Some throughts on reading to avoid
May. 8th, 2005 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
momsalive1Here's something not to read if you are American and don't want to hide under your bed cringing in shame. .
Lots of details about our general hypocrisy, bullying and other childishness in trying (largely unsuccessfully) to control public opinion at home and in the Middle East.
If half of what he writes is a fair representation of what happened, it would still be infuriating. What is particularly dispiriting is realizing how much I was right there with the whole sentiment that national security is the top priority (and I still am) but freedom of the press and equitable application of the justice system just seemed to drop off my list of most cherished values. I can say they came back up to the top pretty quickly, and I can hope that was true of most of us, but I think the damage had been done.
True, he doesn't spend much ink acknowledging the terror I think many of us still feel, but that's not his topic.
Here's something not to read if you'd like to ignore global warming for a few more years.
Ever since the mid-80s, the idea that we are headed for a global catastrophe has gradually moved in the climate literature from some guy's idea to a pretty good hypothesis to, now, the best supported hypothesis about what the next 100 years or so will look like.
There was a quote in her first article that crushed any remaining irrational hope I had that this wasn't going to happen in our kids' lifetime, or that we'd figure a way out of it. She was talking to someone working on permafrost in Alaska. Unlike average air temperatures, which fluctuate quite a bit from year to year, average soil temperatures are usually very steady, decade after decade. In Alaska, the permafrost has warmed 3 to 6 degrees since the early 1980s.
The Arctic is melting, Greenland is melting, the Netherlands are flooding, island nations are shrinking. The temperature and salt gradients in the sea that run the global climate are shifting. In the 1980s the glaciers of Iceland were still advancing southwards. Measurements of one particular glacier recorded a 10 foot retreat in 1996, another 33 feet in 1997, another 98 feet in 1998. It is now 1100 feet shorter than it was in 1994.
I think I'll read some fiction for awhile.
Lots of details about our general hypocrisy, bullying and other childishness in trying (largely unsuccessfully) to control public opinion at home and in the Middle East.
If half of what he writes is a fair representation of what happened, it would still be infuriating. What is particularly dispiriting is realizing how much I was right there with the whole sentiment that national security is the top priority (and I still am) but freedom of the press and equitable application of the justice system just seemed to drop off my list of most cherished values. I can say they came back up to the top pretty quickly, and I can hope that was true of most of us, but I think the damage had been done.
True, he doesn't spend much ink acknowledging the terror I think many of us still feel, but that's not his topic.
Here's something not to read if you'd like to ignore global warming for a few more years.
Ever since the mid-80s, the idea that we are headed for a global catastrophe has gradually moved in the climate literature from some guy's idea to a pretty good hypothesis to, now, the best supported hypothesis about what the next 100 years or so will look like.
There was a quote in her first article that crushed any remaining irrational hope I had that this wasn't going to happen in our kids' lifetime, or that we'd figure a way out of it. She was talking to someone working on permafrost in Alaska. Unlike average air temperatures, which fluctuate quite a bit from year to year, average soil temperatures are usually very steady, decade after decade. In Alaska, the permafrost has warmed 3 to 6 degrees since the early 1980s.
The Arctic is melting, Greenland is melting, the Netherlands are flooding, island nations are shrinking. The temperature and salt gradients in the sea that run the global climate are shifting. In the 1980s the glaciers of Iceland were still advancing southwards. Measurements of one particular glacier recorded a 10 foot retreat in 1996, another 33 feet in 1997, another 98 feet in 1998. It is now 1100 feet shorter than it was in 1994.
I think I'll read some fiction for awhile.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-08 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-09 06:32 pm (UTC)So, heard of any good orgies lately?
no subject
Date: 2005-05-08 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-14 06:41 pm (UTC)**shakes head**
Back to Bean lust......
no subject
Date: 2005-05-14 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-09 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-09 06:34 pm (UTC)his head out of Bush's arse
......has me thinking RPS?
no subject
Date: 2005-05-09 11:28 pm (UTC)