Springing

Last local weather report on this station was in early February, with the first rain after a scarily dry December and January (two of our normally prime rainy season months.)  February blessedly turned out to be rainy all the way.  We had rain here almost every day into the first week of March.  The result for us was replenished rivers and lakes (and water reservoir) and refreshed landscape.

So now that spring has snuck in between a locally invisible St. Patrick's day and Bach's birthday, flowers are blooming, there is less brown in the trees and other greenery, and a lot of tension is relieved.  The past two weeks of sunshine suggested the rainy season was over early, but it looks like a new series of storms are coming that keep rain in the forecast for the next 10 days, starting tonight.

Though some snowpack was renewed, not all of California got enough rain to put anything but a temporary dent in the drought.  An early and very bad fire season is predicted, and preparations are underway to meet it.  So serious is the drought that the suggestion by some long-range forecasters that there's a better than even chance that a new El Nino is forming which would return rains to the whole West Coast made headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle.

It's intriguing that even our many southern CA transplants at Humboldt State greeted the rains.  The smell and sound of rain are so integral to the environment here, especially at this time of year.  All this sunshine (even in summer) is weird, menacing even as it is glorious.

The Dreaming Up Daily Weekly Quote

“It is important to work for future generations, for our descendants. We must be proud to do something, even though people do not usually know its value.”
Shunryu Suzuki

40th

Today marks the 40th anniversary of my mother's death.  It's hard to believe it's been that long.

I'm posting two photos in commemoration.  One was probably taken in a New York City hotel in the late 40s or early 50s, her second time there (her first was for the World's Fair, probably in 1940) and the last time.

The other is my favorite.  It's in the tiny kitchen at my grandparents' house in Youngwood.  My mother, my sister Kathy and my grandfather are visible.  That's my sister Debbie's hair in the foreground.  They're reacting to something in their card game.  I had squeezed myself between Debbie and the kitchen sink to take the photo.  I thought I was pretty daring to take a candid "action" photo.  I salvaged this from the only print I had.  But that expression on my mother's face is familiar, characteristic.

She was 54 when she died of cancer.  She died on March 22 at 2:22 a.m.  I missed a lot of years with her, including the more recent years when I got more interested in who my parents were, how they experienced the events in their lives that became more real to me. And my late-found ability to appreciate them as people.  I missed her experience and support more than once.  Now that time is a daily mystery, it's hard to say more.

 

(In Praise of ) The Gouldberg Variations

On the occasion of J.S. Bach's birthday, I share the opening--the Aria-- for what has become my favorite piece of music, the Goldberg Variations, in my favorite version, the 1981 recording by Glenn Gould.

A local classical music station played some of the variations today to mark Bach's birthday.  The announcer repeated the standard story (sometimes disputed) that Bach wrote it as a commission by a nobleman who couldn't sleep--it was to be played by his private keyboardist, a 14 year old boy named Goldberg, who was also Bach's pupil.  It was supposed to promote sleep yet be lively enough to offer solace if sleep didn't come.

Though I was first inspired to listen to it by Richard Powers' description of it in his novel The Goldbug Variations, I too attempted to use it in this legendary way, and listened to it so many nights in succession that it was no longer necessary for me to turn on my mp3 player, I could just play it in my head.  Since then I've scaled back, but I still listen to it in part or all of it pretty often.  And still find new moments in it.

Some years back the NY Times or somebody asked a bunch of classical music people their opinion on the best classical recording.  Several named Gould's Goldberg's Variations, though they were split on which version--his first recording in 1955 or his second in 1981 (they were his first and last recordings of anything.)

Both are somewhat controversial, but the 1981 probably more so.  The most obvious difference is the Aria--it is slower in 1981, but that only begins to describe the difference.  The difference is a revelation, and speaks to me of time, melancholy and acceptance, and savoring the moments of life's beauty.

I know a pianist who disdains both Gould versions.  On the other hand there are people like me, not classically educated or employed, who are devoted to Gould's piano performances, and specifically to one or the other of the Goldberg Variations he recorded.

I knew the radio station was going to play the Goldberg Variations so I made sure to tune in, hoping they would play a version I hadn't heard.  It's said that before Gould it didn't seem possible for one pianist to play the Variations (it is astonishing to try to follow what two hands are doing--it sounds impossible) but since then, many pianists have recorded them.

But the version the station chose wasn't a piano (or a harpsichord, the keyboard for which it was written) but a transcription for strings.  There are several of these--I have two--and they seem to emphasize the lyrical quality of the 1981 Aria.

But Gould's playing--especially on parts of the Goldberg--has also always reminded me of jazz.  Gould apparently thought of some of his playing as approaching jazz, and it seems that way to me.  So I also have a jazz version of the Goldberg by the Jacques Loussier Trio.  And like it a lot too.  I could well be wrong, but I don't think either the string version or the jazz version would exist
without Gould.

The above clip is from a video recording of Gould playing the 1981 version in the recording studio.  The whole performance is also on YouTube, but I have it on disk.  It's a remarkable thing to watch.  Gould was a handsome young man in 1955 but in 1981 he was just a few years from the end.  In this video he looks apish, not at all capable of making the sounds he is in fact making.  Add to his appearance his eccentricities--strange posture and approach of his hands to the keyboard--and it is not really easy to watch.  Until the camera lingers on his hands as he plays, and then it's mesmerizing.  

The Aria has become somewhat familiar from movies and television shows, but in total it is for me a great 3 minute piece in itself, and I offer it to cyberspace in the hope of introducing it to enhance someone else's life.  Paying it forward.

Data and Parents: Two New Weapons to Address the Climate Crisis

Two positive endeavors in addressing the climate crisis: one very new, the other still growing.

The very new one is from the White House, where presidential counsellor John Podesta and White House director of Science and Technology John Holdren announced the Climate Data Initiative.  Citing the frequency and impact of climate related disasters, they described the Initiative as "an ambitious new effort bringing together extensive open government data and design competitions with commitments from the private and philanthropic sectors to develop data-driven planning and resilience tools for local communities. This effort will help give communities across America the information and tools they need to plan for current and future climate impacts."

The product is a web site--climate.data.gov--that will collect and organize relevant information and convey it in user-friendly form.  It starts with projections on coastal flooding and sea level rise and their impacts.  So far this seems aimed at local planners, government and otherwise, but tech literate citizens can also benefit.

The other endeavor is an organization--with a web site of course--called Climate Parents.  The impetus is the sobering knowledge (expressed eloquently in the latest book by one of the founding members, Mark Hertsgaard's Hot) that today's children are going to inherit a very different world caused by the climate crisis.

The organization is involved in various action campaigns against carbon and other pollution, for clean energy and to promote education on climate crisis issues.  For example, some 50,000 parents signed on to a campaign to support a clean energy tax credit that the Koch Brothers and their ilk are trying to kill.

The initiatives don't involve just parents, but specifically children and grandparents.  One overall goal is to get decision-makers to stop prioritizing dirty energy that is poisoning water, air and the future, while shifting emphasis to clean energy.

But emphasizing parental responsibilities or just feelings for the world we're leaving to the next generations sure seems like it should be a major motivator for efforts to address the climate crisis in both its causes and effects.

Reality Without Consensus

It's more than a decade since I heard Bill McKibben on C-SPAN suggesting that what the U.S. needed to seriously confront the climate crisis was an "emotional consensus" of the American people.  It did not happen.  There are probably many reasons why not.  I suggested at the time that one might be the language that scientists use (and journalists following their lead) which failed to convey the danger of the crisis and the urgency required to address it.

That problem has been mocked but also more recently is being embraced by the American Association for the Advancement of Scientists.  A weather.com report begins:

"After years of publishing scientific reports filled with impenetrable jargon and numbering in the thousands of pages – like those released every few years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – one group of American scientists have said enough's enough.

Under the banner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the group of more than a dozen scientists on Tuesday launched "What We Know," an outreach effort that aims to encourage people to think of climate change as a risk management issue for human societies, rather than solely as something that impacts the environment.

"Our specific goal in this case is to try to help move policy forward by making science as clear and straightforward as we possibly can," said Dr. Alan Leshner, the chief executive officer of AAAS, in a conference call with reporters Tuesday."

The Association made good on this intent with an 18-page report, described by the LA Times:

The American Assn. for the Advancement of Science's blunt report contains no new scientific conclusions. But by speaking in plain, accessible terms it seeks to instill greater urgency in leaders and influence everyday Americans. Scientists said many previous assessments have been long and ponderous, and have failed to shift public opinion on global warming.

The goal "is to move policy forward by making science as clear and straightforward as we possibly can," association Chief Executive Alan Leshner said. "What we're trying to do is to move the debate from whether human-induced climate change is reality … to exactly what should you do about it."

The report is backed-up by a web site which also features videos.

The truth is that while this is a long overdue development, even clearer language and one minute videos for the twitter generation aren't enough.  There must be a dozen or more books that inspired reviewers to suggest that this would be the one that got people going, that would be this generations Silent Spring.  When her climate crisis book appeared in 2008 (Field Notes From a Catastrophe), Elizabeth Kolbert was the latest to be called the next Rachel Carson.  But even her exemplary writing did not have anything like that kind of impact.

Now her new book, The Sixth Extinction, is getting media attention, as well as a few words here.  In the debut of his own new site, Ezra Klein chose to interview Kolbert on this book.  He zeros in on the first--and worst-- of the five past mass extinctions, which scientists believe was set in motion by global heating caused by massive infusions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Exactly why carbon dioxide was released in these quantities is still unknown, but what apparently is known is summarized in one of Klein's questions:

Ezra Klein: One of the really terrifying parts of your almost nonstop-terrifying book, is that the quantity of carbon dioxide that we are emitting at the moment, every day, every year, every month, every year, is not just similar too, but potentially faster than the carbon dioxide emission that led to that extinction.

In her book Kolbert emphasizes how rare extinctions normally are, but that we are living through a blizzard of them.  And she emphasizes how slow changes normally are, but that we are seeing the end of an icy Arctic that existed that way for millions of years. She tells Klein he is likely to see an ice-free Arctic in his lifetime, just as scientists are learning how important Arctic ice is to global weather patterns as well as the climate itself.

Plainer statements of urgency are hard to imagine than this interview (which I highly recommend) and the AAAS report.  But Kolbert may be on to something when she tries to get us to shift our frame of reference about the speed of change.  That's only one of the conceptual blocks that ordinary people may have to this extraordinary phenomenon--the defining challenge of human civilization and to the steady development of the human species.

Waving

On Monday--the day I posted one of my astronomical photos--there was a press conference to announce what some are calling the scientific finding of the century so far.  This illustration is it: a pattern of gravitational waves through spacetime.

The Reuters report begins:

Astronomers announced on Monday that they had discovered what many consider the holy grail of their field: ripples in the fabric of space-time that are echoes of the massive expansion of the universe that took place just after the Big Bang.

Predicted by Albert Einstein nearly a century ago, the discovery of the ripples, called gravitational waves, would be a crowning achievement in one of the greatest triumphs of the human intellect: an understanding of how the universe began and evolved into the cornucopia of galaxies and stars, nebulae and vast stretches of nearly empty space that constitute the known universe.

"This detection is cosmology's missing link," Marc Kamionkowski, a physicist of Johns Hopkins University and one of the researchers on the collaboration that made the finding, told reporters on Monday at a press conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

The BBC story is one that emphasizes how important scientists think this is, and in the New Yorker, physicist Lawrence Krauss places it in historical context and explains some of the ramifications.

I've seen some more extravagant claims as to what it may mean (confirmation of the "multiverse" of infinite branches, which would mean human life exists elsewhere as well as here) but apparently this discovery also shuts down some theories as well.  It will take scientists time to sort out the ramifications, as well as confirming this discovery.

 What a wonder the human mind is, to come up with fundamental theories and what happened in the first one-trillionth of a second, or to get all excited by maybe spotting the first liquid waves on any other world, on Saturn's moon Titan.  And meanwhile failing to act on the one bit of science that threatens everything that allows these theories and discoveries.

Monitoring the Crimea Gambit

I've had a certain cognitive dissonance as I monitor news of the past two weeks involving the Ukraine and Russia.  All diplomatic attempts failed to persuade Premier Putin (for that is how he is behaving) from continuing on the path that led most recently to Russia essentially annexing the Crimea, in defiance of Ukraine's sovereignty and the objections of the West.

For much of my lifetime this would have prompted an international crisis that dominated headlines and conversations.  There would have been prominent stories noting that the U.S. was heightening alert for nuclear forces, and a certain frenzy for and against a possible approaching war would be rife.

This week however, this hasn't even been the top story, failing to eclipse the mystery of a missing airliner or even March Madness and the latest show business gossip.  Although Republicans are screeching about national strength and honor etc. as they would have, they immediately sober up when the question of military force is suggested.

While everybody apparently seems prepared for the long game in this situation, while not neglecting political advantage for upcoming elections,  I probably should feel reassured.  But actually I don't, not yet.  Ignoring dire possibilities may well have contributed as much to both world wars as did the awful readiness and eagerness of some to wage them.

One prominent Russian voice on state media did say the N word, suggesting that Russia still had the power to turn the U.S. to radioactive dust. But I haven't seen a counter blast of dangerous bluster.  So that's good.  But it would probably be a good thing to know what is being done in terms of western nuclear forces.  There are still enough nuclear bombs to level much of civilization.

 Maybe it's just because I grew up with the Cold War and the nuclear sword dangling over the playground, but I worry that this history and the dangers it suggest are not sufficiently in the minds of those now in charge.  Based on his past statements and his knowledge of his office, I seriously doubt that includes President Obama, but otherwise I wonder.

The Dreaming Up Daily Weekly Quote

             "Attention is the cardinal psychological virtue."
James Hillman

Califractia No!

Think Progress reports:

"Thousands of environmentalists took to California’s state capitol on Saturday to demand Governor Jerry Brown ban hydraulic fracturing, in what is being called the largest anti-fracking mobilization the state has ever seen."

"The process relies heavily on groundwater by injecting a mixture of chemicals and water into rock formations to release oil and gas deposits. California’s recent drought emergency has prompted some lawmakers to push for a statewide moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, as a recent Ceres report found that 96 percent of California fracking wells are located in the areas experiencing drought and high water stress."

"The protest, called Don’t Frack California, also attempts to point out that the oil and gas produced from fracking ultimately contributes to climate change, which leading climate scientists have said is the reason why California’s drought has been so bad in the first place."

Also last week a study commissioned by several environmental advocacy groups quantified the risks of earthquakes induced by fracking practices.

We Are Made of Cosmos Stuff

I saw the first episode of the new Cosmos series online this week.  Over at Soul of Star Trek I noted some of my reactions, especially with Star Trek in mind: how the new "spaceship of the imagination" interior looks like the old Enterprise D (from The Next Generation) but before the stuff got installed, and that even this series devoted to science obeys the Trek convention of space ships accompanied by that unscientific whooshing sound as they fly by.  And I note what has gotten the least attention, that the executive producer (and director of the first ep) is Brannon Braga, who was a writer and producer for three Trek series and a couple of features.

I also commented on the Giordano Bruno animated sequence. Unlike the Washington Post's James Downie, my main impression wasn't that the sequence reconciled science and religion by emphasizing Bruno's vision of a bigger universe (the earth orbiting the sun, the stars as other suns with other earths orbiting them) as the expression of a bigger God.  I saw a lot of time spent on various 16th century Christian denominations condemning and persecuting him, ending with a fully animated burning at the stake by the Catholic Inquisition.  That was my takeaway, and for good or ill, it seemed pretty provocative, especially on Fox.   Though the rating suggest not so many Fox watchers were watching.  (He also thought the animation was brilliant, but it looked 1950s to me.)

Besides, as new host Neil DeGrasse Tyson pointed out, Bruno didn't come to these conclusions based on science, but on a visionary experience. So what does this have to do with suppressing science or reconciling it? Sagan by contrast told a story earlier in his Cosmos about the burning of the library at Alexandria, which was deeply impressive.

Days later, my lingering feeling is that I miss Carl Sagan.  His omnipresence got wearing and his showbiz pizzazz was embarrassing at times, but he could be thrilling ("We are made of star stuff."  I can't forget how he said that line) and above all he was erudite and substantive.

Downie, like me, has Sagan's book version of Cosmos (and we both note there's next to nothing about Bruno in it.)  It's probably not fair to compare the new series to the book--in the introduction, Sagan notes the differences between his series and his book, and how much more detailed and substantive he can be in the book.  But it's a hell of a book. I'll probably watch the rest of the new series online (if I can stomach the same four commercials repeated with increasing frequency--mostly for cars and cosmetics, who do they think is watching this?) But its real gift to me so far is to send me back to Sagan's book. 

Pulling An All-Nighter on the Climate Crisis

Twenty-eight Senators (26 Democrats, two Independents) will take to the U.S. Senate floor tonight for an all-night session on the climate crisis.  The talkathon begins at 10 p.m. and goes until 9 on Tuesday morning.

They'll have plenty to talk about.  For instance, the research that confirms the theory and ordinary observation: malaria spreads to higher altitudes with warmer temps, infecting more people.  Another study that shows that hotter climate has already brought deadly new diseases to the Inuit.  Evidence that climate change (Arctic melting in particular) has changed the jet stream, meaning different weather patterns for Europe and North America--perhaps more of what this year has been like.

They're likely to reference the leaked excerpts from the UN report officially out this month on effects of the climate crisis.  The AP report on the leaked draft began:

 Starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease already lead to human tragedies. They're likely to worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change, a leaked draft of an international scientific report forecasts.

Think Progress then reported: Stanford’s Chris Field, who co-chairs the working group drafting the report, told reporters Monday that “the impacts of climate change that have already occurred are very evident, they’re widespread, they have consequences.” One key point Field made is that we are not prepared for the kind of warming-worsened extreme weather — like floods and droughts — we’re already experiencing: “I think if you look around the world at the damages that have been sustained in a wide range of climate-related events, it’s very clear we’re not prepared for the kinds of event we’re already seeing.”

And someone will doubtlessly illustrate the recent study that found that rising sea levels will eventually destroy more than 700 designated world heritage sites, including Independence Hall, the Tower of London, all of Venice, and...the Statue of Liberty ("drifting away to sea/and I dreamed I was flying...")

Here's the list of Senators scheduled to participate in the all-nighter: Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill. Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash. Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.  Senator Barbara

 Boxer, D-Calif. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore. Senator Bill Nelson, D-Fla. Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md. Senator Bernard Sanders, I-Vt. Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. Senator Mark Udall, D-Colo. 

Senator Tom Udall, D-N.M. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. Senator Al Franken, D-Minn. Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn. Senator Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. Senator Angus King, I-Maine, Senator Tim Kaine, D-Va. Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Senator Edward J. Markey, D-Mass. Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J.

Then the Congress will return to its Great Work: voting to repeal Obamacare, squabbling over the appointments of federal judges, and generally screwing around about nothing in order to further enshrine itself, at the worst possible time, as the Worst Congress Ever.

The Dreaming Up Daily Weekly Quote

"What the responsible citizen really uses is his imagination, not believing anybody literally, but voting for the man or party that corresponds most closely, at least remotely, to his vision of the society he wants to live in.  The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life, then, is to produce out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in."

Northrup Frye
The Educated Imagination

Vitriol To Come

On Jonathan Bernstein's Bloomberg blog, as I'm sure is true on other sites that host comments, any mention of Hillary Clinton and her possible 2016 candidacy receives numerous hate-filled comments generated apparently by rabid right sites.

While these are educational in the sense that they permit glints of clarification of the peculiar mindset or foundation myths of the rabid right,  they are mostly preview of vitriol to come.  Clinton has an extremely high approval rating among Democrats, and she has the best chance in history so far to bring a woman to the U.S. presidency.  So it is likely she will run and win the Democratic nomination, and this frenzy will be our political future.

How refreshing it will be to put racist vitriol behind us and concentrate on sexist and age vitriol (usually in combination) for the next decade, while we watch the climatic consequences of our cowardly self-indulgence.

Scam Inc: How Government Pays for Privatization and Other Matters

Probably the biggest scam this side of Wall Street banking is privatization.  Promoted in the Reagan years as giving the private sector the chance to cut costs and be efficient in what normally was done by the public sector, the result time after time has been that a few folks are getting rich by privatizing prisons, the military and now higher education--all primarily with tax money.  Notes an opinion piece on the New York Times site:

"The worst problems, though, occur at for-profit schools like those run by the Apollo Group (which owns the University of Phoenix), the Education Management Corporation or Corinthian Colleges. These schools cater to low-income students and veterans, but too often they turn hopes for a better life into the despair of financial ruin.

Nearly all of their students take out loans to attend, and the amounts are staggering. Among holders of bachelor’s degrees, 94 percent borrow. They take on median debt of $33,000 per student, compared with just $18,000 at the nonprofits and $22,000 at the publics. The for-profit graduates have trouble finding jobs that pay enough to afford their debts, and 23 percent of borrowers default within three years, compared with just 7 percent from nonprofits and 8 percent from publics."

 So how do they stay in business?  Like those big "security firms" and prisons, they are lapping it up at the government trough.

"Congress, by loosening regulations, permitted for-profit colleges to thrive on the government’s dime. These schools, which enroll nearly a tenth of college students, use nearly a quarter of federal student aid dollars allocated through Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, and they account for nearly half of all student loan defaults. A 1998 rule allows them to gain up to 90 percent of their revenues from Title IV alone — a figure that does not include their substantial use of military education money. Even during the 2008 financial downturn, the top publicly traded for-profits enjoyed growth. Their upper management and shareholders benefit at the expense of American taxpayers and students."

Other matters:

The Obama Derangement Syndrome Comes Home: This demonization of President Obama has its most obvious and unprecedented consequences in foreign affairs, as Josh Marshall noted.  But it has become the excuse for Republicans to avoid dealing with domestic issues like immigration reform, as Kevin Drum writes in Mother Jones.

However, there's some statistical evidence that while President Obama's reelection has made mad-dog GOPers even madder, it has (temporarily, I would guess) deflated officially designated hate groups.

Paul Ryan has been caught cooking the research to support his war on the war on poverty.

On the subject of poverty and the Rabid Right, is there an alternative brewing within US conservatism?  Or was listening to the Dalai Lama just a stunt?

Speaking of cooking the research, a catalog of Putin's lies about Ukraine.  Nevertheless, Josh Marshall warns that fears of at least some members of the new government aren't baseless: there is a strong fascist faction.  But Marshall's chief conclusion is that Putin is showing weakness, not strength.  As well as showing his true KGB colors.

We Have Met The Enemy...

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
by Elizabeth Kolbert
Henry Holt

I have to confess that I had an advance copy of this book for months before I could bring myself to begin reading it. Over the past few years I’ve read and reviewed a stunned procession of books on the climate crisis (most of them after Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change in 2006) and I wasn’t looking forward to another voyage circling the abyss.

Fortunately, Elizabeth Kolbert is an engaging, absorbing writer, and given this subject, she pretty much has to be. It also helped me in particular that after an introductory chapter of reporting on the extinction of frog species in central America, she deftly summarized the history of extinction as a scientific concept, focusing on the 18th and 19th century, a period in the earth sciences I find fascinating.

These first chapters establish two key facts: that the reality of extinction—the relatively sudden erasing of entire species—has only recently been recognized (there were doubters even 50 years ago), and that actual extinctions are normally very rare: new species appear more often than one goes extinct. “Probably one amphibian species should go extinct every thousand years.” But the scientist she follows has seen several, and she herself has essentially witnessed at least one.

Life forms adapt to their environment, and in the normal course of things, they have time to adapt to environmental changes. “...conditions on earth change only very slowly, except when they don’t.” When something big and unusual happens fast, extinctions occur, and the bigger and more lethal the event, the more extinctions. The asteroid collision that led to the dinosaurs’ demise in the Fifth Extinction is the most dramatic. Sometimes they are slower but inexorable, affecting one species after another.

Kolbert chronicles the five known mass extinctions, though their causes are not all known. The general cause of the ongoing Sixth Extinction is the human species and what it is doing to planet Earth.

On our present track, global heating alone could easily cause the extinction of half the species on the planet, sealing their fate before this century is half over. A more optimistic estimate is one fourth.

But that’s not the only ongoing cause. By transporting species to places they could not normally go (deliberately, as Europeans did when they brought plants and birds to America, or accidentally in the holds of ships and jumbo jets) humans can introduce a foreign species that eradicates the native plants or animals, eventually causing the local ecology to crash and other dependent species to go extinct. Or they bring diseases that local life can’t resist, such as the infestations currently killing off those frogs in central America, and bats by the millions in New England.

Species have been hunted to extinction, their forest environments cut down, and now more often so fragmented by development that they can’t survive. Some of the same industrial age changes in the atmosphere responsible for the climate crisis are implicated in changes in the chemistry of the oceans, perhaps the most dangerous threat of all. Even when there is not a causal link, there is a “dark synergy” with climate change that amplifies mortal threats to life forms well beyond individual species.

Kolbert travels to scientific research stations, interviews and experiences and writes very well about it all. She’s good with apt similes and observations, and doesn’t shy from setting up a giddy turn of phrase, like “rickety spelunkers.” Within the broad effects she describes differences and specifics that scientists study, fascinating as the best nature writing can be.

She follows extreme efforts to save the last remnants of some species, even as the evidence grows that humans were responsible for killing off entire species long before the first cotton gin, including other humans whose genes we still carry, such as the Neanderthal.

Scientists know of key species such as corals that face extinction (threatening an estimated nine million other species), but there are some that are not understood but still may eventually lead to ecologies crashing. The list of species going extinct range from the very small (some of which will not even be catalogued by science before they disappear forever) to trees, amphibians and mammals, including all the great apes, “except us,” at least for the foreseeable future.

A Sixth Extinction might become as profound as the Fifth, in which case the planet will someday be populated by the descendants of the few species that might survive (rats are a good candidate.) In geological time, that may not mean much. “...a hundred million years from now, all that we consider to be the great works of man—the sculptures and the libraries, the monuments and the museums, the cities and the factories—will be compressed into a layer of sediment not much thicker than cigarette paper.” But it's something else to know it is happening now, and will become increasingly obvious during the lives of our immediate descendants. (Though the book's illustrations are few, they are helpful. That there aren't more and glossier could be considered a blessing.)

Whether the human species will outlive the Sixth Extinction it caused is an open question, with lots of doubters. What is even more likely to end is the 10,000 year old experiment called civilization, and the potential for it to redeem recurrent slaughter, mindless cruelty and oppression by growing into consciousness as well as knowledge, in time to save itself and the life of this world. I don’t know if civilization’s achievements are any solace, any more than good writing redeems its subject. But we’re grateful for it now.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Goes Offshore

Here's Josh Marshall on the GOPers like Senator Lindsay Graham:

"Do you remember when President Bush's political adversaries starting ragging on him during the first days after 9/11? Or during the first days of the invasion of Iraq? Me neither. Whatever you think of the holder of the presidential office, if you are actually concerned about the nation's welfare you don't go on TV mocking him and saying he's weak."

This is something I understood even as I criticized those Bush policies before the Iraq invasion, for example.  It's one thing for independent voices, citizens, to dissent.  It's another for high federal officeholders to mock the President, especially when they know that by mocking him for being weak, they are weakening him in this crisis.

The President is not just their political opponent, he is the head of state, particularly in international situations.  Some in Congress argued passionately against Bush policies--against the Patriot Act in 2001, and against the Iraq war before it began, and later.  But not in these crucial moments or situations.

That's not even considering that their charges are outlandish, and their opposition to what President Obama is actually doing and saying without substance.

Michael Cohen goes into this further.

Update: Josh Marshall, trained as a research historian, had this more comprehensive post on Wednesday, with links to other analyses of the Ukraine situation. 

The Dreaming Up Daily Weekly Quote

"Noise protects us from painful reflection. Noise is so insistent, so overwhelmingly real, that everything else becomes a pale phantom.”

C.G. Jung

Good News For A Change (We Can Believe In)

Looking for some good news?  This will have to hold you for awhile:  A CDC study shows a 43% drop in early childhood obesity (ages 2-5) over the past ten years, most of it in the past two years.  This is the first substantial drop in any category, and it's also the only category that shows a drop this time.

Should First Lady Michelle Obama get some credit here for her strenuous efforts to bring attention to the problem and to get children to exercise?  I don't know, but I do remember when a different study a few months ago that showed no drop led to stories that suggested it meant she'd failed.

The Last Vigil

On Saturday evening was held the last candlelight vigil on Woodley Island in Humboldt Bay honoring the memory of the Wiyot women and children massacred in 1860 on the nearby Indian Island, and dedicated to regaining the island so that the World Renewal Dance--the reason the Wiyots were there--could be danced there again.

It was the last vigil because next month, for the first time since 1860, Wiyots will dance on the island again.

In 2004 I wrote a story about the vigils and the Wiyot for the San Francisco Chronicle.  At that time the Wiyot had raised enough money to buy back a few acres of the island called Tuluwat in the Wiyot language.  Shortly thereafter the Eureka City Council deeded back 40 more acres.  The process of cleaning up the land from years of industrial pollution began.  Expanded versions of articles I wrote about all this (for the Chronicle and News from Native California) are here at my archival site, Kowincidence.

Ten years later, the island is ready.  Other North Coast tribes are helping to bring back the World Renewal ceremonies.  Most of them have similar ceremonies.  The Wiyot dance is scheduled for three days at the end of March.

The vigils have been held since 1992, when former tribal chair Cheryl Seidner and a few others rebelled against remembering only Columbus (one of his replica ships was in Humboldt Bay) and organized a different remembrance, of what was nearly the end of a people on Indian Island in 1860.  Since then vigils have been held in rain, fog, wind and cold (the one in 2000 was brought indoors because it was raining so hard.)  But this last one was on a warm, clear bright evening--like the first one was, Cheryl would later say.  Here people are just beginning to gather.

 The sun was pouring its rays towards us.  Facing the camera in this photo is Leona Wilkinson, Cheryl's sister who was one of the original four who started the vigils.  They are direct descendants of an infant survivor of the 1860 massacre. Behind her across the water is a portion of Indian Island.

 What struck me this time was the number of children and babies, of families.  I thought of people I remembered from prior vigils who weren't there.

Cheryl conducted the event informally as usual.  She invited Wiyots in the crowd to come into the inner circle, where they sang a traditional song.  A drum circle from HSU did three songs.  There were moments of prayer and remembrance.

In the center of the circle was a fire that Cheryl tended.  By this time the sun was directly in my eyes, and in my camera lens.

 That's Cheryl tending the fire.  She grew up a baseball fan and remembered seeing Kent Tekulve pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  I wore a black Pirates cap so she might remember me but it didn't work.

Beatles '64

There was so much hype for so long about the 50th anniversary of the Beatles first trip to America and first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, that I missed the actual anniversary days.  The first Sullivan show was February 9, 1964.

Though I saw the Sullivan show and liked them well enough, I personally didn't have my Beatles satori moment until 1965, when I sat in a near-empty movie theater in Manhattan (behind either Bob Dylan or one of many lookalikes) and watched their second film, Help!  Now I still score pretty high on the Beatles quizzes that were floating around this month.

But last month I did read the Rolling Stone cover story, and learned that I wasn't alone in missing the Beatles significance in 1964--neither did his record company. (Of course, I was in high school and they weren't.)

Here's a few key graphs from that story (this is the link but not all of it is online.)  The story quotes Jonathan Gould in the book Can't Buy Me Love concerning the clueless executives of Capitol Records, who owned the U.S. rights to release Beatles records but didn't think it was worth their while.  Then one of their executives read an article in Variety:

"...Variety reported that the Beatles' most recent single, "I Want To Hold Your Hand," had become the first British record to sell a million copies before its release.  The band's previous single, "She Loves You"--which had been rejected by Dexter on behalf of Capitol--had also surpassed a million sales, and the group's second album, With the Beatles, sold 500,000 copies a week after its release.

'This meant,' writes Gould, 'that in a market one-third the size of the United States, the Beatles had released as many million-selling singles in 1963 as the entire American recording industry.'"

So Capitol decided to release some Beatles tunes, but in due time.  But people took matters into their own hands.  From the RS story (by Mikal Gilmore):

"On December 10th, Marsha Albert, a 15-year-old in Silver Spring, Maryland, saw a rebroadcast of the CBS Morning News report from November 22nd disparaging the Beatles and the frenzy they inspired in England. Albert wanted to hear more of the music. She wrote to a local station, WWDC; the disc jockey there, Carroll James, located a flight attendant for a British airline, who brought a copy of the 45 rpm "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on her flight to Washington, D.C.

After the record arrived, James invited Albert to WWDC's studio. In the early evening of December 17th, Albert announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in America, here are the Beat­les, singing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.' " "The switchboard just went totally wild," James later told Bob Spitz in The Beat­les: The Biography. Callers – apparently not all of them teenagers, since WWDC was an MOR station – wanted to hear the song again, and again."

And 50 years later, again and again.

The Beatles were a phenomenon throughout 1963 in the UK but America discovered them just over two months after the unspeakable trauma of the assassination of President Kennedy, who symbolized hope and the future. The Beatles did not replace that exactly. But they did offer another kind of hope for a future with a different kind of joy in it. Especially for those who were young then--the early and middle boomers--it was a Way.

Dueling Billionaires and other matters

Apart from wars, torture, corrupt politicians and hugely bad weather, what else is new?

Thanks to the unjust blindness of our Supreme Court that somehow can't tell the difference between dollars and words and therefore condone the massive influx of money to dominate political debate and jockey for the agenda: a couple of new billionaires are vying to get into the act.

One is at least on the right side of reality.  From the NYTimes:  "A billionaire retired investor is forging plans to spend as much as $100 million during the 2014 election, seeking to pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers."

The donor is Tom Steyer but before you get too impressed, he just provided $11 million to elect the dubious Democrat Terry McAuliffe governor of Virginia.  Still, he's organizing other billionaires to join the fight, as a counterweight to the notorious Koch brothers.  If it sounds like something out of the Wild West, well...gunfighting is speech too, pardner.

Meanwhile, a new wild bunch of Republican billionaires are entering the political fray, though perhaps the interesting thing is they seem to be trying to save the party from the Tea Party, and once again, the notorious Koch brothers.

In other climate crisis news, that is apart from the usual bad news (yes, the Arctic is melting, etc.) there's the interesting situation in Nebraska where a judge has countered the high-handedness we've become used to from Republican governors when it comes to sucking up to their fossil fuel billionaires, and denied permission for the Keystone Pipeline to run roughshod through the state, "condemning" farm land in favor of pipeland.  He ordered the pipes people out of the state.

Some interesting reading:

Slate finds the research that says what many of us have figured out: Internet trolls are sick and evil.  Nothing to say however about the ones who are paid to be sick and evil.

A concise history of newspapers, and why they are still the best medium to explain the daily world, though they may have lost track of that.

A journalist crashes a secret society of the 1% and they are as disgusting as we figured.  So far it seems this is a real story, though not far from an Andy Borowitz column.  Meanwhile, Jonathan Chiat demolishes another of the psychotic 1% arguments, and this one involves Iron Man.

On the other side of the ledger, the Wonkblog reveals "how Obama secretly became the anti-poverty president."

Everyone agrees that Congress isn't going to raise the minimum wage, though President Obama has raised it for federal contracts, and some individual businesses are raising theirs.  So take comfort in the fact that there are no more good arguments against raising it.

And finally, in the new Baffler, David Graeber chronicles the long history of science's most perplexing mystery: why is there fun?

The Dreaming Up Daily Semi-Weekly Quote

"The mind best fitted for survival in any world is the mind that has discovered how knowledge can be joyful, leading to the friendship with wisdom that is pure delight, and is ready to tackle any kind of knowledge with clarity of perception and intentness of will."

Northrup Frye

Slouching Towards Urgency

In just the past few days, political leaders of three major nations declared the climate crisis a major global concern demanding action.

In what was clearly the fruit of ongoing diplomacy, the United States and China issued a joint statement declaring "In light of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change and its worsening impacts, and the related issue of air pollution from burning fossil fuels, the United States and China recognize the urgent need for action to meet these twin challenges. Both sides reaffirm their commitment to contribute significantly to successful 2015 global efforts to meet this challenge. Accordingly, China and the United States will work together..."  A few specific instances followed.

Secretary of State John Kerry soon followed up on this with a major speech in Indonesia, which made headlines both before and after it was given. "When I think about the array of global climate – of global threats – think about this: terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – all challenges that know no borders – the reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them. And it is a challenge that I address in nearly every single country that I visit as Secretary of State, because President Obama and I believe it is urgent that we do so.

And the reason is simple: The science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3D movie. It’s warning us; it’s compelling us to act. And let there be no doubt in anybody’s mind that the science is absolutely certain."

He outlined some of the consequences: sea level rise that would, among other things, flood half of Jakarta; species extinction; water shortages; agricultural transformation; unpredictable and violent weather--all of which involve heavy costs, among other dire consequences.

And in a widely quoted line: "And in a sense, climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction."

But perhaps the most interesting statements came from the UK, which has recently been beset with immense flooding in coastal areas.  Rains and storms had kept the country and the government in a crisis mode for weeks.  The floods have exposed a lack of urgency in executing protective plans, due to budgeting priorities.

In this context the leader of the Labour Party made headlines demanding a national commitment to addressing the climate crisis.  According to the Guardian: "Britain is sleepwalking towards disaster because of a failure to recognise that climate change is causing the extreme weather that has blighted the country for more than a month, Ed Miliband has warned.

The Labour leader says in an interview with the Observer that climate change is now an issue of national security that has the potential not only to destabilise and cause conflict between regions of the world, but to destroy the homes, livelihoods and businesses of millions of British people.

Criticising[Tory PM] David Cameron for appearing to backtrack on his commitment to the environmental cause, he calls on senior figures in all parties to unite behind the scientific evidence that climate change is a key factor in extreme weather. Failure to do so, he warns, will have catastrophic consequences."

The story concludes: "Miliband said he was ready to work with politicians of all parties, including "green" Tories such as Zac Goldsmith, to rebuild the consensus around climate change. He announced a three-point plan to tackle the crisis, including tougher decarbonisation targets, moves to strengthen the country's resilience to floods, and a push to boost business investment in the green economy."

This outlined program is similar to steps advocated by Secretary Kerry and President Obama, and it even more explicitly recognizes the twin challenges of the far future and the near future of inevitable consequences--which as in the UK is now the present.

  In a story not directly related to these statements by Miliband, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats party and deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government with the Tories, suggested a new coalition with Labour.  This may be little more than UK political posturing, but it does open the possibility of a united campaign for the government in which the climate crisis is a central issue.

It's all relatively little and definitely late, but in this case--as my friend Beckett says-- something's better than nothing.