Bishop Hill The poetry of global warming
Jun 9, 2014 Climate: MetOffice Dame Julia Slingo has, like so many of her colleagues, been turning her mind to climate change communication, and reckons that talking about the science in dull technical reports may not be the way forward. Getting the message of impending disaster out requires a dose of funky, a dash of sexy, and a whole lot of poetry.
“We have to look increasingly at what society requires of us… We increasingly recognise that to reach the general public we have to use all sorts of different channels of communication,” Dame Julia told a recent gathering of leading climate change scientists at the University of Exeter.
“And it’s not through tables and graphs. Sometimes it is through art, through music, through poetry, and storytelling and that is increasingly something we have to think about – how we communicate in a more humanist way.
I can see it now - Andrew Motion doing atmospheric circulation, JK Rowling doing the temperature trends, and of course flood warnings from Peter Gabriel.
Reader Comments (78)
She could simply shut the F up!
Worzels got there first anyway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omujHQK9qL4
You could add the XKCD take on the supposed 4.5 degree temperature rise to that list.
Come on chaps, enter into the spirit -
A Met Office chief called Slingo
said people aren't getting our lingo.
To message the climate,
we just need to rhyme it,
then all will believe us - bingo!
Alternative last lines from twitter:
"..and set up a Climate Change Bingo." (Toby Goodman)
"..a cross on our climate change bingo." (Ian Woolley)
"..she couldn't give up on the spin though." (Paul Clark)
Following Peter Gabriel, would be that prime cause of global warming sung by the Beatles .
“We have to look increasingly at what society requires of us..."
Simples, tell the truth, warts and all. Solved.
Bikini weather
this bit from the article?
Meanwhile, Exeter University, the Met Office, the London College of Fashion and the Victoria & Albert Museum have collaborated on the “Climate Dress” – a project looking at how clothing can be used to communicate ideas about global warming,
The mad girl with the staring eyes and long white fingers
Hooked in the stones of the wall,
The storm-wrack hair and screeching mouth: does it matter, Slingo,
Whether the people believe
Your bitter fountain? Truly men hate the truth, they'd liefer
Meet a tiger on the road.
Therefore the poets honey their truth with lying; but religion—
Vendors and political men
Pour from the barrel, new lies on the old, and are praised for kind
Wisdom. Poor bitch be wise.
No: you'll still mumble in a corner a crust of truth, to men
And gods disgusting—you and I, Slingo.
Hat Tip
Robinson Jeffers
£1.5 million.
"A new three-year research project led by The Open University is set to challenge the terms of public debates about energy issues. “Stories of Change: Exploring energy and community in the past, present and future” has received nearly £1.5million in funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to examine areas of conflict, make space for more diverse voices and support a more open public conversation about change. The project will explore energy transformations of the past, present and future through an innovative mix of social science and humanities research, digital storytelling, short films, and other creative work. It will also be generating a publicly accessible collection of ‘stories of change’.
http://citizenjoesmith.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/stories-of-change-arts-and-social-sciences-support-energy-transitions/
Perhaps they all out to be out wearing 'A' boards.... the end is nigh!
How do these quacks continue to be in the public eye?
Sexy? Sorry this is OT
The temperature forecasting record of the IPCC
I'm not sure if there is anything new in this post. I compare the temperature forecasts from the FAR, TAR, AR4 and AR5 with the HadCRUT4 temperature record. The best and most honest IPCC forecast is the FAR from 1990 and this shows clearly that the "Low" forecast is that which lies closest to reality. Thereafter, the IPCC approach has been to obfuscate and fudge data to try and create the image of pending climatic melt down.
Shame about xkcd; why do otherwise intelligent people go utterly loopy over CAGW?
xkcd; "will likely warm by an average of 4-5 C "
Even the IPCC say "rise under most scenarios 1.5-4 C".
I used to enjoy xkcd's 'What If', but now I don't trust the figures any more.
I'd be happy if they just stopped presenting unfounded speculations as fact.
Not withstanding M. Thatcher's comment about society, this particular member requires that the Met Office produces some significant, falsifiable, successful climate predictions before I will take their models seriously. I require more science and less politics.
At the moment I only see them as further damaging the credibility of their weather forecasts.
Unleash the power of interpretive dance!
Dame Julia does them an injustice - They are already masters of storytelling !
Can we have 'Magic in the air' by the three degrees
(as opposed to three degrees by magic in the air)
More evidence that climate obsessed people are practicing a religion.
Raindrops keep falling on my head......
....but I'm singing in the rain.
A more upbeat take, without the political undertones.
LOL
Not one of the leading climate scientists bursting into laughter.
Funny people, the lot of them. And still wondering why their reputation is so abysmally low.
But since we're all inspired...
http://omnologos.com/the-cru-hacking-song-with-apologies-to-george-and-ira-gershwin/
"It ain’t necessarily so
It ain’t necessarily so
The t’ings dat yo’ li’ble
To read in de IPCC,
It ain’t necessarily so...."
http://omnologos.com/skeptical-band-aid-or-do-they-know-its-climategatetime/
"It’s Climategatetime
There’s no need to be afraid
At Climategatetime, we let in light and we banish data hiding
And from our world of skeptics we can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around mainstream media at Climategatetime..."
I wonder if they ever thought of telling the truth for a change!
“We have to look increasingly at what society requires of us…
Unfortunately, what Dame Julia sees as society is not us, because she looks down on us from the great height of leadership, and thus, lacking an underling to show her the practicals, sees hoi polloi through the wrong end of her telescope. (OK, so it doesn't rhyme, or scan:)
A whole lotta poetry, eh?! Well, here's one for you, Dame Julia ...
These are desperate days for our climate
For our planet is frail, not infinite
But our scientists know what to do
If you follow this rhyme, you will too.
For we have produced many papers
Examining all of Earth's capers
There's no need to complain
And so many marvels to gain.
The temperature's rising
So 'tis hardly surprising
That bad you must view
So much dastardly Carbon-O-two.
These measures are really not painful
Little sense in being disdainful
And you know it's really not nice
To think of ignoring our expert advice
As experts we have spent so many hours
Studying patterns and problems and flowers
Furthermore, our excellent tutors
Have faithfully manned our marvy computers
With results so clearly informative
Let's choose a path that's truly transformative
To ensure a future planet regainable
With measures that WE deem sustainable.
We have a new genre, the tragi-panto, and it comes complete with a Dame and a Buttons! Formerly known as the Met Office.
Quite a few climate poems here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/p/climate-culture-poetry-and-song-from.html. But I don't think the authors will be invited for auditions in Exeter any time soon.
I remember when Exeter had a pretty respectable university. Nowadays, no PC bandwagon is allowed to trundle past without some Desperate Don hurling himself on board.
It brings in funding, of course, but it makes the idea of Exeter as a place of learning ever less plausible.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
What's the good doc's background? It certainly does not look as is she has one in the bureaucracy, and I doubt that her recommendation to use poetry will go down well in the corridors of power.
However, art may be a goer. I recall some students in some god-forsaken university produced some sort of work of art that depicted Michael Mann portrayed in various sized dots, possibly with some reference to saving the globe. I also recall that my reaction was that this was a disgraceful bit of propaganda.
It's been apparent for a while now that the climate field is increasingly dominated by left wing social science types rather than properly qualified scientists, so it's no surprise that they are looking for ways to channel some of the abundant CAGW money to their friends in the publically funded Arts sector.
They could try and communicate more effectively with the more scientifically minded public first. In my opinion all that requires is just a basic level of commonsense and scepticism, hence the number of people of all backgrounds who are highly sceptical of the CAGW theory.
H/t Barclay James Harves - The Sun Will Never Shine (with minor alterations)
From corridors of power the clouds began to glower
They knew that never again the skies would be so blue
They took away the sun and with it took the fun
It's true, that now there is really nothing humans do
So I look outside my window at the sheets of pouring rain
And I wonder if the sun will come again
But the sun will never shine the way it used to do
The clouds won't let it through
Oh the sun will never shine its smile for me and you
The clouds won't let it through
It wasn't long ago the people that I knew were glad
And nothing they ever thought about was bad
But since the sun has cooled the people have been fooled
That's bad, to make them forget the happy times they've had
So they look outside their window at the sheets of pouring rain
And they wonder if the sun will come again
But the sun will never shine the way it used to do
The sceptics are to few
Oh the sun will never shine its smile for me and you
The sceptics are to few
Barclay James Harvest - The Sun Will Never Shine Lyrics
"From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat" is as far as I ever read.
Sleepalot: Out of interest, what purpose does it serve telling the world that?
“Scientists have to stay engaged in the communication message. We will have to work at this. We will have to get the message out that this is a profound, deeply serious problem. It is urgent that we, as a science community, work together to advance the science and also to communicate it as effectively as we can so that we get the action that is so badly needed,” she said.
Julia
"The Met Office does not do propaganda."
Richard
There was a girl from the Azores,
OW!
Who threw that crozier?
"From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat" is as far as I ever read.
Jun 9, 2014 at 2:09 PM | Unregistered CommenterSleepalot
Then you owe him a small debt of gratitude for saving you from reading things, of no interest to you, that you otherwise would have read.
Julia you went full retard, Never Go full Retard!
From the article:
If Dame Julia wants to communicate more effectively she should stop telling us we have a serious problem ahead and start showing us what her evidence for that claim is. Freely available Met Office papers would be a start. No more publishing behind paywalls.
"I am now going to explore the effect of EL-NINO 3.4 index in regards to the global air temperature and sea surface temperature datasets as recorded from weather balloons and ARGO buoys cross correlating with projected sea level rise and total solar irradiance....
....through the medium of interpretive dance!"
Does this mean that the BBC science correspondents will finally be able to report on something they actually know about..?
It is a pity Spike is no longer with us, he would have made a wonderful "Poet in Residence" at the MO.
Spike Milligan once said that the wind was caused by trees waving their branches.
"Unleash the power of interpretive dance!"
Would that be an interpretative rain dance or rain-go-away dance?
Forget poetry. Since "combatting climate change" will do more damage to Britain's economy than the Luftwaffe ever did, what is needed is another Leni Riefenstahl to produce a new Triumph of the Will to glamorise the next IPPC congress, even if it is not in Nuremberg.
That should do the trick.
Owen Morgan - Exeter had a respectable reputation? I seem to recall it used to have a reputation amongst the bright young things as primarily a good social university. More fun than work.
"And it’s not through tables and graphs. Sometimes it is through art, through music, through poetry, and storytelling and that is increasingly something we have to think about – how we communicate in a more humanist way."
Well I think standing Ms Slingo and a few others like her up against the wall and shooting them for economic sabotage, gross waste of widows mites, would be a very effective way of communicating something. Sadly it'll never happen. These scoundrels won't even be victims of 'cuts' insofar as they ever happen anyway.
One day we'll get a government that is emotionally adverse to wasting taxpayers money. How and why it will come about I have no idea, but surely we cannot go on as we are?
I wonder if she's thinking of teaming up with the University of Easy Access and their Creative Writing Department to help her with the storytelling.
"A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
and look at things the sceptic way.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady's turned to poetry
With sincere apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson
It must be terrible for Slingo and her ilk to have to dirty their hands dealing with - "the general public" (aka peasants)
[Snip O/T]
Even back in 1970 the magnificent Van der Graaf Generator understood the cyclic nature of climate. Spot the Einstein quote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wEeQqJN1eHQ
Continuing the story, humanity stumbles -
gone is the glory, there's a far distant rumble.
The clouds have gathered and exploded now:
axes shattered, there is no North or South.
Far off, the ice is foundering slowly,
the ice is turning to water,
the ice is turning to water.
The water rushes over all
cities crash in the mighty wave;
the final man is very small,
plunging in for his final bathe.
This is the ending of the beginning,
this is the beginning of the end,
middle of the middle, mid-point, end and start:
the first peak rises, forces the waves apart.
Far off, the ice is now re-forming:
poles are fixed once more,
water's receding, like death-blood.
And when the water falls again,
all is dead and nobody lives.
And then he said:
'Every step appears to be
the unavoidable consequence of the preceding one,
and in the end there beckons more and more clearly
total annihilation'
This is the ending of the beginning,
this is the beginning of the end,
And when the water falls again,
all is dead and nobody lives.