LET'S LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE WITH CLIMATE PROGRESS

Fresh from its victory in the Cold War, Think Progress takes time off from explaining its role in Breshnev's downfall to tell us how ( CUE MOZART):

"Wallace-Wells tries to make what seems trivial and abstract as concrete and visceral as possible with chapter titles such as: 

“Heat Death,” 
“Hunger,” 
“Drowning,” 
“Wildfire,” 

 halfway through the book he says, in all caps, 

“IF YOU HAVE MADE IT THIS FAR,
 YOU  ARE A  BRAVE  READER. "

“Unbreathable Air,” 
“Plagues of Warming,”
“Economic Collapse,” and 
“Climate Conflict.”

And He admits that any of those chapters contains, 

“enough horror to induce a panic attack in even
the most optimistic of those considering it.”

But, he adds, the science makes clear that

 “You are not merely considering it; you are about to embark on living it. In many places, we already are.”

IT TAKES A SEAHORSE TO ROUND UP THE UNICORN VOTE

GLOBAL WARMING : FOR WHOM THE PELL TOLLS

CARDINAL COAL WAS A MERRY OLD SOUL

Sydney, Australia, Apr 22, 2008 

Cardinal Pell disputes global warming hypothesis

In the April 20 edition of the Australian newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph, Cardinal George Pell expressed his concern regarding the “global warming hypothesis” in an article titled, “Global warming is over.”

“Canada has just experienced the coldest winter and the heaviest snowfalls since 1970-71... inconvenient facts for the climate-change bandwagon.”

“And it is an intolerant bandwagon with loud, exaggerated claims that the issue is settled and that an unchallenged consensus among scientists confirms the hypothesis of dangerous, humanly caused global warming. In fact, the issue is far from settled.”

London, March 28 2011
CARDINAL GEORGE PELL TO DELIVER 2011 ANNUAL GWPF LECTURE

The Global Warming Policy Foundation 

is pleased to announce that the second 

Annual GWPF Lecture will be delivered by

His Eminence Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney

One Christian Perspective On Climate Change

26 October 2011, 7pm

Westminster Cathedral Hall, 42 Francis Street, London SW1P

Sydney, Australia, Feb. 26, 2019 

George Pell: Cardinal found guilty of sexual offences in Australia


Cardinal George Pell has been found guilty of sexual offences in Australia, making him the highest-ranking Catholic figure to receive such a conviction.
Pell abused two choir boys in the rooms of a Melbourne cathedral in 1996, a jury found. He had pleaded not guilty.
The verdict was handed down in December, but it could not be reported until now due to legal reasons.

YOU HAVE TO BREAK COWS TO MAKE A CHEESE OMLETTE

            Vegan cheese 
not cheese says cheese body

BBC REPORTS ON NEW LOW CARBON HOOFPRINT COW

A vegan cheesemonger in Brixton has been told to stop calling its produce “cheese”. 

Dairy UK says that using the word "cheese" for anything other than real dairy products is misleading. 

It says plant-based alternatives do not have the same nutritional contents. The shop owners say they are clearly labelling their food.

THE GRAND OLD CLIMATE OPRY

While Anthropocene may not be as bad as it sounds, readers seeking to enjoy better operas in support of a better cause are strongly urged to contact  The Committee for Opera at Syon

    Nature   Books & Arts

Frozen arias for the Anthropocene epoch

A new opera grapples with the impacts of
 climate change. Patrick Goymer reviews it.

Anthropocene

 Music: Stuart MacRae; Words: Louise Welsh Scottish Opera; Hackney Empire, 9 February 2019.

Stranded in a harsh, isolated environment, a small group of explorers begins to argue. Ultimately, the protagonists sink into despair, with potentially deadly consequences. This plot features in literary masterpieces from William Shakespeare’s 1611 The Tempest to Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. Now, an opera claiming both works as inspiration harnesses the idea to explore human-driven climate change.

Anthropocene, by composer Stuart MacRae and librettist Louise Welsh, is not the first opera to be inspired by environmental catastrophe. Giorgio Battistelli’s 2015 CO2, essentially a lecture set to music, was based on the blockbuster documentary featuring Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (2006). MacRae’s three-act work is more of a thriller, nodding to science in references to ice cores, the aurora borealis and the human meddling with the environment that is name-checked in the title.

Here, however, the Anthropocene is not just the geological epoch that bears our grubby fingerprints; it is also the name of an Arctic research ship funded by a philanthropist, who voyages with his daughter to make profound but unspecified discoveries about the origins of life. The crew also includes two scientists, two sailors and a journalist. As in the 1914–17 expedition of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, the ship becomes stuck in ice as winter approaches, with ensuing repercussions.

The action centres around a woman the crew digs out of the ice. Improbably, she is alive. Dubbing her Ice, the group hails her as the scientific discovery of the century. Perhaps representing both hope and the risks of technological advance, she was — we learn — sacrificed during an earlier environmental crisis. However, the crew’s reaction to finding Ice is where the scientific credibility of the piece starts to fall down — not least in the hyperbolic comparison one member makes to the discoveries of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Marie Curie.

Musically, the opera fares much better. The score uses atonal and tonal passages that, with the minimalist white set, successfully evoke polar realms. The singing is excellent, notably from soprano Jennifer France as Ice, mezzo-soprano Sarah Champion as the philanthropist’s determined daughter and bass-baritone Paul Whelan as the ship’s captain.

FULL DISCLOSURE
While the proprietor of this blog served in  the company that won the 1995 Opera House Cup,  he has no conflict of interest to declare regarding taht competition, as i tis a classic  boat race.

HELL'S BELLS !

For whom the climate bell tolls,

 at two minutes to noon

By Thomas Gaulkin, February 20, 2019

Panic is in the air.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few weeks ago, 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg told a room full of powerful adults, “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic.” Aiming at scientists, journalists, and politicians in a recent piece for The New York Times, David Wallace-Wells wrote, “It is O.K., finally, to freak out. Even reasonable.” ...
So how do the rest of those hoping to sound the alarm about climate change make some noise?

One idea: Make noise. Literally. 

Inspired by church bells ringing in Europe on the eve of the COP24 conference in Kratowice, Poland last December, Jonathan Bailey decided to make the idea more user (and social media) friendly.

Bailey, who is active in the Portland, Oregon chapter of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, began ringing a bell every day and posting a video on Twitter with the hashtag #ringthebellforclimate.

THE RED STATE SHIFT

Anthony Watts wants you to believe Scott Adams is on his side. He says that what the cartoonist has to say is:

Scott Adams: ‘The hockey stick is literally a symbol of lying’

Anthony Watts / 23 hours ago 

That’s direct quote from Scott Adams in this video he posted yesterday.

But Watts nine word quote is only a third of a tweet long, and Adams often articulates thoughts too large to fit in a single cartoon balloon. So ellipsis aside, what pray did Adams say, and more to the point, what was he talking about? 

Was Adams calling scientists liars as Watts implies, or was he adressing the political necessity of what French scientists (as opposed to literary theorists) candidly call vulgarisation scientifique-- if you seek popular understanding,  don't go talking Hilbert space in Dilbert space. 

While Climateball's rhetorical excesses may have driven Adams back to fence sitting,  Heller & Rotter  have failed in their eforts to tweet him back into the denialst fold, but though Scott isn't exactly Henry Adams, his commonsense point about exponential graphs that rocket to infinity is one soi disant  climate communicators ignore at their peril.

The We're All Gonna Die species extinction curve in Al Gore's 1992 best seller, The Earth In The Balance was  wisely redacted from later printings after  it was pointed out that a vertical rate of extinction means all species of bookbuyers are already dead.   Best let Adams speak for himself:

WILL THEY RAISE THE VOTING AGE TO THE PLEISTOCENE?

    THE NEW YORK TIMES

Legal Rights for Lake Erie? Voters in Ohio City Will Decide

Image

By Timothy Williams              Feb. 17, 2019 

The failing health of Lake Erie, the world’s 11th largest lake, is at the heart of one of the most unusual questions to appear on an American ballot: Should a body of water be given rights normally associated with those granted to a person? 

Voters in Toledo, Ohio, will be asked this month to decide whether Lake Erie has the legal right “to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.”... If the lake gets legal rights, the theory goes, people can sue polluters on its behalf. 

The proposed Lake Erie Bill of Rights ... seek to show that ... ecosystems like the lake “possess independent rights to survive and be healthy.”... 

In 2014, the city went without drinking water for three days when the lake became so fouled by phosphorus runoff from upstream farms that household water was fit only for flushing toilets ... earlier this year, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota announced that it had granted wild rice its own legal rights, including “the right to pure water.” 

In Toledo, much of Lake Erie is frozen over this winter. But nearly every summer for the last several years, water runoff from large farms flowed into the lake and produced a slick green coating of toxic algae so expansive that it could be seen from space... 

Nick Komives, a City Council member,... said... “The initiative is a powerful tactic. And for me, coming from an activist background, it is important to send messages. But this is probably unconstitutional.” 

THEY HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO MAKE PEOPLE MIGRATE

GREEN NEW DEAL ADVANCES AS TRUMP & OCASIO CORTEZ REACH CONSENSUS ON EMERGENCY CLIMATE WALL

THE WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF AMERICAN INNOVATION BELIEVES THAT INSULATING THE MEXICAN BORDER WALL CAN STOP THE ILLEGAL ENTRY OF GLOBAL WARMING & KEEP THE NATION COLD ENOUGH TO REPEL ANYONE BORN SOUTH OF MAR DEL LAGO

THE SOYLENT GREEN NEW DEAL

EARTHER 

HE'S MAD AS HELL, BUT HE'S NEVER HEARD OF NETWORK

It’s a Mad, Mad

 Mad, Mad,World. 

Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

BY  DIGITALMANAGMENT  FEBRUARY 14, 2019

Have we reached the height or depth of idiocy with the claim that the cold weather is due to global warming?...it is hard to understand how the world was not outraged by the exposure of cheating, lying, manipulating, concocting and altering facts, attacking and often destroying people who opposed them,

 A few years ago, I wrote that the lie that is human-caused global warming was a crime against humanity. Ridiculed at the time, I repeat that charge now in light of the millions of lives lost or livelihoods and potential to prosper destroyed...

The title of this article refers to a 1963 movie described as an American epic comedy. It was fiction, but now reality is even worse. I started to write this article to pursue the comedic theme of the movie, but the more I thought and wrote the angrier I became...

Today you can add a thousand more “mads” to the list. One of them would be in capital letters and bold type, to represent the insanity that is AGW