alanjjohnstone
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I wonder if those rural Brexiteers would have voted to leave if they knew their land-values would fall?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/07/brexit-end-boom-in-farmland-prices-forecasts-say
Analogies – how useful?
Global warming has heated the oceans by the equivalent of one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years, according to analysis of new research. But the heating has accelerated over that time as carbon emissions have risen, and was now the equivalent of between three and six atomic bombs per second.
Dana Nuccitelli, an environmental scientist who was not involved in the new research, said: “The ocean heating rate has increased as global warming has accelerated, and the value is somewhere between roughly three to six Hiroshima bombs per second in recent decades, depending on which dataset and which timeframe is used. This new study estimates the ocean heating rate at about three Hiroshima bombs per second for the period of 1990 to 2015, which is on the low end of other estimates.”
“I try not to make this type of calculation, simply because I find it worrisome,” said Prof Laure Zanna, at the University of Oxford, who led the new research. “We usually try to compare the heating to [human] energy use, to make it less scary.”
[confirming that the scientific community does try to express itself conservatively as Sussex previously suggested]
More than 90% of the heat trapped by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the seas, with just a few per cent heating the air, land and ice caps respectively. The vast amount of energy being added to the oceans drives sea-level rise and enables hurricanes and typhoons to become more intense.
US air-strikes continue, including hitting a hospital
The American back-pedal, Marcos
Robbo, I saw it too. But I see no point in adding anymore.
What had been posted by you and I is sufficient for any neutral visitor to their site to realise there was a debate which was being suppressed.
It’s there website and Artesian will always have the last word.
Folk who run Libcom must not be pleased at his dismissive attitude towards their forum’s attitude to discussion.
Yup, Paul’s recommendation is still one that I always try to follow on our blog, Matt, often amending the original text of what I copy and paste.
Compare saying that “the SPGB is leaderless” in contrast to “the SPGB is leader-free.”
The author shares a similar distain
“…The use of climate arguments to promote other conservation issues has a psychological counterpart in cultivating an image and a self-image of hardheaded realism, in which squishy nature lover reasons give way to rational utilitarian ones. You can traffic in data about sea levels and economic losses and crop failure risks to disguise the truth: Basically, you are a tree hugger. You are a whale lover, a butterfly gazer, a turtle caresser. Maybe you practice Druidic rituals or connect with the soul of Gaia in vision quests. The arguments you give about future impacts, 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees, meters of sea level rise, hectares of forest, energy return on energy investment for photovoltaics, methane clathrate release rates … these legitimize your mushy tree hugger sentiments…”
I think his argument goes deeper than you read into them.
How do we get people to react and respond to climate change.
NIMBYism? “Not-in-my-backyard thinking becomes not-in-anyone’s-backyard.”
But how do we link it? When there is a call to save the planet, what actually is it we are trying to save? The author begins from what each and everyone of us experience, our local “beauty spot”, our local interaction, the hiking and the hill-walking and the swimming in the local river, loch and beach. That the climate change campaign’s stats is a number-game that is failing to reach people.
From the blurb of his book
“This refocusing away from impending catastrophe and our inevitable doom cultivates meaningful emotional and psychological connections and provides real, actionable steps to caring for the earth.”
As one reviewer says, the author wants to present a hopeful and positive attitude and solution. Something that on another thread I am accused of not presenting.
But he is guilty of anthropomorphising our relationship with nature but aren’t we guilty of romanticizing somewhat when we use terms like human family to get our message across?
His language is not ours
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-kurdish-question-1997.html
Hat-tip to Darren for drawing attention to the fact that the Kurds featured in our columns long before others were concerned
Personalising climate change as a strategy
“Perhaps we have been speaking the wrong language, seeking a change of mind when really what we need is a change of heart.”
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/05/why-climate-change-message-isnt-working
(as an aside, in reference to another thread, can we adapt such an approach to the broader issue of social revolution?)
Robbo, I said it earlier to Dave
“I believe we are a movement not a monument and that we can evolve. ”
I said it to ALB about the broader conditions
” there are signs that workers are growing more combative after a period of subjugation”
But, of course, both statements require caveats but more importantly, it requires the will to set things into motion
Just as an aside. The odds of any combination of numbers being drawn in the Lotto game are always 1 in 13,983,816, and a sequence like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 is therefore just as likely as any other. But how many people actually pick that run of numbers? We would consider it as irrational but it isn’t.
But just to clarify, I have picked up on your suggestions for improvement, Robbo and was in no way implying you were insane 😉
There is a difference though from having a gloomy view of how things are progressing and being in denial of a downward trend. As can be seen from the content of my posts, I might be full of doom, but I have not given up hope and have made what I consider to be a strategy to stem the decline and hopefully reverse it.
Wasn’t he the left-back, and Bernstein playing on the right wing with Pannekoek and Luxemburg as the twin strikers…
Rio’s governor is on the same page as Bolsonaro and more like Filipino Duerte
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/04/wilson-witzel-rio-police-security-shoot-to-kill
ALB. my dislike is that it is repetitive phrase fetish. Are we still harking back to the days when the working class were divided between weekly and monthly paid (or even annual in the case of some professionals)
I’m very happy to use the term wage (or waged)workers. I see it as ritual to always add on “and salary”. What about self-employed workers who are paid as hired sub-contractor? Should we add this to include uber-workers, “wage, salary and fee worker” and for the unemployed further elaborate “wage, salary, fee and benefit recipient” workers
I was just making the point that when we say wages – people understand full well its usage and we don’t need to keep on qualifying it all the time with the word “salary” as many do in their writings. Who ever heard of the “abolition of the salary system”? Who has ever replaced “wage-slavery” with “salary-slavery”.
Nor am I very fond of the terms proletariat or bourgeoisie or lumpen-proletariat or petty-bourgeois. Say what we mean in simple terms even if we use a few extra words of explanation and not import technical language.
I also try my best when copying and pasting for the blog to stop the capitalization of Socialism and other words like Working Class etc etc…Just another pet hate of past custom.
