Climatron: Personal Blog of Kyle Vandercamp

The Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson

I can see a pattern emerging in the recent surge of interest and discussion about geoengineering. It may be a fiction right now, but suffice it to say the jury is still out. The confluence of events include:

+ A less than gradual rise in debate, chatter, knowledge and acceptance of the concept of geoengineering – an idea that has quite literally risen like an oxygen bubble from the bottom of the scientific barrel (where it lay sequestered with other moral dilemmas).

+ The salience and interest given to the Superfreakonomics/IV’s StratoShield ‘presentation’ last month.

+ US Congressional hearings into geoengineering, starring Ken Caldeira et al, whilst world leaders gather pre-Copenhagen in Barcelona to affirm the death of a treaty at Copenhagen.

+ President Obama’s declaration to commit the US to a series of emissions cuts, beginning at 17% on 2005 levels by 2020. There are further cuts as part of this plan, but as De Boer and a host of others confirm, the combined efforts of industrialised nations are falling far short of the estimates for meaningful action in avoiding significant climate disruption.

The pattern is there and the pattern suggests implementation of geoengineering principles is inevitable, and that America will get involved soonish. When you look at it, it’s not so mysterious – a cheap and effective way to bring cooling, a stop-gap measure whilst other solutions are (or are not) found… This clean logic hides the truth of how horrendous and out of control the move will be. Ethically, morally it is bereft – there are also so many socio-political scenarios to contemplate… It is one thing to watch as the natural world responds to years of human activity, quite another to intervene before the worst occurs, knowing that you provoked the worst. To be continued!

Professor Bob Watson (UEA)

This is particularly sobering news – the careful, cautious voice raised in frustration at the constant salvos of the skeptics. There was press this weekend that a horde of emails had been leaked online that showed “collusion” between IPCC scientists and “framing” of the data to prove climate change occurrence. The insult to sensibility is answered in Professor Bob Watson’s response

In this one interview, Watson frames the biggest questions of our time: a 3-4 degree average rise in global temperature, geoengineering, the incredible influence of a handful of humans to impact the world in a way that breaks with history lessons.

So this is what I know about Scientists – they will retaliate against extraordinary offense to intelligence and sensitivity, just don’t expect it to be in the form of a booming fog horn: for your own sake, let what they have to say in.

Global Oil Runs Dry

Dammit! There’s only so much oil and we’ve reintroduced most of it back into the atmosphere already. Sure, no one can perfectly measure how much is left, but you only have to spend a little time looking at the over-estimations, plus the pressure/output ratios in the big remaining fields to know we’re past the peak. The seduction continues, and as we run down, a sharp curve no doubt, everything from mass transport to toys will become untenable! Never have so many been reliant and addicted to a single substance. This is a good doco on the story of oil, and this one too (from way back in 2006!).

U. S. Peace Corps – Brazil I 4-S Project 1962-1963

This computer game apparently became the biggest selling entertainment article in history. Someone at work brought it in and we played it on the projector. Somewhere between war porn and simulation, it’s intense and stylish, and everyone is dying all the time. So what makes it so popular? An obsession with war, and the sheer rush of adrenalin?

Of course the answer is banal and obvious – for most people they want to simulate a level of intensity and fantasy that’s not otherwise in their lives. But in terms of a mass psychology, this banality is a phenomenon… <dreaming>If only so much exertion powered sustainability!</dreaming>

Claude Lévi-Strauss

The tenets of Structuralism seem so common these days – of course you derive a thing’s meaning through how it relates to others things in a system… Of course context is everything. McLuhan’s much-revered observation The Medium is the Message relies on Claude Levi-Strauss’ way of seeing.

But we owe Levi-Strauss our greatest thanks for taking the oogah-boogah out of the western eye – culturally, the fear of the other and the notion that primitive=simple was decimated in The Savage Mind.

Quoted in a tribute yesterday is an honesty so resonant for me: “There is today a frightful disappearance of living species, be they plants or animals. And it’s clear that the density of human beings has become so great, if I can say so, that they have begun to poison themselves. And the world in which I am finishing my existence is no longer a world that I like.” If I were old and leaving the world now, I would feel the same.