Lines of evidence: How do we know about climate change?

For anyone still confused as to how we know that the climate is changing and that the changes are largely driven by human activities, this 26 minute video from the US National Academies gives an excellent and authoritative overview of the evidence. None of this is remotely controversial amongst the world's peak scientific bodies, despite much obfuscation and confusion through the media and blogs for political, economic and ideological purposes.

The Pope and the Cardinal: Hamilton on climate ethics and the Catholic Church

"Simple principles and a modicum of self-sacrifice can slice through the most difficult ethical tangles. The simple principles are known; the only thing missing is a little selflessness or even enlightened self-interest. So the big question to ask is why it has been in such short supply?

"I think there have been a number of factors at work. Let me here comment on two of the most telling, leaving aside the exercise of brute political power by fossil fuel corporations.

"First, there is the intensely materialistic nature of affluent societies like ours. In societies where consumerism reigns, people's identities become bound up in how much and what they consume. In these circumstances it becomes easy for opponents of measures to cut carbon emissions to frighten people into thinking they may have to adjust their lifestyles, or make significant sacrifices, for then it seems like a threat to their sense of self. So the psychological pressures of consumerism come into conflict with our desire to be good citizens. Each time an Australian political leader responds to the public demand to "do something" about climate change, he or she attracts resentment and is punished. Most Australians want symbolic actions that make them feel good about themselves but which have no discernible effect on their way of life.

"The second source of moral corruption is the influence of those who repudiate the science of climate change. They portray themselves as "sceptics," but they are more accurately described as deniers. A sceptic is one who carefully filters received knowledge to see which propositions stand up to independent scrutiny. But one thing we immediately notice about the contributions of climate 'sceptics' is the absence of a quizzical, thoughtful approach. Among those who debate the science of climate change they are the ones who profess to be most certain, insisting vehemently on the falsity of the claims of climate scientists and convinced of the correctness of their own opinions."

- Clive Hamilton, The church and the ethics of climate change.
H/T Peter Lockhart.

A better title for this piece might have been "The Roman Catholic church and the ethics of climate change" since, after a lengthy introduction justifying the idea that climate is a moral issue, much of the article is a comparison of the respective positions and mindsets of Sydney's Cardinal Pell and Pope Benedict XVI. Cardinal Pell is well known in Australia for his vociferous denial of climate science, part of a broader rejection of everything associated with environmentalism as a false religion. In stark contrast, Pope Benedict has continued the insistence of his predecessor John Paul II that how we treat God's creation and care for those most vulnerable to ecological degradation are non-negotiable elements of Christian discipleship today.

Clive Hamilton's contributions to climate ethics are always worth reading, and the other book he quotes in this article (A Perfect Moral Storm by Stephen Gardiner) is also a quality piece of work, filled with a sensitivity to our capacity to fool ourselves. All too quickly, we subvert our moral responsibilities in ways that serve our self-interest, a process that Gardiner terms "moral corruption". This is especially true in all kinds of interesting ways with regard to climate change. Such self-serving delusions come as no great surprise to anyone familiar with the holy scriptures. Gardiner's attentiveness to this tendency is the kind of sensitivity that Christian belief and practice ought to inculcate. I'm not sure of Gardiner's religious convictions or background, but his insights here are excellent.

Hamilton takes Gardiner's observations but wants to deny that they form any kind of convenient excuse. While the details of responding well to climate change are incredibly complex, the basic outline of who is responsible to take the lead in addressing it has already been clearly drawn by international negotiations. Therefore, our collective paralysis cannot be blamed purely on the complexity of the ethical disputes. And here, Gardiner's insights into moral corruption are highly appropriate.

What both Hamilton and Gardiner lack is a compelling account of how we are to deal with our moral corruption (though, to be sure, they both have insights to offer on this as well), let alone how to live amongst a morally corrupt people.

Droughts and flooding rain

A couple of years ago, I used to notice - amongst the usual flotsam and jetsam of half-baked semi-truths, muddled confusion, conspiracy theories, ideological axes, pay-per-comment outright deception and opportunistic spin that passes for much of online climate science dissent - some commenters mocking the idea that a warming world might bring both more droughts and more floods. Now some managed to get past the initial intelligence test by realising that one location might get wetter while another becomes drier, but the second hurdle was realising that the mainstream prediction is (and has been for some time) that in some instances, increased droughts and increased flooding might be likely to occur in the same location.

But today - after the severe Australian drought of the naughties being followed by the wettest 24 months on record, a rare hosepipe ban and widespread drought in England followed by the wettest April and June on record and last year's record Mississippi floods prior to recent reports of grounded barges from river levels 15m lower than a year ago - I don't seem to hear that comment much anymore.

A warming world doesn't just mean a hotter world, but one capable of all kinds of greater extremes.
Image by JKS.

Whistling in the dark

Coral reefs: More than 2,600 marine biologists have signed a Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs, warning of the unprecedented challenges faced by coral reefs from warming, acidifying and rising oceans (due to CO₂ emissions), overfishing, sedimentation, pollution and habitat destruction.

Coral reefs (again): A world without coral reefs is coming, probably much sooner than you think, according to ANU ecologist Roger Bradbury, who thinks the statement mentioned above is a form of collective denial. "It’s past time to tell the truth about the state of the world’s coral reefs, the nurseries of tropical coastal fish stocks. They have become zombie ecosystems, neither dead nor truly alive in any functional sense, and on a trajectory to collapse within a human generation."

Perverse incentives: Why the US Farm Bill just encourages more of the same mistake.

US Drought: the largest agricultural disaster area ever declared, covering more than half the lower 48. This US summer has been off the charts, but on our present trajectory even the hottest summers of the late 20thC will be cooler than the coolest summers of the mid-late 21stC in much of the inhabited world. And you don't want to know what the 22ndC then has in store, since if we get that far, warming is unlikely to stop there.

Chernobyl: It's not over yet. Half the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is forest, mainly highly flammable pine forest, radioactive flammable pine forest. A major fire could send radioactive particules high into the atmosphere and across much of Europe. Again.

UK floods: It didn't take much foresight to see that cutting the budget for flood defences was not a smart move in a nation predicted to get wetter. And the victims are not confined to dwellers in low-lying houses.

Australia in denial: Joe Romm's popular climate blog highlights the precarious position of Australian climate policy, where the tiny baby steps so far made could soon be undone. From one perspective, the current climate legislation might actually be functioning as a distraction, given its lack of ambition yet the tepidness of popular support for anything stronger. But I suspect that the repeal of the legislation would only shift public opinion further into the sand.

Lack of environment: a blog recommendation

• Australian? Check.
• Blogger? Check.
• Christian? Check.
• Living in the UK? Check.
• Deeply concerned that we're collectively heading into very dangerous waters as we burn every last scrap of fossil carbon we can get our hands on in order to run our shiny throw-away toys that distract us from the insanity of pursuing endless growth on a finite planet? Check.

Given that we share so much in common, I warmly encourage you to check out Lack of Environment, the blog of Martin Lack in which he rants, ruminates and reports on "the politics & psychology underlying the denial of all environmental problems".

I haven't been keeping up with a host of recommendations for blogs I've discovered over the last few years. Perhaps I will try to scatter a few more around, but you can also check out some of the links in the sidebar.

Assorted opinions

The Conversation: Celebrating 150 years of captivity. I am increasingly uneasy about the ambiguities involved in most zoos. This piece articulates a number of them succinctly.

NY Mag: Sugar Daddies. Sugar Daddies are "private donors or their privately held companies writing checks totaling $1 million or more (sometimes much more) in this [US] election cycle." Some profiles on those spending most to influence the 2012 US presidential election.

Biologos: Thinking aloud together (part 2, part 3). Scot McKnight ponders how to get scientists and pastors talking about the implications of evolutionary biology and human origins.

Rachel Held Evans: 15 reasons I left church. Though many are quite US-centric, these are worth pondering. I'm sure I could add a few more.

Stephen King: Tax me, for F@%&’s Sake!. Multi-millionaire horror writer joins Warren Buffet and numerous other super-rich figures in calling for much higher taxes on themselves. King brings his own (very profitable but not always highbrow) blend of narrative shock and awe to the argument.

ABC: Why we hate Gillard so much. "[T]here are three pertinent distinctions between this government and the Howard Government: it is a Labor Government, it is a minority government, and the current prime minister is a woman."

Brad reflects on economies of deception - "When the pursuit of profit becomes a self-justifying end, truth becomes a readily dispensable commodity, because truth will not maximize profit" - and reviews the important book Merchants of Doubt.

Confirmation bias: why I am suspicious of "good" news

The link between poverty and the dangers of our ecological predicament is an important one. Not only are those least responsible for causing the threat already (in general) suffering the early effects, they will (in general) be more vulnerable to worsening climate and ecological impacts. When we add in future generations and other species, then we have three groups who contribution is negligible or even zero but who are very likely to face the most severe effects. The temptation to motivated reasoning that justifies our present behaviours and cultural assumption needs to keep these groups firmly in mind if we are to assess our responsibilities honestly.

One important form of motivated reasoning in this context is confirmation bias, which is a well-established psychological pattern in which we evaluate new experiences and claims through our existing assumptions, preferences and convictions. We all tend to give greater weight to experiences and evidence that confirms what we already believe, rather than those things that disconfirm it, hence we all have a bias towards confirmation.

Particularly for those of us who are rich and comfortable (by global standards) or who hold a belief that we ought to be and/or can soon be, then we have a preference for things to stay as they are (more or less), or at least not to change too quickly. We don't want scientific results that imply doom and gloom to be true, particularly if they also imply our responsible for such outcomes and/or the possibility of mitigating the threat through modifying our habits and assumptions. We are likely to latch onto experiences and claims that help to confirm that preference and to pay less attention to experiences and claims that challenge it.

This is a moral temptation involving our perception of the world. If it is the case that gross injustices exist all around us, and that climate and ecological crises are very likely to contribute to exacerbating them in various ways, then we can be tempted to downplay the moral importance of this information. This might be by denying the science, by saying that we can't do anything about it, by saying that we should focus on a more narrowly defined set of moral concerns (e.g. purely national interest, or perhaps what is directly relevant for me and my family), by claiming that technology will rescue us from any bad consequences and so on. I would argue that part of Christian discipleship is learning to resist such temptations in order to keep having the horizon of our moral vision, to keep discovering that we are neighbours even to those who might not initially appear to be one of "us". The three groups I mentioned - the global poor, future generations and other species - each challenge us to expand the margins of our moral community, to discover neighbours we didn't realise we had. By focussing on what climate change and ecological degradation means and will mean for these groups, whose moral position is most devastatingly unfair, we can seek to foster a deeper and broader empathy and so nurture a richer moral imagination, capable of seeing more clearly the world through the eyes of others.

Asking "what's in it for me?" or "how am I threatened by climate change?" may, depending on one's ability and willingness to look carefully at the implications of the science, produce apathy, or fear and anxiety, or greed, opportunism and tokenism. But asking, "what are the implications for my neighbour, particularly those most vulnerable?" will lead in a very different direction, to a deep concern for others whose present and future flourishing is deeply dependent upon the choices we make yet whose ability to benefit us (at least in ways that generally enter into calculative reason of cost-benefit analyses) is severely limited.

In short, I believe that our climate and ecological crises are manifestations in the social and ecological realms of the visible and outward costs of the idolatry of consumerism and the hubris that sees humanity as exercising mastery over all things, rather than fulfilling the Genesis mandate in the pattern of Christ's rule: by being the servant of all. If this is true, then the temptation to read our predicament as something less than a spiritual crisis will be strong, since we don't like to confront evidence of our own moral failures. We want to believe that it is not as bad as all that, that the danger is still far off, that we are really helpless and bear no responsibility, that we'll find some techno-fix to ensure we don't need to look inside our hearts to see the pollution spreading within that is the root of the pollution without: the physical pollution we breathe and drink and eat and which is presently dissolving the bonds of the community of life.

Of course, it is possible that it is not as bad as all that, that the risk is less imminent than the science suggests, there we truly are impotent in the face of calamity, that a silver bullet (or silver buckshot) wonder technology (or suite of technologies and economic policies) will mean we can keep on going more or less as we are without challenging consumerism. But because we really *want* these things to be true, we ought to be especially suspicious of claims and experiences that encourage us to hold them, constantly testing whether we might be engaged in wishful thinking, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias. Instead, as Christians shaped by the knowledge that faithfulness means constant repentance (our daily bread is confession and reception of forgiveness as much as any wheat-based product), we ought to hold an epistemology that expects true knowledge of the world will frequently reveal us to be in the wrong and in need of repentance and forgiveness.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive account, and it is important to acknowledge that prior to fallenness comes divine blessing on human participation in naming and understanding a good world. I offer no council of epistemological despair or unending scepticism. The suspicion of which I speak serves a positive purpose in service of neighbour and represents a modulation of God's "yes" to the created order, not a displacement of it by a mistrustful "no".

Nonetheless, we walk in the path of one who warned that following him would mean denial of self and carrying a cross. Anything that suggests the path of faithfulness requires the defence of my material prosperity, ease and luxury needs to be double and triple checked. There is no route to resurrection that does not involve mortification.

I am therefore suspicious of pieces of "good news" that purport to minimise our responsibility or the gravity of our situation. Sometimes, they may well be true, but the good news is that following a crucified and risen Lord means being able to look at my and our failings honestly, confident in the knowledge that they are already forgiven, that I am already being empowered to walk a new path, one that is honest and life-giving.

Apathy is not an option

"No one who believes in a God that loves all people should be able to sit by as the wealthy harm the poor on a massive scale."

- John Torrey, Why Religious People Must Speak Up About Climate Change,
Huffington Post, 21st March 2012.

This piece clearly articulates one of the key ethical drives behind caring about climate change. Given that it is the wealthy who are by and large responsible and the poor who are most vulnerable, it represents a form of global injustice. We could add to this that it represents intergeneration injustice, another way in which those who have done little or nothing to contribute to the problem are left with facing the worst consequences.

Beyond injustice, we can also speak of respect for the Creator in respecting creation, our delight in the created order, our debts to and dependence upon the rest of the community of creation, love for our neighbour, prudence in the face of catastrophic harms and the rejection of idolatrous consumerism. There are many avenues into considering why Christians ought to care about our climate crisis (and ecological crises more generally). This Catholic article argues that it is part of a consistent ethic of life. With the potential for conflicts widely acknowledged to be exacerbated by climate change, then those who wish to be blessed as peacemakers should care too. Even those who believe that careful stewardship of economic resources is a high priority must acknowledge that credible climate damages outstrip many of the suggested mitigation strategies.

In short, if the earth is indeed warming, if our actions are the primary driver and if severe negative consequences are likely to continue to mount, then Christian discipleship does not leave room for climate apathy. Each of these claims is well established and the burden of proof lies with those who dissent from them. Christian discipleship also entails intellectual honesty. Honest scepticism is willing to update its beliefs in light of new evidence. If you do find yourself outside the scientific mainstream on this matter, then it may be worth being extra careful in reflecting on why and whether you choose to remain there.

There is more to climate change than these ethical considerations. Theological ethics does not specify in advance the best path of response for our policy, infrastructure or behaviour (though it may give us principles in evaluating proposals, such as being suspicious of the lures of wealth, paying extra attention to the plight of the most vulnerable and so on). For those already concerned, then becoming better educated on this very complex topic is an important next step. But apathy or indifference are not faithful options.

How to talk to a climate change denier (dissenter)

George Marshall offers six strategies for engaging in constructive, rather than merely heated, dialogue: (a) finding common ground; (b) expressing respect; (c) clearly holding your views; (d) explaining the personal journey that led to your own understanding; (e) speaking to people’s worldview and values, and (f) offering rewards that speak to those values. A referenced paper discussing the research behind this video can be found here.

I'm struck by the similarities between these suggestions and the kinds of tips often given in evangelism training courses in how to engage in conversations that open up deeper questions of belief rather than closing them down or degenerating into yelling matches. Most of this advice is relevant to all conversations about potentially sensitive topics.

I admit that I frequently honour many of these suggestions more in the breach than the observance. My temptation is to jump straight into the details of the controversy, when exploring the reasons behind the disagreement may well be more fruitful.

I recommended a longer lecture from George Marshall back here. He also wrote an excellent piece for the Guardian a while back about the dangers of tokenism that I've just come across.

What has smoking got to do with climate change?

DOUBT from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.

Do cigarettes contribute to the warming of the planet? Not really, but the deliberate manufacturing of public doubt in the face of widespread scientific evidence has been the hallmark of industry attempts to delay regulation in both cases. Not only has big oil used the same arguments and tactics as big tobacco, but in some cases, the same individuals. Certainly many of the same anti-regulation think tanks appear as sources of claims that are subsequently picked up and repeated in the mainstream media. Numerous publications have documented the history of these groups, who act as a PR smokescreen for industries in danger of serious public backlash over the dangerous activities from which they profit (for instance, Merchants of Doubt). The goal is not refutation of the science but merely the seeding of public doubt through the appearance of ongoing controversy on topics considered resolved amongst the experts. The question is how long they will be successful. For the link between cigarettes and cancer, such tactics effectively won the tobacco industry three decades of public confusion and regulatory hiatus in which to maximise profits. We don't have three decades in which to delay over climate.

Rupert's pollution: What does UK phone hacking have to do with Australia's carbon debate?

Two apparently very different stories have been dominating the news in the land of my birth and where I currently live.

In the UK, the News of the World phone hacking saga continues to snowball, with more revelations promised. There are now over 4,000 targets identified (including royalty, celebrities, politicians (even Prime Minister Brown), police, as well as bereaved relatives of soldiers, homocides and terrorism victim), but the story has grown much larger as it becomes clear that the real issue is the cover up. The phone hacking itself was illegal and shockingly callous, representing an abuse of society's willingness to grant journalistic freedom in the pursuit of truth (compare the Wikileaks saga, where the revelations are of much greater social significance and the methods used by the media apparently legal). But knowing that the practice was indefensible, it is becoming clear that News of the World apparently went to great lengths to prevent the full extent of the abuse from becoming public: making payments to police, seeking to pay for silence from early victims in a way that would remove evidence from police investigations, obstructing those investigations by foot dragging, destroying evidence, making misleading statements under oath and contributing substantially to a culture of fearful self-protection amongst politicians who might speak out about the problem. It is not yet clear how far up the chain of authority blame lies, but it seems fair to say that if some of the people currently denying knowledge of what was going on are speaking the truth, then they have become immensely successful while simultaneously being willfully neglectful and culpably negligent. The relative portions of blame to be assigned to journalists, editors, owners, police, politicians and the reading public are still unclear, but the problems are systemic.

It is, however, hard to deny that a hefty portion of the culture in which such abuses can occur can be traced to a situation in which a single man owns such a large chunk of the media that he can threaten political careers and so create the complicit silence in which police corruption can flourish and his underlings feel untouchable. Numerous politicians, including Cameron himself, have been emboldened by the events of the last week to admit their fear of Murdoch had lead them to silence or a soft tread.

So my hunch is that such systemic wickedness arises not so much due to the press being under-regulated, as from its being too concentrated. The crimes and wrongdoings that occurred at News of the World (and likely at other major papers) occurred not simply through lack of oversight, but because editors felt that they were in certain senses above the law, that public figures who openly questioned their modus operandi could be crushed in the court of public opinion through the very media they would be trying to shine a light upon.

Removing that dangerous sense of invincibility includes diluting the power of any one individual through diversifying media ownership. And this, of course, is where the BSkyB deal is intimately related to the whole scandal. Not only ought it be thrown out in light of the revelations of widespread illegality and contempt of the rule of law operating within News Corp, but the appropriate response ought to include the break-up of Murdoch's existing empire into smaller pieces to prevent the kinds of concentration of power that help to generate such pervasive corruption.
And to make Murdoch and News Corp pay their taxes. They are amongst the worst offenders for tax dodging. Murdoch has personally dodged hundreds of millions of pounds of taxes, possibly billions. Of course, this doesn't stop his papers offering lectures on the need for austerity measures to balance the budget.

What does this have to do with the carbon debate in Australia? While phone hacking is getting some coverage, the antipodean front pages are filled with claim and counterclaim about atmospheric chemistry and tax reform. The link is Rupert.

Murdoch's media empire spans four continents and is, by some margin, the largest news media conglomerate in the world. And from Fox News to the Australian, from The Wall Street Journal to The Daily Telegraph (the Sydney tabloid, not the UK broadsheet), Murdoch publishes a huge share of the denial, false balance and misinformation about climate change to be found in the mainstream media (as documented here, here, here and many other places). This is not to say that he only publishes denial, but many of his organisations are the worst offenders at giving equal weight to the claims of highly reputable scientific institutions and ideological think-tanks with significant funding from major fossil fuel companies. It is clear that this is often deliberate policy in order to sow confusion and thus delay and dilute effective collective action.
Murdoch is not, of course, the only wealthy individual deliberately throwing (bull)dust into the air.

This is part of the insidious effect of hyper-capitalism upon democracy. Rather than generating competition and diversity, the concentration of extreme financial wealth in the hands of the few that defines hyper-capitalism risks enabling the further conformity of politics to the interests of the ultra-wealthy. Media plurality is a necessary condition of a free society. So is the avoidance of extreme inequality.

And a postscript: stories like this give me hope. A young TV reporter with a dream career ahead of him makes an important realisation.
H/T Rod Benson.

Don't worry

"Don’t worry. The planet isn’t warming up at all – the temperature record has been tampered with by dodgy climate scientists, in order to justify their funding, and anyway all the measuring devices are next to hot air vents in town centers. Actually, the planet has been warming, but it
stopped in 1998 – that’s why the sea ice has been growing this year. In the winter.

"Having said all that, the planet is in fact warming rapidly, but it’s nothing to do with CO₂ – it’s all about sunspots and cosmic rays. Those crazy climate scientists were telling us there was going to be an ice age, and now they say we’re warming up! Which of course we are. Except there was a record cold winter in my town this year – where’s your global warming now, eh?

"The fact that CO₂ is warming the planet is not in dispute – but humans make only a tiny contribution to it. The rest comes from volcanoes, and anyway if you look at the prehistoric record the warming came first, then the CO₂! Carbon dioxide is good for us, it makes plants grow. Plus it’s warming on Mars, and it was warm in medieval times, I expect our 4x4s caused that too did they?

"The endless flaws and errors in the IPCC reports, plus the scandalous data from the hacked CRU emails shows that global warming alarmists are being used as the tool of governments to raise all our taxes and usher in a new communist world order. It’s a huge hoax, and they’re all in on it – the 7,000 measurement stations, the migrating birds, whoever’s making Greenland melt, all those carefully staged natural disasters – they do it in the same studio where they faked the moon landings, did you know that? Plus, global warming will be great! We’ll grow grapes in London and plant crops in the Arctic and no-one will freeze in the winter. Except it’s not happening at all, and is all part of a natural cycle – the world has always changed temperature, you know. And it’s all China’s fault.

"We can all adapt to it easily enough, and should be spending our time and money on the real problems. It’s all based on computer models, for goodness’ sake! Meanwhile, it’s too late to do anything and we’re all doomed anyway – we may as well party while we can. Because it’s not happening, except it is, and it isn’t our fault, although it is, but it’s not that serious, except it is, but there’s nothing we can do.

"In summary: Relax. It’s all going to be fine. You don’t have to do anything. Don’t look at the nasty scientific reports, or the people dying in floods and droughts and storms, or the melting icecaps, or the way the seasons have started getting really weird, or the strange insects showing up in your local park. Shhhhh. Settle down now. Everything’s going to be just fine.

"- Compiled by the Innocuous-Sounding Institute for Common Sense Climate Solutions, with thanks to various funders that you really don’t need to know about and don’t exist anyway."

- Danny Chiver, The No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change, chapter 3.

For those who might still be feeling confused over whether the climate really is changing in the ways expected by climate scientists, this summary puts together a wide range of evidence. It is not comprehensive, and doesn't show the human fingerprints, yet it is still a very helpful compilation.
Image by ALS.

Can we feed ten billion people?

By popular demand, my link dump posts will continue.

Jeremy asks the $64,000 question (ok, so you can add a few more zeroes to the value of that question due to inflation): can we feed ten billion people? He also answers the question: yes and no.

Another Jeremy wonders: what has nature ever done for us?

Bryan reviews a new book co-authored by John Cook (of Skeptical Science fame) on climate change denial. The book makes the point that there are different kinds of denial and that one kind is simply doing nothing with the knowledge that we have.

"I just want my child to go to a good school." Chris Bonnor points out the effects of this mindset.

Ross Cameron offers some reflections on the royal wedding: "The vows are uttered in public because they are so outrageous they have to be witnessed. In lives bombarded by change, there is something incredibly attractive in the idea of making a promise for life."

Mike Wells encourages us to stop being Australian (especially if we actually are).

What do philosophical arguments sorely lack? Referee hand signals.
H/T Kath.

Onion: Obama's new plan to balance the budget.

And xkcd makes us all feel old.

The future according to Google, and other stories

xkcd: The future according to Google.

Mother Jones: How we fool ourselves. "Expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts. [...] We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself. [...] When we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing." H/T Rod Benson.

UK voters: The lies of the No to AV leaflet. I'm getting pretty annoyed by how misleading so much of the No campaign has been. The BNP are being used as a scare tactic, and yet they are only party to officially endorse the No campaign. It bugs me that such misrepresentations are being effective. H/T Neil Stewart.

SMH: Memos show oil motive in Iraq war. Perhaps this comes as no surprise, but the confirmation is important.

SMH: How Obama is morphing into Bush. Change we can believe in, because it is so small and non-threatening.

SMH: What is the secret to long life? Good table manners.

Reddit: If all you lazy, whining two-thirds world readers think you have things tough, you need to get a sense of some real first world problems.

Oatmeal: The deep ocean is a weird, weird place. Despite being a cartoon (with some naughty language), this is apparently true.

The Cost of Energy: Unemployed? You might want to consider applying for this position.

And a quick straw poll. I occasionally put together lists of random links like this. Which would you prefer:
(a) for these to continue in this fashion, with occasional dumps of lists like this;
(b) for me to post single links as I come across them; or
(c) for me to stop all random links and focus on a narrower band of topics?

Lent: Give up and die

"Ash Wednesday, then, should be seen as standing guard over Lent, reminding us at its start of the core truth of Christianity: we must give up. We must give up not this or that habit or food or particular sin, but the entire project of self-justification, of making God’s love contingent on our own achievements. And the liturgy of this day goes right to the ultimate reality we struggle against, which is death itself. We are reminded, both by the words we say and the burned palms imposed on our foreheads, that we will die. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Give up! Give up, for you will not escape death. The entire logic of the theology of glory, of all our Pelagian impulses, of all human attempts at mastery and control, are searched out and stripped away on Ash Wednesday. We are seen for what we are – frail mortals. All power, all money, all self-control, all striving, all efforts at reform cannot permanently forestall our death. Our return to dust is the looming fact of our existence that, in our resistance to it, provides a template of sorts for all the more petty efforts we make to gain control of our lives. [...]

"Ash Wednesday is a day for the hopeless and suffering, who are affirmed in their hopelessness and suffering rather than commanded to take up the task of self-improvement. When we give up hope, hope in our own abilities and efforts and doing, then the reality of God’s grace truly can become manifest. It is the occasion for an affirmation of who we are, not, ultimately, a plea to transcend our mortal condition. We can live in our bodies, in this world, seeing ourselves more compassionately and thereby are moved to perform works of love, without conditions or demands, for our fellow-sufferers. The first day of Lent is an occasion not for a form of world-denial, but loving acceptance of flawed reality, of imperfection. It is a rebuke to all separatism, escapism, and self-hatred. And of course, as it points us to the Christ-event, Lent ends, as it beings, with an affirmation of our creaturely existence: as Christ rose from the dead, so will our bodies, to live in a New Jerusalem – not an ethereal 'heaven'."

- from Possibly Insane Thoughts on Ash Wednesday
(Written on the Occasion of a Sleepless Night)

This is a beautiful, moving, personal and very insightful piece on the importance of Ash Wednesday in the tradition of Lent, and on the importance of the body and its death in the fullness of life. It is worth reading in full. My own journey out of a dualistic desire for escape from bodily life was also something of a via negativa through the prophet Nietzsche.
H/T Jason.

Both sides of the brain: 2010 in retrospect

To complement the twelve doomiest stories of 2010 I linked to a few days ago, Desdemona has now also posted fifty doomiest graphs (for the left side of the brain) and fifty doomiest photos (for the right side). Of course, such links don't highlight various pieces of good news from this year, but they have been relatively few and far between in comparison with our developing grasp on our deteriorating global situation.

Abandoning false hopes is part of what it means to take up our cross and follow the man of sorrows. As 2010 draws to a close and 2011 dawns, possibilities for faith, hope and love remain abundant. But we must pursue them in the real world, which is increasingly filled with groans and sighs - as well as the promise of the coming glory of God.

Jaws review: climate denial jumps the shark

The Poe-pushing blog ClimateDenial offers a review of the 70s classic Jaws.

Top ten climate science stories of the year

Well, actually nine climate stories and one biodiversity story with a climate link.

How many of these did you hear about? If you heard about them, how many did you hear through mainstream media sources? How can the mainstream media spend so long on trivia and fail to mention some of the most significant risks facing our society identified over the last twelve months? Is it because we don't want to know? Insert head (A) into sand (B). Repeat.

Skeptical about climate change?

"There’s not just a consensus of scientists - there’s a consensus of evidence."

This is an excellent resource for those unsure, confused or hostile to the idea that human activities are dangerously disrupting the climate. John Cook, with the help of a number of climate scientists and other helpers, has put together a free document titled, The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism (pdf here). It is well illustrated, clearly written, brief and to the point, addressing some of the most common queries and misunderstandings.

If your question isn't covered by the guide, the rest of John's site, Skeptical Science, has responses to more than one hundred common arguments concerning climate change (with plenty of links to published peer-reviewed scientific papers, or just short simple answers for beginners). I have recommended this excellent and highly informative website before, but let me do so again.

The big picture on climate change

Skeptical science, an excellent website run by Australian Christian John Cook that gives very readable and well referenced answers to common sceptic talking points about climate change, has just posted an excellent summary of the big picture on climate change. It expresses very succinctly where the uncertainties do and don't currently lie, with plenty of links for those who want to read more. If you're feeling like you'd rather let the whole climate thing pass you by, or feel confused about where to begin, or just want to get your bearings after reading too many newspaper articles, this post is the one to read.

The site is called Skeptical Science because true science is indeed sceptical, and so John applies this to common "scepticism" about climate change, in order to see where the balance of evidence from the best research lies (see here for a good intro to the idea behind the site). If you have specific arguments that you've come across that seem to "disprove" climate science, here are 122 common sceptic talking points each answered in a single sentence (with links to longer answers). If you are yourself sceptical of the science of climate change, then make sure you read through the list and see if your reasons are already answered in the scientific literature. If you come across people putting forward arguments on other websites, bookmark this page and point people towards it.

Each answer refers to relevant scientific literature for those who want to take the discussion further. John is in the process of turning all his answers into three levels of readership: beginner, intermediate and advanced. The website is also being translated into numerous languages. All this work is done by volunteers, who have come across the site, found it a very useful resource and want to make it even more useful. Neither John nor any of his contributers are paid for what they do (apart from the odd PayPal donation); the site is a true labour of love.

Indeed, John has been quite open about the fact that he is concerned about climate change out of Christian love for his neighbours (especially the poor and future generations). He is doing an excellent job co-ordinating an increasingly popular, complex and useful website (which is now also a free iPhone and Android app) and he does it for love, not money. Praise God for John Cook!