MARINA ZURKOW
New year, new thread, I’m on sabbatical from ITP, and starting almost 3 months of deep research out of town – in the Gulf of Mexico, and in Minneapolis for a new umbrella project called Making the Best of It. Here’s a nano description: Making the Best of It is the umbrella concept for a series of regionally site-specific…
“Weather surgeons draw silk through needles, close the eye of the storm.” – Karen An-hwei Lee, from the poem Dream of Inflation I came across a particularly virulent strain of enviro-bashing in the work of Telegraph.co.uk pundit James Delingpole, who has authored, among other things: Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colors (find out what global…
The subject line is Percy Shelley’s. This part of an essay by Tim Morton, “Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There!” included in the exhibit/site RETHINK — Contemporary Art & Climate Change (2009). Among other provocative chunks and challenges: Along with figuring out what implications science has for society and so on, humanists should be asking…
Here’s an excerpt from a cautiously optimistic article in response to all the end-times weather we are having worldwide. From climate change writer Paul Gilding’s blog, The Cocaktoo Chronicles : Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times recently: “The evidence does, in fact, suggest that what we’re getting now is a first taste of…
..from the fantastic artists / visulaizers Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones. London Futures is a new exhibit on display at the Museum Of London featuring images depicting the possibilities that could await London in a future devastated by climate change, as imagined by artists Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones. The gallery showcases 14 digitally crafted…
The Northwest Passage–the legendary shipping route through ice-choked Canadian waters at the top of the world–melted free of ice last week, and is now open for navigation, according to satellite mosaics available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and The University of Illinois Cryosphere Today. This summThe Northwest Passage–the legendary shipping route through…
I find it amazing and exhausting that people are surprised about The Weather. But then there are those who make silk purses out of it, like pollution magnate David Koch: “Global warming could be good for the planet, Koch says. ‘A far greater land area will be available to produce food.’” – from New York…
A study conducted by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley and the U.S. Forest Service projects major vegetation shifts worldwide if greenhouse gas emissions are not brought under control and the Earth continues to rapidly warm. The study forecasts that by 2100 much of Arctic tundra will replaced by boreal forest and that deserts…
Much good writing came out in response to the wan wrap up in Copenhagen. Sadly, and from a narrow telescope deservedly, Obama is the butt of some bitter wallops. To name two in the post-haze of COP15: Bill McKibben’s piece for Yale Environment 360, “Copenhagen: Things Fall Apart and an Uncertain Future Looms” (excerpt): James…
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.
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…
The jumps are so crazy – ours and China’s. Obama has agreed to go to Copenhagen – albeit on the front end of the talks. Breeze through and set the bar? I don’t mean to sound so dubious, but the stalemate between China and us is already nearly set, with smaller countries caviling about why…
an article on protests in response to the pending Cap and Trade Bill. Uh, what’s wrong with this picture? This was the first of a series of about 20 rallies planned for Southern and oil-producing states to organize resistance to proposed legislation that would set a limit on emissions of heat-trapping gases, requiring many companies…
…from an article in the NY Times today about a pro-oil, anti Cap n Trade Bill rally in Houston : A public relations company hired by a pro-coal industry group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, recently sent at least 58 fake letters opposing new climate laws to members of Congress. The letters, forged…
Today’s NY Times article “Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security:” “We will pay for this one way or another,” Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine and the former head of the Central Command, wrote recently in a report he prepared as a member of a military advisory board on energy and climate…
Dear President Obama, I just finished reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s article in June 29 2009 issue of The New Yorker called “The Catastrophist,” a profile of climatologist James Hansen. I have thought many times about how to compose any kind of letter that would at least have meaning to me, if not to the administration, but…