kuniform

Wow. Today began ugly, with a traffic altercation ending with me blowing a kiss to a cop (don’t ask). Then, walking to work, a huge street sign fell off a pole, nearly hitting me. Going up the escalator, the guy in front of me dropped his security badge, which promptly slid between the escalator’s steps and the side.

It made me wonder what the hell I was doing, going to work. Short of frogs raining or a plague of locusts, it was enough signs for me, pun intended. I was tracking through Max Design’s weekly reading list and came across Dave Pollard’s article on collaborative tools and their lack of adoption. The collaborative tools article was great, and Pollard is right. There is little adoption of them, despite their huge promise. This concerns me for two reasons: 1 selfish and 1 pragmatic. The selfish one: I am trying to develop a collaborative tool now, called revizit. The pragmatic: though corporations are probably the biggest beneficiaries, anything that improves human communication is desirable, especially if it improves human understanding or our ability to survive in harmony with our planet.

And on that note, it was with surprise that I found a ton of great environmental links on Pollard’s site, including his article “The Truth About Nature: How to Save the World.” At the same time I was reading this article, and pondering whether Christians or Moslems would ever be able to accept the idea that humans are not the preeminent form of life without relationship to nature, a great 30 minute PBS series entitled “design e2” was on TV. It talked about China, and how rapidly they are adopting environmental solutions (though they still have many issues, make no mistake about it). It ended on an interesting note… A nation believing in the Tao, of life in balance and backed by totalitarian will… does it have a chance to make a difference?

It makes me hopeful, because I think this land of rabid individualism, though fun, may not survive past its adolesence to mature and realize the need for such solutions. I am always hopeful this is not the case, but I live in Chicago, a city with fairly progressive environmental policies. Does the rest of the country have this will? Do our politicians? Maybe it’s time to get with Plato and the Republic, and use music to change it? Obviously, I’m beat, and tilting at windmills. G’night!

The title says it all. When the President of the United States, a former oilman and current snake oil salesman, says we need to focus on the solution, you know it’s on for real. On top of that, 928 scientists believe climate change is caused by human activity.

So, we’ve begun exploring going solar with Solar Service here in Chicago. So far, it does not seem to be very cost effective, so we may call out a salesperson to double check that. Our problem is that we have a boiler, not a furnace, so we only cut down our hot water heater gas usage. We wash most of our clothes with cold water and turn the water heater down, regardless.

There are new federal and Illinois state tax credits that could drop the cost, but we may look at replacing windows around our house or finding other ways in which we can reduce our energy usage before taking that next step, unfortunately. It may be time to call in the Energy Detectives. So, I stand with Hugo Chavez when he says 1 car per person for this planet is lunacy.

Was this in my dreams, or my nightmares:

Hey, hold on to your surf board. It may be a little slick from that Valdez oil slick we still haven’t paid to clean up yet. Hi, I’m Lee Raymond, ex-head of Exxon, guest blogger on kuniform today. Please don’t be angry because I was given a 400 million dollar retirement package, I am a human being like you. I’m just sharper at the game, boss! Hee hee hee. Haw.

Here, this fair and balanced Washington Times article will tell the whole story. Heck, you can always trust a paper owned by the moonies. It shows I need to work for my dead presidents, baby!

Heck, some of that isn’t even cash, it’s stock options, a coupla houses, use of a private corporate jet, and a $1 million/year consulting contract. Sheesh. It’s not all just cash, so get over it. I am a C-O-N-S-U-L-T-A-N-T. C’mon, you’re only pissed because it’s a retirement package bigger than the GNP of the three smallest countries in the world.

Ok, ok, you’re right, Jason (Man, this guy will not shut up with the useless opinions). You’ve convinced me. Time to donate all my ill gotten gains to charity. I wonder if I can find a group with similar interests. Hey, this Josh Marshall guy has a great article here. I really dig his progressive views.

Competitive Enterprise Insitute, you say? Attackin’ Al Gore, huh? Defending the pro-emissions folks?!?

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! Pollution! Goooooooooo toxic chemicals! I’m a big rooter for emissions! Whoops.. Excuse me… That emission.. Must’ve been that guacamole you made, Kunesh. Too spicy, and it’s not the kind of gas that makes me a filthy rich man.

Well, it makes your air filthy, and me rich. Now, where’s my checkbook so’s I can buy off the public’s interest?

Oh, here we go with this again. Is there climate change? Is it statistically real, what about the polar bears? I came into work this morning to find a 1999 BBC article written by Dr. Philip Stott tacked to my cube wall. His position, in brief, is that the media goes mad over hyping these types of stories, and that there are many factors involved in climate change.

His article has a fatalistic position, in that he cites billions of factors which may affect climate change, but that since human activity is responsible for only some factors, why bother? He states many factors affect climate change, including “the flip of a butterfly’s wing, and volcanic eruptions.” Yes, that’s right. That’s all I saw in rush hour this morning. Butterflies inside of metal boxes, powered by miniature volcanic eruptions. This must be science!

He points back to 150 years’ data showing that the climate didn’t change that much (.3 to .6 degrees centigrade), so there must not be a problem with human activity. Stott’s position is that “climate change” is a strawman humands are unable to fight. He conflates the impact of our technological creations on the climate with natural processes, and then informs us that “playing God with one or two politically selected factors” won’t help us. Adaptation will help us, since that is what we’ve done as a species. He closes by telling us that warmer weather will be great.

Stott’s position seems indefensible to me. Because the system is large, our impact is small? And there is no trend that our impact is growing greater? No generally agreed upon idea that this is occurring? Hmm, Stott doesn’t make reference to any specific trends, studies or ideas. It’s much easier to attack a strawman than refute hard science.

Stott is a scientist, and knows an infinite amount more about the climate than me. Using that position as a bullypulpit to deny human impact on the environment is disingenuous at best.

As climate change is discussed more and more, the media will work to distort the issue to its most fantastic proportions. The problem doesn’t exist, it’s all hype—the problem does exist and it’s HUGE!

Here’s a few more British and Canadians takes on the subject. The interesting part about these articles is that they start off by denying climate change or decrying scientists as “alarmist,” cherry-pick a few datapoints describing why they feel a certain way, and then close by ignoring the evidence on the other side. Here’s one by Ruth Lea, director of the Centre for Policy Studies describing how the UN’s research is all hooey, and burning fossil fuels could actually cool the environment. See, when it’s us screwing the environment, that can’t happen. We just naturally make it better. a bank all about temperature changes that occurred without our polar bears are not dying

The bottom line is that climate change as a result of human activity is happening everyday, and we as individuals can do many things to lessen our impact. Let the media find commentators to distort the issue all they want, and people can cling to whichever data points they want. It reminds me of a lecture I attended in college by the late Stephen J. Gould, an eminent biologist. He lectured on scientific bias, and showed us slides of textbooks from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of the arguments about the scientific basis for racism ran to physiological differences between members of different races, things like forehead slope, for example. Gould showed how in the textbook example pictures the publishers used slight visual tricks to underscore the point. White skulls were shown level to an imaginary baseline, while black and Native American skulls were titled back a few degrees. In the same way, this argument is not about data, it’s about owning up to our responsibility as moral human beings.

What we know is that industrialization has led to a very different relationship between humanity and the rest of nature, and this relationship is destructive to us and to nature itself. We have 6 billion people now; in 50 years, 10 billion. Shouldn’t we invest some resources in figuring out how to lessen our impact on the environment?

In any event, here’s a link for you to help stop global warming today.

Recently, I’ve caught up with various people who’ve seen the post below about Al Gore and wondered. The problem is global, and that means it is, prima facie, beyond any single individual to change through direct action.

It’s what I tried to express in that post about the movie itself. At some point, jumping from Africa to Antarctica to Greenland to Tibet to Brazil and back, learning more information about each place and how they interrelate—it’s cognitive overload. You or I cannot individually walk about and clean up the world.

We can do many other things though, each of which has impact:

• Change our behavior. Here’s a carbon calculator, to understand where you use energy now. Wired magaine has one here as well. Even little things like recycling or eating less beef can help.


• Spend your money wisely. You are probably one of the richest people in the world. Investing a bit in insulation or weatherproofing can help the environment, and you. Eating locally grown or raised produce or animals means you pay a bit more to eat tastier food, there’s less environmental impact from shipping and storing meat and local farmers can keep farming. Everybody wins.


• Invest green. Green investments (or SRI, Socially Responsible Investments) reached $2.29 trillion (that’s with a ‘T’) in the US this year. Smart Money magazine had good things to say about it, as well. Namely, that you should do your homework on these funds, and all funds. Green funds have grown 260% since 1995, but the more that it grows and is considered a critical factor in a company’s role in society, the better. And that brings me to the last point…


• Spread the word. No one can do it alone, so each of us needs to make it a priority in our lives, the same way we did with things like cigarette smoking. People have told me this current administration will not do anything about it. That is not the point. They’re around for 3 more years. This problem is the challenge of our generation, and the generation after us. We have to transform our society, and our ways of thinking. No administration, Democrat or Republican, will make this a priority unless they see that it is a priority for their constituents. If Bush thought going green would help his party in the 2006 elections, he would be drinking chlorophyll right now.