in the year twenty-one hundred
in the year twenty-one hundred
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
no one will know Laurie Anderson
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
no one will know Laurie Anderson
I thought myself in love with her
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
I thought myself in love with her
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
no one knows our names
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
no one knows our names, no one knows our names
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Azure and I will have disappeared
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Azure and I will have disappeared
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
From the roll-calls of the Lord
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
From the roll-calls of the Lord
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
And now in this backward year and month
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
And now in this backward year and month
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
There is nothing of song left in me
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
There is nothing of song left in me
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
It's pointless to think of moving on
To going forth by the light of the day
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
It's pointless to think of going on
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
The armies of nightmares burn me alive
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
The armies of nightmares burn me alive
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
For nothing, for absolutely nothing
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
For nothing at all, for no absolute
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Laurie, you can't hear me, read me
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Laurie, you can't hear me, read me
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Azure dawn and names linked for years
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Azure dawn and names linked for years
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
I have no garden to tend
I have no garden to tend
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
This is not a scrap of paper
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
This is not a scrap of paper
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Nor the singing of a sound
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Nor the singing of a sound
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:32:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: moderator@portside.org
Reply-To: portside@portside.org
To: portside@lists.portside.org
Subject: Death Squads at Colombia's Universities
Death Squads at Colombia's Universities
June 15, 2006
Professors, Librarians, Staff, Students
and Pensioners Threatened at University of Antioquia
A Public Statement by Professors, Lecturers and Faculty
of the Universidad de Antioquia
Medellin, Colombia, May 25 de 2006
http://counterpunch.org/deathsquad06152006.html
PUBLIC STATEMENT TO THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL
COMMUNITY
Professors, lecturers, and faculty of the University of
Antioquia, gathered on May 25, 2006, outside the
university campus, due to the unexpected closure of our
Alma Mater and in the course of the deplorable events
of threats by pamilitary death squads against our
community, which severely affects normal functioning.
WE DENOUNCE:
1. On 9 May, 2006, on the university campus, a letter
written in the name of a group of death squads that
threatened to murder 15 members of our university
community was circulated. On the 19 May 2006, through
an email, another message extended the threat to 8 more
members of the university, and 3 days later, a new
communique was distributed and signed by a group
calling itself "Colombia Free of Communists," in which,
by fully endorsing the current president and his
"democratic security" policies, they extended threats
to the whole university community and to various
organizations defenders of freedom and human rights.
2. In the days leading up to the presidential
elections, the University of Antioquia, as well as
other state universities, were closed, silencing the
possibility for deliberation, and obstructing that the
chance that persons directly threatened with murder
would be accompanied.
3. Furthermore, electoral authorities have decided to
exclude the professors, lecturers, faculty, students,
staff, and retired people of the University of
Antioquia, among others, from exercising a historic
function by serving as voting observers. This makes the
environment even more strained, and casts a mantle of
doubt over the elections.
4. Finally, we denounce that the series of threats,
followed by the closure of the university and the
evident mistrust spreading in our university community,
represents an extremely serious precedent. We call for
all university people and the national and
international community to close ranks around the
necessity to defend the open university, without any
type of threats.
Above all, the University is a center for open and
plural debate for the construction of knowledge and for
the free exercise of citizenship with a critical spirit
and social commitment.
PROFESSORS, LECTURERS, AND FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSIDAD
DE ANTIOQUIA
_______________________________________________________
portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news,
discussion and debate service of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to
provide varied material of interest to people on the
left.
For answers to frequently asked questions:
http://www.portside.org/faq
To subscribe, unsubscribe or change settings:
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:34:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: moderator@portside.org
Reply-To: portside@portside.org
To: portside@lists.portside.org
Subject: Global Warming: Two Books Reviewed
Heat Wave
by PETER CANBY
thenation.com
[posted online on June 12, 2006]
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060626/canby
A sense of apocalypse hangs low over Elizabeth
Kolbert's Field Notes From a Catastrophe and Tim
Flannery's The Weather Makers, two important new books
on global warming. Flannery, the director of the South
Australian Museum in Adelaide and an accomplished
science writer, warns: "If humans pursue a business-as-
usual course for the first half of this century, I
believe the collapse of civilization due to climate
change becomes inevitable." Kolbert, a writer at The
New Yorker (where I also work), quotes a despairing New
York University professor of physics, Marty Hoffert:
"We're going to just burn everything up; we're going to
heat the atmosphere to the temperature it was in the
Cretaceous, when there were crocodiles at the poles.
And then everything will collapse."
But in many ways, the most striking thing that emerges
from reading these two books and indeed from
contemplating the larger phenomenon of global warming
is that the earth has often been warmer than it's
likely to become in the next century--and not just for
brief periods of time but for long swatches of its
history. The question therefore becomes less one of
apocalyptic endings--the biological world will no doubt
survive global warming in some perhaps significantly
altered form--than a political one of trying to parse
just what kinds of changes we'll have to make to adjust
to what promises to be a brave new world.
Flannery and Kolbert are clear on the fundamentals.
Greenhouse gases including not just carbon dioxide but
also methane and water vapor have always existed in the
earth's atmosphere in a delicate balance with climate.
By allowing solar radiation to reach the earth's
surface but trapping some of it before it radiates back
out again, these gases have played a significant role
in stabilizing the climate within the temperature bands
that have allowed human life to flourish and expand
over the past 10,000 years. Flannery points out that
this 10,000-year period has been one of unusual climate
stability and that it essentially includes the entire
history of human civilization. He refers to it as "the
long summer" and argues that climate stability may have
been an essential factor in allowing humans to develop
as they have.
But since the industrial revolution, we have been
pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere. By the mid-twenty-first century the
atmosphere is expected to contain close to twice the
carbon dioxide it did in the pre-industrial eighteenth
century. This buildup of carbon dioxide has caused a
rapidly accelerating warming of the earth's atmosphere.
As Kolbert notes, "1990 was the warmest year on record
until 1991, which was equally hot. Almost every
subsequent year has been warmer still...1998 ranks as
the hottest year since the instrumental temperature
record began." The early years of this millennium were
the second, third and fourth hottest until the figures
came in for 2005, which established yet another record.
"The world is now warmer," Kolbert observes, "than it
has been at any point in the last two millennia, and,
if current trends continue, by the end of the century
it will likely be hotter than at any point in the last
two million years."
The relationship between carbon dioxide buildup and the
accelerating rise in the earth's temperature is well
established. It can seem almost binary--and therefore
both predictable and controllable. It's the kind of
thing Americans have traditionally been good at: figure
out the point at which the temperature rise becomes a
problem, invent new technology, cut the levels of
carbon emissions accordingly and presto, no more
problem! But what renders the equation far more
volatile are what Kolbert and Flannery refer to as
"feedback loops," a generic term for the many ways in
which the simple carbon dioxide buildup tends to feed
on itself within the larger, almost impossibly complex,
climate system. These feedback loops include the fact
that the Arctic ice sheet is melting and that the open
water thus exposed absorbs more heat than the ice-
covered ocean. The more the Arctic Ocean is exposed,
therefore, the faster the heat rises. The resulting
rise in Arctic temperatures has already begun to melt
the Arctic permafrost, which is then likely to release
enormously more carbon--frozen in place since the last
ice age. An increasingly warmed atmosphere holds more
water vapor (another greenhouse gas), and thus the
cycle is further accelerated. As part of the general
warming, the ocean too will warm, which will result in
alterations to prevailing currents that are expected to
cause regional droughts. One such drought is predicted
for the Amazon, where, in some climate models, rainfall
will decline by more than 60 percent, the temperature
will rise ten degrees centigrade and the world's
largest rain forest will be transformed into an arid
savannah. This in turn will release the carbon
suspended in the forest into the atmosphere, further
accelerating what seems like a distressingly
unstoppable cycle. In other words, even if the
relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide and
temperature is well established, the ways in which it
plays out over the entire climate system are not.
Kolbert notes that much of the interaction between the
almost infinite variables involved in climate
prediction can only usefully be examined in computer
models of such complexity that running a single climate
simulation can occupy a supercomputer for a month. The
knowledge that derives from such modeling is
necessarily esoteric, and it has left the scientists
who run these computer studies tremendously concerned.
A Princeton engineering professor, Robert Socolow,
tells Kolbert that "in most of the cases, it's the lay
community that is more exercised, more anxious.... But,
in the climate case, the experts--the people who work
with the climate models every day...they are more
concerned. They're going out of their way to say, 'Wake
up!' "
What specifically worries global-warming specialists is
that because the overall process is so inadequately
understood, the effects of the change already set in
motion may become irreversible before we're even aware
of it. The earth could soon reach a tipping point at
which we might inadvertently bust our ways out of our
10,000-year cocoon of climate stability and into
something else altogether. A scientist with whom
Kolbert speaks likens the process to that of rocking a
large boulder on the side of a hill: "So you start
rocking it...and finally it starts moving. And then you
realize, Maybe this wasn't the best idea. That's what
we're doing as a society. This climate, if it starts
rolling, we don't really know where it will stop."
There is ample evidence that such tipping points have
occurred in the past. Flannery notes that Greenland ice
cores contain a record from 8,200 years ago of a period
in which the temperature suddenly dropped five degrees
centigrade and stayed that way for the next 200 years.
This was, Flannery and Kolbert speculate, the result of
a temporary collapse of the Gulf Stream--an ocean
current that channels tropical waters to the North
Atlantic and keeps the Northern Hemisphere warm. The
flow of the Gulf Stream is intimately connected with
the behavior of the Arctic ice caps, and evidence shows
that the Gulf Stream has collapsed in the past.
Researchers in England have already detected a
weakening of Gulf Stream currents that may or may not
be connected to the recent increased melting of Arctic
ice.
Lest even raising this prospect seems alarmist, let it
be known that the Pentagon, according to Flannery, has
already made a Gulf Stream-collapse study of its own.
Not surprisingly, the study, published in 2003, found
national security implications. In addition to the
Northern Hemisphere turning sharply colder, the
Pentagon anticipated such a collapse leaving large
swatches of the tropics much warmer. The study fears
this could require the United States to seal its
borders against a flood of desperate immigrants. Mere
predictions? Maybe, maybe not. Part of the fascination
of the debate over global warming is the contrast
between the direness of such predictions and the
underlying incompleteness of knowledge. This is not a
point that either Kolbert or Flannery emphasize
(although neither do they hide it). Because of the
urgency of the situation and the well-known
intransigence of the White House, industry groups and
their political affiliates (Senator James Inhofe of
Oklahoma famously referred to global warming as "the
greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American
people"), both authors tend to make the case for global
warming--to emphasize what's known at the expense of
what's not. This is entirely understandable--virtually
everything that's known about global warming is
alarming, and each new incremental bit of knowledge
seems to make it more so--but it raises an interesting
question that is perhaps close to the heart of why
Kolbert and Flannery seem to fear that the global
warming phenomenon may, ultimately, be an impossible
one for us to cope with.
Kolbert quotes a 2005 statement by James Connaughton,
head of the White House Council on Environmental
Quality, as saying of global warming that "we are still
working on the issue of causation, the extent to which
humans are a factor." This, in turn, is a polite
variation on Inhofe's argument when he refers to global
warming as "an article of religious faith" for
"alarmists." You can dismiss such statements as classic
Bush Administration disingenuousness, or you can admit
that they have a root connection to legitimate
epistemological questions surrounding the implications
of climate change. Flannery quotes Jack Hollander,
emeritus professor of Energy and Resources at the
University of California, Berkeley, who is skeptical
about the accuracy of climate modeling systems, which
he thinks "do not provide an adequate basis for the
catastrophic generalizations about future climate."
Even Robert Socolow, referring to the changes he feels
will be necessary to stabilize the warming climate,
tells Kolbert that "the earth is a twitchy system. It's
clear from the record that it does things that we don't
fully understand. And we're not going to understand
them in the time period we have to make these
decisions."
The important thing is to admit that the incompleteness
of knowledge, the very difficulty in describing the
complex relationship between cause and effect, is a
factor in the global-warming debate. Flannery observes
that climate change has "deep political and industrial
implications" that arise from "the core processes of
our civilization's success." The truth is that in order
to address it, people are going to have to make radical
adjustments not just in the ways they live but also in
the ways they understand their roles in the world. This
will cut a lot deeper than just trading in the Hummer
for a hybrid. Ultimately, the process of accommodating
to global warming is likely to demand the
transformation of our dispersed suburban existences,
our automobile and international-trade-based shopping
malls, our coal-based electrical generation, our
petroleum-based agriculture and food-distribution
systems. What's interesting is that at least some of
the scientists Kolbert and Flannery interviewed think
that technologically such transformations are within
reach. Socolow tells Kolbert that a carbon tax that
might add $15 to the average American utility bill
would create a sufficient incentive to begin to turn
people away from at least carbon-based electricity--the
single greatest generator of atmospheric carbon
dioxide. Marty Hoffert, the New York University
physicist, argues that a $10 billion or $20 billion
budget for primary research into new energy sources
would be enough to at least jump-start a serious
alternative-energy research program. But Hoffert also
marvels at the peculiar logic that makes such an
expenditure a political impossibility while the Bush
Administration's Star Wars missile defense system is
entirely acceptable, even though it has already cost
the public close to $100 billion and has yet to produce
a workable system.
The problem is that the very complexity of the cause-
and-effect relationship is a major factor in global
warming politics. In the prevailing profoundly anti-
science, anti-intellectual climate in this country,
will Americans--who produce a quarter of the world's
greenhouse gases--be able to follow the complex chain
of causality to connect global-warming-induced changes
to their patterns of consumption? The melting of the
polar ice caps may be something that the voting public
can easily associate with global warming. So will the
disappearance of polar bears from the wild and the
disappearance of glaciers from Glacier National Park,
but will voters who have been bombarded with cynicism
toward "liberal elites" be willing to listen to the
country's scientists and make radical changes based on
an increased frequency of Category 5 hurricanes, or
persistent and ever-more severe droughts in the Amazon,
the African Sahel or even the American West? The
alternative, which in some ways seems more likely, is
that these phenomena, which are certain to increase in
a complex relationship to global warming, will result
in a new isolationism, more demagoguery and perhaps
more millennial religious thinking--as new and better
reasons to despair of the rest of the world, close our
borders and retreat into gated communities. You can't
sign off on global warming, however, without returning
to the central question: If the world has frequently
been as warm or warmer than it is likely to be in the
near future, why is the increased warmth such a
problem? Tim Flannery points to the several-thousand-
year period at the end of the last ice age when the
world's temperature rose by five degrees centigrade.
This was the fastest recorded rise, he notes, in recent
earth history. It also happens that five degrees
centigrade is the same degree of temperature rise that
many climatologists expect the earth to have
experienced between the beginning of the industrial
revolution--the late eighteenth century--and perhaps
the middle of this century. The difference, of course,
is that our five-degree rise is happening--as Flannery
points out--thirty times faster than the one at the
close of the last ice age.
There are many problems that will result from this
extreme rise in the earth's temperature, but high among
them is the difficulty that many of the earth's living
things will have in adjusting. Flannery points out, for
example, that 14,000 years ago, toward the end of the
last ice age, the types of forests that now grow around
Montreal grew in Florida. The geologically rapid change
in temperature that led to an ecological migration from
Miami to Montreal nevertheless took place over several
thousand subsequent years. At that point, such
migrations were biologically possible. Flannery points
out that "trees, birds, insects--indeed entire biotas--
would migrate the length of continents as they tracked
conditions suitable for them."
But in today's world and on the greatly accelerated
time scale of modern global warming, is such adaptation
still a possibility? In 2005 the United Nations
published a "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment," a study
that noted that as the human population topped 6
billion, the demands it was placing on the natural
world had degraded, isolated or eliminated many
ecological systems. Human actions, it observed, were
"fundamentally, and to a significant extent
irreversibly, changing the diversity of life on Earth."
The study notes the key role that biological diversity
plays in allowing ecological systems to adapt and
concludes that most of the human-induced changes
"represent a loss of biodiversity."
Flannery observes that much biodiversity on today's
earth is concentrated in national parks. Many of these
parks, however, are surrounded by what he refers to as
"human-modified landscapes"--agricultural fields,
monoculture forests, superhighways, industrial,
suburban and urban sprawl, malls--that will act as
barriers to the types of ecosystem migrations that took
place during earlier periods of temperature rise. Will
these parks turn into biological traps? Will whole
ecological systems, locked into island parks, be doomed
to extinction? Both Kolbert and Flannery cite a recent
British study, published in Nature, which surveyed
1,103 species of plants and animals drawn from regions
covering 20 percent of the globe and looked at how
they'd fare by the end of this century under different
temperature-rise scenarios. Depending on the scenario,
the study anticipated rates of extinction of 20 to 33
percent--at least one in five species. For species that
are locked into place and at the high end of predicted
temperature rise, the study projects a much higher
extinction rate--58 percent.
Should we be concerned about this? We should be if only
for one good reason. Chris Thomas of the University of
York, the principal author of the extinction study,
points out that crops are biological species, as are
diseases. If there's overwhelming evidence that species
are changing their distribution, he explains to
Kolbert, "we're going to have to expect exactly the
same for crops and pests and diseases." In other words,
areas that are already likely to be afflicted by
temperature rise and drought may soon also be afflicted
by regionally new diseases and regionally new
agricultural pests--afflictions to which they will have
little or no immunity. Flannery anticipates a tripling
of the percent of the world's population at risk for
food shortage. Kolbert notes that shifts in monsoon
patterns and ocean currents could produce streams of
refugees numbering in the millions.
Even reading about such propects can seem overwhelming.
The gravity of the subject clearly gets to Flannery,
who, in a coda to his book, suggests the creation of a
corps of international United Nations-like green-
helmeted carbon police. This is a non-starter if there
ever was one. Kolbert, by contrast, expresses her
opinions through the many scientists she's interviewed
and seems to have arrived at a deep fatalism. She
quotes Marty Hoffert: "I'm not sure we can solve the
problem. I hope we can. I think we have a shot. I mean,
it may be that we're not going to solve global warming,
the earth is going to become an ecological disaster,
and, you know, somebody will visit in a few hundred
million years and find there were some intelligent
beings who lived here for a while, but they just
couldn't handle the transition from being hunter-
gatherers to high technology."
_______________________________________________________
portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news,
discussion and debate service of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to
provide varied material of interest to people on the
left.
For answers to frequently asked questions:
http://www.portside.org/faq
To subscribe, unsubscribe or change settings:
http://lists.portside.org/mailman/listinfo/portside
To submit material, paste into an email and send to:
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