That was then this is now

Posted on November 10, 2015 | 1 comment

This is another post on the theme of future and past times and how we view them. It was prompted in part by reflecting on the Lamar Smith witchhunt of Karl et al at NASA and the scientists who have been analysing and improving the historical temperature record. Continue reading →

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Posted in Climate, Economics, Politics

Here are the emails Rep Lamar Smith(R) is looking for…

Posted on November 1, 2015 | 4 comments

The Chair of the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has demanded all communications between scientists and administrators in relation to the scientific paper on recent surface temperature rise.
Here is his reason why –

“It was inconvenient for this administration that climate data has clearly showed no warming for the past two decades. The American people have every right to be suspicious when NOAA alters data to get the politically correct results they want and then refuses to reveal how those decisions were made. NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda.”

He clearly thinks the scientific paper was fiction, a made-up version of reality to further a political end.

Here are the emails Rep Lamar Smith(R) is looking for… Continue reading →

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Posted in Animation, Climate, Ethics, Politics

Remembering the future; imagining the past.

Posted on October 26, 2015 | Leave a comment

While this may seem paradoxical there are many ways in which this is how we view events that stretch in both directions on the timeline from our present

The recent anniversary of the Back to the Future film is an example of how we judge the present on how we predicted the future in the past.
The way in which we imagine the past however is often shaped by our ideological beliefs. The recent controversy over the Confederate battle flag might be an example of this process by which history gets used as a symbol of resistance to change when it was seen as the mark of resistance to the civil rights advances of the 60s Continue reading →

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Posted in Climate, Economics, Politics, Visual media

Insubstantial analogies

Posted on October 12, 2015 | Leave a comment

I have delayed posting because I wanted to put together something substantial, or at least coherently substantive, about our perceptions of the future and the past. Or at least a bit of visuals and sound that satisfied my aesthetics.
This post is neither. Continue reading →

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Posted in Climate, Epistemology, Science

Syria, migrants and mitigation

Posted on September 8, 2015 | Leave a comment

In a discussion at another [place] the hot issue of the migrant crisis and the role of climate in starting the Syrian unrest emerged. I got to wondering what the present state of the climate is in Syria, and how that impacts on the chances that the millions of people displaced will, or can, ever return. Continue reading →

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Posted in Climate, Economics, Politics

3 min doodle…

Posted on August 24, 2015 | 2 comments

3 Minutes of sound and graphics, a diversion from ongoing projects.  Irish sky and a ‘lost’ FZ solo?timelapse sunrise

Continue reading →

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Posted in Animation, Visual media

Perspectives on temporal sensitivity

Posted on August 10, 2015 | 1 comment

There are obvious reasons why the past and the future are viewed very differently. One is known, the other unknown, one unalterable, one open to modification, one is the cause of the present, while the other will be the effect we cause in the here and now. But there are big differences in the perspective we have on the events in the past that impact us now, and the view we take of the impact the actions we take now will have on the future.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Animation, Climate, Politics, Visual media

Pure Scandal?

Posted on July 27, 2015 | Leave a comment

Having decided to avoid making posts that were purely reactive to the latest froth in the climate debate, or engage with topical politics to any degree, this post will break those resolutions.

I want to post more measured and generalised thoughts on political action, human ethics and climate, as well as other aspects of physics and biology that impact our future options, rather than knee-jerk derision of the latest conspiratorial inanities of the climate deniarati however amusing that may be. Anyway Hot Whopper does that so well, along with Eli, that any further attempt would be redundant.

After falling into a deep contemplation of the epistemological differences between the present and future, there is a post in the pipeline which will be about our perspectives on the near future and recent past. Complete with animated illustrative graphics…

However I find a reason to make a post in complete contradiction to this concern with temporal sensitivities to focus on the instant and ephemeral..
The reason is the wonderful scandal that has engulfed a UK peer of the realm. Continue reading →

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Posted in Ethics, Politics, Uncategorized

Utopian solutions, dystopian precipitates.

Posted on June 27, 2015 | 3 comments

As the reality of the hottest year continues and the room for denial of
ongoing and potential future damaging impacts from AGW shrinks, programs of
policy appear that go beyond the mere economic tinkering of Carbon Tax or
Cap and Trade.utopia_1

The Papal letter on caring for our world, the Ecomodernist manifesto both
exemplify the emergence of approaches to the problem of AGW that go beyond
attacking symptom or causes and propose more far-reaching changes in the way
future society must be ordered to solve the damage that present use of
fossil fuels have created, and avoid further impacts from continued
emissions. Continue reading →

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Posted in Climate, Economics, Ethics, Politics

Fat Chance

Posted on May 31, 2015 | 3 comments

Those that follow the climate change issue may be aware of the low opinion that Matt Ridley is viewed with by people who accept the mainstream scientific position and the opprobrium with which his pronouncements on this matter are often greeted. His financial interests in fossil fuel, he owns a coal mine, do not help but his support of the contrarian view of AGW is also rooted in the political position that rejects the science because the policy choices it implies are an anathema to the hardline free market position he supports. This seems to be the basis for the GWPF advocacy. Some who find his denial, or at least his minimisation of the established climate science objectionable express puzzlement that someone who writes such good books on biology and genetics  can be so wrong on this issue. Others who have a knowledge of the biology he presents in those works that goes beyond the popularist exposition he gives may already have a lower opinion of his work. Continue reading →

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Posted in Climate, Ethics, Politics, Science, Uncategorized