I have always admired your prose since following a link to C-R quite some time back.

Much hilarity on the train today reading the latest evolution of your blogging in your last three posts, in which we get

halfwit eco-baroness
big-headed climate twonk
slightly thick Guardian eco-hack; and
deranged lawyer !

ROFLMAO – more power to you !

It occured to me there is a common link in all this, when I also read this Forbes piece

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/02/07/glencore-hysteria-of-the-day/

also bursting the Guardian’s bubble.

It’s the Guardian – it’s a health hazard ! Too much exposure is probably not good for you.

Pending a peer-reviewed study on the deleterious effects of prolonged Guardian exposure and why we need evidence-based policy to mitigate the worst impacts of Catastrophic Guardian Exposure, limiting your browsing there is probably recommended

“And lastly through a hogshead of real fire!” Perhaps we could understand science and politics as exhibited today by going to the circus. I’ll look forward to Harry the Horse dancing the waltz.

I thoguht this might qualify as performance science: Major Study of Ocean Acidification Helps Scientists Evaluate Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Marine Life. Science as spectacle. Actually, I think of it more as a ritual. It doesn’t actually create any new knowledge as such, but affirms the beliefs and other structures etc.

I don’t agree that ‘performance politics’ is tautologous, though. Of course there’s a performance aspect to politics. And that’s almost all there is left. See some previous posts about ‘pastiche politics’, in which people have flattered themselves by comparing their own situation to that of a moment in the past. The popular ones are ‘the New Deal’, the moon landing, the suffragettes, and things from WW2 variously. Once you take the view that you only have to dress up as Churchill, it kind of does away with all the substance of politics — the ideas, ambitions, interests, philosophies… There should be more to it than simply acting out.

Most all of the climate worriers are violently opposed to modifying maize! Apparently that is playing God with nature.

Cloning a sheep, which involves the exact opposite of modification, is also beyond the pale.

Personally, I can’t see much of a moral issue with genetically modifying people who volunteer for the process. However I imagine I will remain in a small minority for a long time yet. (And I sure won’t ever be volunteering in order to meet someone else’s political goals.)

1. We don’t know what kind of problem climate change is. Modifying a human would be no more meaningful than getting a tattoo of Gaia.
2. We don’t know what the modification the authors consider is. Hence, I didn’t say ‘this is wrong’.
3. If you want to get modified in the name of climate change, that is surely up to you. I’m not getting modified for climate change.
4. The point of the above post is to highlight that discussions about the future — in academia and politics — are not about what could or should happen, but about negatively defining it.

Mood enhancement could also benefit the community as a whole. Consider that many societal problems are the result of collective action problems, according to which individuals do not cooperate for the common good. In a number of cases, the impact of any particular individual’s attempt to address a particular problem may be negligible, whereas the impact of a large group of individuals working together may be huge. For example, while air travel contributes to climate change, individuals may see little reason to avoid travelling by air, since commercial planes will make their journeys regardless of whether or not any particular individual decides to travel. However, if people were generally more willing to act as a group, and could be confident that others would do the same, we may be able to enjoy the sort of benefits that arise only when large numbers of people act together.

Mood enhancement drugs could potentially help with such collective action problems.

O brave new world. That has such people in’t! http://www.huxley.net/soma/somaquote.html

And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now.

The very next day, on June 20th, we have the Rio +20 summit, attended by a group of people including (as far as I know) no leaders or finance ministers from the G20 countries, who will also gather to decide on some sort of a roadmap for the global economy.

Two summits, both in Latin America, both in the same week, both with an agenda to determine the fate of the world economy, and attended, seemingly, by two completely different sets of people.

Is there anyone else who finds this arrangement just a little bizarre?

Big-picture questions? Do they mean, like “Where’s Wally?”?