Bonking Gaia

I recently had an unexpected encounter with radical climate expert Professor Felix Knutta, just returned from an IPCC conference on "The Climate of Persuasion".

We bumped into each other quite by chance at a local swimming pool. Although not prepared to give me a formal interview in such moist surroundings, he did have time for a chat on his latest ideas which sadly didn’t quite make it into the final version of AR5.

‘As you must know,’ Professor Knutta began as we sipped a Fairtrade coffee by the poolside, ‘the climate change message is going through a sticky patch. The way the climate is behaving at the moment is absolutely deplorable.’

‘Because it isn’t warming as predicted you mean?’

‘Too right - even the Arctic is playing hard to get and refusing to melt on cue. We should nuke the place in my view - right up the Northwest Passage. Warm things up a bit wouldn't it?’

‘Nuke the Arctic Professor? May I quote you on that?

‘Not bloody likely - I'll deny it anyway,' the Professor laughed. 'But the whole global warming message has to be sexed up to blazes or we'll come across as a bunch of whinging pillocks wetting ourselves over nothing.’

‘Really? Sexing up the message hasn’t worked too well in the past,’ I replied, unable to think of anything better for the moment. A common problem with Professor Knutta I find.

‘Well I intend to beef up a lot more than the message; so this time we’ll see a result. Climate science has never been all that stimulating anyway, at least not in any red-blooded physical sense, but thanks to my latest research into what I call climate droop that may change. At least I hope so.’

‘In what way Professor?’

‘Well now, I see it like this. We climate experts are passionate about our work – perhaps too passionate for our own good. Unprecedentedly passionate I might say.’

‘A few of you certainly are...’

‘But our passion should surely attract some kind of reward for all our unprecedented discoveries and selfless toil,’ Professor Knutta explained while fiddling with his Speedo swimming trunks. They seemed a little tight to me. Somewhat revealing too - for a middle-aged chap with a midriff shaped by the international conference circuit.

‘So do you mean a kind of physical reward when you talk about the sexing up the message?’

‘In a somewhat roundabout way I suppose I do mean that.’

‘An eco-brothel?’ I hazarded. I threw it in more to distract him from those blasted Speedos than anything else.

‘Umm... hardly that...’ the Professor mumbled, still fiddling. ‘Although presumably eco-brothels accept carbon credits of which I happen to have an unlimited supply. Blow me – what a splendid idea.’

‘So are you suggesting,’ I ploughed on while wondering what on earth he actually was suggesting. ‘You are suggesting that those people who support radical action on global warming should promote climate change from a more stimulating angle?’ One or two people were staring at us so I tried to look nonchalant and non-pervy as possible.

‘Not exactly,’ Professor Knutta eventually mused. He was now scratching himself in an area which polite society usually leaves unscratched. ‘It’s all to do with our attitude to Gaia which I’m sure is far less intimate than it should be.’

‘Intimate?’

‘Indeed yes – far less intimate than is healthy in my view. We climate pioneers may as well admit that what keeps us going in spite of the climate playing the fool is that we are physically attracted to the environment in the person... in the delightful person of Gaia herself.’

‘Err... physically attracted to Gaia?’ I was floundering at this point. Briefly I considered asking the Professor if he meant some kind of intimate contact with trees, but couldn’t quite put the words together. The images were clear enough unfortunately. Luckily he finally finished scratching and came to the point.

‘I’m not suggesting anything improper here you understand...’

‘Such as bonking Gaia?’ I couldn’t help adding. Somehow it just slipped out.

‘Such as bonking Gaia... which sadly appears to be technically impossible... as far as one can tell at the moment,’ the Professor mused for a long moment with a strange look in his eyes - perhaps even the glint of a tear.

‘...and what a very great pity that is,’ he mumbled with a huge subterranean sigh. He began fiddling with his Speedos again so I nipped off for something much stronger than Fairtrade coffee.

Council blocks payday loan websites

From the Derbyshire Times we learn:

A decision to block payday loan websites from all of a council’s 7000 computers has been met with approval.

Anyone trying to access lending sites from any of Derbyshire County Councils computers will instead be re-directed to sources of safe, affordable loans such as Credit Unions, financial support services and welfare rights advice.

The move will affect all of the computers owned by the council across the county including those in libraries and those used by its employees.

Well they are council-owned computers so it's up to them what they allow and what they block even though they are blocking access to a legal activity. 

Even so, I've no problem with it per se. It's the mission creep I don't like. It never ends, slithering into every nook and cranny of daily life.

The weirdness of unreason

Another World - M C Escher - from Wikipedia

Have you ever been in a meeting where certain people seem absolutely set on dredging up every irrational argument they can think of?

Yes?

And apart from the frustration, do you ever find irrational ideas a little weird? How do we explain them for example - how do we picture what is going on in the irrational head?

Instead of thinking in terms of rational and irrational ideas, suppose we think in terms of allegiance - a personal allegiance to some social situation, trend, norm, cause or whatever. That something could be allegiance to a person, social group, project, profession, institution, fashion or any one of countless other possibilities.

It may be an allegiance to Arsenal Football Club, holistic therapy, quantum theory, yoga or a political party. There is no difference – it is all allegiance.

So there are no rational or irrational structures inside our heads. Reasons are essentially tactical and strategic. Beliefs may feel like a nexus of rational ideas but are nothing of the kind. Our beliefs and ideas are merely our allegiances expressed in all their infinite variety.

We are not rational, but merely complex, subtle, resourceful and often covert in expressing our allegiances. Reason is how we raise, gauge and foster support for those allegiances, but that’s all. There is no structure to reason other than the structure of allegiance. That’s why your reason can be my unreason.

We have differing allegiances – that’s all.

So we don’t think rationally or irrationally, but merely offer our allegiance to different social norms, situations and events from the trivial to the essentials of daily life. The central influences over these allegiances are numerous, from language to our personal welfare and the welfare of family, friends, business interests and so on and so on.

However, when it comes to less central concerns, many of us do not seem to have strong allegiances and are willing to probe them. Yet this probing, this apparent vacillation can seem odd and obstructive to those with a strong allegiance to a particular narrative or agenda. In my view this explains human intransigence quite well where the notion of reason and unreason does not.

Maybe this is the value of those of us who mistakenly see ourselves as rational. We are not so much rational as able to see the allegiances others skate over in their pursuit of an agenda. By not having strong allegiances ourselves, we are able to weigh their various claims, especially where popular allegiances are neither as beneficial nor as harmless as commonly assumed.

So rational behaviour is not so much an ability to apply reason, whatever that might be, as a reluctance to offer one’s allegiance without weighing the consequences. Often not even then.

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Aqueduct Cottage

Aqueduct Cottage by Brian Cass

By the side of Cromford canal in Derbyshire is Aqueduct Cottage, a derelict canal keeper’s cottage occupied until the late fifties or early sixties.

The location is attractive, but there is no nearby road, no water, sewage services, electricity or gas supply. In other words, the cottage isn’t worthless because it is derelict, but derelict because by modern standards it is has become worthless.

In bygone times, the canal keeper who lived in Aqueduct Cottage would probably have used candles for lighting and logs from nearby woods for cooking and heating. He may also have bought supplies from passing boats and his water may have come from the nearby river. I don’t know about sewage disposal though – the canal?

Now the boats are gone and picturesque as this mode of life might be, it only appeals from the safe distance of modern comforts.

While out walking I’ve seen one or two derelict stone cottages in a similar condition and with similar problems. They became derelict because they are now worthless, not worthless because they are derelict.

It underlines how much the value of our homes depends on those essential services. Remove them and the value disappears as completely as it did for Aqueduct Cottage. Here it is in 1905 looking like a chocolate box idyll.

From Friends of Cromford Canal/Julie Simpson

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