music vocalists: genius Middle-Eastern music
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Sabri Moudallal — Great Voice of Syria
I know very little about this music, but from the moment I first heard Sabri Moudallal sing I was transfixed. His voice production is completely embodied, and age has not withered nor custom staled his infinite variety. What a magnificent voice.
The former muezzin of the Great Mosque at Alleppo, Syria, he was born in 1919 and died in 2006.
Born in Aleppo in 1918, highly esteemed by native Aleppians but scarcely known beyond the city limits, he has almost always lived outside the ” star system “. His talent was revealed relatively late on his life, from the seventies on, when he gave a series of concerts in Paris with his group of the time, a vocal quartet known as ” The Muezzins of Aleppo “. Ever since then he has received constant requests from abroad, has been appointed principal muezzin of the city and was even decorated in 1996 by Farouk Hosni, the Egyptian Minister of Culture.
environment: coffee corporate irresponsibility sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 10, Day 21: Brrrrrr.
I’ve been seeing this come up in Google recently, but it was only on October 17 that I decided to write a letter about Starbucks’ concerns about the world’s coffee crop, which were described in the October 16 issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
There’s a global crisis of unimaginable import and the powers that be aren’t doing anything about it, despite Seattleites’ strident efforts to raise awareness.
No, it’s not “Occupy Seattle.” We’re talking about a threat to the world’s coffee supply; and Starbucks executives, not underemployed young people, are ringing the alarm.
Jim Hanna, the Seattle coffee empire’s sustainability director, told The Guardian that climate change is already spurring severe hurricanes and more resistant bugs that are reducing crop yields.
I could imagine a future without oil more easily than one without coffee. Sent October 17:
For American coffee drinkers, the news that climate change may drastically impact future crops around the world should be a sobering revelation. Of course, it isn’t just the bitter brown berry that’ll get clobbered by the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect, but virtually every aspect of planetary agriculture.
But it is also worth noticing that Starbucks actually has a “Sustainability Director” — an official whose responsibilities presumably involve looking farther into the future than the next quarterly report. This is something which other corporations should emulate.
How different would our planetary energy economy be if the big oil companies’ priorities were built around more than short-term profitability? How different would our planetary environment be if they respected (and acted upon) climatologists’ reports instead of lavishing funding on anti-science politicians?
It’s time for the fossil fuel industries to wake up — and smell the coffee.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama corporate irresponsibility
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 10, Day 20: Thoughts On Not Wanting To Not Do Something
The New York Times’ Elisabeth Rosenthal writes about the disappearance of the term “climate change” from our political discussion:
IN 2008, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, Barack Obama and John McCain, warned about man-made global warming and supported legislation to curb emissions. After he was elected, President Obama promised “a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change,” and arrived cavalry-like at the 2009 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen to broker a global pact.
But two years later, now that nearly every other nation accepts climate change as a pressing problem, America has turned agnostic on the issue.
I recycled a letter that got published by the Boston Globe this past April, filed off the serial numbers, and sent it in on October 16:
Environmentalists are entirely justified in their frustration at the Obama administration’s pusillanimity on the issues of energy and climate. Climate change’s factuality is now beyond dispute, and the positive economic ramifications of a transformed energy policy are likewise subject to wide agreement across the ideological spectrum. Why, then, does a president whose campaign pledged a transformation in our nation’s climate policy seem so reluctant to fulfill some of the promises that got him elected in the first place?
Simple answers are easy and convenient, but as H.L. Mencken pointed out, they’re wrong. It’s unlikely that Mr. Obama is deliberately betraying his core constituency on environmental issues; he is, after all, a politician of considerable skill. Rather, the administration’s paralysis on energy and climate policy must be considered diagnostically — they’re symptoms of chronic long-term exposure to toxic levels of petrochemicals and their financial byproducts. Our political system has been poisoned.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots Republican obstructionism Rick Perry Texas
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 10, Day 19: Sciencey Stuff Is Easy!
The SF Chronicle reports on Rick Perry’s new energy plan.
West Mifflin, Pa. — Texas Gov. Rick Perry sought to recharge his flagging presidential campaign Friday by introducing an energy plan that calls for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and expanding oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.
Perry said his proposals would kick-start the sluggish economy and create 1.2 million new jobs through development and by rolling back clean air rules and other federal regulations.
Why on earth would anyone trust this guy? Sent October 15:
The revelation that his administration purged any mention of rising sea levels and global climate change from a recent scientific report should be a warning to voters everywhere: Texas governor Rick Perry has a very tenuous relationship with the truth. This act of government censorship was so egregious that all of the scientists involved in the extensive environmental study have requested their names be removed from the document.
Needless to say, it behooves all of us to regard the Texas governor’s newly introduced energy plan with a substantial grain of salt. Mr. Perry’s readiness to ignore problematic truths is surely matched by an equal readiness to replace them with convenient falsehoods. Given Republican primary voters’ preference for tough-talking liars, this may be a sound political strategy, but to those who know both science and history, it resembles Soviet-style revisionism far more than the finest traditions of American democracy.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Al Gore denialists Great Lakes idiots
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 10, Day 18: How Long Do You Think It Would Take Them To Change Positions?
The Chicago Tribune runs another version of the Al Gore/Great Lakes story:
DETROIT—Former Vice President Al Gore says dealing with the climate change crisis is essential to fixing some of the environmental problems plaguing the Great Lakes.
Gore drew links between results of a warming planet and regional issues affecting the lakes in a speech Thursday in Detroit during the annual meeting of the International Joint Commission, an U.S.-Canadian agency that advises both nations on shared waterways.
So I figured I’d get his back. Sent October 14:
Mr. Gore’s recent statement on the Great Lakes’ vulnerability is a scientifically grounded, calmly stated analysis of a very alarming situation. Conservative denialists, of course, don’t care that he has the facts on his side — they’ll still deride the former Vice-President, because they don’t know how to do anything else.
But at some point in the not-so-distant future, global climate change will be so obvious that no one will be able to dispute it any more. At that point, we can expect the Republican party’s talking points to shift rapidly. Their current favorite (“the global warming hoax is a socialist plot to impose one-world government”) will give way to something new. My prediction: the GOP will claim that climate chaos can only be mitigated by tax cuts on the wealthiest one percent of society. After which, they’ll insult Mr. Gore again, presumably for having been right too early.
Warren Senders
environment: Al Gore algae denialists Great Lakes idiots
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 10, Day 17: Repent!
The Worthington Daily Globe (MN) runs an AP piece on Al Gore’s words about the Great Lakes, which are shrill:
Former Vice President Al Gore says dealing with the climate change crisis is essential to fixing some of the environmental problems plaguing the Great Lakes.
Gore drew links between results of a warming planet and regional issues affecting the lakes in a speech Thursday in Detroit during the annual meeting of the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian agency that advises both nations on shared waterways.
He said increasingly intense storms likely caused by global warming are overwhelming wastewater treatment systems in the region. They dump excessive nutrients and sewage into the lakes, leading to beach closings and algae blooms.
Gore said climate change also causes more evaporation, which drives lake levels down.
I’m in a bit of a hurry today, and this letter’s joinery is slightly rickety in places. What the hell. Sent October 13:
While it’s fashionable in some circles to dismiss Al Gore’s words of warning on climate change, his facts are irrefutable. Excess precipitation has indeed overwhelmed water management systems — not just in the Great Lakes area, but all over the planet — triggering massive blooms of algae, contaminating public areas and impacting fish and wildlife populations.
Of course, this is just one aspect of a systemic problem so enormous it’s no wonder climate-change denialists prefer to ignore it entirely. Whether it’s the loss of biodiversity, the shocking decline in Arctic sea ice, or the uptick in extreme weather events everywhere on Earth, the evidence substantiating the danger posed by the greenhouse effect is now overwhelming — and very scary.
While the former Vice-President has the facts on his side, it’s fair to say that, unlike most prophets, Mr. Gore won’t gain any personal satisfaction from being proved right in the end.
Warren Senders
environment: BP corporate irresponsibility Deepwater Horizon
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 10, Day 16: Kill ’em All and Let Dick Cheney Sort ’em Out.
Oh, great. Read it in The Independent (UK) and weep:
BP is making contingency plans to fight the largest oil spill in history, as it prepares to drill more than 4,000 feet down in the Atlantic in wildlife-rich British waters off the Shetland Islands.
Internal company documents seen by The Independent show that the worst-case scenario for a spill from its North Uist exploratory well, to be sunk next year, would involve a leak of 75,000 barrels a day for 140 days – a total of 10.5 million barrels of oil, comfortably the world’s biggest pollution disaster.
Fossil fuels make it possible for stupid and unethical people to become hideously rich and powerful. That alone should be a reason to remove them from our world economy.
Sent October 12:
We’ve known for years that oil is toxic. The devastation of entire regional ecologies in the aftermath of spills is amply and tragically documented. Crude offers a remarkable array of carcinogens, along with many other toxins. Medicine is only beginning to understand the profound neurological consequences of crude oil exposure, but no sane person doubts that it’s viciously poisonous.
But that’s not all. It now appears that oil can cause profound cognitive damage even among those who don’t come in direct contact with it. The symptoms include significantly impaired judgment, including indifference to public opinion, ethical lapses, and an inability to draw logical conclusions from available data. How else shall we explain BP’s plans for exploratory drilling off the Shetland Islands?
The ghastly lessons of the Deepwater Horizon disaster have been ignored by the corporation most responsible. The ecosystems and economies of the Gulf of Mexico have no such luxury.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots scientific consensus
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 10, Day 15: “Wading” Is An Apt Verb
An outlet called the Texas Tribune seems to have at least a vaguely DFH perspective on Texas’ current idiot-in-chief:
Between the year-long drought and Gov. Rick Perry campaigning for the presidency, global warming has become a big topic in Texas these days — and the head of the University of Texas Energy Institute, Raymond Orbach, is wading into the debate with a new paper aiming to debunk eight “myths” about climate change.
The paper, “Our Sustainable Earth,” appears in the forthcoming issue of Reports on Progress in Physics, a British journal known for encouraging (relatively) simple language from its contributors. In it, Orbach summarizes existing scientific evidence to argue that humans bear responsibility for climate change and an 80 percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions by 2050 is needed to stabilize global temperatures. Otherwise, he writes, “current global temperature rises will continue, and even accelerate” as greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising.
Orbach got the idea, he says, when he was reading about eight myths about global warming on a UT campus website. “When I started looking at literature, I noticed that there was warming beginning in 1980,” he says. (Indeed, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that temperatures across the United States have increased by 1.5 degrees since the 1970s.)
Read the piece. I like it when he says that Perry’s entitled to his own opinion. Sent October 11:
Dr. Raymond Orbach’s going to have his work cut out for him when it comes to restoring scientific truth to the discussion of climate change. Unlimited monetary resources and equally unlimited access to mass media outlets has allowed the voices of denial to keep the public “debate” unresolved. Since a failure of consensus automatically translates into a failure to act, our governing institutions are unable to move forward on addressing the climate crisis.
And there’s the rub: while Dr. Orbach’s voice is sorely needed, it’s the grim truth that denialists in our political system are influenced not by evidence and analysis, but by the wishes of their financial masters. Governor Perry’s antipathy to facts demonstrates that he’s not a “skeptic,” but an intellectually incurious hypocrite who’s ready to believe six impossible things before breakfast — but who espouses doubt when it is convenient for the corporations whose interests he serves.
Warren Senders
environment: 350 Bill McKibben
by Warren
1 comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 10, Day 14: Actually, He’d Rather Be Wrong
Deborah Erdley writes sympathetically in the Pittsburgh Tribune about a recent visit from Bill McKibben:
McKibben, who penned “The End of Nature” in 1989, one of the first books on the threat of climate change, acknowledged his growing fears and hopes for the future as he spoke to a group of several hundred college activists from across the nation at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s national conference on Sunday in Pittsburgh.
Ticking off events ranging from summer’s Texas wildfires to a 129-degree daytime temperature record in Pakistan to floods that devastated New England following record rainfall last month, McKibben told the group gathered in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, that climate change is “pinching harder and faster” than anyone imagined 20 years ago.
“You guys are incredibly important. … You may be more important than you know,” McKibben said, noting that seven college students helped him start 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009.
It’s fun to skewer morons. It’s also fun to give praise where and when it’s due. Sent October 10:
Bill McKibben’s long advocacy on behalf of our collective future has never been as relevant as it is today. As global climate change continues to trigger new extremes in weather all over the planet, the necessity for our civilization to reduce atmospheric CO2 can no longer be denied.
And yet constructive approaches to this emergency are rejected and mocked by a substantial portion of our citizenship; even the existence of the climate crisis is disputed by professional denialists in the pay of the oil and coal industries. Their voices, amplified by the mass media, have given cover to politicians who wish to avoid disturbing a lucrative status quo.
Our government’s inability to respond points to a systemic failure: the political system is prevented from focusing on genuine problems by the short-sightedness of its corporate masters. Bill McKibben is one of the few contemporary thinkers to make these connections explicit. Thank you for a carefully crafted and sympathetic article on a man whom future generations will regard as a hero of our times.
Warren Senders
environment: Australia snow
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 10, Day 13: I Never Has Seen Snow
The Sydney Morning Herald for October 10 notes that the Australian Alps are going to lose all their snow by 2050 if things go on this way:
AUSTRALIA’S ski slopes could be completely bare of natural winter snow by 2050 unless concerted action is taken against global warming, according to a government-commissioned report that paints a grim picture of the effects of climate change on alpine areas.
The report, Caring For Our Australian Alps Catchments, has found that the Alps, which stretch from Victoria through NSW to the ACT, face an average temperature rise of between 0.6 and 2.9 degrees by 2050, depending on how much action countries take to combat climate change.
”The effects of climate change are predicted to be the single greatest threat to the natural condition values of the Australian Alps catchments,” the report says.
I didn’t even know there were Alps in Australia. Sent October 9 (because it’s already tomorrow in Australia):
There is less wiggle room than ever before for those who would deny the facts of global climate change. For several decades it has been possible to ignore the predictions of climatologists as they assessed the likely shape of a post-greenhouse-effect planet; after all, all those dire things were going to happen sometime in the indefinite future, so there was time enough to worry about them later on.
Well, as the recently released report on the future of Australia’s Alps demonstrates, the “indefinite future” is no longer “indefinite.” Indeed, it’s hardly even “future”; as ski-slope operators must be realizing right about now, a few decades isn’t much time to prepare for such drastic environmental transformations.
All over the world, climatologists’ predictions are coming true much faster than anyone expected. It behooves us to pay attention to what they’ve been saying for years — and to what they’re saying now.
Warren Senders