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– I wrestle with being inarticulate and I ache to communicate what I feel. Some things just don’t register as words on the page. We read about how many people are dying in Iraq, about how many children are starving each day and about how many species are going extinct around us. We read these things – but we somehow don’t believe them with our heart.

– And, typically, we won’t believe them until we see a dead child in front of us or the carnage of a terrorist’s bomb’s victims splattered on the walls and ground around us. We won’t believe them until the theoretical becomes tangible, unavoidable and immediate. Most of us live in a world of dreams far removed from our world’s terrible realities.

– I feel this way about this beautiful biological world around us. Eden, I call it and what’s going to happen – I call that Eden Lost. I read the other day that there is a type of Tiger in Russia which has about 300 members left – 300 between it and extinction. And there isn’t much on the horizon to change the prognosis. The Mountain Gorillas of Africa are vanishing like the morning’s mist – sacrificed in the chaos of the political instability around them. The next generation born to man will certainly come to consciousness in a world without many of the iconic animals that have been a part of this world since long before mankind’s first word or crude cave painting.

– These animals we share the planet with have, from our POV, always been here. It is hard to realize that, soon, they will not. It is inconceivable to imagine, for me. How can something like an entire species be allowed to go extinct when we can prevent it? It’s like knowing someone you love is going to be killed in a car wreck and yet there’s is nothing you can say or do to prevent it. The second hand is sweeping and you know their time is growing shorter as the minutes pass. And, soon, that irreversible moment will pass and all time will be divided into ‘before’, when they existed and could have been saved, and ‘after’ when no matter how we wring our hands and lament, they cannot. Gorillas, Orangutans, Tigers, Rhinoceros, Elephants, … a dirge, if ever I heard one.

– Perhaps you are wondering what all of this – poignant as it might be – has to do with the title of this post, “of the people, by the people, and for the people“?

– Well, I’m reading the third book in Kim Stanley Robinson’s current trilogy, Sixty Days and Counting. In his book, a new president of the United States has just been elected and this president is giving his inauguration speech and as I read it, I realized that this fictional president ‘got’ what I was just trying to say, above.

– How I wish we really had a President like this one. I wonder if even Al Gore, if he ran and was elected, would be so straight ahead about the issues and the tasks before us if we are to avoid a deep and lasting calamity for ourselves and all the innocent species who have been so unlucky as to have to share this world with us – the most destructive of species.

– I hope Robinson will not object if I quote a bit of his new book here. I want to share his President’s inauguration speech with you. And if I could share it with Al Gore, I would. If you know the man, buy him a copy of Robinson’s trilogy and whisper in his ear that he may be the only thing between us and the certain nightmares of those who will follow us.

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“Fellow Americans,” he said, pacing his speech to the reverb of the loud-speakers, “you have entrusted me with the job of president during a difficult time. The crisis we face now, of abrupt climate change and crippling damage to the biosphere, is a very dangerous one, to be sure. But we are not at war with anyone, and in fact we face a challenge that all humanity has to meet together. On this podium, Franklin Roosevelt said, ‘This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.’ Now it’s true again. We are the generation that has to deal with the profound destruction that will be caused by the global warming that has already been set in motion. The potential disruption of the natural order is so great that scientists warn of a mass extinction event. Losses on that scale would endanger all humanity, and so we cannot fail to address the threat. The lives of our children, and all their descendants, depends on us doing so.

“So, like FDR and his generation, we have to face the great challenge of our time. We have to use our government to organize a total social response to the problem. That took courage then, and we will need courage now. In the years since we used our government to help get us out of the Great Depression, it has sometimes been fashionable to belittle the American as some kind of foreign burden laid on us. That attitude is nothing more than an attack on American history, deliberately designed to shift power away from the American people. I want us to remember how Abraham Lincoln said it: ‘that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this Earth.’ This is the crucial concept of American democracy – that government expresses what the majority of us would like to do as a society. Its us. We do it to us and for us. I believe this reminder is so important that I intend to add the defining phrase ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’ everytime I use the word ‘government,’ and I intend to do all I can to make that phrase a true description. it will make me even more long-winded than I was before, but I am willing to pay that price, and you are going to have to pay it with me.

“So, this winter, with your approval and support, I intend to instruct my team in the executive branch of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, to initiate a series of federal actions and changes designed to meet the problem of global climate change head-on. We will deal with it as a society working together, and working with the rest of the world. Its a global project, and so I will go to the United nations and tell them that the United States is ready to join the international effort. We will also help the underdeveloped world to develop using clean technology, so that the good aspects of development will not be drowned in its bad side effects – often literally drowned. In our own country, meanwhile, we will do all it takes to shift to clean technologies as quickly as possible.”

Phil paused to survey the crowd. “My it’s cold out here today! You can feel right now down to the bone, that what I am saying is true. We’re out in the cold, and we need to change the way we do things. And it’s not just a technological problem, having to do with our machinery alone. The devastation of the biosphere is also a result of there being too many human beings for the planet to support over the long haul. If the human population continues to increase as it has risen in the past, all progress we might make will be overwhelmed.

“But what is very striking to observe is that everywhere on this Earth where good standards of justice prevail, the rate of reproduction is about the replacement rate. While where ever justice and the full array of rights as described in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, is somehow denied to some portion of the population, especially to woman and children, the rate of reproduction either baloons to unsustainably rapid growth rates, or crashes outright. Now you can argue all you want about why this correlation exists but the correlation itself is striking and undeniable. So, this is one of those situations in which what we do for good in one area, helps us again in another. It is a positive feedback loop with the most profound implications. Consider: for the sake of climate stabilization, there must be population stabilization; and for there to be population stabilization, justice must prevail. Every person on the planet must live with the full array of human rights that all nations have already ascribed to when signing the UN Charter. When we achieve that, at that point, and at that point only, we will begin to reproduce at a sustainable rate.

“To help that happen, I intend to make sure that the United States joins the global justice project fully, unequivocally, and without any double standards. This means accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, and the jurisdiction of the World Court in the Hague. It means abiding by all the clauses of the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, which after all we have already signed. It means supporting UN peacekeeping forces and supporting the general concept of the UN as the body through which international conflicts get resolved. It means supporting the World Health Organizations in all of its reproductive rights and population reduction efforts. It means supporting women’s education and women’s rights everywhere, even in cultures where men’s tyrannies are claimed to be some sort of tradition. All these commitments on our part will be crucial if we are serious about building a sustainable world. There are three legs to this effort, folks: technology, environment, and social justice. None of the three can be neglected.

“So, some of what we do may look a little unconventional at first. And it may look more than a little threatening to those few who have been trying, in effect, to buy our government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and use it to line their own pockets while the world goes smash. But you know what? Those people need to change too. They’re out in the cold the same as the rest of us. So we will proceed, and hope those opposed come to see the good in it.

“Ultimately we will be exploring all peaceful means to initiate positive changes in our systems, in order to hand on to the generations to come a world that is as beautiful and bountiful as the one we were born into. We are only the temporary stewards of a mighty trust, which includes the lives of all the future generations to come. We are responsible to our children and theirs. What we do now will reveal much about our character and our values as a people. We have to rise to the occasion, and I think we can and will. I am going to throw myself into the effort wholeheartedly and with a feeling of high excitement, as if beginning a long journey over stormy seas.”

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The three books in this trilogy (highly recommended) are:

I watched The Ground Truth tonight, thanks to a friend who loaned me a copy. It’s a movie/documentary about the Iraq War from the POV of the troops who’ve come home deeply damaged by their experiences. I’ve talked elsewhere ➡ about my feelings about the Iraq and Viet-Nam wars but this movie made me see something I hadn’t seen before about my own experiences.

I was in the miltary during the Viet-Nam War and during that time, I decided the war was wrong and I chose to refuse to go to Viet-Nam even though it potentially meant prison and a dishonorable discharge.

In all the years since then, I’ve always been happy and perhaps even a bit proud that I stood up against the war and said ‘no’ when so many of my companions just let themselves believe the rhetoric and went along.

But tonight, when they were showing how very badly messed up so many of these people are by the things they did in Iraq in the name of their country, I realized that by refusing to go, I dodged a terrible bullet of lifetime guilt and remorse – though I’d never realized it until now.

When we’re young, our expeiences have an unreal almost pretend-like quality to them. The military, our marriages our early jobs – it’s almost like we’re still waiting to grow up and for things to become ‘real’. But, as many of these young men and woman have found out the hard way in Iraq and Afganistan, everything we do in this life is ‘for-keeps’.

– In this world of sound bites and quick posts tailored for people’s ever shorter and shorter attention spans, a lot gets lost. But, good conversations do happen though they aren’t as easy to find as the short-n-sweet variety.

– The following is an E-mail conversation between myself and one of my friends. We discuss “The Great Global Warming Swindle“, the recent IPCC Report and Michael Crichton’s book, State of Fear. If you aren’t adverse to exercising your attention span a bit, you might find it an interesting read.

– I’ve laid these out in chronological order so if you read from the top, you get them in the correct order.

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Dennis,

I think you will find this very interesting. It is a non emotional, movie that presents a very compelling argument against carbon dioxide as the culprit. It is long but well done. I think it is worth your time to give it a go.

I know I am a pain in your ass, but nevertheless, this issue is too big to just roll over and play dead. I want all the facts before I go off on a crusade.

MD

The web link is here: ➡

—–

Thanks, M. I’ve been quiet for a few days but it’s not because my interest is not deeply engaged in all of this – it’s just very busy here now. I’ll look at the movie and go through the other links you’ve sent and get back in play soon. Aren’t you off to the US soon – or are you over here now?

—–

All,

M, on this list, sent me a link the other day to a video he felt presented a strong case for Global Warming NOT being caused by mankind. I watched it yesterday and found it disconcerting – to say the least. It was an articulate presentation and showcased many points that attacked the foundations of a lot of current Global Warming theory. The show ran on March 8th in Britain on their Channel 4.

Here’s a link to the video: ➡

As I said, seeing this video and listening to its assertions left me disquieted. I’ve done some digging since then and turned up a lot of interesting information. If you are interested, you can follow these links.

(1) ➡
(2) ➡
(3) ➡

And, M? After you’ve read through all of this, I’d especially love to hear your thoughts about it.

Cheers,

Dennis

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Dennis,

Please go to this link: ➡ You will find numerous articles on the error in the IPCC data. This makes the results suspect. This also slants things to support the pro-climate change camp.

I do not want you to think it is my ambition to debunk the “environmental” issue. It is huge. I do think we need to do all we can to reduce human induced intervention. This includes cutting down all the forests, dumping garbage in the oceans, air pollution, water pollution, etc.

Having said that, I am really pissed off when we are getting bull shit data to scare the shit out of everyone.

I think this (IPCC issue) questionable data explains what I mean. Let me tell you, there is huge money to be made by getting everyone on board that climate change is man made by excess CO2. This to me is not correct. Does it affect the environment, I think so. If we spend a fortune chasing it, will it really make a difference? I am not of the opinion it will.

We need to get after the right issues, not be led like sheep to slaughter.

I ask you to really look at this issue. View it from the political side, not the scientific side. What does the pro side stand to gain? What does the other side gain? I think the heat is high enough now that industry, if they are the culprits, can’t really be too disingenuous.

I am more and more of the opinion we are being had, big time. If so, I really think it is time that someone be held accountable. This reminds me of Ann Rands book, “Atlas Shrugged“.

Dennis, I have the feeling you want this to be true. I think you feel it is a Democrat vs. Republican vindicatin. If there is any truth in my observation, put it aside a really look at this. Also READ Crichton’s book. It really is good and makes you question what the hell is going on here.

MD

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M,

Alright. I will give it all a good going through.

Dennis

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M,

I followed the link ➡ through three pages worth and looked at a lot of the articles. You are right, there’s a lot of stuff there citing apparent problems with the IPCC data. It was quite a mix. I also saw things there from known climate skeptics as well.

I’ve been mulling all of this over this weekend thinking about truth, biases, evidence, vested interests, trust and pessimism – among other things. They all come into this in one way or another. I fully believe you are intelligent, sincere, honest and genuinly seeking to come to the most informed understanding you can. And, I am the same. And yet in spite of all of that, we’ve come to different conclusions on some things.

I guess that’s not odd at all. The quickest look at the world shows that it is packed with people who share all of our attributes and more and they’ve come to yet other conclusions – and some of them are wildly different than ours. I’m thinking here of New Agers who think they can ‘wish’ the world to get right, Business types who think that Capitalism and the market are the answer to everything and then there’s the religious folks convinced that if God made it this way and if there’s a problem, he’ll handle it.

I also think that the ‘evidence’ that you and I are looking at as we try to bolster our arguments is really more complex that either of us, or almost anyone else, is able to judge. Unless we are specialists or we have a lot of time on our hands to study up on things, most of the discussions of suposed flaws in the IPCC data are beyound our ability to follow, in my opinion. It all looks like numbers, complex relationships and assumptions we’re not privy to.

So, as bright as we are, I don’t think we’re able to judge the science on its scientific merits.

In the absence of really being able to judge the science, we are reduced to trying to figure out who we should trust through alternative logic and criteria.

One criticism of the scientists involved in generating the data supporting the theory that global warming is a function of mankind’s activities is that they have vested interests in continuing to get their grants and such. It sounds like a damning accusation because it is obvious that they will gain, if the current hoop-la continues.

But, on the other hand, when has there ever been anything that’s gotten big in the public’s eye that hasn’t resulted in the same sort of a feedback loop for those involved? It’s a criticism that applies equally well to everyone in the game on every side so I think we need to look deeper.

The people who run corporations usually follow that pathway for the profits. Large corporations are, after all, entities that exist solely to generate profits for their shareholders and those who run succesful corporations, get to participate in those profits. Indeed, the news tells us that even executives who run failing companies often end up with millions of dollars in golden parachutes. I would summarize by saying that in the world of business, the truth is most often sacrificed for money.

The people who aspire to politics? Some go into it for the good of mankind, I suppose. But, I think most go into it for the power that will accrue to them. And regardles of how their intentions began, I think few will rise very far before they are deeply entangled in the world of political favors, interlocking obliigations and compromise trades. In this world, the truth is most often sacrificed for power.

And scientists? Some, I’m sure go into it because they hope to invent and patent a process that will make them rich but I suspect the vast majority of them go into it for the intellectual challege of uncovering nature’s secrets and learning how reality works and how we can control it. So, yes, the motives are mixed up, I agree. If scientists are good, profit and success may come to them. But, on the other hand, many labor their lives away on just their academic pay – content to dig through and reveal the intricate details and the trivia of whatever little nook of the physical world they’ve decided to investigate.

In business and politics, the way forward is the way that works – whatever works. In science, on the other hand, the way forward usually has to involve a big dose of adherance to the scientic method. Or the results they produce will not describe the world well and lead to testable and verifiable predictions.

If, as many critics claim, the scientists have lost their way on the climate issue because of their pursuit of wealth, then they are building a bubble of a theory which will burst at some point. Wasn’t that one of the key points in Soros’ book? That whenever our beliefs about reality diverge from the way reality is actually working, then we get into bubble space and sooner or later the tension between what we imagine and what is – is going to slap us?

Science is mankind’s one pursuit that follows a methodolgy designed and intended to generate data maximally free of human bias. This is, for the most part, what scientists do.

As a pursuit, science has utterly changed the world exactly because it cuts to the core of how things actually work and leaves our opinions, preconceptions and prejudices out of it.

Religion has changed the world profoundly also but mostly, I think, by bringing strife and fanaticism into it.

And business has changed it by creating things for profit. But, by and large, business can only create from the fruits that science first yeilds.

Science is quantitatively different because of the scientific method. The people that practice it are not perfect but the scientific method they employ is the best tool in our tool box by far.

So, when I ask myself who I will gamble and trust in this world of competing claims, I think it is the scientists because of everything I’ve said above. Not a blind trust – a reasoned trust. Not a complete trust – but a watchful trust. If we’re trying to snoop our way into places we’ve never been before (like a world which seeems be be warming rapidly), then I think I’ll choose to follow the bloodhound who’s had the best success record at snooping out the truth from physical reality so far.

Enough of that thread. Let’s take another.

I know you are impressed with Crichton’s book. And, I’m sure it is very well written and convincing. Thinking about this reminded me of a conversation I had over dinner many years ago. Our friends, J and C. were with me and my first wife, R. (whom I know you know). As a group, we were calmly discussing some disagreement R. and I were engaged in and after awhile, when R. got up to go to the restroom, J. said to me, “Dennis, you know just because you are smarter than R. and you can debate circles around her, doesn’t make you right? Being right is different than being able to dominate someone through your verbal skills or your intelligence.”

Crichton’s forte is to be a great writer. I’m sure he must be dazzling. But, again, is he the bloodhound with the best record at ferriting out the truth or simply the most dazzling advocate around?

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Dennis,

Hum, what to say about all of this. First, I paid absolutely no attention to climate change until you started your series of article beginning with peak oil. I got interested and followed your publishing. When you got to climate change, honestly, you scared me pretty good. I began to read up on this, and yep I found a lot of information confirming what you were saying. I thought I new what this was about so I began to champion this notion that the earth is going to burn up. However, I ran into a guy who did not care to roll over. He gave me some information to the contrary, quoting sources, along with a copy of Michael Crichton’s book, State of Fear. Truthfully, I did not read the book but immediately went to the Internet to dispute this heresy. I had no problem finding a whole host of critics. Well then I began reading other material on the Internet which started to point out some flaws with the current thinking. The last being a discovery of a huge error In the latest IPPC study which makes their results very suspect. Next I read Crichton’s book. Although it is fiction, his charts and sources are documented. they are very convincing to the contrary. If you have not read it, I strongly recommend you do.

He makes the point, very well I might add, that there is every bit of reason for the pro climate changers to fudge the truth as far or further than the Nay Sayers.

You have published a couple of article that trash the movie. What seems to be missing is real evidence that the charts depicted, such as CO2 leading temperature rise and others. Now I have not spent a lot of time chasing all the links, so I will reserve judgment on this.

So the author of the movie, which I sent you is biased, the others are not???

Having said all of that, I’ll tell you what I think. I think there is something very wrong with all of this. We are being manipulated on both sides. I do believe that man is ravishing the environment. Maybe it affects climate, maybe not. I really don’t know and really don’t put much faith in either side every giving me an honest assessment. I do not have (or want to spend) the time to become a climateologist to figure it out for myself.

As a side note, I would imagine that most of you think I am a Rush Limbough stooge. That would be as far from the truth as you could get. My political view is very simple; I despise and disrespect and certainly do not trust politicians, none of them. Therefore I am not willing to give them any more power; left or right. I would take it back if I knew how. I surely do not think they will solve any of this. For example, Look at Europe (resuls from the very recent European Union summit on climate change) in their latest foray into fixing this. Looks good huh!! One small problem, they left out the nuclear solution.
They would not touch it. If you read James Lovelock’s The Revenge of Gaia, you find out that this is the only short term way to get off oil, coal and gas. Solar power, wind mills and the like just can’t hack it. Bio fuels compete with food production and it is incredibly inefficient.

So here is what I am going to do: I am going to forget about this argument on climate change. It is what it is.

Nevertheless, I really do like the earth and hate seeing it being ravaged. Even though I have no faith that any of us can change the direction we are headed. I will still treat her with dignity and respect. She is the only space ship we have. I guess I am adopting the “small is beautiful concept”.

I hope that the rest of you can find some equilibrium in this.

MD

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Dennis,

I think you misunderstand me a bit. I am not denying that man is having an impact on the environment, including climate change. What I am suspect of, is the degree of his impact on climate change vs. natural events. Frankly, I think some of the other environmental issues are equal or greater in importance than climate change with respect to damage to the ecosystem. The water is foul, the bio-mass of the ocean is being decimated, the air we breath is horrible, the natural foliage is being depleted at an alarming rate. I suspect all of this is interconnected and to single out one aspect is overly simplistic.

Nevertheless, there is evidence that the “good guys”are fudging the numbers just as much or more than the “bad guys”. I just don’t trust any of them.

Regarding Crichton, give it a read. It will not be wasted time and I know you will like it. The point to his book, from my perspective, is how anyone can find evidence to make his argument. He also has some great evidence to the contrary. He points out how people react on emotion even when they are very ignorant.

So, at the end of the day we are not so far apart. I suppose I am pessimistic when it comes to what impact we can have on fixing any of this. Momentum is against us. Too many people around the world that are too low down the triangle to worry about these issues. They just want to make it to tomorrow. We are 300 million out of 6.5 billion. How many of us really care? And, we are the supposed educated ones.

MD

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M,

“So, at the end of the day we are not so far apart.” Yes, I too believe that’s true. And I agree with a lot of what you say here.

The future is very hard to predict and things may well turn out quite different from what we expect. Unfortunately, unless we’re willing to pretend that the future will take care of itself, we have no choice but to try to make sense of the tea leaves we have.

I was in a book store yesterday and found a copy of Crichton’s book. I thumbed through it and found the section at the end where he recaps his personal thoughts on environmental issues as distinct from the story he develops in the book itself. I found many of his comments reasonable and even fairly middle of the road. He’s not without humor about himself and his views either. The last point he makes (tongue in cheek, I’m sure) is that he is, himself, without bias on these issues. Ha!

I’ve come to have my doubts on the Polar Bears in general and on the likelihood of a sharply time-delimited Peak Oil crises. And the points that the Professor from Paris made about Malaria in the “Swindle” video also bears a deeper look.

Crichton is a dangerous wild card here. He is very good at what he does. I’ve read some of his earlier works like the Andromeda Strain. He is a world class writer like Dan Brown. I am absolutely certain that if someone paid him enough, he could write a book completely opposite of his State of Fear book and make it just as riveting and convincing. I believe most of what you see there is his skill as a writer, not the inherent persuasive power of the facts he cites. How can we trust a fiction writer who has world class ability to make people believe what he writes? If I read him, it will be for entertainment.

Yes, I’m pessimistic as well. The more I study this, the less I think humanity has any significant chance of rising to the problems. We are too deeply in the grip of our biological imperatives and our biases and illusions.

If you want to know who I trust the least in all of this, it is the corporations. If mankind survives this period, I think future historians may look back on the unconstrained growth of impersonal, profit driven corporate power to be one on the worst plagues mankind unleashed on itself during this period in our history. They are major players in the drama whose only aim is to bolster their profits. Is it any wonder that the forests are disappearing, the oceans are being dredged, the environmental movement is being deflected by intentional misinformation and governments like the US are handing out no bid contracts to the like of Halliburton? All of this at a time when we should be making decisions based on our collective future welfare.

Dennis

I’ve decided that I need to cut back on my output here for awhile on this blog. I’m also going to change the balance a bit as well. My usual routine is to read through a pile of RSS links and pull down and post any and all stories that either bear on the Perfect Storm Hypothesis or that interest me personally (like science or psychology stories). I’ve also made the odd personal, philosophical or technical post here and there as well.

– One thing I’m going to do is post significantly less of the stories that bear on the Perfect Storm Hypothesis. In many ways, I feel I’m preaching to the choir here and while that’s useful, it is maybe not the best use of my time and energy. Instead, I’m going to only post the odd supporting story if it is a really egregious example of something.

– I might spend more time looking at stories like the one I began today about The Great Global Warming Swindle show which aired on Britain’s Channel 4 on March 8th a few days ago. What’s of interest to me here is the interplay between different entrenched points-of-view and how someone genuinely interested in getting at the truth rather than backing one horse or the other might proceed through all the claims and counter claims.

– I’d also like to write about some more philosophical subjects. I had lunch today with a friend of mine and we spent most of the time talking about books and computer programming and I enjoyed the heck out of it. We’d both read Blindsight by Peter Watts recently and loved it. We’d also both been reading A Mind of it Own by Cornelia Fine. Both books dealt with ways of looking at consciousness that are both unusual and revealing. Leonard Cohen came in for a mention because I’d read that he’d taken LSD when he was younger and credited it with breaking him out of looking at the world around him in an inflexible manner. My friends said I’d like his video, I’m Your Man, and that I could get it on NetFlix. Then we went into computer programming and how it varies across several axis where at one extreme, all the programmer does all day is look up how to use the various high-level interfaces he needs to use while at the other end, it is all about building and debugging complex logic structures. And then, along another axis, we discussed how many younger programmers have no idea how to do multi-threaded code whereas older programmers who’ve dipped their toes into the world of device drivers and interrupts, find multi-threaded programming natural. Finally, my friend offered that he disagreed with Greg Egan’s idea in Diaspora that if mankind learned effective immortality, boredom would become a critical problem. I said I didn’t agree. In my opinion, emotions are the real thing that drives us – in the same sense that a battery is the thing that makes an engine act. That over time, as the ‘been-there-done-that’ component of an immortal’s experience grew, the size of the emotional polarity (like the poles of the battery) between what they’d done and what they still yearned to do would lessen and, perhaps, eventually be completely nulled out. Without emotion to drive us, I wondered if we would act at all or if we would even care if we lived to see the next day.

I’m back now from lunch and thinking about ‘real life’ here at the nursery. Coming up in the near future, I have a big project. I’m going to replace our main (and only) irrigation pump – a three-phase pump with a single-phase with more horsepower. I’m going to replace an ancient 24 station irrigation controller which has been limping along for years with a modern one and I’m going rewire all of the electric and the associated relays that drive and control all of this. All of these are deeply interlinked so it all needs to be done in one move. I’ll have three to five days to get it all done and running before plants here at the nursery will begin to get seriously stressed from lack of water. Needless to say, I will need to have all of my proverbial ducks-in-a-row before I wade in and start tearing critical stuff apart.

Books and videos I mentioned here:

Well, given how much I write about the Global Climate Crises, it might seem odd that I’ve only just seen An Inconvenient Truth tonight – but, it’s true.

It left me feeling sad. If Gore can say these things with such clarity and from such a great pulpit and over and over and over again, and still not have shifted the balance – it is an amazing, disturbing and profoundly sad thing.

Today, I was glancing at the blog of a woman that works, I think, at the national weather service and she’d been so brash as to suggest that weather men and women who are promoting climate skepticism should be banned. There were dozens and dozens of comments, after she’d posted a clarification of what she’d meant. It’s hard to believe that any of those folks had seen Gore’s presentation. They trotted out every lame idea and rationalization and paraded them as if everyone just know that they were true and anyone with common sense could se it.

One fact Gore brought forward, that was really telling, was that they’d taken a sample of 938 peer reviewed scientific articles on the climate from the overall literature on the subject and, of the 938, not one had cast doubt on the basic POV that mankind is primarily responsible for Global Climate Change. But, when they took a large sample of articles from the popular press about the climate, 53% of them expressed doubt that we know what the real reason is.

He said one other thing that I found particularly telling. And that was that many people deny the truth of the Global Climate Crises because if they’d really look at it and fully admit to themselves the size of the threat, the moral imperative to jump the issue to the top of their priorities and act would be unavoidable – and thus they are just unwilling to face that truth head-on.

Our web site says we’re opening this Saturday, March 3rd, for the 2007 season. But, the other day, we decided to unofficially open today since we’d promised customers we’d be here. So, the gate is standing open as I write this. Here are some photos of what our 2007 opening looks like.

 

So, come on out for our Spring opening. And bring your own hot chocolate – you mght need it <smile>.

Cheers, from Woods Creek Wholesale Nursery
out in the wilds of the Snohomish

— later.   I posted the above at 10 AM or so.   It’s now 1:30 PM and it is continuing to fall. Yikes!   I hope it lets up or we’ll be out all night  removing snow from the greenhouse roofs to prevent them from collapsing under the load.

M,

I do speculate.   Probably everyone does.  Quantum physics and cosmology are both tough areas, though.  As humans, we find it hard to imagine that things might not have a beginning or end; like time and space.  Or that things can work the way they tell us they do at the quantum physical level.  So, I find that my mental machinery is already ‘challenged’ to try to imagine what they are telling me, much less to really grasp it and then imagine on further.

The ultimate question of where did the universe come from assumes a beginning.  The idea that the universe will expand forever, suggests the question of what’s beyond the area it is expanding into.  If you talk to scientists, some will tell you that it is the questions themselves that are wrong.

I used to try to understand how space/time could curve back on itself as Einstein suggested.  That if you went long enough in one direction, you’d end up back in the same place again.   I never got it until someone pointed out the Mobius Strip as a representation of the idea and that being on the surface of a sphere is another.  In both cases, you can start from a place and go in a direction and arrive back in the same place.  With three-dimensional space, it is harder for our brains to wrap themselves around the same idea but, apparently, it is true.   So, there may not be a ‘beyond’ beyond what we see as strange as it might seem.  I’ve read several laymen’s books on Einstein’s theory of Relativity and I still find them tough going.

I guess I’m seeing, as I’m writing, that in these areas I’m not speculating so much as trying to grasp what there already is to know.

The idea of the Big Bang and of what they call The Expansion bugs me.   It doesn’t feel right but that’s about all I can say about it.

And what about quantum physics?   They tell us that as you get smaller and smaller, you finally come to things the size of the Planck limit.   They say that there is nothing smaller.  Well, I find that bizarre just like I find the idea that there’s nothing bigger than the universe or no beginning of time.  But, perhaps that’s just because I inhabit an evolved mammalian brain which has no way to wrap itself around such ideas.

And Schrodering’s Cat is a situation that endless numbers of folks have thought about and gone away baffled and yet quantum physics tells us it is so.   Too weird.

So, where do I like to speculate?  I’m fascinated by the mind and consciousness and what perception really is.  What is awareness and self-awareness and how does the mind ‘model’ the reality around us?   How accurate or inaccurate are our perceptions?   The very tool (the mind) we use to ponder these things has inherent in it distortions and shortfalls that interfere with our ability to see through to the answers clearly.   I think a lot of this interest arose from having meditated for many years and spent a lot of time in inner spaces.

One of the reasons I enjoyed altered states of consciousness years ago was because they gave me an alternative to the normal state.  And it is a truism that you cannot see where you are until you’ve seen it from some alternate place.   The more ‘elses’ you’ve visited, the more perspectives you can get on what is transitory and what is fixed among the different places.

Meditation allows you time to experiment with awareness without words, of being without time, of forming intentions and holding them as feelings and not words.  Of identifying with the nervous system that is centered in your abdomen rather than the one in your head.  Of separating your awareness from the stream of chatter that is ever arising from the mind’s language center.  Of realizing as a direct knowing what creativity is and then coming back into normal consciousness and not being able to say it.

I like to speculate about history and where mankind is going and how this same drama might have played itself out on other planets where intelligent life evolved long ago and what might have become of those creatures if they managed to pass through their technological adolescence without destroying themselves.

I like to aggressively find and separate myself from my unconscious belief systems and replace them with things that I’ve had a good look at and have consciously decided are worth incorporating so that who and what I am is more and more a matter of conscious intentional choice rather than being composed of the flotsam and jetsam that happened to wash through my life during my formative years.  And this connects back into a circle with the stuff I said earlier about trying to understand the foibles and limitations of the human mind.  I highly recommend a book called “A Mind of it Own” by Cornelia Fine in this regard.

I find a lot of this to be hard going.   On every side, the temptation to get sucked into some bogus belief system is there.  Hence, why I cleave so tightly to what science reveals.  Hence why I constantly am taking time to stand away from my own beliefs and challenge them and look at alternatives so that I don’t get sucked into the trap of identifying with them and associated them with my ego and thus ending up defending them – right or wrong.

The ego is a big obstacle to clarity.   Cognitive dissonance is a big obstacle.  Assumptions are a problem.  The very way the mind works is a problem.  And yet, someplace behind all of these shifting sands of illusion and misperception, is the bedrock reality we find ourselves within – even though each of us will give a different description of it.

I could go on for while like this.

Dennis

The tides of history swell high for one thing and then they recede and rise again for another. Just like the whims of fashion, the big issues come and go – just as the skirt lines rise and fall.

Viet-Nam came and went. A great rolling tide that swept through my generation and took 57,000 of us who were unfortunate enough to have been born at just the right time to be harvested by the drafts of war. Viet-Nam then, Iraq now.

The passions of the old men for their convictions, for their patriotisms, and for making their marks on the shifting sands of history – these come and go with the administrations, with the parties, and with the ebb and flow of the manufactured news we’re fed and the causes we’re told are of vital importance. Vital, that is, until the next election, until the next summer breeze of political fashion sweeps through the beltway. But, the deadly consequences of those fickle and changing winds may have, by then, spilt into our lives with a cold permanence that denies the transience of their summer’s passing.

Last night, we watched “Nixon – A Presidency Revealed” and it left me sad and thoughtful about all the things that happened back then and what we were told and believed at the time – and how it has all come out so differently now in the clarity of time and hindsight. Then, so much of the essential mechinations were hidden and we had to rely on the explanations we were given to make sense of things. We were saving a country from being overrun against their will, We were leading the fight to preserve democracy in the world. Our leaders knew the best course of action for our country as they guided the great enterprise through the shoals of history. We were not quitters. We had the integrity of our convictions. The lives we were spending would be vindicated by the judgments of the histories yet to be written.

But, in the White House, behind the magic curtains, different stories and reasons were weaving their webs. Paranoia begat paranoia, tape recorders ran, lists of enemies were made and break-ins planned and almost executed well – but not quite. Vice-President Agnew left in deep disgrace for his own crimes and Nixon stone-walled while the bombs fell into the deep jungles of Cambodia and into the lives of those on the ground there with the utter permanence of death.

As the House and Senate met to begin the process of driving the President out, and the strange war began to wind down into defeat, the last chapters of its illogic were writ large before us even though we couldn’t recognize them as such through the spin they were packaged in.

In one deep irony, the North Vietnamese, after long negotiations with the United States, agreed to end the war jointly with us. But, when we carried this agreement to our allies, the South Vietnamese, and showed them, they rejected it. So, we rewarded the flexibility of the North by sending in the bombers to bomb their population centers and force them into a new agreement – one that the government of the South might like better. And all this time, the lives of our 57,000 dribbled away while Nixon fretted and plotted and the months and years and the whole long saga of political decisions gone bad unrolled and unraveled.

57,000 killed and I don’t even know how many maimed and crippled physically, emotionally and mentally for life. All of it so utterly permanent. The wives, the girlfriends, the parents, the children and the siblings left behind in every American city to pick up the bits and pieces of their shattered families, lives and dreams. Think of the old photographs that sit now on honored tables and shelves remembering a life that could have been, that almost was, before it was cut permanently short serving ‘the cause’.

This is the thing that I feel most deeply about wars like Viet-Nam and Iraq and the thing that I have the hardest time expressing well; this juxtaposition between the utter permanence of the deaths they cause and the insubstantiality of the political causes for which those lives were given. The administrations and the political passions of the old men come and go.  But, for the young ones who die,for those who are crippled and maimed, and for those who remain afterwards as half men with half minds and half lives – they will suffer and bear these burdens until the entire scarred and misused generation passes away.

When I said ‘no’ to Viet-Nam while in the Air Force back then, I was ostracized by many of my superiors, ignored by most of my peers and supported by very few of any of them.

The officers and the lifer non-coms told me how unpatriotic I was and how disloyal to this great country. They told me that our leaders knew what they were doing and that they should be beyond questioning by the likes of me. That my job was just to get on with it – what ever I was told to do. I lived with the pressure, the silence and the threat of a court-martial for months out on the Texas coast during those terrible months in 1970. And all the while, as the President denied bombing and invading Cambodia, the men in my unit were rotating back from Southeast Asia and were telling those of us still here what was really happening.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes…again

– the Doors, “The End”

So, Iraq spins out now. The reasons and the stories swirl around us in the press. The administration says, the press says, foreign governments say. Everyone says and everyone has an opinion. More troops – let’s do a surge and win – pull the troops out without destroying the country – this is about oil not democracy – this is about democracy – if you don’t agree with us, you are a traitor and a coward.

We’ve heard it all. And, very likely, we’ve heard very little of what we will be hearing in twenty or thirty years when hindsight and the historians have cut through the fog of war and revealed all the things that go on behind the magic curtains.

But, the young men and woman who are dying today for us everyday over there, who are crippled and maimed for life over there, …we should cry for them that they are so naive, so innocent, so willing, so patriotic and so foolish as to risk everything without ever having understood the history of the Viet-Nam War or how the political passions of the old men come and go in Washington.

Without having ever realized that this ’cause’ they are dying for will be yesterday’s news as soon as the breeze of political passions changes again in Washington. Today’s resisters will be pardoned tomorrow, today’s great causes, that seem so worth dying for today, will be tomorrow’s raked over errors and misjudgements – just old news gone stale.

Somewhere, a young man will sit without his arm, or his manhood or his sanity and wait for the rest of his long and damaged life to dribble away. Today’s passions and great causes will have turned to dust in mere months while the consequences will, for him, fill all of the rest of his life. And the young who died for us – their names will be written on stones in graveyards or walls in the capitol and their pictures will sit on honored shelves until they are finally packed away into boxes for the future generations who will surely forget.

But all that they could have been, all their dreams and potentialities, all their children, families and careers, will have been so permanently and utterly spent for a transient political wind which was so very fickle and so very transient.