April 22

Good morning on a sunny but very cool morning. The weather people keep promising that the warmer temperatures will return soon. Watching the Weather Channel I am glad I didn't yield to the temptation to get plants and put them in the gardens. So far I am still planning for around mid-May when our average last frost day occurs. I did check out what is happening in the containers and found that my mints didn't survive. I haven't seen anything in one of the containers that had Asiatic lilies while the other is going really well. I will have to separate the bulbs and replant in the fall. The valerian is also popping up also but not the indigo. If we get some warmer days I plan to get more sweeping and start on sorting out the shed. Until then I pulled out a needlepoint I haven't worked on for a couple of decades. Since I just finished the embroidery on a table scarf I can pull something else out to join my other WIPs (Works In Progress).

Naill Ferguson has an article in the Free Press on "The Treason of the Intellectuals." Some years ago the news covered one of several cheating scandals in one of the service Academies at the same time that a poll of college students revealed that a majority of them would cheat if they could get away with it. My thought at the time was that expecting professionals of any kind, military or civil, to be more honest than the society in which they live is ridiculous. The same can be said of the intellectual class with regard to any passionate movement within society. As Ferguson  notes at the end, intolerance comes in right leaning and left leaning political varieties--and probably in other varieties as well.

Over the weekend I watched Climate: the Movie which presents the case for "climate skepticism." It is always a good idea to checkout views that challenge what ideas that are currently dominant in society/politics/economics, etc. So what does the film challenge? 

First, the very notion of "anthropogenic" climate change. The idea we constantly hear is that our climate is warming dangerously because humans are releasing huge quantities of CO2 which is a "greenhouse" gas. The scientists that appear during the 80+ minutes of the movie dispute that claiming that there is no causal relationship between increasing temperature and rising CO2 levels. Temperatures appeared to rise before CO2 rose. A case of "correlation not causation." 

Second, they challenge the very notion that the temperatures are actually rising dangerously and in fact that we are still in a cool period, a.k.a. an ice age. Maybe, maybe not. What they don't say is that there is a difference between the geological notion of an ice age and the human experience. At one point one of the presenters points out that at various times throughout earth's history the climate was considerably warmer but they don't mention that those points came before humans evolved. Over human history we have experienced both warm and cold periods. The Roman Climate Optimum (ca. 200BCE-200CE) was followed by the a climate shift that made the mediterranean basin dryer and hotter which had severe effects on Roman society.

I stop here with a note that when we are reading/viewing/listening to any information (scientific/economic/political) we have to ask for clear definitions of the terms and ask for clear evidence used to support the positions. Arguing about climate change from the perspective of geological time against those who are arguing from a human perspective (or vice versa) is disingenuous if not dishonest.

Tom Engelhardt posted an interesting item this morning: "Old Man World". Interesting and depressing. I think he reflects the feelings I had since 2020--we need new people and new ideas.