It’s About Making Babies!

Sharon writes on Casaubon’s Book of her concerns that climate change activism and government support seem to be waning as the Copenhagen conference approaches.

The Big Lie

The first, and I think biggest, obstacle Sharon, Peak Oil, and Transition movements face is the big lie. When the government and leaders states something, that statement becomes an act of faith for a people. This is most evident when the statement is false, the leaders know it when they first utter the nonsense – yet by repetition and the appearance of being affected by the statement – the people are convinced that the statement is meaningful and . . . true.

Few governments are talking about climate change, or global warming. The absence of climate from the media broadcasts of news and concerns, the absence of climate from government actions – they make an implied statement that global climate change is a non-issue. An implied Big Lie. And the nations of the world, for the most part, accept that there is no immediacy, no serious concern about climate change. Production of coal and oil, transport of coal and oil have not been curtailed due to concern over climate, again making an implied Big Lie statement that coal and oil aren’t all that much of a problem. And the American People and people elsewhere understand the meaning – that climate, coal, oil – these are middling important economic concerns. Period.

End of the world

I remember “duck and cover” drills in the classroom, and early dismissal of school to hold nuclear blast and fallout drills. An intercontinental exchange of nuclear missiles between the US and Russia, and / or China, was an almost accepted event, the only question was timing, and how many survivors – and who and where they would be! – and what of normal life could be salvaged.

Various churches have held the end times are now, and have been for 20 years. Then year 2000 was to be the second coming, or at least all computers would crash.

Miniskirts, swing, jazz, rock, rap, and hip-hop music were to bring about the end of civilization. Segregation was said to be the last bastion of the survival of our nation (that didn’t make any more sense that harassing Irish, Hungarian, German, or any others setting foot on America soil).

As a culture, using the specter of the end of life as we know it (TEOLAWKI) to motivate someone’s actions or changes has been used since before the first bible was opened. The argument form is new to younger people, and the argument content for climate change is compelling, for some. Yet as a culture and as individuals, many of us have learned to discount tales of the end of things. Call it experience, or wisdom, or apathy – this mostly depends on your support for any given argument – tales of the Zombicalypse is not immediately terrifying to all listeners.

Changing stories and Doubts

I have an issue with the science of global warming, or as it calls itself this week, climate change. A couple of issues, really.

- Methane

See, the first I recall hearing about methane was as sewer gas. That is, not the digestion of vegetation by ruminants like cows. And methane as swamp gas, the normal decay of vegetation that produces methane. Composting, forest mast, mulched grass, for goodness’ sake. I ask, and have heard no reply, whether a patch of pasture sufficient to sustain a cow or cows for a year, would produce more total methane over that year with a cow grazing, or a year dormant. Or a variant, with only wildlife grazing or otherwise utilizing that same patch of pasture. My concern should be obvious – how (why?) should we identify animal sources of methane, if they aren’t producing more methane than would have occurred in their absence?

- How much carbon in that there carbon-cycle?

We in the United States face a quandary about wild fires. Apparently the natural cycle of things is for burn offs of forest an plain at irregular intervals. Only, we don’t like to do that anymore since we might lose our homes and parks. Those wildfires put out a lot of particulates, water vapor – and carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. How may gallons of gasoline, again, does it take to put the same amount of carbon into the air as a square mile of burned prairie or forest? How many tons is equivalent? And how does our modern suppression of fires, using fire lanes and other artificial control measures as well as firefighting crews, affect the natural balance of carbon in the environment?

Why, just think of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel expended fighting fires!

- Old Carbon

I do understand the theory of sequestered carbon. That the fossil fuels contain carbon removed from the atmosphere millions of years ago, and thus burning fossil fuels returns that carbon to an active cycle of life, and risks restoring an environment from millions of years ago, that we could not survive today. I do get it.

What I don’t know is where the atmosphere, carbon, wild fires, methane, and other factors stand in balance. And, like with other end-of-the-world scenarios, I am not convinced that this story is the only end of life story that is true. It would be a first, for me.

- Dust

I also know that the world, all of earth, accumulates about a centimeter (a bit over 3/8ths inches) of dust from outside our atmosphere, micrometeorites and various stuffs that fall onto the earth from outer space. What is the carbon – or carbon-reducing – effect of this cosmic debris? Volcanoes erupt, spewing untold thousands of tons of acids and dust and gases – including bunches of methane – on a nearly continual basis, year round and around the earth.

Dust changes things. It settles in water – or mixes in and changes the freezing and boiling points. It makes a bit of ground or plant absorb or reflect a bit more sun – it is mostly random in it’s affect. But accumulations of little things – like burning more coal or oil – does add up.

- Albedo, or how the earth shines

Take a kitchen wall. Paint it white, or eggshell or apartment-white or whatever is close. Notice how large the room feels, how bright, how warm. Now paint it a creamy beige color, that same wall. See how the room feels warmer, a different size, almost a calmer mood? Now paint that wall a crafty, thirsty orange. You may feel the room needs more light bulbs to feel well-lit, you may find you spend less time in the kitchens.

Now take a patch of the Earth. Take a forest. Cut it down, and plant oats, or corn, or soybeans. Part of the year the dirt will be worked up, part will be a bright, growing green. Other times you will have mature golds and browns, and then stubble or old plant debris.

What you will not have, is a patch of ground that absorbs or reflects the amount of energy at the same rate and degree that the forest it replaced absorbed or reflected energy.

You changed the “brightness” of that patch of the Earth. Next, build some roads, and some buildings, move a few metal or plastic vehicles about. Wow. Now we really see the changes. And you know what? The amount of energy, sunlight, cosmic radiation, UV, and heat that is either captured or bounced back off the earth – that energy shows up as warming and cooling. Warming and cooling of the ground and the air around that patch of the Earth. Warming and cooling of the environment. And let us not look at what clearing roads, that should be snow-covered in winter, does to affect the temperature of the environment.

Back to the trees.

I mentioned the albedo change when you whack down trees. But I grew up thinking of a tree as a water pump. Back before most apple trees were dwarfs, when a mature apple tree stood shoulder to shoulder with maples and oaks, I was told that a mature apple tree transfers nearly 150 gallons of water a day from the ground to the air. Now think what it means to the locale when you chop down a bunch of trees – the air is drier. I am told that at tree’s root system is generally as well developed as the top part – much of the water the mature tree utilizes comes from below what farmers call the subsoil, the moisture reservoir that rains replenish to provide for crops and pastures. And forests.

Change the amount of moisture in the air, and you change the temperature characteristics. Ever notice that some times the coolest temp of the day – just before or as the sun comes up in the morning – varies from the heat of the day – often mid to late afternoon? Have you noticed that when the difference is 40 degrees Fahrenheit (abut 22 degrees centigrade) – the humidity is quite low? That when the difference from low to high is 20 degrees the relative humidity, the percentage of moisture in the air to the amount of moisture that saturated air could hold, is high? That at nearly 100 percent humidity, the low and high temps are mere degrees apart?

Plants, including trees, are carbon-based life forms. The tons of mass that make up a mature, tall tree, is mostly water, just like nearly all life. But there is a sizable amount of carbon. I was taught in school that chlorophyll, the green stuff in plant leaves, in the presence of sunlight combines carbon dioxide in the air with moisture to release oxygen and produce sugars and starches. The mighty mass of the tree, like the profusion of the meadow, removes a bunch of carbon from the air. When we burn wood, leaves, or even grasses, we return that carbon to the air. When the wood or leaves or grasses decompose instead, they form carbon gases like carbon dioxide and methane, and leave a bit of ash as compost. In normal, sustained cycles the trees grow, carbon is capture, and again released. Because all is going on at any moment, the net effect is a steady amount of heat, carbon, moisture, etc.

Deforesting the Amazon

But what happens when Brazil deforests the Amazon River Basin, whacks down ancient trees and forests that have held hundreds of years worth of carbon – and keep that area deforested? That immense quantity of permanent carbon change, of that permanent interruption of the carbon cycle affects continents and oceans. The change in oxygen release, the change in moisture conveyed from deep underground to air, the change in minerals brought to the surface by tree roots – these all affect the world’s environment. The amount of carbon involved in the “only” thousand square miles of rain forest destroyed last year has to be the equal of train loads of coal. Coal, at least, barely affects water cycles and albedo.

More forests gone

China and Asia burn a lot of charcoal. It seems that charcoal makes a handy fuel for heating the home, for cooking. For the charcoal and wood, it seems the Asian rain forests are on their last few years, before being cleared quite away. The deforestation of Asia makes the Brazilian ecological assault on the Amazon Rain Forest pale in comparison. The Asian loss of forest is also having a proportionally larger impact on the environment.

Africa, too, is deforesting itself for charcoal. More and more devastation of ecologies and environments.

Burning wood, its not the same

I want to be clear about one thing – burning wood, making and burning charcoal, these can be part of a sustained environment. Burn deadfalls from stands of trees, trees downed by storm or trimings of trees harvested for lumber – that are replaced. So that any acre of ground maintains, more or less, about the same amount of growing tree mass, a similar range of maturities and ages of trees, from year to year. Even harvesting straggler unwanted trees can be sustainable if you only harvest them when they reach maturity, and never completely clear out the younger trees, again keeping about balanced from year to year.

Long pole in the tent.

So, Sharon, I think one of the reasons climate change is facing reduced commitment is a combination of people that haven’t committed to alleviating climate change factors have are pursuing other issues. Like keeping a nation’s eyes on a non-issue like insurance for health care as a distraction from clandestine actions. I think some of those that are concerned about global warming are distracted by life issues. I think the immediacy of the issues has worn thin as a motivating force.

An analogy. Take a tent like a circus tent, with several poles holding the center line of the tent high. But you notice one pole seems to stand higher than the others, so you pull that pole out, and shorten it. Now you notice a different pole is the tall one, so you shorten it. Because you continue to observe the changing skyline of the tent, and view from various vantages and angles, you can continue forever to find that one pole seems taller than another.

And I am not convinced that the issues being pursued – reducing fossil fuel emissions – is the long pole in the tent. Energy spent addressing the long pole – which I think is global deforestation – will have the most effective result.

Till next time

I had a bunch of comments on Sharon’s article, that will have to follow in another post – and ties back to Sharon’s concern about redefining lifestyle and my concern over family and culture.

Any thoughts?

Sharon Astyk at Casaubon’s Book writes about the Obama visit to Russia, and how Mrs Michele Obama was received by Russian women. The topic of her post is unhappy and clearly and effectively speaks to how limiting the role of the First Lady is – and the roles of women in the family.

Where I come from

The roles of men and women, and cultural assumptions about marriage, change from year to year, and have since I guess forever. Whether it is true, or simple projection, the consensus seems to be that prehistory started the model we have today – men work and hunt, women keep the cave and children.

One other historic premise. I forget the source, but religions through history haven’t always tolerated each other. When the origination of the Judeo-Christian faith occurred, many religions and cultures were matriarchal. That is, giving birth was seen as a closer bond and representation of godhood, women held places of authority in church and often over state as well. The competition led to the Judeo-Christian position of very strict patriarchal traditions and values. The traditional church wedding vows often cite the reference that Man is head of house and woman. And in this case they always meant the male gender, not humankind in general.

Where Sharon is coming from

I think that Sharon is projecting the motivations, frustrations, and inequities of individual circumstances and frustrations onto cultural generalizations. When the reality is that we have been confused, as a nation, almost forever.

We claim and have laws, as communities and as a nation, about the sanctity of marriage, yet have had prostitution, adultery, and fornication (sexual intercourse between unwed partners), since before America was a nation. Recall that Ben Franklin was an acknowledged and tolerated “womanizer”. We have had Presidents with not-so-clandestine “mistresses”. Etc. And our neighbors and leaders continue the tradition, some of them.

Our ancestors claimed that “a woman’s place is in the home”, yet there have always been women, single, married, divorced or widowed, parent or alone, that have worked for others. America relied in no small part on the ability of women in industry during war time. Yet girls still dream of the immense (and expensive) big wedding as the goal of their pre-married life.

We are not a homogeneous society or culture. Not all women, men, boys, girls, have the same dreams. Not all communities or faiths teach the same values. And no generalization, including this one, is completely true.

Yet powerful traditions in America trace back to the crude, outdated, “Keep them barefoot and pregnant”.

My model

First, let me state that my model informs the traditions and expectations, the limits and scope, of marriage today; it is not a goal or even desirable for anyone to try to follow this as a guideline in their lives. I use this as an illustrative tool to examine how what we have today might have come about.

In past times men have been seen as representing a unit of culture, of work. A family was considered an accessory to the man; a man took a job or craft, the family supported the man. In some professions and positions, a family – supportive wife, possibly children to bring up in the trade – were necessary to meet mundane, domestic, and business or political demands. Women have been seen as steadying influences on a man in a position of influence.

A wife and family have also been seen as a mark of affluence, in some circles, or of character. In the military, there were unwritten rules in the past that an officer below a certain grade (few years of service) should not marry, while officers in more senior grades must be married.

The First Lady

Sharon laments that the Russian women identified most with the First Lady – about the infamous White House Garden. That an article brings out the Russian woman’s struggle with independence and domestic roles. That Michele Obama is defined in her role as First Lady not by her education and aptitude, but by the domesticity of her role as the wife of the President.

I find the argument disingenuous.

First, a politician uses any tool, pretext, or scam to “appeal” to people, to make a “connection” – to get people to believe the politician is a friend and understands them. Politics is a profession of perception, with substance and honest running poor thirds.

The organizers of the trip promoted Michele Obama for her roles in parenting their children and gardening as being the ties that show she understands and sympathizes with the women working in Russia. How sincere is that image? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It seems to have worked, for the moment. What I know is that Michele O. sold her support during the campaign season for a humongously expensive custom ring, Chicago payoff style.

Sharon laments that the article in question spends time on attire. Oh, please. The turnout at the MJ service didn’t just happen to look like a who’s how of entertainment – it was staged, people, for the benefit of building and maintaining business for entertainers. Mrs. Obama wore flat shoes. Duh. The article pointed that out, and it appealed to the (nameless?) Russian women – because it might be tough to visualize Michele Obama as a gardener and active parent in killer stiletto heels. There was an image to create, and the shoes were part of the presentation.

The role of First Lady

First Lady is not an elected office. In the past, women have made little or much of the role, depending on the times and the people involved. Whether an unseen presence in the White House, or an outspoken social or cultural leader, there is no reason to think that the “domestic limits” Sharon finds in her Russian trip article are anything significant, or even more than a facade presented for one occasion. Nancy Reagan, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy Onassis – I haven’t followed the First Ladies of the nation, since they hold their office by virtue of their direct and indirect support of their elected husbands.

And that brings me back to seeing the role of wife as a symbol of stature of the family and of the husband, in society, a symbol of character and affluence, and as a resource and asset in pursuing the husband’s career.

Tradition

The Presidency of the United States is enshrouded, if not enshrined, in tradition. From the traditional Easter Egg Hunt and Pardoning of the Thanksgiving Turkey, to the presence of the Secret Service protection details, the President in many ways is a symbol of tradition, stability, and security to the nation.

And the tradition, right or wrong, applicable or not, of the wife as being a support for her husband, is alive and well in the perceptions that the White House uses to put forward the President’s agenda.

Keep in mind that the lifestyle that the President portrays is affluent. Not all children have a work-at-home father. Not all families *know* the rent, or taxes, are paid for the next several years. Not all women have a choice about whether to wear flats to work. Not all spouses get to go along on business trips.

My reading of what has come out of the White House is that the only real restrictions on Michele Obama are negotiated with her husband. But the appearances will be maintained, where it suits B. Hussein Obama and his wife.

A Patriarchal view

Judeo-Christian faiths and Western Civilization are based on a patriarchal view of society. Despite recognition of how artificial it is to define roles and responsibilities based on gender, patriarchal, male dominant, traditions and values still make themselves felt.

Lamenting that the US President and his family portray an image, when it is useful, of being traditional, is missing the point. Michele Obama seems to have enjoyed and successfully played up to her assigned role. This is not a tragedy, any more than for anyone else winning a part in an exciting play. This is not much of a mirror of reality, either.