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Saturday, February 23, 2019
Children’s Climate Court Case Pushing an Injunction Against Fossil Fuel Extraction
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Study: A Solar Signature in Many Climate Indices
Abstract Jean‐Louis Le MouëlFernand LopesVincent Courtillot We first apply singular spectrum analysis (SSA) to the international sunspot number (ISSN; 1849‐2015) and the count of polar faculae (PF; 1906‐2006). The SSA method finds 22, 11 and 5.5‐year components as the first eigenvectors of these solar activity proxies. We next apply SSA to the ten Madden‐Julian oscillation…
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BBC’s Relentless Bias–Booker
By Paul Homewood
A double whammy for the BBC from Booker today:
How ironic it was last week to hear the BBC leading its news on that Commons report claiming that our "democracy is being destroyed" by the flood of "fake news" spread by social media. In fact, thanks to the relentless bias of its own coverage of so many issues, there is no more influential source of "fake news" than the BBC itself. Here are two glaring, but far from untypical, recent examples.
The first began earlier in February with puffs on the BBC News website and Radio 4's Today programme by Roger Harrabin, the BBC's "environment analyst", for a report by a body called the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), warning of "multiple crises" that threaten to "destabilise" the world's entire environmental system. Particularly striking was a repeated claim that, since 2005, thanks to climate change, there has been a 15-fold increase in floods across the world and a 20-fold increase in "extreme temperature events".
This seemed so startling that it prompted Paul Homewood, the diligent statistical analyst, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog to track down the evidence for these claims. It turned out that they originated from a database of natural disasters, EM-DAT. According to Homewood, this showed that the chief reason for these rocketing increases was a very significant change in the way such "disasters" were being recorded, to include thousands of more recent events that would previously have been far too small to register in the global figures (the IPPR itself warned that these figures should, therefore, be treated with "caution").
But then Homewood found that the IPPR version was taken from something cited as the "GMO White Paper", which might have sounded scientific. In fact, the "GMO" stands for Grantham, Mayo, van Otterloo, the asset management firm run by Jeremy Grantham, who also funds the Grantham Institute on Climate Change at two London universities, Imperial College and the LSE (similar figures have been quoted by Lord Stern, the chair of the LSE branch).
Even the BBC realised that it had come rather a cropper on these claims. Subsequently, it allowed for at least a partial correction, aided by Mark Lynas, the climate campaigner, and the authors of that disaster database to which Grantham attributed his figures. But the impact of this was infinitely less than that of the coverage by Harrabin.
It was he who, back in 2006, was the organiser of that "secret seminar" between top BBC executives and green activists, which led to the BBC policy that – despite its statutory obligation to report only with "impartiality" – because the science on climate change was now settled, there was no need to give "equal space" to views that questioned it (with results so much in evidence ever since).
For a second, quite different, example, there could be no better measure of how far the once revered BBC World Service has degenerated than its bizarre recent celebration of the 40th anniversary of the seizure of power in Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Its centrepiece has been a still continuing multi-episode "dramatisation", Fall of the Shah, portraying the Ayatollah being welcomed by cheering crowds as the liberator of his country from the corrupt and tyrannical Shah.
Other programmes focused on the "successes" of Iran's Islamic revolution: better education of women and recovery of national self-respect, with the main aim of its foreign policy being to promote "stability" across the Middle East. If Iran has grievous economic problems arousing mass popular protests, these programmes suggested, they are mainly caused by President Trump's reimposition of sanctions.
One could scarcely have guessed from all this that Iran's Islamic fundamentalist regime is one of the world's most ruthless dictatorships with, per capita, the highest number of executions, including public hangings; that much of its economy is corruptly controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), its equivalent of the old Soviet KGB; that most of the $100 billion (£76.5 billion) in Iranian assets unfrozen by the West under that dubious nuclear deal was seized by the IRGC to finance its propping up of the Assad regime in Syria and fomenting terror across the Middle East, from Yemen to Afghanistan; and that this in itself, rather than using the money to boost Iran's failing economy, has been a central message of those desperate recent mass protests.
Yet another dismal triumph for the BBC's very own "fake news" machine.
The frustrating thing is that Booker could fill his column every week with similar examples of fake news from the BBC.
As for the BBC, this IPPR story exemplifies just how broken their coverage of climate change has become.
Harrabin may have not been competent enough to spot the absurdity of the IPPR claims, which he was happy to headline. But inviting the opinions of a wide range of experts would have quickly uncovered the error.
Instead all he did was quote two scientists, Simon Lewis and Harriet Bulkeley, who were so biased that they failed to even question the claims.
The Today programme followed up the story, and inevitably fell into the same trap, interviewing Joanna Haigh, the hopelessly biased Co-Director of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College.
Unsurprisingly she fully backed up the flawed IPPR report, never deigning to mention that her own employer had been ultimately responsible for a grossly misleading report, which was then blown out of all proportion by her chums at the BBC.
If the BBC want to avoid broadcasting such patently obvious fake news in future, they really must be prepared to ask the opinions of a much wider section of opinion, and not just the narrow circle of prejudiced, well funded insiders, who are only prepared to give answers which suit their agenda.
For those who have not read it, my original report is here:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/02/12/bbc-repeat-fake-disaster-claims/
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Photochemical removal of acetaldehyde using 172 nm vacuum ultraviolet excimer lamp in N 2 or air at atmospheric pressure
Abstract
The photochemical removal of acetaldehyde was studied in N2 or air (O2 1–20%) at atmospheric pressure using side-on and head-on types of 172 nm Xe2 excimer lamps. When CH3CHO was decomposed in N2 using the head-on lamp (HL), CH4, CO, and CO2 were observed as products in FTIR spectra. The initial removal rate of CH3CHO in N2 was ascertained as 0.37 min−1. In air (1–20% O2), HCHO, HCOOH, CO, and CO2 were observed as products in FTIR spectra. The removal rate of CH3CHO in air using the side-on lamp (SL) increased from 3.2 to 18.6 min−1 with decreasing O2 concentration from 20 to 1%. It also increased from 2.5 to 3.7 min−1 with increasing CH3CHO concentration from 150 to 1000 ppm at 20% O2. The best energy efficiency of the CH3CHO removal using the SL in a flow system was 2.8 g/kWh at 1% O2. Results show that the contribution of O(1D) and O3 is insignificant in the initial decomposition of CH3CHO. It was inferred that CH3CHO is initially decomposed by the O(3P) + CH3CHO reaction at 5–20% O2, whereas the contribution of direct vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) photolysis increases concomitantly with decreasing O2 pressure at < 5% O2. After initial decomposition of CH3CHO, it was oxidized further by reactions of O(3P), OH, and O3 with various intermediates such as HCHO, HCOOH, and CO, leading to CO2 as a final product.
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Exploring inter-species sensitivity to a model hydrocarbon, 2-Methylnaphtalene, using a process-based model
Abstract
We compared inter-species sensitivity to a model narcotic compound, 2-Methylnaphthalene, to test if taxonomical relatedness, feeding guilds, and trophic level govern species sensitivities on species distributed in different regions. We fitted a toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic model to survival patterns over time for 26 species using new and raw data from the literature. Species sensitivity distributions provided little insight into understanding patterns in inter-species sensitivity. The range of no-effect concentrations (NEC) obtained for 26 species showed little variation (mean 0.0081 mM; SD 0.009). Results suggest that the NEC alone does not explain the complexity of the species tolerances. The dominant rate constant and the derived time to observe an effect (t0), a function of concentration, might provide the means for depicting patterns in sensitivity and better ecotoxicological testing. When comparing the t0 functions, we observed that Arctic species have shorter time frames to start showing effects. Mollusks and second trophic level species took longer to build up a lethal body burden than the rest. Coupling our results with fate and transport models would allow forecasting narcotic compounds toxicity in time and thus improve risk assessment.
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Thousands of yellow vest protesters take to the streets across France for a 15th weekend running
https://ift.tt/2tySYay Hundreds of yellow vest protesters – also known as gilet jaunes – held rallies around Paris and other cities Five separate demonstrations were organized in the French capital, which saw 4,000 protesters by 2 pm Support for the movement has ebbed in recent weeks as it has splintered and outbreaks of violence continue Tempers […]
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Coral in Hawii recovering from El Nino bleaching
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AEP’s Climate War On Big Food
By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
What is it about otherwise perfectly sane journalists, that they lose all critical faculties when discussing climate change?
This is AEP's latest effort in the Telegraph. It is behind a paywall, and they don't like me showing the whole piece, but the first bit gives a pretty good clue to the drivel to follow:
First it was the fossil energy industry. Then came plastics. Now society is turning the screws on agriculture and Big Food. The global land economy generates a quarter of man-made greenhouse emissions in one way or another.
Among them are methane and nitrous oxide, which pack an immediate punch. It is no longer tenable to exempt this behemoth from full accountability.
Farmers and food producers will have to slash emissions like everybody else after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave us 12 years to avert a potential catastrophe.
The safety buffer for our ecosystem is lower than we thought. The limit is 1.5 degrees and we have already used up two thirds of it.
One reader commented that he gave up reading after this introduction, and I can understand why!
So let's start by dissecting it:
First it was the fossil energy industry-
Society turning the screw? What planet is he on?
In 2017, 85% of the world's energy came from fossil fuels. On top of this, you can add the use of oil, gas and coal in producing plastics and so on.
Consumption of fossil fuels continues to grow remorselessly, reaching a record high in 2017:
BP Energy Review
Does that sound as if society is turning the screws? No, I though not.
As for plastics, this is purely a litter problem, and is utterly irrelevant.
Apparently AEP thinks we are now all so concerned about greenhouse emissions from agriculture, that we are going to throw it under a bus, regardless of the consequences.
Farmers and food producers will have to slash emissions like everybody else after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave us 12 years to avert a potential catastrophe.
The safety buffer for our ecosystem is lower than we thought. The limit is 1.5 degrees and we have already used up two thirds of it.
Oh dear, did AEP really believe that piece of fiction from the UN? More to the point, does he think most of the world gives a toss, outside of the climate zealots of the EU?
Has he not realised that the 1.5 degrees is simply a figure pulled out of thin air, because we all refused to be scared by the previous one of 2 degrees?
As for using "two thirds" of it already, maybe he would like to tell us just exactly how our climate, or our ecosystem, is any worse than it was in the 19thC.
Here's some of the other things he has written:
This has explosive financial consequences, with winners and losers to match. Big global banks and investment funds are already swarming all over it. A 56-page report by Barclays hones in on the neuralgic issue of livestock, source of 9pc of man-linked global emissions.
"Burping cows are more damaging to the climate than all the cars on this planet," said authors Sebastian Satz and Alex Steward.
Well, no surprise there then! Big banks are always on the lookout for ways to make money out of scams, particularly when politicians clear the way.
It is a pity AEP is not exposing the con.
We are in trouble and doing something about it will involve massive technological and economic disruption. Any incumbent betting that the status quo can continue risks being swept away, much as the great telecom companies of the 1990s were outflanked by mobile phones, or as the sleepy power utilities saw their business models wrecked by solar and wind.
Barclays says investors should brace for a methane tax – or a global 'red meat tax' – and "aggressive regulatory change".
"Sleepy power utilities saw their business models wrecked by solar and wind."? On the contrary, they have seen them wrecked by obscene government subsidies for solar and wind, two rather different things. As a business correspondent, one would have hoped that AEP would have vehemently protesting against such market distorting policies.
As for phones, mobile phones took over because they offered something better to buyers.
None of this applies to meat producers, or farming in general. As for global meat taxes and aggressive regulation, we are still waiting for the global carbon tax he predicted a few years ago. Readers may recall what AEP wrote in May 2015:
The political noose is tightening on the global fossil fuel industry. It is a fair bet that world leaders will agree this year to impose a draconian "tax" on carbon emissions that entirely changes the financial calculus for coal, oil, and gas, and may ultimately devalue much of their asset base to zero.
In any event, I can't see many countries prepared to impose food taxes, intended to make us eat less.
AgriTech will of course be supremely important in years to come. But not for the reasons AEP says.
Countries around the world don't care about greenhouse emissions from farting cows. Their one concern is keeping their populations well fed. Increasingly, middle classes in Asia are picking up western eating habits, which will add to demand pressures.
Quoting an Oxford study from last year, AEP writes:
There is no magic formula or technology coming that can avert grim choices. They argue that the only plausible way to feed a population growing by another two billion by mid-century is to switch to a 'flexitarian' diet and work on every front at once.
Europeans and Americans will have to cut their consumption of beef and pork by 90pc and milk by 60pc. We will have learn to live on beans and pulses. That is the world's default setting and our probable future.
That sounds a fun world! I suspect though that progress in AgriTech in decades to come will bring us improvements in farming which we cannot even imagine now.
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For Serioso – Per The Media
An interesting video about the failure of The Media to get things right, and having two catastrophic fails back to back in the shortest month of the year. Continue reading →
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Generation of biodiesel from industrial wastewater using oleaginous yeast: performance and emission characteristics of microbial biodiesel and its blends on a compression injection diesel engine
Abstract
Microbial-derived biodiesel was tested on a lab scale CI diesel engine for carrying out exhaust emission and performance characteristics. The performance, emission, and combustion characteristics of a single cylinder four stroke fixed compression ratio engine when fueled with microbial bio-diesel and its 10–30% blends with diesel (on a volume basis) were investigated and compared with conventional diesel. The bio-diesel was obtained from microbes which were grown by combining distillery spent wash with lignocellulosic hydrolysate at nutrient deprived conditions. The microbes consumed the wastes and converted the high strength waste water into lipids, which were trans-esterified to form bio-diesel. Testing of microbial bio-diesel blends with ordinary diesel at different loading pressures and the emission characteristics were compared. Results indicate that with increasing of the blends, reduction of HC and CO emissions were observed, whilst brake thermal efficiency maxed out at 20% blending. Further increase of blends showed a tendency of increasing of both emissions in the exhaust stream. The Brake Specific Fuel consumption was observed to decline with blending until 20% and then increased. The nitrogen oxide emissions, however, were found to increase with increasing blend ratios and reached a maximum at 20% blend. The escalation of HC, CO, CO2, and NOx emissions was also observed at higher blending ratios and higher engine loads. The performance studies were able to show that out of the three blends of biodiesel, 20% biodiesel blend was able to deliver the best of reduced hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions, whilst also delivering the highest Brake thermal efficiency and the lowest Brake Specific Fuel consumption.
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Flashback 1993: Michael Crichton explains why it is so difficult to predict the future – In 1900 no one had ever heard of a radio, airport, movies, TVs, computers, jets…’
https://ift.tt/2TdlMUD Novelist Michael Crichton, in the Caltech Michelin lecture in 1993, offered what some might see as a calming reassurance about the future of the earths' climate. He looked back to the turn of the last century when people, "didn't know what radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a […]
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Climatologist Dr. John Christy rejects premise of Green New Deal: ‘The World is not spiraling off into some dangerous territory of climate’
https://ift.tt/2TdlMUD Others question the desperate sense of urgency to transition to a carbon neutral economy. John Christy, head of the Atmospheric Sciences Department of the University of Alabama, has long questioned the so-called 97 percent consensus among climate scientists. He notes the greatest scientific discoveries in history have often broken with consensus. Astronomer Galileo Galilei […]
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Green New Deal Reveals Green Left’s True Colors
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Presumably the idea is to start off by proposing the completely ridiculous, and then see what can be got away with before finally being rumbled.
By Larry Bell ~
Over the next 10 years, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., supported by at least eight prospective 2020 presidential Democratic-Socialist candidates and 40 acolyte lawmakers, plans to eliminate fossil fuels; make air travel obsolete using bullet trains; upgrade or replace every building in America to ensure energy efficiency; and ensure "economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work."
Oh yes — and apparently for those who are dumb enough to turn away free money for doing nothing — this New Green Deal will also guarantee "A [government] job with a family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security."
An original summary fact sheet posted on Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's official congressional website (then rapidly removed), stated, "The Green New Deal resolution [is] a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War II to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas…
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Dem Sen. Dianne Feinstein accused of ‘smugness & disrespecting’ kids as she scolds kids who pushed her to back Green New Deal: ‘I know what I’m doing’
https://ift.tt/2XkUfQf Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein pulled rank Friday when a group of kids tried to school her on climate change. After the group sought her support for the Green New Deal, the 85-year-old senior senator from California let them know she wasn't about to be bossed around by a bunch of youngsters. "You know what's interesting about […]
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AOC explains why ‘farting cows’ were considered in Green New Deal – ‘Maybe we shouldn’t be eating a hamburger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner’
https://ift.tt/2GYyaRU By Yaron Steinbuch Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent plenty of air time explaining "farting cows," as she defended her so-called Green New Deal on the premiere of Showtime's "Desus & Mero." According to an initial outline of the measure, the freshman Democrat and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said they "set a goal to get to net-zero, rather […]
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Cosmic Heroes: Peterson’s Pearls (3)
This is the third in a series of posts based upon Jordan Peterson's book Maps of Meaning, published in 1999 after 17 years of research and writing. It is rich in description and insight with many references and quotations from original sources. Reading it I began to copy passages that struck me as especially lucid and pertinent. Those paragraphs of his text are provided below in italics as excerpts selected to explain five themes emerging in my reflections while pondering his book. Cosmic Dichotomy: Peterson's Pearls (1) provides an overview explaining why this is important to me and perhaps to others.
[Note: I use the word "cosmic" since each individual's world is at risk, and as we see in the agitation over climate change, entire social groups can also fear for their collective world.]
Jordan Peterson on Cosmic Heroes (Excerpts from Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief Title is link to pdf)
Before the emergence of empirical methodology, which allowed for methodical separation of subject and object in description, the world-model contained abstracted inferences about the nature of existence, derived primarily from observations of human behavior. This means, in essence, that pre-experimental man observed "morality" in his behavior and inferred (through the process described previously) the existence of a source or rationale for that morality in the structure of the "universe" itself. Of course, this "universe" is the experiential field—affect, imagination and all—and not the "objective" world constructed by the post-empirical mind. This prescientific "model of reality" primarily consisted of narrative representations of behavioral patterns (and of the contexts that surround them), and was concerned primarily with the motivational significance of events and processes. As this model became more abstract—as the semantic system analyzed the information presented in narrative format, but not understood—man generated imaginative hypotheses about the nature of the ideal human behavior, in the archetypal environment.
The phenomena that we would now describe as emotions or motive forces, from the perspective of our modern, comparatively differentiated and acute self-consciousness, do not appear to have been experienced precisely as "internal" in their original form. Rather, they made their appearance as part and parcel of the experience (the event, or sequence of events) that gave rise to them, and adopted initial representational form in imaginative embodiment. The modern idea of the "stimulus" might be regarded as a vestigial remnant of this form of thinking—a form that grants the power of affective and behavioral control to the object (or which cannot distinguish between that which elicits a response, and the response itself). We no longer think "animistically" as adults, except in our weaker or more playful moments, because we attribute motivation and emotion to our own agency, and not (generally) to the stimulus that gives proximal rise to them. We can separate the thing from the implication of the thing, because we are students and beneficiaries of empirical thinking and experimental method. We can remove attribution of motive and affective power from the "object," and leave it standing in its purely sensory and consensual aspect; can distinguish between what is us and what is world. The pre-experimental mind could not (cannot) do this, at least not consistently; could not reliably discriminate between the object and its effect on behavior. It is that object and effect which, in totality, constitute a god (more accurately, it is a class of objects and their effects that constitute a god).
Transpersonal motive forces do wage war with one another over vast spans of time; are each forced to come to terms with their powerful "opponents" in the intrapsychic hierarchy. The battles between the different "ways of life" (or different philosophies) that eternally characterize human societies can usefully be visualized as combat undertaken by different standards of value (and, therefore, by different hierarchies of motivation). The "forces" involved in such wars do not die, as they are "immortal": the human beings acting as "pawns of the gods" during such times are not so fortunate.
Everything we know, we know because someone explored something they did not understand—explored something they were afraid of, in awe of. Everything we know, we know because someone generated something valuable in the course of an encounter with the unexpected. . . "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." All things that we know no longer demand our attention. To know something is to do it automatically, without thinking, to categorize it at a glance (or less than a glance), or to ignore it entirely.
The nervous system is "designed" to eliminate predictability from consideration, and to focus limited analytical resources where focus would produce useful results. We attend to the places where change is occurring; where something is happening that has not yet been modeled, where something is happening that has not yet had behaviors erected around it—where something is happening that is not yet understood. Consciousness itself might be considered as that organ which specializes in the analysis and classification of unpredictable events. Attention and concentration naturally gravitate to those elements in the experiential field that contain the highest concentration of novelty, or that are the least expected, prior to what might normally be considered higher cognitive processing. The nervous system responds to irregular change and eliminates regularity. There is limited information, positive and negative, in the predictable. The novel occurrence, by contrast, might be considered a window into the "transcendent space" where reward and punishment exist in eternal and unlimited potential.
Empirical (classical) "objects" are either one thing or another. Nature, by contrast— the great unknown—is one thing and its (affective) opposite at the same time, and in the same place. The novel, primeval experience was (and remains) much too complex to be gripped, initially, by rational understanding, as understood in the present day. Mythic imagination, "willing" to sacrifice discriminatory clarity for inclusive phenomenological accuracy, provided the necessary developmental bridge. The earliest embodiments of nature are therefore symbolic combinations of rationally irreconcilable attributes; monsters, essentially feminine, who represent animal and human, creation and destruction, birth and cessation of experience.
In the case of broader society: the "meaning" of an object—that is, the significance of that object for emotional regulation and behavioral output—is determined by the social consequences of behaviors undertaken and inferences drawn in its presence. Thus internal motivational forces vie for predominance under the influence of social control. The valence of erotic advances made by a given woman, for example—which is to say, whether her behavior invokes the "goddess of love" or the "god of fear"—will depend on her current position in a given social hierarchy. If she is single and acting in context, she may be considered desirable; if she is the intoxicated wife of a large and dangerous man, by contrast, she may be placed in the category of "something best run away from quickly."
The culturally determined meaning of an object—apprehended, originally, as an aspect of the object—is in fact in large part implicit information about the nature of the current dominance hierarchy, which has been partially transformed into an abstract hypothesis about the relative value of things (including the self and others). Who owns what, for example, determines what things signify, and who owns what is dominance-hierarchy dependent. What an object signifies is determined by the value placed upon it, manifested in terms of the (socially determined) system of promises, rewards, threats and punishments associated with exposure to, contact with, and use or misuse of that object. This is in turn determined by the affective significance of the object (its relevance, or lack thereof, to the attainment of a particular goal), in combination with its scarcity or prevalence, and the power (or lack thereof) of those who judge its nature.
The (necessary) meaning-constraint typical of a given culture is a consequence of uniformity of behavior, imposed by that culture, toward objects and situations. The push toward uniformity is a primary characteristic of the "patriarchal" state (as everyone who acts in the same situation-specific manner has been rendered comfortably "predictable"). The state becomes increasingly tyrannical, however, as the pressure for uniformity increases. As the drive toward similarity becomes extreme, everyone becomes the "same" person—that is, imitation of the past becomes total. All behavioral and conceptual variability is thereby forced from the body politic. The state then becomes truly static: paralyzed or deadened, turned to stone, in mythological language. Lack of variability in action and ideation renders society and the individuals who compose it increasingly vulnerable to precipitous "environmental" transformation (that is, to an involuntary influx of "chaotic" changes). It is possible to engender a complete social collapse by constantly resisting incremental change. It is in this manner that the gods become displeased with their creation, man—and his willful stupidity—and wash away the world. The necessity for interchange of information between "known" and "unknown" means that the state risks its own death by requiring an excess of uniformity.
The story is making a point: when you don't know where you are going, it is counterproductive to assume that you know how to get there. This point is a specific example of a more general moral: Arrogant ("prideful") individuals presume they know who and what is important. This makes them too haughty to pay attention when they are in trouble—too haughty, in particular, to attend to those things or people whom they habitually hold in contempt. The "drying up of the environment" or the "senescence of the king" is a consequence of a too rigid, too arrogant value hierarchy. ("What or who can reasonably be ignored" is as much a part of such a hierarchy as "who or what must be attended too.") When trouble arrives, the traditional value hierarchy must be revised. This means that the formerly humble and despised may suddenly hold the secret to continued life—and that those who refuse to admit to their error, like the "elder brothers," will inevitably encounter trouble.
Anything that protects and fosters (and that is therefore predictable and powerful) necessarily has the capacity to smother and oppress (and may manifest those capacities, unpredictably, in any given situation). No static political utopia is therefore possible—and the kingdom of God remains spiritual, not worldly. Recognition of the essentially ambivalent nature of the predictable—stultifying but secure—means discarding simplistic theories which attribute the existence of human suffering and evil purely to the state, or which presume that the state is all that is good, and that the individual should exist merely as subordinate or slave.
The unknown never disappears; it is a permanent constituent element of experience. The ability to represent the terrible aspects of the unknown allow us to conceptualize what has not yet been encountered, and to practice adopting the proper attitude toward what we do not understand.
Redemptive knowledge itself springs from the generative encounter with the unknown, from exploration of aspects of novel things and novel situations; is part of the potential of things, implicit in them, intrinsic to their nature. This redemptive knowledge is wisdom, knowledge of how to act, generated as a consequence of proper relationship established with the positive aspect of the unknown, the source of all things.
Wisdom may be personified as a spirit who eternally gives, who provides to her adherents unfailing riches. She is to be valued higher than status or material possessions, as the source of all things. With the categorical inexactitude characteristic of metaphoric thought and its attendant richness of connotation, the act of valuing this spirit is also Wisdom. So the matrix itself becomes conflated with—that is, grouped into the same category as—the attitude that makes of that matrix something beneficial. This conflation occurs because primal generative capacity characterizes both the "source of all things" and the exploratory/hopeful attitudes and actions that make of that source determinate things. We would only regard the latter—the "subjective stance"—as something clearly psychological (as something akin to "wisdom" in the modern sense). The former is more likely to be considered "external," from our perspective—something beyond subjective intervention. But it is the case that without the appropriate attitude (Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened" [Matthew 7:7–8].) the unknown is a sterile wasteland.
If the unknown is approached voluntarily (which is to say, "as if" it is beneficial), then its promising aspect is likely to appear more salient. If the unknown makes its appearance despite our desire, then it is likely to appear more purely in its aspect of threat. This means that if we are willing to admit to the existence of those things that we do not understand, those things are more likely to adopt a positive face. Rejection of the unknown, conversely, increases the likelihood that it will wear a terrifying visage when it inevitably manifests itself. It seems to me that this is one of the essential messages of the New Testament, with its express (although difficult-to-interpret) insistence that God should be regarded as all-good.
The beneficial aspect of the unknown is something unavailable to the "unworthy," something eternal and pure; something that enters into relationship with those who are willing, from age to age; and something that makes friends of God.
The terrible unknown compels representation; likewise, the beneficial unknown. We are driven to represent the fact that possibility resides in every uncertain event, that promise beckons from the depths of every mystery. Transformation, attendant upon the emergence of change, means the death of everything old and decayed—means the death of everything whose continued existence would merely mean additional suffering on the part of those still striving to survive. The terrible unknown, which paralyzes when it appears, is also succour for the suffering, calm for the troubled, peace for the warrior, insight and discovery for the perplexed and curious.
Modern treatment for disorders of anxiety, to take a specific example— "desensitization"—involves exposing an individual, "ritualistically" (that is, under circumstances rendered predictable by authority), to novel or otherwise threatening stimuli (with appropriate reaction modeled by that authority. Such desensitization theoretically induces "habituation"; what is actually happening is that guided exploration, in the course of behavior therapy, produces reclassification and behavioral adjustment [such that the once terrifying thing or once again terrifying thing is turned (back) into something controllable, familiar, and known]. Voluntary exposure additionally teaches the previously anxiety-ridden individual the nontrivial lesson that he or she is capable of facing the "place of fear" and prevailing. The process of guided voluntary exposure appears to produce therapeutic benefits even when the "thing being avoided" is traumatic—when it might appear cruel, from a superficially "empathic" perspective, to insist upon exposure and "processing."
"Fearless Felix" Baumgartner ascended to the stratosphere and stepped into the void from 24.2 miles above the Earth. His speed during the fall reached Mach 1.24, and the Austrian adventurer nailed the landing. October 14, 2012
Analysis of the much more dramatic, very widespread, but metaphorically equivalent phenomena of the sacrifical ritual—a rite whose very existence compelled one insightful author to argue for the essential insanity of man— provides additional insight into the nature of the ability to transform threat into promise. We have already discussed the fact that the valence of an object switches with context of interpretation. It is knowledge of this idea that allows for comprehension of the meaning of the sacrificial attitude. The beautiful countenance of the beneficial mother is the face the unknown adopts when approached from the proper perspective. Everything unknown is simultaneously horrifying and promising; it is courage and genius (and the grace of God) that determines which aspect dominates.
Primary religious rituals, serving a key adaptive purpose, "predicated" upon knowledge of proper approach mechanisms, evolved to suit the space surrounding the primary deity, embodiment of the unknown. The ubiquitous drama of human sacrifice, (proto)typical of primordial religious practice, enacted the idea that the essence of man was something to be offered up voluntarily to the ravages of nature—something to be juxtaposed into creative encounter with the terrible unknown. The offering, in ritual, was often devoured, in reality or symbolically, as aid to embodiment of the immortal human spirit, as aid to incorporation of the heroic process. Such rituals were abstracted and altered, as they developed—with the nature of the sacrificial entity changing (with constancy of underlying "ideation").
The mysterious and seemingly irrational "sacrificial" ritual actually dramatizes or acts out two critically important and related ideas: first, that the essence of man—that is, the divine aspect—must constantly be "offered up" to the unknown, must present itself voluntarily to the destructive/creative power that constitutes the Great Mother, incarnation of the unpredictable (as we have seen); and second, that the "thing that is loved best" must be destroyed—that is, sacrificed—in order for the positive aspect of the unknown to manifest itself.
The former idea is "predicated" on the notion that the unknown must be encountered, voluntarily, for new information to be generated, for new behavioral patterns to be constructed; the latter idea is "predicated" on the observation that an improper or outdated or otherwise invalid attachment—such as the attachment to an inappropriate pattern of behavior or belief—turns the world into waste, by interfering with the process of adaptation itself. Rigid, inflexible attachment to "inappropriate things of value"— indicative of dominance by a pathological hierarchy of values (a "dead god")—is tantamount to denial of the hero. Someone miserable and useless in the midst of plenty— just for the sake of illustration—is unhappy because of his or her attachments to the wrong "things."
Unhappiness is frequently the consequence of immature or rigid thinking—a consequence of the overvaluation of phenomena that are in fact trivial. The neurotic clings to the things that make her unhappy, while devaluing the processes, opportunities and ideas that would free her, if she adopted them. The sacrifice of the "thing loved best" to "appease the gods" is the embodiment in procedure of the idea that the benevolent aspect of the unknown will return if the present schema of adaptation (the "ruling king") is sufficiently altered (that is, destroyed and regenerated). An individual stripped of his "identification" with what he previously valued is simultaneously someone facing the unknown—and is, therefore, someone "unconsciously" imitating the hero.
The intimate relationship between clinging to the past, rejection of heroism, and denial of the unknown is most frequently explicated in narrative form (perhaps because the association is so complex that it has not yet been made explicit).
The spirit forever willing to risk personal (more abstractly, intrapsychic) destruction to gain redemptive knowledge might be considered the archetypal representative of the adaptive process as such. The pre-experimental mind considered traumatic union of this "masculine" representative with the destructive and procreative feminine unknown a necessary precedent to continual renewal and rebirth of the individual and community. This is an idea precisely as magnificent as that contained in the Osiris/Horus myth; an idea which adds additional depth to the brilliant "moral hypotheses" contained in that myth. The exploratory hero, divine son of the known and unknown, courageously faces the unknown, unites with it creatively—abandoning all pretence of pre-existent "absolute knowledge"—garners new information, returns to the community, and revitalizes his tradition.
The fundamental act of creativity in the human realm, in the concrete case, is the construction of a pattern of behavior which produces emotionally desirable results in a situation that previously reeked of unpredictability, danger and promise. Creative acts, despite their unique particulars, have an eternally identifiable structure, because they always takes place under the same conditions: what is known is "extracted," eternally, from the unknown. In consequence, it is perpetually possible to derive and re-derive the central features of the metapattern of behavior which always and necessarily means human advancement.
During exploration, behavior and representational schema are modified in an experimental fashion, in the hopes of bringing about by ingenious means whatever outcome is currently envisioned. Such exploration also produces alteration of the sensory world—since that world changes with shift in motor output and physical locale. Exploration produces transformation in assumption guiding behavior, and in expectation of behavioral outcome: produces learning in knowing how and knowing what mode. Most generally, new learning means the application of a new means to the same end, which means that the pattern of presumptions underlying the internal model of the present and the desired future remain essentially intact. This form of readaptation might be described as normal creativity, and constitutes the bulk of human thought. However, on rare occasions, ongoing activity (specifically goal-directed or exploratory) produces more profound and unsettling mismatch. This is more stressful (and more promising), and necessitates more radical update of modeling—necessitates exploration-guided reprogramming of fundamental behavioral assumption and associated episodic or semantic representation. Such reprogramming also constitutes creativity, but of the revolutionary type, generally associated with genius. Exploration is therefore creation and re-creation of the world.
Every unmapped territory—that is, every place where what to do has not been specified—also constitutes the battleground for ancestral kings. The learned patterns of action and interpretation that vie for application when a new situation arises can be usefully regarded, metaphorically, as the current embodiments of adaptive strategies formulated as a consequence of past exploratory behavior—as adaptive strategies invented and constructed by the heroes of the past, "unconsciously" mimicked and duplicated by those currently alive.
Adaptation to new territory—that is, to the unexpected—therefore also means successful mediation of archaic or habitual strategies competing, in the new situation, for dominance over behavioral output.
We act appropriately before we understand how we act—just as children learn to behave before they can describe the reasons for their behavior. It is only through the observation of our actions, accumulated and distilled over centuries, that we come to understand our own motivations, and the patterns of behavior that characterize our cultures (and these are changing as we model them). Active adaptation precedes abstracted comprehension of the basis for such adaptation. This is necessarily the case, because we are more complex than we can understand, as is the world to which we must adjust ourselves.
First we act. Afterward, we envision the pattern that constitutes our actions. Then we use that pattern to guide our actions. It is establishment of conscious (declarative) connection between behavior and consequences of that behavior (which means establishment of a new feedback process) that enables us to abstractly posit a desired future, to act in such a way as to bring that future about, and to judge the relevance of emergent phenomena themselves on the basis of their apparent relevance to that future.
The myth of the hero has come to represent the essential nature of human possibility, as manifested in adaptive behavior, as a consequence of observation and rerepresentation of such behavior, conducted cumulatively over the course of thousands of years. The hero myth provides the structure that governs, but does not determine, the general course of history; expresses one fundamental preconception in a thousand different ways. This idea (analogous in structure to the modern hypothesis, although not explicitly formulated, nor rationally constructed in the same manner) renders individual creativity socially acceptable and provides the precondition for change. The most fundamental presumption of the myth of the hero is that the nature of human experience can be (should be) improved by voluntary alteration in individual human attitude and action. This statement—the historical hypothesis—is an expression of faith in human possibility itself and constitutes the truly revolutionary idea of historical man.
All specific adaptive behaviors (which are acts that restrict the destructive or enhance the beneficial potential of the unknown) follow a general pattern. This "pattern"—which at least produces the results intended (and therefore desired)—inevitably attracts social interest. "Interesting" or "admirable" behaviors engender imitation and description. Such imitation and description might first be of an interesting or admirable behavior, but is later of the class of interesting and admirable behaviors. The class is then imitated as a general guide to specific actions; is redescribed, redistilled and imitated once again. The image of the hero, step by step, becomes ever clearer, and ever more broadly applicable. The pattern of behavior characteristic of the hero—that is, voluntary advance in the face of the dangerous and promising unknown, generation of something of value as a consequence and, simultaneously, dissolution and reconstruction of current knowledge, of current morality—comes to form the kernel for the good story, cross-culturally. That story—which is what to do, when you no longer know what to do—defines the central pattern of behavior embedded in all genuinely religious systems (furthermore, provides the basis for the "respect due the individual" undergirding our conception of natural rights).
The hero's quest or journey has been represented in mythology and ritual in numerous ways, but the manifold representations appear in accordance with the myth of the way, as previously described: a harmonious community or way of life, predictable and stable in structure and function, is unexpectedly threatened by the emergence of (previously harnessed) unknown and dangerous forces. An individual of humble and princely origins rises, by free choice, to counter this threat. This individual is exposed to great personal trials and risks or experiences physical and psychological dissolution. Nonetheless, he overcomes the threat, is magically restored (frequently improved) and receives a great reward, in consequence. He returns to his community with the reward, and (re)establishes social order (sometimes after a crisis engendered by his return).
We use stories to regulate our emotions and govern our behavior. They provide the present we inhabit with a determinate point of reference—the desired future. The optimal "desired future" is not a state, however, but a process: the (intrinsically compelling) process of mediating between order and chaos; the process of the incarnation of Logos—the Word— which is the world-creating principle. Identification with this process, rather than with any of its determinate outcomes (that is, with any "idols" or fixed frames of reference or ideologies) ensures that emotion will stay optimally regulated and action remain possible no matter how the environment shifts, and no matter when. In consequence of such identification, respect for belief comes to take second place to respect for the process by which belief is generated.
The "stories" by which individuals live (which comprise their schemas of interpretation, which guide their actions, which regulate their emotions) are therefore emergent structures shaped by the necessity of organizing competing internal biological demands, over variable spans of time, in the presence of others, faced with the same fate. This similarity of demand (constrained by physiological structure) and context (constrained by social reality) produces similarity of response. It is this similarity of response, in turn, that is at the base of the emergent "shared moral viewpoint" that accounts for cross-cultural similarity in myth. This means, by the way, that such "shared viewpoints" refer to something real, at least insofar as emergent properties are granted reality (and most of the things that we regard without question as real are precisely such emergent properties).
The reactions of a hypothetical firstborn child to his or her newborn sibling may serve as concrete illustration of the interactions between the individual, the interpersonal and the social. The elder sibling may be drawn positively to the newborn by natural affiliative tendencies and curiosity. At the same time, however, the new arrival may be receiving a substantial amount of parental attention, sometimes in preference to the older child.
How is the child to resolve his conflicts? He must build himself a personality to deal with his new sibling (must become a proper big brother). This means that he might subordinate his aggression to the fear, guilt and shame produced by parental adjudication on behalf of the baby. This will mean that he will at least "act like a human being" around the baby, in the direct presence of his parents. He might also learn to act as if the aggressive reaction motivated by his shift in status is less desirable, in total, than the affiliative response. His as if stance may easily be bolstered by intelligent shift in interpretation: he may reasonably gain from his younger sibling some of the attention he is no longer paid by parents—if he is diligent and genuine in his attempts to be friendly. He might also develop some more independent interests, suitable to his new position as relatively mature family member.
Although the "battle for predominance" that characterizes exchange of morally relevant information can easily be imagined as a war (and is often fought out in the guise of genuine war), it is more frequently the case that it manifests itself as a struggle between "beliefs." In the latter case, it loss of faith, rather than life, that determines the outcome of the battle. Human beings can substitute loss of faith for death partly because they are capable of abstractly constructing their "territories" (making beliefs out of them) and of abstractly abandoning those territories once they are no longer tenable. Animals, less capable of abstraction, are also able to lose face, rather than life, although they "act out" this loss, in behavioral routines, rather than in verbal or imagistic battles (rather than through argument). It is the capacity to "symbolically capitulate" and to "symbolically destroy" that in large part underlies the ability of individual animals to organize themselves into social groups (which require a hierarchical organization) and to maintain and update those groups once established. Much the same can be said for human beings (who also engage in abstract war, at the procedural level, as well as in real war and argumentation).
The capacity to maintain territorial position when challenged is therefore indicative of the degree to which intrapsychic state is integrated with regard to current motivation (which means, indicative of how "convinced" a given animal is that it can [should] hold its ground). This integration constitutes power—charisma, in the human realm—made most evident in behavioral display. The certainty with which a position is held (whether it is a territorial position, dominance hierarchy niche, or abstract notion)— insofar as this can be inferred from observable behavior, such as absence of fear— constitutes a valid indication of the potential integrative potency of that position. . . Hence the power of the martyr, and the unwillingness of even modern totalitarians to allow their enemies to make public sacrifices of themselves.
Over the course of centuries, the actions of ancestral heroes, imitated directly and then represented in myth, become transformed, simplified, streamlined and quickened— reduced as it were ever more precisely to their "Platonic" forms. Culture is therefore the sum total of surviving historically determined hierarchically arranged behaviors and second- and third-order abstract representations, and more: it is the integration of these, in the course of endless social and intrapsychic conflict, into a single pattern of behavior—a single system of morality, simultaneously governing personal conduct, interpersonal interaction and imagistic/semantic description of such.
This pattern is the "corporeal ideal" of the culture, its mode of transforming the unbearable present into the desired future, its guiding force, its central personality. This personality, expressed in behavior, is first embodied in the king or emperor, socially (where it forms the basis for "sovereignty"). Abstractly represented—imitated, played, ritualized, and storied—it becomes something ever more psychological. This embodied and represented "cultural character" is transmitted through the generations, transmuting in form, but not in essence—transmitted by direct instruction, through imitation, and as a consequence of the human ability to incorporate personality features temporarily disembodied in narrative.
Footnote: The point about "doing things without thinking about them" reminded me of this:
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Ocasio-Cortez asserts her power: ‘We’re in charge – and you’re just shouting from the cheap seats’ – Greenpeace co-founder rips her as ‘Pompous…You would bring about mass death’
Freshman Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is asserting what she perceives as her newfound legislative powers. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) declared on February 22, 2019, "Yup. If you don't like the Green New Deal, then come up with your own ambitious, on-scale proposal to address the global climate crisis. Until then, we're in charge – and you're […]
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Top German MP Warns Of ‘Dictatorship Of Climate Law’ – ‘I do not consider this law to be compatible with a market economy’
Top German MP Warns Of 'Dictatorship Of Climate Law' Climate War Splits German Government As Climate Law Is Postponed Indefinitely VIa: GWPF Newsletter 02/23/19 Top German MP Warns Of 'Dictatorship Of Climate Law' Deutschlandfunk, 23 February 2019Legally binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions for individual German ministries are a danger to democracy, says the […]
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Al Gore on ‘environmental justice’ tour in Alabama: US poverty ‘shocking’ – Warns ‘climate crisis’ will make things worse – Warns of ‘rain bombs’
https://ift.tt/2BLggi8 Al Gore continued an environmental justice tour with a visit to poor areas of Alabama – and warned that already dire conditions are set to worsen because of climate change. Hoda Muthana's father sues in bid to bring his daughter back to US Read more The former vice-president met people in Hayneville, near Montgomery, […]
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Week in review – science edition
by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye the past 4(!) weeks.
A hidden province of volcanoes in West Antarctica may accelerate sea level rise [link]
The Dominant Role of Extreme Precipitation Events in Antarctic Snowfall Variability buff.ly/2U3stFU
The Strength of Low-Cloud Feedbacks and Tropical Climate: A CESM Sensitivity Study buff.ly/2NiqxqB
A preliminary calculation of cement carbon dioxide in China from 1949 to 2050 [link]
Spring rainfall on permafrost is a growing factor in Arctic warming, but it hasn't been accounted for in most projections. New research suggests the increase in methane emissions could be twice the expected rate. [link]
On the westward shift of tropical Pacific climate variability since 2000 [link]
Unabated Bottom Water Warming and Freshening in the South Pacific Ocean buff.ly/2TZnHtd
Atmospheric methane grew very rapidly in 2014 (12.7±0.5 ppb/yr), 2015 (10.1±0.7 ppb/yr), 2016 (7.0±0.7 ppb/yr) and 2017 (7.7±0.7 ppb /yr), at rates not observed since the 1980s. Implications for the Paris Agreement: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2018GB006009
Centennial-scale temperature change in last millennium simulations and proxy-based reconstructions https://buff.ly/2EnACjj) buff.ly/2EnACjj
How well does a scientific model represent the real Earth system? We might need to re-envision it our ways of finding out. [link]
Antarctic sea ice Control on the Depth of North Atlantic Deep Water buff.ly/2BIaQVg
Carbon from fossil fuels (not wildfires) biggest source of arctic pollution [link]
But now climate change has claimed its first mammal species extinction (that we know of). https://amp.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/our-little-brown-rat-first-climate-change-caused-mammal-extinction-20190219-p50yry.html#click=https://t.co/jKrZhijyoV
A new statistical tool could extend predictions of atmospheric river activity by as much as 5 weeks. [link]
Global impacts of ENSO reach into the stratosphere [link]
Spatial early warning signals for impending regime shifts: A practical framework for application in real‐world landscapes buff.ly/2IjiQld
An interesting new analysis from Australia: Sea levels in and around Sydney Harbour 1886-2018 https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/sea-levels-sydney.pdf
"Can you take the heat?" Heat-induced health symptoms are associated with protective behaviors buff.ly/2V4K9kG
New NASA Study Solves Climate Mystery, Confirms Methane Spike Tied to Oil and Gas [link]
Relative roles of dynamic and thermodynamic processes in causing positive and negative global mean SST trends during the past 100 years buff.ly/2Ed5IK7
Early Meteorological Data in Southern Spain During the Dalton Minimum buff.ly/2EeuVEc
Hydrothermal carbon release to the ocean and atmosphere from the eastern equatorial Pacific during the last glacial termination (open access) buff.ly/2DUb7on
Influence of solar activity changes on European rainfall https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682618305273
How LA's golf courses and manicured lawns contribute significant greenhouse gases [link]
Embracing the complexity of extreme weather events when quantifying their likelihood of recurrence in a warming world buff.ly/2Gq7dXP
Towards a more complete quantification of the global carbon cycle (open access) buff.ly/2GKSdmW
The melting of high-elevation glaciers due to climate change may temporarily offset streamflow declines. [link]
Atmospheric circulation modulates the spatial variability of temperature in the Atlantic‐Arctic region buff.ly/2TQApKG
On the timescales and length scales of the Arctic sea ice thickness anomalies: a study based on 14 reanalyses buff.ly/2trrcN7
Estimating the likelihood of future temperature extremes [link]
Impact of Atmospheric Heat and Moisture Transport on the Arctic Warming buff.ly/2S1gRlc
Climate changes in interior semi-arid Spain from the last interglacial to the late Holocene https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2019-16
Recent Tropical Expansion: Natural Variability or Forced Response?: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0444.1#.XGHT1M76pOw.twitter
new paper on influence of Asian mountains (ie the Tibetan Plateau/ Himalayas) on typhoons and precipitation [link]
Variation in MERRA-2 aerosol optical depth and absorption aerosol optical depth over China from 1980 to 2017 buff.ly/2Dpb9nA
Interesting new paper on the AMO https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095927319300210
Climate‐Induced Changes in the Risk of Hydrological Failure of Major Dams in California buff.ly/2WMb8Dm
Very strong atmospheric #methane growth in the four years 2014‐2017: Implications for the Paris Agreement https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018GB006009
Insights into the global aerosol size distribution from the largest synthesised collection of in-situ aircraft measurements https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2018-1337) doi.org/10.5194/acp-20…
Winter upper ocean stability and ice-ocean feedbacks in the sea-ice-covered Southern Ocean." A few takeaways follow… (1/5) (link: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JPO-D-18-0184.1) journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.117…
Climate change suppresses Santa Ana winds of Southern California and sharpens their seasonality buff.ly/2ML6lxl
A sea change in our view of overturning in the subpolar North Atlantic [link]
Mechanisms and Impacts of a Partial AMOC Recovery Under Enhanced Freshwater Forcing buff.ly/2S0ZkOU
Changes in gyre circulation cause decadal variability in North Atlantic decadal sea level. [link]
Does the shoe fit? Real versus imagined ecological footprints [link]
Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261
What is the polar vortex and how does it influence weather? [link]
Finding sources of uncertainty in the spatial pattern of global warming [link]
Pacific Ocean forcing and atmospheric variability are the dominant causes of spatially widespread droughts in the contiguous United States buff.ly/2sUs7pp
Estimation of the Antarctic surface mass balance using the regional climate model MAR (1979–2015) and identification of dominant processes buff.ly/2Wq1mqp
Holocene environmental history in high‐Arctic North Greenland revealed by a combined biomarker and macrofossil approach (link: https://buff.ly/2sRP8sK) buff.ly/2sRP8sK
Model derived uncertainties in deep ocean temperature trends between 1990‐2010 buff.ly/2FV6yxs
Recent acceleration of Arabian Sea warming induced by the Atlantic‐western Pacific trans‐basin multidecadal variability buff.ly/2G8oR1d
Have synergies between nitrogen deposition and atmospheric CO2 driven the recent enhancement of the terrestrial carbon sink? buff.ly/2WliT2N
Is equatorial Africa getting wetter or drier? Insights from an evaluation of long‐term, satellite‐based rainfall estimates for western Uganda (link: https://buff.ly/2UmgC5Q) buff.ly/2UmgC5Q
Social science, technology & policy
Understanding high-end climate change: from impacts to co-creating integrated and transformative solutions [link]
An antiquated California water law encourages political conflict rather than market transactions https://libertarianenvironmentalism.com/2019/02/20/an-antiquated-california-water-law-encourages-political-conflict-rather-than-market-transactions/
The Green New Deal seeks a complete transition to clean energy by 2030. How much battery storage would an all-renewable grid require, especially in the most trying of winter weather conditions? [link]
Miami battles rising seas [link]
Policies to reduce CO2 emissions: Fallacies and evidence from the United States and California (link: https://buff.ly/2Ng1yEp) buff.ly/2Ng1yEp
Even in optimum weather, lithium-ion batteries lose about one percent of range every day, but the #PolarVortex caused tremendous loss of range for electric vehicles in the Midwest. [link]
Attributable damage liability in a non-linear climate [link]
Stochastic Trend: Energy Efficiency Improvements Do Not Save Energy https://stochastictrend.blogspot.com/2019/02/energy-efficiency-improvements-do-not.html
Perspective: Achievement of Paris climate goals unlikely due to time lags in the land system go.nature.com/2U2teyU
Direct air capture of CO2 is getting better and offering intriguing options [link]
Emission mechanism and reduction countermeasures of agricultural greenhouse gases – a review buff.ly/2S1tSee
French, R. D. (2019). Is It Time to Give Up on Evidence-based Policy? Four Answers. Policy & Politics, 47(1), 151-168. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/tpp/pap/2019/00000047/00000001/art00009
"Given that CCS is expected to account for the mitigation of ~4-20% of total CO₂ emissions, in 2050 the CCS industry will need to be larger by a factor of 2–4 in volume terms than the current global oil industry" [link]
Could a new superplant solve the climate crisis? https://www.ft.com/content/aa055276-2419-11e9-8ce6-5db4543da632
About science & scientists
Scientist who resisted censorship of climate report lost her job [link]
Machine learning 'causing science crisis' – a crisis of reproducibility in science goes a lot deeper than machine learning. [link]
Oregon #Anesthesiology Doctor's Personal #ClimateChange Battle Spurs Industry Change [link]
Academic freedom and the scope of protections for extramural speech: Why controversial remarks by faculty must be protected. https://www.aaup.org/article/academic-freedom-and-scope-protections-extramural-speech#.XGgmzy2ZM3H
Machine Learning's Amazing Ability to Predict Chaos. [link]
UCSF's dangerous targeting of academic researchers [link]
Based on citations, a study suggests that smaller teams come up with better new ideas than larger collaborations [link]
Is email making professors stupid? [link]
Artificial intelligence alone won't solve the complexity of earth sciences [link]
Durham student was sacked as editor of a student journal, removed from his post as president of a student society, and has now been banned from a debate on another campus. And for what? Retweeting an article. [link]
Scenarios and Decision Support for Security and Conflict Risks in the Context of Climate Change [link]
When censorship is crowdsourced [link]
Decisions are largely emotional, not logical: the neuroscience of decision making [link]
RIP Walter Munk [link]. A recent interview [link]
Scientific Gullibility, now in press. How did Psych get into the mess its in? Some answers here: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/Gullibility.docx
Former UW-Madison professor Don Moynihan on campus speech and attack on UW political science professor Ken Mayer: "If we look the other way when academic freedom is attacked, expect it to be attacked more often." [link]
David Spiegelhalter: "You should not want to be trusted. Instead, what you should want to do is to demonstrate trustworthiness, because that is within your control." spr.ly/6012Eutum
Intensification of El Niño rainfall variability over the tropical Pacific in the slow oceanic response to global warming buff.ly/2WOcMEg
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Feinstein snubs Green New Deal Kids
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Weekend Unthreaded
…
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Snapshot of environmental condition in different tropical estuarine systems by using S. cucullata (an edible oyster) as bio-indicator
Abstract
Accumulation of toxic metals and indigenous bacteria in oyster, (Saccostrea cucullata) and their impact on antioxidant enzyme activities in the biological system was studied and used to provide snapshot of environmental condition in different tropical estuarine systems. The sedimentary Cd, Pb, and Hg concentration varied from 0.1 to 1.8, 22.0 to 98.0, and 0.03 to 0.11 mg kg−1 (dry wt.) respectively. The bioaccumulated Cd, Pb, and Hg concentration in the oysters ranged from 3.6 to 9.0, 0.03 to 8.0, and 0.06 to 0.1 mg kg−1 (dry wt.) respectively. In the oyster, the Cd concentration was well above the safe limit whereas the Pb and Hg concentrations were below the safe limit recommended by the European Commission (EC No. 1881/2006) for human consumption. The MPN value in the raw oyster for fecal coliforms (33–110 × 103/100 g) exceeded the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) approved limits. Increase in antioxidant enzymes (catalase, superoxide dismutase, glutathione-s-transferase, and metallothionein) activities with increasing pollutants loading was observed. The activities of antioxidant enzymes in the oyster were found to be very useful tool for evaluating environmental condition in any tropical estuarine systems.
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Combined effects of NaCl and fluoxetine on the freshwater planarian, Schmidtea mediterranea (Platyhelminthes: Dugesiidae)
Abstract
Increasing salinity levels in freshwaters due to natural and anthropogenic sources pose risk to exposed aquatic organisms. However, there is a paucity of information on how salinity may influence the effects of other chemical stressors especially psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Freshwater planarians which have been suggested as bioindicator species in aquatic habitats were used in this study to evaluate toxic effects of sodium chloride (NaCl) used here as a surrogate for increasing salinity, and its influence on the effects of the antidepressant, fluoxetine. Effects of NaCl on Schmidtea mediterranea were evaluated using survival, regeneration, locomotion, feeding, and reproduction as endpoints. Subsequently, combined effects of NaCl and fluoxetine on planarians' locomotion and reproduction were also evaluated. Result showed that exposure to increased NaCl concentrations is toxic to planarians with 48 and 96 h LC50 of 9.15 and 7.55 g NaCl L−1 respectively and exposure to sub-lethal concentrations led to reductions in feeding (LOEC of 0.75 g NaCl L−1 or 1906 μS cm−1 at 20 °C) and reproduction (LOEC 3.0 g NaCl L−1 or 5530 μS cm−1 at 20 °C), delayed head regeneration (LOEC of 1.5 g NaCl L−1 or 3210 μS cm−1 at 20 °C), and also slight decreases in locomotor activity. Moreover, some developmental malformations were observed in regenerating planarians, as well as delayed or inhibition of wound healing and degeneration after fissioning and during head regeneration. A significant interaction between fluoxetine and NaCl was observed for locomotor activity and unlike planarians exposed to fluoxetine alone, fissioned planarians and their pieces from the combined exposure treatments were also unable to regenerate missing portions. Results show that S. mediterranea can be highly sensitive to low NaCl concentrations and that this stressor can alter the effects of fluoxetine. The implication of these effects for planarian populations in the natural habitat is discussed as well as the need for more research on the effects of neuroactive pharmaceuticals under relevant exposure scenarios.
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Data Showing Polar Sea Ice Stable 12 Years, Cause Global Warming Alarmists To Melt Down
By Kirye
and P. Gosselin
A look at the real observed data on polar sea ice shows that the situation has been surprisingly stable for more than one decade, now, despite the cult-like doomsday prophecies that much more ice would be gone by now.
For the climate change cultists who have been banking on climate system collapse and a rescue by global socialists, these are indeed depressing times.
Arctic sea ice volume stable 12 years
What really has been frustrating the climate alarmists is the Arctic, which many "experts" promised 10 years ago that the late summer Arctic ice would be gone by now. What follows is a chart of the data from the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) that shows that nothing of the sort is happening.
Data source: DMI
As we can see, Arctic sea ice volume maximum, which occurs in early spring, still reaches the levels seen 10 years ago. Moreover the all-important summer minimum — considered a "tipping point" by doomsday climate alarmists — is even higher than it was 10 years ago. The linear trend for sea ice volume has stood steady for 12 years.
Climate doomsday predictions cultish, fraud
So it's little wonder climate alarmists keep pushing back the goal posts, which they've been doing now for 30 years. If there is one thing that mankind should have learned by now while on the slippery slope of civilization is that all the prophesies of doomsday have been wrong and that latest one – climate breakdown – will be no different.
There is no evidence showing that this latest end-of world climate prophecy is the one that is going to turn out to be true. In fact, this one is pathetically easy to see through and realize it's Smollet-quality science.
Today's Arctic sea ice level is nothing extraordinary
Doomsday climate alarmists will now insist that only 12 years of data are not enough and that we must look back 40 years. They will accuse us of cherry-picking and concealing inconvenient data. The truth, they say, is that Arctic ice is in fact dwindling rapidly, and what we've been seeing for the last 10 years is only a temporary pause. There's some merit to that argument, but 40 years is also too limited. Lets us go back to the start of the 20th century and look at overall Arctic sea ice extent:
Chart by Alekseev et al, 2016. Comments and rough linear trendlines added by NTZ.
The aforementioned chart shows there is nothing unusual about today's sea ice extent. It's all happened before.
Models were wrong for the last 12 years
Plotted Arctic minimum sea ice extent data from the Japan Meteorology Agency (JMA) show no declining trend since 2007 and thus contradict the earlier projections made by models:
Chart by Kirye. Data source: JMA.
If models were unable to get even the first 12 years correct, what performance should one expect even further out into the future?
Antarctic ice still showing robust longer-term GROWTH trend
Four years ago, global warming cultists avoided discussion over Antarctic sea ice like the plague. This was because also Antarctic sea ice had totally contradicted the model forecasts and embarrassed the climate scientists. The trend had shown robust sea ice growth since 1979.
But recently the alarmists have seen some possible shimmers of doomsday hope from Antarctica as the sea ice extent there suddenly fell sharply after decades of (unexpected) steady growth:
Antarctica sea ice extent continues its long term trend of steady growth. Chart: Kirye. Data source: JMA here and here.
However, three or four years of data mean very little on climate scales. The overall Antarctic trend remains one of growth.
More natural than man-made
And even if the trend turned downward over the coming decades, it only would prove a warming Antarctic sea and say nothing about the real cause.
What is becoming ever clearer is that many powerful natural factors are indeed at play and that man's impact is far less than the global warming doomsday cultists like to insist it is.
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader https://ift.tt/2Xk1J67
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