The Consequences of Global Warming and @JoeNBC

I watched a video of ‘Tornado Rampage 2011′ ( http://youtu.be/Ccagt2JPdYo ) originally shown on the Discovery Channel. It’s a documentary on the massive outbreak of super storms that ripped through the south on April 27^th, 2011, taking more than 300 human lives. Discussing the ferocity of the one day outbreak, meteorologist Reed Timmer said: “The intensity of the storm activity and the sheer number of tornadoes that touched down is overwhelming and heartbreaking.”

As I’m watching the extraordinary footage of massive tornadoes bearing down on city after city, listening to firsthand accounts of people who were hit, picked up and carried in their cars and homes and seeing the unimaginable aftermath of terror and destruction, I keep hearing the voice of Joe Scarborough, a cavalier political opportunist, mocking the science of Global Warming as untested theory and ridiculing EPA mileage standards as infringements on the rights of people to drive SUVs.

Well, we are past the time to gracefully argue the merits of Climate Change Theory with opportunists willing to subject us and the living planet around us, to death and destruction, in order to consolidate power and wealth into the hands of a few elitist. We are now recording the consequences of ignored warnings and intentionally blocked corrective action. We are now documenting the induced extinction of cultures and species in the machinery of exploitive greed and excessive lifestyles.

SCE, Nuclear Power and Risk

San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant’s newly installed labyrinth of steam tubes is experiencing accelerated wear. SoCal Edison wants to plug more than 1300 damaged pipes & restart the 2 reactors. This is not a wise thing to do.

Without clearly establishing and correcting the root causes of the wear and leaks, there is a serious risk of major systems failure. The tubing subsystem, installed in 2009 & 2010, should have a life span of more than 25 years. They have, however, already started wearing out and leaking 2 years after they were put in place.

Edison is complaining about losing money and raising the specter of rolling blackouts this summer. They are not, on the other hand, publicly discussing the consequences of a cascading failure of the cooling system. With more than 7 million people living in a 50 mile radius, a catastrophic failure would result in loss of lives, massive destruction of the California coastal and inland environment, it would throw the economy into deep recession and bankrupt Edison.

If Fukushima could have a ‘do over’, they would gladly take it. If we already have warning signs, there is no rational reason to ignore them. The consequences are too apocalyptic to consider.

Spring

Pushing on a wall of winter cold with pent up expectations,

Water vapor spills out along frontal corridors in the atmosphere,

Condenses into rain, hurled in handfuls toward parched ground,

Too long dead and deeply cracked

From relentless Summer Sun and gusting desert winds.

Recognition, Respect and Art

The lines have always been blurred and are more so today. Recognition has always been the first step taken in coming to respect. It’s the part you do by yourself. You see something. You understand it. You react to it. You feel it. Respect goes the other way.

The reaction to recognition is where respect comes in, or for that matter indifference. But, I digress. Respect is a payment for something we recognize. It can be a thank you or an award. It can be a hug or it can be money. In any event, it’s something given in recognition. In a sense, it completes the circle. The form respect takes has implications with historical roots. There are a number of examples I might use, but I’d like to use art, for the purpose of completing a conversation that started earlier today.

Art is both an obsession that’s distinctly human and a life style, complete with social and economic implications. Art, in a sense, branched with human evolution and has developed in parallel with our species. Art is older than money or government and will probably survive us, in some form, when we’re gone. Art is a fundamental human value. So, I want to use art as an example of the effect access has on the relationship between recognition and respect.

Cave drawings, stories and song, in ancient tribal times, were only accessible to a few. If you lived in or came upon a place where drawings dressed the walls, or were with someone when they were exciting imaginations with the story of a hunt, or were listening to a sobbing mother wail for the loss of a child… if you were there, you could recognize the impact of that art. If you were there, you could pay respects to the story teller with gifts or gasps. If you were there you could hug the sobbing mother and hold her while she shook out the last of her loss and emptied her soul of her sorrow. If you were there you could complete the circle and give respect. The drawings were different though.

Unless you were there, when they were done, the drawings were left, for others to find. The artist may have moved on. The permanence of the art, now separated from the artist, gave the viewer a chance to recognize it, but the opportunity to pay respect to the artist was gone.

Stories and Songs became portable, when proxies stepped in. Actors evolved to retell famous stories and singers carried songs of sorrow and joy to new audiences. But, cave drawings were as unportable as the cave walls they were on, while the artists moved on.

In a way, separating cave drawings from the artists established precedence. It divorced the expectation of respect from the act of recognition. It set up the dilemma of art for art’s sake. It provided endless opportunities for enjoyment and few for compensation. It’s a curse that’s returned to haunt hungry artists in their time of need. It’s the escape clause for people who just want to look. It’s the economic puzzle that keeps coming back over time.

Tar Sands, The Suffering Planet and Civil Disobedience

This video clip is from Up with Chris Hayes. It documents the individual efforts of Tim DeChristopher to intercept and disrupt the contining expansion of oil exploitation.

Civil Disopbedience – A Patriotic Act

Oblivious!

The insular nature of SCOTUS questions on #ObamaCare arguments disappoints me. I naively coveted a dialog about the merits the PPACA: stability and freedom from avoidable disease, improving the wellbeing of our nation, the practicality of requiring everyone to buy in and the benefits of equitable cost & risk distribution.

Instead we get “are we in danger of having to buy broccoli and cell phones?”, in place of a dialog on moral obligation, practical policy and mitigated risk.

Bad jokes about broccoli and mandatory cell phone phobia; what world are these guys living in?

R. C. deWinter

Communication is the purpose of her poetry, that’s what @RCdeWinter told me. But, her Soundcloud readings (they can be found here: http://soundcloud.com/rcdewinter/tracks?page=1#play ) are something new to me; the words, the rhythm, the delivery, the art, the tone, the music and the sophistication. It’s a cathartic exercise in intrigue that takes me, incorporating my imagination into what seems like her fascinating, compelling multisensory excursions.

Not all communication is equal, RC pushes the boundaries of my personal experience and spits me out, into a place composed of familiar objects arranged in different ways. I look and am drawn into a picture representing what I’m hearing. I listen and a compelling story reveals itself in cascading images. I project my imagination and find a well formed wave to carry it along at a pulse pounding pace.

I’m reminded of the first time I sat in a coffee house, listening to a beat poet attack my imagination, while a saxophone honked and squealed in the shadow of the stage.