VINTAGE LATOUR

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

A Serious Man

by Steven Shapin

Three facts about Bruno Latour. He was from a wine-growing family; he was from Burgundy; and he was Catholic. These facts are related, and they are pertinent to understanding what his philosophical project was about. Bruno was born with silver in his mouth and that silver was a tastevin. I don’t believe that Bruno ever needed the money that came from an academic career... and I occasionally teased him about his poor career choice, for which my reward was several bottles of Corton when he came over to dinner at my house in San Diego.…

At the funeral service at the Chapelle Saint-Louis in the Salpêtrière, there it was. 

Bruno left detailed instructions…for  the production and display of a digitalized representation of Rogier van der Weyden’s mid-fifteenth-century Last Judgement polyptych altarpiece in the Hospices de Beaune, an art work that Bruno made much of in his discussions of salvation and of “the end of days.”

 The service was…  I believe, the first Mass—and plausibly the last—that contained readings from texts in Science and Technology Studies.

 Sections of Bruno’s writings—from An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, Facing Gaia,and the Irréductions appended to The Pasteurization of France—were read out by colleagues and friends...

 most people in our part of the academic world knew of Bruno’s Catholicism… there were some who were embarrassed by it—including... I suppose, the great majority of the atheists and the religiously indifferent attending the funeral mass. 

When, five years ago, the New York Times ran a sprawling panegyric introducing Bruno to the American public, the wine connection was mentioned, Catholicism and theological concerns not at all... his religion, like his philosophy, was idiosyncratic. 

His conception of God was, it’s been said, “immanentist.” Schaffer once tagged him as a “hylozoist,” and “pantheist” might serve as well—God was everywhere, present in all things... in Bruno’s metaphysics the sorting of the categories of Nature and Us is ultimately in need of linguistic repair. 

You’ve had the language for centuries, he once told me, give me a few years. Bruno’s religious focus was, as he often said, on eschatology and soteriology—the Last Days, apocalypse, salvation—the matters portrayed on the Beaune altarpiece. 

SEA LEVEL DENIAL IS EASY AS IGNORING GEOPHYSICS

NET ZERO: A VERY, VERY , BRIEF HISTORY

London’s sooty air held 280 parts per million of CO2 as Royal Institution physicist John Tyndall FRS set about measuring the climatic consequences of the coal-burning Age of Steam:

 

By 1896 Sweden’s Svante Arrhenius had fleshed out Tyndall’s work by quantifying what went up in smoke, and by the time Teddy Roosevelt progressed to the White House,  Popular Mechanics had spread the results far and wide: 

The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.

 

In 1959, with 316 parts per million of CO2 in the air, the American Petroleum Institute celebrated the industry’s centenary at a Columbia University, where H-Bomb physicist Edward Teller made a startling prediction:

 

“Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth… It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York… and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.”

 

Some in the audience took him at his word. At 320ppm President Johnson commissioned this reporton what to do about CO2:

 

As ambient CO2 rose past the 10% mark in1985. and the world teetered on the brink of the Teller threshold, Carl Sagan took time off from touting his Nuclear Winter campaign to tell Congress what to do about the alarming rise:

 

“The idea that we should immediately stop burning fossil fuel has such severe economic consequences that no one, of course, will take it seriously. There are many other things we can do in response.”

 

In 1991, though model doubling sensitivity  remained unsettled, Teller’s apocalyptic prediction met with success. The year  CO2 reached 355 ppm  saw Earth’s largest, coldest, and most Arctic warming sensitive nation disintegrated into a gibbering flock of Socialist Republics.

 

So devastating was the shock that just three COP meetings and two IPCC reports later, Sagan & Teller departed this world dry-shod, at 362 and 382 parts per million respectively.  

 

 Only after an underwater press conference in the Maldives did Global South’s foremost climate statesman, the Right Honorable Prime Minister of Australia reframe the meaning of our imperiled world breaking the 400 ppm barrier :

” Coal is now an essential part of our zero carbon future.”

 

CLIMATE: MANAGING CHANGE ONE PARAMETER AT A TIME

The future according to  the Potsdam Institute's Johan Rockstrom makes better sense unedited than filtered through the histrionic  Covering Climate Now  playbook  that colors The Guardian's  prose:

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN AND THE WILL TO GOVERN.

In the days after his inauguration, President Biden signed his name to many, many, documents. Among them was Executive Order 14008 

Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad

Which, without legislative authority, placed 40 percent of Federal climate, clean energy, and other benefits at the disposal of :

"disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution."  

 

 On April 1 2023,  Biden signed an extension of  environmental DEI into the future with  Executive Order 14096  

Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for Al

The precedent for Woke disaster relief and Green AI can be found in Obama's 2016 Executive  Order 13707, launched by Presidential Science Advisor and past Harvard Center for the Environment Director  John Holden to a hallelujah chorus of  tofu-fed wannabe policy wonks at a  West Wing  Humanist Revival meeting  worthy of a dystopic science fiction convention :

"As  President  Obama  noted  in  his  Executive  Order  13707, behavioral science insights can support a wide range of national priorities including ... accelerating the transition to a low carbon economy. 

That Executive Order, 13707, directs Federal agencies to apply behavioral science insights to their policies and programs, and it institutionalizes  the Social and Behavioral Science Team...The adminstration is releasing new guidance to agencies that supports continued implementation of 
The Behavioral Science Insights Executive Order. 

That guidance will help agencies identify promising opportunities to apply behavioral science insights to their programs and policies."

From it emerged a National Academy Sciences report:

The  "new guidance"  of  Executive  Order  13707  applies to every departments of government, and requires  the Department of Defense to report back to the newly institutionalized White House Social and Behavioral  Sciences Team at regular intervals, as to how the armed forces are being remodeled in accord with the executive guidance of that order, which, after all, was signed by their Commander In Chief.

Thus far  no NAS Precautionary Principle advocates have stepped forward  to tell us  why  it  ought not  to apply to the warning given by Yale  Professor  Roger  Sherman of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence: 

 “If the Executive can model the army, he    may set up an absolute government.” 

It is a fear George Washington echoed in his Farewell Address, when he  warned  the nation to:

avoid the necessity of those overgrown... establishments  which, under any form of government,  are inauspicious to liberty.

HICKS NIX CLIMATE HOAX, HAIL HURRICANE LASER ATTACK

YOU'VE GOT TO HAVE H.A.A.R.P

Millman of the Graun reports :

US meteorologists face death threats as

 hurricane conspiracies surge

"Meteorologists tracking the advance of Hurricane Milton have been targeted by a deluge of conspiracy theories that they were controlling the weather, abuse and even death threats… The extent of the misinformation... has stymied the ability to help hurricane-hit communities,

Katie Nickolaou, a Michigan-based meteorologist, … received messages claiming there are category 6 hurricanes (there aren’t), that meteorologists or the government are creating and directing hurricanes (they aren’t) and even that scientists should be killed and radar equipment be demolished.

“I have had a bunch of people saying I created and steered the hurricane... a hurricane has the energy of 10,000 nuclear bombs and we can’t hope to control that. But it’s taken a turn to more violent rhetoric, especially with people saying those who created Milton should be killed.”

One post aimed at Nickolaou said:

 “Stop the breathing of those that made them and their affiliates.” She responded: “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes. I can’t believe I just had to type that.”... It’s very tiring.”

… several of Trump’s closest allies have baselessly asserted that the federal government is somehow controlling hurricanes. 

“Hurricane Helene was an ATTACK caused by Weather Manipulation,” claimed a video shared by Michael Flynn, a former national security advisor to Trump.

“Yes they can control the weather,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right congresswoman, wrote on X last week. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Chris Gloninger, a former TV meteorologist and climate scientist … said. 

“I’m seeing my former colleagues getting threats, I’m getting messages that we are steering hurricanes into red states. It’s mindblowing, I’ve never seen anything like this in any disaster... What other profession are people targeted for simply doing their job? All we are trying to do is protect life and property during extreme weather.”

HOW COULD SEA LEVEL RISE FASTER THAN TRUMP SAYS ?

SINCE  TRUMP SAYS  SEA LEVEL RISE ONLY SERVES TO  INCREASE WATERFRONT PROPERTY VALUES, TUCKER CARLSON NATURALLY LAMBASTES FORMER PRESIDENT OBAMA AS A CLIMATE HYPOCRITE, FOR BUYING A HOUSE ON MARTHA'S VINEYARD,

IN CONTRAST TO OBAMA'S VIEW FROM 

A HILL HALF A MILE FROM THE OCEAN 

ON AN ISLAND A HUNDRED YARDS HIGH:

The Vineyard stands high enough to see Newport from Gay Head

 

TUCK'S  FLORIDA BEACH HOUSE SITS  ON A SANDSPIT

 A STONE'S THROW FROM THE SEA

   IN BAYOU-BOUND BOCA GRANDE 

MAX. ELEVATION 13 FEET

 I LIVED A MILE SOUTH OF HIS PLACE, UNTIL A STORM TIDE SENT SALT WATER UNDER MY  DOOR,

  AN EVENT MY TEXAN NEIGHBORS MET WITH GOOD GRACE, AS  OLD BOCA'S CHARM OFFSETS THE RISK

OF ITS BEING A GALVESTON WAITING TO HAPPEN:

 WHILE HURRICANE IAN  UNSURPRISINGLY INUNDATED TUCK'S BEACH HOUSE,  TUCK AND HIS FAMILY WERE ABSENT , SAFE IN THEIR CUSTOMARY HURRICANE SEASON RETREAT, 

A MAINE TOWN TWENTY MILES INLAND , WHERE WATERFRONT PROPERTY

 MEANS A POND  700 FEET ABOVE  SEA LEVEL

WHEN MILTON HIT, THE CARLSONS WERE AGAIN THANKFULLY ABSENT WHEN THE BEACH PAID A CALL ON THEIR BEACH HOUSE:

 AND GASPARILLA ISLAND SUFFERED NOT A SINGLE HURRICANE CASUALTY, THE ENTIRE POPULATION HAVING PRUDENTLY AND PROVIDENTIALLY GOTTEN OUT OF DODGE, WOMEN & CHILDREN FIRST, AND SHERIFF & FIRE DEPARTMENT LAST

JUNK SCIENCE JUDO SQUASHED BY PUNK SCIENCE SUMO

Climatology basher  Steve  Milloy's  K Street punch and judy show,  Junk Science Judo has lost ground to energetic Danish climate policy discounter  Jon Lomborg, who  emphasizes global problems cheaper to fix than climate change.

WHAT COMES AFTER HURRICANES ZELENSKY AND ZYLVIA?

  today's disastrous political climate has rendered naming  hurricanes after politicians redundant

They should become the namesakes of climate deniers instead

 IN HONOR OF THE LATE Sen. Inhofe's 

right-hand man by  Alpinists on both sides of the aisle should START calling melting glacier detritus:

MORANO MORAINES

Australians facing coastal dust-ups correlated with  coal exports can henceforth bemoan

SINGER SIMOONS   &  SPENCER CYCLONES

 

Greenlanders  aghast  at their icecap  going down the drain can blame

MONCKTON  MOULINS

In honor of National Review's  Planet Gore blog   editor, gaping polar ice holes  should be rechristened

POLLOWITZ  POLYNYAS 
Lomborg landslides,  Bast Boras, Taylor Typhoons, & Soon Squalls may  all be celebrated when and as they evolve.

BE KIND TO YOUR FRIENDS IN THE SWAMP, FOR A DUCK MAY BE SOMEBODY'S MOTHER

For all his  “drain the swamp”  rhetoric in 2020, Donald Trump instead turned to the Beltway bayou  to staff his transition team with critters like Steve Milloy, a  registered lobbyist with Superpowers the Hulk might envy. The force of solipsism  is strong in this one. He does not hesitate to refute by proclamation anything he can’t explain or  his clients don’t like, witness this Twitter  sillygism in four parts. 

Imprimus :

• 1.” Science is not done by consensus. “

So he and noted historian Tucker Carlson keep telling us. However, even Fox viewers who  break their backs generally prefer the diagnosis of a team of neurosurgeons to a chiropractor or a K Street hack. 

• 2.” There is no evidence that the Earth's climate -- whatever that is -- is warming or at an unprecedented rate.” 

How can Steve declare the non-existence of something he cannot define?

And what on Earth enables him  understand its physical attributes? 

Only a far gone solipsist would deny the physical existence, form and function of the instruments scientists and engineers have devised to reproducibly measure “whatever that is ?” 

 Not far from K Street Steve will find the Naval Observatory, where the Oceanographer of the Navy  can tell him how many wars have been won by reliance on the cogency and coherence of the atmospheric sciences, and also how many have been lost by those refusing to do so. 

• 3. “The Earth has many climates that are regional in nature. There is no evidence that any of these regional climate (sic) has changed in any meaningful or discernible way. “

That first idea is Aristotle’s, which  Humboldt was  made scientifically compelling by relating temperature and elevation in biogeography, and kickstarting the monumental compilation of data that led to the discovery of the  physical causes of climate change.

While Steve is free to shun science in  the interest of credible denial, lobbyists paid to wax counterfactual earn negative credibility as well. 

 He  might as well tell us to reject the  so-called theory of  “plate tectonics” because it is an affront to the power of the  pre-Socratic Gods that invites the wrath of  earth-shaking Poseidon.

• 4.  I'm not aware of any "scientist" who has correctly predicted anything about climate. So who exactly should we consider to be a "scientist" when it comes to climate? “  

 Here Steve indulges in a fallacy so infamous that has a name: 

‘Ignoramus et ignoramibus’

Best Englished ad  " I don’t know and I damn well refuse to find out."