This isn’t an April Fool’s in and of itself, but I went to Google.com in order to see what they had come up with for an April Fool’s Doodle this year. But apparently they have decided that it’s Opposite Day and no special doodle is displayed, just the regular Google.
That’s my screenshot, just proving that I did see this.
I am actually amazed at this.
My earlier post on global climate change, “We’re All Going to — Die? Warm Up?“, got some interest lately when someone in a forum I participate in challenged me on it in a private message exchange. Since it was a private message exchange I shall not identify my correspondent by screen-name, but I will call him ClimateChanger. As background I will say that ClimateChanger is all on-board with Anthropogenic Global Warming.
The apparent intent of his challenge was to convince me that (1) global warming is happening, and (2) it’s all our fault. I also got a sense from him that (3) this is bad.
Do you ever find yourself trying to convince someone that you agree with them on some issue, but they continue to try to persuade you over to their side of an issue? Does this annoy you, too? I know, right?
Anyway, he wrote:
“In other words, up until just very recently, since the end of the last glacial period, 8,000 years ago when we were at a peak in temperatures, we’ve been trending colder, not hotter”
It was a regional temperature, not a Global Temperature
The The Holocene Climate Optimum was generally warmer than today, but only in summer and only in the northern hemisphere. More over, scientists know the cause of this natural warming, and know without doubt that this proven “astronomical” climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years.
This was in reference to the Holocene Temperature Variations chart I posted.
As to the matter of “regional temperature”, the graph actually consists of several temperature tracks as found in many locations throughout the world, and provides an average of them all (the dark black line). Note that he is right that some regions were colder and some were warmer than the average. But that is characteristic of “average”, and not an argument against the graph. Seeking an average in this case is not to say that everywhere on the globe marched in lockstep to the graph. The average temperature merely identifies the trend. And he is also correct that during the HCO the northern hemisphere experienced warmer temperatures — he left out the fact that the southern hemisphere had lower temperatures. Oh, well.
At risk of repeating myself I shall post this graph again, but with a trendline in RED. The trendline goes from about the midpoint of the graph’s highpoint, about 7,900 years ago, and continues to the midpoint of the beginning of the recent dramatic increase, about 200 years ago:
As you can see, the trend is downwards toward the next period of glaciation. However, when you examine the inset graph continuation it shows a disconcertedly rapid rise in temperature. In my original post I point out that the temperature goes up to 0.5 degrees in a very short time. And then I get the following. My correspondent first takes a quotes from my post and then pulls a Straw Man on it:
He quotes me thus:
we are not yet out of the last Ice Age! We are presently in a period known as the Quaternary Glaciation, which started 2.6 million years ago and hasn’t ended yet. The only reason why you’re not sitting on a huge pile of ice reading this is because we happen to be in what is called an Interglacial Period
And then he responds
Even if true, even if we are still not out of the last ice age, that does not explain the rapid rise of the global temperature since 1980. The global temperature increased more than 0.5 degrees in just 30 years. Why did it accelerate in a few years?
Your own graph shows the Earth was getting colder, but now the Earth is hotter than it has ever been in the last 12,000 years, see your own graph.
First of all, his quotation of me occurs AFTER I wrote this:
…as we move off the chart to the right, the temperature line goes up to near 0.5 degrees.
I said this twice, in fact, but he either ignored or missed it entirely — all the while telling me to look at my own graph!
Yes, my own graph shows an sudden increase to 0.5 degrees, and I mention it twice in one paragraph. Who is he arguing with? I can’t be with me because I wrote what he appears to be trying to claim I didn’t write several months ago.
He wrote “Even if true…” to my statement that we are still in an Ice Age but in the midst of an Interglacial Period, presumably because he disagrees with me about the Ice Age / Interglacial, but he’s generously allowing it for the sake of argument. How kind. I responded:
What do you mean “even if true”? I’m not stating my opinion, I’m stating fact, and fact backed up by climatology. And who says that being still in a current ice age “does not explain the rapid rise of the global temperature since 1980”? That’s a non-sequitor since I did not link the current ice age with any rise in temperature. You’re trying to refute what I haven’t claimed, which is what makes me think you read me very superficially. As to “even if true”, I can back up what I wrote. From a portion of the relevant article in Wikipedia, which is sourced from Science, Nature and ScienceDaily:
“The earth has been in an interglacial period known as the Holocene for more than 11,000 years. It was conventional wisdom that the typical interglacial period lasts about 12,000 years, but this has been called into question recently. For example, an article in Nature[35] argues that the current interglacial might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years. Predicted changes in orbital forcing suggest that the next glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now, even in absence of human-made global warming[36] (see Milankovitch cycles). Moreover, anthropogenic forcing from increased greenhouse gases might outweigh orbital forcing for as long as intensive use of fossil fuels continues.[37]”
[36] – http://www.webcitation.org/5qnO3Fw2p
[37] – http://www.sciencema…/5585/1287.full (Sorry, it’s a paywall)
[38] – http://www.scienceda…70829193436.htm
I love it when someone tries to argue with me as if I were a climate change denier, and on top of that, doesn’t have his facts straight about even this basic concept in climatology: we’re in an Ice Age, dude. It’s only looks mild because we’re in a temporary interglacial period. I also love it when I write about how greenhouse gases are apparently providing some forcing of the global temperature, only to have someone turn around to try to convince me that science has shown that CO2 is causing temperatures to rise, as if I said something to the contrary. Now, I will admit that I don’t believe that humans are 100% responsible for all this. So far, anyway. I’m persuadable — in fact I used to believe that there was no anthropogenic global warming, but I’ve come around on that.
There is more to the conversation, but I am not going to extend this post to go on and on about it. I think I have demonstrated my point, which is that people should actually read what they are supposedly responding to before they attempt to respond to it.
Well, not quite. The number of years between his attendance and mine separates us from the chance that we could ever have interacted, but I was pleasantly surprised this morning to discover that Gustav Holst, the composer of the famous symphony, The Planets, and I attended the same school in Cheltenham, England. The school is Cheltenham Grammar School (known today as Pate’s Grammar School).
Holst was there from 1886 and 1891, while I was there from 1969 to 1971. Holst’s attendance seems a long, long time ago, but considering that the school was founded by Sir Richard Pate in 1574, it was not really all that long ago.
Anyway, I get a very unreasonable sense of pride when I consider that I attended the same school as Gustav Holst! Although not in the same building, as the school has occupied many quarters in its 440 year history. As the Beach Boys ably expressed it, “Be True to Your School.”
I should also like to point out that in addition to Gustav Holst, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was also a Cheltenham Grammar School alumnus. My history with Jones runs a bit closer than it does with Holst, of course. For one thing, we attended in the same building, and shared the same Headmaster, Dr. A. E. Bell. I remember that Dr. Bell wrote a brief memorandum on the occasion of Jones’s death that appeared in the school yearbook. Jones had apparently been quite the school cut-up, getting in some trouble from time to time, but from the tone of the article as I remember it Dr. Bell appeared to have had a positive view of Jones, and was clearly disappointed at his life’s course. Jones was, in fact, a poor study but a brilliant performer in exams, as his high intelligence made it easy for him to get good results from minimal study.
Another slight similarity was that I, like Jones, was interested in music, and helped form what I guess I would call a “basement band” (in which I played lead guitar). We ended up practicing on two or three occasions in a basement that we were told Jones had occasionally practiced in! Small world.
Knowing her to be an otherwise intelligent and thoughtful person – an opinion I base almost entirely upon her brilliant novel, Fluency, since of course I’ve never met her or communicated with her – I was somewhat dismayed to read Jennifer Foehner Wells’ review of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. I will here insert a shameless plug, namely my review of Fluency, which appears HERE.
Jennifer’s review is short and to the point, and I don’t want to excessively multiply words over it, so in order to help me keep this review likewise short, please go visit her review and read it before continuing here. I’ll wait.
I read The Handmaid’s Tale when it came out, possibly before Jennifer was born, and I have to say that I was as dismayed as she is about the story in the book. Calling it “dystopian” is like calling a hurricane “bad weather”. But in its very extremity lies a deadly flaw, for which Jennifer has clearly fallen. This is in evident in her assertion and prediction that “[t]he fundamentalist religious right already has so much power, if our country were to splinter, civil war could erupt allowing pockets of this kind of evil to proliferate.” With this, it is clear that author Atwood, an especially feminist writer, has achieved her purpose one more time, successfully warning of the dangers of patriarchy.
I should like to parenthetically note here the ironic juxtaposition of Jennifer Foehner Wells with Margaret Atwood, since the latter once stated that science fiction is “talking squids in outer space.” This is smile-inducing in view of Fluency, which features an important character that is, in fact, a talking squid in outer space. Or, at least, a telepathic squid. But I digress.
The deadly flaw of The Handmaid’s Tale is that something which would be, at worst, an unlikely and certainly short-lived aberration or deviation from the norm, is presented as a distinct possibility. Atwood herself does not characterize Handmaid as science fiction, but as speculative fiction, since, as she believes “Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen.” In this she ignores, of course, that much of today’s modern technology, including spaceships, nearly sentient computers, and the like, used to be solely the realm of science-fiction.
And this is what makes The Handmaid’s Tale a case of extreme irony. Science fiction is what could really happen. It is not outside the realm of possibility that Fluency’s scenario of a derelict alien spaceship orbiting the sun could prove to be true. There is literally no chance that the power of the “fundamentalist religious right” could lead to The Handmaid’s Tale in reality. That which she seems to have forgotten entirely is that far from descending into it, the “fundies” would apoplexically choke at the practice of polygamy or concubinage – which is the primary pot that Atwood is attempting to stir.
What Jennifer seems to have inexplicably swallowed, hook, line and sinker, is the message the political Left has been putting out for years, and that is that the political Right’s dearest desire is to take women’s contraception away, to relegate them to the kitchen, sans shoes, and turn them into baby-making machines. Not to mention that they want “to put ya’ll back in chains” – speaking of another group whose loyalty the Left tries to ensure through wild and baseless fearmongering.
I’ll just say it clearly, that the political Right’s dearest desire with respect to contraception is that those whose religious sensitivities forbid their own use of it not be forced to pay for others’ use of it. There is a slight difference between this and a fanciful “war on women”.
I don’t understand how an intelligent and thoughtful person, which Jennifer Foehner Wells certainly is, could imagine that the “fundamentalist religious right” had power that is increasing. She is perhaps too young to realize that the attitudes of what she characterizes as the “religious right” used to be the attitudes of virtually everyone in the entire country. An old fart such as myself does remember, however, that there was a time when nearly everyone in this country attended church at least several times a year, and a majority attended church every week. And at least half of those people were not Right, but Left. Of course, now that the Left has largely left off attending church, they are quite comfortable now calling those who still do “fundamentalists”.
The thing is, so many fewer now attend church regularly, that those who still do so are more evident than they used to be, standing in greater contrast to the irreligious or areligious, who are perhaps now a majority. And these folks, having suddenly noticed that there are still those outliers who profess to follow a religion, disingenuously mischaracterize them as increasing in power. It is to laugh. Hollowly, perhaps.
I’ve gone overboard again, I see. My apologies to you, dear reader, for professing a desire not to “excessively multiply words”, when I should have known I could not forbear. My apologies as well to Jennifer Foehner Wells, who probably doesn’t deserve being subject to this barrage of words I have been pleased to pour out.
And I am really looking forward to Fluency II. Talking squids in space, indeed!
Several years ago the City of Olympia planted some trees along our street, and these were immediately attacked by the low-life vandals who walk through the neighborhood from time to time, heading from the downtown bars to the Section 8 housing located up the street from us. The new trees were barely a week in the ground when these idiots (don’t know who they were, but I know their kind, at least) deliberately broke many if not most of them in half. City crews came out and tried to fix them, but the vandals had done their work too well, and the tops of these trees eventually died. Sickening.
But, the trees themselves did not die, and they continue to grow. It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder what kind of trees these were until a couple of days ago when I happened to notice that there were two varieties. The ones growing on the north side of the street have sort-of spiky light green leaves and produce copious quantities of red-orangish berries. The ones growing on the south side have more rounded but dark green leaves and produce copious quantities of dark red berries. This piqued my curiosity. Neither produce tasty berries — they aren’t too bitter, but they are astringent, and the birds don’t seem interesting in eating them. So what are they?
A query via email produced an interesting reply. The responder wasn’t sure of the exact species, without a photo at least, but suggested they were either Serviceberries or Mountain Ash. A quick look at Wikipedia showed that these were no way Mountain Ash (or Rowan) — the leaves are completely different, and so are the berries. But Wikipedia makes it pretty certain these are some species of Serviceberry, or Amelanchier. But which two species? At least some of these species are edible, but neither of the two types of tree on our street are producing fruit that I would call edible.
Well, I took a photo of the fruit and some leaves from both species. Here:
What species of Serviceberry are these?
Any ideas? I’m sending a link to this post to the City Arborist, and if I get a response, I will update accordingly.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve bought and read any new science-fiction by any but a select circle of writers. My favorites have been Jerry Pournelle (who doesn’t write much any more, unfortunately), Lois McMaster Bujold, David Sherman, and Dan Cragg (who has completely retired). But completely by chance I happened upon a new writer, Jennifer Foehner Wells, who has a first novel out: Fluency.
Now, not everyone with a first novel is a Tom Clancy, whose first, The Hunt for Red October, was an instant classic. But Wells’s book is in that league, I feel. Think I’m exaggerating? I will admit to only being slightly less than halfway through the book, but I am finding it a very worthy read, and hard to put down. Since I have it on Kindle, this means I can carry it around and read it any time, so this isn’t a bad thing. But this book is fascinating, and I am looking forward to its conclusion! I understand Jen is working on a sequel already, and this is good news.
Fluency is a “first contact” novel, meaning that it is about first human contact with an extraterrestrial race. And it’s near future as well. Pretty much current technology, so it isn’t hard to relate to. Let me repeat the first part of the story synopsis:
NASA discovered the alien ship lurking in the asteroid belt in the 1960s. They kept the Target under intense surveillance for decades, letting the public believe they were exploring the solar system, while they worked feverishly to refine the technology needed to reach it.
The ship itself remained silent, drifting.
Dr. Jane Holloway is content documenting nearly-extinct languages and had never contemplated becoming an astronaut. But when NASA recruits her to join a team of military scientists for an expedition to the Target, it’s an adventure she can’t refuse.
The ship isn’t vacant, as they presumed.
I am so glad the author didn’t choose to start the book on earth, and painstakingly delve into the assembly of the crew, and all the technical details. She gets pretty much right into it, and leaves whatever background information for a few quick flashbacks — which do not at all detract from the plot. The crew is wonderfully human, and not a bunch of perfect jocks (like you expect astronauts might be). They have realistic characters, and are developed pretty much “just right”.
I recommend this book for those of my readers who are looking for a good SF read. Buy it Here.
I’ve always thought that the Zero Population Growth movement was idiotic. This is not because I think “The more humans the better”, though I do think this, but that “The more humans the better chance of more geniuses.” We need those smarter people! For inventions, for knowledge, and for advancement.
But, in amongst the geniuses we always find those humans who may not be geniuses, but who nevertheless find ways to get things done, even where there are limitations to available technology, or limitations due to artificial constraints on economy. As evidence in support of this, I present “Cuba’s DIY Inventions from 20 Years of Isolation.” It is marvelous what we humans can come up with!
In the heat of my last post I indicated that my wife’s cancer had spread everywhere and was soon going to kill her, and at the time that was her surgeon’s fear, given the advanced state of the main tumor. Since then we have learned that things may not be as dire as originally feared.
No Metastasis Apparent
Last week, at about 2 weeks post-op, we met with the surgeon, and he presented us with the results from the pathology folks. They examined everything the surgeon took out, included 20 or so lymph nodes, and found that none of the lymph nodes had any trace of cancer. The doctor indicated that this was strong evidence that the tumor had not, after all, strongly metastasized. It does not prove that cancer has not spread to other places farther away from that site on the colon, but if it had done any spreading it seems logical that it would first done so in the lymph nodes nearer to the tumor. The surgeon had also examined what he could see of her liver and other organs and could see nothing that indicated cancer anywhere on them.
So we may have dodged a major bullet here.
I still stand by my negative and derisive stance in my previous post with respect to the alternative therapies, however. There is utterly no reason to suppose that any of it has helped — if Essiac was going to help, then by golly it would have stopped the main tumor from growing. And it did not.
A Lingering Cancer Site
Something discovered in the CT scan done to determine what was causing her fever back at the time was a small site of cancer further down what remains of my wife’s colon. This is down towards the rectum, which is basically inoperable, but the surgeon said its location outside the perineum makes it eminently treatable with radiation and chemotherapy. He expects such treatment to be 100% likely to produce a complete destruction of that tumor. He was quite positive about it, which makes me feel positive, too.
My wife is still planning to use Essiac tea for this remaining tumor, by the way, but I will be using all my powers of persuasion (if I have any) to urge her to go with the conventional medical treatment. In addition to the Essiac, if I have to, and in replacement of it if I can.
Recovery Going Well
Recovery from the surgery has been progressing very well. Because of the peritonitis, the surgeon left the lower half of the incision open, in order to help prevent a recurrence of the infection. The wound is re-packed twice daily with damp gauze, and it is in a condition where rapid growth is gradually closing it up. I watched the nurses doing to re-pack a few times in the hospital, and now I am primarily responsible for doing it at home. I am in a position to watch the healing process, and it is amazing to observe. When I first saw the wound it went all the way down to the muscles and fascia of the abdomen, but over the past 2 weeks it has completely covered them except for a little tiny portion. In two or three weeks it will completely heal, and be totally filled in! Amazing what the human body can do.
The wife is becoming more active, and though she has still not ventured upstairs in the house, she does move about to the kitchen, and to the back yard to sit in the sun for brief periods (yes, we have been having a lot of sun over the last few weeks). At some point, she will venture finally upstairs and will discover that our bedroom is a discombobulated mess! I look forward to that! Not really, and I have pledged to myself that I will straighten things up before she gains enough strength to come upstairs.
This is an update of my topic Certainties and Inevitabilities from back in January 2013.
On Saturday my dear wife, who had been dealing with bad anemia and an apparent intestinal tract infection (on top of her colon tumor), spiked a fever into the 105 degree territory, despite a course of antibiotics prescribed for the infection. I called 911 and she was transported to the hospital. They brought her fever down and did some extensive testing to find out the cause of the trouble. They finally discovered it, and it wasn’t good news.
In short, the colon tumor had grown so much that it had caused perforation of her colon and wild growth of bacteria in her abdominal cavity. The doctor offered her two outcomes, depending upon the treatment options available: (1) do nothing and within a week or two die from sepsis, very painfully; or (2) undergo a colostomy operation and live for the rest of her life with a bag attached to her (a repair is no longer possible due to the extent of the damage). She, who had sworn she would never do “the bag” chose option 2 nevertheless, and on Sunday the surgery was completed. She is now in the hospital, and will stay there for five to seven days before going home to finish recovery. She is not a happy camper. But at least she will live for a while longer.
Back in November of 2012 I urged her to do a course of radiation and then have the tumor cut out. She would have had to deal with a colostomy for a few months, but then the surgeon would have been able to rejoin the cut ends and all would be back to normal. My wife is a wonderful woman, but she has a problem with black-and-white thinking. She highly dislikes the medical profession because of their arrogances, and holds strongly to the notion that all alternative medicine is better. She has told me several times that the doctors want to make tons of money on their ignorant patients, all the while either denying the efficacy of “natural” medicine, or are totally and intentionally criminally ignorant of it. Sure the doctors are great for broken limbs and such, but vaccines? antibiotics? surgery? it is all a conspiracy.
I was in some despair over her choice to use so-called “natural” remedies. Note that I do not feel that herbal remedies are in themselves all useless, for I have myself used various herbs for minor ailments and found them to be effective in many cases. But cancer? And useless treatments like the Hulda Clark Zapper?
As for the zapper, we spent about $200 for a store-bought version. Being an electronics technician, once upon a time, I can tell you that this zapper is nothing more nor less than a square wave generator. I could build one from parts for less than $10. And I did, once! Useless piece of crap, but apparently the “special” frequency of the zapper is a doggoned cure-all. But nothing I could say about the zapper could convince a true believer. Even if using one produces no perception at all of any effect, this doesn’t cool some people’s jets. Eventually, I convinced my wife she was wasting her time using the stupid thing. And managed to convince her that the Hulda Clark “cure” for cancer was a complete fraud. This was my last success in my campaign to get my wife to do something that might actually have a prayer of working, and it was helped by the fact that Dr. Clark (yes, she was a real Doctor, although a biochemist, not an MD) died of cancer herself, and her own “cures” didn’t help.
And then there is the Essiac Formula. This is a tea formulated from burdock, Indian rhubarb, slippery elm bark and sheep sorrel. Some formulations include a couple of other herbs, but whatever. The base formula was supposedly originated from a medicine man of the Ojibway tribe, and passed to Canadian nurse Rene Caisse by one of her patients. You can read the history of this thing in the link, I won’t elaborate further, except to say that I read about it very thoroughly and couldn’t find any compelling reason to believe that the tea would help. I did find that apparently one of the studies found that it might even make a cancer grow faster, but I couldn’t see that even that had been clinically proven. Plus, I know my wife: once she has decided that something is right, she goes at it guns blazing (metaphorically), and nobody dares to try to tell her differently.
Well, the Essiac Formula is what my wife decided upon as her primary treatment mode. So, she has been making and using this Essiac stuff for the last year and a half. Because she is a very provident and thrifty individual, she has been making her own from the raw herbs. So every two weeks she has made a batch of the tea, and keeping it in the fridge, drinks a cup of it religiously twice each day. When she has run out of the formula, she has made more. And roped me into helping her prepare it. A week and a half ago I even went so far as to make a big batch of the formula for her (she was not feeling very well).
As you can tell from the beginning of this post, the Essiac seems to have made utterly no difference at all to the progress of my wife’s cancer. It has gone from Stage 2 (eminently treatable) to where it is now, Stage 4 (virtually untreatable and ultimately fatal), apparently without even pausing to think about it.
And ironically, my wife plans to continue drinking the Essiac when she gets home from the hospital. And I will not object, because I don’t think it has hurt, and I’m certain it won’t help. There something to be said for continuing to take an action which has proven to not work, expecting a different outcome. But I won’t say it, at least to her. She has a proven history of not listening on points like this, so there’s little point in raising the issue.
BUT I HAVE A THING TO SAY TO THOSE OF YOU WHO THINK THAT ESSIAC (OR THINGS LIKE HULDA CLARK’S “THERAPY”) ARE SOMEHOW “MIRACLE CURES” THAT ARE SUPPRESSED BY THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT: there is NO suppression — this junk is all over the Internet — the failures of these QUACK remedies are their own suppression. If they cured people, don’t you think this would be noticed?
Rene Caisse and Hulda Clark and their devotees have combined with my wife’s gullibity to kill her. She isn’t dead as of this writing, but the writing is on the wall. Her cancer has metastasized to the point it is now useless to treat with radiation or surgery. Apparently there’s a small chance that chemotherapy might slow it down, but that’s a very bad bet. And there will be no chemo for her — she’s still a “true believer”.
Note that in my original post on this issue I said that I expected to be a widower in about year from that time. Well, it’s been a year and a half, so I was wrong about the timing. Thank God.
But NOT about the certainty and the inevitability.
Okay, I will admit that I don’t agree with George Takei much, when it comes to politics. But in this TED Talk, he hits the nail on the head when it comes to the principles that this country stand for. And as often as this country has admittedly missed the mark when it comes to being 100% as to performance of those principles, George makes clear that it is worth standing behind the United States of America, as Americans.
George Takei explains “Why I love a country that once betrayed me.”
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