Chris Jordan’s presentation at TED is sobering. I’m not up to date in the field of contemporary art but I can’t imagine that there is a more important artist for our time. His message to try and help us understand our culture better so that we might consciously change is exactly what we need.

On a tangential note: I used to play the game Civilization II for hours. ( Civ is a simulation game where you manage the development of a civilization from huts to space ships. ) I found it fascinating to manage the growth of a civilization. Although climate, and the number of competing civilizations, were the biggest factors in how a game began they all ended the same for me. By the 1500s I would have dominated the world and from there all my time was spent building a vast, sprawling civilization that transformed every inch of the land into a city. It’s just what I did.

But the simulation is very good. Near the end all my efforts in managing the civilization were in effect to clean up the mess that I created to get to that point. In the game industrialization comes at the cost of, you guessed it, global warming. So once industrialization was well under way I had access to create solar plants and recycling centers.

By the very end of the game every city had maxed out its productivity, taxes were set to practically nothing, and there was no military. It took a huge management effort to get my civilization to that point but that’s what always happened.

Oddly enough I think that’s why I’m optimistic that we’ll reach that same state in our real civilization. But there was one major difference: I was the benevolent despot that managed single handedly. Any chance we could manage that in a global civilization with conflicting cultures and governments?

In today’s NASA/JPL newsletter they write about an article that will appear in the journal Science which states:

“the changes to Greenland’s glaciers in the past decade are widespread, large and sustained over time. They are progressively affecting the entire ice sheet and increasing its contribution to global sea level rise.”

That’s no big shocker. I’ve read numerous reports that all conclude the same thing. This is just another drop in the bucket - pun intended.

Lets skip the debate over the causes, or even existence of global warming, for just a moment. There is no denying that the media is paying closer attention and writing more and more about it. That influences our perceptions no matter what we think is the cause. If you believe that global warming is real and has anthropogenic roots then these stories just add fuel to the fire - gosh, is that another pun?

If you believe that this is just a temporary phase that the climate is going through or perhaps even that this is some sort of global environmentalists conspiracy, then the increase in reporting, again, enhances your preconceptions.

While in college my focus in philosophy was epistemology: the study of knowledge (read more about episemology at Wikipedia.). Of course I’m interested in what people believe but more interested in why they believe the things they do.

So what do you believe and why?

I myself believe that global warming is a real trend and caused by humans. Beyond that I hope both cases are true. Now I’m wondering - and maybe you are to - why I would hope such a thing. If global warming is really happening then it will undoubtedly cause a great deal of tumult around the world. Of course I feel that my hopes are independent of reality so my hoping will not directly affect anyone. I still do my part to conserve, not that I think it will do any good.

Bottom line is that I’ve always felt that stagnation is boring and change - the more the better - is eventually a good thing. I’m really looking forward to seeing how all this turns out.

Here’s a nicely written essay about global warming and happy people and other things.

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_3527503

Here’s a great blog posting on GW from one of the editors at ScientificAmerican.com - SciAm.com

Could Global Warming Be Worse Than You Think?

The blog is well referenced with many good ancillary links to other publications and studies.

Just when you thought Global Warming was only going to be devistating.

New scientific theory, hydrate hypothesis, suggests global warming catastrophe

This article comes from a site called “planetSave.com”. So they migth be a little biased. They certainly didn’t try to tone it down and present opposing views or anything.

I saw a show on PBS/Discovery/TLC years ago about this topic so this isn’t anything new. Since then I’ve wondered what affect the warming ocean would have on the hydrates under the ocean floor. The show had some footage from an oil platform where it looked like the ocean was boiling. It was just the methane bubbling up, and it’s certainly not hot. But if these deposits started a chain reaction of gassing? Well, that would be among the worst case scenarios that anyone could imagine for this planet.

One of the main arguing points that global warming skeptics have had on their side is the discrepancy between observed temperatures in the troposphere and what computer models predict. The computer models predict that f, in fact, the climate is warming then the troposphere should be warming as well. However, weather balloon measurements and satellite data indicate that the troposphere is not warming. Or is it…

Researchers from Yale University have found that the problem is with the data, not the models.

The Economist has a short article on the subject here: An unexplained anomaly in the climate seems to have been the result of bad data.

If you want something a little more meaty then try reading this at RealClimate.com: A Mistake with Repercussions

Note: I’m playing fast and loose with history here. The details aren’t important. It’s the perceptions that I’m speaking to.

In college I had a professor who was talking to the class about the Napoleonic wars. He set the stage for us by telling us how Europe was transitioning into a modern society and they knew it. For the first time in history people were looking at their present and realizing that it was different than the past.

You know how sometimes someone will ask you how your day was and you say, “Same old. Same old.” That’s how life was before around the 1700s, give or take a few hundred years. Point is that most men and women did what their mothers and fathers had done and that’s pretty much how life had been for generations enumerable.

The point here is that Europeans in the 1800s had a sence that they were permanently different than their ancestors and that maybe they wouldn’t even have any more wars. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Then of course everything went to pot when Napoleon started marching around the continent. Not only were they disappointed that they were back at war but this was really bad. They had cannons and muskets and things that made a real mess out of some really nice estates. Not to mention the raping and pillaging that the soldiers did along the way which is pretty much what soldiers had always done.

So just when they thought they were finally pulling themselves out of the mud they fell into a shit hole.

That’s the essence of what my professor was communicating to us.

I raised my hand and said, “But you know, we did get Beethoven’s 9th Symphony out of it.” That pretty much got me a “globber” from everyone in the class including the professor.

My point was that, while it may have been really crappy for those stuck in the mess it’s really pretty far removed from us now. Plus we’ve seen things like the Holocaust and such that makes the Napoleonic wars look like a garden party.

But it was the tragedy of those times that inspired Beethoven’s 9th. That symphony will endure. When the Alps are worn down into gentle rolling hills the air will still occasionally vibrate to the tune of Beethoven’s 9th.

So were the Napoleonic wars bad? Is it appropriate to label something historical in that way? Certainly as we distance ourselves from it we are more inclined to focus on the greatness that they produced instead of the horror they suffered.

So what of today? How will people of the future view the events of today and near future? I think of this often when I think of what might be in store for humanity if global warming turns into a worse case scenario.

Perhaps in the generations to follow they will think of us today, the agents of global warming, as the unknowing saviors of the human race. It could be our actions that in the immediate future will be universally considered “bad” that leads to the next evolution of humanity into a true global society. And so our distant children will be thankful that we blundered yet gave birth to something they cherish.

Then again, maybe we’re all doomed. At any rate. I often think of Shakespeare’s quote in Hamlet who said, “There is nothing neither good nor bad. But thinking makes it so.”

Let me say up front that there is ample reason to be a global warming skeptic. Especially if one is skeptical about the anthropogenic affects. There is no doubt that earth has undergone huge climate variations in the past. From a “Snowball Earth” to a mostly tropical climate through the Jurassic.

With that said, “What the frak are skeptics thinking?”

Really?

Dogma once held that the Earth was the center of the Universe. Then a guy comes along and says, “You know, I have this model of the solar system that works pretty darn good with the Sun at the center of the solar system.” (*Note: that’s not completely accurate.)

Dogma responds, rather vehemently, that dogma is correct because it’s dogma.

Some might call that a circular argument. But a dogmatist would respond to that by saying, “You’re being inconsistent because you think that it’s okay for planets to go in circles but not arguments.” This is the sort of statement that really stupid people fall for.

Another guy had a fairly simple idea that would explain the wild diversity of nature based entirely on who gets laid. He loosened a shit storm that is still raging despite an overwhelming body of evidence. I mean if evidence had mass then the theory of evolution would collapse into a black hole. Going along with that analogy, skeptics must have some exotic method of reasoning that is not effected by data.

What else? Space travel is not possible; heavier than air machines won’t fly; heart surgery can’t be done not to mention brain surgery; Everest can’t be climbed; continents don’t move; God does not play dice with the Universe . . . I could go on, and on.

Skeptics have such a horrible batting average that if skepticism could be measured it would count as scientific evidence for a theory. I can see the headlines now, “Engineers build space ship capable of faster than light travel powered by skepticism that it can’t be done.”

One might say that skeptics keep people from being overly gullible. But how many gullible people fall for the argument of the skeptic only to eventually end up feeling gullible?

After much thought I have come up with a theory to explain skepticism. Most people don’t want to believe things. And they certainly don’t want to understand things. They want to Know things - with a capital “K”. How do you know something? You listen to an authority figure talk. They tell you what you there is to know.

Where do authority figures get their knowledge from? Simple, they figure out what it is that they need to get people to know so that they can get what they want.

So if you don’t believe in my theory then I’m going to argue that that is evidence to support my theory.

Ha! Take that you skeptic.

*The Copernican model was not as accurate at predicting planetary movements as the ruling Polyatomic model because Copernicus used circles instead of ellipsis. Once Kepler fixed the Copernican model it worked much better than the Ptolemaic.

Global warming is about to hit high gear is a wonderful interview with Bill McKibben from the Citizen-Times.com from Ashville, NC. McKibben has written numerous books about nature and global warming.

Here’s some good advice about taking care of your pets in the event of bad weather.