February 11, 2010
Weather and climate
by Sylvia S Tognetti
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| We're Off to See the Blizzard | ||||
| ||||
In addition to being snowed in, I lost power for part of yesterday and most of last weekend, but I have another post on the way. Since I get paid for things other than writing this blog, it may not be until the weekend. In the meantime, an insightful report on weather and climate, from who else but Stephen Colbert.
Update: for more insight on the relationship between the snowstorm and climate see also: Capitol Climate, Jeff Masters/WunderBlog, and Jon Stewart. While no single event proves anything about the climate, the bottom line is, record breaking snowfall we just had in the northeast is what can be expected from record breaking moisture in the atmosphere, which is what can be expected from global warming, which increases evaporation from the oceans.
And welcome to visitors from wattsupwiththat, where Jerry Ravetz posted an essay I only partially agree with. As Jerry has provided much of the inspiration for this blog, and has been an occasional contributor, disagreements with him are not something I take lightly. His post merits discussion and careful comment. I will link to wattsupwiththat in the blogroll when I see arguments there that hold water and have not been refuted. Other than part of Jerry's essay.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 8:56 AM | TrackBack
November 2, 2008
Campaign adventures
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I spent a good part of the afternoon knocking on doors for the Obama campaign, on the other side of the Potomac river in Loudoun County VA - which happens to be Neddie Jingo's neighborhood. It seems that most of the action happened right before we got there. For historical context, and to find out more about "the real Virginia" see the links on the front page of his blog to a series of posts about "The John Mobberly Story." As for my own campaign adventure, I got to see who some of the "undecideds" are. Yes, they still exist, and they say they don't need any more information to make up their minds. Which makes me wonder how they go about actually making up their minds. Whatever...
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 9:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 6, 2008
Just don't inhale
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I'm only posting this video because I haven't been able to get this song out of my head since Revere gave it new meaning... Way back when, the Tom Lehrer album on which this song appears was among the few my parents had other than classical music, and before I was old enough to start my own collection, so it got overplayed. But this is the first time I have actually seen what he looked like in performance. It is even funnier now. In retrospect, it also does a better job than we seem to be doing now, of linking pollution to human health.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:20 PM | TrackBack
March 16, 2008
Tiempos locos
by Sylvia S Tognetti
...a phrase often used to describe the weather in Guatemala, where I recently spent 3 weeks, mostly working on an ecosystem services case study that I will say more about when the report is done, and where local papers carried headlines about “Super Martes.” More than once I got to practice my Spanish answering questions about our dysfunctional elections. Had Comedy Central been among the cable channels, I might have just let Esteban Colberto explain it - but I did get to see Jon Stewart on the CNN international channel, making fun of CNN... Over one of the weekends, I also witnessed a few tourists roasting corn and marshmallows in the lava that is creeping down the slope of the Pacaya volcano, and learned that the country lies at the intersection of three colliding tectonic plates – both physically and metaphorically, i.e., in the political realm. The problems they face in the aftermath of a long civil war make our problems look mild in comparison. But they are not unrelated.
Before I left - after Sen. Obama made the Reagan comment - and Sen. Clinton took it out of context, I started writing a post I did not finish at the time because I was trying to put my finger more precisely on just what it was that changed under Reagan with respect to science and policy... a point I'll come back to. Naomi Oreskes addresses that very nicely in this presentation (video link), which is well worth your time to watch if you haven't already. But the key point was, and still is, that both Obama and Clinton missed the point about Reagan, and that the narrative of the Democratic party campaigns is going to have to change before we can change anything else. Which might even help break the current stalemate. For now, neither one is off the hook. I have generally refrained from blogging about the primary because we will need the combined talents of all of the candidates including those that who have dropped out and those who have stayed out (i.e., Gore – who I would still prefer over the leading contenders), and not just to win in November. So I offer this post in the spirit of constructive criticism. In case you need a reminder, here is the full Obama/Reagan quote:
What I'm saying is I think the average baby-boomers have moved beyond the arguments of the 60's but our politicians haven't. We're still having the same argument... It's all around culture wars and it's all ... even when you discuss war the frame of reference is all Vietnam. Well that's not my frame of reference. My frame of reference is "what works." Even when I first opposed the war in Iraq, my first line was I don't oppose all wars, specifically to make clear that this is not an anti-military, you know, 70's love-in kind of approach.
I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
Obama was absolutely right that Reagan changed the American political trajectory, but it wasn’t by appealing to the center in some middle of the road chasm strategy. (Digby imagines a message equivalent to Obama's as it might have been uttered by Reagan - it didn't happen). During the 1980 presidential campaign, I learned, in a political science 101 class at GWU, that Reagan didn't have a chance because, as the professor explained, in America, fringe candidates don’t win. It was just “common sense.” Appealing to the center is (or at least was), a time-honored tradition in American Politics. However, with a little help from the Iranian hostage crisis, Reagan changed the rules, not by appealing to the center but by evoking nostalgia for an idyllic and simple past that never was, and by taking clear untriangulated positions that made solutions to complex and messy problems sound equally simple: the market will solve everything if the government just gets out of the way. His most recent employment had been as a motivational speaker. As it got closer to election day, “common sense” changed. The election day outcome would depend on the weather because Democrats are generally not energized enough to come out in the rain to vote. Rain or shine, Republicans are the ones who are there when the polls open. On that "mourning in America" it rained.
Like the weather, our elections have become more fickle ever since. Twelve long years later, President Clinton won by using a right wing frame of reference. Anything that might have previously been construed as the "center" was left in the wilderness, along with more diverse perspectives. And with that shift in political discourse, there was little context or frame or reference for anything his vice president or anyone else had to say about the climate - or any other messy and complex problem. As Frank Luntz once asked (in this recent Frontline interview "you tell me where global warming fits in on the more immediate issues - Iraq, Iran, terrorism, health care, prescription drugs, education..." It doesn't. Lets call climate the context of the context.
Underlying this shift in political discourse was an equally profound shift in the science and policy relationship. As Naomi Oreskes points out in her lecture, there was a consensus on climate change in 1979 based on research developed over the previous 50 or so years. That consensus was also based on the conclusions of scientific committees made up of members who had served both Democratic and Republican administrations, as well as international scientific bodies, to which the establishment of the IPCC was a response.
Prior to that time, science was generally not a partisan enterprise, because it provided support and reinforcement for a mainstream political agenda for which there was general agreement, e.g., progress through industrialization, national security through weapons that provided the capacity for Mutually Assured Destruction, and efficient use of natural resources. But these did not come without trade-offs and political opposition. In other words, science was politicized in a different way in that it was used to support rather than to question established policies.
As I have discussed in earlier posts - throughout most of the 20th century, science for policy was largely confined to the deterministic and delusional frame of reference in which it was expected to enable the control of natural systems, provide certainty, and above all, provide justification for controversial decisions, for example, by determining “acceptable risk” even with unknown probabilities. This approach is rooted in the early part of the 20th century when, according to the environmental historian Samuel Hays, in his classic book on Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency
Hays characterized this as a denial by Theodore Roosevelt of the reality of social conflict and an attempt to develop “concepts and techniques which would, in effect, legislate that conflict out of existence” so as to return to an idyllic agrarian past that never really existed. This in turn minimized the political influence of “institutions which reflected the organized sentiment of local communities”, whose interests were considered only in order “to facilitate administration and to prevent... decisions from arousing too much resentment” -- resulting in widespread social alienation. This is now generally recognized as sham public participation. Conveniently avoided were the messier problems of judgment under uncertainty as well as issues of equity in the distribution of costs, benefits, risks and uncertainties, that were merely shifted rather than reduced.
There are still those who have such expectations of science - but few of them are actually scientists. Although the frame remains a powerful one, the foundation of that narrative crumbled as a new generation of scientists began to investigate the consequences of using science to try to control the world, and moved away from a static towards a more dynamic view of the world.
Then Reagan got elected, which is when, according to Oreskes, scientific uncertainty began to be used as a political tactic. To summarize some of her key points - it was during Reagan’s administration, in 1984, that the George Marshall Institute was founded by a few physicists who had built their careers during the cold war – Robert Jastrow, along with William Nierenberg and Frederick Seitz who served on the board of directors. The initial purpose was to defend Reagan’s SDI or “Star Wars” initiative from scientific and political attacks by most other physicists who judged it to be technically dubious as well as politically destabilizing. In 1986, 6500 of them signed a statement in which they declared a boycott of program research funds. The initial goal of the Marshall Institute was to demonstrate that not all physicists were against the SDI program, by debating science in the media rather than in scientific forums, and demanding “balance” in media coverage. Ironically, although Reagan opposed and eventually dismantled the Fairness Doctrine as a form of government interference in markets, among the successful tactics of the Marshall Institute was to threaten lawsuits under the Fairness Doctrine if “one sided” programs were aired.
Until the end of the cold war, the Marshall Institute also focused on other cold war related programs: nuclear winter, seismic verification of the ban on underground nuclear tests, and the future of the space program. Then it turned its attention to an area in which it did not even have expertise, i.e., global warming, following what Oreskes calls “the tobacco strategy” of “keeping the controversy alive” by creating reasonable doubt. This was a program that actually began before the Reagan election. From 1975 to 1989, RJR Nabisco, the parent company of Philip Reynolds, invested $45 million in a program that Seitz directed after 1978, that identified and supported promising underfunded investigators who could back up those "doubts." In “the tobacco strategy”, Seitz at least they tried to provide some form of rational justification for his claim that there was no evidence that 2nd hand smoke created a risk of lung cancer. Citing the 500 year old scientific notion of Paracelsus that “the dose makes the poison”, he dismissed the linear dose-response model because it did not address what might be the threshold value below which there would be no adverse effects. However he did not present any evidence of such a threshold.
In addition to claims of scientific uncertainty – that I have long argued only work because of the false expectations of scientific certainty created over the preceding century, global warming was also dismissed with claims that concerns are exaggerated, and that if it does turn out to be a problem, technology and markets will solve it, providing, of course, that the government does not interfere. What evidence I have seen suggests the opposite, but there is plenty of ink on that so I’m not going to begin to address that in this post. See the Oreskes lecture for more details on the evidence that already existed at that time, and predictions based on it that have since been confirmed.
Coming back to Obama’s Reagan remarks, what troubled me most was that he deepened a troubling narrative, that reinforces myths about the “excesses of the “60s and ‘70s” and about moving on from the fights of the ‘90s. As if the Clintons, and our current president, reflected the entire generation of baby boomers. This narrative probably has more to do with media hype than with the two leading Democratic candidates, both of whom seem to be smart people, who probably know all of this. But there must be people who believe this crap, which is only reinforced by their campaign talk. To be fair, Obama seems to have moved on a bit himself – to evoking Kennedy - perhaps having learned something, and/or perhaps realizing that boomers vote too.
First of all, it would be great if we could all just get along, but partisan conflicts go back much farther than the 1990s, or even the 1960s, the New Deal and the Magna Carta. The current administration has indeed taken aim at all of those as well as the US Constitution. Second, if, as Obama says, most have moved on from what he calls the bickering of the '60s and '90s (or whenever else), it is not from merely getting beyond or magically transcending those conflicts but because we are now in the age of consequences of past attempts to control complex natural systems, and have new kinds of problems to face. Had Reagan not been elected, we would be much further along in addressing such consequences, e.g., climate change. As for entrepreneurship, I personally know two people who were entrepreneurs in what was a nascent renewable energy business who were forced to change careers as Reagan cut all R&D funding for it, took Carter's solar panels off of the White House, and brought in the likes of James Watt, etc etc etc. Since it was before the internet era, all he had to do to prevent information from getting out of some of the agencies was to cut the maintenance contracts for photocopying machines. If some Democrats recall Reagan with a bit of nostalgia it is only because at least he did much of this in the light of day rather than in obscure signing statements and initiatives with nice-sounding but deceptive titles. The current administration doesn’t even bother to try to justify their decisions with anything other than spin and deception. Without Habeas Corpus, I don't know why they even bother to do that. (Just some obscure legal text that once provided safeguards against arbitrary imprisonment and insured a right to a trial by jury - without which all other rights established in the United States Constitution are hypothetical, as is the need for public policies to be justified with any kind of evidence or rational argument.)
As for Guatemala and elsewhere in developing countries, as seen in the film "Charlie Wilson's War" regarding Afghanistan, a post-cold war reconstruction is a hard sell after a series of proxy wars conducted or supported in secret, but we could go a long way towards achieving that by addressing climate change in ways that also reduce poverty. And now, I have just arrived in Italy for a meeting related to another project that aims to do precisely that, and that I'll blog more on in the future, when it is more formally launched. Being here will also give me an opportunity to meet with Silvio Funtowicz over breakfast in the morning. Stay tuned.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 3:27 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 4, 2007
Farewell then, wimps of America
by Jerry Ravetz
All of a sudden, the wimps of America aren’t there. Now that they’re gone, we miss them. Come back please, we really do love you. After the wimps, it won’t ever be the same again.
What is a wimp? It’s one of those funny people who doesn’t sincerely believe that Greed Is Good. Or someone who knows about Adam Smith’s other book, the sentimental one about morals.
The wimps in America were the self-appointed guardians of our standards. They took pride in quaint things like ‘integrity’, even though it kept them poor. When the gave an AA rating to a financial product, it used to mean just that and no more, no less. We didn’t need to know what sort of junk had been chopped up and repackaged inside. We could just buy them cheap and sell them dear in confidence, knowing that what the wimps said was true.
Then something happened. The American wimps wised up. Perhaps they had heard all those students asking, “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” Or they realised that they were behaving like irrational actors in the paradigm. So they joined the game. In addition to derivatives and SIV’s, their ratings went for sale too. What could be more natural?
Noone told us that that was happening. In fact we hadn’t even known that the American wimps were there. That’s not really our fault; who ever learned about Regulation? Only the people who took courses with numbers like 327, in other words the wimps themselves. The rest of us just learned how to make with the curves, so as to get our ticket for the professional gravy train.
But now the wimps are gone, and in New York another show is beginning. This is called ‘Mister District Attorney’. It involves exposing a scandal, getting newspaper headlines, sending a few guys to jail, and then going for a Governorship and beyond. Over there, the wimps have been replaced by the sharks.
After the sharks comes the outraged Great American Public, and their legislators. They want to make a Prohibition of sin in finance. So first we had Sarbanes-Oxley and now it’s to be FAS 157, standards for evaluating assets. Never mind that it’s all bad for business; the Great American Conscience will have been appeased.
But back here in Olde England, the horizon is still clear. We have really nice wimpy wimps for regulators. Normally they just murmur, “wonderful, wonderful.” When something really atrocious happens they whisper, “naughty, naughty”. For them it would be simply inconceivable for a city gent to do anything so vulgar as to go to jail.
So it’s very likely that in the present Puritanical reaction in the States, London will soon take an even bigger piece of the action from The Big Apple. Then with our own dear wimpy wimps as regulators, it will be like the kids taking over the candy store. ‘Anything goes’ will be the new theme song in The Square Mile. And it doesn’t need much history of economics to know that eventually, as night follows day, we’ll all be using that old American saying, “Buddy, could you spare a dime?”.
Posted by Jerry Ravetz at 11:50 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 8, 2007
PNT Exclusive - Stephen Colbert answers the call
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Special to the Post-Normal Times. If you watched the Colbert report last week, you may recall, that Stephen had a fit because USA Today, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal all received iphones before he did. Saturday evening, after he pitched the first pint of "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream" ice cream to Jerry (of Ben & Jerry's) at the Charleston Riverdogs baseball game, he was presented with the one pictured above. So he answered it. I guess we will get his review when he goes back on the air next week. Jerry dished out ice cream. Then the game got rained out. But Americone Dream is now available at all area Piggly Wiggly's. Proceeds go to the Americone Dream Fund to support various charities. So you may eat it in good conscience.
As for the iphone, I didn't get one to review either, but I caught a glimpse of the other kind, belonging to a friend - it was impossible to get out of the hands of a child. I don't like it because you can't read books on it. So I guess its perfect for Stephen - since he doesn't read.
This is Sylvia Tognetti, reporting from The Low Country behind the scenes, in The Colbert Nation.
[revised, 8:30 am]
Update: NoFactZone.net has footage of Stephen pitching the pint and several more blog posts and pictures from the River Dogs game, including a cross-post of this post. Via a comment left over there, by RiverDog, I now know who it was that stepped in to give him the "iphone":
Good catch. Me and one of my employees are big Colbert fans and I pointed out we should present him with a Colbert ‘08 jersey and my employee is the one who created the iPhone…complete with the apple on top!
Lastly, I'm not sure whose call Stephen answered - the title of the post reflects my attempt to stick to the main topic of this blog - environmental science and policy. To "Answer the call" from Al Gore, click here.
For those visiting this blog from outside the United States, who may not have heard of Stephen Colbert, I should also add that, I often post clips from his comedy show because, as I explained in this previous post, he does a much better job than most scientists at conveying the value of science for the common good. Besides that, he is "America's Benigni."
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June 22, 2007
It all depends on what the choices are
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I take most opinion polls I hear about with a grain of salt because what people think usually depends on how you frame the question and what the choices are, and can change as people learn more about the problem. Just now, a new opinion poll on global warming came up on the RSS reader that actually presents the respondents with policy options and cost estimates and shows that the majority of Americans still support taking action on global warming even when presented with costs. It was conducted by the New Scientist with a polling team from Stanford and with some cost estimates and analysis provided by Resources for the Future - and is worth a read. It is also expected to provide a springboard for debate about how best to tackle global warming, which will undoubtedly lead to more learning and possibly to more options...
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 12:57 AM | TrackBack
June 20, 2007
Root causes
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Dani Rodrik - an economist who is esteemed for his work on global trade issues to which he brings an institutional perspective, and who is refreshingly candid about blindspots in his own field, is looking for the benefits of changes in the global financial system that have occurred over the past 25 years or so, and can't find any. For a list of the risks, see this article he links to, by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, who does a good job of describing some of the mechanics of the "financial engineering" that has occurred. Wolf hasn't quite figured out if this is good or bad:
Our brave new capitalist world has many similarities to that of the early 1900s. But, in many ways, it has gone far beyond it. It brings exciting opportunities. But it is also largely untested. It is creating new elites. This modern mutation of capitalism has loyal friends and fierce foes. But both can agree that its emergence is among the most significant events or our time.
but promises Rodrik an answer in next week's column. What his article suggests to me is that novelties in the global financial system have unleashed risks and uncertainties as unprecedented and possibly as uncontrollable as those in the climate. If there is indeed a "triumph of the trader in assets over the long-term producer" and if "capital is flowing in the wrong direction, from poor to rich nations" - what does that say about approaches being taken to protect the production functions of ecosystems so as to insure the flow of services, like water and climate regulation, and to alleviate poverty and promote sustainable development? Rodrik concludes:
I am among those who see the future risks as being substantial. I think there is a fundamental incompatibility between unfettered global finance and a fragmented system of political sovereignty at the national level. I am also not convinced that this new international financial capitalism has actually lived up to its promise: it has on the whole not been beneficial to developing nations, and it has created great inequality in the rich countries (as Wolf acknowledges). So we need a substantial rethink.
All the potential Keynes's out there: we need your ideas!
I don't think the answers will all come from economics or that we will find any Keynesian silver bullets but I will eventually flesh out a post about the notion of a "Post-Cold War Reconstruction" as a framework for a substantial rethink and for redefining the whole concept of security, which would answer the question Frank Luntz asked in the Frontline interview: "you tell me where global warming fits in [on the more immediate issues]" Iraq, Iran, terrorism, health care, prescription drugs, education...". There is some good stuff out there - now if we could just get somebody intelligent elected for president who isn't intimidated by complexity or delusional voters.... (Come on Al!)
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 4:04 PM | TrackBack
May 17, 2007
On the cultural and environmental philosophy of coffee cups
by Sylvia S Tognetti
David Ng shares some thoughts about his coffee cup and asks:
1. Can you show us your coffee cup?
2. Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality?
3. Do you have any interesting anecdotes resulting from coffee cup commentary?
3. Can you try to get others to comment on it?
So here is one of mine - a souvenir from attending working group meetings of the Millennium Ecosystem Asessment. The full text on it reads: "Coffee, freshwhater, sugar... in f act everything we use is provided by the ecosystems we are part of. How much longer will they be able to provide these services? When I finish this cup I am going to look into it..." Inside at the bottom of the cup, as a reminder, is the link to the MA website. My other cup says "Oysters are habitat forming." And now I have a paper to finish about protecting ecosystem services provided by soil so I can keep drinking this stuff, and so the oysters in the Chesapeake Bay don't have their filtering mechanisms overwhelmed.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:01 PM | TrackBack
May 16, 2007
The Pro-Glacier agenda
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I have real work to finish but, in the wee hours of the morning, as I waited for more coffee to bubble up from my stovetop espresso pot, I turned on the TV just in time to catch this clip of Stephen Colbert ranting about The Pro-Glacier Agenda. He also reminds us that Ptolemy's view, that the the sun revolves around the earth has been around 1400 years longer than the the notion that the earth revolves around the sun - but watch the video for more insight on mental rigidity and denialism. Then compare the above picture, taken by me on the Denali glacier sometime in the spring of 1988, with this one taken at the same location in June 2004, posted at wunderground by Steve Gregory. According to the pilot who flew him in, who could easily have been the same one that flew me in, "the out-cropping of rock in the background took all of just 3 years to become visible."
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:43 AM | TrackBack
April 22, 2007
The curse of convenience: an Earth Day sermonette
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I'm always somewhat cynical about the encouragements we hear every Earth Day, for individuals to conserve and recycle, when these are not accompanied by any mention of policies that needed to cap total consumption, to create more choices, and ultimately, to make sure we aren't just becoming more efficient producers of greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of garbage. The cars we drive now are certainly more efficient than the ones that were around before the gas crisis of the 1970s, but it sure doesn't seem to have reduced consumption. Here is Maryland, as the state joins in a Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, preparations are also underway to build another highway, the Inter-County Connector, which not only doesn't go anywhere, but would preempt funding necessary to expand mass transportation and create more alternatives to driving. But that is not to say that, we shouldn't conserve as much as possible.
So in honor of Earth Day, here are some words about water conservation I came across in a collection of writings by Guido Ceronetti, "La Fragilitá del pensare" (The fragility of thought) in my own rough translation from Italian:
Go ahead and waste words and occasions, but not water.
...Turn on the faucet and down comes water.... It is the curse of convenience.... Go get it with a bucket and a botle, when there is a breakdown, and immediately you are reminded that water is precious, that life requires effort. Pouring it from a jug is an educational act: "after soaking the feet, there is enough left, tepid enough to shave". "After shaving, enough remains to cook an egg." "After the egg is cooked, after the water has chilled, I can soak my dentures." This is civilization.
Herbicides, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, agricultural chemicals, travel, penetrate, slide down, insinuate themselves, nourishing their petrified pseudo-life on the death of water. And water is the absolute biological frontier. A supernatural blindness is needed to continue in this way, with such anger, to destroy its potability...
Now don´t forget to carry a cloth bag next time you are out shopping and running errands. On my shopping list is a rain barrel, which won´t fit in a bag but it can save tremendous amounts of water by capturing water than can be used in the garden, but, if everyone in my neighborhood did it, we could reduce stormwater runoff in Muddy Spring as well as to the Chesapeake Bay.
In other news, in The GreatTurtle Race, from Costa Rica to the Galapagos, Stephanie Colburtle has so far managed to avoid mistaking any plastic bags for jellyfish and is back in the lead. But I´m also cheering for Drexelina and Sundae, who stayed behind on beach patrol.
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April 16, 2007
Better know a terrapin
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Last Thursday, Stephen Colbert adopted Stephanie Colburtle the (Leatherback) Turtle, who so far is leading on this first day of The Great Turtle Race, from Costa Rica to the Galapagos - assuming she doesn't mistake any plastic bags for jellyfish along the way. Apparently, this is an offshoot of Stephen's 240-part series "Better know a Terrapin" which I am eager to see but, to my knowledge, this series hasn't actually aired yet... Since Testudo the Terrapin is the mascot of the University of Maryland - where I did my graduate studies - when I wasn't riding tides around the Chesapeake Bay in a kayak looking for its notorious ambassadors, I'm going to kick it off here.
What has fascinated me about the diamondback terrapin is the way its existence is intertwined with the diverse habitats found in the Bay, in the various stages of its lifecycle. It is adapted to brackish water, nests on what little is left of the sandy beaches, finds shelter among what is left of underwater sea grasses and on the disappearing predator free islands, feeds in the salt marshes, hibernates in the muddy bottoms of creeks and rivers where the salinity is low, and moves between salinity gradients in the bay itself, surfacing to drink freshwater found on the surface after it rains. It has also been found drowned in crab pots and at Maryland basketball games, cheering for the Terps - at least in the year they won the national championship.
Although Terrapins can be found in estuaries of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, the Chesapeake Bay, with its extensive mix of shallow and nearshore habitats, happens to be the terrapin stronghold, So while non-Marylanders are warned to "Fear the Turtle" I fear for it. To save the Terrapins, we have to protect the whole Bay, just as to save the Leatherbacks, we have to protect the ocean - particularly the nearshore and coastal areas, with comprehensive conservation strategies. For more information, visit The Terrapin Institute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Pictured above is one of the 50 sculptures exhibited around the state last year in the UMD Fear the Turtle Sculpture Project. It is entitled Thanks for all the fish, was done by Kit Cappillino, and was located by the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Pictured below is Michelangelo, the Mutant Ninja Terrapin, who I would not want to see get upset. The latter is a creation of David Brosch.
Reference
Hart, K.L. and D.S. Lee. The Diamondback Terrapin: The biology, ecology, cultural history and conservation status of an obligate estuarine turtle. Studies in Avian Biology No. 32: 206-213.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:42 PM | TrackBack
March 12, 2007
Re-emergence of Glen Canyon
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I was in Salt Lake City last week for a symposium on "The Colorado River Compact in the 21st Century: Time for Change?"held at the University of Utah Wallace Stegner Center,and am still climbing out of the avalanche of information that landed on me. Another flurry of blog posts is in the works but in the meantime, here is a picture of an arch at Glen Canyon, which is starting to make a reappearance, courtesy of the dropping water level in Lake Powell. The photograph posted with permission from Tom Till, who included this in his presentation on "The Flowing Desert." For many, the reappearance of Glen Canyon was the bright spot in the western water crisis. Even Goldwater is said to have regretted his vote for the Glen Canyon Dam. Nevada was not as enthused. More on that to follow.
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February 20, 2007
Time for a Post-Cold War Reconstruction
by Sylvia S Tognetti
For all of the European visitors to this site, Randy Newman sings a few words in defense of America, well, sort of...
Hat Tip goes to Jonah Lehrer at the Frontal Cortex blog, who also has a good post about The Certainty Bias typically found in political decision-making. I'll come back to the subject of the title of this post...
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:08 AM | TrackBack
December 22, 2006
Signs of the Post-Normal Times
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Nobody expects to see bears wide awake and roaming wild in the winter. Apparently, they have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain. Or osprey in the Scottish Highlands in December (which normally migrate to west Africa), or Red Admiral butterflies, or buff-tailed bumblebees or swallows or blooming Evergreen ivy, ox-eye daisies, primroses and daffodils in Britain, or 240 wildplants and 200 cultivated species flowering in the Netherlands, or for the smew (a diving duck) to stay home for Christmas - in Russia and Scandinavia. Or to find the American breadbasket growing in Canada - which hasn't happened yet - and which might be a double surprise, since, as a commenter to the article pointed out, the topsoil in Canada and Siberia were scraped off during the last ice age. Or, authentic Japanese restaurants in Paris, or Tuscan Villas in Chevy Chase (suburbs of Washington DC), or muddy springs in Silver Spring, or the Spanish Inquisition on Halloween. Or for Henry Kissinger to say "Its time to rock" and then ask Stephen Colbert to "Crank it up." (If you missed Guitarmageddon, i.e., the Colbert Report on Wednesday 12-20-06, watch the whole series of clips from The Shred Down - Stephen went way over the top in this last show of 2006). And if you want to know what this has to do with science and policy, watch Stephen explain politics to a class at the Harvard Institute of Politics.
Nor did anyone expect the Greenland ice cap to melt but, apparently, this also has some unexpected economic benefits. A new microbrewery in Greenland, can now brew beer from "the purest water imaginable" - melted inland ice - but only that which has broken off. As the Greenland Brewhouse website (hat tip: Jeff Masters) explains:
We are very much aware of the global warming, and it is very important to us not to destroy or use the unique inland ice, but only use the ice that have broken off. We are strong supporters of sustainable development, and care for nature and environment - and strong opponents of the industrial pollution !
...Greenland's inland ice is about 3000 metres thick, 2000 kilometres long and 800 kilometres wide. The snow at the bottom fell over 180,000 years ago. Every year about two metres of snow falls over the inland ice and slowly the snow is pressed into ice. The enormous pressure in the centre forces icebergs out into Greenland's many fjords.
Our beer is brewed by hand with great care using the world's purest water. The melted inland ice, which is one of the main ingredients in beer from Greenland Brewhouse, is at least 2,000 years old and therefore completely free from pollution. The small icebergs are specially selected by local fishermen, who tow them to the brewery in Narsaq. Here, the ice is melted to form the unique water that is used in the hand-brewed beers from Greenland Brewhouse.
Orders for it are said to be flooding in but, to find out whether or not trading the ice-cap for pollution-free beer is a good deal, see the next post from Paul Baer, in which he will present an analysis of the actual worth of the ice-cap, which was not considered in the Stern calculations of the costs of climate change. Yes, I know I said this post was coming soon about a month ago but he got side-tracked by the AGU meeting in San Francisco, had to track down a figure he wanted to use, and apply for a job etc. It was worth the wait. We should have it up there before Christmas.
Also coming soon will be reviews and discussion of two new books on science and policy: The The No-Nonsense Guide to Science by Jerry (Jerome) Ravetz, and Interfaces between Science and Society, edited by Ângela Guimarães Pereira, Sofia Guedes Vaz and Yours Truly. This last book is the product of a workshop held in Milan in November 2003, where I went to re-establish contact with those who were my real mentors in graduate school, and present the idea for this blog as a way to create a space for broader discourse on science and policy necessary to address all of these new challenges. ok, so November/December is also a good time to visit relatives in Italy - that is when the olive oil is fresh and green with a pungent heavenly taste of... olives! At least for now... Now its time to "crank it up."
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November 22, 2006
Remembering what makes America a special place
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Or should I say "made"? Time will tell but, in case you were wondering what might have been, Brent Budowsky channels JFK on this 43rd anniversary of his assassination, with a message that puts the predicaments of 2006 into some historical context. Absolutely required reading for anyone not old enough to remember that day, which really did change everything. And just to stay on the topic of this blog - science won't help to make he world a better place or lead to better policy without a bold vision of what it is we want to accomplish.
I came across this while digging up links for another post in progress, which I probably won't finish until after Thanksgiving... Also forthcoming is a guest contribution from Paul Baer regarding the Stern report. Stay tuned.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 2:43 PM | TrackBack
September 23, 2006
Science bash
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I had my doubts about this grand social experiment. What to make of a couple of DC socialite bloggers hosting a birthday bash for Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet at a swanky place called "The Science Club"? But being an inquiring mind, I couldn't resist the opportunity for some participant observation along with an equally adventurous friend. OK so, we may have altered the outcome with our presence - and were probably the only baby-boomers in the whole place. But it allowed me to meet Dr. Nisbet, and to wish both him and Chris a happy birthday. And there were actually a few other people who actually work in other areas of science policy. and yes, Big Head Rob really has a big head. It was also a good excuse for a stroll into town on a cool evening. So I pronounce it a success, but I have no idea if there is a consensus on that, and I really don't want to know nor do I care whether KAC ever found out if Mooney is "spongeworthy."
As for where are the science gossip bloggers - when I first had the idea to create a site called The Post-Normal Times, - which was before I had even learned what a blog is, it seemed like it would just have to include a gossip column. If for no other reason than to discuss how science policy really gets made. But the common wisdom is, the same way as any other policy - like sausage - you don't want to know that either. Off the record, if you ask someone who actually works on science and policy, a likely straight-faced reply is, "I didn't know there was any such thing as a policy based on science."
At least not under this administration. If you aren't convinced, read Chris's book, The Republican War on Science
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July 9, 2006
CAMPIONI DEL MONDO!
by Sylvia S Tognetti
This time I started drinking coffee earlier in the game - it didn't keep it from going into penalty kicks but they earned this one. Once I venture out of the house, I'll try to get some pictures of the madness that is sure to be going on for the next several weeks. Last time Italy won the world cup (1982), I arrived here a few days later....
These last few posts have been somewhat of a digression from environmental science and policy - the main subject of this blog - but not entirely. As a geographer, I am intrigued by places and what makes them special. This is a source of conflict between science and policy because science is fixated on finding generalizations that can be applied anywhere. This also has a lot to do with European reluctance to accept genetically modified organisms, and might just become the subject of another book about Tuscany, but not like anything you might have read or heard about. This one will have to pass the laugh test in Tuscany - a high bar. According to the writer Curzio Malaparte, who wrote a book called "Those Cursed Tuscans," (1958) Mussolini never could have come to power had he tried to make those speeches from a balcony in Piazza Signoria in Florence rather than from the Palazzo Venezia in Rome because he could not have said those things and kept a straight face before an audience of Florentines (like Oriana Fallaci for example...) What makes this particular place special is a question I have been asking myself since long before I became a geographer. It all started when my father burst into uncontrollable laughter while reading that book. He tried to explain what was so funny but I was only about 7 or 8 years old at the time. He grew up dodging the draft under Mussolini and American bombs at the same time, and then got the hell out of Italy with a scholarship but sent me here to school. I'm not sure if anyone here actually read Under the Tuscan Sun but the film drew guffaws for using outdated stereotypes from other regions of the country.
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On the trail of real formaggio
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Last summer about this time, Arianna Huffington wrote a post about cheese-gate and the trail of phony formaggio that I always intended to blog something about. Now I'm hot on the trail of real formaggio, here is my two cents. A few days ago, on a day trip north with a few relatives, we stopped in Parma for the real thing and I learned the difference in taste between parmesan made from the milk of cows grazed in the mountains from that made from cows grazed in the valley and in the hills. But if it isn't from Parma, it isn't Parmigiano. There are big signs on the road that let you know when you are entering into the zone of origin of Parmigiano Reggiano. Cheeses from neighboring regions made in the same way, are not called Parmesan. Instead, the proper name for the type of cheese is "grana" as in Grana Padano and Trentin Grana.
Now I'm sitting by a window that looks out over a grove of olive trees at the base of the Pisan Hills, said to be inhabited by wild boars, but I haven't seen any yet myself. I also ate a few plums, right from a plum tree, and two days ago, in the nearby town of San Piero, picked up a big bag of the pine nuts for which this place is also known, because they come from a species of pine that can be found only along this narrow coastal region and are tastier than any you can find anywhere else.
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Ulterior motives
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Riding on the outcome of the World Cup championship game this evening may be the future of Media World. Apparently, before the games even started, when Italy was regarded as having little chance of winning, this German company offered to reimburse the cost of LDC and plasma televisions larger than 32", purchased between May 18th and June 8th, if Italy wins. Over 10,000 Italians took them up on the bet. If you read Italian, the offer can be found online here.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 4:22 AM | TrackBack
July 4, 2006
Must have been the coffee!
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I almost fell asleep watching the Italy/Germany soccer game, but, as the game went into overtime, determined not to see the game end with penalty kicks, accepted a cup of coffee and sat up straight, just in time to see Italy make two goals in the last two minutes of the second period of overtime. Now that I'm fired back up, here are a few pictures from another game, "Il Gioco del Ponte" - i.e., The Bridge Game that is played every year in Pisa, by teams from opposite sides of the Arno river - the side on which the sun comes up - the Mezzo Giorno, and the side on which it sets - the Tramontana (the side I was rooting for because it is where most of my relatives live and I visit, as often as possible. It all starts with a medieval parade that makes the US marines look docile but its all drama. Following which, a challenge is sent from one side to the other, following which, the biggest men from either side of town battle for the main bridge, by pushing on a large cart until the flag is knocked over on one side of the bridge or the other. The Pisan and the neighborhood flags wasn't the only ones flying - below the bridge was a boat flying the Red Cross flag, ready to rescue anyone falling from it. It has happened.... but everything remained rather civil this time. Tramontana won again, as they have since 1998. But what makes it even more worthwhile is that the entire downtown area is closed to traffic and, after the game is over, there are a lot of people walking around in medieval dress, as if they dressed like that every day. Also, sitting on the wall along the Arno river at sunset, one could also feel a maritime breeze coming in from the Mediterranean.
Earlier in June is another festival that I missed when, in addition to closing the streets to traffic, all electric lighting is turned off. The river and the entire downtown of Pisa are lit up entirely with candle lanterns - this is done for the Night of San Ranieri, the patron saint of Pisa, known elsewhere in the world as the Night of the Shooting Stars, the English title of a Taviani brothers film that tells the story of an incident that took place on that day in 1945. I also missed the boat races among the "4 Maritime Republics" - Pisa, Genova, Venice and Amalfi - which were hosted here this year. Pisa won that too. Before I leave, maybe I will get a chance to see the boats that were used....
This is Sylvia Tognetti,aka, The Ronin Geographer, reporting from the Tramontana, in the Marine Republic of Pisa...
Note: I have a painfully slow connection - so there is a lag between writing and posting.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 7:13 PM | TrackBack
July 3, 2006
Una vista di una camera con una vista
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Giá che sono in Italia, una traduzione in Italiano del´ultimo post. Se arrivano commenti interessanti, forse traduceró anche quelli:
Firenze, 23 Giugno, 2006. Firenze appare di essere diventata una bella scena per il fondo del palco mondiale. La mostruositá nella foto sopra é la vista dal tetto di un edificio nel centro di Firenze, casa di un amica dagli anni di scuola (medie e primi di liceo) che ho fatto in quella cittá, esito a dire quanti anni fa, ma ho avuto una lunga interruzione dalla scuola durante la grande alluvione del 1966, e poi ricordo bene i tempi subito dopo, quando fango usciva dai rubinetti. Ero in partenza per Firenze da Pisa quel giorno che é successo ma fortunatamente, fu cancellato il treno (dopo che ero abordo). Insomma, il quartiere é cambiato. Nella direzione opposta si vedono grandi macchine da costruzione, fino almeno alla distanza a cui si riesce a vedere con gli occhi. Ai lati, i paesaggi iconici di colline, includendo i telescopi di Galileo, ci stanno sempre. Pure rimane il Ponte Vecchio, che peró era chiuso per usare come pista per una sfilata di Roberto Cavalli, per vendere quello che é diventato il piú notevole prodotto Italiano da quando Marcello Mastroianni si é buttato nella fontana di Trevi nella Dolce Vita - l' immagine maschile. La sfilata era parte di "Pitti Immagine Uomo" che, secondo Il Firenze (nuovo giornale locale), ha confirmato l' immagine del uomo contemporaneo di essere "sportivo-vanitoso" - che vuole essere esclusivo e ricercato a tutti i costi. Con la eccezione peró del' uomo di Cavalli, il quale si é pavoneggiato in un foulard multi-uso, portato come cravatta, vestito in colori rosso e viola, una camicia con rifiniture in pitone bianco e chissá cosa. Io non ho direttamente visto questa faccenda, e non ho idea se era pitone vero. Cerco solo di fare senso di come é descritto nel giornale e il mio Italiano é un po arruginito ma ora comincia a tornare....
Altre cose non hanno cambiato proprio per niente. Ulisse Sifossifoco, un blogger Fiorentino, per cuil il Ponte Vecchio é anche la strada per ritornare a casa dal lavoro, non ne volle sentire. Quando gli hanno detto che il ponte era stato "acquistato" per la sfilata e che perció era chiuso per la sera, gentilmente offrí "un rap di moccoli a colonna sonora per questa sfilata di brubbrú" (cioé, cafoni vestiti da festa). Un modo di parlare che, nella mente di altri Italiani, é associato con la Toscana quanto lo é Dante. Peró forse infondo é anche la ragione perché Danta é diventato famoso. Dopo di avere scritto in Latino della eloquenza della lingua volgare, cioé, il vernacolo Toscano, e dopo di essere stato mandato in esilio, ha scritto La Divina Commedia in quella lingua che piú tardi, in una forma piú pulita e uniforme, é diventato ¨Italiano.¨ Sifossifoco poi prende il suo ¨nom de blog¨ da una poesia di Cecco Angiolieri, che era un compagno di battaglia verbale di Dante. Questa poesia presenta un immagine di uomo piú archaico - uno che, invece di essere cercato, cerca, non donne ma,¨donne giovane¨ ' esclusivamente! Ma tornando al problema di traversare il Ponte Vecchio per ritornare a casa, Sifossi ha anche offerte la scelta di farlo passare, e fu subito dato una scorta da due poliziotti. Come lo descrive lui, era come quando Pinocchio fu portato a case dai gendarmi.
Questo incidente non lo ho visto direttamente o preso fotografie - ho solo la parola di Sifossi, il quale ho finalmente avuto l´opportunitá di conoscere in persona. Sifossi, autore di un blog che leggo da un paio di anni, ed un´altra blogger Fiorentina, La VisContessa, hanno organizzato una rimpatriata blogger a Firenze in Piazza Brunelleschi. E siccome, per caso stavo facendo la valigia quando fu annunciato, e non era molto fuori del mio itinerario, decisi di fare la inviata per il Post'Normal Times.
Quando siamo arrivati alla fine di una bella serata con aria fresca in piazza, sono stata scortata alla casa di un amica - cioé la camera con la vista della camera con la vista, sopra un´altro grande prodotto del disegno della Toscana di Pisa - la vespa. Solo per poi essere svegliata ed imbarazzata da una colonna sonora, presentata da Americani ubriachi che cantavano cercavano di cantare, America the Beautiful. Siccome molti di questi vecchi edifici non hanno aria condizionata, non ero certamente l´unica a dormire con le finestre aperte. Deve essere stato le 3 di mattina. Almeno avrebbero potuto cantarlo bene - una cosa che forse potrebbe anche migliorare le relazioni internazionali, almeno al livello personale. Alle riunioni scientifiche internazionali, dove, duranti periodi sociali, i participanti spesso cantano qualcosa dal loro paese, Amercani hanno anche una reputazione di non potere cantare.
Sylvia Tognetti , aka, la Geografa Ronin, inviata al Post-Normal Times, da una camera con una vista di una camera con una vista di Firenze.
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Grazie a problemi di connezione internet, altre foto della rimpatriata dovranno aspettare che torno a Muddy Spring (Sorgente Fangoso - il nome che ho dato al quartiere dove abito, parte di "Silver Spring" (Sorgente Argentato)
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 10:35 AM | TrackBack
July 2, 2006
A view of a room with a view
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Firenze June 23, 2006. Florence it seems, has become the ultimate backdrop for the world stage. The eyesore pictured above is the view from the rooftop of an apartment building in downtown Florence, home to a friend from the years I spent in there in middle and high school - I hesitate to say how many years ago but I had a long break from school during the big flood in 1966, and then witnessed the immediate aftermath, when mud flowed from the water faucets. I was actually on my way to Florence from Pisa when it happened but my train was fortunately cancelled (after I was on board). The place has changed. In the opposite direction are building cranes as far as the eye can see. Sideways, in the iconic hillside landscapes, Galileo's telescopes are still there. So too, the Ponte Vecchio, though it was closed off for the evening for use as a runway for a Roberto Cavalli fashion show, to sell what has become Italy's best known product ever since Marcello Mastroianni jumped into the Trevi fountain in La Dolce Vita - the male image. The show was part of "Pitti Immagine Uomo" - which, according to the local newspaper, Il Firenze, confirmed the image of the contemporary man as "sportivo-vanitoso" i.e., a vain and sportive type, who wants to be exclusive and sought after at all costs. With the exception of the Cavalli man of course, who strutted his stuff in a multiple use scarf worn as a tie, red violet colors, a shirt with finishing touches in white python, and what have you (I didn't actually see it and have no idea if it was real python skin - I'm just trying to make sense of the description and my Italian is a bit rusty - but its coming back).
Some things haven't changed at all. Ulisse Sifossifoco, a Florentine blogger, for whom the Ponte Vecchio is the shortest way to walk home from work, was having none of it. Upon being told the bridge had been acquired for the fashion show and was therefore closed for the evening, he kindly offered to provide a soundtrack for the "brubbrú" parade (boors all dressed up in party clothes), in a "rap di moccoli" - a rap of colorful cussing - which, in the mind of other Italians, is associated with Tuscans as much as is Dante. Though perhaps it is the reason Dante became famous to begin with. After writing in Latin about the eloquence of the vulgar tongue (i.e., the Tuscan vernacular), and after being forced into exile, he wrote The Divine Commedy in what later, in a more polished form, became known as "Italian." Sifossifoco actually takes his "nom de blog" from a poem by Dante's verbal sparring partner, Cecco Angiolieri. This poem presents a more archaic male image, as one who, rather than being sought after, seeks after, not women but, younger women - exclusively! But getting back to the problem of crossing the Ponte Vecchio to get home, Sifossi also, of course, offered the option of simply letting him cross it, and was promptly escorted across by two police officers. As he put it, it was like when Pinocchio was brought home, dangling from the arms of two "gendarmi." (armed guards).
I didn't witness this one myself or get pictures so I had to take Sifossi's word for it when I finally had the opportunity to meet him in person. Sifossi, who happens to be the author of a blog I have been reading for a few years, together with another Florentine blogger, La VisContessa, organized a repatriation of bloggers, in Piazza Brunelleschi. And since I just happened to be packing my suitcase when this was announced, and it wasn't far out of my way, I decided to cover it for The Post-Normal Times
As a delightful evening drew to a close, I was escorted to my friend's place - i.e., the room with a view of a room with a view by "Volpe", on the back of that other great product of Tuscan Pisan design - the vespa. Only to be awakened and embarassed by a soundtrack provided by drunk Americans in the street, singing trying to sing, America the Beautiful. Since most of those buildings don't have air conditioning, I surely wasn´t the only one sleeping with open windows. It must have been 3 am. The least they could do is get it right. It might even improve international relations - on a personal level anyway. At international scientific meetings, where participants often sing songs from their own countries, Americans actually have a reputation for not being able to sing.
For the Post-Normal Times, this is Sylvia Tognetti, aka, the Ronin Geographer, reporting from a room with a view of a room with a view - of Florence.Italy.
Postscript: The delay in posting this is because I went off radar shortly afterwards - this time, Italy was on the way to Nairobi, where I went for a workshop, and didn't have much time for the internet at times that it was accessible - once I finally found a decent connection. I also didn't have enough time to explore Nairobi enough to blog anything interesting about it, or to go on any safaris, but I did actually notice a man wearing a scarf as a necktie - actually, a french participant in the workshop I was attending. He swore it was nothing new. Italy is also on the way back from Nairobi, And there are a few other stops on the itinerary before getting back to DC, so stay tuned.
Since I'm having internet conection problems, I'll put additional pictures of the Florentine blogger repatriation, in a trip report, after I get back to Muddy Spring.
Also, in order to content the Viscontentessa, who claims to have lived happily ever discontented, an Italian translation, in the next post
Nel prossimo post, una traduzione in Italiano, per contentare la Viscontentessa - che Visse felice e scontenta... Siccome ho problemi di connezione internet, altre foto della rimpatriata dovranno aspettare il mio ritorno a Muddy Spring, quando scriveró una cronaca di viaggio.
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May 1, 2006
Required reading
by Sylvia S Tognetti
If you are one of those visitors from outside the US who is still wondering what is going on in the US (or don't get cable tv and haven't read any other blogs yet in the past 2 days) look no further than the video and transcript of Steven Colbert, speaking "straight from the gut... [giving] people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument" - Saturday evening at the annual White House Correspondent's Dinner, also reported on here. You may also want to see the transcript of his appearance on 60 minutes the next day. But watch the video - you have to see it to believe that he said all this with Bush sitting nearby, and in the presence of "the mainstream media" while being broadcast live on CSPAN. Is this a great country or what? A few excerpts, that explain how science and policy decisions are actually made, and provide some context:
...let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The President makes decisions, he's the decider. The Press Secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know, fiction.
...Because really, what incentive do these people have to answer your questions, after all? I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.
...The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this man's beliefs never will.
...I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.
...Fox News gives you both sides of every story, the President's side and the Vice President's side.
And just to show that he didn't let anyone off the hook:
Jesse Jackson is here. I had him on the show. Very interesting and challenging interview. You can ask him anything, but he's going to say what he wants at the pace that he wants. It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.
He ended by expressing disappointment that the job of the White House Press Secretary had already been filled, and presented an audition tape of him conducting a White House Press conference - don't miss this one.
On a more serious note, in case you think it was in any way "over the top," another bit of required reading is this article which shows that Bush's claim to be above the law goes far beyond domestic surveillance:
President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, "whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
I was going to write a longer post last night in answer to Roger Pielke's latest post about linking hurricanes and climate policy - and Gore's new film on global warming, but was out enjoying the beautiful weather and dinner with my neighbors. And there is this bigger elephant in the room. But I will, soon enough - and hurricane season is almost back so I don't think that thread is going anywhere. I have a few things to say about Gore too.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 5:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 1, 2006
An ode to the Lorax
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I previously posted the words of An African Forest Tale which is written in the form of an Ode to the Lorax by Jesse Ribot, who explained:
As I tried to write the story-with all its contradictions-it felt more to me like a Dr. Seuss tale than a scholarly history. So, I began writing in Seuss-esque verse. To my delight, the resulting text told the story better than anything I had written in a more-serious moment.
I had posted it together with one of the illustrations by Senegalese artist Mor Gueye, who painted a whole series of illustrations on reverse glass, that practically tell the story all by themselves. Now you can see all of the illustrations, and hear Jesse tell the tale in his own voice, in this video that I promised to post as soon as I figured out how to reduce it to a manageable size for the web - which I have now been able to do, thanks to a new computer.
For the higher quality version (17 MB) click here.
For a lower quality version (2.5 MB) click here.
There is an even higher quality version, that permits the images to be viewed in a larger size but it is about 250 MB - if you are really really really interested, and would willing to make a donation to support higher costs of bandwidth, send me an e-mail (sst at postnormaltimes dot net).
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 4:47 PM | TrackBack
February 9, 2006
The word - of Steven Colbert
by Sylvia S Tognetti
[the promised link - then click Eureka!]
Colbert talked about science this evening and really nailed it - it is better watched, (if you have access to cable it reruns several times the next day) - if the video segment gets posted online at the show site, I will update this post with a link. In the meantime - I recorded it and made the following transcript of "The Word" segment:
The word: Eureka - as in you reek et science America! That why the president is really pushing his competitiveness initiative, which will double the number of science teachers in the next 5 years (Bush hot for teachers) so, if you are a high school student who is crazy about science, you are in luck (for a change) because the whole world is opening up to you like a blossom (but girls still won’t), because the president is putting his money where his mouth is (Buttcheek of the Saudi Royal Family). He… he is cutting the education budget by 3.2 billion dollars, (that’ll learn ya) but… but the truth is, you don’t need to buy books to learn (Gideon gives bibles for free). You can still get the fundamentals (from fundamentalists). So, take the president’s challenge, be a scientist - whatever fires your curiosity: biology (but not evolution), genetics (but no stem cells), climatology (but no global warming), geology (nothing before 5000 years ago), astronomy (ditto). There are so many choices it can be confusing. But, you know, there is a new science out there. It is the science of studying what science is worth studying (scientology?). Now… now if the president’s contradictions between saying and doing don’t make logical sense to you, do what all great scientists do, and just take it on faith and, if you are already a scientist, just tow the administration’s line, and then you will get federal funding (Eureka). And that’s the word.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 12:24 AM | TrackBack
January 6, 2006
Starting from Zeta
by Sylvia S Tognetti
The end of 2005 didn't end the hurricane season of 2005, which finally ended today as Zeta disintegrated. For more, see Jeff Masters blog at Wunderground, for which I am adding a special link to the blogroll because he doesn't just report the weather - he also reports on departures from normal - and not just about hurricanes. Check out his explanation of what this cloud is, and why we will probably be seeing it more often.
Before moving on, a comment about 2005: After Katrina, can anybody still believe that more and better scientific information will necessarily lead to better policy decisions?
2005 was the year that some proclaimed the science wars to be over (see also this post by PZ Myers] - largely because of a war on science itself that made differences between the two cultures pale in comparison. It's about time. I have gotten into a few arguments with scientists myself, but it is only because I value science that I even bother. I have often heard statements to the effect that it is necessary to "get the science right" before dealing with the mushy stuff, like policies and institutions. The catch is, that getting good scientific information that is relevant to social concerns, and to particular places, is itself an institutional challenge. Not to mention getting it to actually be used in decision-making, or getting a decision to actually be made....
Although this is beginning to be recognized, and great efforts have been made to collaborate across these disciplinary divides, there is a pitfall in this too, in that everything seems to get reduced to the conceptual framework of the discipline of the person who designs and initiates the study. This is an issue I became very conscious of over 15 years ago when I worked at the National Academy of Sciences, where I helped to organize and staff what may have been the first committee composed of an almost even split between natural and social scientists. Subsequently I went to graduate school but never quite managed to get a dissertation off of the ground - probably because I developed a background in both the natural and social sciences and could never reduce an argument to either one without feeling like I was making a caricature out of reality (ok, so there were other reasons, like major differences with my first graduate adviser and a program switch that was all for the best). More recently, as part of a working group for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, I felt like I had entered into a world created by a couple of ecological modelers, or some sort of soft bureaucracy structured to correspond with the compartments of their model (still, in spite of the unwieldy process, there is a lot of good material in the soon to be released technical volumes - more on that later).
2005 also catapulted Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War on Science
What is more interesting to me is where some of the negative public reactions towards science, or experts in general, comes from. In science for policy, there is a tendency that parallels that found in interdisciplinary efforts, which is that of reducing complex problems to a scientific framework that leaves out much of what people care about. This frame is itself a hidden value judgment, which, for example, is ultimately what is behind the opposition to GMOs in Europe. A few months ago, Mario Giampietro passed through town and gave me an earful of scientific explanations for his objections to GMOs and why functional equivalence is a myth. He has even published articles about this. But over dinner, he gave me the real reason, in his own language. You can't make gnocchi without the yellow sticky potatoes that come only from Avezzano in the Abruzzo. If you try to make gnocchi with Idaho potatoes it will be a disaster! If you want to find out what kind of peaches are best for soaking in wine you will have to learn Italian and go ask a Roman - some things are better left not only in their own language but also in their cultural context. But these peaches only grow at Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the pope. There is no functional equivalent.
As I half grew up in Italy, I understand this only too well. One of my favorite things to do when I visit family in Pisa is to go on a bike ride to the market with my aunt. The last time I did this, one of the vendors held up a head of lettuce and said it came from Torre del Lago. He went on to insist that, if you eat this lettuce you will hear Puccini. Hearing Puccini might have only been my imagination, but the association of the image with the taste seared the taste in my memory. I'm sure there is nothing else like it anywhere. The controversy isn't about GMOs, but about a way of life and the value of places. Where food comes from is no less important than where people come from. But policy decisions are not based on such things. As for functional equivalence, it depends on the functions you are looking at. If looking only at nutritional characteristics of food, it is possible that soylent green could be engineered to be functionally equivalent to potatoes from Avezzano or lettuce from Torre del Lago - but what I will call the Puccini factor would be lost forever. And the world itself would become a less interesting place to live.
As for that book... maybe if I put "Tuscany" in the title, people would even read it. As a half Pisan, DOC, I know I can tell a more interesting story than Under the Tuscan Sun, and, as a geographer, it would also give me a chance to rant about what makes places unique and special.... (Interested publishers can write to me at sst at postnormaltimes dot net).
May we all find at least some moments of normalcy in the coming year.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 10:53 PM | TrackBack
December 7, 2005
Who domesticated who?
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I've been reading a book on Climate Change in Prehistory
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 12:18 PM
Keeping an eye on the eye of epsilon
by Sylvia S Tognetti
It's still there. Jeff Masters tries to explain. As for the reason for so many hurricanes made landfall in the US in this season, he explains in a previous post, that a ridge of high pressure over the eastern US that steered storms toward the Atlantic and Gulf coasts was formed in response to a strong warming of the ocean in the North Central Pacific which deflected the jet stream. But concedes ignorance as to the reason the ocean warmed in the Central North Pacific - which would be a question for the climatologists...
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:39 AM
November 30, 2005
Lorax attends the COP
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Earlier today, the Lorax made an appearance in Montreal at the COP 11 climate meetings, to speak for the trees. In case you missed it, a few months ago I posted an ode to the Lorax by Jesse Ribot. I now have a video version that features the full set of illustrations that I will post as soon as I can figure out how to get it to a manageable size for downloading.
I have been to frantic to write any substantive posts and will be for at least a few more days but, for some live reporting from COP 11, and to find out who won the fossil of the day award this time, see the daily Climate Action Network newsletter . And, of course, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin. Meanwhile, at the new blog launched by EcoEquity, Paul Baer challenges factually challenged reporters. I nominate CNN, MSNBC, and any other media source that spread the incomplete version of the AP story in which "[US Negotiator Harlan] Watson said... that Bush had committed to cutting greenhouses gases some 18 percent by 2012" for a fossil of the day award. As Paul points out, the full story also quoted Alden Meyer from UCS, who corrected that assertion.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:27 AM | TrackBack
October 31, 2005
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I know you weren't expecting a kind of Spanish Inquisition, on Halloween - but honestly, could there be a better day for rounding up heathens?
Jarring chord. The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez of Spain enters, flanked by two junior cardinals. Cardinal Biggles has goggles pushed over his forehead. Cardinal Fang is just Cardinal Fang.
Ximinez Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four...no... amongst our weapons.... amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again. (exit and exeunt)
Reg I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
Jarring chord. They burst in....
Ximinez Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms - oh damn! (to Biggles) I can't say it, you'll have to say it....
... Biggles I know...I know! Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, those who do expect...
Ximinez Our chief weapons are...
Biggles Our chief weapons are...um...er...
Ximinez Surprise.
Biggles Surprise and...
Ximinez Stop. Stop there! Stop there. Whew! Our chief weapon is surprise, blah, blah, blah, blah. Cardinal, read the charges.
Fang You are hereby charged that you did on diverse dates commit heresy against the Holy Church. My old man said follow the...
Biggles That's enough. (to Lady Mountback) Now, how do you plead?
Lady Mountback We're innocent.
Ximinez Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
(From Monty Python, episode 15)
Unfortunately, it has an enduring legacy. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 10:29 PM
Rosa Parks Motorcade
by Sylvia S Tognetti
In follow-up to the last post, I didn't make it into the Capitol Rotunda last night because I was one of those at the East Entrance to the Capitol wildly cheering for the motorcade that brought Rosa Parks and her entourage in from the BWI airport. I then stood in the line to get into the Rotunda, for a few hours, somewhere between 2nd and 3rd streets, where it appeared that the line just went around 3rd Street. But then somebody noticed a gap in the line - a closer inspection revealed that the line snaked back and forth all the way around the Mall, i.e., to 7th Street and back! So we contented ourselves with having seen and greeted the motorcade. For DC area residents, motorcades of that size, that can be seen even in the distance, lighting up the night sky as they move through cleared city streets, only mean one thing - It's the President... Not this time. Behind the fleet of motorcycles, instead of 3 limousines, there were three city buses. The first one was the 1957 bus that carried Rosa. The second two carried the entourage. Among the folks waving out from the bus, I only recognized Donna Brazile. But I was also trying to take pictures with an uncooperative camera. I doubt anyone has ever seen anything like it before, or will again. As Neddie says, now its up to the rest of us.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 10:02 PM | TrackBack
October 30, 2005
Something that we know IS happening, TODAY!
by Sylvia S Tognetti
As an almost life-long Washington area resident, the first public event I remember participating in was standing in a very very very long line at the Capitol, with my entire family, to pay respects to President Kennedy, when he was lying in the Rotunda. All I knew at the time was that the world had changed forever. The passing of Rosa Parks makes me wonder, what might have been, had some other people, inspired by what she did, not had their lives so rudely cut short. If you are anywhere near the Washington DC area, you need to turn off your computer shortly, and go pay your respects to Rosa. She will be lying in the Capitol Rotunda this evening from 6:30 pm to midnight, and tomorrow morning, from 7 to 10 am. If you have children, take them with you. They will never forget it.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:48 AM | TrackBack
October 26, 2005
Post-Normal Washington
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Quote of the day:
We do not know what is happening, and that is what is happening.From the diary of Leonard Garment who, according to Murray Waas, "was an aide to Richard Nixon on Christmas Day, 1972, when James McCord was indicted for his role in the Watergate break-in [and who] was, in turn, quoting Jose Ortega y Gasset.
Even though everyone in Washington breathlessly awaits the grand jury, that's won't be an end... as so much a beginning of something much more important and vast. We will soon hear back from the grand jury, but that only raises more questions, taking the President and the nation into murky, uncharted waters. And once again, we will be left saying: "We do not know what is happening, and that is what is happening."
I noted in one of the first posts on this blog, that we already entered into terra incognita, or Post-Normal Times, when changes in key greenhouse gas concentrations went beyond the range of variation known to have occurred over the past 400,000 years - longer than our species has been in existence. Science and other forms of intelligence are now more critical than ever for navigating these uncharted waters. But there is this oblivious elephant in the room....
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 8:06 PM | TrackBack
October 21, 2005
Climate mash
by Sylvia S Tognetti
A Halloween treat that exposes all the tricks behind The Climate Mash. Hint: real science is bashed....
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 2:40 PM | TrackBack
September 3, 2005
Swamp Funk (continued)
by Sylvia S Tognetti
(Revised and edited, Monday 9-5-05)
Last Monday, as many of us were waiting to find out what Katrina would do, Chris Mooney listed a few Elephants in the Room - i.e., sea level rise, coastal wetlands losses, and the hurricane-global warming link - and asked if anyone had any other suggestions. I was going to add, lack of the capacity to respond to all of the above. As I pondered this, events took over. Now, I'm adding, lack of capacity for shame, and am asking myself if we have been occupied by the Borg. But resistance is not futile yet - this one has resonated across the political spectrum for a change, or at least some of it - even some Fox news reporters have started acting like reporters (Crooks and Liars has the video footage). Regarding the current and immediate situation, I don't have anything to add to the excellent reporting and blogging being done elsewhere - see Effect Measure for an excellent post - by real public health professionals, that debunks myths about disasters, public health and the spread, or not, of disease. I will raise a few science policy related issues that should be kept in mind as the situation unfolds, and as longer term response issues arise.
In an earlier post about hurricanes and New Orleans written back in June, I referred to a statement by Mary Landrieu, who said that there isn't a business in the U.S. that doesn't in some way benefit from the wetlands and barrier islands along Louisiana's coast and that, if pressed, she is sure she could document this. I added that, if a single hurricane were to take the critical path for New Orleans, she wouldn't have to. Now she doesn't - Katrina was close enough. An article in the Washington Post also summarized on the Environmental Economics blog, begins to flesh out some details, going well beyond speculating about the implications of impacts on oil and gas facilities for the price of gas, to examine also such things as the impacts on prices of both imported and exported commodities that rely on the port, the loss of facilities that produce key ingredients used in a broad range of products, the loss of oyster beds, and some expected ramifications across other economic sectors. Don't expect Santa Claus this year. Furthermore, rather than having to place some trust in science, now we can all participate in this assessment, as we will all be learning more about these ramifications first hand, in the months and years to come, as this disaster exposes these economic linkages, along with all of our other vulnerabilities and social dysfunctions of which it is merely a symptom. And perhaps it will lead us to place a greater value on the wetlands that support 30% of fishery production in the lower 48 states, and that, once upon a time, prevented even more routine storm surges from spilling over the shoreside levees of Lake Pontchartrain, and on the many other services that they provide. According to Bob Gramling, a sociologist at Louisiana in Lafayette, who has built his career studying the relationships between people and the wetlands of coastal Louisiana, this did not happen prior to the current accelerated loss.
To be sure, the loss of wetlands is in large part a result of the construction of the levees that were built to protect New Orleans, which lies in a bowl in between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi, because they also prevent the deposit of sediments that, normally, would nourish and build the marshes. There may have been better ways to engineer river control structures, but, as things have been done up until now, the only way that the city of New Orleans can exist where it is, is through continued vigilance and maintenance of the levees, for which funding was dramatically cut to enable tax cuts and who knows what in Iraq. Another key culprit is the construction of canals and shoreline facilities that support the offshore oil and gas industry. So maintaining levees and restoring wetlands should be considered part of the cost of shipping - the reason New Orleans is located where it is, as well as the cost of doing business in the offshore oil and gas industry.
With all of this wealth that has been flowing out of the region and through the port of New Orleans, we also have to ask why the region leads the nation in poverty rates and can barely even run their schools. This is an issue that has been on my radar screen since the late 1980s, when I toured the coastal region with a committee of the Nationial Academy of Sciences (for which I was a research assistant at the time), that was evaluating the environmental studies conducted by the Department of the Interior Minerals Management Service to support offshore oil and gas exploration and development, which are suppose to include consideration of the socioeconomic impacts. The meeting and tour were hosted by Bob Gramling, who forwarded me a few of his more recent papers after my earlier post and who we may eventually hear from, but my guess is, he is swamped at the moment. For now, I will just recall what one of the other participants in the group, the anthropologist Roy Rappoport called Warrilow's Law, which applies as much to Louisiana as to Papua New Guinea, which is that "the distribution of benefits of large scale mineral extraction is inversely proportional to distance from it, whereas the distribution of its costs and damages is directly proportional to proximity to it." In this case, Southern Louisiana gets the holes. The dollars go to Houston, New York, London and probably Mars. The costs are borne by the people of Southern Louisiana, where the looting started at the top, a long time ago. Before the meeting, I also visited MMS to get some documents, and vividly recall the words of an MMS official who was in charge of producing those environmental studies, to the effect that, they just needed a good crisis - then nobody would care about those studies. They would just want the gas.
Just a few things to keep in mind when House Speaker Dennis Hastert asks whether it makes sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level, and whether the government should be responsible for footing the bill. Having the capacity to respond to disaster, is perhaps the most basic reasons to even have a government. Access to food and water is the most basic element of human security. And having the capacity to hold public officials accountable is the most basic prerequisite keeping a democracy. Last I heard, not only has there been a failure to provide food and water to those who had been unable to evacuate - most because they could not afford to - others because buses they had hired were comandeered by the government, many are now being prevented from even walking out of the city. The entire Bush administration should spare further agony and just resign, but fantasy is a luxury we can't afford. We might recall also that it was the Mississippi flood of 1927 that set the stage for the New Deal. The city of New Orleans was spared in that one - although they also blew a strategically located hole in a levee just to make sure. That was done at the expense of even poorer rural communities who were not given all of the compensation promised, but at least they were evacuated. (If you haven't already, read The Rising Tide by John M. Barry.
So I expect that there are big changes coming. And there is undoubtedly more to come on this blog, and lots of work to do. Flood victims are arriving in places all over the country, including Washington DC. Some personal friends also made it here from New Orleans for events that had been previously planned. For those of you in the DC area, Margie Perez, former DC resident and Part Time Goddess, who has been flooded out of her N.O. apartment, will be performing with friends on Wednesday evening, in what will now be a benefit for hurricane relief. Place: the new Domku bar, 821 Upshur St. NW (DC's Petworth neighborhood, near intersection of Georgia & Kansas Avenues), 8:30 pm, courtesy of The Deej, donations, $5.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 3:17 PM | TrackBack
August 28, 2005
The heart of the matter?
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I've been a lethargic blogger over the summer - just reading blogs can become a time sink and, being a researcher by trade, I always feel compelled to read a lot of background material before publishing anything - which just tends to pile up. I promise to get back to science and policy very shortly, in the next post, but if you read the last one, you know I have been having e-mail correspondence with someone named Alex, who is serving in Iraq as a marine. As he is also a lawyer, he is heavily engaged in issues regarding the rule-of-law in Iraq, and rules of engagement in the military, much of which comes down to basic civic education, which we need a lot more of, right here in the US of A... Back here at home, he is someone from whom I have learned a fair amount of aikido - a martial art which is my other excuse for not blogging more - I finally took my black belt test in June. Every now and then Alex sends out "Field Notes" to let some of us know what he us up to and share some of his perspective of what is going on. This led to a few recent e-mail exchanges about whether or not he is keeping the "lid on a volcano" (the way Juan Cole's blog characterized what the US military is doing), and about Cindy Sheehan - and whether she is mobilizing national dialogue in a way that is positive and constructive, or whether this is a case of hyper-politicization and dramatization of death. So he asked me:
"What is the heart of the matter, find the center and don't get lost by all the hands waving around. It is as true about aikido as anything else. So here is my question about Iraq for you. What is the heart of the matter? Oil? Freedom? I am interested in your answer, not Cindy Sheehan's or Bush's."
He then encouraged me to publish what I wrote back on the blog, which is as follows:
Dear Alex,As much as I despise "idolization" and hyperpoliticization, at least Cindy Sheehan is asking a question a lot of people want an answer to. It just resonates. And August is a slow news period - and the media needed something to do while hanging around Texas during Bush's vacation. Meanwhile, while you are in the salt mines, an even bigger debate is happening in this country, not about the war, but about whether "Intelligent Design" should be taught as "science" alongside "evolution." Now there are some people who refuse to allow their worldview to be challenged, and who are being pandered to by the GOP. The scientific community is generally livid. Any day now, I expect to see the media presenting a "debate" about whether the earth is flat. The heart of the matter is, I don't trust those making decisions and I want you back in the dojo. I know you are answering questions honestly, from the way you see it, and believe me, I really want to believe you. Based on what you tell me, I do believe that there are some bright spots - but I don't know where they fit into the big picture. But the point I was trying to make is, regardless of whether I believe you, there are a lot of other people who are just waiting for someone to make a good case - which is essentially what Cindy Sheehan is asking the president to do. If there is a good case to be made, then you might be the one who has to do it. Bush is incapable of it - and somebody needs to make a convincing case if there is one to be made. btw, nobody believes the mainstream media anymore either. How can you believe someone who smiles while they are talking about war casualties and feels compelled to give equal time to bullshit (wrt climate and evolution)? I know I live in a bubble where I am mostly surrounded by people who share liberal values - but I occasionally do get across the river and outside the bubble. I hear the same stuff over there too - even from people associated with the military, and people who have never even shown interest in politics before, and a few who claim to be "former" republicans.
Is there a heart of the matter at all? We have people running the government who don't believe in government and appear to have a disdain for the constitution. Bush just sent a rogue ambassador to the UN, on a recess appointment, who is making even more enemies and trying to undermine even the Millenium Development Goals - which may not mean much to you but is a center piece, that define broad objectives for sustainable development and poverty alleviation - (the stuff of my work). We all know that the chance of fully achieving them by 2015, is about as distant as democracy and freedom in Iraq and the rest of the world. But without visions and objectives, we won't even go in that direction, and create opportunities by which to even give it a chance. I honestly don't know whether Bush went in to Iraq because he was sold a bill of goods by those of the neocon persuasion, or naiveté, or if he just wanted to be a "war president" or if it was about oil - or all of the above. Freedom from tyranny is indeed a noble cause but as you are finding out, it is complicated, and I'm not sure if America's presence is helping at the moment. Noble or not, it was a war of choice - Iraq was not an immediate threat to the US - there were better ways to deal with the situation. But we have to live with the consequences of Bush's decisions, or whoever makes them for him, and do the best we can.
Note: if anyone wants to chip in to send some cigars over to Alex's group of marines, click on the Paypal button - any and all donations received over the next week will be used for that purpose.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 6:15 PM | TrackBack
July 14, 2005
Bastille Day 4th of July greeting
by Sylvia S Tognetti
As you may have noticed, I haven't gotten the knack of knocking out blog posts on a daily basis - there are a few in the pipeline, coming soon of course. In the meantime, I am passing along a 4th of July greeting from a friend who also happens to be a marine corps lawyer now serving in Iraq - which I did not post on the 4th because I wanted to make sure he didn't mind it being posted to a public forum. While we don't always agree on everything, we agree that the ability to have disagreements, and be civilized about it, is what America and the 4th, are all about.
It seems more and more time is slipping by. More importantly, HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!! Being out here has provided me a deeper appreciation for what our forefathers went through in trying to ensure individual liberty. It took them 8 years to just get a constitution, which was rejected 4 years later, another 75 years before the sectarian differences b/n the North and South erupted into the Civil War, another 150 years before women achieved legal (if not real) equality, another 175 years for legal racial equality. It appears that individual liberty and democracy is a work in progress. I suppose I could imagine finishing the work in Iraq by Christmas or even in the next couple of years, but there is a no drug policy in the military, so I don?t see my imagination reaching that level. How many years will it take the Iraqi?s? Let?s hope they like us, never stop discovering the responsibilities of liberty and walking the path of freedom.
I hope that you are enjoying fireworks and the warm glow of shared idealism with your neighbors. I spent last Friday night having cigar and beers (NA of course) with colleagues on a rooftop watching the counter battery fires of nearby base, but fortunately, we have not had fireworks here at Camp TQ since last Wednesday, when we enjoyed a rocket?s red glare.
Alex, stay safe. And now, in honor of Bastille Day, and in defiance of my own I won't say which decadal anniversaire, I'm going to go blow out some roman candles. I'll probably get those posts up over the weekend.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 8:28 PM | TrackBack
June 27, 2005
Swamp Funk
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Here Comes the Sun - Mardi Gras Float, New Orleans. Photo by Margie Perez.
New Orleans is not one of those places built to look like some other place and time, or a place like Disney World, that can be rebuilt. According to Mary Landrieu, the US Senator from Louisiana, it's the real deal. There also isn't a business in the U.S. that doesn't in some way benefit from the marshes that make up the coastal region of Louisiana. If pressed, she is sure she could document this. However, if a single hurricane were to take the critical path for New Orleans she wouldn't have to. There have been a number of close calls. But these marshes also provide some measure of protection against more frequent but less severe storms, and even normal wave action. As she went on to explain, numerous small waves can, over time, have an impact just as devastating as a tsunami.
Senator Landrieu's remarks were made at an Environmental Science Seminar Series hosted by the American Meteorological Society, that I attended last week (6-19-05) in Washington DC - which was itself built on a swamp, but I digress. Other presenters were Thomas Knutson, a Research Scientist at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and Shirley Laska, Director of the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology and Professor of Sociology at the University of New Orleans. Knutson provided an overview of what we know about the relationship between global warming and hurricanes. Laska provided an overview of the socioeconomic ramifications and responses to the threat. A few more highlights from my notes: (more)
An area half of the size of Manhattan is lost every year, key reasons being the development of canals and coastal facilities that support offshore oil and gas operations, the building of levees to control river flooding that also block the regular flow of sediment that would otherwise be building these marshes, and other structural measures needed to maintain the shipping channels and ports, and which prevent the delta from switching course - which it has done about 5 or 6 times over the past 5000 years. While all of these are vital to the national economy, and oil and gas operations in the Gulf are a significant source of revenue for the federal government, they have provided little benefit to the region itself, which leads the nation in poverty rates. The Louisiana marshes also provide vital habitat for most of the commercial fisheries of the Gulf. Senator Landrieu would therefore like Louisiana to receive a share of the revenue and is also requesting $30 billion to support a restoration plan for the marshes similar to that for the Florida Everglades, and to implement other measures that would help to reduce vulnerability to floods - not as charity, but in exchange for all of the services provided by the region's ecosystem, and the very direct and tangible benefits that it provides to the nation as a whole.
Thomas Knutson presented data which shows that there is no clear evidence of a long term upward trend in hurricane frequency, but with the caveat that good hurricane data only goes back to 1944. The pattern is instead one of fluctuation between periods of high activity. As for whether hurricanes are increasing in intensity, there is a longer term data set for Sea Surface Temperature (SST), which shows a big jump around 1920, that appears to be the result of anthropogenic forcing. Since SST sets upper limits on hurricane intensity, given current and projected trends, this is likely to increase by one half of a category per 100 years.
Shirley Laska provided an overview of the diverse place-based communities and cultures that inhabit this region that also contains numerous historical buildings, and is the birthplace of jazz (she didn't mention some of the other musical styles that also originated there). Given that the cultures are "place-based," they would be unlikely to survive relocation. Out of a population of 4.75 million, 670,000 (almost 15%) have fishing licenses. It is estimated that 1 mile of marsh prevents 1 foot of storm surge. The risks from the loss of the marshes are of a "slow onset" type - a term which refers to disasters of the same kind as a drought which occur over a long period of time and are not immediately recognized. So it is expected to provide lessons that can help to more effectively respond to the hazard of global warming. For now, in New Orleans, it has become normal to expect floods when the sun is shining. In the event of a hurricane, decisions whether to evacuate always present a dilemma because evacuation requires 50 hour advance notice, when a storm is still in the Florida Keys, which makes false alarms inevitable.
Dramatic slides were shown that illustrate a comparison of the marsh area before the mid 1800s and the present, the Chandaleur Islands before and after hurricane George, some of the 463 pelicans killed by an oil spill that occurred after a hurricane last year, when an offshore oil and gas facility was flooded, and also a map of repeatedly flooded structures. Oil prices rose after damage to pipes during hurricane Ivan. For some history on the modifications of the river and the consequences of the Mississippi flood of 1927, she recommended a book called The Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood and How It Changed America
Oh, (in another digression) and to see Roberto Benigni make his way through the Louisiana swamps with Tom Waits and John Lurie, see the film "Down by Law" if you haven't already. And for some Swamp-Funk in the DC area, stay tuned for upcoming performances by a new band, The Beat Hotel, which serves up music, dancin'& hot, with room service by The Bell Hop Horns....
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:10 AM | TrackBack
June 10, 2005
The Business of Sustainable Development: An African Forest Tale
by Sylvia S Tognetti
An Ode to the Lorax
By Jesse Ribot
Way back in the days of pre-colonial bliss
when primordial forests were covered with mist
wood-dwelling natives ate nuts, berries and bees
and picked monkey-bread pods from the baobab trees.
One glorious morning Abdou Jallow Njiaye
was harpooning dogfish and eating them fried
when he noted a speck sailing in from the sea.
It was Captain Lusitanious Frangelli McGee
with a flag, a cigar and a beard full of fleas. (more...)
Stepping out of his dingboat onto the beach
he cordially introduced himself with spect-perfluous speech.
He waved and he bowed and then he announced:
"Bark-dudalus Cronkus et Fribulous Sneess
by dint of my foot please give me a piece."
Then Abdou consulted friends, mothers and chiefs
offering the captain a well shaded seat
on the branch of a fruit-laden smorgasbord tree
with a vine for a foot rest and a cup of bark tea
a view of the village, the forest, and sea.
But, off sailed the captain waiving his hat
he was back in a fortnight with five boats at that.
McFilch and O'Pillage set up their camp
smack dab in the village by kerosene lamp.
Cousins Extracto and Bernard du Corvée
built rows of square houses in less than a day,
trading green widgets for fruits on long trays.
Extracto and Corvée soon started their work
when they pulled out hack-hackers, tree pluckers and yerks.
They were met eye to eye by incredulous chiefs
with oddball requests and illogical beefs.
"Please" said one chief with a sad twisted smile
"your hacking is stretching for over a mile.
These forests provide us with edible sap, and cow berry fruits;
not to mention the spirits that live in their roots."
"Never fear," barked McGee, "our work does no harm.
Its your very own cutting that's cause for alarm."
"Why cutting in chaos for your houses and fuel
wastes fine wood we could sell in ol' Liverpool.
If you keep using forests for your insatiable needs
how will we ever supply Europe with thneeds?"
"A thneed! Why a thneed is a thing with just so many uses!
It can serve as a coffin for great northern mooses.
It can serve as a bench or a box to hold sunff
or a stylish stand for a fine coffee cup.
"Can't you see" said McGee "I come with a vision.
We'll cut down the forests from here to Mount Mission.
We'll rotate them by decades and watch them grow back.
So there'll always be forests for continuous hack-hack."
"Sustainable-bility we'll call it" he said.
"There'll be eternal growth from now till we're dead.
The whole lovely thing will take place in straight lines
and its assured to work smoothly due to exorbitant fines."
"The best for the most and the most for the best--
mostly me, he then mumbled--and jobs for the rest...."
"Yes" spoke the chief, "I can see with your eyes.
Have you ever considered selling kola nut pies?
...or tradable permits for black clouds in the sky?"
"Your work leaves our village in a sea of new stumps
we don't even have places to hide rubbish dumps.
Our rains won't come without forests around
and your rotational methods drive our young out of town."
"We can't wait ten years for our trees to grow back.
We must cook our next meal on that wood that you hack.
We have bellies to fill and spirits to feed.
So please leave this place with your yerks in good speed."
"But if," quipped McGee, "you use trees just to survive
the thneeds of all nations will be cruelly deprived."
"Don't waste them for fodder or your daily fuel.
In the life of your nation play your role as a tool
for supporting the national good is the rule."
"Look! Here in the rulebook--which you must obey--
you have rights to the things that we don't take away.
But we can't take the wood without taking the trees
so you'll have to make due with the stumps and some seeds."
"You can grow village woodlots--eucalyptus or pines
we'll help you to manage them through incentives and fines.
If you want to participate please lend in a hand.
Do as we tell you and we'll tell you you can.
If you listen-look-learn and do as we say
even democratization will be on its way!"
"We must protect forests from people like you
so people with business will have business to do."
Abdou and the chiefs puzzled looks at each other
when they heard the wise voice of Abdou's first mother....
She said: "I can remember the last time you came.
You said something totally different but you did just the same."
"This time it is I who will outline the rules:
You must stop hogging access to markets and tools.
We will cut and sell forests just as we like
keeping smorgasbord trees and paths to ride bikes."
"The woods of my vision are a patchwork so fine
of trees giving lumber and rope-making vines:
We'll keep great stately egg-trees, and bee trees with honey.
We'll eat purple zump fruits, and sell some for money."
"When it's time for the harvest we'll dance the night through
eating berries and fruitcakes, we may even invite you."
*** THE END ***
ALTERNATIVE ENDING: 40 years later
Abdou and the chiefs puzzled looks at each other
when in rolled the Mercedes of Abdou’s minister-brother.
He said “hey there old chiefs I know it’s been tough,
but you won’t control land with this democracy stuff.
When the people have chosen, their reps. hold the land,
and it won’t be a tool in your traditional hand.
If it belongs to the people (and the people ain’t you),
you can’t allocate it for your inherited due.
If you can’t gain favor by distributing land
how can we use chiefs to strengthen our hand?
We must stop local voting and re-install you,
so us central controllers can dance the night through,
sipping fine gin and tonics with no need for a coup.”
Ribot 2005 Revised Version
Copyright 1997
Author's notes:
In the late 1990s, I wrote this poem while attempting to write a history of colonial forestry policy in West Africa. I often call it ‘An Ode to the Lorax’ after Dr. Seuss’s environmental children’s book The Lorax (Random House, 1971). As I tried to write the story—with all its contradictions—it felt more to me like a Dr. Seuss tale than a scholarly history. So, I began writing in Seuss-esque verse. To my delight, the resulting text told the story better than anything I had written in a more-serious moment. This book tells the story of disjuncture between European and local discourses in colonial domination. It also speaks to the period from independence to the present. After independence, national ministries and international agencies have assumed functions and roles similar to those of the former colonial merchants and officers.
Last year I asked Senegalese reverse glass artist Mor Gueye—whose studio I had frequented since the mid 1980s—to illustrate the poem. He graciously accepted. [A forthcoming book [will] feature twenty-one of the resulting paintings.
To receive an e-mail notification when the book becomes available, please send an e-mail to lorax@postnormaltimes.net
The Author: Jesse C. Ribot
Jesse Ribot is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, born in the interior of New Jersey. He is on leave from his post as a senior associate at the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC. Ribot has worked and written on rural development policy in Africa over the past twenty years. He taught rural political economy and environmental policy at MIT, was a research associate at Harvard Center for Population and Development, and was a Fellow in Agrarian Studies at Yale. Ribot has published on social vulnerability in the face of climate change, concepts of property and access, natural resource commodity chains, and democratic decentralization of natural resources. His work concentrates on West Africa with comparative material drawn from around the world. He is currently conducting comparative research on conflicts between local democracy and ‘customary’ authorities in Africa. In his spare time, Ribot is a potter and glassblower.
The Artist: Mor Gueye
Mor Gueye is an internationally renowned Senegalese artist. At 80 years old, Mor Gueye is considered the ‘dean’ of Senegal’s reverse glass painters. Born in a village in central Senegal, Gueye moved to Dakar on the eve of Senegal’s independence in 1960, where he has lived ever since. His work has appeared in a number of exhibitions in Africa and Europe. Most recently, he and his son Serign Gueye were featured in the exhibition A Saint in the City at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Mor Gueye uses a technique popular in urban Senegal known as ‘reverse glass painting’, where he paints on one side of a glass pane to be viewed from the other. He is a devout ‘Baye Fall’, a member of the Sufi sect of Mouridism in Senegal. As a young man, Gueye recounts that Amadu Bamba, the great Mouride leader, came to him in a dream that inspired his first painting. While Gueye works in a range of genres, most of his paintings depict scenes from Mouride history. Indeed, Gueye considers himself a historian, and his deepest joy is in recounting Bamba's life, creating a visual hagiography of this great Sufi saint. He feels his paintings are ‘like prayers’, which in their making convey baraka or blessings.
The Art Photographer: Franklin Pierre Khoury
The art in [the forthcoming] volume was photographed by Franklin Pierre Khoury, the art photographer of the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.
Exhibition: The text and images were exhibited at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars gallery April through June 2005.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 3:33 PM | TrackBack
May 15, 2005
Elephant at the table
by Sylvia S Tognetti
A question that often comes up is whether there is such a thing as policy based on science or, in some cases, even on intelligence. Particularly when there is an elephant in the room (or at the table), who has already made up his mind what he is going to do, as was spelled out in The Downing Street Memo. So, in Post-Normal Times, we need to focus also on creating the context for good policy, perhaps as is depicted in Billmon' s vision of 2010.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:29 PM | TrackBack
April 24, 2005
Sunday afternoon penguin blogging
by Sylvia S Tognetti
More frequent posting soon, I promise. In the meantime, more penguins, probably just looking for someplace that's cool - click here for a photo essay of penguins from Seaworld going through aiport security, thanks to Majikthise - another penguin obsessed, Douglas Adams inspired blog that will get added to the Post-Normal Times blogroll as soon as I add a blogroll to this site. Not to be outdone, here are some more penguins, Washington Post in hand, entering the metro station near the Spring that was once upon a time Silver.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 3:02 PM | TrackBack
April 6, 2005
Fools in charge?
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Asked about the provenance of the term "flip-flop" - in reference to phase shifts in complex systems, Henry Regier, author of a paper about this with James Kay, sent me a note in which he muses that it may just be a modern term given to that which our ancestors attributed to the workings of a trickster deity to whom we might dedicate April 1st - which it was at the time. Since it was too late in the day for an April fools day post, I am instead dedicating the entire rest of the month to the Fools who think they are in charge of anything (i.e., control freaks), and to "the mischievous Greek God Pan." First, a little bit of background that you can probably skip over if you are an ecologist:
Source: Gunderson and Holling 2002; Holling 2004
Two other comtemporary ecologists, Buzz Holling and Lance Gunderson, coined the term Panarchy
Similar patterns can be observed in social systems. For better or for worse, these periods of change make possible alternative futures and, present opportunities for changing the rules of the game. For an interesting tale of the beginning of the end of feudalism (at least in Europe) and the birth of modern law just after the turn of the last millennium, and that set the stage for the renaissance, see this new biography of Matilda of Canossa
Buzz Holling suggests the post-cold war and post 9-11 period is part of a great backloop phase, that some would call the long now. And then there is the coming time of The Long Emergency
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 10:44 AM
February 17, 2005
How the light gets in
by David Waltner-Toews
Editor's note: Biodiversity is about the relationships that make all of existence possible. But is it possible for human communities to flourish on this planet without destroying the incredible diversity of other communities of living things? In this essay, David-Waltner Toews explores the great contradictions of life and imagines what it might be like to live in a holarchy.
The world may end tomorrow. If not through wars over oil or water or nuclear accidents or eco-industrial wrist-slashing, then through meteors from space or the death of our sun. In just this way, our loved ones may die at any time. Do we therefore love them less? Of course not. It is because of this that we care more. For the tasks of sustainable human communities on this planet, there is, in the words of poet Mary Oliver, “only one question: How to love this world.” What does this mean? Send a Hallmark card? Make a flower arrangement? What is it that helps us get up in the morning, humming, and actually do something to make the world just a little better?
Romance the earth by candlelight? We could do worse that look into the eyes of the biosphere and feel, again, or the first time, our primal biophylia. But, in the vast heavy blackness of the space in which we float, from whence comes this light? “There is a crack in everything”, says Canadian poet and song-writer Leonard Cohen in his song Anthem. “That’s how the light gets in.”
To romance the earth, we begin with a candle in the “encircling gloom.” Some of us have thought of science as a kind of light, and it is. The open, mutually correcting community of science, as well as its precise language, so apparently unsuited to poetry and stories, seems suited to the search for exact truth. But such a candle, some of us have discovered, is not enough. The precision of description does not reduce uncertainty of understanding. Nor can it get its linguistic head around the fact that we are inside this earth, having evolved inside it, and have no external objective way of determining whether or not what we think is true, actually is. Even such a “hard science” thing as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, eludes us. We promoted efficiency and recycling based on "hard" science, and we ended up with a terrifying, incurable disease. After all the massive scientific effort and careful observation that has told us that the earth's climate is changing, probably rapidly, probably catastrophically for us, there is still sufficient uncertainty that nay-sayers can fuss over the niceties of computer and mathematical models, ignore the direct experience of millions of people around the world whose livelihoods in the arctic and in the tropical mountains and in the coastal plains are disappearing before their eyes, and say, well, we're not sure, so we shouldn't do anything. We can only marginally reduce the uncertainty - that's not the issue. The notion that we can reduce uncertainty about questions at the global scale is based on a childish view of science, that science is about growing up, and that when we get there, when we get the perfect science, when we are 30 years old, then we will know what to do. Any scientist older than 30 knows that we are as uncertain as ever, that our knowledge will always be only as perfect as that of a naked primate in the urban jungle can be. The issue is not how to dispel uncertainty; the challenge is how we find our way through the darkness.
We begin by exploring outward into this complex web, beyond the candle and the campfire. Like love, science is curious. What is this about light, for instance, that draws us? We all need light. We cannot escape it. We need light if we want to go somewhere, light for our eyes to guide our feet. Still, blind people seem to manage okay, guiding themselves through auditory and tactile clues. For the rest of us - the auditorially and tactily challenged, however - light is important. We could ask: who needs to go anywhere? We could read books. That is a way of going somewhere without going somewhere. Ah, but the trees who gave their leaves and the uranium which fed our power plants have sacrificed their light to make our reading possible. Could we sit in the dark and turn white and fat? Many of us do this, with consequences. In the long winter in northern parts of the world people can suffer from SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is a fancy way of saying that if you are cold and in the dark you tend not to be your cheery old self. The darkness creeps into your bones and into your heart. It settles there like a clammy mold, slowly re-cycling you for the benefit of bacteria and albino newts. The answer to this of course is a big satellite dish with hundreds of channels. But that really is just another form of light. Cold, blue and warped, but light nonetheless.
Even if there were a good comedy channel, we would still need to eat, and even potatoes of the non-couch variety, the ones they make chips out of, need above ground leaves to gather the radiant energy of the sun to come into being. Is this a scientific issue? A poetic conundrum?
The idea of energy is a curiously ambiguous one. Some of my ecologist and engineering colleagues speak of exergy – not just any energy, but energy in useful form. But useful for what? Mario Giampietro tells a kind of parable about a man marooned on an island with a can of petrol. How much energy is in the can? The engineers in the room begin their calculations. Then he adds, just as they complete their scribbling, "and if the man uses throws the can at a rabbit to kill it and provide food, how much energy was in the can?" A warm room and the element in an oven may contain the same amount of "energy", but not the same amount of exergy. You can't for instance, cook a chicken by placing it in a warm room, although you could grow enough bacteria to kill a few people. Exergy acknowledges the relativity of the concept of energy, a relativity rooted in our cultures and our poetry and our stories.
If we look around us, what do we see? How much energy is there? That depends. What is it for? The energy from the sun concentrated and built up into complex webs of plants and animals that we increasingly usurp, starving out other species in our frenzied feeding. This exergy, this gift from Grace, a community of fellow beings here for our company on this strange and perilous voyage, we use to build highways and parking lots and black-roofed buildings and plastic garbage bags or refrigerator storage containers or burn to runs cars or tanks or airplanes. And yet this scientific view of the light as exergy, based on how we care, on what we value, gives barely an inkling of why we should care. At one level, we simply need that light to live; it is so basic a need that we are willing to steal from other species, scrounge from other people, wrest away from our children, the way we have stolen the forests and the seas and the bird-songs and the terrible marvel of insects from them.
But we need more than simple solar energy if we are to care.
The darkness is so intense. The newspaper headlines speak of slavery in the Sudan, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, the ritual worship of junk-bond traders on Wall Street. Sometimes the moral world we live in seems like such a gloomy place that the darkness is palpable, that morning breaks, literally, shattering in millions of brilliant shards against the unbreakable night. We burn everything we can - trees, coal, electrons - just to hedge ourselves against the omnivorous darkness.
If you get far enough away from the city, away from our electronic fires, out into a field of stubble or at the edge of Lake Huron, you can look out into the vastness of the universe. The darkness, it seems, expands breathlessly in all directions. The stars are tiny points of light, candles flickering in an empty room, speaking to our sense that we are alone, speaking to our hopes.
Or perhaps the darkness is a vast dome punctured by tiny flaws through which a radiance bursts to us. If we saw this radiance in all its glory, we would surely die. Yet secretly, would we not all prefer to die in such a blaze of glory? When I was growing up, we used to talk a lot about conversion experiences. Have you experienced the Lord? was an expression often used. This was a blinding, Damascus Road kind of revelation which would change your life. Some of us felt that we had such moments.
The trouble is, like any adrenaline rush, they can become addictive, and the temptation to try to capture that wild light, to cage it, to make it ours on demand, is almost overwhelming. Some of us got saved many times just to try to keep that life changing light rushing through our veins. We even carried this with us into our collective political lives. In the 1960s, we spoke of a global, world-changing revolution, ushering in an age of peace, harmony and good music. This sounds more like an epiphany than anything Karl Marx would recognize.
But if the real light, the raw, undomesticated light, cannot be counted on to come in sudden, blinding revelations, neither does it respond well to the flick of a switch. The more we try to confine the power of the Spirit to our religious power stations and spiritual grids, the more that brilliance, escapes us. Perhaps our reach should exceed our grasp and we should aspire to be perfect, whatever that means. Yet it is not in the grasp of perfection that the light comes to us. Just when we think we are becoming perfect, when we have achieved the perfect science or the perfect philosophy or the perfect religion, we discover that we are still in darkness, that the fundamentals of our lives still elude us. Human perfection is an illusion of perfect darkness. It is in the muddled middle ground, where science and culture meet, where the light comes.
Light strays our way through the cracks.
Working in Kathmandu, I have sometimes been tempted to see only the filth and disease, the dirty water, the dogs next to the food and the children playing in the garbage. But, as German painter Rainer Nepita was wont to point out to me over pots of sweet, milky Nepali tea, there were also blue and yellow and red plastic baskets piled next to the shiny brass pots, women with the bright saffron and purple saris, earth-tones of the street, children, hope, breaks in the clouds. Where I saw darkness, he saw light. Where I saw the broken-ness, the cracks, he saw what was revealed in the broken-ness, the sprouts of green and light.
“Ring the bells that still can ring,” says poet Leonard Cohen. “Forget your perfect offering.” And then, in the recorded version of the song, he does something that I’m not sure even he was aware of. He creates a crack in the line. “There is a crack, a crack in everything,” he sings. “That’s how the light gets in.” The little repetition of crack, separated by a comma, a pause to let in the light. If we want to find the light, we will need to see the cracks.
If there is a crack, that implies that there is a whole which is yet not a whole, something is fragile, but not utterly broken. But in a world seemingly torn between the smug and the shattered where can we look for this light? How can we see this? How can we find this light?
Early one morning after one of my talks with Rainer I went out into the city. I saw and felt everything, the saffrons and purples and reds, the dog-barks and the lung-deep coughs, the bicycle bells, people chatting around a tea pot by the street-side, the strewn plastic and shit and banana leaves, devastation, hope. What moved me most, however, was a young girl dressed in rags, sitting on a sidewalk, very carefully stacking lychees and peaches into pyramids of five. It seemed that she was waiting, not just for customers, but for something bigger. An answer to some unarticulated question. A faint sound of music to soothe her spirit.
But what is this that we all long for and wait for? It seemed to me that if light was grace, which I guess it is, then the girl on the bridge already had grace. More than the bumbling Canadian out for his morning constitutional. But if light is only grace, then there is nothing we can do to find it; grace comes to us, not us to grace. But are there places we can go where grace can find us more easily? Is there a street corner or coffee shop or a mall where she hangs out?
I once thought that perhaps the girl on the bridge had an answer, or that I had one. I now see this isn’t going to happen. Neither of us, alone, can find an answer. But together, not just the girl and I, but all of us, might find an answer, might learn our way into a future worth embracing.
Later in his song, Cohen says, “Every heart to love will come, but like a refugee.” So, we are back to love. After we have tried everything else, this is the refuge we flee to in our leaky boats, in our roped-together rafts of knowledge. Or, as St Paul eloquently put it, “I may be able to speak with the languages of men and even of angels, but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell; I may have the gift of inspired preaching; I may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; I may have all the faith needed to move mountains - but if I have no love, I am nothing. I may give away everything I have, and even give up my body to be burned - but if I have no love, this does me no good.”
Having tried everything else - perfected our technologies, our bodies, our minds, done all the self help stuff, climbed Everest, the spiritual exercises and the bodily exercises, the jogging, the yoga and the eating right - we will, if we still yearn for the light, return to love, flee to her as a last resort. Indeed, science that is not based on a deep love for this planet is usually lousy science, or at least irrelevant science, answering questions that don't matter.
But are we any further ahead talking about love than about light? Light, grace and love, after all, are all different ways of speaking about something mysterious, powerful and wonderful at the heart of everything. What can we learn from love about grace, about light?
Says philosopher Michael Ignatieff, (Many of the things we need most deeply in life - love chief among them - do not necessarily bring us happiness. If we need them, it is to go to the depth of our being, to learn as much of ourselves as we can stand, to be reconciled to what we find in ourselves and in those around us.( To me, this is the ultimate goal of all good science - and of all good literature and art and music.
And what do we find in the depths of our being?
Here is a riddle. In loving each other, in loving this wonderful biosphere of which we are a part, we acknowledge our separateness even as we desire wholeness. Unless we are each alone, individual, whole in ourselves, there is no one to summon love into being. Unless we are incomplete, fragments of some larger whole, we will not yearn for love. For love to become, we must be whole, and we must be broken, or at least cracked.
It is tempting to believe that this is all just about the fluttering of your heart, about the light that breaks through the gloom of a winter’s day when you unexpectedly see that special someone you care about, recklessly and anxiously, about teenagers trying to see the shape of each other in the darkness in the back seat of a car. But this is not just about you and your friends, about the pain of saying goodby and the hope of seeing each other again.
This goes to the very core of yourself as a person. Your very brain in cleft in two. The left half of your brain, so some researchers have said, is analytical and logical; the right half is creative and intuitive. What makes you who you are is not just the two pieces, but the communication across them: the corpus callosum, those bundles of nerve cells, traversing the clammy, dark and uncertain depths of the longitudinal fissure. They connect the two halves of the brain. That’s how the light gets in.
This goes, as well, to the very heart of our political and cultural being. It is about the most powerful and destructive forces unleashed in the past century: communism, driven by the fierce desire to make us all one; and capitalism, based on the unshakable belief that individuals are everything. Both are a refusal to accept a fundamental contradiction of life.
Ignatieff, in writing about the 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, says the following: “[His] insight is that a community of men can become masters of their needs, instead of slaves to their desires, only when they democratically decide upon some form of collective constraint on inequalities of fortune...Apparently, societies that seek to give everyone the same chance at freedom can only do so at some cost to freedom itself...Modern secular humanism is empty if it supposes that the human good is without internal contradiction.”
There is a crack in everything.
This goes, as well, to the core of the great questions of environmental sustainability we ask today, of the possibility, which many now seriously doubt, that human communities can flourish on this planet without destroying the incredible diversity of other communities of living things which make those human communities not only livable, but possible.
Biodiversity has become a watchword for environmental activists around the world. But biodiversity is not just about all the pieces, about saving germ-plasm in banks. That misses the point entirely. More than anything biodiversity is about relationships, what goes on in the cracks between things. The wonder of nature is not just the cardinals, squirrels, the beautiful quetzal birds and lemurs and white tailed deer and timber wolves. It is not just the riches of life we find recorded in the archeological records. It is the Wagnerian chorus of them all together, the tongue-tickling harmonies, the tum-tiddling down your vertebrae, the humming in the stem cells in your bone marrow, the twisting in the ancient codes that make us who we are: the Auruch, the Quagga, Gypsonia, Dickinsonia, Glyptodont, the Moa, the Ammonites, the Trilobites. It is about the chorus of history and evolution bursting through us, poetry of the Burgess Shale, the Java Man, my grandmother, the Canadian Val-kyrie eleisons of people and grizzly bears and raccoons and trumpeter swans and even elected politicians.
This is not just about you, but about the family of which you are part, and the communities made up of your families, and the ecosystems made up of families of millions of species. This is about being a whole, and being incomplete. This is a love, then, that requires an all-encompassing care, an aching tension and contradiction and struggle. Perfect equilibrium in any living thing only comes with death. According to thermodynamic laws, we must live in tension, far from equilibrium, or we cannot live at all.
The philosopher and novelist Arthur Koestler created a language which I think can help us here. He coined the word holon to describe something that is both a part of something and whole in itself. A holon, being whole, is internally rich with relationships, like all the psycho-physiological pathways that make you who you are. But it is also a part of something larger, communicating, sending out and receiving essential messages to the larger holons, the family, the community of which it is a part. A holarchy is what a holon is part of. We are done with hierarchies, with bosses and boss-ees, with one-way, downward communications. As we must rediscover, the fundamental rule of the Biosphere, like the basic rule in the kingdom of the Spirit, is not based on authority, one over another, but on serving one another, not as shuffling slaves, but as holons. We love our neighbours - and our enemies - as we love ourselves. We communicate with each other. We converse. We exchange gifts. We sing. We write poetry and do science. These are the relationships that make our collective life on this planet possible - and wonderful - and it is the collective life that makes our individual lives possible.
This then is our challenge: to be ourselves as individuals, and at the same time to claim our part in the whole of this wonderful creation. To be holons, simultaneously acknowledging our separateness and our wholeness. To find ways for people of many religions and cultures to be true to themselves, and yet not to demand that everyone be like them. To love our neighbours, our enemies, our fellow species, as we love ourselves, as unique individuals, as whole, and as part. This is the contradiction at the heart of everything, the crack where the light gets in, the challenge for a new kind of science and a new kind of story-telling, a new, integrated way of thinking about knowledge which Silvio Funtowicz and Jerry Ravetz have called Post Normal Science. This is a science where the peer group is expanded to include a large congregation of our fellow citizens, and where “hard science” meets cultural story-telling. The only science - the only understanding of knowledge - commensurate to the problems of the 21st century is one in which culture and natural science speak to each other, where poetry and experiment and music dance together, the one and only dance we have, the last dance.
Let me come back to the question I started this essay with: How can we love this world? By keeping our senses alert and our mental eyes wide open, moving like the half-wild savannah animals we are, to walk through the uncertainty of this landscape cautiously. In so doing, we may find the skills necessary to be good citizens of earth as well as good scientists, to see, and, seeing, as Pablo Neruda said, to come to life, to see (the fire that sprang to life in beautiful things(. We will then find those places where the light, and grace, will come. If we are willing to be alienated, to be lonely, and to be compassionate, to think hard and to challenge each other, to always go back outside and look at the evidence, at the incredible world we live in and are part of, and whose fate is our fate, then we will find the light that comes through the cracks. Maybe not a blinding flash of insight, but enough to travel by, enough to read by, enough to see where we are, the wonder of it, and to make our way.
Posted by David Waltner-Toews at 7:06 PM | TrackBack
A Tribute to James Kay
by Sylvia S Tognetti
presented by David Waltner-Toews on July 11, 2004, at the Welcome Sessions of the International Society for Ecological Economics, Montreal ,Canada
James Kay died, at 11 PM on May 30th of 2004 year, just a few weeks short of his 50th birthday. He died with his eyes open, both literally and figuratively.
For many, James was an exquisite physicist, theoretician on complexity and thermodynamics. In his early work with Eric Schneider, he re-interpreted the second law of thermodynamics, applying it to understand how exergy gradients induce self-organizing structures, and how living systems organize so as to destroy exergy gradients at the fastest rates possible. His work was featured as a cover story on the New Scientist. His 1994 paper with Schneider was recently identified as one of the 12 most important papers in ecology in the 1990s and is included in the Oxford University Press Readings in Ecology. More recently, he extended and expanded on this work with Royden Fraser. Some have argued that in the unpublished papers on thermodynamics he left behind there is more than enough material for a Nobel Prize. I cannot say I understand that part of his work well enough to make such a judgement. I do know that he never stopped at exquisite theory.
I first knew James as a teacher when, as a veterinarian and public health epidemiologist, I was making my first tentative forays into the debates on sustainable development. I discovered what a wonderful teacher he was, translating the complex theories of thermodynamics into plain English and simple object lessons and diagrams. The irreducible uncertainty of complex life was to him not just a source of frustration, but of humility, and great wonder and amazement and good graphics. It was certainly at the core of how he approached the immense problems of science in the public domain, science for the public good.
He could move from thermodynamics to science fiction to municipal politics with ease, although some might argue that the latter two are not so different after all. He was the founding Chair of University of Waterloo's Greening the Campus Committee and a founding member of the City of Kitchener's Environment Committee, which developed a Strategic Plan for the Environment and an ecosystem-based master plan for the Huron Natural Area. He sat on the committee which developed the award winning (Canadian Institute of Planners) bicycle master plan for Kitchener, was on the City's committee for the transition to a hydrogen economy. He advised the Ontario Ministry of the Environment on how to develop indicators of ecological integrity, and delivered special guest lectures to the National Ministry of the Environment. He served on the Long Term Ecosystem Research and Monitoring Panel of the Royal Society of Canada and was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Beijer Institute, Working Group on Complex Ecological Economic Systems Modeling. He was a very active member of the United States National Science Foundation Advisory Committee on Environmental Research and Education and had a profound influence on the shape of its 10 year outlook, Complex Environmental Systems: Synthesis for Earth, Life and Society in the 21st Century, published in 2003.
As academic friends will, we would sometimes commiserate about the immense inertia of formal institutional structures such as governments, granting councils and universities. But he wouldn’t let us stop at just complaining. When we founded the Network for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health, James saw it as a way to re-invent the university, to create a forum for intellectual debate, teaching and practice, a critique of business as usual, a way to use new web-based technologies to create that extended peer group demanded by Post Normal Science.
In the last 10 years, many of us had the privilege of working with him on a kind of globalization of this parallel, publicly engaged university. Since the early 1990s, he had been part of an ad hoc international group of scholars studying uncertainty, complexity, and managing for sustainability. An earlier name for the group, the Cali Cartel, named after the working place for one of our members, seemed to create some traveling problems. Then, we had a memorable meeting at La Faloria Convent in Cortina, in the Italian Alps, in which we flew people across the Atlantic with no clear agenda and no committed funds, our only sponsor an Italian wine-maker who agreed to provide wine. It was one of the greatest scientific experiences of our lives. Like the fictional detective Dirk Gently, created by Douglas Adams, that hitch-hiker of the galaxy, we sought to solve the whole crime, to find the whole person, to find the whole solution to our global problems. Served pasta by the nuns and heavenly Italian wine, we read poetry and argued complex systems theories, explored the reasons for epidemics and the nature of agricultural development. When I suggested we might call ourselves the Dirk Gently Group, James, with typical impishness, insisted on referring to us as the Dirk Gently Gang.
Later, at the Ecological Economics meetings in Boston, and subsequent panels and special sessions in Cali, Columbia, Toronto, Guelph, James was always a central figure. Even this last November in Milan, and in March in Alexandria, when he was not there physically, we could feel his presence. Then again, there were the sessions he organized dedicated to theoretical ecology in the Biennial Workshop in Advances in Energy Studies of Porto Venere, Northern Italy, in which James always played the crucial role of the “skipper fighting in the typhoon”. More than once, he told me, after some memorable engagement at a workshop on exergy or energy or integrity or health, there had been blood on the floor. More than once, he confided in me that he was distressed at the way some scholars seemed to believe that one side had to win or lose these debates. Did we not believe in the reality of complexity? In the necessity for well argued, well articulated multiple perspectives? In the reality of trade-offs?
In the last year, he was annoyed by the fact that there is a lot of work still to be done, and his health problems were preventing him from doing all he would have liked to do. At the beginning of May, I visited him in the hospice shortly after he had moved in. It was an unsettled spring day, with temperatures around 20 C, bits of rain, bits of sunshine. The hospice is in a small gulley, with a wetland nearby, and James had some bird feeders outside his floor-to-ceiling windowed doors. He immediately started talking about energetics and feed availability and species competition. We watched the young redwinged blackbirds, chipmunks, a flock of goldfinches. James was taking pictures with a new digital camera to document the ecology outside his window. The world never ceased to intrigue and amaze him. Until a couple of weeks before he died, he was still debating with Martin Bunch and I the fine details of diagrams of self-organizing systems to be included in a book we had been working on, it seems to me, almost forever, entitled, The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Managing for Sustainability. For some of us, like myself, who are at home with broad visions of health and sustainability, he could be an annoying bear of a man to work with, precisely because he was as demanding of his colleagues as he was of himself. He complained at how sloppily supposedly good scientists used words like attractors and phase changes, did not tolerate the kind of loose thinking or sloppy logic which some of us use to comfort ourselves with our cleverness. He wouldn’t let us off the hook just because we were friends. And I think it is exactly because of this that I remember him as a friend, and not just a colleague.
Looking over the edge of eternity, he was worried that his work might not amount to what it should, that it would fall short of its potential. On May 19th, just a couple of weeks before he died, I dropped by his hospice on my way home from work, and talked with him over supper, and then we wheeled out to the little wetland and looked at water and listened to the red-winged blackbirds. It’s all going so fast, he said. I told him again about how he had connected so many diverse people from so many parts of the world, the marvelous influence he had. Only half joking, I think, he told me to keep saying that, as it made him feel better. He was pleased that Jona and Lise, his children, now both had their drivers' licenses; they were growing up and out into that world he so loved. I went home and worked in the back yard until dark and I had a sore back. I guess I just wanted to feel my body, knowing how easily it can slip away, how easily, if we let it, this world can slip away from us.
In spite of his regret at not having finished his work here, he left a huge legacy to us, in terms of books, papers, videos, tapes, intuitions, enthusiasm, contacts, friendships, shared experiences, memories, ongoing projects, personal example. Visit his website; it is a treasure. James would want us to share it, to use it, to let it multiply in the minds of students and scholars everywhere. It is time for us, now, to use our intellectual drivers’ licenses, and get out there, not to let it all slip away, this world full of misery and wonder, immense problems and immense resilience. With James’ passing, the world lost a champion of good science, good ecological economics, good citizenship. But most of all, for many of us on this strange and wonderful journey of life, we lost a traveling companion and a good friend.
David Waltner-Toews
for
Joan Martinez-Alier
Tim Allen
Bruna de Marchi
Silvio Funtowicz
Gilberto Gallopin
Mario Giampietro
Giuseppe Munda
Jerry Ravetz
Henry Regier
Joe Tainter
Bob Ulanowicz
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 2:30 AM | Comments (1)