alan – Page 50 – Alan Flurry

February 27, 2013

Giant waves of pain

Climate change is disturbing the pattern of atmospheric flow around the globe, says the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK):

“An important part of the global air motion in the mid-latitudes of the Earth normally takes the form of waves wandering around the planet, oscillating between the tropical and the Arctic regions. So when they swing up, these waves suck warm air from the tropics to Europe, Russia, or the US, and when they swing down, they do the same thing with cold air from the Arctic,” explains lead author Vladimir Petoukhov.

“What we found is that during several recent extreme weather events these planetary waves almost freeze in their tracks for weeks. So instead of bringing in cool air after having brought warm air in before, the heat just stays. In fact, we observe a strong amplification of the usually weak, slowly moving component of these waves,” says Petoukhov. Time is critical here: two or three days of 30 degrees Celsius are no problem, but twenty or more days lead to extreme heat stress. Since many ecosystems and cities are not adapted to this, prolonged hot periods can result in a high death toll, forest fires, and dramatic harvest losses.

I know I don’t like when my flow is disturbed; It’s tough out there for a planet.

February 24, 2013

I’m largely ambivalent about the Academy Awards, but I do like when a powerful documentary has an opportunity for wider exposure because of its nomination. 5 Broken Cameras is one of those films where you ask how did they make that? – and not in the goofy CGI way. I hope it wins.

February 22, 2013

Wet Behind the Turnip Truck Yesterday

Pierce calls this the Dare to be Ignorant Protection Act of 2013 and I’ll have a hard time swimming up the Nile on that one:

In biology class, public school students can’t generally argue that dinosaurs and people ran around Earth at the same time, at least not without risking a big fat F. But that could soon change for kids in Oklahoma: On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Common Education committee is expected to consider a House bill that would forbid teachers from penalizing students who turn in papers attempting to debunk almost universally accepted scientific theories such as biological evolution and anthropogenic (human-driven) climate change.

Gus Blackwell, the Republican state representative who introduced the bill, insists that his legislation has nothing to do with religion; it simply encourages scientific exploration. “I proposed this bill because there are teachers and students who may be afraid of going against what they see in their textbooks,” says Blackwell, who previously spent 20 years working for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. “A student has the freedom to write a paper that points out that highly complex life may not be explained by chance mutations.”

Stated another way, students could make untestable, faith-based claims in science classes without fear of receiving a poor mark.

HB 1674 is the latest in an ongoing series of “academic freedom” bills aimed at watering down the teaching of science on highly charged topics. Instead of requiring that teachers and textbooks include creationism—see the bill proposed by Missouri state Rep. Rick Brattin—HB 1674’s crafters say it merely encourages teachers and students to question, as the bill puts it, the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of topics that “cause controversy,” including “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

Eric Meikle, education project director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, says Oklahoma has proposed more anti-evolution legislation than any other state, introducing eight bills with academic freedom language since 2004. (None has passed.) “The problem with these bills is that they’re so open-ended; it’s a kind of code for people who are opposed to teaching climate change and evolution,” Meikle says.

You don’t say, Eric. Friday reading, indeed.

February 21, 2013

Climate Broderism

As in the late Washington Post columnist David Broder, who made a real name for himself with the kind of ‘both sides do it’, why can’t ‘Obama and Boehner have a drink and settle this like Tip and Ronny used to’ false equivalence Villager-ism that makes anyone paying attention from outside the beltway feel like they’re picking up a signal from Venus on the state flower satellite dish. Anyway, this is a bizarre turn but because it’s right there in the paper of record (and elsewhere) we would be remiss in not mentioning it. Dave Roberts, via LGM:

Self-proclaimed moderates like to lecture anti-Keystone XL activists that they are “distracting” and “counterproductive,” without spelling out what the hell that means, yet they seem bewildered when that makes the activists in question angry.

Let’s review. This weekend, close to 50,000 people gathered for the biggest rally ever against climate change, a threat Revkin acknowledges is enormous, difficult, and urgent. Revkin and his council of wonks took to Twitter to argue that the rally and the campaign behind it are misdirected, absolutist, confused, and bereft of long-term strategy. They had this familiar conversation as the rally was unfolding.

As a result, Revkin suffered the grievous injury of a frustrated tweet from Wen Stephenson, a journalist who has crossed over to activism. This gave the wounded Revkin the opportunity to write yet another lament on the slings and arrows that face the Reasonable Man. He faced down the scourge of single-minded “my way or the highway environmentalism,” y’all, but don’t worry, he’s got a thick skin. He lived to tell the tale.

This is all for the benefit of an elite audience, mind you, for whom getting yelled at by activists is the sine qua non of seriousness. The only thing that boosts VSP cred more is getting yelled at by activists on Both Sides.

Read the whole thing. This is happening on the NYT Green blog. As Loomis explains, the most important thing for Revkin is compromise with the big polluters, no matter how wrong they are or how much their industries are the cause of it all and their lobbying keeps any solutions from being considered much less implemented.

February 14, 2013

The Electric Car Evil

Incoming, via Doug at BJ. So the NYT takes a hit out on Tesla Motor Company, but the Tesla says, “Not so fast:”

Data released by Tesla Motors late Wednesday night directly contradicts a damning review of the automaker’s Model S sedan by The New York Times.

Tesla claims the data, pulled directly from the electric sedan’s on-board computer, proves that New York Times reporter John M. Broder never completely ran out of energy during his extended drive of the Model S, despite his account to the contrary.

Broder’s trip in the Model S began outside of Washington, D.C., ran up to Norwich, Connecticut and then down to Milford, Connecticut over the course of two days. The drive was intended as a way to evaluate Tesla’s newly installed Supercharger stations, which allow Model S owners to top off their batteries for free at solar-powered charging stations lining major thoroughfares along the east and west coasts.

Building batteries is hard; building businesses that purvey renewable transportation options, harder still. I’m not sure who is right in this instance, but conventional wisdom against cars that do not run on legacy energy will be hard to overturn. There’s always an easy story for an editor to assign – show how it doesn’t really work. Not until they appear in a novel where the lads take a cross-country jaunt in an EElectric Buick will the tide even begin to turn. I wonder if horses worked the same media advantages against the Model T.

February 10, 2013

Communications Inequality

In the land that offers the best healthcare system in the world and where the sun provides us with more than enough power to spark massive creativity and love affairs alike, we also have the fastest, cheapest and freedom-est internet access know to man.

Okay, I fudged that first second last part every single verse of the anthem. But Susan Crawford doesn’t here. And Moyers, never.

Update: Video plug-in kaput; here’s the link-y.

February 8, 2013

Wittier than Babal

Had planned to post an excerpt from the new Woody Guthrie novel(!) House of Earth, published by Johnny Depp, no less. But then I figured out that it’s actually a JD imprint of Harper Collins so… you can find that and pay H/C yourself.

Instead you get Proust, from part one of Volume III The Guermantes Way in the new(er) translation that at least got the title right and so gives me more faith in the translation itself:

Mme de Villeparisis gave vent to an indistinct growl, from which emerged: “I know she was dining with the Mecklenburgs the night before last. Hannibal de Breaute was there. he came and told me about it, quite amusingly, I must say.”

“There was a man there who’s a great deal wittier than Babal,” said Mme de Guermantes who, intimate though she was with M. de Bréauté-Consalvi, felt the need to advertise the fact by the use of this diminutive. “I mean M. Bergotte.”

I had never imagined that Bergotte could be regarded as witty; moreover, I thought of him as always as part of the intellectual section of humanity, that is to say infinitely remote from the mysterious realm of which I had caught a glimpse through the purple hangings of a theatre box behind which, making the Duchess laugh, M. de Bréauté had been holding her, in the language of the gods, that unimaginable thing, a conversation between people of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. I was distressed to see the balance upset and Bergotte rise above M. de Bréauté. But above all I was dismayed to think that I had avoided Bergotte on the evening of Phèdre, that I had not gone up and spoken to him, when I heard Mme de Guermantes, in who one could always, as at the turn of a mental tide, see the flow of curiosity with regard to well-known intellectuals sweep over the ebb of her aristocratic snobbishness, say to Mme de Villeparisis: He’s the only person I have any wish to know. It would be such a pleasure.”

Indeed.

February 4, 2013

Green Super Bowl Ads

It’s a bit of a misnomer, but amid the sexy starlets, wacky animals and wacky adorable kids – oh, and farmers – hawking all kinds of beer and chips and cars and sandwiches, there was very little green-shaded buying cover. This could mean several things:

1) we’ve finally reached a sustainable level of everything – from renewable fuels to mass transit and locally grown [and consumed] food.

2) we’ve reached the point where there is not even the need for greenwashing anymore; the trend is over and we will continue as before, without even the conceit of change or its need.

3) we’ve entered a new realm of hyper-expensive spectacle advertising. This is the God and the devil realm, where even the military is a puppet controlled by heart strings in service to selling Jeeps.

Far more shameless than the cartoon renderings of routes out of planetary peril, (3) actually leaves me feeling soiled with a new brand of sinister. So I guess that’s something.

January 31, 2013

Two things we like

In an effort to properly scathe those most in need of it, Stephen King has written and published a sort of open-letter pro-gun control essay:

King, who owns three handguns, aimed the expletive-peppered polemic at fellow gun-owners, calling on them to support a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons in the wake of the December shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school which left 20 children and six adults dead.

“Autos and semi-autos are weapons of mass destruction. When lunatics want to make war on the unarmed and unprepared, these are the weapons they use,” King wrote.

He said blanket opposition to gun control was less about defending the second amendment of the US constitution than “a stubborn desire to hold onto what they have, and to hell with the collateral damage”. He added: “If that’s the case, let me suggest that ‘fuck you, Jack, I’m okay’ is not a tenable position, morally speaking.”

No, it is not. A 25-page ebook. Hmmm.

And then, if that’s got you feeling good, LGM linked to these awesome, and rare, color photos from turn-of-the-20th century Paris.

Nice.

Update: here’s a better link to the Paris color photos, with place IDs. Thanks Dave!

January 28, 2013

Crass commercialism interlude for Cansville

This is the 801st post on the Green site and, while not all that much by internet standards (quality>quantity!), I will take the opportunity use it to ask for some in exchange for my novel, Cansville.

Though there is an Amazon ad for it there on the right, I’ve been told that it might be easy to miss – or to miss its connection to the author of this blog. And with the site continuing to grow (best traffic month was December 2012), there’s no reason I should be coy about asking for your support. Especially as I’m willing to trade you something for it.

Cansville is a novel I published in 2012, and while it is about art and art making, it’s not without its green aspects. The protagonist, Toby, is a wet-behind-the-ears playwright, as green as pool felt in some ways, as we often have to be in order to try something foolhardy, unlikely, perhaps beautiful, risky to us – pyschologically, at least – but also so crazy it just might work. This is the story of Cansville and I hope you’ll dial it up on your Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, or satellite Swiss Army knife.

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