Being crazy is defined as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. So, with so much research out there describing how peoples’ brains work in real life (look here and here) why are activists so attached to the same failed methods?

Once you understand that just putting info out there doesn’t significantly change behavior, will you do things differently? Or will this exhortation have the same effect as all the “Please turn off the lights!” stickers out there?

(Thanks to David Roberts at Grist for the idea.)

I keep getting questions about this from folks I know. This email cover-up: what are we to believe about climate change? Is it a trojan horse?
The email scandal is (mostly) a non-issue as far as I can see. While I haven’t  researched it extensively, Here’s what it looks like from here:

1) there’s a small amount of evidence which doens’t support the whole piece, but it’s relatively small in the face of everything else
2) The fact that the evidence doesn’t support isn’t really all that significant for the overall conclusions that the scientific community has drawn about climate change
3) Nonetheless, their reactions to it have been really bad and possibly included bad scientific method of not remaining as transparent as they should be
4) But they were transparent enough for science to do it’s job and the conclusions still hold (keep in mind that it’s not just fringe scientists that hold this together, it’s been vetted by the major, and conservative, scientific communities.)
5) Nonetheless, the media loves a controversy and people have a lot of intellectual and emotional reasons to want to deny climate change — and thus a molehill is turned into a mountain.

Ultimately, it comes down to risk management — even if one doesn’t feel certain that climate change will happen, the question is one of the cost of making a mistake in either direction. The cost of making a mistake if climate change is happening (which appears to be the case) vastly outstrip the damages of trying address it. In fact, trying address it makes for good sense even if climate change *isn’t* happening for the reasons outlined well in this article called Why Business Leaders Can Ignore Climate Deniers.

I also recommend this take on climate science for the lay person: a youtube video called How it All Ends.
(I think you’ll really enjoy this one.)

If 99 out of 100 doctors told me that my child would die if I didn’t take action, I wouldn’t focus my time on determining whether the 1 doctor might be right. I’d take immediate action to save my child’s life. And, in reality, this isn’t just an analogy.

Survival of the Fattest sculpture in Copenhagen

Today’s the start of COP15, and the world watches for news on what climate change mitigation strategies will come out of Copenhagen.  But not all of the communication is happening over big tables and podiums or even over cellphones, TV and email.

A collection of artists are using sculpture to create potent communication tools around Copenhagen so that delegates to COP15 may absorb information in a different way. The initial piece is called Seven Meters and uses red lights to create a band of light around the city at that height to show how high sea levels would likely rise if all the ice on greenland melted.

Activists, political ramblers and thinkers (especially of the intellectual variety) often indulge in morbid set of observations about how pop culture so often trumps “things that matter”.  I once heard a comedian (back in the mid-90s) ask an audience who the current secretary of state was to only recieve a mumle of replies. But when asked for the name of the black girl on Facts of Life he was met with a resounding “Tootie!!” The laughs that come from these sorts of stories are often a mix of derisive superiority, apologetic self-recognition and world-weary resignation. I’ve certainly participated in these antics and laughed all three laughs myself.

While some folks will certainly question the “art” of most sitcoms, nonetheless clearly these images, faces and voices, these stories stay with us (not to mention the theme songs!). And yes, they stay with most of us better than most the current personalities across the political sphere (Alan Greenspan being an inexplicable exception).

Ah the joys of cross-pollination. Cross pollination of ideas is one of the things that I am most excited about with this blog. So, it seems fitting to post this as my first entry. Specifically, I’m combining microbiology, independent musicians and social activism to see if a worthwhile idea emerges.