April 22 Action environment Jazz music: benefit concert genius violin
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Mimi Rabson Quartet: Violins Against Climate Change, April 22, 2011
Mimi Rabson appeared with her group, including Nick Grondin on guitar, Dave Clark on bass, and Ricardo Monzon on drums. They played an absolutely terrific set. Listen and enjoy:
“The Next Vehicle” (The beginning of this piece was cut off — sorry!)
“Billie’s Bounce” (Nick Grondin arrangement)
“Heal I-Self”
“Marking Time”
“Because I Can”
“Ska Circus”
“Archnophobia” — Composition: Dave Clark
“Why’d Ya Do It?”
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This music was performed to benefit 350.org. Please consider donating some money to them if you have enjoyed listening. Just click on the photo.
Education environment: asthma media irresponsibility public health
by Warren
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 23: Good News For The Albuterol Lobby
The Chicago Tribune reprints a story from US News and World Report on (hack! cough! sneeze!) the respiratory impacts of climate change:
A group of lung doctors warned Thursday that climate change will likely lead to an increase in the rate and severity of a variety of respiratory diseases.
“We felt as though the medical community was not understanding how climate change might impact patients and their health,” says Kent Pinkerton, director of the Center for Health & the Environment at the University of California-Davis. Pinkerton says the warning came out of a meeting of top climate change scientists and lung doctors that discussed the potential impacts of global warming on patient health.
“It was an eye opener for us as we began to talk to climatologists and other individuals to find out how climate change can have far-reaching effects,” he says. It’s not just pollution’s impact on air quality that’s causing an increasing number of cases of asthma, allergies and chronic pulmonary diseases, according to the document.
I know a lot of people with asthma. It’s no joke. Neither is this. Sent March 17:
While an uptick in respiratory diseases is already bad news (given that Americans lose millions of work hours and experience more than enough asthma-related misery already), the public health consequences of climate change are only beginning to be understood, and the genuinely scary stuff still isn’t attracting media attention.
It’s not just increased pollen counts ravaging our lungs. It’s disease-carrying insects traveling northward as warmer conditions spread. It’s disruption of monocropped agriculture from extreme weather events; it’s trees no longer protected by winter freezes from destructive beetle pests; it’s droughts and wildfires; it’s the ongoing loss of biodiversity in our planetary environment. Each of these factors is grim enough when considered in isolation — but the complex jigsaw puzzle that is planetary climate chaos has yet to be assembled in the public imagination. Will we put all the pieces together before our civilization is rent asunder?
Warren Senders
environment India Indian music music Personal Politics Warren's music: benefit concert
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environment: biodiversity drought National parks species loss wildfires
by Warren
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 16: I Guess I’ll Go Hang Out With Quinn The Eskimo
For the full flavor of this article on climate change’s effects in our national park system, I recommend visiting and reading the comments. Oy. Anyway, here’s the gist of the piece:
CODY — Summer visitors to the Shoshone National Forest and Yellowstone National Park could benefit from a warming climate, though fires would likely increase, water would run short by season’s end, and some species could vanish from the landscape.
Those are predictions of a new study released by the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station. The report looks at the impacts that climate change would have on the Shoshone and the consequences to the surrounding ecosystem.
Janine Rice, lead author of the study from the University of Colorado, found that climate records over the past 100 years indicate a 2-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperatures on the Shoshone during the summer and fall, and a 4-degree increase in winter and spring.
The report suggests that more warming has taken place at higher elevations than lower elevations. If the trend continues, temperatures across the forest could rise between 2 and 10 degrees in this century.
But Al Gore is fat. Sent March 16:
The Rocky Mountain Research Station’s new study on the effects of climate change takes on very powerful meaning when it’s understood in a larger context. To be sure, even relatively minor warming for Shoshone and Yellowstone National Parks will trigger profound consequences — there’s nothing trivial about more fires, less water, and an increase in regional extinctions.
But to really grasp the import of this study, it’s necessary to remember that climate change’s impacts aren’t restricted to a few beautiful pieces of parkland. Those wildfires will burn all over the West, not just in the sagebrush of Shoshone — and the water to extinguish them will be unavailable everywhere in the region.
There aren’t enough scientists to do predictive studies on every ecological niche on the planet. Those few areas which get investigated are the canaries in the coal mine for the rest of us. We need to pay attention.
Warren Senders
atheism Education environment Politics: armageddon cowering before the apocalypse denialists idiots theology
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 21: Only When The Last Tree Has Been Cut Down…
The Tuscon Sentinel notes the frothy mixture of god-bothering and just plain dumb that makes up Senator Santorum’s public statements:
Rick Santorum calls global warming a “hoax.” If he were a scientist, he would be in a small minority.
“The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is,” Santorum said at the Gulf Coast Energy Summit in Biloxi, Miss., on March 12. He made similar comments in early February in Colorado Springs, Colo., saying that global warming was a “hoax” and that “man-made global warming” and proposed remedies were “bogus.”
Santorum isn’t the only climate change skeptic, but skeptics are rare among scientists who actually study the climate. A paper published in 2010 by the National Academy of Sciences found that 97 percent to 98 percent of climate researchers “most actively publishing in the field” agreed that climate change was occurring.
To my knowledge, no journalist has yet asked Santorum about his views on apocalypse. It would be a very interesting question…although we already know the answer. Sent March 15:
Just when we thought the 2012 election couldn’t get any more idiotic, we’re treated to Rick Santorum’s recent remarks on climate change. Judging from the former Pennsylvania senator’s eager rejection of scientific research, his backers must be terribly nostalgic for the good old days…when the sun revolved around the earth.
Mr. Santorum’s constituents are ready to ignore the science of global warming for two reasons. First, because they’ve been lied to and manipulated by a group of cynical, profit-driven corporate entities; second, because their collective eagerness for a Biblical Armageddon renders irrelevant any notion of planetary long-term thinking. Ronald Reagan’s Interior Secretary, James Watt, famously remarked, “We don’t have to protect the environment — the Second Coming is at hand.” Mr. Santorum’s theologically-driven ignorance of basic science shows that he’s cut from the same cloth.
Any politician this anxious for apocalypse should never be entrusted with the levers of power.
Warren Senders
India Indian music music vocalists: khyal near genius
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V. R. Athavale
V.R. Athavale – born December 20, 1918. A khyaliya of Agra gharana, he learned with Pt. V.N. Patwardhan and Ustad Vilayat Hussein Khan, and was known as a teacher and author (a biography of Pt. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar). These recordings are from an All India Radio broadcast.
Raga Dhanashri
Raga Lalit Pancham
Raga Bhupali Todi
Raga Bahaduri Todi
Raga Lachari Todi
Raga Hussaini Todi
Raga Samant Sarang
environment Politics: assholes denialism Greenland ice melt media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 20: Dry Ice! We’ll Sprinkle Dry Ice All Around, And It’ll Freeze Everything Up Again!
The Boston Herald apparently had an empty spot on one of their pages, so they ran an article about climate change and ice melt:
LOS ANGELES — The Greenland ice sheet has a lower melting point than previously thought, with scientists saying not only that it could melt completely at a lower temperature than once believed, but also that the melting process could soon become irreversible.
“Once the process of melting the ice begins, it is very hard for it to change course even if we can lower temperatures in the future,” Alex Robertson, lead author of a new study, said in an interview by email with the Los Angeles Times on Monday.
“So even though melting the whole ice sheet could take a really long time, we will essentially decide the fate of Greenland within the next century.”
The study was published Sunday in Nature Climate Change.
How to criticize them without hurting their fee-fees? Sent March 14:
In a culture dominated by scandals du jour and the rapid-fire programming of a 24-hour news cycle, it’s no surprise that our nation seems to have a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder. When electoral politics is carried out in sound bites and bumper-sticker slogans, our civilization’s long-term future is invariably trivialized.
Nowhere is this more problematic than in the intersection of scientific research and public policy. By its nature, science requires rigor, attentiveness, and patience — three qualities notably lacking in our political and media environments. The most recent study on the likely fate of the Greenland ice sheet is the result of many years of concentrated study and inquiry — and its findings likewise require more than superficial attention. Politicians and pundits, however, will do their best to ignore its implications for our nation and our planet; it’s far, far easier just to mock what you don’t understand.
Warren Senders
Politics: idiots Republicans
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On this date in 2003…
…we invaded Iraq.
“My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”
—Dick Cheney (3/16/03)
India Indian music music Personal vocalists Warren's music: khyal pune
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Pune Concert, August 20, 2011
This concert was arranged by Chaitanya Kunte, the extraordinary musicologist, composer and harmonium virtuoso.
It was a pleasant and unusual experience to have two melodic accompanists — Chaitanyaji on harmonium and Eeshan Devasthali (my Guruji’s grandson) on violin. Milind Pote provided the rock-solid and very sympathetic tabla sangat.
Ragas:
Shyam Kalyan
Puriya Dhanashri
Tilak Kamod
Kafi
Bhairavi
Here’s the concert, embedded as a single playlist:
environment Politics: ice melt rising sea levels
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 19: Just Look At The Schmuck On That Camel!
The Broward South Beach New Times (FL) wonders about the possibility of the Southern end of their state going underwater:
A giant sheet of ice that covers most of Greenland might be a serious problem for South Florida in a few hundred or few thousand years, give or take.
A new study in Nature Climate Change warns that a 1.6 degree Celsius jump in global temperatures could completely melt Greenland’s ice sheet.
That’s terrible because we’re talking about ice that’s on land — not in the ocean — meaning that sea levels could rise dramatically if the sheet were to vanish.
Bloomberg reports that “the United Nations estimates the Greenland ice sheet contains enough water to raise global sea levels by about seven meters (23 feet), threatening coastal cities from New York to London and Bangkok. Even so, the researchers said it could take thousands of years for the entire sheet to melt.”
Frederick Bloetscher, an engineering professor at Florida Atlantic University, tells New Times that a mere three-foot rise in global sea levels would permanently flood entire areas of western Broward County.
But on the other hand, as one of their commenters has helpfully pointed out, Al Gore.
Sent March 13:
While the prospect of a submerged South Florida is disturbing enough, the fact is that rising sea levels will be taking entire nations off the map; island states in Oceania are already making plans to move their entire populations elsewhere in the likely event that their homelands are lost beneath the waves.
We humans only rarely think beyond a century ahead; far more often our imaginations cannot leap more than a few years into the future. Because of this, the multi-generational threat posed by melting ice in Greenland hardly seems significant compared with more immediate concerns: jobs, wars, health care, civil rights.
But if the warming of the world’s atmosphere continues to accelerate, all of these issues will be rendered irrelevant. If we fail to address the accelerating greenhouse effect, our descendants will have far graver concerns than the petty political dramas that now occupy us so intensely.
Warren Senders