Metacentricities

It’s amazing…

I was reintroduced to the Rule of St. Benedict recently by a photoessay done by a PSR colleague, published this month in Ochre Journal. It’s a great view of a Benedictine monastery in Idaho, the Monastery of St. Gertrude. One of the most interesting aspects to me of Benedictine spirituality is the concept of Conversatio Morum - which basically means that one is always on a journey of conversion - there isn’t just a moment of conversion. The nuns at St. Gertrude have an interesting interpretation of this:

This promise is a commitment to change within a tradition that is often viewed as static. The balancing of the promise of stability with that of continual change has produced gradual adjustments in the sisters’ understanding of their responsibility to the land. It is also a powerful alternative to the rapid and destabilizing shifts that mark much change in the world today. … True to the process of conversatio morum, the sisters’ focus on the land was not a sudden decision, but a gradual conversion. Building on their history with the land, they realized that their retreats, land stewardship committee, gardens and orchards, and interactions with neighbors built a foundation of care and concern for the land.

It has wonderful photographs, and it’s a great read. Check it out.

I’ve been a reader of The Nation on and off over the past 20 years or so. I’ve subscribed several times. These days, I pick it up once a month or so at newstands to read it (because I can’t keep up with it weekly.) I picked up this week’s Nation, and Alexander Cockburn had a column, called “Is Global Warming a Sin?” It was such an atrocious article, I felt I needed to write a letter to them.

Here’s my letter:

So I’m assuming Alexander Cockburn’s column on carbon credits is mostly a joke. Certainly, the part about the carbon credit trade was serious. Buying carbon credits does certainly serve to make people feel better, without a whole lot of evidence yet that it works. It might work, but it probably won’t.

However, I’m assuming the rest of the column, suggesting that human-caused global climate change is a hoax, is a joke. The same kind of joke that one might play on April fool’s - suggesting, for instance, that the theory of evolution is a hoax. Or, perhaps, that the world is flat (really, it is, if you look all the way out to the horizon, you don’t see any curvature! How can it be round?)

It’s not worth spending my effort to describe in detail the mass of data that shows the role of human activity on the climate. Others perhaps have done that. Scientists have reached a consensus that human beings have caused the current change in climate and CO2. Picking out one single graph, to suggest that this graph invalidates the huge mountain of other data is absurd. Suggesting scientific expertise by his discussion of CO2 and the atmosphere doesn’t make a difference. Alexander Cockburn isn’t a scientist, and there are virtually no reputable scientists left who don’t think that human activities have caused current increases in CO2 and temperature.

Human caused global climate change is, in many scientists’ opinions, a threat to the very survival of human beings on the planet, at worst. At best, it will kill, and disrupt the lives of millions of people, mostly poor, in all parts of the world. And this is mostly due to the lifestyles of us here in the United States. If you are going to continue to print Alexander Cockburn’s series suggesting that the idea that humans are changing the climate is a hoax, I’m going to stop reading The Nation. It no longer counts as a reliable progressive voice.

Technorati Tags: globalclimate, thenation

As you’ve probably noticed - I’ve not been posting much, here. Mostly, it’s because I’ve been very busy continuing to settle in, and to start my new technology advising practice, called MetaCentric Technology Advising. I’ve been blooging up a storm on Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s happening in the world, at the same time as I’m thinking a lot about my own spiritual journey, and looking to find a spiritual community. There will be more on those things in a while, I’m sure. In the meanwhile, I thought I’d share some links today.

• The National Coalition Against the Death Penalty issued a report that seems to definitively prove what we’ve known all along: innocent people get executed.
• The Governor of Oregon spent a week on food stamps
• Keith Olbermann delivers a stinging rebuke (in his inimical style) to Rudy Juliani, who used fearmongering in a campaign speech.
• Stephen Colbert digs Bush on global warming
• The Evangelical Ecologist has their Carnival celebrating Earth Day
• The National Council of Churches has resources and such for “Earth Day Sunday.” This year’s theme: “The Food that Sustains Us”
• Also in honor of Earth Day: get a toolbar for your computer that helps you save CO2.
• Hugh talks to God.
• The Archdruid talks about the religion of progress and peak oil

• Antioxidant supplements may not be all that good for you. Hmmm, might be time to trim the doses of Vitamin A.
• Most Americans want universal health care. Looks like accusations of “socialized medicine” that conservatives throw about aren’t going to work.
• Michael Jackson converted to Islam.
• Republican candidates who governed left-leaning constituencies (Guliani and Romney) try their best to convince conservatives that they are on their side.
• A new magazine, called “Conserve” is launched, which proposes to be a voice of “doing more with less.” Um, a new magazine? Don’t magazines make their money with advertising? Don’t advertisers expect people to buy stuff? What’s wrong with this picture? (It reminds me of the magazine “Real Simple.” Why do people need to buy a magazine to make their lives simpler, or do more with less?)
• The graphs are a bit eye-bending, but check out this post in the Oil Drum about the decrease in Saudi Arabian oil production last year. By the way, Saudi Arabia has 1/4 of the world’s oil reserves. Looks like we’re at Peak Oil. There are, by the way, some very interesting comments in that post.
• The USDA preliminarily approved the production of rice engineered with human genes, which are hoped to help treat diarrheal infections in the developing world, but could have completely unpredictable effects. In addition, the genes won’t stay in the rice fields they originally put them in.

• Enjoy your fish now, because there might not be so much later.
• You’ve already eaten genetically modified rice. They so don’t know wtf they are doing with GM foods
• My new favorite peak oil blog The Oil Drum has an interview with my ex-Hampshire College colleague, Michael Klare
• Bush finally admits the Iraq war … is about oil
• The debate about biofuel heats up in California.

Tomorrow: GO VOTE!!!

You know about Tamiflu, right? Tamiflu is the anti-viral drug that many people are stocking up on, in case of a flu pandemic. Never mind that it’s not at all clear that it will work.

Well, there is worse yet. A new study suggests that the use of Tamiflu for a pandemic will have potentially damaging effects on the environment, as well as create the conditions for new, resistant strains of flu virus. This is pretty familiar - the reason we have so many antibiotic resistant bacteria is because of the widespread use of antibiotics.

So, here it is - we are doing something that makes us feel safer, but getting ourselves into worse trouble. Sound familiar? I think a blog post about that phenomenon might be in order, at some point.

• If you are a woman, you might want to put that coke down!
• Yes, indeed, there seem to be lots of planets in the galaxy.
• Are elephants suffering from PTSD? Maybe they are just sick of us.
• Here’s a new system for using sink greywater to flush the toilet. Why did it take so long?
• Yay, NYU! They are buying wind power.
• The Weather Channel (one of my favorite stations when I had a TV) launches a new broadband internet video website, called One Degree, which has some great stuff.

Here are today’s links for ya:

• I keep coming across information about this new "Jack 2" oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. There is talk about how this could increase the US oil reserves, and keep the price of oil down for a long time. People who have poo-pooed peak oil think it’s evidence that there is no such phenomenon. There’s a great article in a new blog I found called "The Oil Drum" about the realities of this new discovery.
• The New York Times has an interesting series about the water crisis in India.
• Transition Culture has a great article about the potential dangers of any biofuels (yeah, including biodeisel.) It is primarily around the fact that biofuels depend on industrial agriculture, and industrial agriculture is probably one of the most environmentally damaging practices that exist.
• Juan Cole has an interesting analysis about that National Intelligence Estimate document that got partially declassified and leaked. He says, among many other things:

The NIE clearly says that the Iraq War is now the main generator of
terrorism against the US and its allies. It certainly caused the Madrid
train bombings of March, 2004 and the London subway bombings of July
2005. The reaction against the US attack on and occupation of a major
Arab Muslim country like Iraq has been anger throughout the Muslim
world.

There is another take by Michael Scheuer, who was the former head of the Bin Laden desk at the CIA (yes, the Bin Laden desk!)

• Lots and lots of feathers are flying in Washington. Glad I’m not there.
• I hadn’t realized that Bush was a Methodist. Garrison Keillor says:

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure
that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to
Guantanamo, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing
room with deafening noise, so why should they worry? It’s only the Jews
who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are
doing just fine. If you can’t trust a Methodist with absolute power to
arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

Ouch.

Here’s a bunch of things I came across that I think are useful, with a bit of commentary.

• The unintended consequences of human action often provide the need for huge remediation projects. Case in point: the Mississippi River. Years and years of levee projects has caused problems for the Mississippi, and where the water would have flowed. Scientists say, apparently, that it’s time to move the Mississippi.
• This is a great list of foods you should try to eat organically, because of the amounts of pesticides used in growing them conventionally. Ooops. Too bad I didn’t read this list yesterday.
• Al Gore (why, oh why won’t he run for President again?) says to tax CO2 emmisions, not payrolls. I like the idea.
• In the Very Old News department: Acadmic institutions, not ability, hinders academic women in science and technology. Duh. I hate when some "new" report states the patently obvious (and well known for decades), and then a news organization picks it up as news. Sigh.
• Karen Armstrong has her typically fabulous words to say about the Pope’s comments on Islam.