has one leaf in it the first day, two the second day, four the third, and the number of leaves continues to double each day. If the pond fills on the thirtieth day, when is it half full? The twenty-ninth day. Unfortunately for our overcrowded planet, we may now be beyond the thirtieth day.

       My sense is that the “perfect storm” or the “ultimate recession” could come at any time. It will likely be triggered by an unprecedented harvest shortfall, one caused by a combination of crop-withering heat waves and emerging water shortages as aquifers are depleted. Such a grain shortfall could drive food prices off the top of the chart, leading exporting countries to restrict or ban exports — as several countries did when prices rose in 2007-08 and as Russia did again in response to the heat wave of 2010. This in turn would undermine confidence in the market economy as a reliable source of grain. And in a world where each country would be narrowly focused on meeting its own needs, the confidence that is the foundation of the international economic and financial systems would begin to erode.

       Now to the second question. What will it take to reverse the many environmental trends that are undermining the world economy? Restructuring the economy in time to avoid decline will take a massive mobilization at wartime speed. Here at the Earth Policy Institute and in this book, we call this massive restructuring Plan B. We are convinced that it, or something very similar to it, is our only hope.

       As we think about the ecological deficits that are leading the world toward the edge, it becomes clear that the values generating ecological deficits are the same values that lead to growing fiscal deficits. We used to think it would be our children who would have to deal with the consequences of our deficits, but now it is clear that our generation will have to deal with them. Ecological and economic deficits are now shaping not only our future, but our present.

       Beddington and Porritt deserve credit for publicly addressing the prospect of social collapse because it is not easy to talk about. This is partly because it is difficult to imagine something we have never experienced. We lack even the vocabulary. It is also difficult to talk about because we are addressing not just the future of humanity in an abstract sense, but the future of our families and our friends. No generation has faced a challenge with the complexity, scale, and urgency of the one that we face.

       But there is hope. Without it this book would not exist. We think we can see both what needs to be done and how to do it.

       There are two policy cornerstones underlying the Plan B transformation. One is to restructure taxes by lowering income taxes and raising the tax on carbon emissions to include the indirect costs of burning fossil fuels, such as climate change and air pollution, in fossil fuel prices. The amount of tax we pay would not change.

       The second policy cornerstone is to redefine security for the twenty-first century. The threats to our future now are not armed aggression but rather climate change, population growth, water shortages, poverty, rising food prices, and failing states. Our challenge is not only to redefine security in conceptual terms, but also to reallocate fiscal priorities to shift resources toward achieving the Plan B goals. These include reforestation, soil conservation, fishery restoration, universal primary school education, and reproductive health care and family planning services for women everywhere.

       Although these goals are conceptually simple and easily understood, they will not be easily achieved. They will require an enormous effort from each of us. The vested interests of the fossil fuel and defense industries in maintaining the status quo are strong. But it is our future that is at stake. Yours and mine.

Lester R. Brown
October 2010

---

Down.

direst illth & a stup'd fuh'n ol' Hippie

at a Climate Change Conference.
or: "He cannot distinguish solecism from barbarism, milord."
Up, Down, Appendices, Postscript.

I had just finished my first reading of Tim Jackson's Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (thanks to the Toronto Public Library) when my own copy arrived in the mail from Earthscan and I began a more relaxed look at it, and also arrived Peter Victor's Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster, I will look in a minute to see which of them used 'illth' ... ahh, it was neither of them, Tim Jackson employs four Forewords to his book, and the first is by Herman Daly, and it is Daly who uses 'illth' ...

great word! 'illth'

it's in the OED, means what you think it would, one of the citations there bears repeating: “A hundred sovereigns may be no wealth, but the direst illth, to the drowning wretch in whose pockets they serve only as a load to drag him to destruction.” (G.B. Shaw)

sometime in the summer of 1968 I was hitch-hiking down the Burin Peninsula with a girlfriend, the road wasn't paved in those days, we stopped at a diner for a coffee & sandwich, in came three Mounties who plugged the jukebox with I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee three or four times until we left, we picked up a ride right away in the back of a dump truck and moved on down the road ... 'high camp' I guess, is that what you'd call it? here's Merle Haggard and Merle again and the Beach Boys singin' it,

so, I spent the weekend at a Climate Change Conference,

I met Ron Plain face-to-face, and a girl, Gracen Johnson, and I heard Greg Allen & Ralph Torrie speak from up close - those were the best things,

otherwise it was mostly a bust, I'm sorry to say it, but there it is eh? ... right away I had a problem with the name of it, do you see? the problem being that it really didn't have a name, despite the organizers being from the Green Party of k-k-Canada and the early presence & involvement of Elizabeth May, it was explicitly explained to be 'non sectarian' ... hence the need for the indefinite article I guess ...

Q: What did you do this weekend?
A: Oh, I went to a climate change conference.

or something, maybe not having a name reveals too much, maybe it leads to identity crisis, I dunno, whatever ... what I experienced had to do with me (obviously), it has to be said like that (unfortunately), it has to be like that (inevitably) ... "It's all about ME!" do you see? this ME thing must be a virus, and I must've caught it from an incautious kiss, I'm sorry Miss ...

being born on the 13th isn't all it's cracked up to be (see Briar Rose, Sleeping Beauty)

it was relentless, I could not keep up with the sheer pace of it, sitting, squirming, hour after hour in the heat with no time off to kibbitz ... eventually I scribbled DAEMONIC! in my notebook, a man, a doctor, Alan Abelsohn, began to speak about the medical impacts, I felt an uncontrollable urge to blurt out, "does my paranoid schizophrenia figgure in there somewhere?" but I knew that was a bad idea so I staggered up & outside for a smoke ... and then just didn't go back inside again, that was Saturday,

Sunday I managed to get there because I wanted to hear Ralph Torrie, as luck would have it I heard Greg Allen as well, I was mistaken in what I said about Greg Allen in the last post, he is eloquent & knowledgeable & coherent & convincing & positive - quite a combination, I did have a question for Ralph but the microphone was immediately hogged by the usual suspects, the organizers were incapable of properly introducing anyone and they were also incapable of asking "Is this a question or is this a speech?" I tried to get a photograph but he was gone by the time I turned around so I just left,

I wanted to post these links to Ralph Torrie speaking at the Corporate Knights' E3 Roundtable in Toronto in May: 1 2 3; and to one of the men he shared the stage with, Lawrence Solomon: 1 2; and to Greg Allen's The Energetic City presentation: 1 2, the third part of Ralph's speech has got a hitch in it somewhere, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sorry about that (the technical incompetence of these so called Corporate Knights is matched only by the Green Party of k-k-Canada), if you run it through Keepvid it seems to work ok.

I have mentioned Ron Plain here before, I did manage to get his picture with Elizabeth May, I included Elizabeth in the picture because Ron told me that she had come there to Aamjiwnaang (God bless her!)

three hours drive west, like he says, and nobody knows where it is or what's going on there,

he taught me how to say Aamjiwnaang, which I have forgot already ... or not,

a relentless series of presentations, my mind blurred under the onslaught - and that's speaking as someone who knows the material somewhat better than superficially I think it is fair to say, well enough to know that some of the presenters had not done their homework,

here's another good thing that came out of it: the first clue (luckily it was up-front - she was the second speaker) was that Gracen Johnson is not full of herself, you could even say she is 'humble,' that might be exaggeration since she is so young, but if you did say 'humble' then you would have to couple it with something else like 'with some steel showing' to get the whole picture, but that wouldn't be quite 'balanced' either because she is in fact slim, quiet, reserved, a girl, a quandary, a hopeful glimpse of a real person struggling (and managing) to establish connections,

in the subsequent Q&A someone somehow picked up on violence out of what she had said, I tried to inject a little Noam Chomsky into it, oil on the water in a manner of speaking, but I don't think they heard me, I know they didn't ...

there were a few other clues, I will go through my notes later and see if any of them are worth recording,

what I think of as 'the counterforce' was only enunciated clearly by Ron Plain (that I can remember) when he said (something like) "the only value in events like this is in whatever contacts we manage to forge with one another."

there it is again: "We must love one another or die." (just in case, gentle reader, you were wondering 'Clues to what?')

I failed in this respect, I tried (I know it's lame to say that but there it is eh?), I gave them proofs, and came away feeling more like an outsider than ever, alone with my only friend - despair, oh well ... I was not the only one either, there is a young man who often shows up at these sorts of events, one of the 'usual suspects' and I have tried talking to him, saying 'Good Morning' & 'Good Afternoon' and I have tried making sense of the ellipical questions he inevitably asks, but they don't make sense to me and all I do in the end is bear a kind of hand-wringing k-k-Canadian witness that makes me know that the Good Samaritan has not shown up yet on the scene and is probably not coming ...

a man named 'Old Karajá' was killed in the town of Santa Terezinha in the Brasilian state of Mato Grosso, the name reported is Matukari Karajá, it was a fluke that I later discovered Matukari means 'old man' in the language of the Karajá - talk about a generic murder? a generic murder of a generic person - who was quite possibly satisfied or even gratified to be called by any name at all - I can't say,

Ron also said "You only get what you can handle," ... and he got that right too,

be well gentle reader.



Postscript:

as usual I forget where I am going and only remember when I am half-way there and begin thinking I am done, turn back and discover that I have forgotten my keys,

my thinking around the planet has been converging, first of all because my mind, such as it is, wants to find convergence, if not Doonesbury's 'divine harmonic' kind then any kind whatever (was it Doonesbury who did that one?),

the directions of Bill McKibben (once you manage to discount his fucking ego) and Clive Hamilton (once you warm his cool to serving temperature) seem to me to be converging to lead me down this garden path to thinking that it is all connected to a sort-of secular Good Samaritan which I sum up using Auden's phrase "We must love one another or die."

and there is another convergence going on here as well, I thought Hamilton's throwing in civil disobedience at the end of his book was a lame sort of sop when I read it ... but through the flickering jaggers and out-of-synch audio and just-plain-not-there (in short excurciatingly excreable & execrable) video came a ghost of Bill McKibben talking about civil disobedience too, hummm ... and Noam Chomsky's caveat that if there is to be violence then there must be a VERY strong case made for it, and stumbling onto the aversion of the North American Mainstream Media (and leftstream media too for that matter) to even mention the aquittals of the EDO Decommissioners and the rest - you can see where this is going right?

every time I see Elizabeth May speak she ends by invoking hope, which is exactly the right thing to do, but like a Pollyanna nit-wit laying on random grace notes she is not able to carry it off, she says, "Oh, you must not fall into despair, you must have hope" and stops, gives no fucking clue about how to get there from here except, "Write to your MP - they really care," it makes me want to yell at her (the way you yell at people on TV Jeopardy or Wheel Of Fortune when they get soooo close), in fact I wrote her a stern letter a while ago including this point but she did not deign to respond (though she did cash the cheque :-)

so how do you get there from here? (as the Scotsman said to the Eskimo) ... well, at the end of her speech she could say, "Now, turn to your neighbour there in the seat beside you, and if you already know the person on your right then turn to the left, and when you get up to leave the hall, walk with this person as far as the street, find out their name and where they come from and what they do or did, find out what languages they speak, exchange emails, follow it up later, within a week, by actually sending an email, don't get into their car or visit until you know them better, but ... ESTABLISH CONTACT! There is no hope if there is only one." Ivan Illich said so (or if he didn't he meant to).

the only one I saw with the wits to do something like this was Andrew Knox talking about Transition Town, good on 'im!

things in Australia are quite different, Clive Hamilton's descriptons of the bully tactics of deniers there do seem exaggerated - but they are not, here's a tempest in an Australian teapot: an article by Kellie Tranter, and a kind-of sort-of rebuttal by three (apparently prominent) Australian deniers complete with footnotes yet! which I have not followed up on but a quick look at the authors of the articles being cited may give you a clue, the comments on the original articles are interesting as well,

I first stopped to read what Kellie had to say because she is a lawyer, and because I am still musing about the differences between legal and moral arguments, and still musing about the EDO Decommissioners & Raytheon 9 & B52-Two and so on, the pictures of her I have posted are a kind-of sort-of social commentary as well, they were self-selected - both were lifted from her website, and they seem very 50s to me, I know I know I know - it is a mortal sin to make any disparaging remarks about Australians being behind the times.

the wheels of American Justice grind more quickly than the k-k-Canadian ones I guess, here's Massey's CEO Don Blankenship in the courts over the Upper Big Branch explosions already - only 4 months (!) - now that I look at him again I notice a certain 50ish cast there too eh?

and the plural of subpoena chosen by Bloomberg is interesting, looks like putting on airs,

"I was told we'd sail the seas for American gold, we'd fire no guns, shed no tears, now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier, the last of Barrett's Privateers."

“If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law,” said Winston Churchill, some people say the deniers are primarily fuelled by dislike of authority & regulations & bureaucracy, Sarah Palin mavericks and so on, and then Ralph Torrie stands up and says that he too set out to 'challenge authority' - just to show that there may be a disconnect somewhere in this general area,

while I was fossicking down under (as it were) I discovered Fiona Lowry, these images have an ideological bent which I don't necessarily like or agree with, but they have some other quality as well (aside from nudity) which appeals to me, here:

it was when I read the title It's confusing when they kill the innocent, that I decided to take the time to post the images, if you are interested in the ideology you can find it elsewhere starting with the link above.

oh my, almost forgot to include Susan Cooper, the Nunavut Judge who shut down seismic testing in Lancaster Sound this week, here's a copy of her decision, there is also something called the 'Triton Report' which apparently justifies the testing, it is floating around but I can't find a bona-fide copy anywhere, what I did find was this report on the NIRB FTP site, they probably meant to lock it up and forgot (?), down around page 13 it specifies the sound levels involved - the testing equipment delivers on the order of 200 dB at 500 metres away, what I remember is that 125 dB is about at the 'threshold of pain' at a distance an order of magnitude less, doh! are the ears of sea mammals so different from the ears of human mammals? listening to 10 times the threshold of pain causes just about immediate and permanent deafness in humans eh? and that's in air which is, I think, more elastic than water?

these were the only two pictures of Sue Cooper that I could find, it looks like there may have been some hard miles in there somewhere, can't say, hope not ... she should get the Order of Canada for this injunction, that's my vote.



Appendices:
1. Mais um Karajá assassinado!, Gilberto Vieira dos Santos, 11/08/2010.
2-1. Climate change 'brown wash', Kellie Tranter, 26 July 2010.
2-2. Suing the sceptics, Anthony Cox & David Stockwell & Jo Nova, 11 August 2010.
3. Massey Executives Face Subpoenaes in Probe of Mine Blast, Jeff Plungis, Aug 11 2010.
4. Nunavut judge grants temporary injunction against seismic testing, Randy Boswell, August 8 2010.


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Mais um Karajá assassinado!, Gilberto Vieira dos Santos, 11/08/2010.

No dia 5 de agosto foi encontrado morto nos arredores da cidade de Santa Terezinha - Mato Grosso (MT), Matukari Karajá, senhor de aproximadamente 50 anos de idade, morador da Aldeia Macaúba, Ilha do Bananal. Estava desaparecido há alguns dias e seu corpo, já em estado de decomposição, apresentava ferimentos de faca e pauladas.

Ele foi visto com vida pela última vez na festa de encerramento dos Jogos Regionais, que acontecem no mês de julho em Santa Terezinha. Testemunhas dizem que ele estava bastante bêbado na ocasião.

Os Karajá, que são o grupo humano de mais longa permanência no Araguaia, têm sofrido inúmeras violências ao longo do contato com a sociedade não-indígena. São freqüentes as mortes em decorrência dos efeitos do alcoolismo, como quando voltam para suas aldeias de canoa e se afogam no rio Araguaia. As cidades ribeirinhas que se instalaram em locais próximos às suas aldeias favorecem o consumo de bebidas alcoólicas vendidas por comerciantes inescrupulosos.

No mês de julho, quando acontecem festivais de praia em Santa Terezinha, Luciara e São Félix do Araguaia, a população Karajá fica exposta a sérias situações de risco, sobretudo os jovens. Consumo de álcool e outras drogas, prostituição de menores, doenças graves como DST-AIDS, hoje fazem parte do cotidiano das aldeias.

Devido a essa situação, acabam sendo vítimas de um enorme preconceito por parte da população não-indígena, que, em geral, os discrimina diariamente. Entretanto, o fato de Matukari estar possivelmente alcoolizado não dava a ninguém o direito de assassiná-lo. Espera-se que as autoridades locais concluam o inquérito iniciado e que os responsáveis por mais esse ato de violência contra os Karajá não fiquem impunes.



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Climate change 'brown wash', Kellie Tranter, 26 July 2010.

Recent reports confirm that 2010 could end up being the warmest year since measurement records began in 1880. That may help explain the unseasonable misery for hayfever sufferers - does it feel like midwinter, with the wattle already out? Then again, the politicians are also out.

Back at the lab the pleas from scientists "to act now" have long faded. No doubt they've already bought land in more temperate climates and planned their retreat to higher ground. Who could blame them? If you knew what they know you'd want to escape the force of the herd, hell-bent on "moving forward" into an overpopulated and under-resourced future where winter will be the season of choice.

If you were to ask any of our current elected representatives what needs to be done politically, economically and socially to limit any increase in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, what chance is there that you'd hear a rational, financially viable and carefully articulated plan? How confident can you be that these people won't get you killed?

As climate change comes back onto the political agenda with the forthcoming election, so too will come the spawning of those pushing for inaction.

With no sign of immediate large-scale emergency measures - which is what's needed to limit any increase in global temperature to 2C - green groups need to identify where the resistance to change lies, how it inveigles itself into political respectability, and how it can be exposed for what it is and thus more effectively targeted.

Courtesy of the ACCC we all know the consequences of "green wash", but what about the flip side? Shouldn't the ACCC also be telling us about "brown wash"?

Section 52 of the Trade Practices Act 1987 provides that a corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive.

At a state level fair trading acts mirror the consumer protection parts of the Trade Practices Act. The Fair Trading Act (NSW), for instance, provides that "a person shall not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive. It defines "trade or commerce" to include "any business (which includes a business not carried on for profit and a trade or profession) or professional activity".

Now suppose you're a "brown washer" and you put yourself up as an expert on the issue of climate change. You knock up a book on the subject. You're paid to deliver lectures, and you're using the lectures to promote your profession or trade as an author. Hundreds attend and many purchase your book because they are relatively unsophisticated in scientific matters and want to know more. You're in "trade or commerce".

Your book is successful. Your representations, if repeated, are likely to sway the minds of some who interest themselves in the questions posed by you. They may also interest policymakers, think-tanks, various foundations and mainstream media, not just because of alleged "scientific validity" but because they might, for example, be useful in pushing a line that is of short-term economic benefit for some people or alternatively in promoting newsworthy conflict.

Your representations include that carbon dioxide isn't all that important to the Earth's radiation balance, that we can go on burning fossil fuels with gay abandon, and that climate scientists are frauds, manipulating data and pushing a message to deindustrialise the modern world. You'd reminisce about past climate change, calling on this as comfort that somehow the change that's coming will not be relevant, and you'd earn some nice royalties along the way.

You don't mention, nor do you offer any evidence to refute or alternative hypotheses to explain, that carbon dioxide affects global temperature due to the well-known greenhouse effect, or that no known factor apart from greenhouse gases can account for the past century of warming - not solar cycles, nor cosmic rays, not magnetic fields, not urban heat effects.

You fail to mention the consistent global scale temperature trends of the past century: the ocean warming far away from cities, the ice sheet melt and sea level rise, and the melting of mountain ice caps. You ignore the direct satellite measurements that have tracked the gradual progression of the enhanced greenhouse effect: the measurements that show the widening gap between the solar radiation going in and the longwave radiation getting out. You show five years of data to make a point that you know is invalidated by a longer time record.

For someone claiming to have a scientific background, isn't the written publication and oral presentation of those representations misleading or deceptive? How can a person who claims to be an expert in climate science - even though you may not have specialist qualifications in the field - and who claims to have examined the evidence ignore the most important scientific evidence?

Why don't you deal with this evidence? Could it be incompetence or ignorance, that you're not aware of it? Could it be ineptitude or cowardice, that you can't answer it or won't try to? Could it be cowardly self-interest, that facing it would make the premises of your arguments untenable and your output unsaleable? Could it be calculated deception, that acknowledging scientific truth would invalidate your fallacious assertions and hence your entire position, so that self preservation requires that you deny its existence?

Opportunistic exploitation of a pseudo-scientific position is all very well - "never let a chance go by" is the credo that set us on this course - but as our environmental predicament becomes more dire you shouldn't be surprised if financially-backed green groups consider legal action to put a stop to it.

There is a view, widely and quite properly held, that care must be exercised before courts are asked to make orders restraining statements made in the course of public discussion. But that sympathy for honest and open debate won't come to the aid of those whose printed works and publicly espoused "expert" views are deliberately misleading, whose actions are commercially motivated and who deliberately aim to enshroud the masses in falsehoods and exaggerated claims of uncertainty to avoid tackling the issue of climate change.



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Suing the sceptics, Anthony Cox & David Stockwell & Jo Nova, 11 August 2010.

Kellie Tranter's "Brown-washing" article was incorrect, inaccurate, based on fallacies of ad hominem, reasoned by mere authority, and was stocked with countless unsubstantiated claims about imaginary malfeasant authors. It's so vacant, and lacking in any reasonable argument that it doesn't just reflect badly on the author, it begs us to ask why our tax dollars are being used to propagate this kind of generic un-researched smear.

Kellie Tranter attacks imaginary people, who she doesn't name, doesn't cite, and doesn't quote. She accuses them of misrepresentations that she doesn't specify. Surely Australian tax payers expect that commentary they pay to promote ought to at least be based on some research, by someone who has some familiarity with the topic?

Kellie Tranter wants to sue sceptics using the Trade Practices Act (TPA) and its state equivalents, but this is legally tenuous. Generally litigation under Part V of the TPA requires two things. Firstly the target must have created the perception of expertise and secondly used that perception to promote a defective product which people rely on to their detriment.

The irony here is that it is the believers in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) who are pushing a product, not the sceptics. And it is the general public who are being forced through their power bills and the cascade throughout the economy of the cost of the CAGW 'solutions' to rely on the product of CAGW to their detriment.

But this confusion is typical of the Tranter article; everything she accuses sceptics of doing; inference and innuendo, scaremongering, lack of transparency, profiteering and obfuscation are labels which apply to the CAGW supporters. Indeed the money for those with pro-CAGW lectures, books, junkets and committees vastly outdoes the rewards of scepticism by 3500: 1. And the promised profits of the carbon-trading schemes eclipse the scientific funding even more so.

The sceptics offer products for voluntary private purchase. Citizens have to pay CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology and the Department of Climate Change. No one is forced to buy a book from a sceptic, and non-fiction books don't have a Charter to provide balanced, impartial information, but government departments do. Who, exactly, fails their contractual duty?

The allegations of "vested interests at work" is not just a vague and lazy ad hominem by Tranter, it's also demonstrably, outrageously wrong. No fossil fuel money is coming to The Climate Sceptics; it is obviously all being spent on that clunker of an idea, carbon capture or clean coal. Given that CAGW is the Zeitgeist it is bizarre to even suggest that sceptics are motivated by money, glory or status. Most of them have the seat out of their pants and operate on the smell of an oily rag. The motivation of most sceptics is that they dislike and oppose the fundamental untruth of CAGW and the great detriment the proposed remedies will have on humanity. They are also concerned about the effect that CAGW will have on the integrity of science as an honest, transparent broker of evidence and information. The University of East Anglia e-mail scandal and the defects of the 3 enquiries exonerating the scientists involved have greatly eroded public trust in science. It is those white-washes that Tranter should be concerned about not an imaginary "brown-wash".

The only plus is that Tranter's claims for civil action are not as egregiously anti-free speech as other proposed legal actions are. James Hansen, Joe Romm, Al Gore and Paul Krugman want sceptics to be charged with criminal offences including but not limited to "treason against the planet". Other CAGW believers like Clive Hamilton want the democratic process to be suspended, while erstwhile Senate candidate Lee Rhiannon runs workshops training people in how to break the law and be civilly disobedient. Robert Manne just wants us all to do what the clever AGW scientists tell us to do.

Bring on the legal cases. The sceptics win.

CAGW has already been put under legal scrutiny. In 2007 Al Gore's pro-AGW film, "An Inconvenient Truth", was brought to court by a parent who objected to the screening of Gore's film in schools. The English High Court found the film had at least nine inaccuracies, that the film was a political work and if shown without warning of its inaccuracies would be political indoctrination. No one appealed the decision.

Closer to home in 2007 the Queensland Land and Resources Tribunal dismissed action brought by the Queensland Conservation Council against Xstrata in relation to the CO2 emissions which would be caused by its Newlands coal mine expansion. The tribunal found evidence supplied by the Australian Conservation Foundation was exaggerated.

Recently, in the NSW Land and Environment Court, an action brought by members of the green group Rising Tide, had its first stage thrown out. The Court ruled that Macquarie Generation had an implied authority rather than just a licence to emit CO2 during the production of electricity; that is electricity could not be produced without emissions. Rising Tide was represented by the taxpayer funded NSW Environment Defender's Office (EDO). Persisting, as groups spending other people's money usually do, the EDO is now seeking a limit on CO2 emissions; in effect, limiting electricity production. If the Greens hold the balance of power after the federal election it will not matter if this head of claim fails as well because Green policies, which include closure of coal power energy, will have the same result.

Some sceptics have suggested climate scientists are frauds who manipulate data, but hasn't Tranter noticed that none of the accused has launched legal proceedings to protect their names? Perhaps the legal maxim, "he who seeks equity must do equity" applies? And if climate scientists have nothing to hide, why do they expend so much effort hiding their work?

Tranter speaks generically on behalf of "victims" who are well paid, and well supported by the government and media, against sceptics who are usually volunteer grassroots workers with nothing to gain financially.

She dutifully repeats evidence that is irrelevant: sea-levels and glaciers would rise and melt regardless of the cause of warming, and indeed they started doing that 100 years before human emissions increased, and the rate hasn't changed. She is so ill-informed she isn't aware most of the satellite measurements she quotes only point to projections of 1.2 degrees or less of warming, and not to the catastrophic sensational headlines. She accuses sceptics of using short data that's invalidated by longer trends. The bad joke is that her side thinks 130 years of records is "long term" and ignores that warm period 1000 years ago that invalidates their own argument. 2,6,7,8

The modellers can't predict or explain the past warm periods when CO2 was low. There is little correlation between CO2 movement and temperature on any time scale except one where temperatures drive CO2. Relative humidity levels in the upper troposphere are not rising, 10,11 temperatures haven't warmed as much as the models predicted, believers can't name any empirical evidence supporting their catastrophic claims, but sceptics can name several independent studies all suggesting CO2 will only make a minor difference. 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12

Her favoured experts have been caught avoiding Freedom of Information requests, talking about deleting records, trying to hide data, and all stand to lose status and money if they say anything other than "there's a catastrophe". Which begs the question: who should sue who?

References

1 Douglass, D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearson, and S.F. Singer. 2007. A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International Journal of Climatology.

2 Huang, S., H. N. Pollack, and P. Y. Shen (1997), Late Quaternary temperature changes seen in world-wide continental heat flow measurements, Geophys. Res. Lett., 24(15), 1947-1950.

3 Idso, S.B. 1998. CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic's view of potential climate change. Climate Research 10: 69-82

4 Lindzen, R. S., and Y.-S. Choi (2009), On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L16705, doi:10.1029/2009GL039628.

5 Lindzen, R. S., and Y.-S. Choi (2010), On the observational determination of climate sensitivity and its implications (Submitted to Journal of Geophysical Research, February 2010)

6 Loehle, C. and J.H. McCulloch. 2008. Correction to: A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 19, 93-100.

7 McIntyre, S., and R. McKitrick, 2003. Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy database and Northern Hemispheric average temperature series. Energy & Environment,14, 751-771 (PDF).

8 McIntyre, S., and R. McKitrick, 2005. Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance. Geophysical Research Letters, 32, doi:10.1029/2004GL021750.

9 McKitrick, Ross R., Stephen McIntyre and Chad Herman (2010) "Panel and Multivariate Methods for Tests of Trend Equivalence in Climate Data Series" in press at Atmospheric Science Letters.

10 Miskolczi, Ferenc; (2010). "The Stable Stationary value of the Earth's global average atmospheric Planck-weighted green-house gas optical thickness. Energy and Environment, volume 21, number 4, August 2010

11 Paltridge, G., Arking, A., Pook, M., 2009. Trends in middle- and upper-level tropospheric humidity from NCEP reanalysis data. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Volume 98, Numbers 3-4, pp. 351-35).

12 Spencer, R.W., Braswell, W.D., Christy, J.R., Hnilo, J., 2007. Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L15707, doi:10.1029/2007/GL029698;

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Massey Executives Face Subpoenaes in Probe of Mine Blast, Jeff Plungis, Aug 11 2010.

Massey Energy Co. executives will be subpoenaed in the U.S. investigation of a deadly West Virginia coal mine explosion that a safety regulator today called “a preventable occurrence.”

The Mine Safety and Health Administration and state regulators have so far interviewed 166 people about the April 5 blast at the Upper Big Branch Mine, Joseph Main, assistant secretary of Labor for mine safety, said on a call with reporters. Main said executives will be summoned and declined to comment on the possibility of a subpoena for Massey Chief Executive Officer Don Blankenship.

“To accommodate moving the investigation forward, there is the use of the subpoena process to effectively conclude the interview process,” Main said. “We are going to scour the earth to determine what happened at the Upper Big Branch Mine.”

The explosion in the rural West Virginia mine killed 29 workers, the worst such U.S. coal-industry accident in 40 years. The Labor Department said in a report to President Barack Obama in April that most mine blasts of that magnitude are sparked by accumulations of methane, combustible coal dust and air.

Massey fell $2.11, or 6.4 percent, to $30.99 at 4:01 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, and has declined 43 percent since the explosion.

Investigators at the West Virginia mine are searching for methane detectors, Main said. A large portion of the mine remains unmapped and the investigation isn’t complete, he said.

Methane Detectors

Investigators are examining eight detectors used in the mine before the explosion, Main said. Data from four has been extracted with additional testing to be conducted, he said. Officials think other units from the mine are missing, he said.

Main and Kevin Stricklin, MSHA’s assistant administrator for coal, disputed a Massey statement they said was made to the families of the workers who died that a 150-foot crack along the mine’s long wall of coal may have allowed a buildup of methane to trigger the explosion.

Investigators have seen “floor heaving” and cracks that would be expected in longwall mining, and none were “close to 150 feet,” Stricklin said. Investigators have seen cracks 6 inches deep and 8 inches wide of varying lengths, he said.

“There hasn’t been enough evidence amassed yet to reach any conclusions on the causes,” Main said.

Massey posted pictures on its website today and said the photographs had been shown to relatives of the blast’s victims.

‘Fully Examined’

“These photos show a crack in the mine floor in the longwall section of the UBB mine,” Shane Harvey, Massey’s vice president and general counsel, said in a statement. “The crack along with other potential sources in the mine need to be fully examined by company, federal and state investigators.”

The West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training is conducting its own investigation. The U.S. Labor Department and the state office decided early on subpoena all witnesses after a few employees failed to show up for interviews, Main said.

Massey’s upper-level managers will be interviewed “in the next month or so,” Stricklin said. “We want them all in here. We want to interview all of them.”



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Nunavut judge grants temporary injunction against seismic testing, Randy Boswell, August 8 2010.

A Nunavut judge has handed the Canadian government a significant setback in the Arctic after granting an injunction sought by several Inuit communities from Baffin Island that blocks a planned seismic survey in the environmentally sensitive waters of Lancaster Sound.

The controversial proposal to use sound blasts to probe the sea floor off of Baffin’s northeast coast — an area also slated to become a national marine conservation area — had raised concerns about a possible new Arctic oil and gas target and potential harm to marine mammals from this summer’s testing procedures.

Both federal Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis and Environment Minister Jim Prentice — who has described the species-rich sound as the “Serengeti” of the Arctic — have insisted that the seabed scan is neither a prelude to petroleum exploration nor a danger to the narwhals and beluga whales for which the waters are a crucial habitat.

But the planned survey had also sparked an uproar among Inuit representatives over what they considered inadequate community consultation.

And the project had even drawn the German government into the fray — in support of the survey — since its science ministry’s research ship Polarstern was scheduled to perform the work on behalf of Natural Resources Canada.

The federal government issued a statement on Sunday acknowledging the court decision "preventing the commencement of the Baffin Bay area marine seismic survey," but noting that "Natural Resources Canada remains committed to the goal of its geo-mapping program, which is to increase our knowledge of the geology of the north."

The release added that "this scientific information will also be valuable in establishing a proposed marine conservation area in Lancaster Sound" and stated that the court ruling "has no impact on the other surveys currently taking place in the north."

First reported by Postmedia News in April, the uproar over Lancaster Sound recently prompted Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff to accuse the Conservative government of “rushing ahead with oil exploration” while touting plans to create a marine wildlife sanctuary “in exactly the same place.”

In the decision issued Sunday, Judge Susan Cooper of the Nunavut Court of Justice ruled that: “I am satisfied that Inuit in the five affected communities will suffer irreparable harm if an injunction is not granted.”

The Qikiqtani Inuit Association, which represents several Baffin Island communities opposed to the survey, had argued that the acoustic pulses used in seismic testing could harm wildlife and therefore disrupt traditional hunting practices in waters near the eastern entrance to the Northwest Passage.

Backed by the Iqaluit-based environmental group Oceans North Canada, the QIA sought an injunction last week to stop the tests and hearings were held Thursday and Friday.

Cooper noted that “there is evidence before the court that the proposed testing areas are both calving areas and migration routes for marine mammals.”

Her ruling added that “there is also evidence that the channel between Colberg Island and Devon Island is narrow, and a disruption of migratory patterns would divert marine mammals from their usual migratory route into Jones Sound.”

The QIA issued a statement following the decision expressing satisfaction with the outcome but concern over the events that forced the issue into court.

“”It is very unfortunate that with the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement and a territorial government, Inuit still need to fight to have their voices heard,” said QIA president Okalik Eegeesiak.

“QIA firmly believes the best way to research, explore and develop within Nunavut is through partnership with Inuit. I look forward to the day when the advice of Inuit and their representative organizations is sought prior to seeking project approval.”

The German embassy in Ottawa issued a statement last week defending the safety of the planned probe and offering a special seat to an Inuit observer aboard Polarstern to monitor the seismic testing.

Prior to the ruling, a spokesman for the Alfred Wegener Institute — the German research body that oversees the Polarstern’s research program — had told Postmedia News that AWI scientists were “irritated” by the controversy in Canada but would comply with any court decision.

“It’s very simple,” said AWI spokesman Ralf Roechert. “If there will be a court decision not to do seismic surveys in Lancaster Sound, we won’t do it.”

But he added that “it would be a lost chance to gain valuable scientific data.”