Tidbits

The agony of victory: The Atlantic emails on Sept. 14 that “The U.S. mainland is experiencing an amazing run of avoiding hurricanes – which is good, because the government doesn’t seem ready for a major disaster.” The US is in fact quite prone to windstorms, from tornadoes to hurricanes, and like most advanced countries has become better and better at limiting casualties, although it is true that its government, being a government, is bad at a lot of things including disaster relief. But note that instead of saying something like gosh, we thought warming was going to make hurricanes worse, what a relief, the related article takes shots at Donald Trump, touts Pacific hurricanes, then says “scientists say that El Niño also accounts for the absence of major storms, so far, in the Atlantic.” So far. But hope springs eternal.
According to National Geographic “Researchers have long debated why the Pacific’s most skilled navigators suddenly resumed sailing after their ‘Long Pause.’” The long winter nights must just fly by when those researchers get together. But the point is that Polynesians really did venture into the mostly empty Pacific in canoes without maps or compasses and some at least were heard from again. But from around 800 BC to 900 AD exploration quieted down then resumed. And now some researchers point to “climatic shift”, specifically less rain in western Pacific islands from which they set out and more in eastern ones they aimed for. Apparently climatic shift is just like climate change except natural. Also “It was roughly the same era when Vikings were expanding across northern Europe, though the historic Polynesians traveled much further and created cultures that last to this day.” Say, would it be the Medieval Warm Period, with better weather? That notion evidently eluded them.
Roger Pielke Jr. has caught the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) flagrantly engaged in advocacy and soliciting money for same in direct contradiction to its mandate and proclaimed values. And yes, the issue is climate change. What is it about this one that causes so many people to lose their integrity in such embarrassing ways?
From the good-word-for-man-eating-sharks file, National Geographic runs an item on how male king cobras fight, which oddly rarely involves biting, and cites researcher Max Jones that “this struggle highlights the importance of conserving mating habitat for cobras” so we can um have more. OK, “People are often afraid of king cobras, though they rarely bite and typically try to threaten first. But fights in open areas make them vulnerable to humans, who may take their ritual distraction as an opportunity to come in and lop their heads off with a machete, Jones says.” And now it’s bad not to have 12-foot-long lethal snakes nearby. How environmental views have changed. Speaking of which, “King cobras have gone through something of a reckoning—what was previously thought to be a single species has recently been split into four distinct species. As a result, researchers are trying to determine any differences in the ecology and behavior of the various species.” Again, so much for settled science… on anything but climate.
Even the Canadian think tank Cardus, whose focus is religion and society, emailed us on September 8 “Among those of us who are concerned about the natural environment, we often start with politics and global issues – climate change is a quintessential example.” All climate all the time. Which is one reason environmentalism is struggling.
Don’t save us a seat: in context of “NYC Climate Week” something called Climate X emails us “This New York Climate Week, Climate X is launching Forces of Nature: 5 Leaders Redefining Resilience, an award recognizing 5 leaders driving measurable resilience to extreme weather.” Nominations have now closed but it’s OK because apparently you didn’t win money anyway. But we’ll be staying away and snoozing through whoever gets a plaque for “Being a thought leader”, since we’re pretty sure it will be someone who dutifully follows the crowd.

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