Thursday, January 15, 2009

"Climate Wars"

Last night I listened to a program on a national Canadian station (CBC) about global warming, "Climate Wars." The narrator spoke about, among other things, "climate change denial." He spoke about how hot the planet was becoming. After the show the Canadian news came on. "Canada is still locked in a deep-freeze." The entire country has been blanketed in ice for months.

I was reminded about the classic Twilight Zone episode about a woman trying to survive as the sun moves closer and closer to our planet. It's an unprecedented heat wave. Just as conditions reach a terrible climax she wakes up. It turns out the sun is in fact moving away from us, and she's in an unprecedented deep-freeze.

Regarding experts: either they're misreading the data, or they're receiving flawed or gimmicked data.

Curious that scientists make "unarguable" predictions about thirty years out, but couldn't predict what's happening right now.

Scientists are not immune from gullibility. I recall the case of psychic Uri Geller, who could bend spoons and such with his brain waves. He passed with glowing reviews endless panels of scientists. "Experts." Then one day a magician caught his act and exposed him as a quack.
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What does this have to do with literature?

The "experts" are clearly wrong in that case also.

9 comments:

Karl Wenclas said...

Also see "COLD!!!" at my Detroit blog.

scofflaw said...

What is the cause of Global Warming?
As causes go pretty much the same as these Deep Freezes...

Climate Changes brought on by pollution... and the movement of cold water and air out from the Artic and Anartic...

If as if to make a gentle suggestion that I on't see anywhere i n your strokes and par ratio on this subject--- why not go after the neo-liberal heart of the matter of the scam that isn't much been talked about by the experts 'cos they're in cahoots..
Also just like the lit/crit experts really talking heads no better no worse than the journalists- talking heads who were on the Bush regime (and probably Israeli State, it should be clearly seen especially now)payola reward mills up to and continuing after the Iraqi War...
further more not unlike the CIAKGB and lit pogrom that you are keeping most courageously in the public (one can only hope?) eye!

King Wenclas said...

It's so cold that the heat went on on my refrigerator.

King Wenclas said...

p.s. There is no global warming. That's the point.
Pollution's a problem for other reasons. Global temperature always varies and has always varied. It's affected more by the activity of sunspots than anything we ant-like humans accomplish.

scofflaw said...

NONSENSE! PSEUDO-SCIENCE...!!!

Oh, yeh, previous post meant to mention the carbon credit scam, "futures" and "hedged" bets in the neo-liberal fast tracks... where have we seen this before I wonder ?

Great sharp and beautifully measured verse by you up on ULAPoetry&Fiction and the HappyAmerican Lit blogspots...

genuine articles seriously, thanks for the treats!

Detroit seems to have elicited from you the effect claimed for Rimbaud by Auden in WHs poem---
"in him rhetoric burst like a pipe/ the cold had made a poet..."

King Wenclas said...

Pure hyperbole. . . .

Anonymous said...

Karl, what the hell are you talking about. Global Warming is real.

A) Serious people don't even hesitate about it anymore. All the data is showing its worse than we ever thought it would be.

B) The solutions to climate change are all about making this a cleaner, less polluted, less wasteful, more efficient society.

Why wouldn't we just do that anyway? Worst case scenario: we were totally wrong. Climate change was a myth, but... whoops! Everything works better, stinks less and people are getting sick vastly less.

God, wouldn't that be awful?

There's no intelligent reason not to act on climate change. But... it is real. It really is. Ask the Philadelphia Water Department, which is working to completely change the way it manages stormwater, because the nature of storms is changing so dramatically in the area that it can't cope with them the same way anymore.

BradyDale said...

That last post wasn't anonymous... it was from me. The Name/URL box didn't work, for some reason. Weird.

King Wenclas said...

When I get a chance, Brady, I'll discuss the subject further. The Theory is absurd when you think about it. Truly.
Again, I'm not against fighting pollution. Not at all! I also have a smaller carbon footprint, and pollute less, than anyone I know.
But-- I ask for intellectual honesty. Good intentions aren't enough. In the long run, it serves only to discredit a cause.