Melting of glaciers 'speeds up' [BBC]

Mountain glaciers are shrinking three times faster than they were in the 1980s, scientists have announced!

We will enter conditions which we have not seen in the past 10,000 years, and perhaps conditions which mankind has never experienced

Wilfried Haeberli, WGMS

Chairman: Bush officials misled public on global warming [CNN]

Survey: Scientists pressured to downplay threat

The groups presented a survey that shows two in five of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to "global warming" or "climate change" from a report.

The questionnaire was sent by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a private advocacy group. The report also was based on "firsthand experiences" described in interviews with the Government Accountability Project, which helps government whistle blowers, lawmakers were told.

pollan's article

check this article about food and health out in today's new york times

UN dossier 'ends all climate-change doubt' [Scotsman, UK]

Brace Yourselves

The report predicts:

• Temperatures are likely to rise by between 2C and 4.5C above pre-industrial levels if concentrations are kept at 550 parts per million in the atmosphere, as against about 380 now. The "best estimate" for the rise is about 3C.

• The warming is unlikely to be less than 1.5C.

• It is "very likely" that extremes such as heatwaves and heavy rains will become more frequent. Arctic sea ice could disappear in summer by the latter part of the 21st century in some projections. Warming is expected to be greatest over land and at high northern latitudes and least over the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic.

• Antarctica is likely to stay too cold for wide surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to a rise in snowfall.

• A system of Atlantic currents including the Gulf Stream, bringing warm waters northwards, are likely to slow by 2100, but an overall warming will more than offset any cooling effect.

Last warning: 10 years to save world [Times, UK]

About half the 24 billion tons of carbon dioxide generated by human activities each year are absorbed by forests and oceans — a process without which the world might already be several degrees warmer.

But as CO2 levels rise and soils dry, microbes can start breaking down accumulated organic matter, so forests become net producers of greenhouse gases. The sea’s power to absorb CO2 also falls sharply as it warms.

The latest research suggests the threshold for such disastrous changes will come when CO2 levels reach 550 parts per million (ppm), roughly double their natural levels. This is predicted to happen around 2040-50.

Half of the world's energy needs in 2050 could be met by renewables [BBC]

Read more ...

What Manhattan might look like if sea levels continue to rise

MIT study: Get more energy from Earth's heat

From the article:

"Now that energy concerns have resurfaced (Really?Now? Where is my LOL emoticons!), an opportunity exists for the U.S. to pursue the enhanced geothermal system option aggressively to meet long-term national needs," said panel head Jefferson Tester, a chemical engineer at MIT.



People who don't know how Geothermal power works:

Geothermal plants essentially mine heat by using wells at times a mile or more deep. These wells tap into hot rock and connect them with flowing water, producing large amounts of steam and super-hot water that can drive turbines and run electricity generators at the surface.

Sustainable housing

http://www.salahomes.com.au/

If you dig through the linked website, you'll see examples of sustainable housing being produced and sold in Australia.

http://www.salahomes.com.au/gallery.html

That's where you'll find the pictures.

[If you, like I was, are wondering what a sustainable house is/does, here's a short list:

harvests rainwater
treats sewerage
generates its own power
use resources and materials that are renewable and/or recyclable
avoids the use of toxic chemicals and poisonous substances
offers improved security
is safe
is adaptable to you as you mature
is affordable]

Has global warming become a religion?

The blogger goes :

"My concern is that global warming has become on par with religious dogma. When anyone, including legitimate scientists, dares to present contradictory data or a different interpretation of current data, they are attacked and harassed. It is assumed that they have evil intentions or are shills for the oil industry. Anyone who does not toe the global warming party line is considered akin to Holocaust deniers. Any data that deviates from the established doctrine is dismissed as biased or not worth looking at.


This is a problem. Science should not be politicized. A particular interpretation of the data should not be taken as the gospel from on high. Our knowledge of science evolves over time. Just a few decades ago, scientists were concerned about the catastrophic effects of global cooling and the coming Ice Age. Going even further back, to the 1630s, Galileo was convicted of heresy by the Church for supporting the radical Copernican theory that the Earth revolves around the sun, rather than the other way around. We should not be subjecting scientists to another Inquisition because they do not agree with commonly accepted ideas. Science does not advance without people who are willing to challenge the dominant paradigm.
"


read more..

nature/culture/tourism

this relates to our conversation today about mediating nature.

quiz-mania!

Courtesy of Jordan, here's an ecological footprint quiz to take.

Terms in "The Social Construction of Nature"

To help you with the reading in case you're unfamiliar with all the fancy-schmancy theoretical jargon (which English majors will learn if/when you take 3084):

Dialogic
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogic

"The dialogic work carries on a continual dialogue with other works of literature and other authors. It does not merely answer, correct, silence, or extend a previous work, but informs and is continually informed by the previous work. Dialogic literature is in communication with multiple works. This is not merely a matter of influence, for the dialogue extends in both directions, and the previous work of literature is as altered by the dialogue as the present one is."

"The term 'dialogic', however, does not just apply to literature. For Bakhtin, all language - indeed, all thought - appeared dialogic. This means that everything anybody ever says always exists in response to things that have been said before and in anticipation of things that will be said in response. We never, in other words, speak in a vacuum. As a result, all language (and the ideas which language contains and communicates) is dynamic, relational and engaged in a process of endless redescriptions of the world."

[Speaking of Wikipedia, it in itself is a "dialogic phenomenon," and it refers to itself as such in this article.]

Poststructuralism
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poststructuralism

"Post-structuralists hold that the concept of "self" as a singular and coherent entity is a fictional construct. Instead, an individual comprises conflicting tensions and knowledge claims (e.g. gender, class, profession, etc.). Therefore, to properly study a text the reader must understand how the work is related to his own personal concept of self. This self-perception plays a critical role in one's interpretation of meaning."

"In the post-structuralist approach to textual analysis, the reader replaces the author as the primary subject of inquiry. This displacement is often referred to as the "destabilizing" or "decentering" of the author, though it has its greatest effect on the text itself. Without a central fixation on the author, and disregarding an essentialist reading of the content, post-structuralists examine other sources for meaning (e.g. readers, cultural norms, other literature, etc.). These alternative sources are never authoritative, and promise no consistency."

Semiology
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

"Semiotics, or semiology, is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped in sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood. Semioticians also sometimes examine how organisms make predictions about and adapt to their semiotic niche in the world (see semiosis). Semiotics theorises at a general level about signs, while the study of the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis."

Grand narrative
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_narrative

"In critical theory, and particularly postmodernism, a metanarrative (sometimes master- or grand narrative) "is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience".[1] The prefix meta means "beyond" and is here used to mean "about", and a narrative is a story. Therefore, a metanarrative is a story about a story.
The term is best known for its use by Jean-François Lyotard in the following quotation: "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives".[2] By this, Lyotard meant that the postmodern condition is characterized by an increasingly widespread skepticism toward metanarratives, such as the unique status of the individual, the boundedness of information, and the march of progress, that are thought to have given order and meaning to Western thought during modernity."

"A metanarrative can include any grand, all-encompassing story, classic text, or archetypal account of the historical record. They can also provide a framework upon which an individual's own experiences and thoughts may be ordered. These grand, all-encompassing stories are typically characterised by some form of 'transcendent and universal truth' in addition to an evolutionary tale of human existence (a story with a beginning, middle and an end)."

Examples of metanarratives associated with systems of belief or ideologies (paraphrased from Wikipedia article):

-Christian belief in the innately sinful nature of the human condition and the redemption and eternal life offered by the Crucifixion, which becomes humanity's teleological end.
-Enlightenment belief that rational thought coupled with scientific reasoning leads to moral conclusions.
-Freudian belief that human history is a narrative of the repression of sexual urges (libido).
-Meritocrats' (Republicans?) belief that all who work hard will succeed.

[p.s. anyone know how i can make the font smaller???]

Airlines set to net billions under greenhouse gas plan [Nature]

The world's airlines, including many firms who have lobbied aggressively against climate-change legislation, could make billions of euros from a planned emissions-reduction scheme, say economists studying the situation. ...............

Climate resets 'Doomsday Clock' [BBC]

Interesting read that gives insights into the "future" of our environment - thanks to the vagaries of childish International politics.

Link

Reading for Monday 1/22

For Monday, please read The Environmental Ethic by Edward O. Wilson and The Social Construction of Nature by Terry Gifford (both found on blackboard in pdf format).

There's also an interesting post over at Grist that I'd like you to read.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog for EcoTexts: English 2123. The conversations and texts for this class will include critiques of hyperindustrialization, literary portrayals of activists, images of animals in literature, investigations into language, women, and nature, and discussions of the corporate ownership of food.

Though I'll serve as moderator, everyone is encouraged to start new discussions, post relevant links, etc.

I'll also be posting reading schedules etc. here so check it frequently.

Jessica