"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Sunday, March 29, 2015

You say Texian, I say Tejano

"How to talk Texian" by a Yankee quotes Molly Ivins & other Texians nytimes.com/1984/07/22/mag 

Nice, but I want to know how to pronounce "Texian"

Have heard Tex-EE-an but don't believe it was 19th century vernacular. Tekshuns? Compare Parisian, Tunisian. see texasalmanac.com/sites/default/

Friday, March 27, 2015

Denial Can Be Strategically Rational

Florida is toast in my opinion. Miami may be a special case. 

New Orleans is definitely a special case in my opinion. It is too culturally important to lose. Heroic measures are justified.

All places at sea level eventually going to be swamped. The main uncertainty is when. 

And most populated places at sea level are in some form of denial, which is explicit and frank in some places. For instance, Galveston, Texas, is particularly at risk and in particularly vehement denial about it - they would be sinking due to local mismanagement alone and the real estate community is admantly against recognizing the fact.

http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/.../nature-vs-real...

Mortgages and financial arrangements are written with 30 - year return periods. Therefore everyone with property is interested in the risk being perceived as nonexistent or very far in the future.

Typically the people with the most property in an area are the most influential. Therefore denialism concentrates among the elite on the coasts, especially in areas on broad, shallow coastal plains or on sandy beaches. 

In my opinion this is NOT just DESPITE them being among the most at risk. 

To the contrary, they deny because they stand to lose considerable wealth the instant that the sea level rise problem becomes perceived as unmanageable. 

They deny BECAUSE they are at risk, and they want another buyer to come along. Like anyone selling or potentially selling defective property, they are not motivated to admit the defects.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Doom (in seven tweets)

Not debatable: Trillions of $ worth of proven fossil fuel reserves simply can't be allowed to be extracted and burned.

The carbon emissions constraint appears both absolutely necessary and absolutely inaccessible via available social/political affordances.

COP meetings a tug-of-war: nations compete to have least possible impact on their own short term interests. Nobody speaks for Earth.

Everyone on earth is invested in the fossil fuel status quo, most of the powerful very much so, & no sensible alternative is on the table.

Only hope is a global grassroots consensus based on clear shared view of our predicament: what denialsm is funded to prevent at all costs.

Then when I say that people everywhere need to understand a few rudiments of climate science, social scientists mock me for "deficit model".

Was a long shot anyway. So, checkmate? Victory for the cliff, defeat for the lemmings? Any ideas?