THERE WILL BE TIME

PondHawk, in a comment at Dot Earth, writes:

I had a long discussion with a relative who doubts global warming. ... Finally, he pointed out the nearest oceanside city isn't flooded with sea water. I quit the discussion then, after saying, 'So you're going to wait until cities are flooded? That's way too late.' I find it frustrating to talk to people with that frame of mind.

Me too! Indeed, those comments always make me think of lines from Eliot's great poem:

... indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
(with apologies to T.S. Eliot)

The only thing that doesn't work in this imagery is that it's not about women "talking of Michelangelo." It's pretty serious guys in suits talking about nonsense.

THE EVANGELIST

A SPECIAL SHOUT FROM DAVID SUZUKI



David Suzuki, the eco-conscience of Canada, has issued an emergency alert:

Tell MPs and the Prime Minister to respect democracy and heed the will of Canadians

Stephen Harper has done what he promised never to do: allow the Senate to go against the will of the majority of Members of Parliament and the Canadian public. On November 16, after a surprise vote and without any debate, unelected Conservative senators killed the Climate Change Accountability Act. The Act would have made government accountable for putting in place the solutions to reduce global warming emissions to safe levels – in line with targets that leading scientists say are necessary to avoid the devastating consequences of uncontrolled climate change. It was overwhelmingly supported by and passed in the elected House of Commons, thanks in part to the support of Canadians from across the country.

This decision by Conservative senators to avoid debate and call a snap vote shows disrespect for our democracy and for Canadians, who time and again have told our elected representatives that we want the federal government to act on the most serious threat facing our country and the world.

[UPDATE: There's more in-depth information in a report from IPS.]

Please call or write the Prime Minister and your Member of Parliament to let them know that we expect them to live up to their responsibility to be accountable to the will of Canadians and our democracy. Consider also sending a letter to your local newspaper to let others know how you feel.

Use the easy email form here.

Read the Globe and Mail story here.

TWO VIEWS OF THE PANTANAL

And from Wikipedia,

"[Brazil's] Pantanal ecosystem is also thought to be home to 1000 bird species, 400 fish species, 300 mammalian species, 480 reptile species and over 9000 different subspecies of invertebrates."

THREATS TO THE PANTANAL

The Pantanal region includes essential sanctuaries for migratory birds, critical nursery grounds for aquatic life, and refuges for such creatures as the black caiman, deer, and jaguar.

The main human activities which threaten the Pantanal ecosystems are:

Cattle-ranching

Approximately 99% of the land in the Pantanal is privately owned for
the purpose of agriculture and ranching

There are 2500 fazendas in the region and up to eight million cattle.

Erosion and sedimentation caused by this activity alter the soil and
hydrological characteristics of Pantanal flood-plain ecosystems with
the consequence that native species are threatened by the change in
ecosystem variables.

Uncontrolled tourism and over use of natural resources.

Commercial fishing

Fishing is focused on only a few species and is probably not sustainable.

National and international sport fishing

The Paraguay river and its tributaries are the main focus for fishing
activities.

Hunting and smuggling of endangered species

Reptile, wild cat and parrot species are particularly at risk from the
smuggling industry due to their high value on the black market.

Deforestation

Deforestation is more relevant to elevated areas of the Pantanal which
contain forest stands than low-land grassy areas.

Silt run-off from deforested highlands alters soil hydrology and is a
significant threat to the Pantanal.

Mercury pollution from gold mining operations

The Pantanal is a natural water treatment system system as it removes
chemicals, including pollutants, from water. However, over-pollution from
industrial development (especially gold mining) can harm native flora and
fauna.

Pollution from agro-industrial plants

Water quality in the Pantanal was not significantly impacted as
of 2002

Recent high flooding has caused inundation of cultivated areas
surrounding the park. The receding flood waters carried large amounts of
pesticides back into the rivers and lakes, killing a great number of fish.

Pollution from sewage systems

Development of land for transport (shipping canals and raised roads)

The proposed plan to dredge the Paraguay and Parana Rivers to allow
ocean-going ships to travel further inland is of particular concern and
could affect the hydrology (flooding and drainage cycles) of the region,
and therefore impact the ecosystem.

AN INCONVENIENT MIND?

"An Inconvenient Mind" is the title of a recent Dot Earth post in which Andrew Revkin invites folks to weigh in on how the limits of the human mind might be limiting our capacity to accept the scientific consensus about the dire threats posed by global warming. The views of several academic students of mind and human behavior provided the basis for speculation and reader response.

Personally, I don't like to "shrink" the problem in this way. It feels too much like "blaming the victim. Here's my comment:

Andy,

I resist the temptation to reach for a psychological explanation of our dilemma. "An Inconvenient Mind" feels too much like "blaming the victim." Perhaps it is inconvenient that our minds are not omniscient so that we might all see the same picture but that is the way it is. That is why we argue instead from our points-of-view and have only an imperfect politics to produce agreement on action.

On really big questions where no one knows all with clarifying precision we are buffeted by the information flows of a media-driven world that makes propaganda -- meaning any public relations supporting any agenda (true or false) -- all important. The climate hawks got off to a pretty good start with Gore's propaganda and the opposition counter-attacked with a more multifaceted and much better funded propaganda campaign. Bottom line is that it's not about our minds but about (no pun intended) whose ox gets gored and the limited ability of politics to resolve conflict.

In the old days of the Great Iroquois Confederacy (which gave a thousand years of peace and helped form the US Constitution) if the chiefs could not agree the matter was turned over to the Clan Mothers who were asked a single question: "What would be best for the seventh generation to come?"

Nowadays, in our globalized everything (including politics) the chiefs can't agree and big Clan Mother or Mother Earth will make the Seventh Generation call by triggering new evolutionary forces. Will it be good or bad and for whom and when is not known but Pancho's immortal words from the Man of La Mancha come to mind, "When the rock and the pitcher decide to fight, it's not going to be good for the pitcher."

The developmental path chosen by ever-multiplying humans has been a long conquest of nature. Inconvenient or not, She will fight back. And, this is not a "mind-trip."

SUPER MARMIKA

 




Super Grandma Therapy to the Rescue

I think we need more like her.

Grandma's Superhero Therapy (18 photos)
Posted by Eugene on November 16, 2010 at 4:30pm
View Eugene's blog

A few years ago, French photographer Sacha Goldberger found his 91-year-old Hungarian grandmother Frederika feeling lonely and depressed. To cheer her up, he suggested that they shoot a series of outrageous photographs in unusual costumes, poses, and locations. Grandma reluctantly agreed, but once they got rolling, she couldn't stop smiling.

Frederika was born in Budapest 20 years before World War II. During the war, at the peril of her own life, she courageously saved the lives of ten people. When asked how, Goldberger told us "she hid the Jewish people she knew, moving them around to different places everyday." As a survivor of Nazism and Communism, she then immigrated away from Hungary to France, forced by the Communist regime to leave her homeland illegally or face death.

Aside from great strength, Frederika has an incredible sense of humor, one that defies time and misfortune. She is funny and cynical, always mocking the people that she loves.

With the unexpected success of this series, titled "Mamika," Goldberger created a MySpace page for his grandmother. She now has over 2,200 friends and receives messages like: "You're the grandmother that I have dreamed of, would you adopt me?" and " You made my day, I hope to be like you at your age."

Initially, she did not understand why all these people wrote to congratulate her. Then, little by little, she realized that her story conveyed a message of hope and joy. In all those pictures, she posed with the utmost enthusiasm. Now, after the set, Goldberger shares that his grandmother has never shown even a trace of depression. Perhaps it's because her story serves some sort of purpose. That through the warm words of newfound friends, she's reminded of just how lucky she is to be alive.

We got in touch with Sacha Goldberger, the grandson and talented photographer to ask him more about his background and creative process. He told us this: "I've been photographing for four years now and before that I worked as a creative director. My grandmother is very professional. I'd show her some poses, and she'd propose some of her own. I like to tell stories and I also work with some very creative friends."

CONCRETE SKY

THE DANGER OF COSMIC GENIUS

Illustration: Marc Yankus;       Photo of Freeman Dyson: Imke Lass/Redux


In the range of his genius, Freeman Dyson is heir to Einstein—a visionary who has reshaped thinking in fields from math to astrophysics to medicine, and who has conceived nuclear-propelled spaceships designed to transport human colonists to distant planets. And yet on the matter of global warming he is, as an outspoken skeptic, dead wrong: wrong on the facts, wrong on the science. How could someone as smart as Dyson be so dumb about the environment? The answer lies in his almost religious faith in the power of man and science to bring nature to heel.

There is a GREAT article at The Atlantic by Kenneth Brower -- the son of Archdruid David Brower -- on the main religious schism of our time, which is between technohubris and ecohumility.

Here's a snippet:

Among intelligent nonexperts who have weighed in on climate change, Freeman Dyson has become, now that Michael Crichton is dead, perhaps our most prominent global-warming skeptic. Charlie Rose began his interview with questions about the climate. Dyson answered that he remained very skeptical about the dangers of global warming. He did not believe the pronouncements of the experts. He did not claim to be an expert himself, so he would not argue the details with anybody; he had not given much time to the issue and did not pretend to know the real answers, but what he knew for sure was that the global-warming experts did not know the answers, either.

Dyson did not deny that the world was getting warmer. What he doubted was the models of the climatologists, and the grave consequences they predicted, and the supposition that global warming is bad. “I went to Greenland myself, where the warming is most extreme,” he said. “And it’s quite spectacular, of course, what you see in Greenland. But what is also true is, the people there love it. The people there hope it continues. It makes their lives a lot more pleasant.”

....

Many of Dyson’s facts on global warming are wrong, as the scientists who have done actual research on the subject point out, but more disconcerting is the selective way he gathers his information and the peculiar conceptual framework into which he inserts it.

It is true that plants grow better with increases in carbon dioxide. (Photosynthesis is the conversion of carbon dioxide and sunlight into organic compounds, so the more CO2 and sunlight, the better, up to a point.) If a plant’s survival depended only on its metabolism—if all it had to do was photosynthesize—then increased CO2 in the atmosphere might indeed be a good thing. But plants happen to grow in these little universes we call ecosystems, where they are sustained by complex webs of interdependency with fungi, microbes, animals, and other plants. Much of this mutually dependent life is adapted to narrow temperature and rainfall regimes, and these biomes are collapsing everywhere.

Plants do grow better with increased CO2, but not when deprived of water. Water is a vanishing commodity in the American West, where I live, and where, like the Australians and Sudanese and many others, we are enduring a succession of increasingly prolonged and severe droughts. Drought is a paleontological fact in the American West, but the latest desiccations have a new signature, and my region’s climatologists, hydrologists, foresters, and water managers are nearly unanimous in their conviction that what we are seeing now is climate change, the anthropogenic kind, a consequence of too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Drought-induced stress increases plants’ susceptibility to disease, and tree diseases are epidemic now in my home landscape and elsewhere. Plants grow better with increased CO2, but not when they are dead snags.

....

How could someone as brilliant as Freeman Dyson take the positions he does on global warming and other environmental issues?

I have a number of theories.

Read on at The Atlantic

ACRE AND CALIFORNIA LINKED IN HISTORIC PACT

Good news from the doing something about climate change and deforestation front.


Go to original article and links.


Historic pact to protect tropical forests will link state-level carbon markets in U.S., Brazil, Mexico


Historic pact to protect tropical forests will link state-level carbon markets in U.S., Brazil, Mexico

EthiopianReview.com | November 16th, 2010 at 11:38 pm

More great news from California on the global climate change front. Today the state joined with the Brazilian state of Acre and the Mexican state of Chiapas in a historic achievement to curb climate change through reducing deforestation. (As we've mentioned before, the cutting and burning of tropical forests accounts for about 15% of global carbon dioxide emissions — more than all of the cars and trucks in the world produce.)

Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Binho Marques of Acre, Brazil, and Juan Sabines Guerrero of Chiapas, Mexico announced this afternoon that they had agreed to form a Working Group to promote efforts on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) at the "sub-national," or state, level.

The agreement calls for the Working Group to make recommendations to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) by next October on how California can link its emerging carbon market to the REDD programs in Acre, Chiapas and potentially other states or provinces around the world.

EDF President Fred Krupp called the pact:

a significant and concrete step to protect the climate by protecting the world’s forests. It also is a precedent-setting initiative as countries gear up for international climate change negotiations in December.

Governor Binho Marques of Acre, one of the poorest and most isolated — but also environmentally progressive — states in the Brazilian Amazon, said:

Acre has opted for development based on preserving and wisely using its forests to honor of Chico Mendes’ dream, which echoed around the world two decades ago. We seek to consolidate sustainable development through a low carbon, high social equity economy. This partnership between our states will allow our economies to grow and address global climate change.

This agreement comes just two weeks after California voters soundly rejected the industry-backed ballot Proposition 23, which would have suspended implementation of the state's landmark global warming law.

EDF Tropical Forests Director Steve Schwartzman said the agreement shows "international climate leadership," and:

It clearly demonstrates that we can start to effectively combat climate change and stop deforestation in the absence of a national policy and an international agreement.

California, Acre and Chiapas are members of the Governor’s Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF), a collaboration of 14 states and provinces in the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Nigeria that was created at the first Governor’s Global Climate Summit in 2008.

Read more in EDF's news release: Tropical Forests Protection Pact Hailed for Protecting Climate

WILLIE WONKA'S TUNNEL TO HELL



David Pescovitz has a great little riff on it at Boing Boing.

Last night, my 4-year-old son and I watched the original Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory from 1971. ... I had forgotten that the tunnel scene is so deeply dark and psychedelic. Of course Wonka's poem, below, is amazing, but my favorite line from that part is spoken by Violet Beauregarde: "What is this, a freak out?" Hell yes it is. At one point, I asked my son if he was scared and he calmly responded, "No, because I'm not in that tunnel."

There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going.
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing.
Is it raining?
Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a blowing?

Not a speck of light is showing
so the danger must be growing.
Are the fires of hell a glowing?
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
Yes! The danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing. And they're certainly not showing
any signs that they are slowing!

RIO BRANCO: A GRINGO'S VIEW

("Dirty" Colors)

"Eternity is in love with the productions of time"
-- William Blake


There's a very special patina that is the product of time, weather and the dance of the elements.

BLOGGING IS LIKE THIS

Bottle from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

I've often felt that blogging was like stuffing messages into bottles and floating them to sea. You never know upon what shore they may land or to what depths they may travel.

"Bottle" by Kirsten Lepore has won one of nine "community choice" awards at Vimeo.

FANTA KONATÊ AT CLÍNIO BRANDÃO

November is Black Awareness month in Brazil. The official day is November 20th but things got started early in Rio Branco with a very special visit from Fanta Konatê, Guinean singer/dancer and daughter of Master Djembefola Famoudou Konatê and her partner and music therapist Luis Kinugawa.





In addition to three performances of Fanta's remarkable troupe there were two workshops. The one at the elementary school Clínio Brandão (above video) liberated many magical moments when the powerfully free "kid energies" were unleashed and everyone from the students to the school principal was drawn into this extraordinary celebration of the vitality of life.

Actually, it was a conjunction of two very special energies. The Clínio Brandão school has won many awards for excellence in education. It began as a working class school that served the worker families and the rural poor at the edge of town across the road from the brick factory and now, many years later, it has retained a similar demographic.








One of the most interesting stories occurred some years back when the school system proposed to cut cut down the trees planted inside the school compound to create a soccer field (a must have in Brazil).





But the students and teachers resisted saying that they wanted their little "forest" more than an athletic field and they prevailed.


Here are more pics of the school and the workshop:






Nowadays, Fanta and Luis travel widely in Brazil and abroad promoting their special dream of building the Manden Cultural Development Center in Guinea. Check it out. It sounds like a beautiful project.

PUSHING THE SHIT

A dung beetle in Acre Brazil rolls its treasure home.

DECONSTRUCTION

Graffiti among the ruins of an old building in Rio Branco AC Brazil.

Whew, lot going on here. I'm still contemplating it.

View large size here.