Bishop Hill Hulme's new climate course
Mar 29, 2012 Climate: Hulme Times Higher Education reports on Mike Hulme's latest idea - a course combining environmental studies and the humanities:
"I have worked in the field for over 30 years," he said. "I started with a very numerical approach but became increasingly frustrated that science alone cannot motivate social change.
As a taxpayer, I must say I struggle with the idea that I should be forced to pay people to work on coming up with new tactics to get me to amend my ways. This seems to me to be political campaigning rather than academic research.
This bit made me laugh:
Professor Hulme - who also teaches an undergraduate class on scientific controversy - acknowledged that UEA had been at the centre of a political row over climate change.
"We have gone through a big controversy here with the 'Climate-gate' scandal, which raised questions about whether some scientists were trying to subvert the peer-review process and who counts as a legitimate expert."
He added that although his own emails were among the batch obtained by campaigners who cited them as evidence that scientists were manipulating climate data, he was "not in the spotlight".
As did this:
Insights from nature writing and eco-poetry will be considered alongside those of philosophy and science.
Reader Comments (128)
Eco-friendly vomit bag's at the ready!!
Big trees are great, small trees are too, I like to eat leaves and recycle my pooh. The weather's getting weird, I must now grow a beard, and warming is bad it's not just a fad. The world is on fire as temperatures get higher the science is settled so I'm not just a lair. The storms are increasing so recycle your waste and don't use you're heating for the energy you'll waste. Big trees are great, small trees are too, the ice caps are melting so recycle your pooh.
Do I get an Eco-degree?
First class Master's degree in the post Sparks, if I can afford a first class stamp.
There once was a fellow called Mann
Who thought up a wonderful plan
He adopted a trick
Came up with a Stick
And became his number one fan
Global warming, global warming,
scientists raising the alarm.
Global warming, global warming,
nothing but a sham.
Global warming, global warming,
greens are going loco.
Global warming, global warming
too much of the dodgy tobacco.
Global warming, global warming
temperatures are going up and up
Global warming, global warming
the IPCC made it up
Global warming, global warming
why doesn't world care?
Global warming, global warming,
just another newspaper scare!
For some time it's been unclear whether the theory of AGW was scientific or religious. Well it now seems that they're giving up the science cover altogether and focussing on the 'belief' side.
I've been referring to the CRU as the Creative wRiting Unit for almost a year now. Seems that it's going to become true after all.
p.s. Will Hulme make Phil Jones the course Poet Laureate?
Can anyone understand the value of university teaching in scientific controversy?
Wouldn't undergraduates be better off learning something useful for their £9k/yr?
I've had enough lectures from PoMo professors - it sounds like Stanley Unwin to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Unwin_(comedian)
Anyone who doesn't recognize the sarcasm in my previous comment has committed a serious criminal offense. You will be reported to the eco-police: conviction will lead to life in prison, execution, or for the gravest offenders, being required to take Hulme's new climate course.
Thanks for the corrections above and sorry for my misunderstanding. I didn't know Hulme I was talking about.
All things green and carbon-free,
All windmills great and small,
Fuzzy and sustainable,
The Department of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Humanities and Eco-Poetry to Overcome Frustration and Use a Non-Numerical Approach to Motivate Social Change loves them all.
This thread is ace! All the poetz win the interwebz!
A very very serious warning, Earthlings!
It has long been the proud boast of our race that apart from mindless cruelty, casual sadism and an addiction to bureaucracy - virtues for which we are rightly praised - we are the writers of the worst poetry in the Universe. From Betelgeuse to Milliways, we are unbeatable in that sphere.
So we take great exception indeed to hearing the news that you puny apemen plan to teach your foul offspring to challenge us for our rightful crown. 'Eco-poetry' can only be seen as a threat to our supremacy. We are the masters of excecrable odes, not a trivial bipedal carbon-based life form like the humans!
Beware our wrath! Remember what happened last time you failed to pay attention to our works. The hypersapce expressway demolished your puny planet in seconds flat.
Give up this suicidal idea while there is still time....our Constructor Fleet is currently busy in Andromeda, but could be here in just a short while. Make known your intention to scrap this foolish course. Otherwise you will have to live (or not) with the consequences.
Resistance is Useless!
I have a memory that the UEA runs a creative writing course which is 'highly regarded' - presumeably by the Grauniad. I had assumed this was run by the CRU, but maybe it's this eco-poetry thingey...
At last a corse that I wil realy enjoy. I like running about saing 'hello clouds, hello sky, hello natur'. And nice Prof Hoom will sa nice things about me to pater and mater. Even beter big oafs like Nigle Molseworth wil not be ther. They r not sensitive enuff for we who feel the planets' pane.
Fotherington-Thomas is a weed and a wet as any fule kno.
I wuld not be seen ded on such a course. It is stupid and a waste of everyon's time and mony.
Vogon wrath be damned! I forgot a couple verses...
Who made the Maldives founder?
Who made the oceans boil?
Who made the corals crumble?
'Twere us bad boys and goyls!
Cute and cuddly polar bears are drowning all day long,
We can bring them back again if we all sing this song.
Run model, run model, run, run, run
Always deny it's the sun, sun, sun
.......
Then I got stuck. Some help, please?
The Molesworthian adjective "weedstruck" describes eco-poetry to a T.
Sparks mate, that's some funny sh*t.
My dad will just give a big donashun to the UAE, so I will get a first.
Grabber (head boy and captane of everything)
Ten green dogmas hanging on the wall,
Ten green dogmas hanging on the wall,
And if one green dogma should accidentally fall.........
.............. There'll be ten green dogmas hanging on the wall.
Distinction?
Eco-poetry is an oxymoron, as this hilarious thread demonstrates.
Although I have a couple of lines to add to Jobsworth's effort:
"Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Nodding their heads in interpretative dance."
How come there's no interpretative dance or installation art in this course? And, whatever happened to street theatre as an agent of social change?
Beautiful green rainbows swept away!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That countless careers have gone astray
In the second decade of the twenty first century
Which shall be remembered for all eternity
'Twas about seven o'clock at night
When professor Gleick took a terrible fright
At the oily deniers and all their schemes
Not realising it was all in his dreams
And the green demons of the air seem'd to say
"We'll drive him mad in a environmental sort of way"
It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight
While the green fiends did laugh and angry did bray
Over Gleick's keyboard his fingers did play
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay
That your movement would not have given way
At least many sensible men (and Bishops) do say
Had it been supported on all sides with observational data
As many sensible men (and Bishops) said later
For the stronger we our science do build
The less chance we have of being killed
(With apologies the late William McGonagall and his "The Tay Bridge Disaster"
http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/gems/the-tay-bridge-disaster
"I should have acknowledged my debt to William Jobsworth there."
Inspired Richard, just inspired.
This is vintage Hulme, as I reported two and a half years ago in 'Climate Change and the Death of Science'
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/
Hulme says:
"Climate change is telling the story of an idea and how that idea is changing the way in which our societies think, feel, interpret and act. And therefore climate change is extending itself well beyond simply the description of change in physical properties in our world…"
"The function of climate change I suggest, is not as a lower-case environmental phenomenon to be solved…It really is not about stopping climate chaos. Instead, we need to see how we can use the idea of climate change – the matrix of ecological functions, power relationships, cultural discourses and materials flows that climate change reveals – to rethink how we take forward our political, social, economic and personal projects over the decades to come."
"There is something about this idea that makes it very powerful for lots of different interest groups to latch on to, whether for political reasons, for commercial interests, social interests in the case of NGOs, and a whole lot of new social movements looking for counter culture trends."
"Climate change has moved from being a predominantly physical phenomenon to being a social one…It is circulating anxiously in the worlds of domestic politics and international diplomacy, and with mobilising force in business, law, academia, development, welfare, religion, ethics, art and celebrity."
"Climate change also teaches us to rethink what we really want for ourselves…mythical ways of thinking about climate change reflect back to us truths about the human condition…"
"The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identifies and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us…Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs."
"We need to reveal the creative psychological, spiritual and ethical work that climate change can do and is doing for us…we open up a way of resituating culture and the human spirit…As a resource of the imagination, the idea of climate change can be deployed around our geographical, social and virtual worlds in creative ways…it can inspire new artistic creations in visual, written and dramatised media. The idea of climate change can provoke new ethical and theological thinking about our relationship with the future….We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilise these stories in support of our projects. Whereas a modernist reading of climate may once have regarded it as merely a physical condition for human action, we must now come to terms with climate change operating simultaneously as an overlying, but more fluid, imaginative condition of human existence."
Although it includes "an intensive orientation week on method and data" and "a crash course in statistics and narrative", these will obviously not be enough to "create highly skilled statisticians or literary critics...
Statistics and narrative?
With apologies to Ozzie Osbourne
Is Hulme now completely off his rocker?
You’re all a bunch of amateurs. The Guardian did a special on eco-lit to celebrate Copenhagen 2 years ago at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/series/10-10-climate-change-special
My favorite, by Jeanette Winterson, began:
We need some Haiku
Cows? They fart methane.
It's time for you to enjoy
that last cheeseburger
We have consensus
If you only sacrifice
Utopia is waiting
Green is a color
and my lifestyle choice as well
Stop that damn breathing
Mar 29, 2012 at 11:26 PM | ScientistForTruth
I rest my case. He makes about as much sense as Stanley Unwin; perhaps less.
So, Hulme became "increasingly frustrated that science alone cannot motivate social change?"
That sounds like a comment from a politician or a technocrat, not a scientist.
Oh Dear, all this concern about eco-poetry but a near total ignoring of the fact that the humanities are an enormous influence on public opinion. Those who write or produce other forms of art live in a world where they are constantly bombarded by the CAGW message by the vast majority of the media and by most politicians (in the UK at least). They contribute to society by amplifying and commenting upon this message. This body of work exists and thus is worthy of study- regardless of whether or not you personally agree with its unerlying message or not. Anyone, like Mike, who tries to bridge the gap between "The Two Cultures" is, in my book, worthy of praise, not derision.
To criticize and especially to mock the inclusion of the humanities in the debate also ignores its power. I speak from personal experience. I started my conversion toward the "skeptical" position, not from reading learned scientific papers, but from reading The State of Fear (terrible story, hopeless geoscience) and following up his recommended reading.
I also suspect that Mike Hulme is one of the better guys, he is susceptible to good argument, and (more personally) was the only person at UEA who offered encouragement (and sympathy) the last time I wrote on this site (about the "demonization" of UEA).
@IanK
I think you are missing the point. We are not mocking eco-poetry. In fact this thread is full of it. Satirical eco-poetry is just as valid as any other. What you do not like is the message.
That is the beauty of the mirror of art. Everyone sees a different reflection.
If you are such a proponent of linking humanities you should be praising this thread irrespective of the themes involved.It is a beautiful example of art and in action.
I have met many "artists", my Engineering faculty shared the same building as the Fine Art faculty. Not an easy mix.
No one here begrudges any art as long as it is authentic, and authenticity is sadly missing in many artists. Your comment is a perfect example - art cannot be owned or manufactured.
The art on this thread is authentic. BH planted an idea and the seeds have grown. Just because you do not like the flower, does not make it invalid.
So. Farewell then
Those eco-poets
Old physicists
Who weren't. Michael, Albert
James Clerk
we will not teach
your work.
They were three but
Hilbert takes the score
to four
Or was
it twenty three.
We'll never know
for sure
So farewell
Then
old physicists
Your work's not
de rigueur
EJ GrantB (no longer aged 17 1/2)
Here's a beauty that belongs in the pop-genre section of the post-modernist non-revisionist dialectical data orientation phase of awarenessising the course participants. I hope the author does not mind my posting it in full here:
Michael’s Little Helper
By Wendy McElroy (http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.4514)
(to the tune of "Mother's Little Helper")
What a drag it is getting cold
Temps are different today
I hear scientists all say
But our warming theories need better proof;
So we'll use a graphic trick
To create a hockey stick
We'll go plotting the world's swelter, thanks to Michael's little helper
And the IPCC raves, for the world's theirs to save
Funding's different today
we need grants to pay our way
and we can't let down the ones who pay our bills;
So erase historic peaks, and call modern times unique
And keep plotting the world's swelter, thanks to Michael's little helper
And our colleagues will all cheer, funded for another year
Doctor please, we can't use trees
For recent trends, the warming ends
What a drag it is getting cold.
Laws are different today
We've a new F O I A*
And some skeptics want to deconstruct our work;
So some data will get lost, and some emails will get tossed
No more doubting the world's swelter, thanks to Michael's little helper
And our critics we'll berate, they don't care about our fate
Doctor please, we can't use trees
For recent trends, the warming ends
What a drag it is getting cold.
Work's much harder now today
Climate scientists all say
No one takes us at our unsupported word;
Though they weren't exactly lies, we did win a Nobel Prize
When we plotted the world's swelter, thanks to Michael's little helper
And those claims we will defend, 'til our sordid bitter end
They could start each day with an eco-song (all join hands - to the tune of London's Burning):
Global warming, global warming
Scare the children, scare the children
Hot hot! Hot hot!
Weather weirding, weather weirding
Insights from nature writing and eco-poetry will be considered alongside those of philosophy and science.
Mike Hulme's remark displays the secular prejudice that is typical of people in academia. He thinks that philosophy and the arts should be taken into account but not religion.
The gravy train came down the track & she blew, she blew
The gravy train came down the track & she blew, she blew
The gravy train came down the track, driven by Leo & Richard Black
And she blew, blew,blew, blew, blew
The climateers said we're nearly there & she blew, she blew,
The climateers said we're nearly there & she blew, she blew
The climateers said we're nearly there, we just need one more massive scare & she blew, blew,blew, blew, blew
The sceptics said you're going too fast & she blew, she blew
The sceptics said you're going too fast & she blew, she blew
The sceptics said you're going too fast, your science is crap, it'll never last & she blew, blew, blew blew, blew
The politicians got an awful fright & she blew, she blew
The politicians got an awful fright & she blew, she blew
The politicians got an awful fright, Cameron & Obama both turned white & she blew, blew, blew, blew, blew
The public were standing in the way & she blew, she blew
The public were standing in the way & she blew, she blew
The public were standing in the way with no fuel left & bills to pay & she blew, blew, blew, blew, blew
Lord Lawson said there'll be a wreck & she blew, she blew
Lord Lawson said there'll be a wreck & she blew, she blew
Lord Lawson said there'll be a wreck and the government will get it in the neck & she blew, blew, blew, blew ,blew
The gravy train went over the hill & she blew, she blew
The gravy train went over the hill & she blew, she blew
The gravy train went over the hill & for the next fifty years we'll be paying still as she blew, blew blew, blew, blew
Jiminey Cricket
No I think you miss my point. I don't object in any way to the "eco-poetry" being posted on this site - in fact I have enjoyed reading them (although some make me cringe - is doggerel poetry?). So I do appreciate the "flower".
The point I made was that wholesale criticism of a university course that tries to incorporate the influence of the humanities into the debate about climate change is counterproductive. You (and others) would have a valid point if poetry (or other art) supporting the skeptical point of view about CAGW were to be deliberately excluded from the course. I somehow doubt, however, that the contributions within this post would find a place, but the reason for exclusion would probably not be on the grounds of content. However, I'll ask Mike for his views.and report back.
A more productive methodology would be to suggest to Mike serious contenders of art that supports the more skeptical viewpoint about CAGW for inclusion within the course. Good luck on finding them!
In today's lecture we will examine the following:
ODE to FOIA
-----------------
Oh, sweet request
That yielded files
Which showed the secrets
Of their wiles
Of missing heat
And hid decline
With Nature's tricks
And rings of pine.
Oh, sweet request
To CRU addressed
The sender now
Forever blessed...
A.Denier
Your assignment is to deconstruct this, using current valid interdisciplinary modes of thought taking into account the reorientation in correct approaches and modulation of society imposed on us by narratives of impending change and the consequent paradigmal, sorry paroxysmal (scream, men in white coats, removal from room...)..
Run model, run model, run, run, run
Always deny it's the sun, sun, sun
MET will get by
without the sun in the sky
So run model, run model, run, run, run.
A childrens' eco-rhyme
One degree, two degrees,
Three degrees, four,
Five degrees, six degrees,
Seven degrees, more!
They f*** you up
CRUTEM and HAD...
"Mike serious contenders of art that supports the more skeptical viewpoint about CAGW for inclusion within the course. Good luck on finding them!"
IanK, therein lies our disagreement... "serious contenders"? Art is art. All the other layers placed on top to make it serious, "valuable" in some way are all just self justifying, reputation creating, income earning bullsh*t. Much like climate science it seems.
Forgive me but your comment strikes me of elitism.
We may be eco-versing plebs, and proud of it, but it is art and unpretentious art at that.
Qualifying for glorious entry into the marble halls UEA doesn't validate anything.
@IanK
You seem to be perilously close to taking the position that 'serious art' is that which reflects the worldview that consensus represents. Would Paul Bloomer count as serious art? http://www.paulbloomer.com/
Is Damian Hirst really more artistically accomplished than Fenbeagle, or Josh? The David Mayhew ode that immediately followed your post is (in my view) a high standard of writing and wit that easily matches a lot of the output I've seen from such luminaries as the current Poet Laureate. That art is so subjective makes it a very tricky proposition to decide what's in or out, and one's worldview is far more likely to impact selection than any measure of artistic merit.
In my experience, particularly with what one might call the lifestyle greeny, there is no attempt to understand the science. The data are an inconvenient distraction from attaining some utopia. You see this in the distain that the intellectual elite has for any numerate discipline, where engineers, mathematicians, scientists etc are regarded as glorified tradesmen, albeit fashionable from time to time with the glitterati, as long as the message does not conflict with their ideology.
The type of course Hulme proposes is merely a way of mixing enough 'science' into a course that is very little different to a thousand other 'warm and fuzzy' courses that give the liberal elite things to waste their days on, without any real engagement with the issues.
Mar 30, 2012 at 10:01 AM | Unregistered Commenter@lanK
If by 'serious' you mean 'devoid of humour', then I would have to agree with you. Sceptics are good at spotting nonsense so it is not surprising that satire is their preferred artform.
I don't see any warmists contributing any counter doggerel here or anywhere else. Perhaps we should turn the challenge round and ask Mike Hulme to point us to the great satires against 'deniers'.
Cumbrian Lad
Have you noticed that when a bridge falls down it's the engineers who get the blame, but when it stays up it's the architects who get the credit?
We had Form 3B from St.Custards in yesterday. Latimer Alder told us some while back that the UEA had won the Mrs Joyful prize for Raffia Work.
http://www.roper.org.uk/tr/2007/11/mrs-joyful-priz.html
Today we have scaring the proles. Yesterday,
We had narrative writing. And tomorrow morning,
we will be taxing them into the dirt. But today,
Today we have scaring the proles. CO2 bubbles
harmlessly through coral reefs east of Papua New Guinea,
And today we have scaring the proles.
This is the adjusted temperature data. And this
Is the residual anomaly, whose use you will see,
when you are given your graphs. And this is the raw temperature data,
Which in your case you have not got. The trees
stand unflinching, steadfast against all adversity,
Which in our case we have not got.
Now this is the graph, and you hold it like so,
And you cover this end with your thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone grinning. You can keep a straight face,
if you have enough faith in the Cause. The daisies
shadow the lawn with their leaves, never letting anyone see
Any one of them grinning.
And this you can see is our model result. The pupose of this
is to extend our reach. As you see, We can change these
parameters just as much as we please: we call this
building consensus. And rapidly backwards and forwards,
the advocates are alarming and corrupting MPs:
They call it building consensus.
They call it building consensus: it's easy enough
if you can keep a straight face: like the trend,
and the scale, and the hypothesis, and the tipping point,
which in our case we have not got; and the skeptics
excluded from every arena, and the advocates going backwards and forwards,
For today we have scaring the proles.