The old one was decrepit, motheaten and shopworn, to put it mildly. Things that once seemed of great import no longer do - I've been bitching about the cuisine in the dining car while the train's headed off a cliff.
Help me to keep my focus on the big stuff, people.
(confidential to my trolls: yes, even you, but please do it face to face.)
Update: RealClimate overview of The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change
Stale blog offering Perspective on ideas, issues and life from Nevada County, California - belaboring the obvious since 2003
Monday, December 31, 2007
8 comments:
Welcome, and thanks for caring enough to donate your time and thoughts toward greater collective wisdom...
Terms of engagement:
* Please be civil.
* * * * Please do not post anonymously * * * (I'd remove this choice if I could, and I may remove your comment if you do) - instead, do this:
Click on the 'Name/URL' radiobutton, then enter your real name (if you're brave) or a pseudonym (if you're not). (You can leave the "URL" field blank.)
Or go ahead and click "Anonymous", but put your name in your comment.
* The Management reserves the right to delete comments (Moderation Certificate can be found here). You can always post it on a blog of your own.
If you run into technical difficulties, please a) accept my apologies, then b) email your comment to aherror2011 at gmail.com with "Comment for [name of this blog]" in the Subject line.
New policy re climate contrarianism comments as of 11/11/2009:
Comments questioning the climate science community's understanding of climate change (97% of active climatologists now believe that the earth is currently warming and that it's human-caused - link) will be deleted unless the commenter:
a) is local
b) uses his real name
c) provides link(s) to substantiate his claim(s)/inference(s)
d) is willing to collaborate on constructing an argument tree, to get us past the usual sterile point-counterpoint-countercounterpoint.
(For people who can't read the above, a summary:
1) Be civil;
2) Don't post w/o giving at least a pseudonym;
3) Don't espouse climate-denial crankery unless you're local and willing to stand behind it.)
Caveats:
1. Comments could be delayed: they are being moderated, and I'm sometimes away from the computer for a day or more.
2. : Perfectly legitimate comments are sometimes miscategorized (by the blogging platform) as spam, & not published. If this happens to yours, please notify me, else I might not notice for a day or two.
Anna,
ReplyDeleteMuch better look. BTW, what ARE the real issues?
Hello Anon, and thanks for pointing out (via your sig) that I needed to refurbish my comments section's Terms of Engagement. (Done.)
ReplyDelete> "what are the real issues?"...
Climate change threats exacerbated by brain dead behaviors (which are largely evolution's fault, though suing is not an option)
There are limits, as all ecologists (but very few economists or marketers) know;
We can't continue with business as usual, burning all the fossil fuels we can reach, or we'll be handing our children a very different, hostile, unstable home. We're seeing the start of the predicted changes now. What people don't realize is that there's already plenty more in the pipeline - our 'turning radius' is agonizingly long and slow, both in the time it'll take to reduce our emissions (which need to stop NOW), and in the lag time (decades at least) before the atmosphere fully absorbs our abuses, then responds to our ameliorations.
People are trying not to think about this problem; it's huge, and life is much simpler - for us, now - if we deny or minimize it.
But to do so is terribly short-sighted thinking - both morally and economically. The human race isn't going to take this lying down, we will wake up, the question is when, and how much damage will we already have done and set in motion, and whose industries will be ahead in the race to develop the infrastructure and advanced technology we'll need. If we in the U.S. continue with business as usual, it won't be us - we'll just be a backward banana republic.
I think we can do better than that. I know we should do better. And I won't be able to look my niece in the eye if I don't try to make it happen.
p.s. the press, up until recently, has been an enabler, with its truth-agnostic false-balanced he-said-she-said reporting. In some cases they're still playing that role. But locally, The Union seems to be turning around, which - if that change is for real - is very promising.
"we are all adrift in the same boat, and there's no way half the boat is going to sink."
What interest me the most is the people who are deniers, on the grounds that there is no "scientific" proof, that it is caused by man.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem to me that Santa's Workshop is soon going to be a houseboat should be enough to at least ask the question, "If Moma Nature's about to put us in the toaster oven for reasons of her own, what can we do to turn down the resultant heat, even if it is only caused by the sun doing Sunshine Superman dance? "
As you have pointed out, when a car is speeding towards a cliff, measuring the distance and calculating the time to the Wylie Coyote moment is not really necessary. Stopping the car or getting out is.
Nice Format !
> "What interest me the most is the people who are deniers, on the grounds that there is no "scientific" proof..."
ReplyDeleteDoug, you're making the same mistake that I initially did. It's the "three fingers pointing back" thing - we project our own motives onto others.
In this case, ours and theirs are not the same.
In case anyone's distraught at the demise of the old template with its rodent midden sidebar, it can - for now, at least - still be found here.
ReplyDeleteGosh. I know many people who live here who if they heard him talking like this here from day to day would tell him he is just being "so negative." He would be ostracized and rejected for being "too negative." Thus, we get nothing done here but we worship the people with backbones that DON'T live here. Interesting phenomenon about living here. The New Agers keep a damper on the awareness but most importantly, on the rage which can fire and does fire "positive" change.
ReplyDeleteBy "him", I meant Gore...but insert any other real activist's name here, none of which live here because they would not be allowed to.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work. I love your earlier footer....Martin Luther King didn't get famous for a speech saying "I have a complaint"...
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Don Fontaine