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I’ve posted before about my dislike of the term ‘global warming’ because of the implications of it being so gentle. I’ve expressed a preference for ‘climate change’ because it contains a truer indication of the likely expectations, since while some areas are going to get warmer, some will get colder. While some areas will get dryer, others will get wetter. Etc.
However, I’m coming around to the terms ‘catestrophic climate change’, ‘global climatic disruption’, or ‘global climatic crisis’. The reason being because ‘climate change’ sounds so benign. Like ‘global warming’ it sounds so safe. It sounds like something which can be fixed easily, can be adapted to easily. Change is a part of life, after all. Resisting change can cause problems in itself. As such it must be made clear that the change isn’t benign, it’s dramatic and dangerous.
“Holdren explains that the term “global warming” is actually a misnomer. The term implies that the problem at hand is gradual, when in truth it’s quite rapid; uniform when it is highly inconsistent across all of Earth; mainly about temperature, but it encompasses everything about climate; and potentially benign, although it is entirely harmful.” – Strategic Sustainability Consultant’s Blog.
For anyone wondering how I can write climate change entries with the Arctic seeming to be freezing over again, it’s because one year doesn’t make a trend. The trend is very different. One year of ice growth isn’t a good sign since one year of ice growth can be expected to melt in one year. Persistent multi year ice is the stuff that we have been getting rid of. Losing muti year ice is bad news as it’s more resilient than single year ice, it’s harder to melt, yet last year alone saw a large volume of it melting away.
Even if this year’s ice growth does mark the start of a re-laying of multi year ice, that doesn’t kill the idea of climate change. It would kill the idea of global warming, but as pointed out, it’s not about global warming, it’s about the climate changing, which it clearly is doing. Would I be happy seeing multiple year on year gains of ice over the poles? Yeah, it’d be nice. However, it could also indicate a catestrophic slowing of the Gulf Stream, meaning my house would be on the way to being under a few feet of ice in a couple of decades. That wouldn’t make me quite so happy, even if it meant that polabears survived.
I would like to take a moment to point everyone to a fantastic blog, called Hobo Stripper. One of my favourite posts is For the Love of Salmon, an excellent story about Hobo Stripper’s day with Rich Dicks who only like a little bit of the fish, and throw the rest away. Very thought-provoking and wonderful, highlighting the way the police and other authorities are just there to normalise and support the violence which goes down the hierarchy and supress and destroy any question that this is the way things should be. In accordance with Premise Four:
Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims. — Derrick Jensen, Endgame.
I love reading the stories by Hobo Stripper. She has a refreshing view of the world, especially her job. She writes facinating, detailed and useful things, as well as things which are just wonderful, like the salmon story[1].
The way Hobo Stripper lives is an amazing example of how to live as a non-civilised person while using the master’s tools against him. She keeps herself safe while doing one of the most fundamental of all capitalist endeavours – selling a service, which costs her very little, to people who are willing to pay a premium for it. Best of all? She calls a spade a spade. She doesn’t mince around the edges, if there is a person being violent, stupid, whatever, she tells it as it is.
All in all, I would advise people to go over to her blog and take a look around. Her posts are clearly marked so it’s not hard to see when a post has content you might not appreciate, such as her vibrator posts. However, I like reading all of the posts she makes since each one has in it the core of her personality, and that is the thing I like most of all.
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[1] I am not using the word story to belittle or diminish her writing. Stories are the most important part of life. Our entire society, civilisation as we know it, is built on stories which are told and re-told, enacted and re-enacted, all the time and in many different ways. Stories have power and we need different stories, such as those by Hobo Stripper, if we are to break the hold of civilisation’s stories.
