{"id":3200,"date":"2015-11-30T18:03:05","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T02:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=3200"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:51:14","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:51:14","slug":"sundays-new-york-times-links-and-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2015\/11\/30\/sundays-new-york-times-links-and-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday’s New York Times: Links and Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opinion column by Curt Stager: Tales of a Warmer Planet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This relates to my suspicion and prediction that efforts to ameliorate climate change will come too little and too late — because human nature cannot respond to a potential threat until it actually happens, until it actually affects people who don’t pay attention to long-range political issues until those issues affect their daily lives.<\/p>\n

\nIt is now too late to stop human-driven warming altogether. Even if we wean ourselves from fossil fuels within the next few decades, our descendants will still face temperatures significantly higher than they are now \u2014 for millenniums to come.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We are changing, through inaction, not only our immediate future, but far futures.<\/p>\n

\nIn that far future, there will be no more fossil fuels left to burn in order to sustain the artificial hothouse, and only a reduced, heat-tolerant fraction of today\u2019s cultural and biological diversity will remain to face an age of global cooling that could last as long as half a million years, far more than the entire history of anatomically modern humans up until now.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We are in the geological Anthropocene, as Elizabeth Kolbert described in The Sixth Extinction<\/b> (post review here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\nAs pioneers of the Anthropocene, we are an immensely powerful force of nature and can accomplish great things if we not only learn what is scientifically true, but also do what is morally right. Pope Francis tells us that \u201cthere is nobility in the duty to care for creation.\u201d As a climate scientist who welcomes international action to address climate change, I offer a heartfelt \u201cAmen\u201d to that.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\\\\<\/p>\n

Sunday’s New York Times Book Review<\/i> has reviews of two especially interesting books.<\/p>\n

On Lisa Randall’s Dark Matter and the Dinosuars<\/b>, review by Maria Popova<\/a>. I’ve mentioned this book before, and its thesis, and how Randall evokes the interconnectedness of everything.<\/p>\n

\nRandall calls the force driving that fraction \u201cdark light\u201d \u2014 an appropriately paradoxical term confuting the haughty human assumption that the world we see is all there is. … Therein lies the book\u2019s greatest reward \u2014 the gift of perspective. The existence of parallel truths is what gives our world its tremendous richness, and the grand scheme of things is far grander than our minds habitually imagine.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Popova concludes,<\/p>\n

\nScience, after all, isn\u2019t merely about advancing information \u2014 it\u2019s about advancing understanding. Its task is to disentangle the opinions and the claims from the facts in the service of truth. But beyond the \u201cwhat\u201d of truth, successful science writing tells a complete story of the \u201chow\u201d \u2014 the methodical marvel building up to the \u201cwhy\u201d \u2014 and Randall does just that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\\\\<\/p>\n

And a review by Frank Rose<\/a> of Matt Ridley’s The Evolution of Everything<\/b>, another book on my to-read stack. Ridley’s book is an exploration of how the idea of evolution, of natural selection, applies to much more than organic evolution. Ridley’s thesis is that many things we think are planned or determined in some way are in fact the result of ’emergent’ results, “unplanned and undirected behavior unfolding over time”. <\/p>\n

\nThe word for this is \u201cemergent,\u201d and with \u201cThe Evolution of Everything\u201d Ridley has set out to construct a sort of grand unified theory of emergent behavior.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meaning,<\/p>\n

\nAs humans, we like to think we control events. We accept, at least in theory, that there is a degree of randomness in the world, but we still try to read some kind of portent into whatever happens. Any explanation is more comforting than the stark possibility that things occur without purpose. Even an inscrutable deity who deals out death and torment for reasons we can\u2019t fathom is preferable to the profound disorientation of chance. We want \u2014 need \u2014 to believe that someone or something is in charge.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The review goes on to discuss Lucretius (“swerve”), public morals and Adam Smith, but with a reservation or two:<\/p>\n

\nHe makes a good case that education would be better off without bureaucrats. But elsewhere he overreaches. His insistence that climate- change arguments are overwrought is rather suspect, especially for someone with a working coal mine on his country estate.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Always take into account the motivations of any writer.)<\/p>\n

The review concludes:<\/p>\n

\nWhy are emergence and randomness so hard for people to accept? Could it be that the human brain is such a pattern-\u00adseeking organ that it can barely acknowledge unguided developments as an option? \u201cThe belief in the will and in the immortal soul themselves emerged as evolutionary consequences of how the brain changed,\u201d Ridley writes. It\u2019s a thought he might well have explored further.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, yes, the human brain is a pattern-seeking organ…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opinion column by Curt Stager: Tales of a Warmer Planet. This relates to my suspicion and prediction that efforts to ameliorate climate change will come too little and too late — because human nature cannot respond to a potential threat … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,22,41,12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-evolution","category-morality","category-religion","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3200"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3206,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3200\/revisions\/3206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}