Hans Ebeling Koning (1931)
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Illustration by Alex Ebel from Science Year: The World Book Science Annual, 1976.
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Interesting proposal by Nate Loewentheil in a guest column in The New York Times. Not only was his proposal thought provoking, but two of the comments regarding it by readers were also worth contemplating. Below are some excerpts from the column, followed by the two comments.
Here is a proposal for the environmental movement: Pool philanthropic funds for a day, buy a small plot of land in Washington, D.C., and put up a tall marble wall to serve as a climate memorial. Carve on this memorial the names of public figures actively denying the existence of climate change. Carve the names so deep and large, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren need not search the archives.
This is not a metaphor. The problem with climate change is the disconnect between action and impact. If politicians vote against construction standards and a school collapses, the next election will be their last. But with climate change, cause and effect are at a vast distance.
We are already seeing the consequences of our past and present greenhouse gas emissions. In coming decades, those emissions will wreak their full havoc on the climate, and it will take hundreds, possibly thousands, of years for those pollutants to fully dissipate. But in the short term, the most immediate burdens are borne mostly by the poor in America and distant people in distant lands. Misaligned incentives are at the heart of why some political and business leaders deny and delay.
[...]
I would first nominate those who have sown confusion over climate science, like Myron Ebell, who recently retired as director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, where he sought to block climate change efforts in Congress, and served as the head of Donald Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Ebell has argued that the idea that climate change is “an existential threat or even crisis is preposterous.”
Then there are lawmakers who have consistently stood in the way of federal action, like the recently retired senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the author of the book “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”
[color emphasis added]
Below is the first thought provoking comment to this article:
There is, in Iceland, a memorial to a dead glacier - the Ok Glacier. It reads: "Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it." [color emphasis added]
--Chris D., Colorado
Photo of the plaque at the at the Okjökull (OK Glacier) memorial.
Here is the second thought provoking comment to this article:
For reference this graph https://i.redd.it/ljifc828iui31.jpg is from the Exxon internal scientific report on climate change, 1982, produced by scientists working for that fossil fuel corporation.
Look at what their graph predicted for 2020.
Approaching 420 ppm CO2 and a rise of 1.2 C degrees above pre-industrial temperature - very close to what we actually got in 2020.
Then look at what the graph shows for later this century, based on not reducing emissions.
Very serious temperature rises, that could make agriculture very difficult in many countries.
Yes, and then Exxon, having seen this, got involved in PR campaigns to "cast doubt" on climate science, to protect their assets. [color emphasis added]
--Erik Frederiksen, Ashville, NC
1982 Exxon graph depicting average global temperature increases over time correlating with increases in atmospheric CO2. NOTE: Graph color was modified for greater clarity.
Fossil fuel companies like Exxon, and fossil fuel oligarchs like the Koch brothers should be included in any "Climate Wall of Shame."
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feeling very keenly today the way that gender transgressors from the past have such larger-than-life personalities -- the way their disobedience and outlawism creates fantastic, heroic, eccentric revolutionaries and how that language plays into modern day mythologies without attaching itself to the people who created the language in the first place (ex. rebels against The System) and how many of these people came from poverty or even slavery and how many were sex workers at one time or another and how many were considered mad by their peers and how many of them existed along axes of oppression
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Mary Ebeling - Healthcare and big data: digital specters and phantom objects
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