Month: March 2017

Some Sort-of Good News on Endangered Species

Amid the deluge of sickening environmental news in the U.S., there are a few somewhat bright spots from abroad

On Tigers: Cautious Optimism in Thailand: Tigers here

China’s Move toward Shutting Down Ivory Trade:  Chinese crackdown on ivory trade

Environmental Impacts of Chinese Looting of Resources Worldwide

China Resource Grabs

More “charismatic” animals such as elephants could slow Chinese resource exploitation around the world.  The sad and not-so-sad reality is that elephants are easy to love, and their killers easy to hate. Most of the endangered species on Earth do not have an equivalent “poster child” to represent them, and they are quietly being crushed under the bulldozer of economic “progress.”  In a world where celebrity tweets get more of our attention than trees and rivers, there’s little standing in the way.

 

Get the Cold Shoulder: Speak Out Against Climate Change Denial

Cautionary Advice on Opposing Climate Change Denial

Confronting climate change denial carries a social cost. That’s the finding of a study done by University of Exeter, as reported by Adam Corner in The Guardian:  Social Cost of Speaking Out

Just think of the social cost in the 19th Century for speaking out against slavery, or against denying women the vote. Or, in 1938 Germany, speaking out against oppression of Jews?  From the findings of this survey, you can be pretty sure the cost was high.  Adam Corner speaks of the importance of “potential collateral damage caused by challenging climate denial. . . ” He warns against losing the climate opinion war by engaging in battles that may degrade your social acceptability and thus your influence. “Being right,” he maintains, “is not the same thing as being persuasive.”

At What Cost Speaking Your Mind?

I’m not sure whether Adam Corner’s mindset reflects a British bias toward politeness, or a pragmatism that could prove useful in changing public opinion. If the latter, then just how his prescription for “emphasizing positive social norms” could be carried out is pretty vague. You also have to take into account Corner’s using the outworn metaphor, “collateral damage,” to refer to a psychological condition.  If “positive social norms” sounds jargony, and the use of “collateral damage” sounds tone-deaf, then you have to wonder about Corner’s analytic edge.

Continue reading “Get the Cold Shoulder: Speak Out Against Climate Change Denial”

The Consolation of Big Numbers: The Long View

[Let’s back away a few trillion steps from our world’s tragedies, comedies, inspirations, follies, triumphs, losses, meaningless accidents and meaningful enterprises, to muse upon the otherworldly. It gives me some tranquility at a time when tranquility is hard to come by. To do so, I will have to venture far into Nerdland.  If big numbers leave you cold, stop right here.]

Zillions of Planets Akin to Ours?

While here on our own planet things are lurching from bad to worse, I was comforted to hear the news of nonzero odds for the habitability of  several planets in the “nearby” solar system TRAPPIST-1.  Located a mere 40 light years from us, these planets are rocky, not too big and not too small, not too heavy, not too light, and at a distance from their sun that liquid water could exist on them, and harbor Earthlike life forms. Their distance from their sun is smaller than the orbit of Mercury around ours, but the star is so cool—an “ultra cool dwarf”—that three of them are evidently situated in the “Goldilocks Zone” amenable, with the presence of water, to life as we know it.

Continue reading “The Consolation of Big Numbers: The Long View”

THEY did it! The Signature Theme of the Trump Presidency

It Was the Other Guys Who Screwed Up – the Guiding Principle of Trump Governance

Confronted by a reporter with actual indisputable facts contravening Donald Trump’s boast about his massive electoral college victory, Trump replied “I was given this information.” Sure, and two months after the election he still had not bothered to confirm that which he had been “given“—which was no more complicated than comparing three or four numbers.

Whether this kind of prevarication is a deliberate lie, or evidence of Trump’s lack of curiosity as to facts, is not exactly clear. But whichever it is, the man’s instinct is immediately to shrug off responsibility. Something goes wrong, it is someone else’s fault.

Likewise, concerning the death of Ryan Owens in the botched raid in Yemen, he assigned the responsibility for Owens’s death to the  generals: “They lost Ryan.”  Moreover, he made a point that the operation had been planned during the “totally disastrous”  Obama presidency—no matter that Obama had rejected carrying it out, it had to be something Trump was not responsible for. Two times over.

Of course, his attribution of the loss of the popular vote in the election to fraud on an unprecedented scale—for which not a shred of proof has been adduced—belongs to the same pattern.

Continue reading “THEY did it! The Signature Theme of the Trump Presidency”

Rogue Republicans for Presidential Transparency

Apparently there are more than one Republican speaking out for release of Trump’s tax returns (see below).  Nevertheless, while Iowan Republican congressman David Young says it’s a “no-brainer,” the same guy refused to sign a letter from other Republicans requesting it.  Such is the climate of political fear in the Republican Party.

Intimidation is Trump’s time-tested tactic, whether it’s over Democrats, the press, the judiciary, minorities of various ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, physically or mentally handicapped, or various political stripes (nothing to do with ideology, only whether they comply with any Trumpian whim. Also members of his own party about whom he has no compunction in attacking with a tweet. He’s used to bullying and insulting people in his own business and making it work for him; it seems not yet to have occurred to him that it doesn’t work to bully everyone. (The example of Paul Ryan notwithstanding. I don’t believe Ryan fears Trump; rather he thinks he can use Trump. Good luck, )

Republicans call for release of tax returns

It seems that an increasing number of people are coming around to ther recollection that “The only thing for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing,” said by Edmund Burke in the 18th Century( if he were alive today, I think he would have included women as well).  It appears that the Republicans who are doing nothing must have something else on their minds, such as the next primary.