Not living, just wasting time
So I friend a lot of awesome people over the weekend, get really excited -- and then all but disappear off the face of the Internet for a few days. Sorry about that. ^_^; Yesterday was very hectic, and I'm just being active and feeling apathetic as I usually do, so I'm still trying to get caught up on leaving and replying to comments. I should have all that done by the end of this week, so apologies for any late replies -- I have a tendency to do that anyway. XD;
On Sunday two of my friends interviewed Bill McKibben for their radio show, and, well, I have a few things to say about that......
For those who don't already know, my friends do a one-hour radio show every Sunday afternoon about the weather, climatology, etc. They're both climate change skeptics, though they're far from the crazy kind; it's clear from talking to them that they've done their research, that they don't have any vested interests or political motives behind their beliefs, that they don't buy into easily debunked arguments (like, "If global warming is supposed to be happening, then why do we have colder and snowier winters?" -- while global warming does introduce more heat to the climate, it doesn't make day-by-day weather patterns warmer, but makes them go haywire instead), and that they won't deny that anthropogenic (human-caused) effects are a contributor to climate change. The purpose of the interview was to debate McKibben, who believes climate change is mostly anthropogenic and a serious problem, on the subject. I'm not entirely sure why they wanted to have a debate on climate change with someone like him, who's more of an activist than an actual scientist -- probably because he's one of our college's scholars-in-residence, and that they wanted to talk to someone famous like him using whatever reason they could get. (And who wouldn't, really?) But what really bothered me was the nature of the arguments being made (I won't mention the arguments themselves, mostly because I don't remember them and a lot of it was over my head anyway XD).
My friends, whatever their motives might have been, were trying to have a reasoned, intelligent debate, yet McKIbben kept on being dismissive of their arguments, seemed more invested in scoring political points, and at times was arrogant and rude. I don't think I heard any direct rebuttals from him; it was all, "I can't wait to see your paper published in a scientific journal" (which is really more of a shot at their knowledge and their willingness to look at scientific studies even if they don't agree with their preconceived notions, and even if you concede that they lack the qualifications and trustworthiness of actual climatologists, his sarcasm still comes across as needlessly mean-spirited), "It's so ~*~wonderful~*~ you're looking after the reputation of the environmental movement ~*~ALL ON YOUR OWN~*~" (even though that if it turns out the science backing up the claims of the existence, severity, and anthropogenic nature of global warming turns out once and for all to be flawed, then yeah, like it or not, it would be a hit on the movement's reputation, and it doesn't take a climatologist to figure out why), saying that they weren't environmentalists (even though Climatology Nerd lives in the environmental studies house, cooks with and eats as much local food as possible, has a strong appreciation for the environment, tries to incorporate as many environmentally sustainable practices in daily life as possible, agrees with McKibben and many others that we need to switch to a "green energy" economy albeit for different reasons, and by word and deed can very well be considered an environmentalist), and basically talking to them as though they were any other climate skeptics without actually listening to their arguments and responding to them directly and in kind. I admit I was amused by some of the "oh snap!" moments, but mostly I was just frustrated.
And it is frustrating, mostly because McKibben is someone I otherwise feel is worthy of my respect, if not my admiration. The only book I've read of his is Deep Economy, which helped influence a lot of my views on the environment and politics, and was a very insightful and thought-provoking book on the whole; I recommend it to anyone who's reading this. But it's impossible -- and undesirable -- to agree with everything someone says, and nothing should be held above reproach. Example: McKibben criticized my friends for confusing climate and weather, even though they don't have the two mixed up, like I mentioned above. After the interview ended, they pulled out a quote from one of McKibben's other books in which it could be interpreted that he mixes up weather and climate. Granted, it is important to know the context of the quote, and sometimes to make people think about a larger truth one must make smaller lies (this is basically Michael Moore's shtick in a nutshell), but the point they made still stands. Whatever misgivings I have for my friends regarding why they did this interview and how they handled it (they did get into minutiae that I'm pretty sure McKIbben knows very little about) are nothing compared to the disappointment I felt in McKibben over his ability to drop the activist mantle and have a cool-headed, rational discussion.
As for me? I guess you can say I'm a bit skeptical of climate change myself, if only because I've been hanging around Climatology Nerd and his posse for a while now, and because I find the theory that human beings are solely responsible for rising global temperatures a tad bit hard to swallow. I still believe we shouldn't take any risks, though -- say we manage to curtail greenhouse gas emissions significantly and we get a decent renewable energy system going, and then it turns out, oops, global warming isn't such a big deal after all! The worst that can happen is that we have a cleaner, safer, more efficient, and more just way to produce energy, and that our economy takes a little bit of a hit. Whereas if we don't do anything and our worst fears come true, well......let's not think about that, OK? ^_^; But I also believe in good science and improving the image of the environmental movement so that people are more willing to accept their good ideas and demand they be implemented (the movement already has a huge image problem, which explains its extremely low importance among voters), and these two go hand-in-hand. Some principles should not be compromised for the sake of doing the right thing. I'm not saying we should wait to do anything until we get our facts straight -- climatology is a complex and inexact science, and when we do get our facts straight it may be too late. What I'm saying is we should act as immediately and quickly as possible to lower emissions and use more renewable energy sources, but that doesn't mean we can put getting our facts straight on the back burner. Both should be done simultaneously, and it's far too risky not to do either.
Monday was the exam, and I don't think I did too badly on it, though I really should've studied more because there were quite a few things I totally blanked on. So yeah, pretty nervous to get my results, especially considering I really do need to step it up these next few months. As for the group project, we're working on the conflict in Kosovo and whether or not self-defense should have been used to justify humanitarian intervention there. It's definitely an interesting topic, even though it's still a project, and I'm terrible at oral presentations, so. D: We're meeting as a group tomorrow over lunch, meeting with the professors next Tuesday (with our bibliography and plan in hand), taking our final exam next Thursday, and presenting the following Monday. So yeah, pretty full plate here, and I'm not exactly Mr. Hakuna Matata when it comes to schoolwork. :PPP
Tuesday was my busy day: the radio show (one of the morning show hosts from the town's other big radio station came to visit our studio before my show was set to air, and we had a pretty good discussion about the lack of variety and getting sick of overplayed music on commercial radio, equipment failures, etc.), the Japanese review session (in which I have forgotten most of my vocab, and in which we all played a game where the sensei read out a word and we had to slap a card on a table with the kanji of that word on it -- it was pretty fun, but also a bit dangerous and competitive, which made it even funner), and yoga (which, because of the fact that it's at the end of a long day and the fact that I am horrendously out of shape, made me feel even more tired than before, even though I enjoyed myself a lot). And not much of interest happened today, save actually having something halfway intelligent to say in class for once, missing the movie the Japanese department was showing (which sucks because the movies they put on are almost always extremely good), and generally having a tiny stomachache and maybe having a bit of a cold coming on. -_-; Tomorrow I plan on seeing Climatology Nerd participate in an Iron Chef contest, so that should be fun!
Before I go on, some links where you can donate to help relief efforts after yesterday's earthquake in Haiti:
International Red Cross // American Red Cross
Oxfam America
World Vision
Partners in Health
UNICEF
Direct Relief International
International Medical Corps
ADRA International
Artists For Peace and Justice
Médecins Sans Frontières
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund
Canadians can donate to any of the charities listed on this page, which I found through my Friends of Friends list. Americans can also donate $10 to the American Red Cross by texting "HAITI" to 90999.
I'll probably do a real links post sometime later this week. ;-)
All right, some memes!
First, the good ol' "ask me anything at all" meme that's been going around the f-list for a couple of days now. I already sorta kinda did it on my intro post here; you can comment either there or here with any questions you got, about, well, anything at all. And don't be afraid of asking me a lot, either. ^_^;
From swipeatronspark:
the { first ✚ impression } meme
(This might be more appropriate for all of those who've been around for a while, but newbies are more than welcome to comment too. 8D)
From eska_rina:
ship me meme
(Same deal as above.)
On Sunday two of my friends interviewed Bill McKibben for their radio show, and, well, I have a few things to say about that......
For those who don't already know, my friends do a one-hour radio show every Sunday afternoon about the weather, climatology, etc. They're both climate change skeptics, though they're far from the crazy kind; it's clear from talking to them that they've done their research, that they don't have any vested interests or political motives behind their beliefs, that they don't buy into easily debunked arguments (like, "If global warming is supposed to be happening, then why do we have colder and snowier winters?" -- while global warming does introduce more heat to the climate, it doesn't make day-by-day weather patterns warmer, but makes them go haywire instead), and that they won't deny that anthropogenic (human-caused) effects are a contributor to climate change. The purpose of the interview was to debate McKibben, who believes climate change is mostly anthropogenic and a serious problem, on the subject. I'm not entirely sure why they wanted to have a debate on climate change with someone like him, who's more of an activist than an actual scientist -- probably because he's one of our college's scholars-in-residence, and that they wanted to talk to someone famous like him using whatever reason they could get. (And who wouldn't, really?) But what really bothered me was the nature of the arguments being made (I won't mention the arguments themselves, mostly because I don't remember them and a lot of it was over my head anyway XD).
My friends, whatever their motives might have been, were trying to have a reasoned, intelligent debate, yet McKIbben kept on being dismissive of their arguments, seemed more invested in scoring political points, and at times was arrogant and rude. I don't think I heard any direct rebuttals from him; it was all, "I can't wait to see your paper published in a scientific journal" (which is really more of a shot at their knowledge and their willingness to look at scientific studies even if they don't agree with their preconceived notions, and even if you concede that they lack the qualifications and trustworthiness of actual climatologists, his sarcasm still comes across as needlessly mean-spirited), "It's so ~*~wonderful~*~ you're looking after the reputation of the environmental movement ~*~ALL ON YOUR OWN~*~" (even though that if it turns out the science backing up the claims of the existence, severity, and anthropogenic nature of global warming turns out once and for all to be flawed, then yeah, like it or not, it would be a hit on the movement's reputation, and it doesn't take a climatologist to figure out why), saying that they weren't environmentalists (even though Climatology Nerd lives in the environmental studies house, cooks with and eats as much local food as possible, has a strong appreciation for the environment, tries to incorporate as many environmentally sustainable practices in daily life as possible, agrees with McKibben and many others that we need to switch to a "green energy" economy albeit for different reasons, and by word and deed can very well be considered an environmentalist), and basically talking to them as though they were any other climate skeptics without actually listening to their arguments and responding to them directly and in kind. I admit I was amused by some of the "oh snap!" moments, but mostly I was just frustrated.
And it is frustrating, mostly because McKibben is someone I otherwise feel is worthy of my respect, if not my admiration. The only book I've read of his is Deep Economy, which helped influence a lot of my views on the environment and politics, and was a very insightful and thought-provoking book on the whole; I recommend it to anyone who's reading this. But it's impossible -- and undesirable -- to agree with everything someone says, and nothing should be held above reproach. Example: McKibben criticized my friends for confusing climate and weather, even though they don't have the two mixed up, like I mentioned above. After the interview ended, they pulled out a quote from one of McKibben's other books in which it could be interpreted that he mixes up weather and climate. Granted, it is important to know the context of the quote, and sometimes to make people think about a larger truth one must make smaller lies (this is basically Michael Moore's shtick in a nutshell), but the point they made still stands. Whatever misgivings I have for my friends regarding why they did this interview and how they handled it (they did get into minutiae that I'm pretty sure McKIbben knows very little about) are nothing compared to the disappointment I felt in McKibben over his ability to drop the activist mantle and have a cool-headed, rational discussion.
As for me? I guess you can say I'm a bit skeptical of climate change myself, if only because I've been hanging around Climatology Nerd and his posse for a while now, and because I find the theory that human beings are solely responsible for rising global temperatures a tad bit hard to swallow. I still believe we shouldn't take any risks, though -- say we manage to curtail greenhouse gas emissions significantly and we get a decent renewable energy system going, and then it turns out, oops, global warming isn't such a big deal after all! The worst that can happen is that we have a cleaner, safer, more efficient, and more just way to produce energy, and that our economy takes a little bit of a hit. Whereas if we don't do anything and our worst fears come true, well......let's not think about that, OK? ^_^; But I also believe in good science and improving the image of the environmental movement so that people are more willing to accept their good ideas and demand they be implemented (the movement already has a huge image problem, which explains its extremely low importance among voters), and these two go hand-in-hand. Some principles should not be compromised for the sake of doing the right thing. I'm not saying we should wait to do anything until we get our facts straight -- climatology is a complex and inexact science, and when we do get our facts straight it may be too late. What I'm saying is we should act as immediately and quickly as possible to lower emissions and use more renewable energy sources, but that doesn't mean we can put getting our facts straight on the back burner. Both should be done simultaneously, and it's far too risky not to do either.
Monday was the exam, and I don't think I did too badly on it, though I really should've studied more because there were quite a few things I totally blanked on. So yeah, pretty nervous to get my results, especially considering I really do need to step it up these next few months. As for the group project, we're working on the conflict in Kosovo and whether or not self-defense should have been used to justify humanitarian intervention there. It's definitely an interesting topic, even though it's still a project, and I'm terrible at oral presentations, so. D: We're meeting as a group tomorrow over lunch, meeting with the professors next Tuesday (with our bibliography and plan in hand), taking our final exam next Thursday, and presenting the following Monday. So yeah, pretty full plate here, and I'm not exactly Mr. Hakuna Matata when it comes to schoolwork. :PPP
Tuesday was my busy day: the radio show (one of the morning show hosts from the town's other big radio station came to visit our studio before my show was set to air, and we had a pretty good discussion about the lack of variety and getting sick of overplayed music on commercial radio, equipment failures, etc.), the Japanese review session (in which I have forgotten most of my vocab, and in which we all played a game where the sensei read out a word and we had to slap a card on a table with the kanji of that word on it -- it was pretty fun, but also a bit dangerous and competitive, which made it even funner), and yoga (which, because of the fact that it's at the end of a long day and the fact that I am horrendously out of shape, made me feel even more tired than before, even though I enjoyed myself a lot). And not much of interest happened today, save actually having something halfway intelligent to say in class for once, missing the movie the Japanese department was showing (which sucks because the movies they put on are almost always extremely good), and generally having a tiny stomachache and maybe having a bit of a cold coming on. -_-; Tomorrow I plan on seeing Climatology Nerd participate in an Iron Chef contest, so that should be fun!
Before I go on, some links where you can donate to help relief efforts after yesterday's earthquake in Haiti:
International Red Cross // American Red Cross
Oxfam America
World Vision
Partners in Health
UNICEF
Direct Relief International
International Medical Corps
ADRA International
Artists For Peace and Justice
Médecins Sans Frontières
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund
Canadians can donate to any of the charities listed on this page, which I found through my Friends of Friends list. Americans can also donate $10 to the American Red Cross by texting "HAITI" to 90999.
I'll probably do a real links post sometime later this week. ;-)
All right, some memes!
First, the good ol' "ask me anything at all" meme that's been going around the f-list for a couple of days now. I already sorta kinda did it on my intro post here; you can comment either there or here with any questions you got, about, well, anything at all. And don't be afraid of asking me a lot, either. ^_^;
From swipeatronspark:
the { first ✚ impression } meme
(This might be more appropriate for all of those who've been around for a while, but newbies are more than welcome to comment too. 8D)
From eska_rina:
ship me meme
(Same deal as above.)