On our way to Uluru

Riding the Rails

An Intercity at Homebush

A bus driver’s strike yesterday caused considerable inconvenience (and much CO₂ emission). Instead of using train and bus to travel to Waverley for an inspection, I spent much time in very slow moving traffic, all of us spewing out exhaust gas. In the news leading up to the strike, I missed any mention of how this strike contributes to global warming but read how both sides were the personification of compromise; it was all the other side’s bloody-mindedness.

Climate Change – Questioning the Science

I do not doubt that we are experiencing a period of climate change but I question the science. Taking a long-term view, climate change is a cyclical event; taking a short-term view, I cannot determine if the sea level is rising or falling, if temperatures are rising or falling or whether CO₂ is the contributing emission, from the information presented in the many sources available. In discussing this with Ken Cameron, he mentioned that:

Climate change as religion looks to me like a mixture of science as a religion, which Mary Midgely writes about so well, and environmentalism as a religion, which has at least a 300-year history.  The media coverage of Copenhagen is reaching a crescendo of much ado about nothing. But I do look forward to quality writing about what happened. (E. Cameron, 17 December, email.)

This prompted me to check out Mary Midgley and in the following selective quotes, she describes my knowledge dilemma.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary”, The Guardian, 13 January 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/jan/13/philosophy

… human life [is] like an enormous, ill-lit aquarium which we never see fully from above, but only through various small windows unevenly distributed around it. Scientific windows – like historical ones – are just one important set among these. Fish and other strange creatures constantly swim away from particular windows… reappearing where different lighting can make them hard to recognise. Long experience, along with constant dashing around between windows, does give us a good deal of skill in tracking them. But if we refuse to put together the data from different widows, then we can be in real trouble.

… distance from academic proprieties comes out in her friendship and admiration for James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis. “She’s so right about science. It is becoming fragmented to such an extent that the average scientist is now a specialist who knows no more outside his specialty than the average layman; and somebody needed to say that.”

But although she often professes to be talking about science, she does draw an equivalence between scientism [applying scientific method inappropriately] and science.

Midgley feels that modern scientists, though they have realised what the urgent problems of the human race are, still talk as if science, or simply increasing knowledge, could solve them. But “If there is one thing that we know from the long and hard experience of the human race, it is that what is wrong is not simple.”

My consideration of Lovelock was posted on 1 December when, through the reasoning of Tim Flannery, I changed my opinion of both Lovelock and Flannery.

Midgley’s logic is in contrast to that of Bill McKibben and other climate change ‘gurus’ and I am moving more to the view we are being shilled by the ‘climate change leads to doom’ priesthood .

See the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Midgley and  Midgley, M (2002), Beast and Man, http://books.google.com.au/books?id=g2gu7pRXEPYC&dq=mary+midgley&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=pRSMVJsd2B&sig=ntBDtTIrbTBpPP0nzq0zUncetoU&hl=en&ei=1r0pS-buFo-gkQX25bz4CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false which has a readable text and enough to prompt a deeper reading of the actual book.

And then we have this

“Scientists ‘crying wolf’ over coral”, The Australian, 19 December, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/scientists-crying-wolf-over-coral/story-e6frg6nf-1225811910634

A SENIOR marine researcher has accused Australian scientists of “crying wolf” over the threat of climate change to the Great Barrier Reef, exposing deep division about its vulnerability.

Today’s Website

A fine interactive graphic but it doesn’t say much too me.

“A Journey Through Climate History”, ABC Science, http://www.abc.net.au/innovation/environment/cc_timeline.html

Mt Cockburn, Central Australia

Riding the Rails

Redfern Carriage and Locomotive Workshops

My father was a carriage builder in these workshops in the early 1930s.

Climate Change

A reward of maintaining this weblog is learning  about climate change, rising sea levels, coal, gas, deforestation, drought, genetic modification, food-miles and more; but I read much that tests my credibility. One example is the rising ‘climate change’ star, Bill McKibben who conforms to the ‘religious’ aspect discussed by Freeman Dyson (see 7 December post).

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben’s Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_McKibben. (I have inserted my comments into his text.)

William Ernest “Bill” McKibben (born 1960) is an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming and alternative energy and advocates for more localized economies. Beginning in the summer of 2006, he led the organization of the largest demonstrations against global warming in American history. McKibben is active in the Methodist Church, and his writing is sometimes spiritual in nature. Al Gore wrote in 2007 that “when I was serving in the Senate, Bill McKibben’s descriptions of the planetary impacts… made such an impression on me that it led, among other things, to my receiving the honorific title ‘Ozone Man’ from the first President Bush.” (This is nonsense – what are ‘planetary impacts”?)

McKibben grew up in suburban Lexington, Massachusetts. As an undergraduate at Harvard University (unable to determine what degree), he was president of the Harvard Crimson newspaper (1). Immediately after college he joined the The New Yorker as a staff writer and wrote much of the Talk of the Town column from 1982 to early 1987. He quit the magazine when its longtime editor William Shawn was forced out of his job (some background here would be useful), and soon moved to the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.

He currently resides with his wife, writer Sue Halpern and his daughter, Sophie, who was born in 1993, in Ripton, Vermont. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, where he also directs the Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism (the same as he has written on his website – little environmental substance but includes his many books). He is also a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute (a self-congratulating vehicle promoting doom and carbon tarts).

Awards

McKibben has been awarded both a Guggenheim Fellowship (1993) and a Lyndhurst Fellowship (unable to get any information on this other than several links to go back to Bill). He won a Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction writing in 2000 (verifiable and an award of significance). He has honorary degrees from Sterling College, Green Mountain College, Unity College, the State University of New York, Colgate University, and Lebanon Valley College (linked to the Methodist church but no mention of what degrees).

This is reprinted from http://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/41961-thank-you-together-we-made

“Thank you – together, we made history”, Posted Oct 25, 2009 by Bill McKibben

Today in New York was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. As I stood in Times Square and watched images flood in from every corner of the world on the big screens, I finally saw what a climate movement looked like — and it looked diverse and creative and beautiful. Please head to www.350.org and spend a few minutes watching the pictures. We need you to feel the strength of this movement, and to see how creative and committed this movement is, all across the planet. It was so sweet to watch the day move around the globe, with thousands upon thousands of pictures appearing, sometimes a dozen a minute! There were photos of climbers high on the glaciers of Switzerland holding 350 banners, of bicycle parades from Copenhagen to San Francisco, of organizers in Papua New Guinea beating their church gong 350 times while churches in Barcelona rang their bells 350 times. Photos of activists protesting coal plants and celebrating wind farms, of students in 350 shirts repairing their flooded homes in Manila, and of thousands of people marching in the streets of Bogota and Kathmandu. Photos of people from different races and classes, religions and nationalities, coming together around a simple and powerful number to save our planet. Thousands took to the streets in Addis Ababa and Mexico City; we had huge parades in places like Togo and Seattle. You were by far the biggest news story on Google, on CNN, on the front pages of newspapers around the planet. And these pictures were seen around the world, in newspapers from Beijing to Boston, on TV stations from New Delhi to New York, and on blogs, social networks, and websites across the internet. Together, we’ve shown the world that a global climate movement is possible and set a bold new agenda for the upcoming United Nations Climate Meetings in Copenhagen this December. The 350 target is the new bottom line for climate action and world leaders must now meet that target. We thought we would be tired after many sleepless nights planning this day, but in fact we’re more energized than ever. We’re preparing to deliver the photos and messages from your events to every national delegation to the United Nations on Monday, and planning to hand the photos to high-level ministers at upcoming climate negotiations in Barcelona and Copenhagen. So if you haven’t uploaded your best pictures from the event yet, please do so right away by sending us an e-mail to photos@350.org with your photos attached, with your City, Country as the subject and the body as the action description. Thank you more than we can possibly say. We’ll (of course) be asking you to do lots more in the weeks ahead — but today, lean back, relax, look through pictures at 350.org, and savor your accomplishment. You were part of what many journalists called “the most widespread day of political action the world has ever seen.” (My emphasis). Together with millions around the world, you made a real difference already — get ready to make much more in the days, weeks and months to come. With hope, Bill McKibben and the whole 350.org Team

As an avid print and internet press reader, how did I miss this ‘sweet’ event?

(1) http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/6/4/william-e-mckibben-a-commentator-on/