Category: Education

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Three very thought-provoking films

Over the last week we have watched all three 0ne-hour films made by the BBC, aired in 2011,  under the title of the heading of this post, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.  The films are available on the website Top Documentary Films, the direct link is here.  As that website explains,

A series of films about how humans have been colonized by the machines they have built. Although we don’t realize it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers. It claims that computers have failed to liberate us and instead have distorted and simplified our view of the world around us.

1. Love and Power. This is the story of the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the Internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy.

2. The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts. This is the story of how our modern scientific idea of nature, the self-regulating ecosystem, is actually a machine fantasy. It has little to do with the real complexity of nature. It is based on cybernetic ideas that were projected on to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists. A static machine theory of order that sees humans, and everything else on the planet, as components – cogs – in a system.

3. The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey. This episode looks at why we humans find this machine vision so beguiling. The film argues it is because all political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed – so we have retreated into machine-fantasies that say we have no control over our actions because they excuse our failure.

Adam Curtis is a documentary film maker, whose work includes The Power of Nightmares,The Century of the Self, The Mayfair Set, Pandora’s Box, The Trap and The Living Dead.

As was eluded, the three films are deeply thought-provoking.  There is a ‘taster’ to the first film on YouTube, as below,

Adam Curtis, the film maker, has a blog site under the BBC Blogs umbrella.  The entry on that blog-site by Adam in connection with these films is here, and makes interesting reading.  It also includes a longer trailer than the one from YouTube, above.

Finally, there are comprehensive writings on all three films on the WikiPedia website here.  To give you a taste, here’s what was written about the third film,

The Monkey In The Machine and the Machine in the Monkey

This programme looked into the selfish gene theory which holds that humans are machines controlled by genes which was invented by William Hamilton. Adam Curtis also covered the source of ethnic conflict that was created by Belgian colonialism’s artificial creation of a racial divide and the ensuing slaughter that occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is a source of raw materialfor computers and cell phones.

William Hamilton went to Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of the Congo while the Second Congo War was raging. He went there to collect Chimpanzee faeces to test his theory that HIV was due to a medical mistake. Unfortunately he caught malaria, for which he took aspirin, which caused a haemorrhage and he died. However his selfish gene theory lived on.

In 1960 Congo had become independent from Belgium, but governance promptly collapsed, and towns became battle grounds as soldiers fought for control of the mines. America and the Belgians organised a coup and the elected leader was assassinated, creating chaos. The Western mining operations were largely unaffected however.

Bill Hamilton was a solitary man, and he saw everything through the lens of Darwin’s theory of evolution. When he wanted to know why some ants and humans gave up their life for others, he went to Waterloo station and stared at humans for hours, and looked for patterns. In 1963 he realised that most of the behaviours of humans was due to genes, and looking at the humans from the genes’ point of view. Humans were machines that were only important for carrying genes, and that it made sense for a gene to sacrifice a human if it meant that another copy of the gene elsewhere would prosper.

In the 1930s Armand Denis made films that told the world about Africa. However, his documentary gave fanciful stories about Rwanda’s Tutsis being a noble ruling elite originally from Egypt, whereas the Hutus were a peasant race. In reality they were racially the same and the Belgian rulers had ruthlessly exploited the myth. But when it came to create independence, liberal Belgians felt guilty, and decided that the Hutus should overthrow the Tutsi rule. This led to a blood bath, as the Tutsis were then seen as aliens and were slaughtered.

So, all in all, this is a great personal recommendation and, it goes without saying, those of you that do watch the films and want to comment, would love to hear from you.

The Changing Face of Society

A powerful and compelling essay from Tom Engelhardt

First, a preamble from me.

There have been a number of references to Tom Engelhardt’s writings on Learning from Dogs over the last 12 months; if you want to browse through them why not start with TomDispatch – The Great American Carbon Bomb.  Frequently, Tom writes an introductory piece to an essay from a guest author; Tom has generously given me written permission to republish any of his writings.

But his latest essay is 100% Tom and beautifully written.  My instinct is to agree with Tom’s conclusions entirely.  The reason you hear a slight hesitation in that last sentence is because I was not born an American, indeed only became a permanent USA resident this last April.  From the perspective of  a Londoner born in 1944, I suspect not too many years Tom’s senior, much of Tom’s essay really resonates with me.

OK, that’s enough from me.  Whoops, sorry, a few more words.  Tom’s essay is long, but so what!  Guess what I am saying is don’t be put off by the length, just make a mental note that if you haven’t got a quiet 15 minutes now, then wait until you have.  The essay will be compelling, I can guarantee it.  Especially if you are one of the many Learning from Dogs readers that is outside the USA – this provides very great insight into the Occupy Wall Street movement and the changes in society that are going to flow from that movement, flow around the globe.

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Wall Street by the Book Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 8:00pm, October 30, 2011.

OWS at Valley Forge
A (Self-)Graduation Speech for the Occupiers of Zuccotti Park 
By Tom Engelhardt

Once the Arab Spring broke loose, people began asking me why this country was still so quiet.  I would always point out that no one ever expects or predicts such events.  Nothing like this, I would say, happens until it happens, and only then do you try to make sense of it retrospectively.

Sounds smart enough, but here’s the truth of it: whatever I said, I wasn’t expecting you.  After this endless grim decade of war and debacle in America, I had no idea you were coming, not even after Madison.

You took me by surprise.  For all I know, you took yourself by surprise, the first of you who arrived at Zuccotti Park and, inspired by a bunch of Egyptian students, didn’t go home again.  And when the news of you penetrated my world, I didn’t pay much attention.  So I wasn’t among the best and brightest when it came to you.  But one thing’s for sure: you’ve had my attention these last weeks.  I already feel years younger thanks to you (even if my legs don’t).

Decades ago in the Neolithic age we now call “the Sixties,” I was, like you: outraged.  I was out in the streets (and in the library).  I was part of the anti-Vietnam War movement.  I turned in my draft card, joined a group called the Resistance, took part in the radical politics of the moment, researched the war, became a draft counselor, helped organize an anti-war Asian scholars group — I was at the time preparing to be a China scholar, before being swept away — began writing about (and against) the war, worked as an “underground” printer (there was nothing underground about us, but it sounded wonderful), and finally became an editor and journalist at an antiwar news service in San Francisco.

In that time of turmoil, I doubt I spent a moment pondering this irony: despite all those years in college and graduate school, the most crucial part of my education — learning about the nature of American power and how it was wielded — was largely self-taught in my off-hours.  And I wasn’t alone.  In those days, most of us found ourselves in a frenzy of teaching (each other), reading, writing — and acting.  That was how I first became an editor (without even knowing what an editor was): simply by having friends shove their essays at me and ask for help.

Those were heady years, as heady, I have no doubt, as this moment is for you.  But that doesn’t mean our moments were the same.  Not by a long shot.  Here’s one major difference: like so many of the young of that distant era, I was surfing the crest of a wave of American wealth and wellbeing.  We never thought about, but also never doubted, that if this moment ended, there would be perfectly normal jobs — good ones — awaiting us, should we want them.  It never crossed our minds that we couldn’t land on our feet in America, if we cared to.

In that sense, while we certainly talked about putting everything on the line, we didn’t; in truth, economically speaking, we couldn’t. Although you, the occupiers of Zuccotti Park and other encampments around the country, are a heterogeneous crew, many of you, I know, graduated from college in recent years.

Most of you were ushered off those leafy campuses (or their urban equivalents) with due pomp and ceremony, and plenty of what passes for inspiration.  I’m ready to bet, though, that in those ceremonies no one bothered to mention that you (and your parents) had essentially been conned, snookered out of tens of thousands of dollars on the implicit promise that such an “education” would usher you into a profession or at least a world of decent jobs.

As you know better than I, you got soaked by the educational equivalent of a subprime mortgage.  As a result, many of you were sent out of those gates and directly — as they say of houses that are worth less than what’s owed on their mortgages — underwater.

You essentially mortgaged your lives for an education and left college weighed down with so much debt — a veritable trillion-dollar bubble of it — that you may never straighten up, not if the 1% have their way.  Worse yet, you were sent into a world just then being stripped of its finery, where decent jobs were going the way of TVs with antennas and rotary telephones.

Lost Worlds and Utopia

Here’s a weakness of mine: graduation speeches.  I like their form, if not their everyday reality, and so from time to time give them unasked at TomDispatch.com, speeches for those of us already out in the world and seldom credited for never stopping learning.

In this case, though, don’t think of me as your graduation speaker.  Think of this as a self-graduation.  And this time, it’s positives all the way to the horizon.  After all, you haven’t incurred a cent of debt, because you and those around you in Zuccotti Park are giving the classes you took.  First, you began educating yourself in the realities of post-meltdown America, and then, miraculously enough, you went and educated many of the rest of us as well.

You really did change the conversation in this country in a heartbeat from, as Joshua Holland wroteat Alternet.org, “a relentless focus on the deficit to a discussion of the real issues facing Main Street: the lack of jobs… spiraling inequality, cash-strapped American families’ debt-loads, and the pernicious influence of money in politics that led us to this point” — and more amazingly yet, at no charge.

In other words, I’m not here, like the typical graduation speaker, to inspire you.  I’m here to tell you how you’ve inspired me.   In the four decades between the moment when I imagined I put everything on the line and the moment when you actually did, wealth and income inequalitiesexploded in ways unimaginable in the 1960s.  For ordinary Americans, the numbers that translated into daily troubles began heading downhill in the 1990s, the Clinton years, and only a fraudulent bubble in home values kept the good times rolling until 2008.

Then, of course, it burst big time.  But you know all this.  Who knows better than you the story of the financial and political flim-flam artists who brought this country to its knees, made out like bandits, and left the 99% in the dust?  Three years of stunned silence followed, as if Americans simply couldn’t believe it, couldn’t take it in — if, that is, you leave aside the Tea Party movement.

But give those aging, angry whites credit.  They were the first to cry out for a lost world (while denouncing some of the same bank bailouts and financial shenanigans you have).  That was before, in a political nano-second, the phrase “Tea Party” was essentially trademarked, occupied, and made the property of long-time Republican operatives, corporate cronies, and various billionaires.

That won’t happen to you.  Among your many strengths, the lack of a list of demands that so many of your elders have complained about, your inclusiveness, and your utopian streak — the urge to create a tiny, thoroughly democratic new society near the beating financial heart of the old one — will make you far harder to co-opt.  Add in the fact that, while any movement taking on inequity and unfairness is political, you are also, in the usual sense of the term, a strikingly apolitical movement.  Again, this is, to my mind, part of your strength.  It ensures that neither the Democratic Party nor left sects will find it easy to get a toehold in your environs.  Yes, in the long run, if you last and grow (as I suspect you will), a more traditional kind of politics may form around you, but it’s unlikely to abscond with you as those Republican operatives did with the Tea Party.

Actuarially, the Tea Party is a movement of the past in mourning for a lost world and the good life that went with it.  All you have to do is look at the sudden, post-2008 burst of poverty in the suburbs, that golden beacon of the post-World War II American dream, to know that something unprecedented is underway.

Once upon a time, no one imagined that an American world of home ownership and good jobs, of cheap gas and cheaper steaks, would ever end.  Nonetheless, it was kneecapped over the last few decades and it’s not coming back.  Not for you or your children, no matter what happens economically.

So don’t kid yourself: whether you know it or not, young as you are, you’re in mourning, too, or Occupy Wall Street wouldn’t exist. Unlike the Tea Party, however, you are young, which means that you’re also a movement of the unknown future, which is your strength.

Self-Education U.

Let me fess up here to my fondness for libraries (even though I find their silence unnerving).  As a child, I lived in the golden age of your lost world, but as something of an outsider.  The 1950s weren’t a golden age for my family, and they weren’t particularly happy years for me.  I was an only child, and my escape was into books.  Less than a block from where I lived was a local branch of the New York City public library and, in those days before adult problems had morphed into TV fare, I repaired there, like Harriet the Spy, to get the scoop on the mysterious world of grown-ups.  (The only question then was whether the librarian would let you out of the children’s section; mine did.)

I remembering hauling home piles of books, including John Toland’s But Not in Shame, Isaac Asimov’s space operas, and Désirée (a racy pop novel about a woman Napoleon loved), often with little idea what they were and no one to guide me.  On the shelves in my small room were yet more books, including most of the Harvard Five Foot Shelf, a collection of 51 classic volumes.  My set had been rescued from somebody’s flooded basement, their spines slightly warped and signs of mildew on some of them.  But I can still remember taking them off my shelf with a certain wonder: Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast (thrilling!), Darwin’s The Origins of the Species(impenetrable), Homer’s The Odyssey (Cyclops!), and so on.

Books — Johannes Gutenberg’s more than 500-year-old “technology” — were my companions, my siblings, and also my building blocks.  To while away the hours, I would pile them up to create the landscape — valleys and mountains — within which my toy soldiers fought their battles.  So libraries and self-education, that’s a program in my comfort zone.

Though my route seemed happenstantial at the time, it’s probably no accident that, 35 years ago, I ended up as a book editor on the periphery of mainstream publishing and stayed there.  After all, it was a paid excuse to retreat to my room with books (to-be) and, if not turn them into mountains and valleys, then at least transform them into a kind of eternal play and self-education.

All of which is why, on arriving for the first time at your encampment in Zuccotti Park and taking that tiny set of steps down from Broadway, I was moved to find myself in, of all things, an informal open-air library.  The People’s Library no less, even if books sorted by category in plastic bins on tables isn’t exactly the way I once imagined The Library.

Still, it couldn’t be more appropriate for Occupy Wall Street, with its long, open-air meetings, its invited speakers and experts, its visiting authors, its constant debates and arguments, that feeling when you’re there that you can talk to anyone.

Like the best of library systems, it’s a Self-Education U., or perhaps a modern version of theChautauqua adult education movement.  Your goal, it seems, is to educate yourselves and then the rest of us in the realities and inequities of twenty-first century American life.

Still, for the advanced guard of your electronic generation to commit itself so publicly to actual books, ones you can pick up, leaf through, hand to someone else — that took me by surprise.  Those books, all donations, are flowing in from publishers (including Metropolitan Books, where I work, and Haymarket Books, which publishes me), private bookstores, authors, and well, just about anyone.  As I stood talking with some of you, the librarians of Zuccotti Park, I watched people arriving, unzipping backpacks, and handing over books.

Of the thousands of volumes you now have, some, as in any library, are indeed taken out and returned, but some not. As Bill Scott, a librarian sitting in front of a makeshift “reference table” in muffler and jacket told me, “The books are donated to us and we donate them to others.”

A youthful-looking 42, Scott, an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, is spending his sabbatical semester camped out in the park.  His book, Troublemakers, is just about to be published and he’s bubbling with enthusiasm.  He’s ordered a couple of copies to donate himself.  “It’s my first book ever.  I’ve never even held it in my hands.  To shelve the first copy in the People’s Library, it’s like all the strands of my life coming together!”

Think of it: Yes, your peers in the park were texting and tweeting and streaming up a video storm.  They were social networking circles around the 1%, the mayor, the police, and whoever else got in their way.  Still, there you all were pushing a technology already relegated by many to the trash bin of cultural history.  You were betting your bottom dollar on the value to your movement of real books, the very things that kept me alive as a kid, that I’ve been editing, publishing, and even writingfor more than three decades.

“I Wanted Something Productive to Do”

That library — in fact, those libraries at Occupy Boston, Occupy Washington, Occupy San Francisco, and other encampments — may be the least commented upon part of your movement.  And yet, you set your library up not as an afterthought or a sideline, but almost as soon as you began imagining a society worth living in, a little world of your own.  You didn’t forget the books, which means you didn’t forget about education.  I mean, a real education.

This was both generous of you and, quite simply, inspiring.  Who would have expected that the old-fashioned, retro book would be at the heart of this country’s great protest movement of a tarnished new century?

When asked how the library began, librarian “Scales” (aka Sam Smith), an unemployed, 20-year-old blond dancer still in shorts on a chilly fall day, responded, “Nobody knows exactly who started it. It was like an immaculate conception.  It was just here.”  If the movement itself were a book, that might stand as its epigraph.  Even if Occupy Wall Street indeed did start somewhere (as did its library), the way it has exploded globally in a historical nanosecond, does give it exactly the feeling Scales described.

When asked why he himself was here, he simply said, “I wanted something productive to do.”

In an economy where “production” is gone with the wind, that makes the deepest sense to me.  Who doesn’t want to be productive in life?  Why should a generation that Wall Street and Washington seem perfectly happy to sideline not want to produce something of their own, as they now have?

I was no less touched, while listening in on a long meeting of the Library Working Group one Saturday afternoon amid the chaos of Zuccotti Park — crowd noise all around us, a band playing nearby — when the woman standing next to me interrupted your meeting.  She identified herself as an elected legislator from an upstate New York county who had driven down to see Occupy Wall Street for herself.  She just wanted you, the librarians, to know that she supported what you were doing and that, while her county was still funding its libraries, it was getting ever harder to do so, given strapped state and local budgets.

In other words, as education is priced out of the reach of so many Americans and in many communities library hours are cut back or local libraries shut down, you’ve opened for business.

Here are just a few things that you, the librarians of Zuccotti Park, said to me:

Bill Scott: “Part of the reason we’re down here is because we live in a society which promotes the idea that education should be bought and sold on the open market.  We want to establish it as a human right.  What the People’s Library proves is that books belong to the people, as does education.  People with student-loan debt find their freedom and options limited.  It severely limited my options.  I’m still crawling out from under a ton of debt.”

Zachary Loeb, who in what passes for real life is an actual librarian: “I’m working part time, so I wake up every morning and spend two hours sending out resumes, but the work isn’t out there.  My training’s in archiving, but nobody’s hiring.  I got a degree in library science, not philosophy, which I wanted to go into, to be on a job track.  Obviously, I’m not.  Lots of people are here because the work situation is abysmal.

“I’ve been an activist for a long time.  I read [the magazine] Adbusters and saw the call to occupy Wall Street.  I was down here on the first day.  I think we’ve changed the conversation in this country.  We’ve given people permission to stand up, to talk to each other, test their ideas out against each other, and consider decisions that shouldn’t simply be made by the powerful in Washington.”

Frances Mercanti-Anthony, out-of-work actress (“my last play closed in August”) and comic writer: “Knowledge is the greatest weapon we have.  What we’re doing is offering knowledge to people who have been disenfranchised.  Our online database of books [in the People’s Library] stands as a great symbol of the movement, of democracy, of knowledge, and sharing.”

Lighting Up the Landscape

Here’s what you’ve done: your anger and your thoughtfulness — what you don’t know and don’t mind not knowing, as well as what you do know — has lit up a previously dismal landscape.  And every move made by those who want to get rid of you has only spurred your growth.

I’m a pretty levelheaded guy, but call me a little starry-eyed right now and I don’t mind at all.  It’s something to feel this way for the first time in I don’t know how long, and whatever happens from now on, I can thank you for that — and for the sudden sense of possibility that goes with it.

Only six weeks into your movement, with so little known about where you’re going or what will happen, it’s undoubtedly early for graduation ceremonies.  Still, let’s face it, you’ve been growing up fast and, for all we know, these could have been the six weeks that changed the world.  Anyway, there’s no limit out here, where you can make your own traditions, on how often you can graduate yourself.

So I say, go for it.  Mark your progress thus far.  Self-graduate.  You don’t need me.   I’ll stay here and borrow a book from your library — and later, when I’m done, just as you suggest, I’ll donate it to someone else.

Shoulder your handmade signs.  Lift them high.  Chant your chants.  Let the drummers play as you march.  Head out toward Wall Street, toward the future, looking back over your shoulder, remembering exactly what your elders squandered, the world they left you, the debts they piled on you.  And the next time they start telling you what you should do with your movement, take it with a grain of salt.  The future, after all, is yours, not theirs.  It may be the only thing you have, exactly because it’s so beautifully unknown, so deeply unpredictable.  It’s your advantage over them because it’s one thing that Washington and Wall Street have no more way of controlling than you do.

In a world of increasing misery, you carry not just your debts, but ours too.  It’s a burden no one should shoulder, especially with winter bearing down, and that 1% of adults waiting for the cold to make tempers short, hoping you’ll begin to fall out, grow discouraged, and find life too miserable to bear, hoping that a New York winter will freeze you out of your own movement.

I take heart that last weekend, on a beautiful fall day, you, the librarians, were already discussing the need to buy “Alaska-style” sleeping bags and a generator which would give you heat; that you, like the mayor, are looking ahead and planning for winter.  This, after all, could be your Valley Forge.  As actress-librarian Mercanti-Anthony told me:  “We have the whole world behind us at this point.  We want to stand our ground for the long haul.  If we can make it through the winter, this occupation is here to stay.”

And she just might be right.  So head out now, and whatever you do, don’t go home.  It’s underwater anyway, and we need you.  We really do.  The world’s in a hell of a mess, but what a time for you to take it in your own hands and do your damnedest.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear(Haymarket Books), will be published in November. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Engelhardt discusses the Occupy Wall Street movement and what hope means in our time click here, or download it to your iPod here.

Copyright 2011 Tom Engelhardt

Who am I?

An intriguing examination of how we build our sense of self.

Note: This article goes back to 2007, part of a programme that I was involved in back then.  However, re-reading the article shows it to be timeless, so trust you find it interesting.  There is a fascinating test, still online, details provided at the end of the article – but if you can’t wait, it’s here.

Finding the self.

What is Self?

Edited by Fiona Kerr from original text by Dorothy Miell

So what is self and how do we study its development? As we grow older we become aware of differences between ourselves and others, for example: what I look like; my gender; what makes me happy or sad. A sense of self is not achieved in a single step; we don’t emerge from our mother’s womb as fully formed adults. As our bodies grow and change we also learn more and more about ourselves. How we describe ourselves to others changes as we get older. This process is not necessarily constant – some aspects of self may stay the same for many years, others may change rapidly.

There may also be big differences to how you feel and how you want others to think you are. This may colour your choices in self-description.

A sense of self is also a cultural construction – in some societies individual uniqueness and self-expression is seen as vulgar and uncivilised. In Open2.net’s “Who Am I?” test we will be examining self in a Western sense, the gradual formation of becoming a self-aware individual. We’ll be grouping the results in age groups, so you can see how the self-descriptions change as people get older. Although self development is most significant in childhood, we’ve decided to keep the results going to see how things change into adulthood (if at all!).

I exist!

A child’s first step to self-understanding is the recognition that she or he exists. As an infant explores the world and interacts with caregivers, she becomes aware that she has power – she is an agent of change within her own environment. She is able to cause things to happen and control objects. This awareness is known as “self-as-subject”, “I” or the “existential self”:

There are thought to be four elements to the existential self:

  1. an awareness of one’s own agency (i.e. one’s power to act) in life events,
  2. an awareness of the uniqueness of one’s own experience, of one’s distinctiveness from other people,
  3. an awareness of the continuity of one’s identity,
  4. an awareness of one’s own awareness, the element of reflexiveness.

For example, if a child closes his or her eyes, the world goes dark. If a toy is touched, it moves. The interaction with the world is physical, external and, in developmental terms, it helps the child differentiate between self and other.

What Makes Me?

At around a child’s second birthday, many children recognise themselves in a mirror or in a photograph. In Western cultures, from the age of 18 months to 3 years of age, infants start to display self-awareness through the use of the word “me” or “mine”. This self-sense isn’t a passive, self-reflective discovery, but is often the result of effort, particularly in rivalry with others. It arises from striving in the face of obstacles.

These are the second steps in establishing a full sense of self, the acquisition and elaboration as “self-as-object” or “me”, now often referred to as the “categorical self”. This aspect of self concerns the qualities that define oneself as a person, e.g. gender, name and relationships with others. Once a child has gained a certain level of self-awareness (of the existential self) he or she begins to place herself (or is placed by others) into a set of categories. This aspect of self is the most influenced by social factors, since it is made up of social roles (such as being a student, a sister, a friend) and characteristics that come from a comparison with others (such as trustworthiness, shyness or sporting ability). Social context is an important feature in self-development.

Self-Esteem

Measuring self-esteem is difficult. We might feel good about ourselves in one aspect of our lives, but not so good in others. One way of measuring self-esteem in children is to ask questions about how they feel in the different aspects of their life, such as: scholastic competence; athletic competence; social acceptance; behavioural conduct; physical appearance.

How we feel about ourselves overall may bear little or no relationship to how we feel about ourselves in these different areas. It’s the importance we place on our areas of achievement or failure that leads to an overall level of self-esteem. A child who is anxious to succeed at sport would have a high level of self-esteem if she did well at sport, but low self-esteem if her performance in sport was poor, even if the child was good academically or socially. The match between our aspirations and performance is one important factor in determining self-esteem. Another factor which might influence a child’s overall feeling of self-esteem is the regard in which they are held by “significant others”, people whose opinion the child values, such as parents, teachers and peers.

Gender identity

Children by the age of about two are able to correctly label themselves as a boy or a girl. But it is not until later that they understand that gender is a stable concept, e.g. that boys cannot become mothers. Being able to identify themselves in terms of gender helps children develop a sense of categorical self and helps define appropriate behaviour for boys and girls. Children develop their gender roles in part through imitation of models, so parents’ reactions to the behaviour of children are an important influence on children’s developing sense of gender identity. Parents who try to raise their children in a non-sexist way have encountered difficulties, as other influences such as the media and society itself can counter their attempts.

If children are shown individual differences between people, that different people believe different things, they can see that contradictory beliefs and behaviours can co-exist, that the rules for their family may not be true of the family next door, but both are valid.

Describing self changes as we grow older

A child uses comparison with others to see how he or she fits into different categories. In order to evaluate if he or she is short, tall, clever or shy, a child either has to compare themselves physically with others, or consider their evaluation by others.

This contrast between self and others helps the child to develop an increasingly complex understanding about self. Children’s self-descriptions change as they become more able to evaluate themselves and develop a sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Children seem to think about themselves in different ways as they get older. Younger children seem to focus more on physical features, activities and behaviours, whereas older children mention more psychological characteristics. So, by the age of about 18, individuals are able to describe themselves in terms of the world of emotions, attitudes, secrets and wishes. Self-reflection is focused inwards, on their inner, private world.

OpenLearn, part of The Open University, have designed a test to illustrate how people of different ages define themselves. Once you take the test, you can then compare yourself to the database of other people who have taken the test to see how you compare with others in your age group, how you compare with people from other age groups and how people differ according to gender. Alternatively you can view the database without taking the test first. Try taking the test with a child and see how your results compare. So why not take the test to find out “Who Am I?”

That test link is here.

References
MIELL, D. (1995) ‘Developing a Sense of Self’
BARNES, P. (ed.) Personal, Social and Emotional Development of Children, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers

The above article was published by the BBC as part of their Child of our Time series, unfortunately no longer available online.

The results of the Who Am I test based on 53,345 entries as at October 30th, 2011, show overwhelmingly that both sexes at all ages describe their relationships and inner emotions as more important than their physical or character descriptions. For men from the age of 16-19 until 61+ their description of their relationships scores more important than their inner self but the margin is slight. For women over the same age span the situation is reversed; inner emotions score marginally higher than relationships.

What is very revealing is that for both sexes across the whole of their adult life, their physical and character identities are significantly less important than their social and emotional selves.

Common sense

The ways of our carbon-consuming past & present cannot be continued into the future.

In many ways that sub-heading above is not controversial for millions of citizens of Planet Earth.  The challenge is in changing behaviours, ending old habits of energy use, and working towards a truly sustainable relationship with the only planetary home we have!

Some time ago, I wrote about Lester Brown’s book, World on the Edge, quickly following it up with Plan B Movie for Planet Earth.  Since reading Lester’s book, I have subscribed to the Blog/website Earth Policy Institute, Lester Brown is President of EPI.

Like many others, Jean and I are of the view that the Keystone XL Pipeline is not required.  Last week there was an update from EPI about this subject illustrating how the pipeline is not required.  That update is published in full, as follows,

Plan B Updates

OCTOBER 06, 2011

U.S. Gasoline Use Declining: Keystone XL Pipeline Not Needed

Lester R. Brown

As the debate unfolds about whether to build a 1,711-mile pipeline to carry crude oil from the tar sands in Canada to refineries in Texas, the focus is on the oil spills and carbon emissions that inevitably come with it. But we need to ask a more fundamental question. Do we really need that oil?

The United States currently consumes more gasoline than the next 16 countries combined. Yes, you read that right. Among them are China, Japan, Russia, Germany, and Brazil. (See data.)

But now this is changing. Not only is the affluence that sustained this extravagant gasoline consumption eroding, but the automobile-centered lifestyle that was considered part of the American birthright is fading as well. U.S. gasoline use has dropped 5 percent in four years.

Four key developments are set to further reduce U.S. gasoline use: a shrinking car fleet, a decline in the miles driven per car, dramatic mandated future gains in new car fuel efficiency, and the shift from gasoline to electricity to power our cars.

The U.S. fleet appears to have peaked at 250 million vehicles in 2008. From 1994 through 2007, new-car sales were in the range of 15–17 million per year. Since then they have totaled 10–13 million per year, and they are unlikely to top 14 million again. Retirees likely will exceed sales of new cars throughout this decade.

The contraction that began when the fleet dropped from 250 million in 2008 to 248 million in 2010 is likely to continue. Sales of new cars are not matching those of earlier years in part because the economic prospect has dimmed and in part because we are still urbanizing. Today 82 percent of us live in urban areas where cars are becoming less essential.

On top of urbanization, we also have a change in the manner in which young people socialize. For teenagers in rural communities a half century ago, getting a driver’s license and something to drive—a car, a pickup, or even a farm truck—was a rite of passage. That’s what everyone did.

This too is changing. Today’s teenagers, most of whom grew up in an urban setting, socialize through smartphones and the Internet. For many of them, a car is of little interest. The number of licensed teenage drivers in this country—the car owners of the future—has dropped from a peak of 12 million in 1978 to 10 million today.

Cities are also being redesigned for people. Among other things, this means cities are becoming pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly, with ready access to public transit.

Many cities are building a cycling infrastructure of bicycle trails, dedicated bike lanes, and bike racks for parking. Bike-sharing programs are showing up, too. In Washington, D.C., the Capital Bikeshare program that began in 2010 has expanded to 116 stations with 1,100 bicycles. Within the first year, some 16,000 riders signed up for annual membership in the program. Denver and Chicago have similar bike share programs. And New York City is about to launch a huge program of its own.

The second reason that gasoline use is falling is the decline in miles driven per car. This is partly in response to economic uncertainty and the high price of gasoline. When gas costs nearly $4 a gallon, people think twice before jumping in a car and using a gallon of gasoline to pick up a half-gallon of milk.

A third trend that is reducing gasoline use is the rising fuel efficiency of the U.S. automobile fleet. New cars sold in 2008 averaged 27 miles per gallon. But in early 2009, President Obama raised the average fuel efficiency standard so that those sold in 2016 will get 36 miles per gallon. Additional standards announced in 2011 mean that new cars sold in 2025 will use less than half as much gasoline as the 2008 models.

The game changer in reducing gasoline use is going to come as drivers shift from gasoline to electrically powered vehicles, including plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars. General Motors recently introduced the Chevrolet Volt, designed to run largely on electricity, and Nissan unveiled the Leaf, an all-electric vehicle. Beyond these, Toyota is accepting orders for the plug-in version of its Prius hybrid, the pacesetter in fuel efficiency. It will be followed by a steady flow of new plug-in hybrid and all-electric car models coming to market.

Although these electrically powered vehicles are typically more costly to buy, the day-to-day cost of operating them is extraordinarily low. An analysis by Professor Michael McElroy at Harvard indicates that running a car on wind-generated electricity could cost less than the equivalent of 80-cent-a-gallon gasoline.

With the auto fleet shrinking, with the average car being driven less, with the fuel use of new cars to be cut in half by 2025, and with electricity starting to replace gasoline as a fuel, why do we need to build a pipeline to bring crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to oil refineries in Texas? The answer is we don’t.

Lester R. Brown is president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of World on the Edge.

Copyright © 2011 Earth Policy Institute

There’s a footnote that I would like to add from the Center for Biological Diversity (great website!) that came out in a recent newsletter.

Here it is,

Lawsuit Seeks to Halt Work on Controversial Keystone XL Pipeline

Keystone Pipeline

The hotly contested Keystone XL pipeline hasn’t been approved for construction, but federal officials don’t seem to care; they’ve allowed the pipeline company to mow down 100 miles of native prairie grasslands in Nebraska to clear the way — before any public hearings were held on whether Keystone XL should move forward at all.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth filed a lawsuit in federal court in Omaha Wednesday to halt that work. Specifically, we’re challenging decisions by the State Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to allow work to begin before a decision’s been made on the pipeline or the public hearings, which look like little more than a sham at this point.

If approved, TransCanada’s 1,700-mile pipeline would carry up to 35 million gallons of oil a day from tar sands in Canada to refineries in Texas. Not only will this project add fuel to the global climate crisis, but the pipeline will cut across Nebraska’s legendary Sandhills, hundreds of rivers and streams, and the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides drinking water for millions of people. TransCanada’s existing pipeline, called Keystone 1, has reportedly leaked 14 times since it started operating in June 2010.

Please will there be some common sense over this?

Can modernisation be “ecological”?

Three guest posts from Martin Lack of Lack of Environment, today Part Two

As previously mentioned, Martin came to the attention of Learning from Dogs when making a comment to the second part of my Sceptical Voices essay.   This is the second part of an essay that Martin wrote that is worthy of deep consideration.  Part One can be read here; the concluding Part Three next Monday, the 10th.

————————-

Can modernisation be “ecological”? – Part 2

What is the problem with Modernity?
The problem is that the accumulation of personal wealth has become the sole objective of many people in modern society; and perpetual growth is posited as a means whereby even the poorest might achieve it. However, the New International Version of the Bible records the Apostle Paul as having written, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil…” (1 Timothy 6:10); and economists and politicians have argued about this for centuries…

According to Jon Elster, it was Karl Marx that coined the term ‘money fetishism’ to describe the belief that money (and/or precious metals) have intrinsic (use) value rather than just instrumental (exchange) value, which Marx felt was as misguided as the religious practice of endowing inanimate objects with supernatural powers (Elster 1986: 56-7). However, the terms use value and exchange value were first put forward by Aristotle (384-322 BC) who, according to Daly, also recognised the danger of focusing on the latter (i.e. whereby the accumulation of wealth becomes an end in itself). Therefore, Daly suggests that the paperless economy (where no useable commodities actually change hands) is the ultimate destiny for money fetishism (Daly 1992: 186).

In 1987, the World Commission on the Environment and Development (WCED) was clearly keen to try and settle an argument and, therefore, made the following quite astonishing assertion: “Growth has no set limits in terms of population or resource use beyond which lies ecological disaster” (Brundtland et al 1987: 45). Instead, WCED gave us the much-touted – but ill-defined – concept of sustainable development (SD). However, in stark contrast to the WCED report, Carter much more recently observed that SD “…will require a fundamental transformation in attitudes to economic growth, consumption, production and work” (Carter 2007: 48). This appears to be a subtle acknowledgement of the legitimacy of Herman Daly’s insistence of the need for a move to a steady-state economy; precisely because infinite growth is impossible in a closed system.

A basic tenet of Daly’s thesis is that economic activity does not take place in a vacuum and that economic – not just ecological – collapse awaits us unless we recognise the limited capacity of the ecosystem within which we operate: “Of all the fields of study, economics is the last one that should seek to be ‘value-free’, lest it deserve Oscar Wilde’s remark that an economist ‘is a man that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’” (Daly 1992: 4).

On 22 December 2010, the BBC broadcast a Panorama programme entitled “What Price Cheap Food” containing the startling revelation that, in the two years between 1 November 2008 and 1 November 2010, town planners approved applications for at least 577 new supermarkets across the UK. The programme also revealed that so-called “mega farms” (i.e. factory farming of cows and pigs – “dairy-go-rounds” and “sty scrappers” respectively) will be the next ‘big idea’ imported from the USA. The potential mega farm operators argue that there is significant scope for recycling and energy from waste schemes to be incorporated, although environmentalists would question (1) the wisdom of concentrating potentially polluting activities; and (2) the ethics of factory farming (which undoubtedly goes against the grain of green consumerism). However, although the potential for economies of scale cannot be denied, this could all be seen as symptomatic of what Daly called “growthmania“.

Growthmania versus Limits to Growth
One of the world’s most famous deniers of Limits to Growth arguments is Julian Simon, who once famously won a bet with Paul Ehrlich that the price of any commodity would reduce with the passage of time. Nevertheless, how can anyone deny that the Earth’s resource base or its capacity to accommodate human beings is anything other than limited? Quite easily, apparently: In 1994, Simon claimed that “humanity now has the ability (or knowledge) to make it possible to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years.”

However, the stupidity of such a dangerously fallacious argument was exposed 2 years later by Paul and Anna Ehrlich, who pointed out that at 1994 growth rates, “it would take only 774 years for the 1994 population of 5.6 billion to increase to the point where there were 10 human beings for each square meter of ice-free land on the planet!” Furthermore, they pointed out that if growth did not decline from 1994 levels, it would take only 1900 years for the mass of the human population to equal the mass of the Earth! (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1996: 66).

Fortunately, the UN now believes (May 2011) that the human population on this planet will probably stabilise by the end of the current Century at somewhere between 10 and 15 billion. The only trouble with that is that, we may well have already exceeded the ecological carrying capacity of the planet, and are therefore causing extreme stress to the global ecosystem; of which the most obvious symptom is AGW.
—————-
References:
Daly, H. (1992), Steady State Economics (2nd ed), London: Earthscan.
Elster, J. (1986), An Introduction to Karl Marx, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ehrlich, P. and Ehrlich, A. (1996), Betrayal of Science and Reason, New York: Island Press.

Sceptical voices, reflections

If there’s any doubt, there’s no doubt!

I know that expression from my days as a private pilot.  It makes such obvious sense, especially in a single-engined light aircraft with one pilot on board.  It’s all about risk.

Frederick Herzberg, the famous American psychologist, coined the term ‘hygiene factor’.  It was the second part of a two-factor approach to the management of people.  According to Herzberg’s theory, people are influenced by two sets of factors, motivation factors and hygiene factors.  More background on this aspect here.

To me, as I reflect on the messages offered in the Sceptical Voices article, Part One and Part Two, the concepts of risk and hygiene seem totally appropriate to the topic of AGW, Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Whether or not AGW is a valid theory behind the rapid change in global warming is utterly irrelevant.  It is the risk to humanity that matters.  There is absolutely no harm done from assuming that AGW is happening and that feedback processes run a grave risk of tipping planetary conditions out of control, and getting that wrong.

On the other hand, assume that AGW is such an uncertain concept that it really isn’t wise to adjust our life styles, and getting that wrong would endanger the human species.

Think of being on a commercial airline flight and you become aware that one of the two pilots in the cockpit is incapacitated through food poisoning.  No doubt that you, with all your fellow passengers, would vote for an immediate diversionary landing.  It’s to do with risk.

From the perspective of Herzberg, a co-ordinated program by the world’s leading governments to tackle AGW might also improve the overall motivation of their peoples in a whole manner of ways.

Merci voiced this perfectly in her comment to Sceptical Voices, Part One, thus,

Yes, question all we want, yes, there are other important issues to resolve in the world, but WHAT IF “Climate Change/Global Warming“ is for real, what then?

Dan wrote also in that Part One piece,

And by “peel-back-the-onion”, I mean that any ardent, independent researcher should publish both sides of the story as a matter of course.  Especially in regards to global warming.

But publishing both sides of the story is not the argument.  The argument is the risk to humanity of doing nothing, and getting it wrong.

That well-respected weekly newspaper The Economist had a recent article about the melting of Arctic ice, from which is quoted,

Arctic sea ice is melting far faster than climate models predict. Why?

Sep 24th 2011 - from the print edition

ON SEPTEMBER 9th, at the height of its summertime shrinkage, ice covered 4.33m square km, or 1.67m square miles, of the Arctic Ocean, according to America’s National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC). That is not a record low—not quite. But the actual record, 4.17m square km in 2007, was the product of an unusual combination of sunny days, cloudless skies and warm currents flowing up from mid-latitudes. This year has seen no such opposite of a perfect storm, yet the summer sea-ice minimum is a mere 4% bigger than that record. Add in the fact that the thickness of the ice, which is much harder to measure, is estimated to have fallen by half since 1979, when satellite records began, and there is probably less ice floating on the Arctic Ocean now than at any time since a particularly warm period 8,000 years ago, soon after the last ice age.

That Arctic sea ice is disappearing has been known for decades. The underlying cause is believed by all but a handful of climatologists to be global warming brought about by greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet the rate the ice is vanishing confounds these climatologists’ models. These predict that if the level of carbon dioxide, methane and so on in the atmosphere continues to rise, then the Arctic Ocean will be free of floating summer ice by the end of the century. At current rates of shrinkage, by contrast, this looks likely to happen some time between 2020 and 2050.

Re-read the sentence, “The underlying cause is believed by all but a handful of climatologists to be global warming brought about by greenhouse-gas emissions.”  In particular, “by all but a handful of climatologists”  Think of risk.

That article, which should be read in full, concludes thus,

A warming Arctic will bring local benefits to some. The rest of the world may pay the cost.

Indeed, the rest of the world may pay the cost!  As I wrote, it’s all about risk.

So whether or not one wants to believe every word of that Economist article is irrelevant.  Or whether one should have believed, or not, the article in New York’s The Sun newspaper back in 2007,

By SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press | December 12, 2007

WASHINGTON — An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.

Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer’s end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by the Associated Press.

“The Arctic is screaming,” a senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo., Mark Serreze, said.

Last year, two scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so fast that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040. This week, after reviewing his own new data, a NASA climate scientist, Jay Zwally, said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”

So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models? “The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming,” Mr. Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal, said. “Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.” [My emphasis, PH]

So, in conclusion, scepticism is healthy and is an important aspect of open debate within an open society, part of determining truth, however challenging that simple concept might be.

But eventually one needs to take a position, to take a stand on the really important issues in life and in the case of climate change the risk of being too sceptical, too cautious is to put the lives of future generations at stake.  For me, and I guess for tens of thousands of others, that is a risk too far.

Moving Planet day

Just a quick item about last Saturday.

My apologies but the demands on my time are a little challenging this week.  All as a result of the creative writing course that is being undertaken at our local Gila Community College, a course that I am loving, by the way!

Last Saturday, John H. and I went down to Tempe, Phoenix to attend the nearest Moving Planet event.  It was well-attended especially by people the right side of 40 years-old!  After all it is the succeeding generation that is going to cope with the consequences of the present abuse of the planet’s resources.

The leader of the event down in Tempe was Doug Bland of Arizona Interfaith Power and Light and it was very encouraging to see such a strong ecumenical involvement.

Later this week, I want to respond to the views that came out in the first part of the Sceptical voices piece last week but for now let me just leave you with a 4-minute video that was shown to the group down in Tempe last Saturday.  It is called Try not to Make Connections.

 

Be entranced

Our beautiful planet home; the only one we have.

With great thanks to Dan G. for sending me the link.

Science educator James Drake built this amazing timelapse video from the perspective of the International Space Station as it flew over North and South America. He created this video by downloading a series of 600 photographs that were available online at theGateway to Astronomy Photograph of Earth, and then stitching them together into a complete video. You can see more of James work at his blog: infinity imagined.

Sceptical voices, part two

More musings about determining the truth.

Those who read yesterday’s part one will undoubtedly have seen the added comment from long-time friend of Learning from Dogs, Patrice Ayme.  Yesterday, I promised to conclude Dan’s sceptical approach to climate warming with three articles that he had sent me.  Here they are,

Global Warming

“Global warming” refers to the global-average temperature increase that has been observed over the last one hundred years or more. But to many politicians and the public, the term carries the implication that mankind is responsible for that warming. This website describes evidence from my group’s government-funded research that suggests global warming is mostly natural, and that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol pollution.

Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming…it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade. This assumption is rather easy for scientists since we do not have enough accurate global data for a long enough period of time to see whether there are natural warming mechanisms at work.

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that the only way they can get their computerized climate models to produce the observed warming is with anthropogenic (human-caused) pollution. But they’re not going to find something if they don’t search for it. More than one scientist has asked me, “What else COULD it be?” Well, the answer to that takes a little digging… and as I show, one doesn’t have to dig very far.

But first let’s examine the basics of why so many scientists think global warming is manmade. Earth’s atmosphere contains natural greenhouse gases (mostly water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane) which act to keep the lower layers of the atmosphere warmer than they otherwise would be without those gases. Greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation — the radiant heat energy that the Earth naturally emits to outer space in response to solar heating. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal, petroleum, and natural gas) releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and this is believed to be enhancing the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. As of 2008, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 40% to 45% higher than it was before the start of the industrial revolution in the 1800’s.

It is interesting to note that, even though carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth to exist, there is precious little of it in Earth’s atmosphere. As of 2008, only 39 out of every 100,000 molecules of air were CO2, and it will take mankind’s CO2 emissions 5 more years to increase that number by 1, to 40.

Earth's atmosphere

The “Holy Grail”: Climate Sensitivity Figuring out how much past warming is due to mankind, and how much more we can expect in the future, depends upon something called “climate sensitivity”. This is the temperature response of the Earth to a given amount of ‘radiative forcing’, of which there are two kinds: a change in either the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth, or in the infrared energy the Earth emits to outer space.

The ‘consensus’ of opinion is that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is quite high, and so warming of about 0.25 deg. C to 0.5 deg. C (about 0.5 deg. F to 0.9 deg. F) every 10 years can be expected for as long as mankind continues to use fossil fuels as our primary source of energy. NASA’s James Hansen claims that climate sensitivity is very high, and that we have already put too much extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Presumably this is why he and Al Gore are campaigning for a moratorium on the construction of any more coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

You would think that we’d know the Earth’s ‘climate sensitivity’ by now, but it has been surprisingly difficult to determine. How atmospheric processes like clouds and precipitation systems respond to warming is critical, as they are either amplifying the warming, or reducing it. This website currently concentrates on the response of clouds to warming, an issue which I am now convinced the scientific community has totally misinterpreted when they have measured natural, year-to-year fluctuations in the climate system. As a result of that confusion, they have the mistaken belief that climate sensitivity is high, when in fact the satellite evidence suggests climate sensitivity is low.

The case for natural climate change I also present an analysis of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which shows that most climate change might well be the result of….the climate system itself! Because small, chaotic fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems can cause small changes in global average cloudiness, this is all that is necessary to cause climate change. You don’t need the sun, or any other ‘external’ influence (although these are also possible…but for now I’ll let others work on that). It is simply what the climate system does. This is actually quite easy for meteorologists to believe, since we understand how complex weather processes are. Your local TV meteorologist is probably a closet ’skeptic’ regarding mankind’s influence on climate.

Climate change — it happens, with or without our help.

And the next one,

Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

Physicists say sunspot cycle is ‘going into hibernation’

By Lewis Page

Posted in Science, 14th June 2011 17:00 GMT

What may be the science story of the century is breaking this evening, as heavyweight US solar physicists announce that the Sun appears to be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean that the Earth – far from facing a global warming problem– is actually headed into a mini Ice Age.

Ice skating on the Thames by 2025?

The announcement made on 14 June (18:00 UK time) comes from scientists at the US National Solar Observatory (NSO) and US Air Force Research Laboratory. Three different analyses of the Sun’s recent behaviour all indicate that a period of unusually low solar activity may be about to begin.

The Sun normally follows an 11-year cycle of activity. The current cycle, Cycle 24, is now supposed to be ramping up towards maximum strength. Increased numbers of sunspots and other indications ought to be happening: but in fact results so far are most disappointing. Scientists at the NSO now suspect, based on data showing decades-long trends leading to this point, that Cycle 25 may not happen at all.

This could have major implications for the Earth’s climate. According to a statement issued by the NSO, announcing the research:

An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots [which occurred] during 1645-1715.

As NASA notes [1]:

Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715. Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years, the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well documented. This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the “Little Ice Age” when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes. There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past.

During the Maunder Minimum and for periods either side of it, many European rivers which are ice-free today – including the Thames – routinely froze over, allowing ice skating and even for armies to march across them in some cases.

“This is highly unusual and unexpected,” says Dr Frank Hill of the NSO. “But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”

Hill’s own research focuses on surface pulsations of the Sun and their relationship with sunspots, and his team has already used their methods to successfully predict the late onset of Cycle 24.

“We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now,” Hill explained, “but we see no sign of it. This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.”

Hill’s results match those from physicists Matt Penn and William Livingston, who have gone over 13 years of sunspot data from the McMath-Pierce Telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona. They have seen the strength of the magnetic fields which create sunspots declining steadily. According to the NSO:

Penn and Livingston observed that the average field strength declined about 50 gauss per year during Cycle 23 and now in Cycle 24. They also observed that spot temperatures have risen exactly as expected for such changes in the magnetic field. If the trend continues, the field strength will drop below the 1,500 gauss threshold and spots will largely disappear as the magnetic field is no longer strong enough to overcome convective forces on the solar surface.

In parallel with this comes research from the US Air Force’s studies of the solar corona. Richard Altrock, in charge of this, has found a 40-year decline in the “rush to the poles” – the poleward surge of magnetic activity in the corona.

“Those wonderful, delicate coronal features are actually powerful, robust magnetic structures rooted in the interior of the Sun,” Altrock says. “Changes we see in the corona reflect changes deep inside the Sun …

“Cycle 24 started out late and slow and may not be strong enough to create a rush to the poles, indicating we’ll see a very weak solar maximum in 2013, if at all. If the rush to the poles fails to complete, this creates a tremendous dilemma for the theorists … No one knows what the Sun will do in that case.”

According to the collective wisdom of the NSO, another Maunder Minimum may very well be on the cards.

“If we are right,” summarises Hill, “this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.”

The effects on space exploration would be benign, as fewer or no solar storms would make space a much less hostile environment for human beings. At the moment, anyone venturing beyond the Earth’s protective magnetic field (the only people to have done so were the Apollo moon astronauts of the 1960s and ’70s) runs a severe risk of dangerous or fatal radiation exposure during a solar storm.

Manned missions beyond low Earth orbit, a stated aspiration of the USA and other nations, might become significantly safer and cheaper to mount (cheaper as there would be no requirement for possibly very heavy shielding to protect astronauts, so reducing launch costs).

The big consequences of a major solar calm spell, however, would be climatic. The next few generations of humanity might not find themselves trying to cope with global warming but rather with a significant cooling. This could overturn decades of received wisdom on such things as CO2 emissions, and lead to radical shifts in government policy worldwide.

And the last one,

On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance

Roy W. Spencer * and William D. Braswell

ESSC-UAH, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Cramer Hall, Huntsville, AL 35899, USA

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.Received: 24 May 2011; in revised form: 13 July 2011 / Accepted: 15 July 2011 / Published: 25 July 2011

Abstract: The sensitivity of the climate system to an imposed radiative imbalance remains the largest source of uncertainty in projections of future anthropogenic climate change. Here we present further evidence that this uncertainty from an observational perspective is largely due to the masking of the radiative feedback signal by internal radiative forcing, probably due to natural cloud variations. That these internal radiative forcings exist and likely corrupt feedback diagnosis is demonstrated with lag regression analysis of satellite and coupled climate model data, interpreted with a simple forcing-feedback model. While the satellite-based metrics for the period 2000–2010 depart substantially in the direction of lower climate sensitivity from those similarly computed from coupled climate models, we find that, with traditional methods, it is not possible to accurately quantify this discrepancy in terms of the feedbacks which determine climate sensitivity. It is concluded that atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the climate system remains an unsolved problem, due primarily to the inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in satellite radiative budget observations.

So back to me!

As you can see there is every opportunity to be confused.  Not embracing contrary views to the ones that you believe, however, is not the way to determine the truth.

So let me close with a couple of my own contrary views.

The first from Bill McKibben published in the Resurgence Magazine,

WHAT COMES NEXT?

We have a tiny window of opportunity to save something of the magnificence of the Earth so let’s all grab it, writes Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org

Asked to name the biggest thing that’s happened over Resurgence’s 45-year career, I think I’d have to say the melt of the Arctic. When this magazine began publishing, there was 40% more summer sea ice in the Arctic. Viewed from space, in those first pictures from the Apollo spacecraft, the planet looked very different than it does now. In recent summers both the north-west and the north-east passages have opened, allowing sailors to circumnavigate the Arctic through waters that no one thought, even a decade ago, humans would ever navigate.

Or maybe I would pick the rapid acidification of the planet’s seas – they’re 30% more acid than they were in 1966. Which means that the small creatures at the base of the marine food chain are having more trouble forming their shells, and that coral reefs – already stressed by warming waters – have a new trauma to deal with.

Another possibility: the Earth’s atmosphere is about 4% moister than it was 45 years ago, simply because warm air holds more water vapour than cold. This loads the dice for deluge, downpour, flood – it’s not surprising that we’re seeing record rainfall and unprecedented floods. Nor, since that water has to come from somewhere, should increasing drought and desertification come as much of a shock.

Here’s what I’m trying to say: when Resurgence began its run, we were still in the Holocene. Humans had altered much of the planet’s natural environment. We had dirty rivers and dirty air, spreading toxins and endangered species. But the basic operating system of the planet was running pretty much the same as it had for the 10,000 years of human civilisation.

Sometime in the intervening decades we moved out of that comfortable and remarkably stable world, and began the transition to What Comes Next?

Any date would be arbitrary, but if you wanted to pick one, you could say 1988. That was the year NASA scientist Jim Hansen warned the US Congress that global warming was indeed real – and it was the year that we passed the benchmark of 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere. At the time we didn’t know it was a benchmark – it was 20 years later that scientists, again led by Hansen, declared that 350ppm was the absolute upper limit if we wanted a planet “similar to the one on which civilisation developed and to which life is adapted”. If we wanted, in other words, that older world we were born onto.

I could list at some length the various woes this new world is already causing: we see rising sea levels displacing farmers across the deltas of Bangladesh, and Aedes aegypti expanding its boundary and spreading dengue fever like wildfire. Speaking of wildfire, we see record amounts, in part because of more heat and drought, and in part because insects (once kept in check by cold weather) are now spreading.

We see millions still homeless from last year’s flood in Pakistan, and billions struggling to pay for food because a string of crop failures that began with last summer’s Russian drought have increased grain prices by 70–80%.

And I could list at even greater length the woes we expect as the century grinds on. After all, we’ve only raised the temperature about a degree so far, and the climatologists tell us to expect four or five unless we stop burning coal and oil and gas much faster than any government currently plans. Temperatures like that will guarantee the melt of Greenland; according to the agronomists they will cut grain harvests by a third or more; they’ll make current shortages of water seem barely worth mentioning.

But for the moment don’t think about consequences, current or future. Just think about the enormity of what we’ve managed to do: we’ve altered the most basic operations of the one planet we’ve got.

The air is profoundly different, the heat balance with our sun profoundly altered. It’s by far the biggest thing humans have ever done or ever contemplated doing, and were some alien watching from a great distance she’d be scratching her head-like appendage. It’s our head-like appendage that’s responsible, of course. That big brain turned out to be incredibly clever, and its cleverest trick was to figure out that buried carbon could make life easy. Everything that we know around us – the whole modern world – derives from that discovery. Much of it is good. But now we’re threatening to take down the good, and much else with it.

So here’s the question for the next 45 years of Resurgence: can the big brain bail us out?

It’s already provided us with the warnings we need, warnings that would not have been available at any other moment in human history. The scientific method, one of the greatest achievements of our civilisation, has produced a robust consensus on this difficult problem in chemistry and physics: since the mid-1990s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said in unmistakably plain language that there is no doubt: we have to cut carbon, and quickly.

But so far that warning has had little or no effect: our national governments, with a few noble exceptions, have paid scant attention; our attempts at global governance have been pathetic failures. The chief reason, I think, is the remarkable power of the fossil-fuel industry to stifle change; for 200 years it has grown bigger and richer and more than able to deal with the threat that science now poses to its reign. It literally makes us stupid: earlier this winter the US House of Representatives, by a 60-vote margin, defeated a resolution that merely stated that global warming was real. Exxon has promoted its own version of physics and chemistry, and they’ve managed to fool a good many too.

The real question, then, is going to be: is there a big enough heart connected to that big brain? Will we be able to heed not only the warnings of science but those of our conscience? Will we, gazing out at the growing array of ‘natural disasters’, figure out that we’ve got to make change? Change in our personal lives, yes, but even more change in our political arrangements, since that’s the only chance that actual physics and chemistry really give us for meeting the deadlines they’ve set.

I think the answer is yes – a tentative and uncertain yes, but one based on just enough real-world data to give me hope.

Three years ago we founded 350.org, the first big global grassroots climate campaign. Rooted in science but expressed in imagination, it has grown to pretty mammoth size. Our first two big global days of action, in the waning months of 2009 and 2010, were what CNN called “the most widespread days of political action in the planet’s history”, with nearly 15,000 demonstrations in every country on Earth but North Korea.

And the good news is we didn’t really ‘organise’ it – our tiny staff worked feverishly, but ultimately it was like a potluck supper. People in every corner of the Earth heard the call and did the work, figuring out what would work in their place. (An underwater demonstration on the dying coral reefs of the Maldives; a giant image of King Canute, composed of thousands of volunteers, trying to hold the sea back on the Brighton seashore!)

It’s not enough yet to beat the fossil-fuel industry – our bodies don’t yet add up to their money. But we’re growing constantly (the next big chance to join us: 24 September 2011, a day we’re calling Moving Planet). And – sad, but true – the natural world is going to continue to give us openings to make the case more strongly. Sooner or later our leaders will listen – and we’re committed to making it sooner.

We’re not going to stop global warming: it’s already warmed and it will warm some more. Those Apollo images of our planet are forever sepia-toned. But we’ve got a tiny window left to save something of the Earth we were born onto – its beauty, its bounty, its safety.

That’s our task, and the next 45 years will tell the tale.

Bill McKibben wrote the first book for a general audience on climate change, The End of Nature, in 1989. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont.

The second from the BBC News website just a few days ago.

Arctic ice hits second-lowest level, US scientists say

Sea ice cover in the Arctic in 2011 has passed its annual minimum, reaching the second-lowest level since satellite records began, US scientists say.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) says the minimum, reached on 9 September, was 4.33 million sq km.

That value is 36% lower than the average minimum for 1979-2000.

NSIDC said the figure was preliminary, and that “changing winds could still push the ice extent lower” before final numbers are published in early October.

The preliminary value is 160,000 sq km – or 4% – above the record minimum seen in 2007.

The minimum level of cover is far below the average of 1979-2000

“While the record low year of 2007 was marked by a combination of weather conditions that favoured ice loss – including clearer skies, favourable wind patterns and warm temperatures – this year has shown more typical weather patterns but continued warmth over the Arctic,” they wrote.

“This supports the idea that the Arctic sea ice cover is continuing to thin.”

NSIDC director Mark Serreze said: “Every summer that we see a very low ice extent in September sets us up for a similar situation the following year.

“The Arctic sea ice cover is so thin now compared to 30 years ago that it just can’t take a hit any more. This overall pattern of thinning ice in the Arctic in recent decades is really starting to catch up with us.”

In fact, an analysis released last week by researchers at the University of Bremen in Germany, who use a different satellite to assess ice cover, indicated that 2011’s minimum was the lowest on record.

However, there is some controversy surrounding the result; the Bremen team’s higher-resolution data can detect small patches of water where the NSIDC team would not, but the Bremen record goes back only to 2003.

These analyses are for the extent, or area, of Arctic ice, but recent estimates released by the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center give an indication of the total amount of sea ice.

Their data indicate that the ice volume is at an all-time low for the second year in a row.

Analyses of Arctic ice in recent years consistently indicate a change in the nature of the ice itself – from one solid mass that melts and freezes at its edges towards more dispersed, piecemeal ice cover, and from robust “multi-year” ice toward seasonal floes that melt more easily.

The NSIDC data show ice cover extents consistently below earlier averages

You may want to refer to the worrying images of the Petermann Glacier that I published on the 14th September.

—oooOOOooo—

I hope this article, split over two days, has been useful.  Hopefully, they underline the need to work it out for yourself and remain open-minded at all times.

Sceptical voices, part one

Musings about the importance of challenging accepted wisdoms

Life is full of traps.  In that sense our lives are little different to our ancient days of cavemen.  But the traps are very different.  They have changed from pits embedded with sharp sticks, covered with vegetation, to an avalanche of information, news and media output from which determining truth is challenging.  The modern equivalent of the ancient pit trap.

My sense is that one way we embrace what we perceive as truthful is through pattern matching, a powerful aspect of the human brain.  By pattern matching, I mean the tendency to place greater emphasis on information that matches our view of the world, that accords with our core beliefs, than that which doesn’t.

Thus if one is a liberal with leanings towards social engineering as a means of improving society then news and information that supports that philosophy will be accepted as validation of that view.  Then again, if one is strong on the need for the individual to be independent and responsible for their own lives then the validation of that philosophy will be supported by a completely different stream of information.

A prologue to what follows.

Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will be clear that my view is that mankind is responsible for a range of issues that, if not resolved, will threaten the very ecology of Planet Earth that allows mankind to survive.  My dear Californian friend of over 40 years, Dan, thinks otherwise.  Let me add, Dan is not a mental slouch.

I wanted to share some articles that Dan recently sent me, not to prove who is right or wrong, but to underline the critical importance of never ceasing to question the truth of everything that is fundamental to our knowledge of the world, in the broadest sense, upon which we live.

Dan sent me a link to this item,

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxidetrap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

 “The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.

The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.

This is not the full article, which may be read here.

I was interested in what had been published by Yahoo News and sought to verify it directly on NASA’s web site.  I was unable to do so, and replied with links to two findings by NASA that man, indeed, was affecting global climate.  One of those NASA links was here,

A new NASA-led study shows that human-caused climate change has impacted a wide range of Earth’s natural systems, from permafrost thawing to plants blooming earlier across Europe to lakes declining in productivity in Africa.

Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York and scientists at 10 other institutions have linked physical and biological impacts since 1970 with rises in temperatures during that period. The study, published May 15 in the journal Nature, concludes that human-caused warming is resulting in a broad range of impacts across the globe.

adding my own view that “There isn’t a serious scientist in the world who has published a peer-reviewed paper that disagrees with the core notion that man has affected the planet. ”

Dan responded thus,

Paul – This will be a good one.

The point I always try to make is that good science is always subject to change as new evidence is discovered. I believe that science is by nature, controversial; plus ça change and all that….

To state as a “Hard-Core Ideological Truth” that Anthropogenic Global Warming (now known as more PC “Climate Change”) is a fact is self-serving.  To deny the disputative work of many highly regarded scientists and climatologists who challenge this construct, can only result in a politically charged and alarmist position serving, in the end, special-interests.

Being skeptical is a healthy process. This process should be followed in the “Climate Change” debate. Especially in the face of today’s political reality and the funding that special interest groups need to survive. Regarding the proclamations of “Man-Induced Global Warming/Climate Change Proponents” that Man is and will be single-handedly responsible for the global flooding of most of the world’s coastal cities, is arrogant, absurd and unprovable.

Moreover, to ask world governments to take billions and billions of dollars out of their economies to fund nutty programs like “Cap and Trade” in order to ostensibly “contradict” something that has been happening on its own for millions of years, is pretty much over the top.

For the last 2 million years, Earth cycles in and out of ice ages.  It happens whether the planet supports 20 million people or 20 million dinosaurs. Glaciers grow and recede. Polar ice increases and decreases. The planet shifts its axis a few degrees and it gets cold.  It shifts back, it gets hotter. Ocean currents change based on God’s unpredictable timetable causing local droughts and floods. A few volcanoes erupt and we get instant cloud cover drifting over the planet changing climatology drastically. The Sun, its relative position to Earth and its sunspot cycles adds a little flavor. How about putting the Earth’s wobble in the mix?  Or, for that matter, without the Moon we would have no seasons?

Greenhouse gases are mostly water vapor. After that, CO2 and methane. All together, very small components of the Earth’s atmosphere.  That should tell us something.

If you go to NASA scientist, Dr. Spencer’s website – http://www.drroyspencer.com -, you may find some interesting data from his studies that suggest that man-made caused CO2 entering the atmosphere is not all that important.  At the very least, this is a controversial subject that should be treated that way and not as fact.  And please, don’t tax me more to pay for unsubstantiated programs to make it snow more in the Arctic.  What if it snows too much or get’s too cold and Hudson and the Thames freeze again.  Rather be warm than cold.

And by “peel-back-the-onion”, I mean that any ardent, independent researcher should publish both sides of the story as a matter of course.  Especially in regards to global warming.

For what it is worth, I personally believe that the “Anthropogenic Global Warming Crisis” is an attempt by “Political Man” to assign full blame to the “Global Industrial Sector” for increased CO2 emissions which, in turn, will rapidly create an atmospheric, hydrospheric and lithospheric catastrophe beyond anything Man has every seen (Love that one!).  Once that blame can become an incontrovertible truth and that Man is proven Responsible, then the Industrial Enterprises of the Advanced Nations (they have all the money, or they used to) will pay billions to Create Government Managed Programs to Decrease CO2 Emissions and Prevent this World-Ending Catastrophe from ever taking place. Wow.

Instead, what we should really be focused on is something a little more banal like Jobs, freeing up Global Enterprises from regulations and taxes, adjusting our Social Entitlement Programs to fit revenues and paying back Debt.  That’s the Red Meat of this era, in my humble opinion.

Paul, I gotta say, this is fun!  See more below…..

Dan then included more background articles that will be the subject of Sceptical Voices, Part Two.  Hope you can stay with it.