Category Archive

Here goes another peculiar analogy. I notice that Uncle Eli has been thinking along related lines.

The doctor (and anyone else I speak to) tells me, unequivocally, that since my MI (heart attack), I absolutely have to quit smoking. No surprises there, then.

Why? Putting aside the derivative opinions of those who aren’t really qualified to know (most of the people who say this apart from the experts), what is the scientific basis of the nedical advice I am receiving? And what will the consequences of ignoring it be?

First, let’s look at the explanation I have been given. By continuing to smoke, I would increase the risk of further heart attacks, probably double it. How does the doctor know this? The cardiologists have a large information base, demonstrating a statistical relationship, historically, between smoking and heart attacks; the evidence is very strong that smokers are more at risk than non-smokers. This statistical probability is generated from real data, and expresses the likelihood/risk of future damage/injury on well-understood physical and theoretical principles.

I can be confident, though, that I don’t have to heed their advice; I could take up smoking again if I wish after all, it’s a free world (cough). For whilst I am told that I would be at an increased risk, it is, after all, only a statistical risk; there is no certainty that I would have another attack, nor can they specify a timescale, either for another prospective attack, or for my future mortality (which will come, its just a matter of when…).

So while I can reasonably assume that I would be at increased risk if I did smoke, I can also (apparently) rationally choose to ignore this advice, since it is speculative and not able to commit to a certainty that I will have a heart attack in the future.

What do you think? Should I take up smoking again? Am I trying to find an excuse to continue doing something which I enjoy and is a habit, even though I know that it is going to be bad for me eventually?

Likewise, I can (apparently) rationally choose to ignore the experts who have used real world data and have calculated the risks using statistical probability, to tell me that the climate is warming, that sea level will rise this century, that patterns of weather on which agriculture and food supply rely are likely to change. After all, their analysis is also ’speculative’, and there are no certainties about the future of the climate/environment.

Here is the chance for you to give me some advice, then; should I adapt (smoke, but stop if I don’t feel well?), mitigate (stop and avoid the increased risk altogether?), or ameliorate (buy some chewing gum/patches, eat boiled sweets, whatever?). Perhaps I can just ignore it, and it will all go away eventually… ater all, we all have to die some time.

Surviving a threat has a way of focussing the mind. For the past few days, the question of priorities has been uppermost. What is important, what is not needed? What and who do I care enough about to invest time in, having been made aware that time is the defining resource limitation?

The heart attack has served to remind me of what might be considered my core philosophy, the essential, buck-stops-here points. Which, at the same time, serves to remind why I thought, a year or so back, that pursuing the questions posed by climate change, and switching occupations, were worthwhile.

Being enagaged in an enforced idleness at home, sat on a day bed contemplating the options of computer chess or daytime TV, I am reminded that, for me, the meaning of being, the purpose of existence, is tied intimately and inexorably to the well-being and happiness of others (you, if you like). A person’s life in and of itself, self-contained and complete (all false imaginings, I promise you), is a very little thing, of small significance. What makes a life big, what makes it full, what gives it meaning and value, is the manner and extent of its interactions with other people.

And here is the connection with climate change and the current state of discussions. Notwithstanding the few who insist otherwise, by and large we are aware that there is a sickness, a malaise, a problem with our world (our home). Whilst one or two will dispute the causes, of more concern is the disagreement over the solutions; how should we treat the patient?

I suspect that it is going to be difficult to decide the best treatments, though, unless we first establish the priorities for governments and industry. Beyond that, we need to establish the priorities for communities and social groups; beyond that, the priorities for families and micro-communities. Which also means establishing our own, individual priorities.

I have established, to my own satisfaction, my list of priorities for a happy and fulfilling life. It goes: People (here and now and present); people future; place/world (environment)[home] and all that it contains; the Future; the rest.

Here is an arrogant suggestion, then. Let’s try this as a template for good decision making about climate change, about adaptation and mitigation, about policy, ,investment and cost.

First priority goes to the problems which need dealing with now; Darfur, Timor, Zimbabwe, poverty, unnecessary death, AIDS, water, food…

Then there are the problems which need dealing with to secure the future for people; food, water, medicine, peace, justice, liberty…

The next priority are the problems which, if they have not already had to be addressed because of the above, relate to the environment, the world, etc; conservation, preservation, protection from exploitation, biodiversity… (though, not unsurprisingly, many of the problems of the first two sets of priorities also involve an attitude to the third set).

The next priority is to resolve the potential longer-term problems; sea levels, water supply, agriculture, resource exploitation…

And, finally, we can invest time, effort and money into to dealing with the other shit.

This set of priorities should be usable to guide us to making first decisions about where effort is needed and how important it should be compared to other issues.

More on that, later.

Two streams of thought arise from the announcement from the BAS that yet another chunk of the Peninsula’s long-term ice shelf is on the verge of splitting off permanently.

The first is to wonder why there are still people who can honestly (inasmuch as they believe it, even though it’s misguided) claim that GW is not really happening. In this category go all the people who spend endless hours attempting to undermine the temperature record in one way or another.

If all that’s left in my gooey grasp is a lolly-stick, there doesn’t seem to be much point in wondering whether the lolly has melted temporarily or on a more long-term basis. There doesn’t seem to be much point discussing whether or not lolly-melting temperatures have been synthetically arrived at by a cabal of lolly-scientists in search of hoards of lolly, or whether the official body responsible for lolly checking is staffed by political radicals with dubious sexual tendencies and atheistic views.

Not much point, because the lolly has gone. No lolly. Bye-bye, cold stuff.

The other stream is the one about what, in the face of the scale and enormity of the problem of climate change, we should or shouldn’t be bothered to do as individuals or consumers (in contrast to institutions and industry). It is easy to understand why some people feel that action on climate change is somewhat pointless, and that token behaviour is simply hypocritical, or perhaps simply self-deluding. It is also easy to see that such an attitude stems, ultimately, from the conception of the world as constituted of many individuals (including ourselves), none of which has substantive power, as opposed to being made up of loosely cohesive groups of people with common desires, aims and beliefs.

You don’t have to join a club to be a part; by doing you are being a part. You don’t have to wear woollen clothing or eat vegetables; there are very few things you might feel compelled to do, unless perhaps it is such things as consuming with thought, travelling with the cost in mind, ending the inclination to waste or replace. You don’t have to sign up to anything, or pay anything. First off, you need to work out whether you belong to a society or are distinct from it. Are you a part, or apart? If you can come to terms with your relative place in the world, then you can start to see the value in your own actions.

Well, not so  much a hiccup, actually, more a small heart attack.

Happened a week last Saturday Night (probably the fourth of a short series),

Operation on Thursday put in two stents.

Now home and recuperating, but obviously, not overly active, for a while.

Honest, it had nothing to do with the paper…

This will probably give me a bit of time to trawl around the blogosphere and irritate a few folks.

Apologies to all those who were expecting to hear from me. Now you know why.

Some interesting may conceivably follow in the days to come.

It’s not even as if I’m actually really that old, you know….

A new theory which attempts to explain the causes of global warming has been published today, and it looks like those doubting Thomases were right all along.

The study, from the University of Lappland’s Department of Seasonal Studies, points the blame for recent warming around the globe firmly at a new, previously unconsidered source. This is bad news for the ‘climate change’ lobby, who have long claimed that the science was clear and that we are directly responsible for the change, which is projected to lead to dramatic, perhaps catastrophic consequences in the next few years.

The theory points to a seasonal phenomenon which has a strong correlation to recent increases in global temperature. What makes it unusual is that, unlike many other hypotheses, this seems to account directly with the phenomenon known as ‘Polar Amplification’.

‘This is an astonishing breakthrough in climate science, something beyond even our expectations,’ explained Professor Helga Elvffrend, the Department’s director.

‘When the idea was first suggested, we were skeptical, naturally, but the strength of the correlation and the additional explanation for Polar Amplification places this as the top of the tree as far as alternative theories go.’

The new theory uses estimates of population growth and demographics, combined with calculation of the carbon impact of flying, along with ruminant methane emissions, to produce a combined global trend which closely matches the instrumental temperature record since the 1750’s.

Using these well-understood measures, the team calculated the emissions trend of Santa Claus, who now covers an estimated 27 million air miles each December. Combining the CO2 emissions from his ’sled’, an unspecified aircraft which the team estimates must be at least twenty times the size of the new Airbus ’superliner’, with the emissions from his reindeer ‘companions’, whose methane emissions are expended directly into the mid-troposphere, the team has shown that Santa’s annual ‘excursion’ could account for as much as fifty percent of the current warming.

Since it is well established that Santa visits every home at Christmas, and since the number of good little boys and good little girls has increased at a rate consistent with the warming of the late twentieth century, the conclusion, that population growth, stimulating an increase in Santa-activity, is responsible for Global Warming appears, on the surface of it, to be robust.

‘If we work on the assumption that Santa must use the Polar routes more than any other during the many visits to and from his grotto, then we have a simple explanation why warming has been greater in the Arctic region than any other. It also explains why the same phenomenon has not been observed so clearly in the Antarctic,’ Professor Elvffrend told me, Her final comments really put the whole ‘is it/ isn’t it? AGW ‘debate’ into its proper context.

‘This is a great moral victory for the few of us who dared to express our doubts about the IPCC and it’s so-called consensus, those who they ridiculed as skeptics and denialists,’ she said, ‘and even the most hard-line alarmist will have to finally admit that there really is an alternative explanation for global warming, which is as credible as anything that skeptics have previously produced.’

As I stumbled through the thick, fresh snowfall from the university building to the airfield, on my way back south to Tromso, I couldn’t help wondering how many people would read to the end of my article and realise that they’d just ordered another set of encyclopedias.

merry christmas to you all.

:w00t:

It seems like everyone wants to do a quickstep on the climate, but the band insists on playing a gentle waltz. The Bali buzz is all about getting on with it, with some places pointing out that soonest is best (like Bhutan, for example). Even Australia is making noises - perhaps pushing an involvement with acting as China’s ‘friend’ for other than policy-development reasons - time will tell. With Bush as the first fiddle, though,  we ain’t gonna get the Souza we need, just a gentle tune-up and a scrape or two of the Blue Danube. Woody Allen springs to mind.

But the Indian section of the band (bagpipes and Bhangra) is also making nasty noises, slightly out-of-tune, though no doubt saying what many others are thinking: there is still the overriding issue of who pays for all the changes which are needed. You can’t really blame politicians for considering their own national interests first, or for wanting to avoid having to tax their own people unnecessarily or unfairly, but if Bali ( and the 2012 agreement) is reduced to horse-trading about where the cash is coming from, and where the changes are happening, we aren’t going to see the progress we need to avoid dangerous change; it really is as simple as that.

It is always difficult to distinguish the jockeying for position and the posturing from the actual stance or potential for action, but I’m not expecting the Bush administration to move an inch (just look at the track record), nor am I expecting China or India to move from their current entrenchments quite yet. So the question is, what is Bali likely to be able to achieve? I’m not optimistic; at best, I expect the delegates to agree to continue discussing the key points somewhere else exotic next year, while the horse-trading continues in the interim.

Back home, Inel points us to the Tory party getting with the CC agenda, promoting microgeneration. There isn’t really much new in Mr. Cameron’s proposals, apart from a suggestion that they would earmark £300 million to support new projects, which is somewhat more than the Government has currently committed, but otherwise, the proposals seem pretty much in line with what is already going on. I agree with the MP who is proposing, in a member’s bill, to cut the paperwork, though: it could still be simpler to do the right thing, if the will to do so exists within government.

On a more personal note, thanks to you regulars who visit, and apologies for the relative slowness of recent posts and updates; the Old man, having come out of his hermitage, has found that the pace of the world is taking a little getting used to; at the moment, I have five major projects on the go, apart from the blog, so it is, inevitably, suffering a bit. Perhaps, also, the blog is suffering because I am moving somewhat away from the pure communication side of climate change towards the active (as in actually doing something constructive) side, and I haven’t really decided how far I should be pushing my new agenda, as opposed to the ‘routines’ that have grown up over the past few months on the site.

This is where you come in; if you can let me know what use my blog is to you, and where you think it ’scores’ for you as a visitor, I can adapt and adjust my output accordingly. So, please let me know what you want to read about and what interests you, and I’ll do what I can.

More on the issues shortly…

This probably isn’t original, but it seems to me that many environmental and climate change organisations are missing a trick.

A lot of people are getting turned off these important issues, because the messages are just so depressing: everything needs ’saving’, everything is ‘at risk’ , thanks to the media, the perception is that we are on the edge of an environmental disaster every other day.

So the messages about the environment, and the climate, have been couched in largely negative terms; destruction, loss, decline, suffering. We have become used to the idea that we are facing significant changes to our world, all of these are bad, and, like the post used as an exemplar by Inel, there isn’t much we can do about it: in other words, we’re all going to Hell, so why not party while we can?

Such a negative narrative  makes use of psychological keys which were useful in the post-war and cold war periods. It encourages the neurotic in us and the idea that we are ‘facing an enemy’ who must be ‘overcome’, that the choices are between destruction and preservation; that change brought about by forces outside our control and not chosen by us are thus enemies of our freedom, our way of life, our sense of who we are.

So what’s the trick?

Let’s agree that we are in living in a world of rapid changes. We can also agree that many of the changes which have happened and which are expected to happen are - undesired.  Yes, there is risk, but, as with all situations where change is coming, it is also a fantastic opportunity.

We have a chance to change the world. We have a chance to contribute to the new directions our world might take in the coming decades. We are the architects of tomorrow.

As we stand on a  hilltop looking out over the horizon of the future we are facing, we are a new generation of pioneers, of explorers, settlers. The future is the new frontier, the place(time) where a fresh start and a chance to escape the bonds of the past, of servitude and oppression, reaches out to embrace us. And we have the benefit of knowing what successes and failures our forebears had, what good choices they made, and what mistakes we should avoid.

Of course there will be problems; rivers to cross, mountains to climb, and no fixed place which is ‘home’ for a time, until the journey brings us to a place we want to be. We will feel insecure, even threatened, at times. We will, occasionally, face hard work and will need to toil to make progress along the rocky trail before us. But we believe it is worth the effort; we believe that what is yet to come will be better than what was left behind.

Changing our lives to adapt to the demands of the changing climate, disposing of the social strictures of the past and adopting new rules for living together which we believe are fairer, better, than the old ones, breaking away from what was not good enough is not a risk, it is a great adventure.

We don’t have to accept that we are going to Hell; that is where our current lives are taking us, but we don’t have to accept it; we can be the agents of a positive change. And I’m not going to say that we are heading for ‘the promised Land’; this is too much, but we could, we can start, to make steps to get to a better place.

Sometimes, a lot of different ideas happen very quickly. It can be like a bomb going off in your head. It happened this weekend. There will be a few weird posts coming up.

It would be helpful if the Old man had the talents of Nexus 6.

Picture: two ‘white-coats’, ( Dick and Bob) a lab, a computer, a duck.

Dick: All the prelims are finished?

Bob:  Check.

Dick: It has a beak?

Bob:  Confirm.

Dick: It quacks?

Bob:  Yup.

Dick: Okay, run it all through the computer.

Bob:  consider it done…

Dick: Well?

Bob:  There’s a better than 50% chance it’s a duck.

Dick: What’s the bad news?

Bob:  There’s a small statistical probability that it could be a flying pig, disguised as a duck, if you add the assumption that the possibility must be considered.

Dick: Excellent!  ‘Dick and Bob’s flying pig hypothesis’; we’ll be famous!

Bob:  But it’s probably wrong…

Dick:  Get real, Bob; nobody will care if we come up with another ‘it’s a duck’ paper. Going with the ‘flying pig’ will guarantee us five years of funding from an anti-duck think-tank.

Bob:  Sure looks a hell of a lot like a duck to me…

I do not like cabbage. Therefore, I have decided that cabbage does not exist.

The claims of scientists that cabbage does exist are merely unproven hypotheses.

The evidence offered for the existence of cabbage is either flawed, or the science has been done improperly; as it posits the existence of a nonexistent thing, it must therefore be based on error.

It makes no difference to my conclusion how many other people say that cabbage does exist, or how expert they are on the subject; they are simply jumping on the cabbage bandwagon; they are in it for the money, and no consensus on the existence of cabbage will be meaningful while there are still a few, honest people like me who continue to challenge this claim.

On occasions, someone has pointed to a green, roughly spherical object and said; ‘Look, a cabbage.’ I am willing to accept that there may be some circumstances under which cabbage-like objects may exist, but this is not definitive proof, as the object is just as likely to be a papier mache model, and everyone knows how unlike real life models are. Anyone who believes, from the output of models, that cabbage is clearly present, is simply mistaken. The resemblance to a cabbage is coincidental.

As I do not accept the existence of cabbage, I am not afraid of bing fed cabbage, or of the consequences of being fed cabbage.

I have a suspicion that the claims of the existence of cabbage may be motivated by a conspiracy of governments who want us to change our meat-eating habits, restrain our traditional freedoms and/or find an excuse to take more of our wealth in the form of tax.

Thirty years ago, they said that  we were entering a cabbage-free world; why should I listen know if they start telling me the opposite?

My stance on cabbage is self-evidently rational and scientific, so anyone who contradicts it is ipso facto either an idiot or a gullible fool, or both.

I am not a member of the House of Lords.

This is for Blog Action Day.

We are like them, perhaps; we know we wish to ’save the Shire’,  to conserve or preserve that which we hold valuable in our homeland. We know without thought, given the choice between the industrial and the bucolic, between keeping or losing that which around us is of Nature, that we prefer to keep, to protect, to preserve for others into the future.

This is a real transformation in the nature of  our thought, and has steadily seeped into our consciousness for the past few decades, until now it can be said that, for many people in the developed world, the quality of civilised life is intimately tied with a sense of connection to that which is yet untouched by civilisation.

This does not mean that we are thus obdurately pastoral or romantic about this other part of the world which remains outside our city walls, but suggests that a respect for the otherwise-than-possessed  (that which is not acquired, worked or transformed by us, for us) is now a reality.

But against this hopeful picture we must place that other picture of our relationship exemplified by the servants of the ‘Dark Lord’. The desire for power, the lust for possession and control, the eagerness to rule, or to share in power, which places us as privileged in competition with other humans. We may feel as if we care for Nature, that Nature matters to us and for us, and yet we are still ‘citizens’, members of a human community which is defined by the construction of its cities, its walls and fences, farms and ‘land improvements’.

And so we live uneasy, many of us in  the social, sub-urban, sanitised greenness of a compromised rural idyll somewhere between the Big City and the Wilderness, enjoying the benefits of our civilisation yet dreaming of being liberated from civilisation’s constraints, whilst outside our privileged places in the developed and technologically sophisticated parts of the world, we know there are millions for whom this is a meaningless triviality, for whom the lack of development is a challenge to survival and comfort which remains to be resolved.

And so we face a challenge ourselves. We have a standard of what ‘good living’ is which allows us, through wealth and complex social support mechanisms, to want to save the environment, and yet we also have a standard which persists in telling us that the preservation and protection of our human lives is also a ‘good’, demanding that we prevent, if we can, the unnecessary human suffering which we know of without ourselves being victims.

Somehow, we must find a way to help others in the world attain that standard of ‘good living’ which we now take for granted, without doing what we did (as societies) in order to reach that standard ourselves; without appropriating the wilderness, without cutting down the forests and planting crops, without building power plants or burying the land beneath a layer of concrete and pesticides.

And so we look at what is already in the world, what exists as resources ready-to-hand, what  the sum of human property and wealth is, and measure it against the sum of need. And we find…we find that, whilst constrained by logistics and location, there is already enough to go around, enough for all to share the standard which is our ‘good life’. So why do those others go hungry, why do they still need to ‘develop’ where once was nature? In part, it is a product of those logistics; the goods needed for good living must be within reach. In part it is a product of imbalances in some places, where the capacity of the land to sustain the population and survive itself has been compromised and we find ourselves compelled to push further along the path of destruction because it is too late to go back.

So what makes us like hobbits? Without getting into arguments about the cultural or ethical assumptions embedded in Tolkein’s work, there is a model in there of what Tolkein and his friends saw as the  ‘way of goodness’ in us ordinary mortals. We are placed in a world of forces much greater than ourselves, where individuals and institutions have huge and seemingly unassailable potency, compared to us.

And yet there is a task for each of us, a job to do, which we can choose to accept or not (to a void issues of determinism, we can also choose to define, first). We know it entails a burden, a self-sacrifice, an effort at the limit of our capacity to attain, a determination in the face of adversity, a trust in each other and a faith that there is in the world something which is worth preserving, worth giving up everything to save.

And here, as people who have chosen to care for our environment and the lives of the people within it, ‘our people’, ‘our homeland’, we have become, strangely, like a hobbit. Not for us the magic swords of power, or the imagined glory of the battlefield. Not for us the face-to-face encounter with an embodied representative of darkness, an epic heroic stand. We must walk, one step at a time, with those around us with whom we share a trust in mutual goodness and goodwill, an undistinguished path, to an uncertain future, without expectation of reward, beyond the knowledge that we are doing what little we can, giving what little effort we have, to save what is for us both greater and more important than ourselves; our world and all the goodness in it.

Gracious!

Perhaps a part of our attitude to climate change is dependent on our attitude to the future. The science of climate change is, after all, at times a kind of futurology; an attempt to at least ascribe a probability to things yet to be. This is what the IPCC was created for, in a sense; to seek an understanding of the causal connections between present and future ‘events’ and thereby provide a ‘picture’ of what tomorrow might bring, under a given range of varied circumstances.

Even before  the issue of how well it does this is addressed, there must be a primary matter, of our attitudes to such a project in the first place. We have a long history of seeking guidance from augury, and a long history of acting in the present in an anticipation of a set of circumstances in the future which are not guaranteed, but seem likely. Is the project of climate science any different? After all, the argument about mitigation is in the end an argument both about whether we can act now to transform the future, and whether we should act.

But many people feel reluctant to allow the possibility that the future is at all ‘knowable’, or that people, as individuals or collectively, can influence future events, either because they are fatalists (often without realising it), or because they believe that the weight/inertia of the global chain of determinism is so great that it is effectively inexorable, which in turn promotes a resignation.

This is a difficult problem because our attitudes to determinism, free will, existence, fate, destiny, human potency or societal inevitability, are often formed at a very deep level, and are intimately tied in to our sense of who we are and what our place is in the world. In particular, these issues force us to address a central neurosis/challenge in our sense of identity, the question of control or power over our own lives and  the impositions on this from outside.

A large scale scientific activity which brings into the open our uncertainties about personal determinism, about freedom, about the satisfaction or thwarting of deep drives like desires, needs, guilt and shame, is therefore a threat. It is not just a threat in that what is anticipated is potentially dangerous, the very activity itself is threatening; the possibility of its existence may force upon us the requirement to decide whether we can see the world and our influence in it in a new, different way.

And this may be why some people resist. A response to ‘this will happen’, or ‘given x, y will probably happen’ is often going to be negative, simply because it contains within its construction a series of implications about how the world functions and, in particular, the role we play in shaping the future, which are potentially unpleasant to us.

If this is right, I suspect that it, too, is based on a series of misunderstandings and misapprehensions about both what climate projections involve and what they logically imply about the relationship between the present and the future, and the role of humans in it. It is also probably often based on  a very simplified, unformed sense of how the world works, rather than a serious attempt to rationalise such a complex matter.

But perhaps this might explain why communication so often breaks down, why it is so difficult to  get action from people. The very process of climate science when it is engaged in projection, in futurology, strikes at deeply embedded neuroses and unarticulated fears which force upon the person a ‘fight or flight’ response; denial to preserve the sense of self-determination in the world, or resistance to fortify the sense of personal potency, of agency, in a world which otherwise might just possibly be too big and too out of control to handle. In other words, for some people, coming to terms with the idea of climate science may require first a coming to terms with their own existential being. Its a lot to ask of an everyday person-in-the-street.

I was going to write about whether  it makes sense to think in terms of ‘prediction’, when so much of our histories are about how the unpredicted came about, or are, alternatively, about hindsight and the juggernaut that is historical inevitability (its probably an illusion).

We are engaged in a task the like of which has never been attempted before, to rewrite the future before it comes to pass, with a greater price to pay for failure than has ever been at stake before; the persistence of a world, an environment, which is still beautiful, rich, varied and valuable to our descendants. And this will require all our best attributes; courage, determination, refusal to give up, fighting against difficult odds, resolving our weaknesses and making of them strength. If we want to turn down the volume knob on the tomorrow machine, we will have to be heroes. A bit.

It isn’t novel to suggest that we live in a culture (in the ‘developed West’) which encourages us to see the world in a childish, almost infantile way. Almost every value which has an impact on everyday life is narrow in scope and simplistic. We prefer surface over substance in almost every imaginable way: physical appearance, ‘bling’, youth, the preferring of immediate gratification over distant benefits. The list of ways in which this might be manifest is almost endless.

What does this have to do with climate change?

It is arguable that this cultural characteristic - if indeed it is one - is one of the principle ‘background’ causes why the concerns of scientists and others are, if not ignored, at least pushed aside in the order of priorities, not just for the general public, but also for policy-makers, in particular in the USA (and here again, I mean the current administration). In a world where what matters is immediately-to-hand, to paraphrase Heidegger, and what we ‘want’ (like a four-year-old child) is more pressing than what is ‘good for us’, looking ahead and seeing the bigger picture simply doesn’t register on the mind.

There are plenty of rational, intelligent people who are able to look ahead, and are able to have a more mature outlook on our prospects, but there are equally a number of otherwise rational and intelligent people who seem unable to grasp the concept that considering the future is an important thing to do, both morally and sensibly, and that in so doing, we should appeal to reason and knowledge (often, but not exclusively, represented by science and academia) for guidance and direction.

But how do I, we, anyone who writes, blogs or argues about climate change, start to talk with others, who choose not to share our concerns about the future? As with politics, if the principal engagement with issues takes places at the immediate, personal or local level, then these are the levels at which we can hope for a response from individuals. This doesn’t mean that we must abandon the ‘wider vision’, but that it may need to be placed in a context for our audiences. Like other bloggers, I find it difficult to know who my audience is specifically, and, in responding to other blogs, or getting feedback from them, it is easy to slip into a group mindset which responds to itself as broadly ‘rational’ and not to ‘others’ for whom this is an opaque, confusing dialogue.

You might object that such an attitude is exactly the reason why ‘dumbing down’ is an issues in our society; not only does it imply a patronising attitude to ‘others’, but also it panders to the cultural childishness by simplifying, making immediate, and trivialising the whole subject which gets us going. This is a bit of a quandary; should we be playing by a rulebook which inherently undermines the very concern which needs addressing, that of the future, or do we need to start the entire ‘Enlightenment’ project all over again?

The causes of the current ‘Age of endarkenment’ (gosh, that looks like it was written for The Simpsons) are many and various, and what lies at the root of the current situation does matter, but more pressing still is the fact of our cultural situation: somehow, we need to help others to start seeing the world in a more ‘grown-up’ way, and to start valuing things more substantial than celebrity, triviality and ‘toys’ (possessions) . At the same time, we need to engage the minds of these selfsame others on the consequences to them of their indifference, not only for themselves, but also for people distant in space and time.

This seems to imply that the purpose, or agenda, of those amongst us for whom climate change is the ‘defining problem of our generation’, must be one of bringing a new enlightenment into our culture; in other words, to educate, inform, and thereby to liberate those who choose to live in a shallow world. As to who might be the object of this liberation, whether our audience should be the current administrators of our society, or the people they are supposed to represent; this can be the choice (and relate to the talents) of each of us.

Here is a proposal and a suggestion, then; the proposal is that an important, perhaps central objective of writers on climate change should be to provide the necessary education. The suggestion is that, in an age where the light of reason is everywhere beset by ignorance and superstition, that we share the common goal of ‘bringing a new Enlightenment’ into the world.

Try to see this post as the first stretching out of a thought or idea of what might be needed to face and resolve the problems which we understand to exist in our world today and in the future. As such, it invites response; it needs dialogue and synthesis, and should not be read as an authorial statement.

We are aware of the world through the  texts, or narratives, of its being which are given to us through our understanding and from the mass media. These do not exist in isolation from either each other or from our history-narratives.

What we feel is that we are in trouble. The whole edifice of the natural world, within which we impose our civilisation and our unique collective human  being, seems on the brink of collapse - at least, this is a common narrative which appears reiterated in a thousand other narratives, from Hollywood to MySpace.

Dealing with the collective human endeavour is too large a project at the moment, though some ideas arising from these thoughts will impinge upon this, too. What I am addressing here, in the first instance, is our individual and collective relationship with the world.

Here, I want to avoid the tendency towards anthropomorphism which is evident in the conception of ‘Gaia’ or ‘Mother Nature’. This is not a denial of these ideas, nor a devaluation of the usefulness of these ways of seeing our home and our place in it, but a recognition that such anthropomorphism can lead to confusion.

The first idea that I want to explore is that the way in which we live in the world - our relationship to it - is  wrong. Wrong, in the sense that we can see that our apparently inexorable pursuit of growth, of expansion, of ‘betterment’ is in conflict with the interest of our environment. The way in which we are conducting ourselves is damaging. The needs and desires which we have lead to destruction and devaluation of the space in which we live.

This might imply that I think we should aim to live ‘in harmony’ with nature. Such an idea is not in itself a bad one, but the presentation of it has become loaded with  other meanings, thanks to the interpretation of such a feeling by the defenders of the status quo as somehow risible. It has become associated with ‘hippies’, vegetarianism or environmental activism, romanticism or pastoralism; the idea of the ‘natural man’ which is brought to light in Rousseau and largely ridiculed as unrealistic by modern ‘pragmatists’. Because of the loading of meaning, we can’t make such a proposal without being faced with the hostility of the ‘Establishment’.

There are many, many other ways, though, in which we can discuss the wrongness of the ways in which we live; the inequity of  the death of others in the same world as our self-indulgence in luxury; the injustice of the competitive economic model, which seems to lead inevitably towards the virtual enslavement of some for the benefit of others; the persistent destruction of habitat, species, vitality itself, which results from certain industrial and economic activities; and the difficulty of balancing the (perceived) needs of the human society against the survival of the natural world.

We also understand that the conflict of our demands and the viability of natural systems looks, at first, to be an inevitability. And yet we are aware that we should be doing something, should be trying to stop this destructiveness. We know why; if we destroy the means of survival, we cannot ourselves survive; there exists no known mechanism of a purely man-made existence, devoid of the resources of nature. We want the resources which the world provides, but not the destruction that the extraction of such resources seems to demand.

Another time, I’ll think about some of the issues that this analysis brings up. For now,  I want to concentrate on a simple proposal. The argument for this is that, even though the reasoning is incomplete, the understanding of the need for it is already here, in our society. We know that this is what we have to do if we want to ’save the world’. The proposal is this:

The time has come to start a gentle revolution. (Perhaps, indeed, it has already begun).

Does this mean we need to overthrow the government? No. I am not calling for war, or bloody overthrow. The revolution needs to take two forms; one of action and one of understanding. To prevent the possibility of serious and shameful destruction and human suffering in the present and near future, action is necessary now. To develop a better relationship with the world in which we no longer threaten the destruction of the means of our existence, a new understanding is needed.

This is why I use the term ‘gentle’ revolution. It requires no violence - it is, really,  anti-violent in both its object and its methodology. But it does demand change. As suggested before; first and foremost a change in what we do, then a change in the way we relate to the world. This priority is not a logical one; normally, we would expect the second to precede the first. But in extremis, we must be active; decision first, reason as we go.

What ‘actions’ are we talking about?  The familiar and simple ones: small, painless (and normally costless) changes in the way we live our lives. These little actions are all manifestations of an attitude to our lives and the world; we must change the sense we have now of what it is we need, or want. I am not talking here of the fundamental needs which are denied too many in the world; security, health, sustenance. We must always allow that these needs must be met. I am talking of the ‘need’ to acquire, or possess objects; of the ‘need’ to consume; what sense does it make to have ourselves defined (and permit the definition) as the end-users of ‘product’? This is to see ourselves the way the salesman or economist wants us to see; as the ‘market’ for ’stuff’.

As well as changing the way in which we define ourselves as a ‘needing’  society, so we also must look at the simple interactions with resources which underpin our everyday lives. We have become, by accident or design, a society which first acquires, or consumes, then disposes. Worse than that, we don’t just dispose of the no-longer-wanted; we also waste. We waste at a level which is almost unimaginably vast. And we waste in a world where others are in want. The morality of this is too plain to need saying. In order to change this, we have to be more aware of the value of each object which we already possess, not as a token of our status in an artificially constructed ‘competitive’ society, but as an object sufficient to the need we felt when it was acquired; no longer the endless demand for ‘more’ or ‘better’ or ‘newer’ (what nonsensical creatures we are), but instead, an acceptance of ‘good enough’. We need to learn that we can never be ’satisfied’ by acquisition - it engenders a vicious circle - so we can find satisfaction (’satis’, after all, means ‘enough’) in already having what we need, and recognise the sense of a need to replace what we have with something ‘better’ as intrinsically non-sense.

The first actions of the revolution are inactions; we slow down the rate at which we consume the world’s resources. The consequent actions are replacements; having developed a sense of satisfaction, we go on to increase the effectiveness or utility of what we use. Though this at first appears to involves a contradiction (we must acquire more efficient objects to replace the less efficient ones we now have), it is only so in the short-term. By increasing the efficiency of our use of resources in our tools (generally, devices which require an external source of energy to use), and determining to stick with our choices for a reasonable ‘lifetime’ of the product (ie, not replacing it in six months time), within a short time, the saving exceeds the new consumption.

All of this is underpinned by something of which we are already aware, but which we will need to bring out into the open as a new narrative of existence if it is to persist; the responsibility we have to ourselves, our families, tribes and communities, to firstly maintain, then improve, the natural environment in which we all live and which which we all depend.

If I remember, I’ll follow this train of thought another time. In the meantime, I’m going to sort out the recycling and pump up the tyres on my bike.

Be - sensible.

Instead, a paean to a sport I love. You never know; CC may even get a mention.

The Rugby World Cup starts tomorrow. The ITV media website link is here. You can’t watch the videos if you’re reading this in Firefox, but otherwise, the intro to the game by Will Greenwood is helpful for total novices.

So what’s special about Rugby?

It is a combination of human vices and virtues compressed into eighty-odd minutes of real-time ritualised warfare. Of all international team sports, it is the most physically brutal and damaging, a succession of confrontations between honed athletes, one-on-one and in groups, which demands skill, technique, determination and fearlessness.

If you are a gridiron fan, this comparison might help: some of the players are 6′5″, weigh in at 250 lbs plus, and can run a sub-eleven hundred metres. The only body protection allowed is 50mm of foam padding sewn into an undershirt and a foam head protector (which few players bother with). The biggest players are 6′9″ and 300 lbs. Alongside them, you’ll see other players no more than 5′6″ and 160 lbs. Some are hugely strong in the upper body, some electrically fast-footed, some incredibly quick-thinking and tactically aware. The game is also played by seven-year old boys and girls, and amateurs at every imaginable level.

In addition to the physical, rugby is one of the few team sports which rewards intelligence. This isn’t true for all the players; sometimes thinking can get in the way, but until recently, when the game went professional, it was the only sport I know of where doctors and lawyers lined up alongside coal miners and steel workers. In this sense, it is a classless game. The best teams all have playmakers who have to be able to assess, evaluate and respond to unexpected situations and opportunities in a fraction of a second. It is one of the few sports which requires both detailed planning and preparation, yet is often won by surprise and initiative.

It is also an inclusive game; unlike many sports, you can be big and lumbering and still have a role to play, a specialist position that suits your physique. You can be short and bulky, wiry or tall and lean; because of the range of positions, there is a place for most physical types. Obviously, whoever you are, fitness and courage are baseline requirements.

It is also a game which cannot be won by a single player, no matter how good he is, though outstanding individual acts often turn games. The best teams combine all the attributes we admire; brains, strength, energy, determination, willpower. In an international match, several players may never have their name mentioned once, but their team mates and opponents know that their contribution makes a difference. And this takes me to one of the most appealing parts of the game; the friendliness.

It is normal, after 30 people have hit, tackled, trampled and pounced on one another with ruthless cruelty in their hearts, for all of them, on both teams, to get together and drink, buy each other rounds, talk about the game and the world. Enemies of five minutes ago become respected friends and co-players. there is always the feeling in rugby that it is, after all is said and done, a game, and the game ends when the final whistle blows. It is also normal for the referee to have a drink bought and share discussions in the bar - normally about difficult decisions he had to make, or how he has interpreted the rules.

i think that is enough for you to get an idea of why I love the game. Now for the CC bit. People talk about the scientific ‘debate’. If this were compared to a rugby match, the ‘debate’ between scientists and denialists or skeptics would be like the All-Blacks first team taking on St. Pancras School under-11 reserve team.

Finally, don’t be surprised if it sometimes goes quiet in the cave; there are three or four matches a day for the next few weeks to get through…

Stand back and admire…

Sorry I’ve been away and thank you for persisting with the Cave. Here is your reward.

As well as being the title of a little-known but highly influential book written in the 1930s by George Dangerfield (listed in the Top 100 most influential non-fiction books of the twentieth century!), TSDOLE is the name of a band.

They have some peculiar quirks, mostly (apparently) inspired by the idealism of youth, but they also write very good music. If you are familiar with Arcade Fire, TSDOLE have been compared to them, ‘with added tattoos’. The lead singer’s voice (that’s Adam, the handsome boy with the bright red Sideshow Bob haircut), has been described as ’so wistful it makes Neil Young sound like a dockworker’. They don’t speak to the audience, instead choosing to communicate with hand-written placards. They switch instruments between songs, and use a xylophone on a couple of tracks.

Hyperbolic, perhaps, but the Old Man just happens to quite like the sound they make. And he predicts big things for them, if circumstances fall right. So what does the Old Man know about music? Personal history bit here; in a past life, he stage managed almost every gig at university for three years, during the eighties. He looked after REM and The Fall, Motorhead (also did a bouncer’s job at that one!), Killing Joke, Everything but the Girl, Divine, Ivor Cutler, The Stranglers, The Bangles, and all the wannabees of the time… Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Doctor and the Medics, King…really, the list is very very long. So he has form, as the saying goes. After watching and listening to a couple of hundred acts, one starts to pick up on the differences between ‘nearly but not quite’ and ‘almost there’, all the way up to ‘Yep, this is okay.’

Of course, cynicism kicks in. Most bands are not as good as they think they are, very few are thought provoking as well as entertaining. TSDOLE are refreshing because they have energy, so much energy; a message, ideas about performance, and good tunes. The fact that they live in a cave near the old man is irrelevant; they’d be good even if he’d never met them. Here is a link to their myspace. There are three tracks from their first EP on there; all different in style and content, but with a recogniseable sound. ‘Good Old Fashioned War’ is due to be released for download on September 17th or so. It could be an anthem for Iraq (though it was no doubt never intended to be): ‘…we’ve heard it all before/last time we had a…/we’ve heard it all before/ that good old-fashioned war…’

Different from the usual post, but, in the spirit of Grist, an indulgence on the old man’s part. He’d love to know what you think.

Tomorrow, it’s back to the ice…

Be loved.

The cave will be quiet and empty next week, for the Old Man is off on his travels, until late next Friday. A lot of water will pass under the bridge between now and then, so there will be some catching up to be done.

In the meantime, I have been ‘inspired’ by several developments in thought and ideas from a range of sources, first amongst which must be James, William, Michael, Paul Baer and some of the kind people who have paid a visit to the cave recently.

So here is something for us all to ponder ’till I return. Please comment if you wish; I’ll catch up and post your words as soon as possible.

Climate Science, the Environmental ‘movement’, and international policy, are all dealing with how we might help shape the world our children, and their children, inherit. The fundamental subject matter is the future. If the arguments about whether the climate is changing and whether pollution is a ‘bad thing’ are broadly accepted as given, how should we proceed now?

Of course, it would be foolish to try to answer this question before we ask the preliminary one of import; what kind of world do we want to imagine for the future?

This is not simple. We so often tend to think in terms of the world of our immediate acquaintance, ‘our’ world, if you like, but here, there is the challenge of thinking about a much bigger picture. Why is this necessary? Because none of the really important problems which face us ‘at home’ are truly local problems; they are universal, in the sense that any policy, strategy, or ideal has to be workable for the planet as a whole. Climate change and pollution, energy production and consumerism, equity and justice, apply everywhere and impact everywhere.

So, what do we want for our descendants? More of some things, less of others. The chance to do some things, the chance to avoid others. Assuming, for a moment, that certain principles are given; a fairer world, one where there is less warfare or murder, one which recognises, at least in principle, the equality of value of the existence and survival of each and every inhabitant of the planet, a world where more people are free to live the way they choose to without fear of persecution, insofar as this does not prevent others from doing the same. These can be allowed as the barest minimum of our expectations. So how do we achieve them? Are there other important fundamental principles which we must (should?) take into account before starting on a road to Tomorrow?

Two requests, then; answers or suggestions for this: what is it we need to do, most urgently,  to ensure a better tomorrow?

Then answers or suggestions for this: What other principles should guide our decisions and our actions? In other words, what rules do we want to make for our new, exciting, dynamic, better world?

As always, be loved.

If you have come to the cave, oh traveller, your journey has been wasted; the Old Man is not in this place at this time (until Monday evening).

Please come back then; visitors are always welcome at the Cave.

By Levinas’ definition, it appears that being can be good - or, good-beyond-being, that predisposition towards absolute acceptance which permits the facing of the other to be without appropriation. But it also seems that the will to action, intentionality, is fraught with difficulty. As soon as we choose to impose ourselves upon the world through willed action (I also imagine willed inaction would count, too) we place ourselves in a position of power in relation to others. We also place ourselves in a context for them, from which, whether we wish it or not, most people will appropriate a meaning for us of our being. In particular, they will create the sense of a power dynamic between us.

One imagines it would be possible to defuse the power dynamic in the face-to-face, but even if so, it still becomes a hurdle to overcome, given that, for the other, to face us with absolute acceptance is not presumed. In the lived experience of the day-to-day, it would be surprising to meet many people for the good-beyond-being is a natural state, therefore we must expect to be treated as a threat, a challenge to identity, a power relationship, whether or not this is our own predisposition.

If this is the case, then what we choose to do - our occupation or ‘defining’ activity -  makes a difference.  It is presumed that there exists a desire to  open to others the possibility of the good-beyond-being, but to do this, one would have to be in a position where this possibility exists. For most others, then, what we do is important as means to understand the first facing. After this, if the openness of the self to the meaning of the other persists and is authentic, the possibility of dialogue which is truthful and just becomes possible. But in most cases, the first facing is a precursor to saying, rather than the opportunity for the saying itself.

Whilst in principle we can wish to be open to the possibility of true being with all others, in effect, by consequence of our physical limitations, we can only ever be for a limited number of others. (Though, arguably, creativity in writing or art may transcend this limitation to some degree, whilst not replacing the original facing). So where does the choice enter the picture? Who chooses the others for whom we have the possibility of meaning and for whom through us the possibility of meaningfulness becomes real? To some extent, this will be defined by the world/society in which are are thrown - the state. To some extent it will be a function of the shared languages with which saying becomes possible. There is also, always, the family, for whom saying and being starts and within which its first definition comes to pass.

But, importantly, it is we who, by our choices of action, define the wider ‘family’ within which the good-beyond-being has potential. What we become, where we fit in the wider dynamic of the social state, (whether by choice or accident), determines for us the people with whom our lives are lived. Therefore, the ultimate responsibility for opening the possibility of the saying of the other and the self is ours. What we do, whether or not the intentionality is constricting or defining, is the context in which the possibility of being and of authentic meaning exists. Therefore, it has power.

Be loved.

The mind can be a fickle beast. There are times when there would be no gain from trying to say anything, as it would always be corrupted by other, unimportant matters. So there are times when silence is best.

But the silence must end at some time, within the bounds of existence, at least. A side thought is whether, for the meaning of being, silence has the same status as darkness; the place of anxiety and terror, of shame and guilt. In which case, the saying would have the same status as light, as transcendent in itself. merely a speculation.

You were asking why you exist. You could have a purpose, or a primal cause in mind. There is a problem with the idea of a primal cause (a divine purpose, if you like), an original intention outside you, which you were created to realise. That problem is that such an intention, if it did exist, must be unknowable. You may complain that, even if this were so, through contemplation and sincere reflection, it can be possible to work out what that purpose might be. But to say this requires that you already assume the existence of that purpose. For some, this might be acceptable, for others, it cannot be.

Then you have to ask; from where, if I contemplate the divine purpose as a possibility, does my understanding come? Regardless of if the purpose is real or imagined, the understanding of the purpose has to come from you. You are the person who does the understanding. It is your consciousness of your being which is considered and which does the considering. If the divine purpose is imagined, this is where the source of it is; in the conscious understanding of yourself. if the divine purpose is not imagined, but is real, it can only come to light through the selfsame process. So there will always be doubt; am I sure that this is the correct interpretation of my ‘purpose’? Have I understood correctly.

You can see, though, that it would make no real difference; whether the purpose is imagined or real, you consciousness, your understanding, belongs to you. You are the source of the bringing-to-light of such a meaning. In other words, a search for divine purpose is of no greater or lesser value than a search for a personal, immediate and secular ‘purpose’. For this reason, I say to you, can you put aside the question of the divine? For you, this question may require an answer at some stage, but the answer isn’t needed now. Which leaves us with the question: ‘Does my life have a purpose?’

In the sense that you imagine that you may have been created to fulfil a specific purpose - a destiny - the answer must be no. To assume this is to assume that the future is set, or at least, your defining identity is set, prior to your existing. This cannot be; more accurately, it cannot be known. If it cannot be known, then it must be set aside. The meaning of your existence is not to be found in the puzzle of a destined purpose. You can create a story of your being which incorporates a purpose, but it must always be an interpretation, a metaphor. It may inform your actions and decisions, may influence the way you exist in the world, but it always remains only as your version, your story of yourself. For some, this can be enough, for others, the search for the meaning of being must continue.

Whichever you are, be loved.

Sometimes, the horror of the real overwhelms. The ability to be for-the-other dissipates and living in the world becomes difficult. Though this is not a necessary response to the real; the nausea, the fear, it can happen.

What can be done? If the possibility of the transcendent/immanent being is gone, temporarily, then, perhaps, being in the world has to go too, for a short while. This is not to speak of dying - though it can be used as a metaphor - but as abstraction, retreat.

it is not that there is any particular benefit in retreat, though this too is possible. It is that if there can be no moral presence, no accepting of the other, then the other should be avoided, for their sakes. When in the inauthentic condition of appropriative interaction we can only damage others and ourselves. This is why retreat may be needed.

And the language changes; the simple words become impossible and instead a complex web of metaphor and ambiguity replaces it, acting as insulation and the self’s own cry of ‘do not kill me’.

There are times when there is nothing to be heard, no clarity. At these times, even words become problems.

Be loved.