Less than a week ago, Act leader Rodney Hide sent an “open letter” to John Key outlining his stance on the Emissions Trading Scheme. In it he says:
So I’m not as worried about the future of the planet as I used to be. Even the UN now admits the globe stopped warming in 1998. [emphasis mine]
Take a look at the graph above and see what he’s done here. Technically 1998 was a very warm year and we’ve not had temperatures to match it since. Up until now people who have had an axe to grind have been misleading the public by phrasing this in ways to make it appear as if global warming has miraculously stopped somehow but Hide goes a step further and turns misdirection into an outright lie.
The UN have never, to my knowledge, said that global warming has stopped. The figures, even when taken selectively, don’t lend support to this concept.
Now, I like Hide as a person but we can’t afford to have people in his postition of influence spreading outright lies like this to the general public and for policy to be made based on these lies.
These are fairly old but I only just stumbled upon them. Some good insights from David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, Richard Leakey and Jane Goodall on the environment and the future of our planet.
In 1973 the BBC released a TV documentary series in 13 episodes by mathematician Jacob Bronowski called The Ascent Of Man. 35 years later I purchased it as a DVD box set on the recommendation of a fellow science documentary aficionado.
It’s extremely good! And I’m not just saying that in the context of the era in which it was produced. Sure, some of the music grates on the nerves and some of the graphics don’t compare to what we are capable of these days but overall it’s got a depth that is often missing from the kind of documentaries found on the Discovery Channel. Actually, I take back my comment about the music; it features music from Meddle - my second-favourite Pink Floyd album - which, for me, redeems a multitude of musical sins.
Bronowski is thoughtful, poetic and very deliberate in every sentence. He gives you the feeling that he is treating you, the viewer, as an equal throughout and he conveys a sense of awe that is impossible to resist.
Most moving for me was a scene where Bronowski is visiting a Nazi concentration camp where many of his relatives were murdered. According to the interview with Attenborough in the bonus material the entire scene was spontaneous and filmed in a single take:
Bronowski died a year later of a heart attack at the age of 66.
I’m not sure whether this experiment has been done before but I was watching some videos on YouTube and noticed that with some speakers/shouters my heart rate seemed to increase. I’m not sure whether this is because I agree or disagree strongly with what they are saying or whether it is some kind of natural human response to emotion or a particular pitch in voices (sort of like the urge to cry when seeing someone else cry or laugh when you hear laughter).
An interesting experiment would be to play a series of audio clips of various speakers to people whilst monitoring their heart rates. It would be handy to have them also rate the clips on how strongly they agree or disagree with the speaker.
Once the results were in I then wonder if you could use software to analyse the audio and make predictions as to how strongly a person is likely to respond on an emotional level to a particular style of speech.
Recently Michael Shermer received an angry letter from a Jew who’d seen the film Expelled. He discussed the issue with Richard Dawkins and they decided to write an open letter in the hopes of setting the record straight for anyone else misled by Ben Stein and the deceptive film makers. Read on.
Dear Mr J
Michael Shermer forwarded me a letter from you which suggests that you have unfortunately been taken in by Ben Stein’s mendacious and/or ignorant suggestion that Darwin is somehow to blame for Hitler. I hope you will not mind if I write to you and try to undo this grievous error.
1. I deeply sympathize with you for the loss of your relatives in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, I don’t think that could really be said to justify the tone of your letter to Michael Shermer, who is a kind and decent man, as even you seemed to concede in your second letter to him, and the very antithesis of a Nazi sympathizer.
Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!
Just look at those words of yours. Probably you regret them by now. I certainly hope so, but I’ll continue to write my letter to you, on the assumption that you still feel at least a part of what you wrote.
I’ve been bellyaching for years now about how silly it is that there is no way to cycle from Auckland’s North Shore to the city centre. I discovered getacross.org.nz yesterday and encourage everyone to take a moment to visit and register your support for the idea.
The bicycle is the most energy-efficient machine ever made. You give it a drop of oil each month and all you have to do is eat some food to power it. Bicycles take up far less room on the road and can travel almost half as fast as a car on the open road and it often faster than cars in city traffic. Cycling is also far better for your health than sitting in a car.
The next time you are able to observe a traffic queue at lights try to imagine all the cars gone and the occupants standing on the road exactly where they are. You’ll see that cars are a cumbersome and grossly inefficient way of getting around within a city.
The downside of riding a bicycle in a city built for cars is that you act like a human pollution filter (especially if you are puffing a bit) and it is horrendously easy to get yourself killed.
I’d like to see our cities redesigned to favour walkers and cyclists and have car traffic relegated to motorways and as second-rate citizens within cities themselves. Cars are still useful and are probably here to stay but we need to recognise that there are better ways of getting around our cities and that one of the things holding this back is the fact that our infrastructure is often designed exclusively for motor vehicles without regard to walkers or cyclists.
I live and work from home which means I don’t get out as often as is probably healthy. A lot of my view of the world is formed by the news I read and sometimes I find myself getting a little pessimistic.
I came across the following statistics last week while reading Freakonomics (thoroughly recommended) which helped put things into perspective. If you think humanity is going to hell in a handbasket I hope these figures help you as much as they did me:
HOMICIDES [not incl. wars] per 100,000 people
En
N+B
Sc
G+S
It
13th and 14th c.
23.0
47.0
na
37.0
56.0
15th c.
na
45.0
46.0
16.0
73.0
16th c.
7.0
25.0
21.0
11.0
47.0
17th c.
5.0
7.5
18.0
7.0
32.0
18th c.
1.5
5.5
1.9
7.5
10.5
19th c.
1.7
1.6
1.1
2.8
12.6
1900-1949
0.8
1.5
0.7
1.7
3.2
1950-1994
0.9
0.9
0.9
1.0
1.5
*En = England, N+B = Netherlands and Belgium, Sc = Scandinavia, G+S = Germany and Swizerland, It = Italy
(Source: Manuel Eisner, “Violence and the Rise of Modern Society” Criminology in Cambridge, October 2003, pp 3-7)
Carl Sagan died eleven years ago today. His enthusiasm for the universe and everything in it was contagious and he is responsible for the sense of awe I and many, many others feel when we look up at the stars at night.
Our brains are not capable of comprehending the true vastness of space but Carl managed to help us expand our comprehension to the point of vertigo and, with it, and closer understanding of our true standing within the universe.
My thoughts are with his family and I, like many others, wish he was still here.
