Open Your Eyes, For Me?

I need to learn to stay away from discussions on the internet.

I know that as a blogger that might seem like a stupid thing to say but going into the comments section on anything from Youtube to Memebase brings about a mood so infuriating that I can’t stop myself; the fact that it’s likely to give me a headache apparently doesn’t deter me, and so I stare into a black abyss of ignorance and wonder what the fuck is wrong with the world.

I shouldn’t, there are billions of people running around with different opinions, different attitudes to living their lives and apparently different earplugs wedged in to… well, their ears, so that they can block out as much evidence and reasonable argument as possible so that they can still hold onto points that are at their best ignorant and at their worst stupid. I don’t want to go into a downer but bloody hell, if there’s any proof that Western education still needs a lot of work, it’s the diversity of ridiculous notions that the internet lets stew in its various melting pots.

Perhaps this is partly to do with the popularity of largely USA-based websites, a country where denying evolution and climate change both is not only commonplace but the majority (at least according to some surveys, I know that they’re not always trustworthy so I won’t pretend that this is a proven fact, but it’s worryingly close to one nevertheless), and in the face of more hurricanes, terrifying data on temperature and CO2 levels in the last few decades and flooding, people still close their eyes and pretend it’s not happening. It’s gone past the point of ridiculousness now, in my opinion. People find it very easy to ignore and cherry pick data, I get that, it’s unfortunately common, but when it’s right in front of you? Ugh.

Kyoto Now

Good news for the planet, we’re not going to be completely without an agreement to cut back on the damage we’re doing through man-made climate change, even though we need something that’s ideally completely international anyway, because the Kyoto protocol’s being extended to 2015.

Don’t relax yet though earth, I’m sure you’ll deal with a lot more destruction by the time any newer and more effective plan is formed, so if anything you should be screaming just as loud as you were before (which, given that you don’t have a mouth is probably for the best for all of us organisms with ears).

Over 200 nations agreed to this, and apparently they do plan on coming up with a further-reaching plan in the future, although at this point I reckon we should start by admitting that our species is inconsiderate as all hell and is not deserving of the ‘dominion over the plants and the animals’ that many of us take as our birthright.

We should flood the streets, let dolphins live in our homes and get back to throwing our shit at each other like our evolutionary cousins, who arguably should be throwing shit at us.

Ideally, we should all just leave this planet as our way of apologising for the mess we’ve caused and go and find somewhere that’s as bleak and depressing as the amount of action the USA has taken on this issue.

Where Our Apathy Gets Us

In a world increasingly close to losing Bangladesh and The Netherlands, I don’t think there’s really any room left for politicians who don’t understand the consequences of climate change, nor the ones that sweep its consequences under the rug, whether for ideological gain or comfort, we can’t really afford to put it off as an issue anymore, not that we ever truly could. These days, it seems to be discussed as if it’s an issue of the past, with it coming far behind the economy on the list of priorities. Granted, we did just come out of a huge, global crisis on that front, and yes, we need some sort of financial stability to be able to take action on an environmental front, but when the future of the planet and the life that walks its surface comes far after a concept that humans managed to both invent and then screw up… aren’t the priorities of our ‘higher-ups’ more than skewered?

Surely, there’s no harm in trying something? Even if climate change was a hoax, which it clearly isn’t, then the worst we could do by switching to renewable energy and sustainable development is surely to avoid our reliance on fuels that will eventually run out and cost us billions to switch everything over from and minimize our detrimental impacts on the ecology and geology we constantly threaten when expanding infrastructure based on greed rather than need? What bloody harm will it cost us that we won’t have to pay doubly in the long run if we ignore it? What reason do we have for ignoring a problem that’s already in our face if not just hoping we’ll be dead by the time it comes around and slaps the next generation in the face for our inexcusable apathy?

I hate to end a post this way two days in a row, but… ugh.

Just When You Thought We Were Getting Better

With certain issues, time seems to be the only cure to a shitstorm. As time passes since an event blows up, particularly on the internet, the more reasonable side of an argument continues to hold on, while those driven by bandwagons, personal experiences, or prejudice seem to slowly dwindle as more people realise what actually makes sense. There’s a lot of emotional baggage people drop in the heat of a moment, some immediately pick a side rather than trying to work out both sides of an argument and working out which makes more sense, but with time, especially after an event that wasn’t personal to the arguer, the more detached from the event it would seem we become, and the more objectively we can assess the situation.

And, just when you thought my faith in humanity had been restored, the UK’s conservative party has just added a climate change denier to its Department of Energy and Climate Change select committee. As one of only five MPs who voted against 2008′s climate change act, he is not representative of even the house of commons, never mind the general public, and as the owner of an oil company, he has a ridiculously transparent vested interest in keeping our country reliant on unsustainable fossil fuels. I try not to bash on the Tories too much, because we differ ideologically enough for it to be almost redundant, but this is just plain stupid.

Just when they’re trying to battle rumors that they’re out of touch with the general public, this and the badger cull episode prove that they’re out of touch with science as well. Seriously, if Ed Milliband and Nick Clegg weren’t so infamous I’d make a call that they’re making themselves unelectable at this point.

Ugh.

Bad Candidate

I’m a little scared about the Romney campaign.

I know I don’t live in the USA, but it’s a really influential country, and despite any good points the idea of the ‘most powerful man in the world’ actively discouraging tackling one of the most important challenges to the planet is really… well, I suppose for lack of a better term it’s really discouraging.

I can’t quite fathom how someone intelligent enough to make it into such a high ranking position can still be so ignorant when it comes to the future fate of the planet and the sustainability of our resources. I’m sorry Romney, but we need to tackle climate change as much as we can, ignoring it and pretending that it doesn’t exist is only going to ensure that the changes come as projected, and when they do, I vote we throw you into the rising sea levels so you can see what you refused to prevent.

Hopefully you won’t be elected and I’ll be less worrisome about this, although I do worry about it from time to time anyway, and hopefully if you do get in you’ll change your mind and use the time you may or may not have to actually try and stop the planet from being threatened.

Because you know, if the job of a world leader is to do anything, it’s to keep their part of the world intact.

The fact that you refuse to do that is what scares me.

Clear?

Heatwaving

I return to the land of the living, although my vigour has been severely crippled by the sweltering heat. It’s nice weather for a barbecue so naturally I tried to do one and didn’t quite manage to cook the chicken through the first time. I am no chef and I’m sure that’s no surprise to any of you.

I think at times like these that I should find some way to trap this heat and use it to power the electricity in my house. I assume that’s possible given the right equipment although I suppose that solar panels are probably more efficient and do a better job at getting some oomph from that giant ball of plasma floating in space so many, many, many miles away.

Oomph should be a real word. If anyone wants to bring that case towards whatever official board governs these things I’ll vouch for you.

Apparently the weather extremes going on around the world are increasing belief in climate change. I say good, it’s ridiculous that it took this long. It truly baffles me to think about how the media invented scandal that was climategate even happened. Why make a mountain out of a molehill when the price could be the earth?

It just seems a little silly is all, surely survival is the goal we should be working towards first.

It would seem that instead of the perpetuation of our planet some of us seem to place more importance on… gossip.

Good News/Bad News: Dinosaur Farts

Hello and welcome to good news/bad news, the segment in which I scour the news to find stories that I deem to be either good or bad. Neutral stories cannot do, for that goes against the very spirit of this day’s post, and my opinions on what constitutes good and bad may appear to be a little out of whack. You can trust me when I tell you that there’s a reason for that, and if you’re a regular reader then it’s probably quite clear.

First of all, just in case you’re not completely sick of me/other people shouting at you about it; go and see the avengers. It’s bloody amazing. I’m going to see it for the second time on Wednesday and I’m sure there are hundreds or thousands of others like me out there. For a movie that’s beaten Harry Potter’s box office records, even then, it’s a work of genius.

Congratulations Joss Whedon, you have not disappointed me this time. I also quite liked Thor and X-men so you’re doing well, and although I have yet to see Cabin In The Woods I’m sure it’s pretty damn great.

But yeah, I suppose that’s sort of news… ish… the box office bit was anyway, that’s some pretty good news if you’re a fan of the movie and you wanted to move smug little Harry Potter from his number one seat and tell him the books were better.

But I suppose some of you might not even consider this news story bad, probably because you don’t care about the dinosaurs, or more likely because it doesn’t really affect you.

I assure you however, that potentially causing global warming with your farts is an incredibly serious issue.

Especially when you’re a thirty foot long hunk of scales, muscle and stomachs.

What am I talking about?

Well it turns out that Sauropod dinosaurs, as you might have expected, were a way worse methane factory than the cows we have today warming our air and being culled for delicious, delicious steak.

Check this out!

Yes friends, this is science at its best, and also at its most likely to hit headlines. And I’m just the kind of sucker to gobble it up and fling it all over facebook, twitter and anywhere else that will give eyes to this blog.

So, working out the methane input of these huge, four-legged, long-necked creatures, a team of scientists in the UK were able to determine that Sauropods probably had a pretty significant impact on the global climate of the mesozoic era.

Look it up.

It’s not surprising when you think about it, but it is pretty bad news in the way that we have millions of animal species as well as many other organisms, pumping out methane and CO2 like it’s nobody’s business, and to counter that… well, we don’t really have the trees anymore.

As humans we have possession of technologies that should really be utilised in a way that helps out ol’ mother earth.

So get on that engineers!

 

 

Good News/Bad News: The Glacial Resist Stance (Part 1)

Hello and welcome to last week’s good news/bad news, the segment where I find something fresh off the press that represents good and something that represents bad, all in my opinion and all without shame.

This week I have the same story from four different sources and I want to make it clear from this why the daily mail should be forced into bankruptcy, and if that’s not possible, for every copy, every building and every website associated with it to burst into flames.

Because this issue deals with issues of climate change, and the daily mail, being the propaganda paper that it is, has pretty much become our bad news for this week.

Let’s go deeper, shall we?

So…

In the blue corner, we have nature – the weekly journal of science!

In the red corner, we have the daily mail – the daily journal of bollocks!

In the yellow corner, we have BBC news – the taxpayer-funded, usually reliable journal of… news?

In the green corner? Well, whatever colour this corner is, we have the guardian, the usually reliable paper that houses Charlie Brooker, Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh on occasion, and therefore a paper which I have to try pretty hard to suppress my bias for.

From that alone, you should get a pretty good idea of how this may turn out, but the most important fact in all of this is the news item.

And that news item deals with the observations of a glacier on the border of Pakistan and China, a glacier that is apparently gaining ice.

Already I can hear you guessing which way the daily mail swung out on this one, and if you’ve already clicked the link you know how bad a job they did with their headlines this time.

‘Forget global warming, scientists discover glaciers in Asia getting BIGGER’ it reads.

And I facepalm so hard my hand practically cracks open my skull.

So, you decide which paper you think won this one out while I prime myself for the second part of this tomorrow, with this unaddressed letter to the daily mail.

Dear Daily Mail,

Here on earth, we have a process that we like to call ‘science’.

It would seem that you don’t quite understand how the process of science works, so let me hit you with some knowledge. One data point does not mean a well-established theory is wrong.

The evidence has to weigh out, and unfortunately for our planet, the fact this Asian glacier may be gaining ice does not overrule the many and more elaborate observations that support the theory that the climate of the earth is changing, and in fact, this glacier growth does not necessarily even dispute this theory.

So before you decide to be sensationalists, get your facts straight.

Because when it comes to matters such as the possible man-made destruction of our planet, we don’t need any more people to be stuffed with the false impression that climate change is pseudoscience.

Please stop publishing and kindly leave your offices to sit and weep in whatever circle of hell you left your intellectual and journalistic integrity in.

Yours sincerely,

Me.

BBC’s Horizon defends science tooth and claw

As one may be able to derive from the title of this short post; the most recent episode of BBC’s documentary series Horizon, entitled: Science Under Attack, did a brilliant job of addressing certain controversies in which science seems to take a fall.

Now Horizon has always been an impressive series and one of the highlights of my week; presenting scientific concepts and theories in a well rounded and informative manner while still retaining its ability to communicate in an interesting and compelling fashion.

The episode, which I will link to below; dealt with public scrutiny of science in the realms of man-made climate change, HIV/AIDS denial and the subject of GM crops. It does a brilliant job of defending the scientific method and consensus on all of these issues, and is especially outstanding in explaining the misfortune that lead to a media storm dismissing the still very real threat of global warming as a ‘scandal’.

There is a certain man in there who would constitute a good candidate for a rant, however, this program dealt with the issues so efficiently there really is nothing to do but recommend it and the points it raises.