portraits / Spheniscidae
Portraits / Felidae
Portraits / Ocean Animals
Been working on portraits of my friends, wending their way between spirit animals and formal (or practical) considerations.
- Ruth (Cheloniida)
saviours vow to keep the red flag flying
Published Date: 09 November 2005 
By Grant Woodward
ITS flame red coat was once a familiar sight in gardens and woodlands the length and breadth of Yorkshire.
The mischievous exploits of Squirrel Nutkin in the popular tales penned by Beatrix Potter won the red squirrel a place in the hearts of children everywhere.
However, the species now teeters on the brink of extinction – pushed there by a ruthless transatlantic rival.
The American grey squirrel has over the years muscled in on its traditional food supplies to the point where greys currently out-number reds by 66 to one.
The invasion has raised the very real threat that the red squirrel will disappear for good.Thankfully, help is now at hand.
A far-reaching plan to save the red squirrel from being wiped out was formally launched today by leading scientists and conservation experts.The North of England Red Squirrel Conservation Strategy aims to bring together wildlife groups as well as landowners, businesses, and the local community in the battle to ensure its survival.
The woodlands chosen will be managed to get the right mix of trees in terms of species and age structure to support healthy populations of red squirrels, but which are less well-suited to the higher energy demands of the larger grey. Targeted grey squirrel control will also take place in “buffer zones” surrounding the reserves to protect the red populations.
Landowners and farmers in the reserves and surrounding buffer zones have already announced their support for the plan.
They will be armed with all the expert advice, training and support needed for effective red squirrel conservation.
The Forestry Commission will also provide support in the form of cash grants to help private landowners with the cost of red squirrel conservation in and around the reserves.
(Full text at the Yorkshire Evening Post)
Copenhagen1
Protesters bring out giants of various sorts to depict current woes. These range from the practical – cut down or eliminate meat consumption – to ghoulish and alien apocalypse-builders.
(What surprises me is how few protest-based image makers utilize any newer media tactics. It could almost be 1975.)
Slide show at NY Times.
Scared Silly Over Climate Change
I have been revisiting writers focused on climate change, and thought again of Bjoern Lomborg the “climate skeptic.”.
He’s a Danish statistician and the author of the books The Skeptical Environmentalist and most recently Cool It. Environmentalists tend to hate him, although I read Cool It and he has many valid positions on misspent money and hysterical priorities that are wobbled far off-balance.
When you read his FAQ, you see some sensible opinions:
Lomborg finds that the smartest way to tackle global warming is to invest heavily in R&D in non-carbon emitting technologies, which will enable everyone to switch over to cheaper-than-fossil-fuel technologies sooner and thus dramatically reduce the 21st century emissions. Specifically, he suggests a ten-fold increase in R&D in non-CO2 -emitting energy technologies like solar, wind, carbon capture, fusion, fission, energy conservation etc…. This is entirely in line with the top recommendation from the Copenhagen Consensus 2008, which includes some of the word’s top economists and five Nobel Laureates.
That said, I looked today at his recent news on his web site, and I DO see a reason to find him dangerous: his recent writing includes an anecdotal series of portrayals of African and Indian poor whose pressing issues are disease, poverty, hunger. These articles – which have been published in the last 6 months in the Wall Street Journal de-emphasize the urgency of addressing climate change, and tacitly fuel financiers, policy-makers and the public who tend to agree (ironically) with the impoverished subjects of Lomborg’s reports: that climate change is an abstraction, its harms are so far down the line both in terms of time and in terms of consideration.
But some of his complicating the media perceptions is very productive. Like this essay of his from June 2009 The Guardian, entitled Scared Silly Over Climate Change:
Exaggeration also wears out the public’s willingness to tackle global warming. If the planet is doomed, people wonder, why do anything? A record 54% of American voters now believe the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is. A majority of people now believe – incorrectly – that global warming is not even caused by humans. In the United Kingdom, 40% believe that global warming is exaggerated and 60% doubt that it is man-made.
But the worst cost of exaggeration, I believe, is the unnecessary alarm that it causes – particularly among children. Recently, I discussed climate change with a group of Danish teenagers. One of them worried that global warming would cause the planet to “explode” – and all the others had similar fears.
His detractors are vocal!
Here’s one site, Lomborg’s Errors