Sustainability, Hurricane Irma, Race, and Book Club

Ah Tom Paine's Ghost, I've been neglecting you to broadcast my thoughts more directly through Facebook and twitter. At least I syndicate the later here on the sidebar.
As we are now in the late third trimester of the Trump administration I want to get back to my roots on the web, reconnect with my blogging, and re-enter with some broader dialogues on Climate-Change and how the manifestations like Hurricane Irma bring the land ethic preached by Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, and Aldo Leopold smashing (both metaphorically and physically) into the people-centered ethic preached by Dr. Martin Luther King and the long list of philosophers who hold human rights, and social justice at the top of the reformers to-do list. This ethical crossroads is grossly apparent when regions of the United States affected most dramatically by ensuring climate chaos are those regions who simultaneously experience the legacy of racial injustice.

So why talk about sustainability in a moment of immediacy, a moment when thumbing your nose at bottled water seems blithely out of touch with the immediate needs of flood victims?  Well, a deep ecological consciousness-raising followed by a massive political movement is the only way I can see to grab hold of the wheel and turn this ship around.  So where to start? If you like podcasts I have a recommendation - Think Sustainability -  this Austrailian podcast is a non-pretentious incredibly entertaining show with very doable advice. Last year while on a cross-country road-trip my wife and I listened to a bunch of episodes. One of our favorites was this one guiding listeners on home-compost best practices.

Remembering how impactful listening to this podcast was on me is inspiring and makes want to kick off my own podcast.   For the last year, I have been organizing a Men's Book Club.  I am considering spinning off some of our conversations into a monthly podcast.  Stay tuned for the premiere of "Chlorathropolis" podcast!

Comment here in if you'd like to be a guest and get on our first-year schedule.

What is Phenology?

Have you ever heard of PHENOLOGY? 

Phenology is the study of seasonal changes in plant and animal life. For example keeping a notebook of the date and location of daffodils blooming, or robins returning in the spring.

As I walked through the woods today I wished I could have uploaded photos taken with my iphone to some online database where they would be mapped to a model of earth.  I envisioned a website where one could upload time-stamped geo-tagged photos of living things and people all over the world could see these photos and use them to watch temporal fluctuations in animal migrations and plants flowering or going to seed. 

July, 12th, 2012, 12:30 PM EDT,
Latitude: 42.06873434, Longitute:79.3502757

My attempt at phenological data collection is pictured at the right. Brownie points if you can identify the butterfly species.

There have been attempts at creating a global phenological network. Project BudBurst is probably the best example. Citizen scientists are invited to log when and where they see certain flowers blooming. It is great to see this but I want more! I want to see more plants an animals recorded by a larger group of citizen scientists in a totally open access setting. The other online data base of species is E.O. Wilson's brainchild - The Encyclopedia of Life. But that database is more about cataloging all life forms on earth. A noble and useful goal but not phenology.

When looking at Google Maps you can click on buttons in the upper right corner and add photos or Wikipedia articles as pieces of meta-information overlaid on the satellite images. Is it far-fetched to expect one day there will be an additional button to add phenological data including photos, dates, and precise coordinates? If people can visualize science I think they are more likely to accept it. If we can show the world how flowers are blooming earlier and earlier due to climate change maybe they will be more likely to accept bland graphs of temperature and CO2 levels.

I had not heard of phenology until I heard Nina Leopold (daughter of naturalist and author Aldo Leopold) mention it while talking about her father (see below).

 
Phenology | Climate Wisconsin from ECB on Vimeo.

Hot Debate: Dawkins and Pell

This debate is well worth and hour of your time. Cardinal George Pell of Australia debates Professor Richard Dawkins on God, evolution, intelligent design and climate change.

Inside the Climate-Change-Denial Playbook

Last week I posted a video of Senator James Inhofe interviewed by Rachel Maddow. In this interview Inhofe makes assertions that made my jaw drop. Namely, that environmental lobbying groups out-spent oil-and-gas lobbyists by over a billion dollars in 2009.  He even sites Nature Magazine as the source for this "fact." A "fact" that he clearly got wrong by grossly misrepresenting and confusing the numbers.

The opinion piece in question can be viewed here. The numbers reported by the editors are as follows; $272 million spent by oil-and-gas lobbyists opposing cap-and-trade in 2009 while $229 million spent by environmental groups lobbying for cap-and-trade legislation. By claiming that environmental lobbyists spent nearly a billion dollars more than oil-and-gas lobbyists while the article clearly states that environmental groups spent 43 million dollars less, Inhofe is guilty of an egregious falsehood. 

Incidentally, Inhofe also describes Nature as a "very liberal publication." This struck my as particularly hilarious as the vast majority of the material written about in Nature is derived from primary research conducted in laboratories all over the world.  It has the highest impact factor of any academic journal and publishing in said journal is the most competitive endeavor a scientist can undertake.  In all my life I have not seen a single member of the US congress argue about the scientific reporting in Nature Magazine unless it threatened their bottom-line. You don't see Inhofe arguing over the liberal or conservative way in which the crystal structure of Malaria parasite proteins are described. Imagine hearing a senator argue - Yes, the cysteine-rich Duffy-binding-like domains of the parasite's erythrocyte binding protein actually only bind to right-leaning cell surface receptors - COME ON!

I want to emphasize that the article Inhofe refers to is a brief OPINION piece, not a full-on research article. It is an opinion written by the editors encouraging their audience to read a report made by a professor at American University in Washington, DC named Matthew C. Nisbet. The title of professor Nisbet's article is - Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate.  

While reading professor Nisbet's response to Inhofe's misuse of his report I came across a very interesting paragraph describing the playbook of the climate-change-deniers.  The following paragraph makes clear that there is an orchestrated effort among some conservatives in Washington to frame climate-change consistently in a severely anti-science manner.  

"During the 1990s, based on focus groups and polling, Republican consultant Frank Luntz helped shape the climate skeptic playbook, recommending in a strategy memo to lobbyists and Republican members of Congress that the issue be framed as scientifically uncertain, using opinions of contrarian scientists as evidence. He also wrote that the “emotional home run” would be an emphasis on the dire economic consequences of action, impacts that would result in an “unfair burden” on Americans if other countries such as China and India did not participate in international agreements.^"

Using anti-science tactics is intolerable to me and I feel sad for the people of this county who are fooled by charlatans like James Inhofe.  They are making a mockery of this republic and it makes me want to scream!

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