So here we are, at the end of another year. Of course calendars and dates have no significance in and of themselves, but they are a convenient reference point. So while I've always been of the opinion that when it comes to a review of the recent past or resolutions for the future any time of the year will do, I'll admit that the end of a calendar year is a convenient time for doing such things. Be that as it may, I'm not going to attempt to present my choices for most notable events of the year, or best book, album, or song (I haven't been keeping up with things enough to do that), nor I am going to make a list of resolutions.
However, having managed to post entries in this blog several times a month for half a year now, I am starting to think about what I'll be doing with it in the future. I may simply keep on posting occasionally on whatever topic I am inspired to write (or rant) about. I may attempt to do a little more light hearted stuff on occasion (perhaps along the lines of "A Dialogue" from a few months back). I'm also thinking about starting up a new blog exclusively for music related posts (or even two, one for Western music and one for Asian music), though if I do that I may end up posting to this blog less often. Anyway, we'll see.
In conclusion, here are some links to a few amusing articles, videos and cartoons (though many are about serious topics). Most are from the top 10 lists from Time magazine (I don't need to bother making my own year-end lists if someone else has done it for me...).
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/u_s_deports_lou_dobbs
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/u_s_finally_gets_around_to
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1945913_1945911,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1944470_1944478,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1944470_1944490,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1945913_1945907,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1944470_1944482,00.html
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-june-25-2009/cheney-predacted
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
People in denial prevent action against climate change
As a follow up to my previous post, I'd like to say a little bit more about the climate change issue. First, as explained last time, I feel compelled to talk a little about something that really shouldn't be an issue, namely the reality of climate change. I'd be tempted to say that those who deny the reality of climate change are like people who claim the Earth is flat or that it's only a few thousand years old (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sumerians_look_on_in_confusion_as). However, while the evidence for climate change is overwhelming, I'll grant that it isn't quite as completely overwhelming as the evidence against those ideas. A better analogy is the fact that smoking is harmful, something that many long tried to deny (and a few still do). This analogy is particularly appropriate as in the case of climate change as in the case of the health hazards of cigarettes, those with a vested interest in preventing action from being taken are most prominent among those attempting to sow doubt in the minds of the public regarding the scientific evidence.
The climate change deniers come in two camps, those who try to deny that global temperatures are increasing at all, and those who deny that the increase is due to human activity. There are also some who out of ignorance, stupidity or intellectually dishonesty (i.e., they are motivated by ideology to completely deny everything having to do with climate change), straddle both camps. Those who deny that there is a real warming trend tried to use the hacked emails from the climate research center in East Anglia to cast doubt on the temperature data. As I pointed out in my previous post, despite their desperation to find evidence that scientists were cooking the books, so to speak, the few things they did find were taken completely out of context and did nothing to disprove the science. What's more, this center is not the only place conducting climate research, nor is it the only source of such temperature data. Though it is one of the major centers for collecting global temperature data, there are several others, including NASA. All of these places have come up with the same results. Some attempt to cast doubt on the credibility of all of these research centers despite the large amount of data they have, but when it comes right down to it, no one has reliable global temperature data that differs markedly from that of these centers, and in fact, as the video I referred to last time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70SlEqX7oY) points out, the few actual scientists who question the current consensus about climate change generally accept that there has recently been a warming trend (i.e., they are in the second of the two camps). So there is much less reason to question the credibility of all the mainstream climate research centers than there is to question that of their critics.
Some also cite "evidence" that seems to question global warming such as cold winters in particular areas, cooling trends in certain regions, and so forth. In fact, these misleading arguments are one of the reasons why "climate change" is now the preferred term. As is commonly stated by scientists, an increase in the overall global temperature has complex consequences around the world. While most places will warm up, some places will actually get cooler. Likewise rainfall patterns will change, so some places will become drier and others wetter, and so on. Also, a lot of people confuse weather and climate. Climate, roughly speaking, is average weather over a long period of time. So even if the climate warms somewhat, you can still have very cold days and even cold winters. The key is the overall climate, not weather on any given day in a particular location. This also why arguments like "they can't even be sure if it'll rain tomorrow, how can they tell if the Earth is warming" are ignorant. In fact, while modelling climates is not easy, it is a lot easier than predicting short-term weather (just as it's easier to predict certain things about a population than it is about an individual person). Of course the reverse is true as well. Some are far too ready to attribute every weather event (a hurricane, a drought, a hot spell) to global warming. While global warming may influence some such things, it's impossible to say for sure, and in many cases it's merely a short term variation unrelated to the overall climate. Basically, individual weather events are not good arguments either for or against climate change, unless they can be shown to be part of a trend.
An example of climate change deniers misleadingly citing local trends is Antarctica. Studies have shown that outlying parts of Antarctica are clearly warming, while the central part of the continent actually cooled slightly. Deniers cite the latter point as evidence against global warming, while ignoring the former. However, cooling in one region does not mean that the globe as whole is not warming. In fact, there are many reasons for such local variations. In this case, I have recently read that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica means a certain amount of heat that would otherwise be trapped is escaping, meaning that area has cooled slightly. So in this case, our previous disruption of the atmosphere is counterbalancing our ongoing disruption (though of course only a crazy person would suggest such a balance is a good thing, given the hazards created by the lack of an ozone layer). What's more, one of the scientists whose study of Antarctic temperatures has been cited by deniers as evidence against global warming has been quoted as refuting assertions that his work disproves global warming.
Then there is the recent claim that the globe has actually been cooling over the last decade. This claim (using the same temperature data that the deniers claim to doubt) is based on disingenuous use of the year 1997 as a starting point. That year,global temperatures were being affected by El Nino, which combined with the general warming over the 20th century made that year the hottest on record. This means, of course, that years since then, when there has been no El Nino effect, have not been as hot. However, if you use either 1996 or 1998 as a starting point, you still see a warming trend. So basically the "global cooling" claim is based on a highly misleading use of statistics, as was shown when statisticians were given the data without being told what it was and yet they still all agreed that the data showed an upward trend (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_bi_ge/us_sci_global_cooling and http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_sc/us_sci_global_cooling_methodology). What's more, despite 1997 still being the hottest year (a record that is expected fall in the next few years), the decade that is just ending was still overall the hottest ever, hotter even than the 1990s (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091208/ap_on_sc/climate).
Another thing climate change deniers like to bring up is the fact that there was a period following the middle of the century when global climate actually cooled slightly. They point to a few articles in the mainstream media a few decades back talking about the possibility of a new ice age, and imply that climate scientists and the media are simply prone to exaggerate any recent trend in temperatures into a non-existent apocalyptic threat. They also seem to imply that the whole idea that the globe is warming due to human activity (anthropogenic global warming, as it is called) is something that only appeared in the last couple of decades.
In fact, the idea that human industrial activity could lead to an increase in temperatures goes back over a hundred years. It was apparently first hypothesized by Svante Ahrrenius in 1898, when human production of greenhouse gases was a small fraction of what it is now (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/climate_timeline;_ylt=Ai.JKlZRotSa4KFFyX2z7bxH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTE2aWNwa29sBHBvcwM1BHNlYwN5bi1yLWItbGVmdARzbGsDLWtleWRhdGVzYWJv). And by the 1970s, the predicted increase in temperatures over the first part of the 20th century had already been observed. A downturn in temperatures beginning in the 1940s which wiped out some of the increase had also been observed, but by no means all scientists agreed that a new ice age was the cause. Nor did this decrease cause them all to discard the idea of anthropogenic global warming. Isaac Asimov, best known as a science fiction writer but also a qualified biochemist, wrote a book on science for the general reader back in the early 1980s in which he briefly discusses global warming. He explains how humans were loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide at a rate 200 times that of the world's volcanoes. He then talks about the downturn in temperatures, which was still happening at the time. He suggests that it was caused by an increase in smog particles in the atmosphere which cut off sunlight, so "it would seem that two different types of human atmospheric pollution are currently canceling each other's effect, at least in this respect and at least temporarily." While I don't know if his explanation for the downward trend (which of course ended about the time he wrote this) is the currently accepted one, but this clearly shows that the idea of anthropogenic global warming was current among scientists in the 1970s and 1980s, despite the slight downward trend in temperatures at the time.
Aside from the clear evidence of an upward trend in global average temperatures over the past centuries, there are plenty of other indications of a warming trend. One well known example is glaciers, which are retreating in many places around the world. Some deniers try to cast doubt on this evidence as well, claiming that some glaciers are growing, or that those that are shrinking are doing so for reasons other than global warming. No doubt a few glaciers are growing, because, as explained above, warming on a global scale can actually cause certain regions to cool, and also in some cases other factors may be at work (as in the cooling trend in some parts of Antarctica mentioned above). Likewise, in a few cases factors other than temperature may cause a glacier to shrink, such as a region becoming significantly drier. However, the fact that a majority of glaciers, in locations all around the world including the Alps, the Andes, Greenland and, most importantly the Himalayas (source of much of the water supply for Asian countries that are home to over a third of the world's people), are shrinking is a clear indication that more than regional factors are at work. Another worrying sign is increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet (which contains a substantial percentage of the world's fresh water) and of Arctic ice. There is no question that these phenomena are occurring, and they are clear indications of a warming pattern. What's more, if they continue, they will have dramatic effects on the climate of the northern hemisphere.
Given all the evidence (and I've only given an extremely cursory overview), there is no question that the average global temperature has been rising over the last century (except the above mentioned period between about 1950 and 1980) and that the warming has accelerated over the last two decades. As mentioned previously, this is even accepted by many of those few deniers who have real scientific qualifications. So the next question is whether this warming is a natural cycle or whether humans are responsible. Some people make the argument that the climate has fluctuated ever since the Earth and its atmosphere formed (i.e., since long before humans existed) and therefore any fluctuations are natural. On the fact of it, this argument is illogical. Yes, the climate has fluctuated throughout geologic history and previous fluctuations have been natural. That does not mean that this fluctuation must necessarily be natural, any more than the fact that you haven't died yet means you can't die. The fact that the climate can and does change without human help does not mean that humans can't affect the climate. Right-wing trolls will sometimes sarcastically comment regarding any mention of climate change in the Earth's geologic past or even other planets that environmentalists, liberals, Al Gore, et al. are no doubt concerned about the case of "global warming" being discussed, implying that because these groups believe in the reality of anthropogenic climate change, they must think all climate change is anthropogenic. This is patently absurd. Climate change is like the course of a river; it can and does change naturally, but humans can also change it, and the fact that it happens one way (naturally or through human action) does not mean it can't happen the other way.
Those who claim that the present warming is not anthropogenic obviously have to come up with another explanation for the unusually rapid increase in temperature. A favorite is solar activity. The theory is that the sun has recently begun putting out more energy, and this has warmed up the Earth. It is true that in the past variation in solar activity has been responsible for global warming, and a number of scientists believe it may also be contributing to current warming. However, after repeated studies, the vast majority of researchers have concluded that greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere by humans are responsible for the majority of the current warming effect.
Others simply claim that since the climate has changed in the past, the fact that it is changing now (whether or not humans are responsible) is no big deal. They point out that the Earth will adjust and life will go on. Certainly it is true that any claim that the Earth itself is in any danger is complete hyperbole. The planet is no danger from humans. The same cannot be said for much of the life on it. Even though the carbon cycle will probably eventually compensate for an increase in carbon in the atmosphere and oceans by locking more carbon into limestone, this process takes tens of thousands of years. In other words, we'll be stuck with elevated temperatures and all the attendant effects for that length of time. While life on Earth couldn't be wiped out by anthropogenic climate change (unless we managed to push greenhouse gas levels high enough to create a runaway greenhouse effect like that Venus experienced), that doesn't mean that we should be casual about the effects. While nature will eventually adjust, many individual species are not likely to adjust fast enough to survive a rapid change in global climate. As for humans, while we are famously adaptable, it's not like we are still a relatively small population of hunter-gatherers who can just move if some regions become less congenial. There are six and half billion people in the world now, and hundreds of millions, even billions, will be negatively affected by climate change. They can't just pick up and move without causing massive disruption. So observing that life on Earth can survive major changes in climate is like observing that it can survive the Earth being hit by a sizable asteroid. It can, but is the extinction of large numbers of species and the death of millions of people (and possibly even the end of modern civilization, if the disruption is bad enough) a price we want to pay?
A review of some basic facts is in order. First, carbon dioxide, methane and other gases are greenhouse gases. That is to say, they all trap solar energy of certain wavelengths in the atmosphere, causing it to heat up. A certain amount of this is good; in fact if it weren't for the greenhouse effect, Earth would be too cold for life. The amount of warming caused by each gas also varies; carbon dioxide is not the most effective greenhouse gas. But too much of any greenhouse gas, including CO2, is definitely a bad thing. To see this, we need look no further than the nearest planet, Venus. Though it is a near twin to Earth in terms of mass, Venus has an average surface temperature of about 450 degrees Celsius, thanks to a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide, the result of a runaway greenhouse effect which boiled any oceans the planet may once have had and baked all the carbon out of the rocks and into the air. So while carbon dioxide is not the only or even the most potent greenhouse gas, too much of it can create a hellish atmosphere.
Secondly, human activity such as the burning of fossil fuels is currently producing large amounts of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide but also others such as methane. The amount of carbon dioxide produced by humans at present is many times greater than that produced by natural processes, such as volcanic outgassing. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (and in the oceans as well) is increasing noticeably, and it is clear that the main reason is human activity.
Finally, as explained above, the average global temperature has increased noticeably over the past decades. So is there a connection between the human production of greenhouse gases and the increase in temperatures? Well, if many smokers get lung cancer but relatively few nonsmokers do, is there a connection between smoking and lung cancer? If people who have close contact with a sick person also get sick, is there a connection between their illnesses? It seems obvious to conclude that in the first case, just as in the other two, there is a connection. It would be nice to think there isn't, but there's no point in deluding ourselves (http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/johann-hari-i-wish-that-the-climate-change-deniers-were-right-14587028.html).
So where does that leave us? Basically, we can either act as if this is a problem that we need to solve or just ignore the issue and continue behaving the same way. Even if we believed that there was some room for doubt about the cause of global warming, it is clear that taking action is the logical choice. If climate change is being caused by us, drastic action is necessary to prevent the severe consequences of continued warming. If, as the deniers assert in the face of all contrary evidence, humans are not causing global warming, what would be the consequences of taking action against it? We would increase our use of cleaner energy, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels (simultaneously decreasing the attendant pollution -- and here I'm not talking about greenhouse gases but all the even more obvious pollutants), and become less profligate in our use of energy. Yes, there might be some temporary economic pain as we adjust our lifestyles and people have to switch from less environmentally sound professions to more sustainable ones, but in the long run we'd still be better off -- and that's even if there was no climate problem to solve. On the other hand, if we do nothing and continue as we are, we will eventually run out of fossil fuels, other resources will be drained faster as populous nations like China and India start consuming energy at rates comparable to the developed world, and other types of pollution will become more and more of a problem. So even if climate change weren't an issue (which it clearly is), we are better off changing our ways now.
Unfortunately, there are many people with a vested interest in the current system (far more than could possibly have a vested interest in creating a false climate change scare, delusions about socialist conspiracies notwithstanding). Others simply don't want to change their bad habits, and will listen to anyone who assures them that they don't have to. While in most cases delusions about the way things are tend to be relatively harmless (such as superstitions, belief in the supernatural, or the idea that aliens visit Earth secretly), in this case these people can do real harm, as evidenced by Barack Obama's inability to commit the US to major cuts in carbon emissions at Copenhagen, which in turn resulted from the fact that he knows he would never get Congress to agree to major cuts, because it is filled with delusional people like James Inhofe (admittedly few are as bad as him, but they are bad enough). So while the conclusion that action is necessary is obvious enough, we still have to keep making the argument until the majority of people realize this and take action.
The climate change deniers come in two camps, those who try to deny that global temperatures are increasing at all, and those who deny that the increase is due to human activity. There are also some who out of ignorance, stupidity or intellectually dishonesty (i.e., they are motivated by ideology to completely deny everything having to do with climate change), straddle both camps. Those who deny that there is a real warming trend tried to use the hacked emails from the climate research center in East Anglia to cast doubt on the temperature data. As I pointed out in my previous post, despite their desperation to find evidence that scientists were cooking the books, so to speak, the few things they did find were taken completely out of context and did nothing to disprove the science. What's more, this center is not the only place conducting climate research, nor is it the only source of such temperature data. Though it is one of the major centers for collecting global temperature data, there are several others, including NASA. All of these places have come up with the same results. Some attempt to cast doubt on the credibility of all of these research centers despite the large amount of data they have, but when it comes right down to it, no one has reliable global temperature data that differs markedly from that of these centers, and in fact, as the video I referred to last time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70SlEqX7oY) points out, the few actual scientists who question the current consensus about climate change generally accept that there has recently been a warming trend (i.e., they are in the second of the two camps). So there is much less reason to question the credibility of all the mainstream climate research centers than there is to question that of their critics.
Some also cite "evidence" that seems to question global warming such as cold winters in particular areas, cooling trends in certain regions, and so forth. In fact, these misleading arguments are one of the reasons why "climate change" is now the preferred term. As is commonly stated by scientists, an increase in the overall global temperature has complex consequences around the world. While most places will warm up, some places will actually get cooler. Likewise rainfall patterns will change, so some places will become drier and others wetter, and so on. Also, a lot of people confuse weather and climate. Climate, roughly speaking, is average weather over a long period of time. So even if the climate warms somewhat, you can still have very cold days and even cold winters. The key is the overall climate, not weather on any given day in a particular location. This also why arguments like "they can't even be sure if it'll rain tomorrow, how can they tell if the Earth is warming" are ignorant. In fact, while modelling climates is not easy, it is a lot easier than predicting short-term weather (just as it's easier to predict certain things about a population than it is about an individual person). Of course the reverse is true as well. Some are far too ready to attribute every weather event (a hurricane, a drought, a hot spell) to global warming. While global warming may influence some such things, it's impossible to say for sure, and in many cases it's merely a short term variation unrelated to the overall climate. Basically, individual weather events are not good arguments either for or against climate change, unless they can be shown to be part of a trend.
An example of climate change deniers misleadingly citing local trends is Antarctica. Studies have shown that outlying parts of Antarctica are clearly warming, while the central part of the continent actually cooled slightly. Deniers cite the latter point as evidence against global warming, while ignoring the former. However, cooling in one region does not mean that the globe as whole is not warming. In fact, there are many reasons for such local variations. In this case, I have recently read that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica means a certain amount of heat that would otherwise be trapped is escaping, meaning that area has cooled slightly. So in this case, our previous disruption of the atmosphere is counterbalancing our ongoing disruption (though of course only a crazy person would suggest such a balance is a good thing, given the hazards created by the lack of an ozone layer). What's more, one of the scientists whose study of Antarctic temperatures has been cited by deniers as evidence against global warming has been quoted as refuting assertions that his work disproves global warming.
Then there is the recent claim that the globe has actually been cooling over the last decade. This claim (using the same temperature data that the deniers claim to doubt) is based on disingenuous use of the year 1997 as a starting point. That year,global temperatures were being affected by El Nino, which combined with the general warming over the 20th century made that year the hottest on record. This means, of course, that years since then, when there has been no El Nino effect, have not been as hot. However, if you use either 1996 or 1998 as a starting point, you still see a warming trend. So basically the "global cooling" claim is based on a highly misleading use of statistics, as was shown when statisticians were given the data without being told what it was and yet they still all agreed that the data showed an upward trend (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_bi_ge/us_sci_global_cooling and http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_sc/us_sci_global_cooling_methodology). What's more, despite 1997 still being the hottest year (a record that is expected fall in the next few years), the decade that is just ending was still overall the hottest ever, hotter even than the 1990s (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091208/ap_on_sc/climate).
Another thing climate change deniers like to bring up is the fact that there was a period following the middle of the century when global climate actually cooled slightly. They point to a few articles in the mainstream media a few decades back talking about the possibility of a new ice age, and imply that climate scientists and the media are simply prone to exaggerate any recent trend in temperatures into a non-existent apocalyptic threat. They also seem to imply that the whole idea that the globe is warming due to human activity (anthropogenic global warming, as it is called) is something that only appeared in the last couple of decades.
In fact, the idea that human industrial activity could lead to an increase in temperatures goes back over a hundred years. It was apparently first hypothesized by Svante Ahrrenius in 1898, when human production of greenhouse gases was a small fraction of what it is now (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/climate_timeline;_ylt=Ai.JKlZRotSa4KFFyX2z7bxH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTE2aWNwa29sBHBvcwM1BHNlYwN5bi1yLWItbGVmdARzbGsDLWtleWRhdGVzYWJv). And by the 1970s, the predicted increase in temperatures over the first part of the 20th century had already been observed. A downturn in temperatures beginning in the 1940s which wiped out some of the increase had also been observed, but by no means all scientists agreed that a new ice age was the cause. Nor did this decrease cause them all to discard the idea of anthropogenic global warming. Isaac Asimov, best known as a science fiction writer but also a qualified biochemist, wrote a book on science for the general reader back in the early 1980s in which he briefly discusses global warming. He explains how humans were loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide at a rate 200 times that of the world's volcanoes. He then talks about the downturn in temperatures, which was still happening at the time. He suggests that it was caused by an increase in smog particles in the atmosphere which cut off sunlight, so "it would seem that two different types of human atmospheric pollution are currently canceling each other's effect, at least in this respect and at least temporarily." While I don't know if his explanation for the downward trend (which of course ended about the time he wrote this) is the currently accepted one, but this clearly shows that the idea of anthropogenic global warming was current among scientists in the 1970s and 1980s, despite the slight downward trend in temperatures at the time.
Aside from the clear evidence of an upward trend in global average temperatures over the past centuries, there are plenty of other indications of a warming trend. One well known example is glaciers, which are retreating in many places around the world. Some deniers try to cast doubt on this evidence as well, claiming that some glaciers are growing, or that those that are shrinking are doing so for reasons other than global warming. No doubt a few glaciers are growing, because, as explained above, warming on a global scale can actually cause certain regions to cool, and also in some cases other factors may be at work (as in the cooling trend in some parts of Antarctica mentioned above). Likewise, in a few cases factors other than temperature may cause a glacier to shrink, such as a region becoming significantly drier. However, the fact that a majority of glaciers, in locations all around the world including the Alps, the Andes, Greenland and, most importantly the Himalayas (source of much of the water supply for Asian countries that are home to over a third of the world's people), are shrinking is a clear indication that more than regional factors are at work. Another worrying sign is increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet (which contains a substantial percentage of the world's fresh water) and of Arctic ice. There is no question that these phenomena are occurring, and they are clear indications of a warming pattern. What's more, if they continue, they will have dramatic effects on the climate of the northern hemisphere.
Given all the evidence (and I've only given an extremely cursory overview), there is no question that the average global temperature has been rising over the last century (except the above mentioned period between about 1950 and 1980) and that the warming has accelerated over the last two decades. As mentioned previously, this is even accepted by many of those few deniers who have real scientific qualifications. So the next question is whether this warming is a natural cycle or whether humans are responsible. Some people make the argument that the climate has fluctuated ever since the Earth and its atmosphere formed (i.e., since long before humans existed) and therefore any fluctuations are natural. On the fact of it, this argument is illogical. Yes, the climate has fluctuated throughout geologic history and previous fluctuations have been natural. That does not mean that this fluctuation must necessarily be natural, any more than the fact that you haven't died yet means you can't die. The fact that the climate can and does change without human help does not mean that humans can't affect the climate. Right-wing trolls will sometimes sarcastically comment regarding any mention of climate change in the Earth's geologic past or even other planets that environmentalists, liberals, Al Gore, et al. are no doubt concerned about the case of "global warming" being discussed, implying that because these groups believe in the reality of anthropogenic climate change, they must think all climate change is anthropogenic. This is patently absurd. Climate change is like the course of a river; it can and does change naturally, but humans can also change it, and the fact that it happens one way (naturally or through human action) does not mean it can't happen the other way.
Those who claim that the present warming is not anthropogenic obviously have to come up with another explanation for the unusually rapid increase in temperature. A favorite is solar activity. The theory is that the sun has recently begun putting out more energy, and this has warmed up the Earth. It is true that in the past variation in solar activity has been responsible for global warming, and a number of scientists believe it may also be contributing to current warming. However, after repeated studies, the vast majority of researchers have concluded that greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere by humans are responsible for the majority of the current warming effect.
Others simply claim that since the climate has changed in the past, the fact that it is changing now (whether or not humans are responsible) is no big deal. They point out that the Earth will adjust and life will go on. Certainly it is true that any claim that the Earth itself is in any danger is complete hyperbole. The planet is no danger from humans. The same cannot be said for much of the life on it. Even though the carbon cycle will probably eventually compensate for an increase in carbon in the atmosphere and oceans by locking more carbon into limestone, this process takes tens of thousands of years. In other words, we'll be stuck with elevated temperatures and all the attendant effects for that length of time. While life on Earth couldn't be wiped out by anthropogenic climate change (unless we managed to push greenhouse gas levels high enough to create a runaway greenhouse effect like that Venus experienced), that doesn't mean that we should be casual about the effects. While nature will eventually adjust, many individual species are not likely to adjust fast enough to survive a rapid change in global climate. As for humans, while we are famously adaptable, it's not like we are still a relatively small population of hunter-gatherers who can just move if some regions become less congenial. There are six and half billion people in the world now, and hundreds of millions, even billions, will be negatively affected by climate change. They can't just pick up and move without causing massive disruption. So observing that life on Earth can survive major changes in climate is like observing that it can survive the Earth being hit by a sizable asteroid. It can, but is the extinction of large numbers of species and the death of millions of people (and possibly even the end of modern civilization, if the disruption is bad enough) a price we want to pay?
A review of some basic facts is in order. First, carbon dioxide, methane and other gases are greenhouse gases. That is to say, they all trap solar energy of certain wavelengths in the atmosphere, causing it to heat up. A certain amount of this is good; in fact if it weren't for the greenhouse effect, Earth would be too cold for life. The amount of warming caused by each gas also varies; carbon dioxide is not the most effective greenhouse gas. But too much of any greenhouse gas, including CO2, is definitely a bad thing. To see this, we need look no further than the nearest planet, Venus. Though it is a near twin to Earth in terms of mass, Venus has an average surface temperature of about 450 degrees Celsius, thanks to a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide, the result of a runaway greenhouse effect which boiled any oceans the planet may once have had and baked all the carbon out of the rocks and into the air. So while carbon dioxide is not the only or even the most potent greenhouse gas, too much of it can create a hellish atmosphere.
Secondly, human activity such as the burning of fossil fuels is currently producing large amounts of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide but also others such as methane. The amount of carbon dioxide produced by humans at present is many times greater than that produced by natural processes, such as volcanic outgassing. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (and in the oceans as well) is increasing noticeably, and it is clear that the main reason is human activity.
Finally, as explained above, the average global temperature has increased noticeably over the past decades. So is there a connection between the human production of greenhouse gases and the increase in temperatures? Well, if many smokers get lung cancer but relatively few nonsmokers do, is there a connection between smoking and lung cancer? If people who have close contact with a sick person also get sick, is there a connection between their illnesses? It seems obvious to conclude that in the first case, just as in the other two, there is a connection. It would be nice to think there isn't, but there's no point in deluding ourselves (http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/johann-hari-i-wish-that-the-climate-change-deniers-were-right-14587028.html).
So where does that leave us? Basically, we can either act as if this is a problem that we need to solve or just ignore the issue and continue behaving the same way. Even if we believed that there was some room for doubt about the cause of global warming, it is clear that taking action is the logical choice. If climate change is being caused by us, drastic action is necessary to prevent the severe consequences of continued warming. If, as the deniers assert in the face of all contrary evidence, humans are not causing global warming, what would be the consequences of taking action against it? We would increase our use of cleaner energy, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels (simultaneously decreasing the attendant pollution -- and here I'm not talking about greenhouse gases but all the even more obvious pollutants), and become less profligate in our use of energy. Yes, there might be some temporary economic pain as we adjust our lifestyles and people have to switch from less environmentally sound professions to more sustainable ones, but in the long run we'd still be better off -- and that's even if there was no climate problem to solve. On the other hand, if we do nothing and continue as we are, we will eventually run out of fossil fuels, other resources will be drained faster as populous nations like China and India start consuming energy at rates comparable to the developed world, and other types of pollution will become more and more of a problem. So even if climate change weren't an issue (which it clearly is), we are better off changing our ways now.
Unfortunately, there are many people with a vested interest in the current system (far more than could possibly have a vested interest in creating a false climate change scare, delusions about socialist conspiracies notwithstanding). Others simply don't want to change their bad habits, and will listen to anyone who assures them that they don't have to. While in most cases delusions about the way things are tend to be relatively harmless (such as superstitions, belief in the supernatural, or the idea that aliens visit Earth secretly), in this case these people can do real harm, as evidenced by Barack Obama's inability to commit the US to major cuts in carbon emissions at Copenhagen, which in turn resulted from the fact that he knows he would never get Congress to agree to major cuts, because it is filled with delusional people like James Inhofe (admittedly few are as bad as him, but they are bad enough). So while the conclusion that action is necessary is obvious enough, we still have to keep making the argument until the majority of people realize this and take action.
Update -- For those who try to use the recent winter weather in North America to question the reality of global warming, the following article from Time entitled "D.C. Snowstorm: How Global Warming Makes Blizzards Worse" should be required reading: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100210/hl_time/08599196229400 . As for the minor, though embarrassing, errors in the IPCC report on climate change, as explained in this report (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100210/ap_on_sc/sci_climate_report_woes;_ylt=AviWT1kIzu4HYei22ptbobqHgsgF;_ylu=X3oDMTJrYm5kZ3FlBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMjEwL3NjaV9jbGltYXRlX3JlcG9ydF93b2VzBHBvcwM4BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA3NjaWVudGlzdHNzZQ--), they have no affect on the underlying science on global warming.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Climate change deniers manufacture controversy
Sometimes I feel compelled to comment on something that is not really worthy of comment or even any real attention at all, simply because everyone persists in talking about it. Likewise, I sometimes feel that I simply have to present arguments on an issue, even when the reality of the situation is so blindingly obvious that anyone who is arguing for the other side is clearly so hopelessly dense (or ideologically committed) that no argument is going to sway them (e.g., Obama's birthplace). I sometimes think I shouldn't say anything about such issues, because in some ways deigning to discuss them perpetuates the idea that they are worth discussing, or that there is something to debate. The problem is that in some cases the underlying issue or a related one is actually important, and allowing the idiots and crazy people to go without any response might conceivably influence more ignorant people in the middle. One instance of this is the "controversy" over the hacked emails written by climate scientists, and the overall issue of human-induced climate change.
Before we get into the "controversy" itself, I'd like to address something else, and that's the name that some people have attached to the hacked email issue, namely "Climategate". Can we give the "something-gate" thing a rest already? Yes, Watergate was a big deal, but does that mean we have to attach the second half of the name of a Washington hotel to every new political scandal since then on to the end of human civilization? We've already heard names like "Contragate", "Monicagate", and who knows how many more. Thankfully most of them are not the most common names for the scandals in question, but they still appear far too often. While we're at it, why not go back and name every political scandal in history whatever-gate? The Teapot Dome scandal, for instance, could be Teapotgate, and so on.... Enough already with the "gates"! [Update: Apparently I'm not the only one who can see the absurdity of this. A March 1, 2010 New York Times article entitled "In Paterson's Attempt to Reassure the Public, a Flashback to That '70s Show" that discusses parallels between Watergate and NY governor David Paterson's interference in an aide's domestic violence case includes a reference to "the enduring journalistic tic of mindlessly attaching the suffix “-gate” to every scandal that comes along."]
As for the emails themselves, for any who don't know, hundreds of private emails were hacked from the University of East Anglia in the UK, home of one of the top climate research centers, and posted on the web. Conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers (those who deny that average global temperatures are rising, or insist that any such warming has nothing to do with human activity) went through these emails and claimed that they came up with evidence that climate scientists were fudging data, engaging in conspiracy to silence opponents, and so forth. Many more sensible people have noted that they were cherry-picking, but it deserves reemphasis. There were hundreds of emails, and yet these people have been harping on no more than half a dozen sentences. That's half a dozen sentences, not even entire emails, out of hundreds of emails, some quite lengthy. This alone shows how desperate they were to find anything they could use.
While a few of the sentences that the nuts (sorry, but it's a convenient shorthand, and it's hard to give these people the respect due to those who have honest questions) dug out may look a little bad to people who don't really think about them, none of them amount to much at all, and that's even more the case considering that they were taken completely out of context. The one most commonly cited is the line "I've just completed Mike's [Mann] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years [from 1981 onward] and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." One word here that the people who want to cast doubts on the science focus on is "trick". Now as we all know, the verb "trick" means to cheat or deceive, and that's what these people want us to think the word implies. But anyone with even a modicum of grammatical knowledge can see that the "trick" in "Mike's trick" is a noun. While the noun trick sometimes can refer to an action involving deception, it also has many meanings that have nothing to do with deception, such as a specialized skill ("tricks of the trade") or a clever act (as in "my dog can do tricks"). Even taken out of context, it is clear that that is what is meant here. The other part of this sentence that these people seized on was "hide the decline". I will say that "hide" was a poor choice of words, but it's not really relevant. The real question is what decline is being discussed. Is it a decline in actual temperatures? Even out of context, it's clear that it isn't, as the writer (Phil Jones) suggests using the "real temps", that is the actual temperatures, to "hide" the decline in question. As explained on this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70SlEqX7oY), the reference is to tree ring data, which matched up well with actual temperatures earlier in the 20th century but then began to diverge from actual temperatures. Why this might be is still something of a mystery, but since the problem the world needs to focus on is the actual temperatures, it is relatively unimportant. In any case, in context it's obvious that this sentence is not referring to any attempt to deceive the world about the real climate situation.
Another example of a sentence taken completely out of context was "We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it's a travesty that we can't.", which as the abovementioned video explains, is simply an expression of frustration with the inadequacy of certain models. Another sentence I saw cited a few times was pme in which Jones says "I would like to see the climate change happen so the science could be proved right." On the face of it, this is not a statement of someone who thinks that the science shows anything other than that global warming is occurring. At most, it might seem to show a little doubt that the science that he clearly believes in will be borne out by events, but it's more likely to be a somewhat cynical hope that more dramatic warming in the near future will erase any doubts (except among the lunatic fringe). Perhaps not the best thing to be hoping for, but perfectly understandable.
An element of the emails that even some who are not climate change deniers focused on was the apparent effort of Jones and others to prevent papers by climate change deniers from being published in journals, and to keep data out of their hands. Apparently they wanted to keep two papers they found objectionable out of the IPCC report (the massive international set of research by a body of international scientists -- winners of the Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore -- that concluded that the Earth is warming and that it is highly probable that human activity is a primary cause). While they were wrong to do so, the reports in question apparently did end up being included, and have since been shown to be flawed. The scientists also discuss their irritation at a journal which published a paper from a climate change denier, and threaten to refuse to treat it as a respectable journal as a result. While this may look bad on the surface, it is actually understandable. If a "scientific" journal chose to publish a paper claiming that the Earth was flat, would scientists be expected to continue to treat it as a reputable journal? While that may seem like an extreme example, to many mainstream scientists, some of the more extreme deniers are little better than flat earthers. It is worth mentioning that an editor at the journal in question also quit over its decision to publish the paper the East Anglia scientists criticized.
As for attempts to keep data out of certain people's hands, that was more clearly a case where Jones and any who went along were wrong, but even this is somewhat understandable. After all, look at the absurd liberties some people took in taking the content of these emails out of context. While data should be available to all, it is easy to comprehend the temptation to want to keep it from people who will deliberately twist it. And climate deniers are already well known for that, an example being the attempt to claim the world has been cooling over the last decade, which they only manage by taking a particular year (1997, which due to the effects of El Nino was the hottest on record) as their starting point. This misuse of statistics is debunked in a set of AP reports (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_bi_ge/us_sci_global_cooling and http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_sc/us_sci_global_cooling_methodology). So it's easy to imagine why some scientists would be inclined not to let these people get their hands on their data. Likewise the desire expressed in an email to punch out one of the more persistent deniers. While not a laudable desire, it's not hard to understand the level of frustration some climate scientists may feel towards these people. Of course they should only express such emotions privately, not in a public email (oh, wait, these were private emails that their senders didn't expect to be made public...).
A lengthy AP analysis by several people of all these emails (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091212/ap_on_sc/climate_e_mails) also came to the conclusion that there was nothing in them that through doubt on the science, though in an attempt to be even-handed (bending over backward to be so, really), they did criticize the scientists for being a little too petty. But the fact that scientists aren't always rational and unemotional should be no surprise to anyone who knows the history of science, and the petty sniping between scientists such as Isaac Newton and Gottfried von Leibniz, or palentologists Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh, or indeed many scientists holding opposing views on some scientific question. If anything, scientists can be even more childish than many other people, perhaps in some cases due to a certain lack of emotional maturity (though perhaps I should cast aspersions, since I can't claim to be perfect in that area myself).
Regarding why the climate change deniers (at least the more extreme ones) are hardly more worth debating than flat earthers, birthers or people who claim the Moon landing was hoax, I'll have to save that for a subsequent post. But regarding this imaginary controversy, here are a few final thoughts. One, some critics claim the climate scientists' emails show that they are overly dogmatic about their belief in global warming. This may be true to some extent (as just noted, being dogmatic about cherished theories is hardly unknown among scientists), but if mainstream scientists who believe climate change is happening and is caused by humans are dogmatic, then what are their opponents? Secondly, the more extreme commentators who try to claim the emails show a conspiracy to mislead the public are, as demonstrated above, obviously brainless, insane or dishonest (remember that out of hundreds of emails which the senders didn't expect to be made public, the best they could come up with was these few sentences, none of which shows anything like a blatant cover up), but if there's any doubt, I actually saw two of these people go so far as to claim that climate change was part of a conspiracy to create a new socialist world order. One actually fingered the UN as being behind it, which is even more absurd, given that the UN has such a small budget and is so paralyzed by contrary factions that it has trouble managing even realtively small operations, let alone taking over the world. The idea that the huge number of scientists who say global warming is happening (in the wake of this email affair, 1700 UK scientists signed a letter reaffirming their conviction that climate change is real) are all part of vast conspiracy or are only being politically correct to get government grant money (a particularly bizarre claim to make about US scientists, seeing as until recently the US had an administration that preferred to pretend climate change wasn't happening) is ludicrous. If anyone has a major financial stake in manufacturing anything regarding climate change, it's the energy companies that would prefer to deny that their products are causing global warming.
So why should we even pay attention to these people who try to manufacture controversy about the science behind climate change? One reason, unfortunately, is that some of these people are in the US Congress, which is currently one of the biggest obstacles, if not the biggest, to a global climate agreement at Copenhagen. The worst offender is in the Senate, namely James Inhofe, R-OK, but there are also some in the House (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/sci_climate_hearing). People like this may end up preventing the rest of the world from solving this very real problem. So until their constituents wise up and vote them out of office, more sensible people will have to go on wasting time demolishing their absurd claims.
Before we get into the "controversy" itself, I'd like to address something else, and that's the name that some people have attached to the hacked email issue, namely "Climategate". Can we give the "something-gate" thing a rest already? Yes, Watergate was a big deal, but does that mean we have to attach the second half of the name of a Washington hotel to every new political scandal since then on to the end of human civilization? We've already heard names like "Contragate", "Monicagate", and who knows how many more. Thankfully most of them are not the most common names for the scandals in question, but they still appear far too often. While we're at it, why not go back and name every political scandal in history whatever-gate? The Teapot Dome scandal, for instance, could be Teapotgate, and so on.... Enough already with the "gates"! [Update: Apparently I'm not the only one who can see the absurdity of this. A March 1, 2010 New York Times article entitled "In Paterson's Attempt to Reassure the Public, a Flashback to That '70s Show" that discusses parallels between Watergate and NY governor David Paterson's interference in an aide's domestic violence case includes a reference to "the enduring journalistic tic of mindlessly attaching the suffix “-gate” to every scandal that comes along."]
As for the emails themselves, for any who don't know, hundreds of private emails were hacked from the University of East Anglia in the UK, home of one of the top climate research centers, and posted on the web. Conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers (those who deny that average global temperatures are rising, or insist that any such warming has nothing to do with human activity) went through these emails and claimed that they came up with evidence that climate scientists were fudging data, engaging in conspiracy to silence opponents, and so forth. Many more sensible people have noted that they were cherry-picking, but it deserves reemphasis. There were hundreds of emails, and yet these people have been harping on no more than half a dozen sentences. That's half a dozen sentences, not even entire emails, out of hundreds of emails, some quite lengthy. This alone shows how desperate they were to find anything they could use.
While a few of the sentences that the nuts (sorry, but it's a convenient shorthand, and it's hard to give these people the respect due to those who have honest questions) dug out may look a little bad to people who don't really think about them, none of them amount to much at all, and that's even more the case considering that they were taken completely out of context. The one most commonly cited is the line "I've just completed Mike's [Mann] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years [from 1981 onward] and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." One word here that the people who want to cast doubts on the science focus on is "trick". Now as we all know, the verb "trick" means to cheat or deceive, and that's what these people want us to think the word implies. But anyone with even a modicum of grammatical knowledge can see that the "trick" in "Mike's trick" is a noun. While the noun trick sometimes can refer to an action involving deception, it also has many meanings that have nothing to do with deception, such as a specialized skill ("tricks of the trade") or a clever act (as in "my dog can do tricks"). Even taken out of context, it is clear that that is what is meant here. The other part of this sentence that these people seized on was "hide the decline". I will say that "hide" was a poor choice of words, but it's not really relevant. The real question is what decline is being discussed. Is it a decline in actual temperatures? Even out of context, it's clear that it isn't, as the writer (Phil Jones) suggests using the "real temps", that is the actual temperatures, to "hide" the decline in question. As explained on this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70SlEqX7oY), the reference is to tree ring data, which matched up well with actual temperatures earlier in the 20th century but then began to diverge from actual temperatures. Why this might be is still something of a mystery, but since the problem the world needs to focus on is the actual temperatures, it is relatively unimportant. In any case, in context it's obvious that this sentence is not referring to any attempt to deceive the world about the real climate situation.
Another example of a sentence taken completely out of context was "We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it's a travesty that we can't.", which as the abovementioned video explains, is simply an expression of frustration with the inadequacy of certain models. Another sentence I saw cited a few times was pme in which Jones says "I would like to see the climate change happen so the science could be proved right." On the face of it, this is not a statement of someone who thinks that the science shows anything other than that global warming is occurring. At most, it might seem to show a little doubt that the science that he clearly believes in will be borne out by events, but it's more likely to be a somewhat cynical hope that more dramatic warming in the near future will erase any doubts (except among the lunatic fringe). Perhaps not the best thing to be hoping for, but perfectly understandable.
An element of the emails that even some who are not climate change deniers focused on was the apparent effort of Jones and others to prevent papers by climate change deniers from being published in journals, and to keep data out of their hands. Apparently they wanted to keep two papers they found objectionable out of the IPCC report (the massive international set of research by a body of international scientists -- winners of the Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore -- that concluded that the Earth is warming and that it is highly probable that human activity is a primary cause). While they were wrong to do so, the reports in question apparently did end up being included, and have since been shown to be flawed. The scientists also discuss their irritation at a journal which published a paper from a climate change denier, and threaten to refuse to treat it as a respectable journal as a result. While this may look bad on the surface, it is actually understandable. If a "scientific" journal chose to publish a paper claiming that the Earth was flat, would scientists be expected to continue to treat it as a reputable journal? While that may seem like an extreme example, to many mainstream scientists, some of the more extreme deniers are little better than flat earthers. It is worth mentioning that an editor at the journal in question also quit over its decision to publish the paper the East Anglia scientists criticized.
As for attempts to keep data out of certain people's hands, that was more clearly a case where Jones and any who went along were wrong, but even this is somewhat understandable. After all, look at the absurd liberties some people took in taking the content of these emails out of context. While data should be available to all, it is easy to comprehend the temptation to want to keep it from people who will deliberately twist it. And climate deniers are already well known for that, an example being the attempt to claim the world has been cooling over the last decade, which they only manage by taking a particular year (1997, which due to the effects of El Nino was the hottest on record) as their starting point. This misuse of statistics is debunked in a set of AP reports (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_bi_ge/us_sci_global_cooling and http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091026/ap_on_sc/us_sci_global_cooling_methodology). So it's easy to imagine why some scientists would be inclined not to let these people get their hands on their data. Likewise the desire expressed in an email to punch out one of the more persistent deniers. While not a laudable desire, it's not hard to understand the level of frustration some climate scientists may feel towards these people. Of course they should only express such emotions privately, not in a public email (oh, wait, these were private emails that their senders didn't expect to be made public...).
A lengthy AP analysis by several people of all these emails (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091212/ap_on_sc/climate_e_mails) also came to the conclusion that there was nothing in them that through doubt on the science, though in an attempt to be even-handed (bending over backward to be so, really), they did criticize the scientists for being a little too petty. But the fact that scientists aren't always rational and unemotional should be no surprise to anyone who knows the history of science, and the petty sniping between scientists such as Isaac Newton and Gottfried von Leibniz, or palentologists Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh, or indeed many scientists holding opposing views on some scientific question. If anything, scientists can be even more childish than many other people, perhaps in some cases due to a certain lack of emotional maturity (though perhaps I should cast aspersions, since I can't claim to be perfect in that area myself).
Regarding why the climate change deniers (at least the more extreme ones) are hardly more worth debating than flat earthers, birthers or people who claim the Moon landing was hoax, I'll have to save that for a subsequent post. But regarding this imaginary controversy, here are a few final thoughts. One, some critics claim the climate scientists' emails show that they are overly dogmatic about their belief in global warming. This may be true to some extent (as just noted, being dogmatic about cherished theories is hardly unknown among scientists), but if mainstream scientists who believe climate change is happening and is caused by humans are dogmatic, then what are their opponents? Secondly, the more extreme commentators who try to claim the emails show a conspiracy to mislead the public are, as demonstrated above, obviously brainless, insane or dishonest (remember that out of hundreds of emails which the senders didn't expect to be made public, the best they could come up with was these few sentences, none of which shows anything like a blatant cover up), but if there's any doubt, I actually saw two of these people go so far as to claim that climate change was part of a conspiracy to create a new socialist world order. One actually fingered the UN as being behind it, which is even more absurd, given that the UN has such a small budget and is so paralyzed by contrary factions that it has trouble managing even realtively small operations, let alone taking over the world. The idea that the huge number of scientists who say global warming is happening (in the wake of this email affair, 1700 UK scientists signed a letter reaffirming their conviction that climate change is real) are all part of vast conspiracy or are only being politically correct to get government grant money (a particularly bizarre claim to make about US scientists, seeing as until recently the US had an administration that preferred to pretend climate change wasn't happening) is ludicrous. If anyone has a major financial stake in manufacturing anything regarding climate change, it's the energy companies that would prefer to deny that their products are causing global warming.
So why should we even pay attention to these people who try to manufacture controversy about the science behind climate change? One reason, unfortunately, is that some of these people are in the US Congress, which is currently one of the biggest obstacles, if not the biggest, to a global climate agreement at Copenhagen. The worst offender is in the Senate, namely James Inhofe, R-OK, but there are also some in the House (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/sci_climate_hearing). People like this may end up preventing the rest of the world from solving this very real problem. So until their constituents wise up and vote them out of office, more sensible people will have to go on wasting time demolishing their absurd claims.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Religion vs. country, defining a "terrorist", and more
Though I realize I'm a little late in doing so, I wanted to make a brief comment on some of the rhetoric that came out of the rampage by Army major Dr. Hasan in Ft. Hood some time back. Some conservative commentators complained that there was too much psychoanalysis of Hasan's motives going on, as they felt this amounted to excusing what he did. Of course there is no excusing what he did, and if anyone was really doing so, they were wrong. However, this does not mean there was anything wrong with examining the factors which motivated him, including stress and perceived discrimination. When something like this happens, it is obviously necessary to understand it as thoroughly as possible, as only by doing so can we reduce the chance of similar incidents occurring in the future, even if only by a slight amount.
I have to say I didn't bother to read every article published on this story, or indeed more than a few, as I find the media's tendency to obsessively dwell on this sort of thing to be annoying. But I did note that several articles quoted Hasan as telling others that he was a Muslim first and an American second. This was cited as evidence that he was "unpatriotic", even as something that that should have tipped authorities to the fact that he might do something like what he did. Right-wingers apparently focused on it, judging from one of the subtitles at the bottom of the screen from the Sean Hannity show featured in this hilarious Daily Show clip (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-november-12-2009/sean-hannity-apologizes-to-jon), which claim Hasan "taunted" classmates by saying he was a Muslim first. Now, first of all, I'm not big on the whole "patriotism" concept (a topic which deserves a separate essay), but even for many of those who think of themselves as very patriotic, what Hasan supposedly said should not really be such a big deal. Most conservatives in the US, for instance, consider themselves devout Christians. Are they going to say that they put a higher priority on being patriotic toward the US than on God and Jesus? Are they Americans first and Christians second? If they are being as true to their faith as most of them claim to be, then they should be Christians first and Americans second. So this supposed statement by Hasan should hardly be regarded as shocking coming from a truly religious person.
Then there is the efforts to label this a "terrorist" attack. Joe Lieberman is one who used the term, and as can be seen from the above clip, convicted felon Oliver North is another, with some prompting from Hannity, who obviously concurs. But as this blog (http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/24894) so accurately points out, these people seem confused about the definition of terrorism. Terrorism involves attacking civilian populations in order to terrorize them with a political goal in mind, usually getting the population to in turn pressure their government to change or abandon certain policies or efforts. Until it is shown that Hasan went on a rampage with some specific political goal in mind, such as getting the US to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, then his actions, while still murderous and reprehensible, can't be called terrorism. Even if he personally wanted the US to pull out of those countries, his attack can't be said to have made specifically with that goal in mind unless he made a statement to that effect before or during the assault (you can't terrorize people into doing something if you don't tell them what you want them to do).
It seems that in fact these people who call Hasan a "terrorist" are in fact equating "terrorism" with "violent, radical Islam". In other words, a radical Islamist is a terrorist, and terrorists are all radical Islamists. This is of course absurd, as there have been and are many non-Muslim terrorists, including the IRA and their Unionist enemies in northern Ireland, the Zionists who bombed that Jerusalem hotel to force the British out of Palestine in the post WWII period, the fundamentalist Christians that murder doctors who perform abortions, and arguably the Allied leaders who approved the firebombing of Dresden in WWII, just to name a few. So while there is no excuse whatever for Hasan's actions, the rhetoric of the right wing regarding them shows once again how completely irrational they can be.
I have to say I didn't bother to read every article published on this story, or indeed more than a few, as I find the media's tendency to obsessively dwell on this sort of thing to be annoying. But I did note that several articles quoted Hasan as telling others that he was a Muslim first and an American second. This was cited as evidence that he was "unpatriotic", even as something that that should have tipped authorities to the fact that he might do something like what he did. Right-wingers apparently focused on it, judging from one of the subtitles at the bottom of the screen from the Sean Hannity show featured in this hilarious Daily Show clip (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-november-12-2009/sean-hannity-apologizes-to-jon), which claim Hasan "taunted" classmates by saying he was a Muslim first. Now, first of all, I'm not big on the whole "patriotism" concept (a topic which deserves a separate essay), but even for many of those who think of themselves as very patriotic, what Hasan supposedly said should not really be such a big deal. Most conservatives in the US, for instance, consider themselves devout Christians. Are they going to say that they put a higher priority on being patriotic toward the US than on God and Jesus? Are they Americans first and Christians second? If they are being as true to their faith as most of them claim to be, then they should be Christians first and Americans second. So this supposed statement by Hasan should hardly be regarded as shocking coming from a truly religious person.
Then there is the efforts to label this a "terrorist" attack. Joe Lieberman is one who used the term, and as can be seen from the above clip, convicted felon Oliver North is another, with some prompting from Hannity, who obviously concurs. But as this blog (http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/24894) so accurately points out, these people seem confused about the definition of terrorism. Terrorism involves attacking civilian populations in order to terrorize them with a political goal in mind, usually getting the population to in turn pressure their government to change or abandon certain policies or efforts. Until it is shown that Hasan went on a rampage with some specific political goal in mind, such as getting the US to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, then his actions, while still murderous and reprehensible, can't be called terrorism. Even if he personally wanted the US to pull out of those countries, his attack can't be said to have made specifically with that goal in mind unless he made a statement to that effect before or during the assault (you can't terrorize people into doing something if you don't tell them what you want them to do).
It seems that in fact these people who call Hasan a "terrorist" are in fact equating "terrorism" with "violent, radical Islam". In other words, a radical Islamist is a terrorist, and terrorists are all radical Islamists. This is of course absurd, as there have been and are many non-Muslim terrorists, including the IRA and their Unionist enemies in northern Ireland, the Zionists who bombed that Jerusalem hotel to force the British out of Palestine in the post WWII period, the fundamentalist Christians that murder doctors who perform abortions, and arguably the Allied leaders who approved the firebombing of Dresden in WWII, just to name a few. So while there is no excuse whatever for Hasan's actions, the rhetoric of the right wing regarding them shows once again how completely irrational they can be.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Bangkok trip
It's been some time since I managed to post anything, one reason (along with preoccupation with other matters, sheer laziness, etc.) being that I was away last weekend. My wife had a meeting to attend in Bangkok, and I decided to go along. What's more, we took our daughter, who thereby had a number of firsts, including her first international trip (for that matter, her first trip out of the Taipei area) and her first airplane ride. It was a pretty short trip, probably the shortest of my many trips to Thailand, as we went on Friday and came back the following Tuesday. Not surprisingly, we didn't do much sightseeing (in fact we didn't do any, at least in the sense of going to specific tourist sights), though that wasn't a big deal, as most of the major sights of Bangkok we've seen at least once and in some cases multiple times.
The meetings my wife was attending went on all day Saturday and Sunday, and I stayed in the area of the hotel they were being held in -- the same one we were staying at -- so she could nurse the baby during their breaks. My furthest venture was to a used bookstore about 20 minutes walk away, a little way past Soi 26 on Thanon Sukhumvit (the hotel was on Soi 20). I took the baby in her stroller, which was complicated by the fact that at most intersections with sois (a soi is a lane or alley off a larger road) or driveways there was no ramp down from the sidewalk to the street, so if the curb was high, as it usually was, I had to pick up the stroller to haul it down and sometimes back up again (though when going back up it was usually possible to just push down on the back to lift the front wheels onto the curb). Also, I had to try to make sure the baby didn't get too much sun (not that a little sun is bad for anyone, but at her age she would certainly burn easily). Nevertheless, a trip of this distance proved manageable, though unfortunately, despite having a good selection, this time the bookstore only had one of the books I was looking for (on our last trip I was able to find several I was searching for there).
Much of the rest of the time we were in the hotel or at most in the soi outside. Fortunately the meeting was being held on a floor just two below the one we were staying on (though annoyingly the stairs were for emergency use only, so we had to use the elevator), and that floor (the 14th) also had the hotel's pool, which was outside on the roof of a shorter wing of the hotel. Though we didn't get to go swimming, it was nice to be able to sit outside while we were waiting for the next rest break in the meeting or while the baby was nursing. The baby was not surprisingly something of hit among many attendees of the meeting, who incidentally were human rights defenders from a wide variety of places, including Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, various South Asian countries and Mongolia.
On the last day the three of us first moved to a cheaper hotel across the soi from the one the meeting was held in (our stay in the latter was partly subsidized only through Sunday, the night following the meeting, so we decided to save some money by switching to a cheaper place). After that we took the Skytrain (the elevated rail line -- incidentally saturated with annoying advertisements; the underground subway called the MRT is much better in this regard, though it didn't go where we were headed in this case) to the shopping district of central Bangkok. We went to the chaotic but relatively cheap MBK shopping center before heading over to the Siam Center/Discovery Center/Siam Paragon shopping complex. Though unsurprisingly I didn't find many of the Thai CDs I was looking, most being either obscure, very old, out of print, or some combination of the three, I did manage to get a few things, and my wife also found a few interesting things. For dinner we met a woman I knew from previous trips who works at Thailand's largest record company GMM Grammy as a sort of assistant to the boss. The place she chose was a pretty good Italian restaurant (she suggested it after I said I'd like to have Italian food) not far from the GMM Grammy building, and fortunately also not far from our hotel (in the other direction), which meant we could walk back.
The other two days of the trip were pretty much taken up by our flights there and back, which fortunately the baby handled fairly well, with only a little fussing. We can only hope her next international trip goes at least nearly as well.
The meetings my wife was attending went on all day Saturday and Sunday, and I stayed in the area of the hotel they were being held in -- the same one we were staying at -- so she could nurse the baby during their breaks. My furthest venture was to a used bookstore about 20 minutes walk away, a little way past Soi 26 on Thanon Sukhumvit (the hotel was on Soi 20). I took the baby in her stroller, which was complicated by the fact that at most intersections with sois (a soi is a lane or alley off a larger road) or driveways there was no ramp down from the sidewalk to the street, so if the curb was high, as it usually was, I had to pick up the stroller to haul it down and sometimes back up again (though when going back up it was usually possible to just push down on the back to lift the front wheels onto the curb). Also, I had to try to make sure the baby didn't get too much sun (not that a little sun is bad for anyone, but at her age she would certainly burn easily). Nevertheless, a trip of this distance proved manageable, though unfortunately, despite having a good selection, this time the bookstore only had one of the books I was looking for (on our last trip I was able to find several I was searching for there).
Much of the rest of the time we were in the hotel or at most in the soi outside. Fortunately the meeting was being held on a floor just two below the one we were staying on (though annoyingly the stairs were for emergency use only, so we had to use the elevator), and that floor (the 14th) also had the hotel's pool, which was outside on the roof of a shorter wing of the hotel. Though we didn't get to go swimming, it was nice to be able to sit outside while we were waiting for the next rest break in the meeting or while the baby was nursing. The baby was not surprisingly something of hit among many attendees of the meeting, who incidentally were human rights defenders from a wide variety of places, including Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, various South Asian countries and Mongolia.
On the last day the three of us first moved to a cheaper hotel across the soi from the one the meeting was held in (our stay in the latter was partly subsidized only through Sunday, the night following the meeting, so we decided to save some money by switching to a cheaper place). After that we took the Skytrain (the elevated rail line -- incidentally saturated with annoying advertisements; the underground subway called the MRT is much better in this regard, though it didn't go where we were headed in this case) to the shopping district of central Bangkok. We went to the chaotic but relatively cheap MBK shopping center before heading over to the Siam Center/Discovery Center/Siam Paragon shopping complex. Though unsurprisingly I didn't find many of the Thai CDs I was looking, most being either obscure, very old, out of print, or some combination of the three, I did manage to get a few things, and my wife also found a few interesting things. For dinner we met a woman I knew from previous trips who works at Thailand's largest record company GMM Grammy as a sort of assistant to the boss. The place she chose was a pretty good Italian restaurant (she suggested it after I said I'd like to have Italian food) not far from the GMM Grammy building, and fortunately also not far from our hotel (in the other direction), which meant we could walk back.
The other two days of the trip were pretty much taken up by our flights there and back, which fortunately the baby handled fairly well, with only a little fussing. We can only hope her next international trip goes at least nearly as well.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
"Protecting" Marriage and Other Nonsense
Maine's recent vote overturning the state's same sex marriage law has brought this issue back to the forefront of national debate, at least temporarily. Every time I see a vote like this, I have to wonder, do all these people who voted to deny marriage rights to same sex couples have such warped moral compasses, or are they simply unable to reason clearly?
The most common argument cited by opponents of same sex marriage is that they want to "protect" traditional marriage. The question they are never able to answer logically is exactly how allowing same sex marriage will harm heterosexual marriages. One argument, if we can call it that, is that allowing different types of marriage will denigrate the "value" of traditional marriage. The argument is so vague as to be completely meaningless. How do you define the "value" of marriage in the first place? The chief value it has is the formalization of a strong family bond between two individuals, such that they can share their lives and fortunes and potentially raise children together. How would allowing people of the same sex to formalize such a bond, one which will arise between them whether or not it is officially recognized by society, hurt the bonds that heterosexual couples form? Surely the argument is not simply that if too many people are married, marriage is no longer special? If that's the case we might as well make obtaining a marriage license a long and difficult process, perhaps with probationary periods beforehand, for any kind of couple (the same would apply for the odd argument that because married couples get certain benefits from society, allowing same sex marriage would be costly to society and therefore shouldn't be allowed). But somehow I don't get the idea that these defenders of "traditional" marriage want in any way to discourage heterosexual couples from getting married or to reduce the total number of marriages. No, they simply don't want to allow homosexual couples to marry.
So what arguments do these opponents of same sex marriage put forth against it, other than out-and-out homophobia? None that are at logical, and many that are just homophobia thinly disguised. One I've heard is that homosexual marriages can't produce children. This is true, in the sense that two people of the same sex can't have a child together in the genetic sense (though it may someday be possible for lesbian couples through genetic engineering). But what of that? Many heterosexual couples can't or don't have children together either, and we don't require them to do so or invalidate their marriages because of their childlessness (the latter used to occur fairly frequently, especially among royalty, but I don't think many people would advocate making a law along such lines). What's more, homosexual couples, like childless heterosexual couples, can and do adopt children or use surrogates, and given the number of children in need of a home around the world, the more couples there are to adopt the better.
But this brings up one of the more homophobic (as well as ignorant) arguments some use against same sex marriage, namely that children raised by homosexual couples will be somehow unnatural. There is a similar argument that allowing homosexual marriage in the society will result in it being "taught in schools". The idea of it being "taught in schools" is a bit bizarre in the first place; what do they think, teachers are suddenly going to start telling children they should marry people of the same sex? At most, schools might use materials that present same sex marriage as being normal. This is what many opponents actually object to, as they don't regard same sex relationships as normal, so they don't want to see toleration of them taught or even passively encouraged. If that's not homophobia, what is it?
Furthermore, some opponents of same sex marriage seem to believe that presenting same sex relationships as normal will somehow cause more children to "become" homosexual (a similar argument is applied to children raised by same sex couples). This argument is simply ignorant, as overwhelming evidence indicates that sexual orientation is primarily a matter of nature, not nurture, so that the percentage of people who are naturally inclined to homosexuality does not vary significantly whether the society is tolerant of homosexuality or not. The only thing that varies is whether those who are by nature homosexual are open about it. In an extremely conservative society, very few if any people will be openly homosexual but there will be just as many homosexuals; they will simply hide their sexual orientation. Conversely, even in a society that treats homosexual relations as completely equal to heterosexual ones, the vast majority of people will still be heterosexual. At most, you may see an increase in open bisexuality, but this is not harmful either, as most people will still settle into a relationship based on their primary orientation, whatever that may be.
Some decry the possibility of more "experimentation" with different orientations among adolescents, but, as stated above, in the end people who are basically heterosexual (again, the vast majority) will end up in heterosexual relationships no matter what they do when they are young, and the converse is true of those who are naturally homosexual. In fact, studies indicate that quite a bit of experimentation goes on among adolescents already. I myself have heard of quite a few examples anecdotally, mostly from women (thought that might be a problem with my sample...). On the other hand, many young people will not experiment with different orientations no matter how widely accepted it becomes. Speaking for myself, I never had the least bit interest in men or boys at any time in my life, and even if I had been living in a society that was very tolerant of homosexuality (rather than the extremely homophobic one I did grow up in), I doubt I would have been inclined to experiment even a little with it. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that many of my friends and classmates did so, nor do I think it would have harmed them. And while, due in part to the homophobic society I grew up in, I'll admit that even now I sometimes feel slightly uncomfortable around gay couples (not, however, around lesbian couples, for some reason...), I recognize that this is my problem, not theirs, and in time I hope and expect to overcome it. Unfortunately, many other people don't even recognize their own homophobia, even when it is much more severe than my own.
In the end, the opposition to same sex marriage is no different from the opposition to marriages between people of different races or "miscegenation", as they used to call it. All of the so-called arguments against same sex marriage could be (and in many cases were) applied against mixed-race marriages. What's more, recalling the legalization of mixed-race marriages (for those who don't know, only a few decades ago mixed race marriage was actually illegal in many places, unbelievable though that may sound) is just one of many analogies that help illustrate why the argument that in this debate the "will of the people" should prevail is ludicrous. If people in states like Mississippi, Alabama, or even Texas had been able to vote on state constitutional amendments outlawing mixed-race marriage or for that matter desegregated schools, they certainly would have done so. It took the courts to force the overturning of these discriminatory laws (in the case of mixed-race marriage, it was a 1967 decision by the US Supreme Court). In doing so, the courts were fulfilling one of their major functions, protecting the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority. Similarly, in the current fight over same sex marriage, it has been primarily the courts that have been responsible for establishing equal rights for same sex couples, often in the face of public opposition, just as desegregation was a result of court rulings which were openly opposed by most people in the South. The idea that the electorate should be allowed to vote for inequality in the same sex marriage debate makes no more sense then allowing them to vote to uphold same segregation or anti-miscegenation laws would have been. Discrimination of this sort is wrong, no matter how many people support it. We can only hope that more and more judges will do the right thing and rule against these discriminatory resolutions, and that after same sex marriage has been legal for enough time, the public at large will come to see that it is not in the least harmful to the society, and there are no grounds for their fears and prejudices.
The most common argument cited by opponents of same sex marriage is that they want to "protect" traditional marriage. The question they are never able to answer logically is exactly how allowing same sex marriage will harm heterosexual marriages. One argument, if we can call it that, is that allowing different types of marriage will denigrate the "value" of traditional marriage. The argument is so vague as to be completely meaningless. How do you define the "value" of marriage in the first place? The chief value it has is the formalization of a strong family bond between two individuals, such that they can share their lives and fortunes and potentially raise children together. How would allowing people of the same sex to formalize such a bond, one which will arise between them whether or not it is officially recognized by society, hurt the bonds that heterosexual couples form? Surely the argument is not simply that if too many people are married, marriage is no longer special? If that's the case we might as well make obtaining a marriage license a long and difficult process, perhaps with probationary periods beforehand, for any kind of couple (the same would apply for the odd argument that because married couples get certain benefits from society, allowing same sex marriage would be costly to society and therefore shouldn't be allowed). But somehow I don't get the idea that these defenders of "traditional" marriage want in any way to discourage heterosexual couples from getting married or to reduce the total number of marriages. No, they simply don't want to allow homosexual couples to marry.
So what arguments do these opponents of same sex marriage put forth against it, other than out-and-out homophobia? None that are at logical, and many that are just homophobia thinly disguised. One I've heard is that homosexual marriages can't produce children. This is true, in the sense that two people of the same sex can't have a child together in the genetic sense (though it may someday be possible for lesbian couples through genetic engineering). But what of that? Many heterosexual couples can't or don't have children together either, and we don't require them to do so or invalidate their marriages because of their childlessness (the latter used to occur fairly frequently, especially among royalty, but I don't think many people would advocate making a law along such lines). What's more, homosexual couples, like childless heterosexual couples, can and do adopt children or use surrogates, and given the number of children in need of a home around the world, the more couples there are to adopt the better.
But this brings up one of the more homophobic (as well as ignorant) arguments some use against same sex marriage, namely that children raised by homosexual couples will be somehow unnatural. There is a similar argument that allowing homosexual marriage in the society will result in it being "taught in schools". The idea of it being "taught in schools" is a bit bizarre in the first place; what do they think, teachers are suddenly going to start telling children they should marry people of the same sex? At most, schools might use materials that present same sex marriage as being normal. This is what many opponents actually object to, as they don't regard same sex relationships as normal, so they don't want to see toleration of them taught or even passively encouraged. If that's not homophobia, what is it?
Furthermore, some opponents of same sex marriage seem to believe that presenting same sex relationships as normal will somehow cause more children to "become" homosexual (a similar argument is applied to children raised by same sex couples). This argument is simply ignorant, as overwhelming evidence indicates that sexual orientation is primarily a matter of nature, not nurture, so that the percentage of people who are naturally inclined to homosexuality does not vary significantly whether the society is tolerant of homosexuality or not. The only thing that varies is whether those who are by nature homosexual are open about it. In an extremely conservative society, very few if any people will be openly homosexual but there will be just as many homosexuals; they will simply hide their sexual orientation. Conversely, even in a society that treats homosexual relations as completely equal to heterosexual ones, the vast majority of people will still be heterosexual. At most, you may see an increase in open bisexuality, but this is not harmful either, as most people will still settle into a relationship based on their primary orientation, whatever that may be.
Some decry the possibility of more "experimentation" with different orientations among adolescents, but, as stated above, in the end people who are basically heterosexual (again, the vast majority) will end up in heterosexual relationships no matter what they do when they are young, and the converse is true of those who are naturally homosexual. In fact, studies indicate that quite a bit of experimentation goes on among adolescents already. I myself have heard of quite a few examples anecdotally, mostly from women (thought that might be a problem with my sample...). On the other hand, many young people will not experiment with different orientations no matter how widely accepted it becomes. Speaking for myself, I never had the least bit interest in men or boys at any time in my life, and even if I had been living in a society that was very tolerant of homosexuality (rather than the extremely homophobic one I did grow up in), I doubt I would have been inclined to experiment even a little with it. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that many of my friends and classmates did so, nor do I think it would have harmed them. And while, due in part to the homophobic society I grew up in, I'll admit that even now I sometimes feel slightly uncomfortable around gay couples (not, however, around lesbian couples, for some reason...), I recognize that this is my problem, not theirs, and in time I hope and expect to overcome it. Unfortunately, many other people don't even recognize their own homophobia, even when it is much more severe than my own.
In the end, the opposition to same sex marriage is no different from the opposition to marriages between people of different races or "miscegenation", as they used to call it. All of the so-called arguments against same sex marriage could be (and in many cases were) applied against mixed-race marriages. What's more, recalling the legalization of mixed-race marriages (for those who don't know, only a few decades ago mixed race marriage was actually illegal in many places, unbelievable though that may sound) is just one of many analogies that help illustrate why the argument that in this debate the "will of the people" should prevail is ludicrous. If people in states like Mississippi, Alabama, or even Texas had been able to vote on state constitutional amendments outlawing mixed-race marriage or for that matter desegregated schools, they certainly would have done so. It took the courts to force the overturning of these discriminatory laws (in the case of mixed-race marriage, it was a 1967 decision by the US Supreme Court). In doing so, the courts were fulfilling one of their major functions, protecting the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority. Similarly, in the current fight over same sex marriage, it has been primarily the courts that have been responsible for establishing equal rights for same sex couples, often in the face of public opposition, just as desegregation was a result of court rulings which were openly opposed by most people in the South. The idea that the electorate should be allowed to vote for inequality in the same sex marriage debate makes no more sense then allowing them to vote to uphold same segregation or anti-miscegenation laws would have been. Discrimination of this sort is wrong, no matter how many people support it. We can only hope that more and more judges will do the right thing and rule against these discriminatory resolutions, and that after same sex marriage has been legal for enough time, the public at large will come to see that it is not in the least harmful to the society, and there are no grounds for their fears and prejudices.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
A Music Historian's Dilemma
Today I had an interesting chat with someone about popular music history research. One of the things we discussed was the problem of inaccurate information spreading when the first people to publish books on particular topics are careless in their research and everyone else copies them. Another problem we talked about is the danger of having other people use you by having you provide them with information and then publishing it without giving you credit. Both of these problems are things I've given a fair amount of thought to, though there is no simple solution to either.
If you are forced to rely on available information and that information is limited, you always run the danger of copying someone else's error. Ideally, of course, you would find some way to double check the information you obtain, but this is not always possible. For instance, while I try to check the release dates of songs and records against the original records and/or contemporary newspaper or magazine articles, sometimes this is not possible, so I'm forced to rely on something someone else has written. If you have reason to question the reliability of your source, all you can do is make clear that you are repeating what someone else has written, i.e., that any inaccuracies can be traced to them.
Conversely, when you yourself are the first to publish a definitive account of something, you have a particular responsibility to get your facts straight, as others are likely to rely on you for information. This is one reason I always feel I need to do more work before I can feel reasonably certain that what I'm writing is accurate.
As for the danger of being used, the obvious solution is to avoid giving your information to anyone else. But since sooner or later you may want information from others, you have to be willing to provide some in return. Also, ultimately the point of collecting all this information is to share it with others, so it's not like you can horde it like a miser forever. So I am usually willing to share a little information with others (but not all of my information at once), and ideally I will eventually make all of it available, though in a way that will ensure that I get credit for gathering it in the first place (and at least a little profit, if there is any to be made). But to do the latter, the first problem still has to be solved -- i.e., I want to make sure my information is as accurate as possible. This then creates a danger that others may use bits of information that I have given them or made public before I have a chance to formally publish them myself. So it seems that what I really need to do is finish my research and publish something as soon as possible.... We'll see if I can manage that.
If you are forced to rely on available information and that information is limited, you always run the danger of copying someone else's error. Ideally, of course, you would find some way to double check the information you obtain, but this is not always possible. For instance, while I try to check the release dates of songs and records against the original records and/or contemporary newspaper or magazine articles, sometimes this is not possible, so I'm forced to rely on something someone else has written. If you have reason to question the reliability of your source, all you can do is make clear that you are repeating what someone else has written, i.e., that any inaccuracies can be traced to them.
Conversely, when you yourself are the first to publish a definitive account of something, you have a particular responsibility to get your facts straight, as others are likely to rely on you for information. This is one reason I always feel I need to do more work before I can feel reasonably certain that what I'm writing is accurate.
As for the danger of being used, the obvious solution is to avoid giving your information to anyone else. But since sooner or later you may want information from others, you have to be willing to provide some in return. Also, ultimately the point of collecting all this information is to share it with others, so it's not like you can horde it like a miser forever. So I am usually willing to share a little information with others (but not all of my information at once), and ideally I will eventually make all of it available, though in a way that will ensure that I get credit for gathering it in the first place (and at least a little profit, if there is any to be made). But to do the latter, the first problem still has to be solved -- i.e., I want to make sure my information is as accurate as possible. This then creates a danger that others may use bits of information that I have given them or made public before I have a chance to formally publish them myself. So it seems that what I really need to do is finish my research and publish something as soon as possible.... We'll see if I can manage that.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Some articles on logic and beliefs
I should probably take time to write a new essay discussing at least some of the events of recent days, such as the Nobel committee's interesting selection of Barack Obama as recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. (In brief, I think it was a bit premature, and there were other candidates at least as worthy, but on the other hand it's true that he has had a major impact on the global climate just by changing many people's perception of America. What remains to be seen is whether he can really live up to such high expectations.) However, I'm feeling a bit lazy, so instead I'm just providing a few links to some old articles on a topic I find fascinating, namely people's ability (or inability) to think logically, and the resaons people believe what they believe. Many years back I started an essay of my own along similar lines, but I never finished it. One day I'll get back to it, but in the meantime here are the articles:
Health Care Debate Based on Lack of Logic
By Jeanna Bryner Senior Writer
LiveScience.com
http://www.livescience.com/culture/090826-healthcare-debate.html
People Unsure of Beliefs Are More Close-Minded
By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer
01 July 2009 11:38 am ET
http://www.livescience.com/culture/090701-close-minded-people.html
Monsters, Ghosts and Gods: Why We Believe
By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor
18 August 2008 11:00 am ET
http://www.livescience.com/culture/080818-monsters-ghosts-gods.html
Health Care Debate Based on Lack of Logic
By Jeanna Bryner Senior Writer
LiveScience.com
http://www.livescience.com/culture/090826-healthcare-debate.html
People Unsure of Beliefs Are More Close-Minded
By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer
01 July 2009 11:38 am ET
http://www.livescience.com/culture/090701-close-minded-people.html
Monsters, Ghosts and Gods: Why We Believe
By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor
18 August 2008 11:00 am ET
http://www.livescience.com/culture/080818-monsters-ghosts-gods.html
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
A Dialogue
Since it's been a few weeks since I posted anything and I don't have anything new written, here's an odd little dialogue that I wrote a couple of years back. It was unfinished so I added a few more lines. I was tempted to leave it open-ended or to extended it even further, but in the end I decided to give it a real closing, for better or for worse.
"If you really want to do it, then, fine, we'll do it."
"Look, if you aren't really willing...."
"I just said I was."
"You don't sound very willing."
"What do you mean? I said, okay, let's do it."
"But the way you put it...."
"'Okay' means 'okay.'"
"You said that if I really want to, then you'd go along. That sounds kind of reluctant to me."
"You said you really wanted to."
"I do, but I want you to want to, too."
"'To to too?' You lost me."
"I just mean that if you're only doing it because I want to, then it's not like you really want to."
"It was your idea."
"But the point is you don't seem very enthusiastic about it."
"What do you want me to do, jump up and down?"
"Of course not. It's just that...."
"Anyway, just because you really want to do it doesn't mean you have the right to expect me to want to do it as much as you do."
"It'd be nice if you wanted it at least a little."
"I said I'd do it."
"But that doesn't mean you want to do it; it sounds like you're only doing it to make me happy."
"Trust me, if I really didn't want to do it, I wouldn't."
"Not not wanting to do it isn't the same as wanting to do it."
"'Not not wanting?'"
"You know what I mean."
"Not really."
"Don't be obtuse."
"I'm not being obtuse, I really don't know what you're talking about."
"Look, you said you were willing...."
"Right, so what more do you want?"
"But you don't really want to."
"Like you just said yourself, I said I was willing."
"But willing doesn't mean you want to."
"What else could it mean?"
"It only means that you don't absolutely refuse. It's reluctant acquiescence."
"Did I say I was reluctant?"
"You sounded reluctant."
"In what way?"
"You just did."
"So you think you know what I'm thinking just from the way I say things?"
"Sure, I can tell."
"Well, if you can read my mind, then why bother ask me what I think in the first place?"
"I didn't say I could read your mind, I said I could guess."
"You said you could tell. That doesn't mean you guess, that means you know."
"Now you're nitpicking. Fine, I can't read your mind. So tell me, do you really want to do it or not?"
"I told you a hundred times, if you really want to do it, then fine by me."
"Arrgh, here we go again. Look, I don't want to feel like I'm forcing you to do it."
"You aren't forcing me. I wouldn't let you force me."
"But you wouldn't even do it if I didn't want to do it."
"Of course not. Why should we do it if you don't want to?"
"That's my point too. Maybe we shouldn't do it if you don't want to."
"I never said I didn't want to."
"But you never said you wanted to, either."
"Look, maybe I don't want to do it as badly as you do. Is that what you want me to say?"
"Then maybe we shouldn't do it at all."
"I know you really want to do it. So if we don't, you're going to act all moody."
"No, I won't."
"Yes, you will. You're acting that way already."
"I am not. If you don't want to do it, I can live with that."
"Ha! So you say now, but you'll mope about it forever. Anyway, I didn't say I didn't want to."
"You're sure acting like you don't."
"Oh for crying out loud, just set up the chess board and let's play."
"If you really want to do it, then, fine, we'll do it."
"Look, if you aren't really willing...."
"I just said I was."
"You don't sound very willing."
"What do you mean? I said, okay, let's do it."
"But the way you put it...."
"'Okay' means 'okay.'"
"You said that if I really want to, then you'd go along. That sounds kind of reluctant to me."
"You said you really wanted to."
"I do, but I want you to want to, too."
"'To to too?' You lost me."
"I just mean that if you're only doing it because I want to, then it's not like you really want to."
"It was your idea."
"But the point is you don't seem very enthusiastic about it."
"What do you want me to do, jump up and down?"
"Of course not. It's just that...."
"Anyway, just because you really want to do it doesn't mean you have the right to expect me to want to do it as much as you do."
"It'd be nice if you wanted it at least a little."
"I said I'd do it."
"But that doesn't mean you want to do it; it sounds like you're only doing it to make me happy."
"Trust me, if I really didn't want to do it, I wouldn't."
"Not not wanting to do it isn't the same as wanting to do it."
"'Not not wanting?'"
"You know what I mean."
"Not really."
"Don't be obtuse."
"I'm not being obtuse, I really don't know what you're talking about."
"Look, you said you were willing...."
"Right, so what more do you want?"
"But you don't really want to."
"Like you just said yourself, I said I was willing."
"But willing doesn't mean you want to."
"What else could it mean?"
"It only means that you don't absolutely refuse. It's reluctant acquiescence."
"Did I say I was reluctant?"
"You sounded reluctant."
"In what way?"
"You just did."
"So you think you know what I'm thinking just from the way I say things?"
"Sure, I can tell."
"Well, if you can read my mind, then why bother ask me what I think in the first place?"
"I didn't say I could read your mind, I said I could guess."
"You said you could tell. That doesn't mean you guess, that means you know."
"Now you're nitpicking. Fine, I can't read your mind. So tell me, do you really want to do it or not?"
"I told you a hundred times, if you really want to do it, then fine by me."
"Arrgh, here we go again. Look, I don't want to feel like I'm forcing you to do it."
"You aren't forcing me. I wouldn't let you force me."
"But you wouldn't even do it if I didn't want to do it."
"Of course not. Why should we do it if you don't want to?"
"That's my point too. Maybe we shouldn't do it if you don't want to."
"I never said I didn't want to."
"But you never said you wanted to, either."
"Look, maybe I don't want to do it as badly as you do. Is that what you want me to say?"
"Then maybe we shouldn't do it at all."
"I know you really want to do it. So if we don't, you're going to act all moody."
"No, I won't."
"Yes, you will. You're acting that way already."
"I am not. If you don't want to do it, I can live with that."
"Ha! So you say now, but you'll mope about it forever. Anyway, I didn't say I didn't want to."
"You're sure acting like you don't."
"Oh for crying out loud, just set up the chess board and let's play."
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Reputation and Reality
Anyone who reads a lot of history, as I do, will frequently encounter assessments of historical figures, both in terms of their deeds and their characters. Historians will provide opinions as to whether a particular political or military leader was "good" in the sense that they fulfilled their role successfully, and whether they were "good" as far as their character was concerned, that is, whether they were humane and just or cruel and arbitrary. Even those who do not read much history will encounter such judgements regarding the reputation of historical figures; indeed many people will make such judgements themselves -- or more likely they will regurgitate judgements that they have learned from others. But, as should be obvious to anyone who spends a few moments' thought on the issue, historical reputations are usually based on a very narrow and often misleading set of facts, and are indeed often somewhat divorced from reality. The unreliability of many opinions regarding the reputations of historical figures is made clear by the fact that different sources can reach diametrically opposed conclusions about the same person. This can even be seen when the person in question is someone who is only recently dead, such as Ronald Reagan or (to take a pop culture example) Michael Jackson. Even cases where there seems to be a relative consensus among most sources, such as the Roman emperor Caligula, sometimes upon close examination are not that clear cut.
Many historical figures have wildly diverging reputations, with a number of different factors behind the variation. At the most basic level, the actual facts of a person's life are often unclear and sometimes end up being wildly distorted. For instance, the Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang almost certainly did not have a mountain painted red (the color worn by condemned criminals) because he was angry at the god of the mountain for impeding his progress, the claim that the emperor Caligula tried to have his horse made consul is dubious, and most of the more lurid stories about Edgar Allen Poe's personal life were invented by a rival who claimed to have been made his literary executor (and who was widely reputed to be a dishonest, unpleasant person). Regarding Caligula (whose real name was Gaius Caesar, Caligula being a nickname), he now has a very infamous reputation, and even many historians say that he was probably tyrannical or insane or both, but some others have suggested that he was in fact a fairly decent emperor whose biggest mistake was badly antagonizing Rome's senatorial class, the class from which the Roman historians who later wrote about him came, such that his deeds were distorted or even made up entirely to vilify him. Other examples abound, such as the Chinese emperor Wang Mang, who was vilified by the historians of the Later Han dynasty which replaced his regime, or Richard III of England, whose record was distorted by members of the court of the man who overthrew him, Henry VII, to the point that they invented fictions about his appearance, such as the claim that he was hunchbacked (an image which Shakespeare unfortunately popularized).
Then there are facts that are certainly or at least probably true but open to varying interpretations, such as the time when Alexander of Macedon (commonly called Alexander "the Great", a name which in itself carries subjective notions about the reputation he deserved) killed his friend Cleitus in a rage. The two were drunk and trading insults, but exactly what was said, who was being more aggressive, what motivated the quarrel, and whether there were underlying motives involved are all subject to some dispute. To take another example, I recently read a book about a Texas family (one that I happened to be descended from) during the period between Texas's declaration of independence from Mexico and the end of the US Civil War. Sam Houston, who was the victor in the battle which won Texan independence, as well as serving as the president of Texas, as a senator, and as governor of the state after it joined the US, is frequently mentioned in the book, as he lived nearby and was an acquaintance of a number of the people in the family. While most people today view Houston positively, this book takes a more negative view, citing among other things his frequent drunkenness and his ambition. Towards the end of his life, Houston lost most of his popularity in Texas due to his opposition to the state's secession from the Union before the Civil War. This account takes the view that his sole or at least primary reason for his position was that he had ambitions to run for US president, something which obviously couldn't happen if Texas left the Union. While Houston clearly was ambitious, it is also quite possible that he opposed secession out of principle or simply because, as he said himself, it was a bad idea that would result in a war that the South would lose. Without getting inside his head, we obviously can't know what his true motivation was, and so whether his motivation was positive or negative is clearly a matter of interpretation (even aside from the issue of whether one agrees with the position he took or not). Similarly, Abraham Lincoln's actions during the Civil War led him to be considered either a savior and liberator (by most Northerners and African-Americans) or an undemocratic tyrant (by many white Southerners). In this case, the same actions were being viewed from drastically different perspectives, leading to contrasting interpretations.
But perhaps the most crucial deciding factor governing a historical figure's reputation is emphasis; that is to say, which events and actions one chooses to focus on when evaluating the person. In many cases, the way a person is generally regarded is based on how they acted with regard to a single event, with the result that someone with an otherwise solid record may be viewed negatively due to one major blunder, or someone who was highly flawed may be seen favorably due to success with regard to a particularly important event. An example of the latter is Winston Churchill, whose successful leadership of Britain in World War II is what is generally remembered about him. What is less remembered is that he was a diehard imperialist who called Gandhi a "half-naked fakir", and as British colonial secretary he was largely responsible for the creation of Iraq, a country with arbitrarily drawn borders containing three different ethnic groups who didn't get along, making him directly responsible for problems that plague the Middle East to this day. Often different people will focus on different events in the life of the same individual. Ronald Reagan is viewed by many conservatives as a great president due to his perceived victory in the Cold War (though how much credit he deserves for that is debatable) as well as his taxation and social policies. Of course those same policies are strongly criticized by liberals, who are also more likely to focus on events like the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan's support for dictators like Pinochet and Saddam Hussein, and his frequent ignorance of what was going on around him. Likewise, after the recent death if Michael Jackson, his fans focused on his musical legacy (though how great that is obviously remains subjective), while his detractors focused on his alleged pedophilia (though it should be remembered that he was found not guilty) and his eccentricity. And after Ted Kennedy died, while the majority of people talked about his achievements as a legislator and his long-time struggle for various liberal causes, some detractors chose to dwell on the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident, in which he drove a car into a tidal channel and left his young woman passenger behind to drown while he escaped. Though many of those who raise this incident wildly exaggerate in their criticism, some going so far as to call Kennedy a murderer when even the worst possible interpretation of the facts shows that the woman's death was accidental, he was still guilty of serious negligence at best. But this of course begs the question of how much good someone has to do to balance out one or more major mistakes or evil deeds.
This latter question is an extremely vital one when it comes to evaluating historical figures, but the answer is necessarily subjective. A close examination of any person's history will reveal both good and bad, even in the best and worst individuals. Obviously in some cases the evil deeds so far outweigh any good ones that a negative assessment is a given, with people like Hitler and Stalin being among the most obvious examples. For figures that are less prominent, a single egregiously evil deed will outweigh any positives, such as the unfortunately numerous cases of perpetrators of bloody massacres of innocent people, including Reginald Dyer (responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in India), Ernest Medina (the highest-ranking officer at the My Lai massacre), and the various white civilians and soldiers responsible for massacres of Native Americans. On the other hand, some individuals did sufficient good that, at least in most people's minds, their virtues clearly outweigh any faults. But in most cases, there are enough examples of both good and bad deeds that one could easily go either way in an overall assessment, depending as suggested above on the weight given to different deeds. Does Augustus Caesar's competent rulership and establishment of Pax Romana outweigh his utter ruthlessness and responsibility for numerous killings? Do Alexander's impressive military achievements and spread of Greek civilization outweigh his drunkenness, fits of rage, and occasional tyrannical behavior? Do Tang Empress Wu Zetian's able executive skills and defiance of patriarchal tradition outweigh her supposed cruelty and use of secret police against dissent? By modern standards, the answer would probably be no in all those cases, but nevertheless an objective assessment would have to acknowledge both the good and the bad, as well as the unfortunate fact that ruthlessness and cruelty were standard behavior for rulers and leaders in those times. Ultimately, when judging historical figures, we should remember that no one is perfect (or even perfectly bad), and we should try to get as much information as possible, both positive and negative, before reaching even a tentative conclusion.
Many historical figures have wildly diverging reputations, with a number of different factors behind the variation. At the most basic level, the actual facts of a person's life are often unclear and sometimes end up being wildly distorted. For instance, the Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang almost certainly did not have a mountain painted red (the color worn by condemned criminals) because he was angry at the god of the mountain for impeding his progress, the claim that the emperor Caligula tried to have his horse made consul is dubious, and most of the more lurid stories about Edgar Allen Poe's personal life were invented by a rival who claimed to have been made his literary executor (and who was widely reputed to be a dishonest, unpleasant person). Regarding Caligula (whose real name was Gaius Caesar, Caligula being a nickname), he now has a very infamous reputation, and even many historians say that he was probably tyrannical or insane or both, but some others have suggested that he was in fact a fairly decent emperor whose biggest mistake was badly antagonizing Rome's senatorial class, the class from which the Roman historians who later wrote about him came, such that his deeds were distorted or even made up entirely to vilify him. Other examples abound, such as the Chinese emperor Wang Mang, who was vilified by the historians of the Later Han dynasty which replaced his regime, or Richard III of England, whose record was distorted by members of the court of the man who overthrew him, Henry VII, to the point that they invented fictions about his appearance, such as the claim that he was hunchbacked (an image which Shakespeare unfortunately popularized).
Then there are facts that are certainly or at least probably true but open to varying interpretations, such as the time when Alexander of Macedon (commonly called Alexander "the Great", a name which in itself carries subjective notions about the reputation he deserved) killed his friend Cleitus in a rage. The two were drunk and trading insults, but exactly what was said, who was being more aggressive, what motivated the quarrel, and whether there were underlying motives involved are all subject to some dispute. To take another example, I recently read a book about a Texas family (one that I happened to be descended from) during the period between Texas's declaration of independence from Mexico and the end of the US Civil War. Sam Houston, who was the victor in the battle which won Texan independence, as well as serving as the president of Texas, as a senator, and as governor of the state after it joined the US, is frequently mentioned in the book, as he lived nearby and was an acquaintance of a number of the people in the family. While most people today view Houston positively, this book takes a more negative view, citing among other things his frequent drunkenness and his ambition. Towards the end of his life, Houston lost most of his popularity in Texas due to his opposition to the state's secession from the Union before the Civil War. This account takes the view that his sole or at least primary reason for his position was that he had ambitions to run for US president, something which obviously couldn't happen if Texas left the Union. While Houston clearly was ambitious, it is also quite possible that he opposed secession out of principle or simply because, as he said himself, it was a bad idea that would result in a war that the South would lose. Without getting inside his head, we obviously can't know what his true motivation was, and so whether his motivation was positive or negative is clearly a matter of interpretation (even aside from the issue of whether one agrees with the position he took or not). Similarly, Abraham Lincoln's actions during the Civil War led him to be considered either a savior and liberator (by most Northerners and African-Americans) or an undemocratic tyrant (by many white Southerners). In this case, the same actions were being viewed from drastically different perspectives, leading to contrasting interpretations.
But perhaps the most crucial deciding factor governing a historical figure's reputation is emphasis; that is to say, which events and actions one chooses to focus on when evaluating the person. In many cases, the way a person is generally regarded is based on how they acted with regard to a single event, with the result that someone with an otherwise solid record may be viewed negatively due to one major blunder, or someone who was highly flawed may be seen favorably due to success with regard to a particularly important event. An example of the latter is Winston Churchill, whose successful leadership of Britain in World War II is what is generally remembered about him. What is less remembered is that he was a diehard imperialist who called Gandhi a "half-naked fakir", and as British colonial secretary he was largely responsible for the creation of Iraq, a country with arbitrarily drawn borders containing three different ethnic groups who didn't get along, making him directly responsible for problems that plague the Middle East to this day. Often different people will focus on different events in the life of the same individual. Ronald Reagan is viewed by many conservatives as a great president due to his perceived victory in the Cold War (though how much credit he deserves for that is debatable) as well as his taxation and social policies. Of course those same policies are strongly criticized by liberals, who are also more likely to focus on events like the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan's support for dictators like Pinochet and Saddam Hussein, and his frequent ignorance of what was going on around him. Likewise, after the recent death if Michael Jackson, his fans focused on his musical legacy (though how great that is obviously remains subjective), while his detractors focused on his alleged pedophilia (though it should be remembered that he was found not guilty) and his eccentricity. And after Ted Kennedy died, while the majority of people talked about his achievements as a legislator and his long-time struggle for various liberal causes, some detractors chose to dwell on the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident, in which he drove a car into a tidal channel and left his young woman passenger behind to drown while he escaped. Though many of those who raise this incident wildly exaggerate in their criticism, some going so far as to call Kennedy a murderer when even the worst possible interpretation of the facts shows that the woman's death was accidental, he was still guilty of serious negligence at best. But this of course begs the question of how much good someone has to do to balance out one or more major mistakes or evil deeds.
This latter question is an extremely vital one when it comes to evaluating historical figures, but the answer is necessarily subjective. A close examination of any person's history will reveal both good and bad, even in the best and worst individuals. Obviously in some cases the evil deeds so far outweigh any good ones that a negative assessment is a given, with people like Hitler and Stalin being among the most obvious examples. For figures that are less prominent, a single egregiously evil deed will outweigh any positives, such as the unfortunately numerous cases of perpetrators of bloody massacres of innocent people, including Reginald Dyer (responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in India), Ernest Medina (the highest-ranking officer at the My Lai massacre), and the various white civilians and soldiers responsible for massacres of Native Americans. On the other hand, some individuals did sufficient good that, at least in most people's minds, their virtues clearly outweigh any faults. But in most cases, there are enough examples of both good and bad deeds that one could easily go either way in an overall assessment, depending as suggested above on the weight given to different deeds. Does Augustus Caesar's competent rulership and establishment of Pax Romana outweigh his utter ruthlessness and responsibility for numerous killings? Do Alexander's impressive military achievements and spread of Greek civilization outweigh his drunkenness, fits of rage, and occasional tyrannical behavior? Do Tang Empress Wu Zetian's able executive skills and defiance of patriarchal tradition outweigh her supposed cruelty and use of secret police against dissent? By modern standards, the answer would probably be no in all those cases, but nevertheless an objective assessment would have to acknowledge both the good and the bad, as well as the unfortunate fact that ruthlessness and cruelty were standard behavior for rulers and leaders in those times. Ultimately, when judging historical figures, we should remember that no one is perfect (or even perfectly bad), and we should try to get as much information as possible, both positive and negative, before reaching even a tentative conclusion.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Warped Politics
I'm thinking it's about time to address some of the political nonsense that has been going on recently in the two countries I've spent most of my life in, the US and Taiwan. Of course politics is always full of absurd characters and ridiculous statements, but we've reached some new lows lately.
In the US, the big debate is over health care, but for the moment I don't intend to address this particular issue at length, but rather some of the rhetoric the extreme right wing has been directing at President Obama and his administration. Of course the latest example of this to make the news was the Republican from South Carolina actually loudly accusing Obama of lying when the latter was making a speech to a joint session of Congress. Now there are a couple of issues involved here. The first is of course whether Wilson's accusation (namely that Obama's statement that the reform he supported would not provide care for illegal immigrants) was true. The facts seem to indicate that it was not, as the current bills specifically exclude require proof of legal status. Of course some illegal immigrants may manage to take advantage of the system, but that is quite different from having a bill which would purposely encompass them. But then there is the second issue involved -- even if it was true that Obama's statement was not accurate, was the time and place appropriate from calling him on it? On this issue there is the greatest amount of agreement among reasonable people of both parties, who generally acknowledge that it is not considered good form for legislators to heckle the president in this kind of setting. So why does Rep. Wilson suddenly think it's acceptable for him to do so, abandoning civil discourse for the type of shouting that's been seeing lately at town hall meetings across the US? In my view, it is symptomatic of the bizarre, deep seated hatred the extreme right has for Obama, something that's surfaced again and again in the past few months.
First you had the idiotic birthers, who claimed that there was some doubt that Obama was born in the US, which was the intellectual equivalent of questioning whether humans landed on the Moon, whether the Holocaust happened, or even whether WWII was a real historical event. What was ridiculous was that a few conservative media figures seemed to give credence to this nonsense, though to be fair it must be noted that even some of the most extreme ones (such as Limbaugh and Coulter) dismissed the birthers' claims out of hand, as any sane person should.
Then there was Glenn Beck, who made the bizarre claim that Obama hated white people, despite the fact that his mother and the grandmother he was closest to were both white, he grew up more among white people than among blacks, and he himself is half white. Of course his borderline slander was strongly criticized, so seemingly partly out of revenge, he targeted one of Obama's advisors, Van Jones. Jones was accused of being a communist, of insulting Republicans, and of supporting a petition regarding 9/11 which asserted the government was responsible. Now I can't claim to have investigated these claims in detail, but from what I've seen they were frankly no big deal (certainly no worse than Beck's own ridiculous statement about Obama). First off, if Jones did ever say he was a "communist", I suspect he meant in the general sense, that is to say he considered a society where most property and capital was owned by the community rather than corporations and individuals (Jones is a community activist, after all). This type of "communism", while not popular among libertarians and the wealthy, is hardly sinister. Jones did call Republicans axxholes in a speech, but frankly many of them are, and in any case he said he himself was one in the same speech. As for the 9/11 petition, my understanding is that it simply called for an investigation on whether government officials might have known an attack was imminent. While I personally doubt this was the case, the idea is not completely absurd (as opposed to actually claiming the government was behind it, which is ludicrous); after all, to this day there are credible historians who suspect the Roosevelt administration may have had advance knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In any event, Jones has said he disagreed with the contents of the petition. So Beck himself is allowed to make ridiculous attacks on Obama but Obama's advisors are not permitted to have opinions that are basically reasonable, if slightly controversial? Give me a break.
Yet another recent incident was Obama's recent speech to school children. Without apparently having any knowledge of the content of the planned speech, rightwingers asserted that Obama planned to "indoctrinate" American school children with "socialist" ideas. Leaving aside the fact that socialism is not necessarily a bad thing, and that American children are already indoctrinated with questionable ideas that rightwingers support, such as nationalism (and if they had their way, they'd be indoctrinated with others such as Christianity and "intelligent design"), these paranoid claims revealed once again a bizarre fear and hatred of Obama, as if he could somehow poison children just by talking to them -- and talking to them only once. The idea that it's terrible for the US president to give a speech to school children is disturbingly strange; presidents have given this type of speech before, and no one got excited about it. And the actual speech, from what I've seen, was the noncontroversial type you'd expect to be given in this context. So what are these people getting excited about?
I generally try not to be like some liberals who manage to find racism as a subtext in almost everything, but in this case I'm beginning to wonder if it might be a factor in all the vitriol. Certainly many of the people we've heard the worst sorts of attacks from are mostly of the type whose racial sensitivity is somewhat questionable. Wilson of South Carolina, for instance, though I don't think he's truly representative of the average person of his state, unfortunately may typify a certain segment of the population (after all, South Carolina is not exactly known for liberals or for racial harmony). Beck of course actually accused Obama of being a racist, but an observant person will be aware that people who are particularly quick to make this type of accusation against others are often guilty of it themselves.
I suspect that the extremists' vitriol comes from a combination of factors. First, they are generally prone to this kind of thing, especially if someone they consider even slightly liberal is in the White House (after all, Clinton didn't escape this kind of attack). Second, they particularly fear Obama because of his popularity and his obvious rhetorical skills. Finally, they consider his background unusually threatening, because aside from being part African (the racism factor), he spent a lot of time abroad (horror of horrors!) and he used to be (shudder) a community activist (run for your lives!). Levity aside, though, this type of warped thinking seems to be far to prevalent in the US nowadays.
In Taiwan, meanwhile, the former president Chen Shuibian, the only non-KMT president in the nation's history, was convicted along with his wife, his children and several close confidants of graft by a district court. So what kind of sentence did he and his wife get? A life sentence. That's right, a life sentence for graft. Now don't get me wrong, I think corruption is bad and should be punished, especially if the guilty party is a national leader. What's more, I think Chen was probably guilty of something. But life? Normally people get life sentences for rape and attempted murder. I've never heard of anyone getting a life sentence for corruption, outside of countries like China, where they execute people for graft among many other things (actually in the case of corrupt officials, they are really executed for being unlucky enough to picked out as an example when the government decides to make people think they are doing something about corruption, and for belonging to the wrong political faction). No Taiwanese politician has ever gotten anything close to a life sentence for corruption. The notoriously corrupt KMT ran the country for 50 years, treating all of Taiwan like party property (or the property of the dictator Chiang Kai-shek and his family, which was also guilty of far worse crimes than corruption), and no KMT politician has received a sentence like this. What's more, Chen had his civil rights annulled for life, meaning he can't vote or run for office. By contrast, a few years ago a known gangster was able to run as an independent for the legislature from prison while serving a brief sentence (not a life sentence, of course) and won. A Taidong politician from the KMT who won the election for county commissioner was forced to surrender his position due to a conviction for corruption (again, the sentence he received was much milder than Chen's), he turned the office over to his wife (actually his ex-wife, as he divorced to get around a law forbidding him to appoint a family member to take his place). She in turn was accused of using county funds to take frequent trips abroad, but just a day after Chen was convicted, the prosecutor's office declined to indict her. Anyone aware of such cases or with even a basic knowledge of Taiwan's political situation and history can't help but see Chen's sentence as a blatantly political one. The irony is this will allow Chen to legitimately claim to be a martyr, a role he has already been overly eager to see himself in.
All this nonsense is almost enough to make one of those people who tries to ignore politics entirely. Unfortunately, I'm very aware of the truth of the statement which goes "you can ignore politics, but politics won't ignore you". So I'll continue to concern myself with what's happening, as bad as it may get.
In the US, the big debate is over health care, but for the moment I don't intend to address this particular issue at length, but rather some of the rhetoric the extreme right wing has been directing at President Obama and his administration. Of course the latest example of this to make the news was the Republican from South Carolina actually loudly accusing Obama of lying when the latter was making a speech to a joint session of Congress. Now there are a couple of issues involved here. The first is of course whether Wilson's accusation (namely that Obama's statement that the reform he supported would not provide care for illegal immigrants) was true. The facts seem to indicate that it was not, as the current bills specifically exclude require proof of legal status. Of course some illegal immigrants may manage to take advantage of the system, but that is quite different from having a bill which would purposely encompass them. But then there is the second issue involved -- even if it was true that Obama's statement was not accurate, was the time and place appropriate from calling him on it? On this issue there is the greatest amount of agreement among reasonable people of both parties, who generally acknowledge that it is not considered good form for legislators to heckle the president in this kind of setting. So why does Rep. Wilson suddenly think it's acceptable for him to do so, abandoning civil discourse for the type of shouting that's been seeing lately at town hall meetings across the US? In my view, it is symptomatic of the bizarre, deep seated hatred the extreme right has for Obama, something that's surfaced again and again in the past few months.
First you had the idiotic birthers, who claimed that there was some doubt that Obama was born in the US, which was the intellectual equivalent of questioning whether humans landed on the Moon, whether the Holocaust happened, or even whether WWII was a real historical event. What was ridiculous was that a few conservative media figures seemed to give credence to this nonsense, though to be fair it must be noted that even some of the most extreme ones (such as Limbaugh and Coulter) dismissed the birthers' claims out of hand, as any sane person should.
Then there was Glenn Beck, who made the bizarre claim that Obama hated white people, despite the fact that his mother and the grandmother he was closest to were both white, he grew up more among white people than among blacks, and he himself is half white. Of course his borderline slander was strongly criticized, so seemingly partly out of revenge, he targeted one of Obama's advisors, Van Jones. Jones was accused of being a communist, of insulting Republicans, and of supporting a petition regarding 9/11 which asserted the government was responsible. Now I can't claim to have investigated these claims in detail, but from what I've seen they were frankly no big deal (certainly no worse than Beck's own ridiculous statement about Obama). First off, if Jones did ever say he was a "communist", I suspect he meant in the general sense, that is to say he considered a society where most property and capital was owned by the community rather than corporations and individuals (Jones is a community activist, after all). This type of "communism", while not popular among libertarians and the wealthy, is hardly sinister. Jones did call Republicans axxholes in a speech, but frankly many of them are, and in any case he said he himself was one in the same speech. As for the 9/11 petition, my understanding is that it simply called for an investigation on whether government officials might have known an attack was imminent. While I personally doubt this was the case, the idea is not completely absurd (as opposed to actually claiming the government was behind it, which is ludicrous); after all, to this day there are credible historians who suspect the Roosevelt administration may have had advance knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In any event, Jones has said he disagreed with the contents of the petition. So Beck himself is allowed to make ridiculous attacks on Obama but Obama's advisors are not permitted to have opinions that are basically reasonable, if slightly controversial? Give me a break.
Yet another recent incident was Obama's recent speech to school children. Without apparently having any knowledge of the content of the planned speech, rightwingers asserted that Obama planned to "indoctrinate" American school children with "socialist" ideas. Leaving aside the fact that socialism is not necessarily a bad thing, and that American children are already indoctrinated with questionable ideas that rightwingers support, such as nationalism (and if they had their way, they'd be indoctrinated with others such as Christianity and "intelligent design"), these paranoid claims revealed once again a bizarre fear and hatred of Obama, as if he could somehow poison children just by talking to them -- and talking to them only once. The idea that it's terrible for the US president to give a speech to school children is disturbingly strange; presidents have given this type of speech before, and no one got excited about it. And the actual speech, from what I've seen, was the noncontroversial type you'd expect to be given in this context. So what are these people getting excited about?
I generally try not to be like some liberals who manage to find racism as a subtext in almost everything, but in this case I'm beginning to wonder if it might be a factor in all the vitriol. Certainly many of the people we've heard the worst sorts of attacks from are mostly of the type whose racial sensitivity is somewhat questionable. Wilson of South Carolina, for instance, though I don't think he's truly representative of the average person of his state, unfortunately may typify a certain segment of the population (after all, South Carolina is not exactly known for liberals or for racial harmony). Beck of course actually accused Obama of being a racist, but an observant person will be aware that people who are particularly quick to make this type of accusation against others are often guilty of it themselves.
I suspect that the extremists' vitriol comes from a combination of factors. First, they are generally prone to this kind of thing, especially if someone they consider even slightly liberal is in the White House (after all, Clinton didn't escape this kind of attack). Second, they particularly fear Obama because of his popularity and his obvious rhetorical skills. Finally, they consider his background unusually threatening, because aside from being part African (the racism factor), he spent a lot of time abroad (horror of horrors!) and he used to be (shudder) a community activist (run for your lives!). Levity aside, though, this type of warped thinking seems to be far to prevalent in the US nowadays.
In Taiwan, meanwhile, the former president Chen Shuibian, the only non-KMT president in the nation's history, was convicted along with his wife, his children and several close confidants of graft by a district court. So what kind of sentence did he and his wife get? A life sentence. That's right, a life sentence for graft. Now don't get me wrong, I think corruption is bad and should be punished, especially if the guilty party is a national leader. What's more, I think Chen was probably guilty of something. But life? Normally people get life sentences for rape and attempted murder. I've never heard of anyone getting a life sentence for corruption, outside of countries like China, where they execute people for graft among many other things (actually in the case of corrupt officials, they are really executed for being unlucky enough to picked out as an example when the government decides to make people think they are doing something about corruption, and for belonging to the wrong political faction). No Taiwanese politician has ever gotten anything close to a life sentence for corruption. The notoriously corrupt KMT ran the country for 50 years, treating all of Taiwan like party property (or the property of the dictator Chiang Kai-shek and his family, which was also guilty of far worse crimes than corruption), and no KMT politician has received a sentence like this. What's more, Chen had his civil rights annulled for life, meaning he can't vote or run for office. By contrast, a few years ago a known gangster was able to run as an independent for the legislature from prison while serving a brief sentence (not a life sentence, of course) and won. A Taidong politician from the KMT who won the election for county commissioner was forced to surrender his position due to a conviction for corruption (again, the sentence he received was much milder than Chen's), he turned the office over to his wife (actually his ex-wife, as he divorced to get around a law forbidding him to appoint a family member to take his place). She in turn was accused of using county funds to take frequent trips abroad, but just a day after Chen was convicted, the prosecutor's office declined to indict her. Anyone aware of such cases or with even a basic knowledge of Taiwan's political situation and history can't help but see Chen's sentence as a blatantly political one. The irony is this will allow Chen to legitimately claim to be a martyr, a role he has already been overly eager to see himself in.
All this nonsense is almost enough to make one of those people who tries to ignore politics entirely. Unfortunately, I'm very aware of the truth of the statement which goes "you can ignore politics, but politics won't ignore you". So I'll continue to concern myself with what's happening, as bad as it may get.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
One Day in China -- A Traveler's Tale
Way back in the mid 1990s, I took a long trip to China. I spent close to 3 months traveling all around the country. The following is an account I wrote some years later (but still close to a decade ago) of one relatively eventful day during that trip.
The sky was overcast as I stepped out of the hotel and walked to the bus station. This was a small, rather unimpressive building next to the train station. I managed to find my bus among the various vehicles that were scattered about the parking lot behind the station. It was properly speaking a minibus, and it was not blessed with leg room suitable for a foreign devil, especially one loaded with bags. Though fortunately it wasn't stuffed to its roof with passengers like buses in and around bigger cities, I didn't anticipate a particularly comfortable ride. On other hand, for the price I was paying I had no right to expect luxury, and, anyway, a little discomfort once in a while keeps life interesting.
Safely (more or less) crammed into my seat, I watched as the bus driver piloted us through the streets of Kaifeng. It was rush hour and the streets were filled with bicycles. They took up the whole road, so the occasional larger vehicles (generally buses and trucks, though there were also a fair number of private cars) had to push their way through, driving right in the center of the road. Though most Western drivers would no doubt have quickly lost their tempers trying to drive in such conditions, our driver was not perturbed in the least, though he used his horn more often than necessary.
Despite the slow pace, we eventually managed to make it out of the city into the less crowded countryside. Here the main obstruction, other than the less then perfect condition of the roads themselves, was grain. In villages all along the way, locals had spread their grain out on the road to sort and dry in the sun. Fortunately they always left enough space for vehicles to get by, though as in the city it was often necessary to drive in the middle of the road.
Throughout our journey we took on and off loaded passengers on the side of the road deep in the countryside. Most people seemed to take the bus for fairly short distances; in fact I believe I was the only one on the bus who traveled all the way from Kaifeng to its final destination. I was also one of the only passengers with a printed ticket, since all the people we picked up on the side of the road just paid the driver whatever he told them was the price for wherever they wanted to go. One or two did argue briefly about prices they considered too high, but they paid up in the end rather than stay on the roadside waiting for the next bus.
We crossed into Shandong province a couple of hours out of Kaifeng. In Heze, the first major town we came to, I moved up to a seat at the front of the bus at the driver's insistence. He, and the woman who took turns driving with him and was presumably his wife, appeared to be in his fifties. Both of them were friendly and talkative, though unfortunately I couldn't understand much of what they said, in part due to their accents and in part to due to my own language deficiencies.
My new seat was decidedly more comfortable than my old one, since there was more room to put my bags, though the road conditions sometimes negated any comfort gained by the move. At one point we left the paved road we had been following and drove along a dirt road which stretched along a ridge overlooking farm houses. Children playing in front of the houses stopped to gaze at our bus as it passed, but it was impossible to gauge from their reactions how often buses passed this way. It was presumably a short cut of some sort, though not surprisingly we didn't travel along at a great speed, and even at the speed we were going my teeth rattled and my bones shook. Fortunately we got back on a paved road before long.
Towards the end of our journey the bus broke down. As the driver and his wife worked to get it started again, I had visions of spending the night sitting there in a bus on the side of a country road in the middle of rural China. In the space between my seat and the driver's was a hatch of sorts which could be lifted to work on the engine, so it wasn't necessary to get out of the bus to do whatever repairs were necessary. The driver and his wife took turns trying to get the engine started while the other one fiddled with it. Apparently the oil wasn't flowing properly, because while one of them worked the gas pedal, the other sucked on a tube to try to get the oil flowing. Whatever they were doing, it was effective -- after ten minutes or so they got the bus started again.
We pulled into Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, at around four o'clock, some eight hours after our departure from Kaifeng. As soon as I exited the bus station I was accosted by a middle aged woman who offered to take me to a cheap hotel. It was cheap all right, the room was a stuffy (but reasonably roomy) cell in the basement furnished with a bed, a little wooden table and a fan, and the toilet was an outhouse. Despite the less than luxurious accommodations, I decided to take it, on the general principal that as long as there was a bed to sleep in and no obvious signs of rat or insect infestations, it would do for a night (though I would have preferred nicer toilets).
Though it was late afternoon, I hadn't had anything to eat all day other than some bread I had had for breakfast before leaving Kaifeng, so I decided to get a very late lunch. I found a small restaurant where I got some fried rice. As I ate the woman who ran the place talked to me, for the most part asking the standard questions ("Where are you from?", "What do you do?", "Are you married?") . At one point she suddenly asked me how many millions of dollars I had. I tried to explain that I didn't even have one million, that in fact the appropriate question would be how many thousands of dollars I had, but she didn't seem to believe me (perhaps she meant renminbi, the Chinese currency, but even one million renminbi is more than US$100,000). This was borne out by the fact that she charged me the outrageous sum of 25 RMB for my plate of fried rice -- well over ten times what I'd paid for a large bowl of noodles in Kaifeng the night before.
Upon my return to the hotel I met the landlady, who told me her last name was Kong, i.e. that she was a member of Confucius's extensive clan, and warned me to watch out for rip-offs, a warning I hardly needed after my experience at lunch. Nevertheless I survived the rest of the day without any significant holes being made in my wallet.
Sometime after midnight I was awakened by a knock on the door. Two uniformed men came into my room. One asked if I could understand Chinese and I indicated that I could, though I refrained from revealing that I could speak it as well, not wishing to prolong the conversation. They lectured me on the safety (or rather lack of the same) of cheap hotels such as the one I was in, and said I should stay in better hotels. I was tempted to point out that the only disturbance I had thus far encountered in this type of hotel was them but I thought better of it. After they had finished dispensing advice on accommodation choices, they left and knocked on other doors. Several hours later I was awakened once more by a hotel employee who took my passport to be checked (by whom I never found out). It was not clear whether this second disturbance was related to the first (though I presume it was) nor whether this was a random inspection, one inspired by word of a foreign devil in the hotel, or rather inspired by an overindulgence in Qingdao (Tsingtao) beer by the policemen on the night shift. In any case, I was left undisturbed for the rest of the night.
The sky was overcast as I stepped out of the hotel and walked to the bus station. This was a small, rather unimpressive building next to the train station. I managed to find my bus among the various vehicles that were scattered about the parking lot behind the station. It was properly speaking a minibus, and it was not blessed with leg room suitable for a foreign devil, especially one loaded with bags. Though fortunately it wasn't stuffed to its roof with passengers like buses in and around bigger cities, I didn't anticipate a particularly comfortable ride. On other hand, for the price I was paying I had no right to expect luxury, and, anyway, a little discomfort once in a while keeps life interesting.
Safely (more or less) crammed into my seat, I watched as the bus driver piloted us through the streets of Kaifeng. It was rush hour and the streets were filled with bicycles. They took up the whole road, so the occasional larger vehicles (generally buses and trucks, though there were also a fair number of private cars) had to push their way through, driving right in the center of the road. Though most Western drivers would no doubt have quickly lost their tempers trying to drive in such conditions, our driver was not perturbed in the least, though he used his horn more often than necessary.
Despite the slow pace, we eventually managed to make it out of the city into the less crowded countryside. Here the main obstruction, other than the less then perfect condition of the roads themselves, was grain. In villages all along the way, locals had spread their grain out on the road to sort and dry in the sun. Fortunately they always left enough space for vehicles to get by, though as in the city it was often necessary to drive in the middle of the road.
Throughout our journey we took on and off loaded passengers on the side of the road deep in the countryside. Most people seemed to take the bus for fairly short distances; in fact I believe I was the only one on the bus who traveled all the way from Kaifeng to its final destination. I was also one of the only passengers with a printed ticket, since all the people we picked up on the side of the road just paid the driver whatever he told them was the price for wherever they wanted to go. One or two did argue briefly about prices they considered too high, but they paid up in the end rather than stay on the roadside waiting for the next bus.
We crossed into Shandong province a couple of hours out of Kaifeng. In Heze, the first major town we came to, I moved up to a seat at the front of the bus at the driver's insistence. He, and the woman who took turns driving with him and was presumably his wife, appeared to be in his fifties. Both of them were friendly and talkative, though unfortunately I couldn't understand much of what they said, in part due to their accents and in part to due to my own language deficiencies.
My new seat was decidedly more comfortable than my old one, since there was more room to put my bags, though the road conditions sometimes negated any comfort gained by the move. At one point we left the paved road we had been following and drove along a dirt road which stretched along a ridge overlooking farm houses. Children playing in front of the houses stopped to gaze at our bus as it passed, but it was impossible to gauge from their reactions how often buses passed this way. It was presumably a short cut of some sort, though not surprisingly we didn't travel along at a great speed, and even at the speed we were going my teeth rattled and my bones shook. Fortunately we got back on a paved road before long.
Towards the end of our journey the bus broke down. As the driver and his wife worked to get it started again, I had visions of spending the night sitting there in a bus on the side of a country road in the middle of rural China. In the space between my seat and the driver's was a hatch of sorts which could be lifted to work on the engine, so it wasn't necessary to get out of the bus to do whatever repairs were necessary. The driver and his wife took turns trying to get the engine started while the other one fiddled with it. Apparently the oil wasn't flowing properly, because while one of them worked the gas pedal, the other sucked on a tube to try to get the oil flowing. Whatever they were doing, it was effective -- after ten minutes or so they got the bus started again.
We pulled into Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, at around four o'clock, some eight hours after our departure from Kaifeng. As soon as I exited the bus station I was accosted by a middle aged woman who offered to take me to a cheap hotel. It was cheap all right, the room was a stuffy (but reasonably roomy) cell in the basement furnished with a bed, a little wooden table and a fan, and the toilet was an outhouse. Despite the less than luxurious accommodations, I decided to take it, on the general principal that as long as there was a bed to sleep in and no obvious signs of rat or insect infestations, it would do for a night (though I would have preferred nicer toilets).
Though it was late afternoon, I hadn't had anything to eat all day other than some bread I had had for breakfast before leaving Kaifeng, so I decided to get a very late lunch. I found a small restaurant where I got some fried rice. As I ate the woman who ran the place talked to me, for the most part asking the standard questions ("Where are you from?", "What do you do?", "Are you married?") . At one point she suddenly asked me how many millions of dollars I had. I tried to explain that I didn't even have one million, that in fact the appropriate question would be how many thousands of dollars I had, but she didn't seem to believe me (perhaps she meant renminbi, the Chinese currency, but even one million renminbi is more than US$100,000). This was borne out by the fact that she charged me the outrageous sum of 25 RMB for my plate of fried rice -- well over ten times what I'd paid for a large bowl of noodles in Kaifeng the night before.
Upon my return to the hotel I met the landlady, who told me her last name was Kong, i.e. that she was a member of Confucius's extensive clan, and warned me to watch out for rip-offs, a warning I hardly needed after my experience at lunch. Nevertheless I survived the rest of the day without any significant holes being made in my wallet.
Sometime after midnight I was awakened by a knock on the door. Two uniformed men came into my room. One asked if I could understand Chinese and I indicated that I could, though I refrained from revealing that I could speak it as well, not wishing to prolong the conversation. They lectured me on the safety (or rather lack of the same) of cheap hotels such as the one I was in, and said I should stay in better hotels. I was tempted to point out that the only disturbance I had thus far encountered in this type of hotel was them but I thought better of it. After they had finished dispensing advice on accommodation choices, they left and knocked on other doors. Several hours later I was awakened once more by a hotel employee who took my passport to be checked (by whom I never found out). It was not clear whether this second disturbance was related to the first (though I presume it was) nor whether this was a random inspection, one inspired by word of a foreign devil in the hotel, or rather inspired by an overindulgence in Qingdao (Tsingtao) beer by the policemen on the night shift. In any case, I was left undisturbed for the rest of the night.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Ghost Month
Time to vent a little spleen...okay, there are lots of things I like to vent my spleen about (why is it the spleen, anyway? why don't we vent, say, our liver?), because I'm a cynic, fairly observant, and my view of humanity in general is fairly well expressed by the last line of Monty Python's Galaxy Song, or those bumper stickers which read "Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here." But today my target it is a local custom. For any strangers who by some chance might read this, I live in Taiwan, a small island country southeast of China and south of Japan. Overall, Taiwan's a pretty decent place to live in (otherwise I wouldn't be here), but like everywhere else in the world, there's still plenty of room for improvement. In Taiwan's case, one of the more obvious areas that needs work is people's attitude towards (and simple consciousness of) the environment, a fact that is particularly brought home to me every year about this time.
Why this time of year? Well, because on the traditional lunar Chinese calender (most Taiwanese are ethnic Chinese), this month, the seventh month of the lunar year, is "Ghost Month". It's a bit like the original All Hallow's Eve, when it was believed that the spirits of the dead roamed free on the Earth, but in this case it lasts all month. Now I don't believe in ghosts (or anything else supernatural, for that matter), but my particular problem with "Ghost Month" is not merely that I consider it nonsense. No, the problem is that to honor these spirits (or to bribe them to leave everyone alone), more traditionally-minded people (and even companies) have big worship ceremonies during this month. Again, I have no particular objection to worship ceremonies, whoever or whatever they are aimed at (though I may consider them silly), but as part of these ceremonies people burn what is sometimes called ghost money. The idea is that if they burn this money it goes to the ghosts, who are then happy and leave the worshipper alone (or even aid them in some way).
Even if it weren't for the very concrete objections I have to this, I'll have to admit I find the whole idea rather absurd. As I've pointed out to people, if ghosts use money, that means they have an economy, with ghost shops and restaurants. That would mean there are also jobs to be had, which in turn means the ghosts shouldn't need to sponge off the living. (Okay, that sounds a bit right-wing, but how do you know that the ghost that's getting your money is one who is really in need? Maybe they actually have a cushy job in some ghost business or something. I mean, if you are doing it as some sort of charity for ghosts, you should at least make sure it's going to the ones who really need it). But I stray....
The real objection, of course, is environmental. Here we are, living in a country which suffered terrible landslides following a typhoon a few weeks back, in part because people have been cutting down the original forest cover to plant cash crops, and people are burning large amounts of paper just so some imaginary ghosts can have a nice imaginary meal? We are profligate enough with paper as it is, considering all the documents, homework papers, test papers, newspapers, magazines, books, paper bags, and so forth that people in Taiwan go through every day. But at least most of those things have some kind of practical purpose, and they can be (and sometimes are) recycled. With ghost money, it all goes up in smoke, and doesn't accomplish anything at all, except maybe psychologically. What makes it even worse is that most ghost money is not pure paper (there are usually fancy coatings to make it look golden and glittery); it contains some highly polluting chemicals, which of course go straight into the air when it's burned. This is aside from the carbon that is released. Here it is, the hottest part of the year, in a world that's getting hotter all the time due to human-induced climate change, and when you walk around the city streets, you've got to walk past all these fires which are just making it worse.
Some might say, yes, but it's a tradition, and part of the religion, so we shouldn't interfere. To which I say...bullsh...er, nonsense (might as well avoid having this page blocked for bad language, at least for the time being). In ancient times, many religions had traditions of human sacrifice. Even in modern times, suttee (where the widow is expected to throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre) in parts of India or female circumcision in parts of Africa are also "tradition". Should we "respect" those traditions and allow them to continue? I am a firm believer in respecting other cultures, at least in that I don't think European culture is in any general sense superior to the cultures of other parts of the world, and I think an effort should be made to preserve most traditions. But if a tradition is harmful in a direct and obvious way, then it should go. Tradition is no excuse for ruining our environment.
In fact, there are plenty of Taiwanese who feel the same way. Buddhist organizations in Taiwan often speak out against the burning of ghost money (though admittedly that's because the whole ghost money concept is Daoist, not Buddhist), and I personally know many Taiwanese who agree that it's not a good thing. Even the government has indirectly acknowledged the problem (I think not so much the environmental destruction, but because it's a fire hazard) by providing websites where people can burn virtual money. And why not? If you really believe that ghosts use money, then why shouldn't virtual money be just as good? After all, in the real world, most money is virtual money that only exists in computers, rather than physically in the form of cash. If it works for us, it should work for the ghosts too.
The upshot is, I hope that some day in the future, I'll be able to walk the streets of Taipei during ghost month without seeing anyone burning any ghost money at all. Rather than spending so much effort on dead ancestors, who don't even notice, let's think more about our descendants, who won't thank us for ruining their world for them. Toast the dead in your heart, or if you insist "burn" some virtual money online, but leave clean air and living trees for yourself and your children.
Why this time of year? Well, because on the traditional lunar Chinese calender (most Taiwanese are ethnic Chinese), this month, the seventh month of the lunar year, is "Ghost Month". It's a bit like the original All Hallow's Eve, when it was believed that the spirits of the dead roamed free on the Earth, but in this case it lasts all month. Now I don't believe in ghosts (or anything else supernatural, for that matter), but my particular problem with "Ghost Month" is not merely that I consider it nonsense. No, the problem is that to honor these spirits (or to bribe them to leave everyone alone), more traditionally-minded people (and even companies) have big worship ceremonies during this month. Again, I have no particular objection to worship ceremonies, whoever or whatever they are aimed at (though I may consider them silly), but as part of these ceremonies people burn what is sometimes called ghost money. The idea is that if they burn this money it goes to the ghosts, who are then happy and leave the worshipper alone (or even aid them in some way).
Even if it weren't for the very concrete objections I have to this, I'll have to admit I find the whole idea rather absurd. As I've pointed out to people, if ghosts use money, that means they have an economy, with ghost shops and restaurants. That would mean there are also jobs to be had, which in turn means the ghosts shouldn't need to sponge off the living. (Okay, that sounds a bit right-wing, but how do you know that the ghost that's getting your money is one who is really in need? Maybe they actually have a cushy job in some ghost business or something. I mean, if you are doing it as some sort of charity for ghosts, you should at least make sure it's going to the ones who really need it). But I stray....
The real objection, of course, is environmental. Here we are, living in a country which suffered terrible landslides following a typhoon a few weeks back, in part because people have been cutting down the original forest cover to plant cash crops, and people are burning large amounts of paper just so some imaginary ghosts can have a nice imaginary meal? We are profligate enough with paper as it is, considering all the documents, homework papers, test papers, newspapers, magazines, books, paper bags, and so forth that people in Taiwan go through every day. But at least most of those things have some kind of practical purpose, and they can be (and sometimes are) recycled. With ghost money, it all goes up in smoke, and doesn't accomplish anything at all, except maybe psychologically. What makes it even worse is that most ghost money is not pure paper (there are usually fancy coatings to make it look golden and glittery); it contains some highly polluting chemicals, which of course go straight into the air when it's burned. This is aside from the carbon that is released. Here it is, the hottest part of the year, in a world that's getting hotter all the time due to human-induced climate change, and when you walk around the city streets, you've got to walk past all these fires which are just making it worse.
Some might say, yes, but it's a tradition, and part of the religion, so we shouldn't interfere. To which I say...bullsh...er, nonsense (might as well avoid having this page blocked for bad language, at least for the time being). In ancient times, many religions had traditions of human sacrifice. Even in modern times, suttee (where the widow is expected to throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre) in parts of India or female circumcision in parts of Africa are also "tradition". Should we "respect" those traditions and allow them to continue? I am a firm believer in respecting other cultures, at least in that I don't think European culture is in any general sense superior to the cultures of other parts of the world, and I think an effort should be made to preserve most traditions. But if a tradition is harmful in a direct and obvious way, then it should go. Tradition is no excuse for ruining our environment.
In fact, there are plenty of Taiwanese who feel the same way. Buddhist organizations in Taiwan often speak out against the burning of ghost money (though admittedly that's because the whole ghost money concept is Daoist, not Buddhist), and I personally know many Taiwanese who agree that it's not a good thing. Even the government has indirectly acknowledged the problem (I think not so much the environmental destruction, but because it's a fire hazard) by providing websites where people can burn virtual money. And why not? If you really believe that ghosts use money, then why shouldn't virtual money be just as good? After all, in the real world, most money is virtual money that only exists in computers, rather than physically in the form of cash. If it works for us, it should work for the ghosts too.
The upshot is, I hope that some day in the future, I'll be able to walk the streets of Taipei during ghost month without seeing anyone burning any ghost money at all. Rather than spending so much effort on dead ancestors, who don't even notice, let's think more about our descendants, who won't thank us for ruining their world for them. Toast the dead in your heart, or if you insist "burn" some virtual money online, but leave clean air and living trees for yourself and your children.
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