Nonfiction

[nytempsperdu]

Thanks very much, barton, that's thoughtful of you to follow up. I am saving that reference.  Kinda wish I'd seen it before this afternoon when I found a bargain on Steve Coll's Ghost Wars which I wanted to read when it came out but wasn't willing to pay $30+ for and the library list was too long, after which I forgot it until after I'd read his fascinating The Bin Ladens and after the re-emergence of US in Afghanistan as big(ger) issue.

Say, Ghost Wars could be discussed hereabouts somewhere...sometime... 

[madupont]

Thanks very much, barton, that's thoughtful of you to follow up. I am saving that reference.  Kinda wish I'd seen it before this afternoon when I found a bargain on Steve Coll's Ghost Wars which I wanted to read when it came out but wasn't willing to pay $30+ for and the library list was too long, after which I forgot it until after I'd read his fascinating The Bin Ladens and after the re-emergence of US in Afghanistan as big(ger) issue.

Say, Ghost Wars could be discussed hereabouts somewhere...sometime... 

I had an absolutely abominable experience being one of three people discussing it at nytimes.com.  That was it, when people realized what they had gotten themselves into, it evaporated down to three participants.  I must say that I learned a lot from Mike Sussman in the process, because although I had done a great amount of reading, mainly from a Jewish point of view/authorship, after the first six weeks to three months of physical traumatization that puts your mind on freeze following 9/11, that reading of Ghost Wars was heavy shlogging.

I would suggest that you can find an entire reportage available at The New Yorker archives where Steve Coll is the "embedded" journalist, compared to my cramming to get a grasp of the players whom I had ignored during the whole Clinton fiasco not fully aware of what his administration signified  in how to change a world; which we are experiencing now.

Sussman gave me and "the other", the refresher course, refamiliarizing us with names. But,"the other" and I were in opposition. Not only did she alienate me by continually heading her posts with the proviso,"Madupont says....", rather than simply placing quotes around any particular comment to bring it up for discussion (which in no time made me feel quite nauseated) but the basic bottom line of her contention was that I do not believe in relieving human beings from any culture of the wherewithal by which they make their means of living and survival. My opponent believed that all the "gelt" naturally belonged to us, without stating her reason, whether it was because we were attacked or just the Republican thing to do. The result,I think puts us categorically in the same cell as  Saddam Hussein awaiting execution; who was enticed into that position by the cleverness of Daddy Warbucks aka George Herbert Walker Bush,sr.  Who I might say did the same for us.

[Donotremove]

Just read Bill Streever's Cold. A more entertaining way of learning about "cold" hasn't crossed my path in all these many years. There is so much information in this book I wouldn't know where to start with tidbits to entice you to read it.

One thing I am convinced of: The state of Alaska can not be left to Alaskans or Congress or the courts. Decisions about Alaska must be left to the scientists.

Up in the tundra there are full grown willow trees only three-four inches tall. Caterpillars an inch long that take 10 years to morph into moths eat the leaves of these willows. The caterpillars freeze during the winter and thaw out in the Spring to begin eating leaves again.

People thinking and talking about climate change is not a recent 20TH-21ST century thing. Joseph Fourier, in an essay in 1827, first described the greenhouse effect (he wrote a paper on it in 1824).

Don't miss this book. It's a page turner and will inform forever the way you think about "climate". And watch for that butterfly flapping its wings in South America!

[barton]

Thanks!  The combo of page-turner and intelligent nonfiction on climate change is exactly the kind of book I like to find in my library wanderings -- I will definitely check this one out.

I wonder if his book will offer any insights to help me understand why we are having such a beastly cold summer and fall here in Nebraska (and I suspect, elsewhere in N. Amer.).  Early October is usually southeast Nebraska's "perfect" season -- crisp air in the mornings to wake you up, then mild afternoons with highs near 70 -- but we are being treated to frosty mornings and the high today is expected to be 45.  We get a warm mild day every so often, but the past few months have been consistently cooler than usual.  That was nice, back in July and August, but now we're paying for it.

This would be easier to bear if I'd never heard of global warming and so wasn't being trained to expect milder falls and winters.

[madupont]

Barton,

Same here. in Pennsylvania, miles and miles away from you, in the East. The secret:
          "This would be easier to bear if I'd never heard of global warming and so wasn't being trained to expect milder falls and winters."

"global warming" means exactly the opposite. No milder falls and winters. Global warming caused colder winters in the northern  hemisphere, once creating an Ice Age that considerably changed things in Europe. Agricultural production was altered considerably, there were no crops to feed cattle so there you go, vegetarians on a select diet versus hunting as a protective device  fending off wild beasts on the prowl for their dinner --and here, I was about to send you another wolf bulletin, that they have adapted the Sarah Palin method of shooting them from helicopters out West

[Donotremove]

Barton, Streever doesn't off any opinions of his own in Cold. Just information. From history and the present. Tons of it. About one third of the way though I thought to myself, boy howdy, I'm going to have to read this book again, or maybe more than again. That much information per page, for me, is like throwing spagetti up against the wall to see if any sticks.  I read the library copy but I am going to buy it. I wish he would write one on heat.

Speaking of cold, I'm sitting here with a lambs wool lap robe wrapped around my shoulders and back. 56° in the middle of the day! It was so warm in the house, the windows have steamed up in the temperature difference.

[Lhoffman]

Speaking of cold, I'm sitting here with a lambs wool lap robe wrapped around my shoulders and back. 56° in the middle of the day! It was so warm in the house, the windows have steamed up in the temperature difference.

A nice benefit of cooking and baking....gets the house all toasty!

[barton]

We had snow today, about three inches, and it's sticking around - no "fairy snow".    The earliest snow here in living memory.  It may get up to 37, they are saying.   Maddie, I don't buy your reasoning regarding global warming causing an ice age, but thanks for an intriguing alternative to logic.   In the science journals I read, on occasion, the data is being interpreted quite differently -- the Greenland ice sheet and the polar ice melting and subtropical conditions all the way up to Kansas City or even Omaha. 

I look forward to "Cold," -- sounds like the information-dense kind of book one might want to have on hand, to delve into several times. 

 

[nytempsperdu]

One of my kid's science teachers also offered a global-warming-leading-to-global-cooling theory based on global warming causing melting of polar ice in turn causing ocean waters to cool, slowing the currents that result from warm water meeting cooler and causing yet more cooling.

Just  a theory.

[knoxharrington]

The global melt equals cooling theory, IIRC (it was written up in Sci. American, among other places) meant that it would get cooler in western Europe, not all over the globe.   The massive melt would clog the Gulf Stream and encourage penguins in Piccadilly, but it would still be hotter in North America and many other places.  If I stop being lazy, I'll post a link.

As you say, Nytem, it's all theory at this point, and the science guys have computer models coming out their ears.   OK, that was a weird mental image.

[Lhoffman]

The global melt equals cooling theory, IIRC (it was written up in Sci. American, among other places) meant that it would get cooler in western Europe...

OMG....Domestic Wine!   

[Lhoffman]

[Donotremove]

Katrina. Although I have read lots of articles about Katrina and her aftermath, I had never read a book about the event. Now I have. Nine Lives:Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum. I heartily recommend this book.

Moving onward in time from hurricane Betsy, Baum follows the lives of 9 people (and all the people these nine interact with) through the years up to when hurricane Katrina hit, then on past into the near now of what's happening in New Orleans.

Most the of these people live(ed) in the 9th Ward.

I now am better able to understand New Orleans as it was, and as it is now. Therefore, I am better able to filter the news I hear about this city from what I learned from this book.

Recently president Obama visited New Orleans for a couple of hours. Many residents there hoped he might mention something about Charity Hospital--which has remained closed since Katrina, and has since been turned over to LSU. This hospital opened in the early 1700s to serve the poor and had been in continuous operation to that end until Katrina. Now there is no medical facility for the poor in New Orleans. Here is an article about Charity Hospital. Scroll down to the Ginsburg piece.

http://www.counterpunch.org/ginsburg09042009.html

New Orleans now has half the population that it had before Katrina. And it seems to me that the powers that be--local, state, federal--tend to lean heavily towards a New Orleans with very few poor (or any) living in it.

[barton]

I just got a copy of "Cold" -- opened at random and learned fascinating stuff about the blubber of whales and how they survive under a sheet of ice. 

Dan Baum -- I think he was interviewed on NPR recently -- I'll check it out.  Interesting issues raised about what happens when poor neighbors are wiped out -- the temptation is there, for TPTB, when you have a tourist city, to Disney-fy it -- eventually, the people who work in service jobs for the tourists can't even afford to live there.

[madupont]

We had snow today, about three inches, and it's sticking around - no "fairy snow".    The earliest snow here in living memory.  It may get up to 37, they are saying.   Maddie, I don't buy your reasoning regarding global warming causing an ice age, but thanks for an intriguing alternative to logic.   In the science journals I read, on occasion, the data is being interpreted quite differently -- the Greenland ice sheet and the polar ice melting and subtropical conditions all the way up to Kansas City or even Omaha. 

I look forward to "Cold," -- sounds like the information-dense kind of book one might want to have on hand, to delve into several times. 

 

An "intriguing alternative to logic" has nothing to do with it. This was a subject that came up in History forum before it became deviously divided  at Melba's Place, in the good old nytimes.com (calm?) earlier half of the decade. Granted it was mostly American History but one day Bob Whelen mentioned the text for Native Americans looking back at the Europeans and how they saw them. There were numerous and various texts read by choice from posters that are included and still here and some who popped in here and dashed off again.

Before presuming the illogic, investigate a little Ice-Age for yourself; which took place in Europe, Vikings were excited about the possibilities of Vineland, by comparison to home. It gradually chilled Italy on the western coast at least as far as Naples. Cultural adaptiveness became necessary,unlike present Melban traits. John Berger, a British Art Historian, of course chose Provence for his retirement and peeled off about three full length works which I never seem to get around to reading although I read his short story collection: Pig Earth. (and ,some of his Art analysis, read while under the influence of Garrison Keillor)

French Provence developed the Domus, or domestic household perched above the farm animals below whose body heat rose upwards helping to heat their people above, a little like the Tyrolean Alpes architecture to the north. I still see it around me today where I am presently located among people whose ancestors once lived there. They prefer houses of that style but often make due with Quaker architecture instead if they don't have the choice of building their own.

Temperature today opened with the usual just under 20 degrees F. which I do not recall seeing since 2004 when it hit us in September and I went to the door every morning to check the thermometer as I was expecting my brother to arrive.

Although these events in Europe occured much in advance of 1883 when people experienced the explosion of Krakatoa, it has been postulated that earlier volcanic action in areas as yet less investigated by Europeans may have been unknown about while eventually blocking out the Sunlight for extensive periods of time.  Okay, so I won't bother you with the petition to stop them from Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon area. If you haven't heard what a exchange of those powered missiles would do for the Sunshine. Check it out. Increased sudden pollution may flood you out when least prepared for "global warming" and then freeze your tail just to be thorough.