You are what you grow...

Today... a quick link to a NY Times article: You are what you grow.

It's a short (3 pages) read providing an overview to the US Farm Bill, and it suggests that it is time for a major overhaul of that piece of legislation. I agree.

Conspiracies & Hope

Yesterday's post-thesis, "I need to think about something else for a while" adventures led me on some interesting journeys. It started with the news... this headline caught my eye: "Students attend first integrated prom." I was expecting to read the story and find out that it was some place in Africa -- perhaps in South Africa where apartheid ended a little more than a decade ago. So I read the story... including this quote: "I've asked, 'Why can't you come [to the Prom]?' and they're like, 'My mommy and daddy -- they don't agree with being with the colored people,' which I think is crazy," she said.

I was quite surprised to find out that the story was based on a place that was less than 50 miles from where I lived for nearly 5 years... the story was from Ashburn, GA -- 160 miles south of Atlanta. Read the full story at: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/04/23/turner.prom/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Then I made the mistake of listening to Dan, who pointed me to a website where one can watch all kinds of documentaries... and I came across one called "Bush link to Kennedy Assassination." I've never much subscribed to conspiracy theories... haven't cared for the idea, no considered them to be serious alternatives. But my curiosity got the better of me -- I've been curious about the JFK assassination for quite some time -- and I watched the film. Interesting. Lots of little bits of evidence put forth that raise quite significant questions about George HW Bush... I don't want to elaborate on all of them, but let's just say there is pretty convincing case. And that's just JFK's assassination, to say nothing over some other theories that are out there regarding Bay of Pigs, Watergate, and Iran-Contra.

While these are all just theories... they led me to wonder something I've been wondering frequently over the last 7 years, and that is: How in this world can a third-rate recovering alcoholic who has never been successful at much of anything become the President of the US? I must say that conspiracy theories shed quite a bit of light on that in the way of networks, favors, and connections... and it leads to a necessity to ask questions about more current events, particularly 9/11 and Iraq. But, like the media and vast majority of the public.. I don't have time for that right now. I have a thesis to work on.

And work related to that thesis leads me on interesting journeys as it relates to our food... I continue to find ways to be disgusted by the food industry... factory farmed meat to ready-to-eat meals, other poor substitutes for "food"... mostly brought on by our own ignorance.

All of these things seem to happen out of our ignorance. Or our apathy. Either way, when I'm looking at the things we are doing to the world... climate change, species loss, and so many other things that are leading us in the opposite direction of a sustainable world... these two -- ignorance and apathy -- will be what decides whether or not we can make it. So while I'm weighed down by the awesome amounts of ignorance and apathy that dominate... I'm buoyed by the hope that comes from knowing how fast things can change when people decide it's time to change. Let's make the decision sooner rather than later...

Earth day...

I'm borrowing a page from Antoine today... so he gets full credit for the thought and the product. The page is about earth day and the plethora of lists of things that you can do "to save the planet." Well... yes... do those things. But changing a light bulb and inflating your tires probably won't do it.

So here's Antoine's list... (slightly modified) which, if we all took to heart, might lead us to actually saving the planet... or at least extending its inhabitability for a little while longer. And that's a good thing.

1. Living and Driving
Consider the living and driving issues together. Envision a future without a car and start making strategic moves towards that goal. Start by walking, cycling and taking transit as much as you can. Move closer to work, or at least close to transit that can take you there. Car dependence not only pollutes but it can make cities ugly and dumb, and its citizens fat. If you must drive, eco-drive (fuel efficient car, inflated tires, low speeds, no sharp accelerations, consolidated trips.)

2. Stuff
Think about the amount of stuff you buy. The less, the better.

• Shop in your closets first. Can you adapt what you have? In general, reuse, borrow, share and buy used. If I can do it (OK I try,) you can do it too.
• Start by minimizing packaging and bringing bags with you when you shop.
  
• Buy local products, support your local economy and minimize the impact of transportation. The closer the better, although shipping by boat is much more energy-efficient than by truck. The worst is by air. (of course don't buy local crap. And sometimes it's important to send a signal to the market by temporarily buying something from far away. Supporting faraway economies can be strategic too - like Fair Trade.)
  
• Support small and local businesses - they can be more responsive to your needs and wants and the money stays in your community.
• Try to figure out how much energy was used to make and transport the product.
  
• Renewable and recyclable materials are best.
  
• Go for durability: repairable quality products with replaceable parts.
  
• Read the labels and ask questions: Where is it from? How was it made? Who made it? What is it made of? Is it recycled, recyclable? How long is it expected to last? If they don't know, make them find out.

3. Food
Buy local, seasonal and organic. You can not only save energy but help make local agriculture viable. When local agriculture doesn't pay anymore, farmland is often turned into strip malls and subdivisions. I prioritize local and seasonal above organic, but it's a long discussion. Aside from ethics, meat takes a lot more land and energy to produce. Limit your consumption of meat and try to find grass-fed organic meat. Be careful about fish... many species are endangered - look at the Monterrey Aquarium seafood Guide.

4. Compost and Recycling
When you buy something, you are just borrowing the molecules for a bit. So think about your intervention as being part of a closed loop.

• Recycle what you can, but this should not absolve you from buying the stuff in the first place. Many materials are expensive to recycle and get downgraded in the process. For example, plastic pop bottles do not become new pop bottles but are used for non-food products.
• It doesn't make sense to landfill food. You will be shocked to see how much your trash is reduced once you take anything organic out. Compost in your yard or pressure your municipality to start a collection program.

5. Power
Don't use the dryer. Just don't... unless you really have to. After a month, you will already notice a difference in your power bill. Unplug everything that can be unplugged when it's not in use. It may be "off" but it continues to use energy. Of course, use compact fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent ones... but don't put them in the trash when you're done - they contain mercury.

6. Comfort
Air conditioning is for when it's so hot your clothes cling to you and you can't sleep. So keep it for emergencies. Pulling your blinds down during the day also helps.
Heating is not designed to grow banana trees indoors and sweaters look great. Add the two together and 20 degrees should be just fine.

7. Water
Even if water is abundant where you live, water use is actually electricity use. The City of Toronto spends more energy pumping water than running its entire transit system. If you must have a yard, use species that require as little watering as possible; use a low-flow shower head; use a front-loading washer; fill the dishwasher or wash your dishes as if you were in Israel.

8. Travel
Ooooh that's the hardest one... the truth is that you can do all of the above and cancel a lot of the good you've done with just a couple flights... try to vacation closer... take a train or fill a fuel-efficient car with your friends. This is the toughest one for me.

9. Dissemination
Keep telling people about the above. They'll roll their eyes and call you names... but you will set the wheels in motion and a few months later, you may notice some changes!

10. Democracy
Democracy is you. If you don't like it, change it! Vote, get elected, make deputations, write letters. It actually makes a difference. Even if it doesn't, you'll feel good about yourself - and you can keep on babbling...

The Real Climate Change Censorship

No words from me today, but Mr. Monbiot's words are sufficient to raise the blood pressure a bit....
From http://monbiot.com/

It’s happening, it’s systematic, and it is precisely the opposite story to the one the papers are telling.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 10^th April 2007.

The drafting of reports by the world’s pre-eminent group of climate scientists is an odd process. For many months scientists contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tussle over the evidence. Nothing gets published unless it achieves consensus. This means that the panel’s reports are extremely conservative – even timid. It also means that they are as trustworthy as a scientific document can be.

Then, when all is settled among the scientists, the politicians sweep in and seek to excise from the summaries anything which threatens their interests. While the US government has traditionally been the scientists’ chief opponent, this time the assault was led by Saudi Arabia, supported by China and Russia(1,2).

The scientists fight back, but they always have to make some concessions. The report released on Friday, for example, was shorn of the warning that “North America is expected to experience locally severe economic damage, plus substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from climate change related events”(3). David Wasdell, an accredited reviewer for the panel, claims that the summary of the science the IPCC published in February was purged of most of its references to “positive feedbacks”: climate change accelerating itself(4).

This is the opposite of the story endlessly repeated in the right-wing press: that the IPCC, in collusion with governments, is conspiring to exaggerate the science. No one explains why governments should seek to amplify their own failures. In the wacky world of the climate conspiracists, no explanations are required. The world’s most conservative scientific body has somehow been transformed into a cabal of screaming demagogues.

This is just one aspect of a story which is endlessly told the wrong way around. In the Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mail, in columns by Dominic Lawson, Tom Utley and Janet Daley the allegation is constantly repeated that climate scientists and environmentalists are trying to “shut down debate”. Those who say that manmade global warming is not taking place, they claim, are being censored.

Something is missing from their accusations: a single valid example. The closest any of them have been able to get is two letters sent – by the Royal Society and by the US senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe – to that delicate flower ExxonMobil, asking that it cease funding lobbyists who deliberately distort climate science(5,6). These correspondents had no power to enforce their wishes. They were merely urging Exxon to change its practices. If everyone who urges is a censor, then the comment pages of the newspapers must be closed in the name of free speech.

In an interview four weeks ago, Martin Durkin, who made Channel 4’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle, claimed that he was subject to “invisible censorship”(7). He appears to have forgotten that he had just been given 90 minutes of prime time television to expound his theory that climate change is a great green conspiracy. So what did this censorship amount to? Complaints about one of his programmes had been upheld by the Independent Television Commission. It found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing” and that they had been “misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.”(8) This, apparently, makes him a martyr.

If you want to know what real censorship looks like, let me show you what has been happening on the other side of the fence. Scientists whose research demonstrates that climate change is taking place have been repeatedly threatened and silenced and their findings edited or suppressed.

The Union of Concerned Scientists found that 58% of the 279 climate scientists working at federal agencies in the US who responded to its survey reported that they had experienced one of the following constraints. 1. “Pressure to eliminate the words ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming’, or other similar terms” from their communications. 2. Editing of scientific reports by their superiors which “changed the meaning of scientific findings”. 3. Statements by officials at their agencies which misrepresented their findings. 4. “The disappearance or unusual delay of websites, reports, or other science-based materials relating to climate”. 5. “New or unusual administrative requirements that impair climate-related work”. 6. “Situations in which scientists have actively objected to, resigned from, or removed themselves from a project because of pressure to change scientific findings.” They reported 435 incidents of political interference over the past five years(9).

In 2003, the White House gutted the climate change section of a report by the Environmental Protection Agency(10). It deleted references to studies showing that global warming is caused by manmade emissions. It added a reference to a study partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute, which suggested that temperatures are not rising. Eventually the agency decided to drop the section altogether.

After Thomas Knutson at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a paper in 2004 linking rising emissions with more intense tropical cyclones, he was blocked by his superiors from speaking to the media. He agreed to one request to appear on MSNBC, but a public affairs officer at NOAA rang the station to tell the programme that Knutson was “too tired” to conduct the interview. The official explained to him that the “White House said no”. All media inquiries were to be routed instead to a scientist who believed there was no connection between global warming and hurricanes(11).

Last year the top climate scientist at NASA, James Hansen, reported that his bosses were trying to censor his lectures, papers and web postings. He was told by public relations officials at the agency that there would be “dire consequences” if he continued to call for rapid reductions in greenhouse gases(12).

Last month, the Alaskan branch of the US Fish and Wildlife Service told its scientists that anyone travelling to the Arctic must understand “the administration’s position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues.”(13)

At hearings in the US Congress three weeks ago, Philip Cooney, a former aide to White House who was previously working at the American Petroleum Institute, admitted he had made hundreds of changes to government reports about climate change on behalf of the Bush administration(14). Though he is not a scientist, he had struck out evidence that glaciers were retreating and inserted phrases suggesting that there was serious scientific doubt about global warming(15).

The guardians of free speech in Britain aren’t above attempting a little suppression, either. The Guardian and I have now received several letters from the climate sceptic Viscount Monckton, threatening us with libel proceedings after I challenged his claims about climate science(16,17,18,19). On two of these occasions he has demanded that articles are removed from the internet. Monckton is the man who wrote to Senators Rockefeller and Snowe, claiming that their letter to ExxonMobil offends the corporation’s “right of free speech”(20).

After Martin Durkin’s film was broadcast, one of the scientists it featured, Professor Carl Wunsch, complained that his views on climate change had been misrepresented. Wunsch says he has now received a legal letter from Durkin’s production company, Wag TV, threatening to sue him for defamation unless he agrees to make a public statement that he was neither misrepresented nor misled(21).

Would it be terribly impolite to suggest that when those who deny that climate change is happening complain of censorship, a certain amount of projection is taking place?

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Catherine Brahic, 6th April 2007. Climate change is here now, says major report. NewScientist.com

2. David Adam, 7th April 2007. Scientists’ stark warning on reality of warmer world. The Guardian.

3. Roger Harrabin, 6th April 2007. The Today Programme, Radio 4.

4. David Wasdell, February 2007. Political Corruption of the IPCC Report? http://www.meridian.org.uk/Resources/Global%20Dynamics/IPCC/contents.htm

5. Bob Ward, the Royal Society, 4th September 2006. Letter to Nick Thomas, Esso Ltd. You can see the letter here: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2006/09/19/LettertoNick.pdf

6. John D. Rockefeller IV and Olympia Snowe, 27th October 2006. Letter to Rex W. Tillerson, ExxonMobil. http://snowe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=9acba744-802a-23ad-47be-2683985c724e

7. Martin Durkin, 9th March 2007. Interview with Brendan O’Neill. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/2948/

8. Independent Television Commission, 1st April 1998. Channel Four to Apologise to Four Interviewees in “Against Nature” Series. Press Release.

9. Union of Concerned Scientists and Government Accountability Project, February 2007. Atmosphere of Pressure: Political Interference in Federal Climate Science. http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/Atmosphere-of-Pressure.pdf

10. Andrew Revkin and Katharine Seelye, 19th June 2003. Report by the E.P.A. Leaves Out Data on Climate Change. The New York Times.

11. Union of Concerned Scientists and Government Accountability Project, ibid.

12. Andrew Revkin, 29th January 2006. Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him. The New York Times.

13. Andrew Revkin, 8th March 2007. Memos Tell Officials How to Discuss Climate. The New York Times.

14. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, 19th March 2007. Committee Examines Political Interference with Climate Science. http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1214

15. Andrew Revkin, 8th June 2005. Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming. The New York Times.

16. Viscount Monckton, 14th November 2006. Email to the Guardian.

17. Viscount Monckton, 23rd November 2006. Letter to the Guardian.

18. Viscount Monckton, 23rd November 2006. Letter to George Monbiot

19. Viscount Monckton, 24th November 2006. Email to George Monbiot.

20. Viscount Monckton, 11th December 2006. Uphold Free Speech About Climate Change or Resign. Open letter to Senators Snowe and Rockefeller. http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061212_monckton.pdf

21. Carl Wunsch, pers comm.