Roles

Though all the news is focused on COP26 today, I’m going to back up to an article in the Globe and Mail this past Saturday which has some important implications for all who write and read. Viviane Fairbank, in her essay, An Inconvenient Truth, argues that we have to review what science is and does and how those who write and read about it need to respond.

She starts by looking at the relationship of weather events and climate models, Most of us are aware of weather - especially when it affects us directly. I live in an old apartment building which is too hot indoors and have to check the temperature outside before I leave it because there can be large differences. We also are aware of disasters like heat and fire in Lytton BC, referenced yesterday by the Canadian Prime Minister at the climate conference. Our common understanding of climate is regional or seasonal. The author makes the case that the understanding of scientists and their models is a different one, spurred on exponentially now with the advantages provided by super computers. When they try to connect the two, weather events and climate change - they speculate about event attribution - how changes in climate might have an effect on specific events. They look at long term patterns of 30 years or more and combine findings from land, sea and ice and even more.

Journalists like event attribution because they think it will influence our behaviour. The scientists are less willing to go there quickly, even though they know it can have a positive effect. Not all scientists agree about the models and this is where trouble can start and it relates to the readers’ understanding of science - usually gained from our high school study experience. It showed up as well during COVID19 when changing reports suggested to some that the news must be fake. Any uncertainty around climate change being caused by humans gives opportunities to discredit findings and allows those benefiting from fossil fuels to sow distrust of all science.

Fairbank takes us back to high school. but before that she deals with the question of whether science is seen as objective - an argument we frequently hear. Science itself is in the midst of a battle about that. There is also a danger that we simply accept the science that lines up with our current beliefs. We underestimate the power of tweets. Her estimate is that 25% of the ones denying climate change are produced by bots - software programs that perform automated, repetitive, pre-defined tasks. There are far more transmittals of skepticism that statements by professional scientists. Scientists become conservative in estimates to avoid being harassed with endless questions from journalists. That creates doubt.

Back to high school. We were told that scientists start with a hypothesis and then test it with experiments. If the results were consistent, the hypothesis was confirmed and became fact. Nevertheless scientists work in an explorative fashion. Research often does not produce conclusive results. That doesn’t prove it wrong so much as it reveals the complexity and need for continuous learning. The models have to be as good as possible. What makes the difference is time. If a model is consistent with what happens over a number of decades, it is safe to assume that there is a degree of accuracy. As time goes on there are also many more factors coming into play. Scientists take time to do their work and don’t make public statements lightly. That’s when the deniers pounce.

Fairbank quotes French philosopher of science Bruno Latour on scientific truth - “not by some world shaking fool-proof demonstration, but by the weaving together of thousands of tiny facts, reworked through modeling into a tissue of proofs that draw their robustness from the multiplicity of data, each piece of which remains obviously fragile”. Scientists are not value free. but their choices inform what they study and care about.

Both pandemics and climate change provoke strong reactions. The risks of a pandemic produced very different responses of acceptance and denial - but we learned pretty quickly what the consequences were. Five million deaths worldwide is both shocking and informative and the feedback has come pretty quickly. The risks of climate change are immense but longer term. Thomas Berry understood them well as early as 1978 when he commented, “The destiny of humans cannot be separated from the destiny of Earth.”

Preparatory Reading

With the Climate Change conference coming soon, I need to spend more time reading than writing. There are an attractive set of options pictured above recommended by Yale Climate Connections. You can read the reviews here.

And The Guardian has some useful definitions in a world of COP26 and you can find them here.

Inspiration

Here are poems for a rainy day:

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

KINSHIP
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Very slowly burning, the big forest tree
stands in the slight hollow of the snow
melted around it by the mild, long
heat of its being and its will to be
root, trunk, branch, leaf, and know
earth dark, sun light, wind touch, bird song.

Rootless and restless and warmblooded, we
blaze in the flare that blinds us to that slow,
tall, fraternal fire of life as strong
now as in the seedling two centuries ago.

Bring a rock

I’ve been taking a course called “Understanding the new Cosmology - and one of the recent lessons suggested in advance, “Bring a Rock”. It’s a little harder for someone in a large city to find one - until one starts looking and find them decorating borders of flowerbeds everywhere.

Rocks for some appear to be pets - less walking and feeding perhaps. Kids love painting them. They are actually good to have around a reminder of how old the universe really is. Cosmologist Brian Swimme reminded us that once upon a time they were probably aflame before settling down to becoming mountains that gradually wore down to the size we can pick up. They are a solid mass of minerals that can be categorized and also have chemical components. We’ve been using them for about two and a half million years for building and mining.

They make good indoor company by being just there - and how young we are in comparison. We know more about planet earth from the study of geology than many cultures that preceded us.

Tools

Sometimes when I am out of ideas - and the articles on climate change that I have saved are consistently depressing, I return to my old blog and recycle. This article is one of them - re-examined and edited from one I wrote in 2015. Interesting to see how I change things from time to time.

Over the years I’ve always had a tool box in the closet like the big one pictured above.  It’s pretty basic – a screwdriver with a variety of heads, a hammer, some picture wire, some duct tape.  Any heavy jobs require assistance from a family member or professional.

But my personal organizational tool box contains some good ones which vary as I acquire more and more digital technology.  The contents here really makes a difference.

First of all – paper journals - even though paper sounds out of date.  Recently I recycled about 25 from past lives pondered and agonized about.  If I were a novelist they might have been fodder for a set of future neurotics , but dipping into them revealed somebody who was self-absorbed and rather silly. No doubt the journal I am filling now will seem the same way later.  But I do find it essential to record what’s on my mind.  A journal gets the ideas and problems out there from inside.  It can be reviewed, laughed at or cried over later when I have better perspectives.  I keep these hand written journals for a while – but not forever.  Sometimes I have a look and copy the best notes from reading or personal insight into another one and those journals are longer keepers.

In addition to the big journal – usually black – and Moleskine or a comparable cheaper brand with a bookmark and an elastic -  I have a couple of other books.  One is for ideas for blogs and things get written down if and when they come to me – (it contained the suggestion of this article among other things).  The third one is a notebook for taking notes at meetings or seminars.  I prefer to do this by hand – and try to capture the main ideas with verbatim phrases or even mind maps.  I’ll later transfer the contents to a report if they are something like minutes and meant to be shared.  Generally people who take notes during meetings capture nearly everything but don’t take the additional step of reflecting on what matters in the content.

For a to do list, appointments and the like, I now recommend Bullet Journal. I picked that up in the last three or four years and it covers everything in one place - and still analog. It has the right balance between integration and personal idiosyncracy, You can be as artistic in doodling as you like - or not.

Second – Synchronized stuff.  We move between laptops, tablets and smart phones and we need to have it all in hand and as portable as possible.  If I need reference material for a meeting, I’ll want to have it available when and where I need it.  A recent meeting had an advance portfolio of over 500 pages.  I had the option of reading it onsite on a tablet by either using wi-fi or a previously uploaded copy. In another situation I needed the combination to open a safe.  It was in a Gmail folder in message saved to a folder three months earlier.

Third – Mind Mapping.  I’ve been a mind mapper since a son responded in the early nineties by giving me Tony Buzan’s The Mind Map Book for Christmas.  He had heard me complain about a client‘s proposal.  As an arts consultant at the time I was helping plan a major civic arts facility housing performing, visual and media arts.  There was a lot of blue sky thinking and it was our role to introduce a few clouds.  Suddenly there was talk of taking one of the three components out of the plan without understanding the financial effect on operating revenue.  “If only there were a way to show how one change affects everything else - but on one page,”  I wailed.

Mind mapping does that.  I later went down to Palm Beach and became a Buzan certified trainer, but you can actually learn mind mapping in 10 minutes. If you Google How to Make a Mind Map, you can find the simple instructions.. Hand maps can be visually beautiful and works of art.  Digital maps have the advantage of reordering and restructuring with ease.  Either technique organizes and structures your thinking.  That’s how this article started and got organized. .

Fourth – Graphic Tools.  For any long term plan or project, you have to use something to see the big picture as well as the details.  Most of us think both logically and intuitively and have a preference for one or the other.  We’re exposed to a growing number of messages and an infinite number of words.  When someone says, “Do I have to draw you a picture?” out of frustration, they may be indeed on the right track.  There are many examples of digital canvasses and some of these are now available for collaborative use.  They are a simple way of uniting those with different ways to think because they combine the textual and the visual and relationships among the components are easier to see.

Fifth – Password Savers.  My current password count is 118. The list might be missing a few or have some that should be deleted.  I still have a small paper book where I wrote these down and had to look them up frequently – until I discovered that there is software that stores all of them securely and can access any of them. Basically all I have to remember now is one – which will allow me to keep all the others on file and synchronize them to my other devices.  It’s really fun to see them automatically open anything from bank accounts to online courseware – and that pause even gives a few seconds to relax and reflect.

Sixth – for now – because there will always be more to explore – (and this is updated) - is how to file emails. Get them out of the inbox by having some digital folders - like @meetings for all your Zoom ones, @action for things you have to do - but not this minute, -and others to file anything you want to keep. The reason for the @ sign is to keep at the top of the folder list.

These serve me well and I’ll keep using them for now.  What’s in your tool-box?