A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
Happy Throwback Thursday! Today's retrospective covers the most commented on entries during the blog's 13th year. The post with the most responses last year talked about technology. Hmm, communication using technology — I just watched a video about that, Be Smart asking Can AI Help Us Talk to Whales?
New technology is revolutionizing how we study and protect nature. In this video, we’ll learn how artificial intelligence is being used to decode the sonic landscapes of the ocean - specifically, whale song. That’s right, there may come a day soon where AI allows us to understand and talk to whales. But some scientists are saying: the question may not be CAN we talk to whales, but SHOULD we talk to whales?
Roger Payne and National Geographic's release of "Songs of the Humpback Whale" shows the power of music to not only make people aware of issues, but to change how they think and feel about them. That demonstrates why I write about entertainment as much as I do. Not only is it fun, it's important, too.
Blue whales are on the brink of extinction. Despite being the biggest animals to ever exist on Earth, they remain a mystery. To protect them, we first need to understand them better.
In our 14th Planet Wild mission, we’re using drones to drop camera robots on whales. Our goal is to find out what a day in the life of a blue whale looks like.
Special thanks to Cascadia Research for providing us with additional footage, taken under NOAA permit to John Calambokidis.
Additional footage by "World of Survival: Humpbacks–the Gentle Giants”, The world of survival show/ TV channel Anglia
First, A.I., now drones. Both show the importance of technology in advancing science.
Follow over the jump for the most commented on entries during the 13th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
2024 was the warmest winter on record, so big winter storms are a thing of the past, right? Not quite…a new study reveals that there is a winter-weather trend that OVERPOWERS CLIMATE CHANGE. To better understand this, we are taking it back to March of 1993 to look at The Storm of the Century, which brought record breaking cold temperatures and 20 INCHES OF SNOW to ALABAMA! By going back, we can better answer questions like: What causes this set up to occur in our atmosphere? And why are we still seeing extreme cold and SNOW IN THE SOUTH? Buckle up as our experts talk the jet stream, polar vortex, and this stubborn cold exception so we can answer the ultimate question: Are these winter storms here to stay? Watch this episode to find out.
The Dominion lawsuit against Fox News has revealed that Tucker Carlson publicly supported the former president while privately despising him. Elsewhere, Oklahomans rejected an effort to legalize recreational use of marijuana.
Seth takes a closer look at new bombshell text messages that reveal what Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson really say about Trump in private.
Both Colbert and Meyers pointed out Carlson's hypocrisy. They also reinforced a point I've been making since 2012, when I posted Projection is the Right's favorite defense mechanism. Fox News is and was doing exactly what it accused its competition of being and doing, a major media company lying to its viewers.
Tucker Carlson used the Jan 6th footage he got from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to cherry-pick innocuous clips in an attempt to rewrite what we all saw happen with our own eyes that day. Elsewhere, federal authorities arrested their 1000th insurrectionist, and failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake may be the former president’s running mate in 2024.
I must not leave out Kevin "Pickled Tongue" McCarthy's role in making Carlson's whitewashing of January 6th possible, which even Mitch McConnell objected to. He's certainly living down to my nickname for him.
BTW, your comment reminds me that I should post John Oliver's video about [Carlson]. Also, did you know that his dad was head of the Voice of America during the closing years of the Cold War? Broadcasting propaganda runs in the family.
It's time to review the statistics for the eleventh year of this blog.
As of 11:59 PM EDT March 20, 2022, this blog had a lifetime total of 3,402,674 page views, 5039 total posts, and 3857 comments.
Minus the 2,869,693 page views, 4672 posts, and 3622 comments as of March 20, 2021, that means this blog earned 532,981 page views and 235 comments on 367 posts during the past 365 days. This is close to but not exactly the same as the 532K page views and 238 comments that the 12-month stats view on Blogger showed. I suspect the latter includes spam comments that never appeared on the blog. Just the same, the blog once again saw more page views on fewer posts than the 384,773 page views and 411 or 412 comments on 398 posts during the tenth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News, although the comments still decreased. Still, it greatly exceeded the page view goal I set for the blog of 25,000 page views per 30 days, which translates to 304,167 page views if converted directly or 304,410 if calculated using 834 page views per day times 365 days, by 228,814 or 228,571 page views, depending on which I use; upon re-examining last year's entry, I should use 304,167 total (I omitted the 0 last year — oops), resulting in 228,814 over my goal. Either way, I was right to write "I'm not worried" again about reaching my page view goals. I easily surpassed them.
Follow over the jump for my analysis of the past year.
I don't think Kamala Harris is leaving until after she faceplants in Iowa. Also, as much as you might dislike Mayor Pete, who tacked left and then back to the center, he's essentially tied with Harris nationwide and well ahead of her in Iowa. He also has a lot of money behind him. I think he'll be in the contest until Super Tuesday, at least. Booker should last until South Carolina and Klobuchar until New Hampshire.
This was in response to Nebris making his wishes known.
I suspect Harris is next. She shut all her offices in New Hampshire and is going all in on Iowa. I expect her to eat shit there and that will be that.
While I was right that Steve Bullock was one of the next two to leave, both Nebris and I were wrong that Harris would last until Iowa, although Nebris was closer to reality when he thought she would be "next." As CBS News reported yesterday, Senator Kamala Harris drops out of 2020 presidential race.
CBSN political reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns joins CBSN's "Red & Blue" to discuss Senator Kamala Harris ending her presidential bid and its impact on the 2020 Democratic race.
Despite all the reporting from Politico and the New York Times about disarray in Harris's campaign, she had qualified for the December debate. I fully expected her to be on the stage. That's not going to happen, much to my surprise. So far, candidates who qualified for debates have continued their campaigns.
I wasn't the only one surprised by Harris's decision. FiveThirtyEight had the same reaction in their emergency Politics Podcast Harris Drops Out.
The crew reacts to Sen. Kamala Harris's decision to drop out of the Democratic primary.
Despite the short time between the announcement and the recording, the four panelists managed a fairly comprehensive analysis of the situation, especially since they were able to build on what Harris should be thankful for — not much other than the support of her husband. Now that she's dropped out, she can be thankful for all the supportive statements from her fellow candidates included in the CBS News clip I embedded above. That's small consolation for her being the most major candidate to have dropped out so far.
As I have done with all the other candidates to have left the campaign, I will retire all of her recipes and memes. Follow over the jump.
Beware the thawing permafrost. ... In the coldest parts of the world, there’s a layer of soil that stays frozen all year. This layer is called permafrost; it exists mainly around the Arctic, and acts kind of like a giant freezer. As plants and animals in those regions die, some of them become preserved in this permafrost.
But as human activity releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the permafrost is starting to thaw and shrink. That’s having some dramatic consequences — and not just for people who live in the Arctic.
This is a science-fiction and horror scenario, which made this another example of how climate change is changing horror. I wasn't the only one who thought so. The top comment read "sounds like a perfect plot for the apocalyptic movie." People agreed; in fact, it's already been used. Responses follow:
"Its where the Blight from the film Interstellar came from."
"It's called The Last Ship."
"You all should watch 'The Last Ship' it's about a disease spreading and about the U.S military. It's an amazing show."
(Aside: I've written about "The Last Ship" on this blog.)
"[T]here’s a tv series called Fortitude which revolves around this subject," to which I replied "I was wondering if someone would mention 'Fortitude.' Great horror show with a science fiction premise."
"Bruh, it reminds me of A Plague Tale : Innocence."
"Resident evil."
Finally, a number of people mentioned "The Thing," which shows how old an idea this is, although that's a hostile extraterrestrial creature, not an earthly disease brought back from extinction.
All this goes to show that advancing technology and societal change aren't the only reasons why we live in science fiction times. Climate change is, too. As my friend Nebris says, scifi is now.
Blogger recorded that this blog had a lifetime total of 2,168,149 page views and 3853 posts at 11:59 PM EDT March 20, 2019. In addition, I counted 361 comments since March 21, 2018. The equivalent numbers from the seventh year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News were 3465 entries, 1,630,513 page views, and 2,391 comments during the first six years of the blog. The result was that the blog earned 537,636 page views while I posted 388 entries during 365 days. Those are fewer page views and comments for more posts than during the seventh year of blogging here, 682,128 page views and 488 comments from my readers and me on 364 entries. That's a first, and not a good one, either. Follow over the jump for my analysis of what went "wrong."
As of 11:59 P.M. E.D.T. on March 20, 2017, I had posted 3101 total entries, the blog had earned 948,385 page views, and the readers and I together posted 1,903 comments over the blog's first seven years. As of that same time on March 20, 2018, those totals had reached 3465 entries, 1,630,513 page views, and 2,391 comments during the first six years of the blog. Consequently, the seventh year of the blog saw me post 364 entries, which earned 682,128 page views and 488 comments from my readers and me.* For comparison, the sixth year of the blog recorded 377 entries, which earned 352,764 page views and 596 comments.
Follow over the jump for my analysis of these numbers.
Monday's prompt reads "Have you ever had another blogger write about you? How did you feel reading the post?" I mentioned this in passing as part of STORY is the theme for April 2016.
Also, I like the idea of writing about what other bloggers have to say about me. I can think of two who have been complimentary, Paul Wartenberg and Infidel 753, and one who has been not necessarily critical but not friendly either, John Michael Greerthe Archdruid. I've mentioned the first two writing about me before, including in two of the recentretrospectives, but I've never passed along what Greer thinks of me when he's not responding to me directly. Time for that to change.
I rather enjoy when Paul and Infidel write about me, which usually include links to my blog. Here's an example from Paul Wartenberg that I quoted in Super Bowl drinks from Tipsy Bartender.
So I need to point out, as this is the Internet, LINKS are everything around here. They link to me, I link to them, people can follow through those links to new and exciting places that offer up drink recipes and NSFW comments about crazy Republicans.
Super Bowl drink recipes it is.
I took it as useful feedback about what he most values in my blogging, so I chose my topic for that day accordingly.
The same is true of Infidel 753, who regularly includes me in his Sunday linkspams. For example, this past Sunday's referenced me in the sentence "A week ago it was Nowrûz (Persian new year), and Obama once again took stock of our relations with Iran." The first one of last month linked to me twice, beginning with "It's Springtime for Trump!" He paid me the favor again by writing "here's what genuine popular anger looks like." My response was to comment "You linked to me twice! That's an honor usually reserved for the likes of Rosa Rubicondior! I'm not worthy! /WayneandGarth." Infidel753 was quite complementary in return, writing "Pinku: Hey, they're good posts." I'm glad he thinks so!
The Archdruid, on the other hand, was less positive. Follow over the jump for what he wrote in response to another commenter at his blog.
More Americans had their backgrounds checked purchasing guns on Black Friday than any day on record, according to data released by the FBI this week.
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System processed 185,345 requests on Nov. 27, one of the largest retail sales days in the country.
"This was an approximate 5% increase over the 175,754 received on Black Friday 2014," wrote Stephen Fischer, the FBI's chief of multimedia productions. "The previous high for receipts were the 177,170 received on 12/21/2012."
Previous spikes for background checks, conducted before a gun buyer can obtain a firearm, occurred after prominent mass shootings, like in December 2012 in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Sure enough, the response to another mass shooting was for Americans to buy more guns. Follow over the jump for that part of the story.
I left the following comment on The Way Out at Kunstler's blog yesterday.
I'm showing "The End of Suburbia" to my students again this week. Other than the stats on natural gas, which have improved from the perspective of business as usual because of fracking, the movie has held up pretty well over the past decade since it came out. Your essay drives home an updated version of the message at the end of the movie; the future will be local, not global. As for how my students will react, in addition to making some pithy observations that I will share with you and your readers next week, I'm sure they'll search for answers on the Internet. Here's to hoping they find my Guide to entries that contain answers to 'The End of Suburbia'; it will make things easier for them.
That I'm showing End of Suburbia convinced me to change the subject of my next retrospective to entries that got the most comments and likes this year, regardless of page views. One of those just happens to be Guide to entries that contain answers to 'The End of Suburbia', which was posted on November 17, 2013, but earned all of its eight comments during November and December of 2014, thanks to Nebris and I going back and forth. Consequently, it gets an honorable mention as well as pride of place so that this entry better serves my students.
The entry has also continued to earn page views. As of this time last year, it had 321 page views as documented in Student worksheets for the second and third year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News. By March 20th of this year, it had moved up to 836 page views. Linking to it at Kunstler's blog added 78 more in 12 hours. I'm sure my students will add even more this week as they search for answers.
Follow over the jump for more entries that earned eight comments during the blogging year just past as well as those that got the equivalent of five or more likes at Google Plus.
I'm taking advantage of Flashblack Friday on Facebook to attend to some unfinished business that I started not once, but twice, and foreshadowed three times.
I credit that to good promotion, including at Kunstler's blog, where I got 436 page views from Zeitgeist Failure, the most from any of Kunstler's entries for all of 2012. That tide lifted another boat higher, though, and it will get an entry of its own later.
The actual most commented on entry from the second year of the blog with comments actually left during the second year of the blog was probably Matt Taibbi and Mike Lofgren are on the same page about the global rich with eight comments. I'll get to that post in a future retrospective.
I have one more entry left before I wrap up the second year of this blog--depressing political news. Hey, what do you expect? This may be a weird, hopeful doomer blog, but it's still a doomer blog.
I've teased my readers enough. Follow over the jump for a post about Richistan plus two entries about depressing political news to complete a series I began two years ago, stopped halfway through, resumed last year, and finally finish today.
Nebris: The low gas prices must be driving Jimmy fucking nuts. =D
Me: No. He's pointing to it as a likely cause of the bursting of the fracking bubble, which will result in more chaos in the financial markets. He likes that. Speaking of low gas prices, that's up next.
The "Jimmy" Nebris referred to is James Howard Kunstler, who Nebs knows. I'll get to Kunstler's comments later. Right now, I'll concentrate on the lower gas prices.
First, the corner station matched the rest of the neighborhood outlets over the weekend, so all the nearby stations are selling at $2.85. Hence, Professor Farnsworth, as promised.
Next, KCRA in Sacramento has noticed the low gas prices, too, and reported on them in Gas prices down shopping up.
With gas prices continuing to drop experts are predicting that holiday shopping will robust in 2014.
$2.60/gallon in California? Oh, my! If the experts the KCRA reporters are quoting are right, this will be a good year for those giving off the stink ofretail desperation.
With gas prices falling, the demand for big cars is up.
Don't let the lack of a preview image (so far) deter you from playing the video; it plays. As for the content, it's evidence in support of the drop in gas mileage I reported in Michigan universities on buying cars. I guess that's the flipside of the good economic news lately.
*I'm showing "The End of Suburbia" to my students again this week, so I shared the link for Throwback Thursday on Facebook, attracting Nebs' attention.
As I promised yesterday,* I'm beginning the reverse countdown of most viewed posts from the past year. I'm departing from the procedure I used the past two years, in which I ordered entries according to what I call the primary counter as the first resort, then used the secondary counter for the remainder of the top 20 entries not listed in the primary counter's top ten, as I did first in The first year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News: last of nine parts, where I called it "the alternative counter." Instead, I'm ordering them strictly according to the secondary counter, which I find much more complete, as well as more useful for an annual retrospective.
The primary counter is what I see on the blog dashboard for top posts by past two hours, day, week, month, and history of the blog, while the secondary counter is what I see when I look under all posts. It does not give a listing for the past year, which would be very convenient. The primary counter's page view statistics also tend to reach a maximum and decrease over time as duplicate page views from the same IP address and page views generated by "referrer spam" and other bots gets culled. The secondary counter tallies all page views regardless of source or duplicate views. That one does not decrease over time. It also gives stats on all entries, not merely those that make it into the top ten during one of the time frames listed above.
That explanation out of the way, the most viewed entry of the third full year of the blog is Finally, a Ringworld movie! That entry from May 23, 2013 had 1317 page views according to the secondary counter and four comments.** It was not among the all time top ten according to the primary counter, even though it has more That's the one in which I repeated my twenty-year-old grousing about how I wrote an adventure for Chaosium's Ringworld table-top RPG, but lost all that effort because the movie rights to the book were sold and the movie production company asserted that they had the game rights, too. To add insult to injury, there was no movie. Apparently, that will change, as SyFy announced that they will develop the book into a four-hour miniseries. If so, good news, but no Farnsworth until it reaches the little screen. According to this video review, that might be this fall, but I have my doubts, as IMDB lists it as 2015 and beyond.
Status: In-Development
Based on the 70s Space Science Fiction Novel "Ringworld"
Notes: Announced as a 4 Hour mini-series in development in the spring 2013...Writer "Michael R. Perry" will adapt the 1970 Science Fiction Novel for a TV show by SyFy.
As for how this entry became so frequently viewed, that's easy--the power of search terms. The phrase "ringworld movie" currently has 129 results, tying it for seventh with the URL of the blog itself among all search terms for the entire history of the blog and making it the most searched new term for the past year. In this way, the entry is similar to Detroit "what people think" meme and Dungeons and Dragons alignments for Game of Thrones characters from 2012, both of which became top entries through web searches.
As for how I feel about this, at least hundreds, if not thousands, of people have read about my misadventures with the Ringworld game and my disappoinment that there hasn't been a movie--yet. Knowing that people have heard my complaints and that something is being done about them, even if I had nothing to do with the action, will generally get me to shut up about them. It may also be enough to get me to buy a Larry Niven book again, too.
Tonight is the showing of the second episode of the second half of the fourth season of “The Walking Dead,” which I just finished watching with my wife. To mark the occasion, I’m going to pull out a different conversation the Archdruid was having in the comments to 2030 is the New 2012, which was quite distinct from the one I had with him that I converted into Perspectives on the next doomsday from The Archdruid and me. This one was with his other readers about the role of the zombie apocalypse.
Greer himself mentioned it twice in his essay, both time in terms that demonstrated that he didn’t take it seriously as a literal event.
From Jonathan Edwards’ famous 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” right through to today’s zombie apocalypse craze, a good number of the biggest pop-culture phenomena in American history have focused on the end of the world in one way or another.
...
Besides the purely religious notion I hold to of an inevitable end (a product of faith and not extrapolation of current forces), I don't foresee an extinction of mankind, nor a zombie apocalypse, nor anything else.
I consider the zombie apocalypse to be at best a metaphor for what Americans fear about the future, not a real possibility.
That written, it’s still worth exploring as a metaphor, which Bruin Silverbear did in comments.
I am a zombie fan. I have been since I was rather young. I even got myself (for a time) into the zombie apocalypse camp. I believe that your use of the word "fantasy" sums it up nicely. It has been my experience that most people who subscribe to the zombie apocalypse scenario, which has evolved into a metaphor for sudden collapse, see it as a fantasy in which they get to live out their hollywood dreams of shooting people and not having to answer to some moralistic entity for it. Nowadays, in the survivalist scene, individuals who are unprepared for sudden collapse and who seek to take your carefully hoarded goods are called "zombies" which implies a rather sinister fate for such folks at the hands of those more prepared. I suspect I could write a paper on the concept. Be that as it may, it is an easy fantasy to find yourself in. We live in a culture of limited or non-existent social justice, war, unreason and power allocated to people who do not have our best interests in mind in any way. Those that do are drummed out of the corridors of political power rather efficiently if they get elected at all. People like the idea of a zombie apocalypse or a falling meteor or a sudden collapse of any kind because it also feeds the idea that they can take more immediate control over their own lives when a secular authority no longer prevents them from living their fantasy of a large farm and a trusty assault rifle, even if that life is difficult and fraught with danger. There is also what you mentioned in that people can use impending doom as an excuse not to have to stand in front of the Tiananmen Square Tanks of progress who will stop for no protestor. In their version of events, as essentially pointed out by yourself if I am interpreting correctly, there is no need to stand in front of those tanks when you can just let them run out of gas on their own? I have often found that people want to join their voice to large scale social justice causes without actually doing anything in their communities for much the same reason. In the end, when the cause fails to gain ground, they need not be held personally responsible for the failure where at a local level they might be pointed out as being another ring leader in a failed philosophical coup de tat. All of this of course going back to what you have been saying for some time, cognitive dissonance. Is it wrong to tell believers in infinite progress that they will only be correct if we get the aliens to begin trading technologies with us? I am sure they could use Preservative filled frozen dinners and Microwaves for those long space/inter-dimensional journeys in return for whatever powers their spacecraft...
Back in October, I recall Nebris saying on Facebook that he didn't watch "The Walking Dead" because he wasn't interested in what he called "white trash fantasies." Based on what Bruin wrote, it looks like he's right to call the show that. That won’t keep me from watching it, but I’m keeping what he said in mind from now on.
As for Greer, while he dismisses an actual zombie apocalypse, he is interested in what the metaphor means.
Bruin, fascinating. As I'm not a zombie fan at all, it's interesting to hear from someone who gets that part of popular culture. I have to say, though, that I'd wondered whether the dehumanization of potential enemies was part of it, and it's rather troubling to find that I was right -- that way lies some very ugly futures.
That wasn’t the end of the discussion. Follow over the jump for what three more people had to same about the meme and the replies they inspired from Greer.
Yes, Inna wished for zoos to be shut down and the animals released. I can sympathize with her, although I can make a case for the value of zoos as both institutions of both education and conservation.* What I found even more noteworthy was the Tipsy Bartender's recommendation of "Blackfish," the documentary that expands on the topic of The ethics of orcas as entertainment. Here's the official trailer for the film.
BLACKFISH tells the story of Tilikum, a notoriously aggressive orca that killed three people while in captivity. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite uses shocking footage and emotional interviews to present a convincing case against keeping these wild animals for human entertainment.
The documentary "Blackfish" examines the treatment and well-being of killer whales in captivity.
I recommended this film to my environmental science students yesterday for extra credit. I also warned them that this will be an uphill battle, as Americans love their entertainment and don't want it messed with. As my friend Nebris has described my observations about the topic, I have written repeatedly that "Americans will take all manner of social, economic and political abuse, but will rise up with righteous fury when you disturb their Entertainment." I told my students that, too.
*That written, I told my students that I thought it was a good idea that the Detroit Zoo gave up its elephants. Unlike most other animals, elephants live shorter lives in captivity than in the wild, so it made no conservation sense to keep them. Yes, people miss them, but there are animals that can be just as entertaining and educational and will actually benefit from being kept.
Also, one of my resolutions last year was to became a member of the zoo. I didn't follow through. I've rolled that over to one of this year's promises. Here's to keeping it.
Are you a hipster, surfer or biker? What is your urban tribe? Your computer may soon be able to tell. Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, are developing an algorithm that uses group pictures to determine to which of these groups, or urban tribes, you belong. So far, the algorithm is 48 percent accurate on average. That’s better than chance--which gets answers right only nine percent of the time--but researchers would like the algorithm perform at least as well as humans would.
An algorithm able to identify people’s urban tribes would have a wide range of applications, from generating more relevant search results and ads, to allowing social networks to provide better recommendations and content. There also is a growing interest in analyzing footage from cameras installed in public spaces to identify groups rather than individuals.
Computer scientists presented their findings at the British Machine Vision Conference in the United Kingdom this fall.
There's a new piece of software out there that can identify a whole lot more about you than your name via Facebook. By analyzing a photo of you alone, it can accurately predict intimate details about your life. Anthony explains how it works and if you should fear- or embrace- this new tech.
Welcome to the world of Minority Report, where technology scans you and costumizes ads for you, but also tracks you. So it’s not your retina, but your photos on social media. It’s good enough that I can repeat my mantra and then Nebris’s: “We live in Science Fiction times” and “SciFi is Now.”
Over at his blog, Greer the Archdruid has been writing a series about the end of progress, or at least the civil religion of progress, for most of the year. I posted an excerpt from one of the early entries in the series as The Archdruid on Objectivism as civil antireligion, but haven’t had much to say about it here since.* This week, he finally winds down the series with An Old Kind of Science, in which he points out that science, as it has been thought of for the past four centuries, has been entirely wrapped up in the pursuit of progress, which he posits as “The attempt to conquer nature—in less metaphorical terms, to render the nonhuman world completely transparent to the human intellect and just as completely subject to the human will—was industrial civilization’s defining project.” He then goes on for several paragraphs about how science went from describing any organized body of knowledge to the way of finding out information using “Quantitative measurement, experimental testing, and public circulation of the results of research” that we know today. He then tied the history of science back to his thesis about progress and conquering Nature by pointing out that “The dream of conquering nature, though, was what made modern science the focus of so large a fraction of the Western world’s energies and ambitions over the last three hundred years.”
This is very deep stuff, and deserves a lot more thought and text than I am willing to put together right now. That written, it did inspire me to respond to him. In turn, he replied back. To mark the Winter Solstice, I’m reposting our exchange here. Follow over the jump, please.
Pliocene epoch featured greenhouse gas levels similar to today's but with higher average temperatures
The Arctic wasn’t always frozen tundra. About 3.6 million years ago, the far north was blanketed in boreal forests, and summers were 8 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today, geologists report May 9 in Science.
Researchers pieced together that picture from sediments buried beneath Lake El’gygytgyn (pronounced EL-gih-git-gin), about 100 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle in northeastern Russia (SN: 11/20/10, p. 13). The sediments preserve the most complete history of Arctic climate on land over the last 3.6 million years.
“It’s an unprecedented record,” says study coauthor Julie Brigham-Grette, a geologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “It gives us a way of envisioning what the future may hold.”
The summer monsoon that dumps rain on an otherwise-arid American Southwest may grow stronger as the climate warms, suggests a study of the region’s monsoon patterns of the last millennium.
Across the Northern Hemisphere, monsoons — winds that change directions seasonally, altering rainfall — could intensify, the team reports May 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The results complement recent observations and simulations of monsoon activity, says Pang-chi Hsu, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who was not involved in the work. “We do see enhanced Northern Hemisphere monsoons over the recent decades, from the 1970s.”
My friend Nebris will appreciate this prediction for reasons that will take too long to explain here now.
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