Easy to Deny, Hard to Ignore

Thursday, a devastating storm with dust and then rain plus 130 km/hr winds hit western India.  This is six weeks before the monsoon season.  The worst flooding on record is taking place in the St. John river valley in New Brunswick.  Traditional weather patterns are being upset in most parts of the world.  But it’s not caused by climate change, because climate change is a myth.

It’s pretty easy to deny climate change.  The President of the United States says that not only is climate change a myth, but it is a hoax perpetrated by China. And who would doubt the President?  And didn’t hundreds of scientists sign something that said it was a myth? And of course, look at all the good that this mythical climate change is doing like opening up shipping in the Arctic.  And didn’t some places have colder than normal temperatures this past winter?  It’s probably all a cyclic climate issue like the ice age.  It will all get back to normal soon.  We really don’t need to spend money or effort on something that isn’t happening.

But climate change is hard to ignore if you pay attention to what is happening to weather around the world.  Those who don’t want it to be true usually have an agenda that doesn’t include any remediation of climate change.  Mr. Trump, despite all his boasting, is not a scientist.  And thousands of eminent climatologists and associated scientists have chimed in on the reality of climate change.  The so-called advantages of climate change such as opening Arctic shipping have several serious downsides, such as damage to Arctic (and Antarctic) ecosystem and rising sea levels.  A one meter rise in ocean levels will devastate many ocean side cities and beaches.  The severe weather that so many places in the world are encountering are not one-off phenomenon.  They are happening more and more and increasing every year.  A perturbation in one place in any particular place does not prove anything.  There are always perturbations in any year, but it is trends that are important here.  Trends show a rising global temperature.  One of the most significant indications of this is the rise in temperature in the Pacific Ocean.  The Pacific is the great heat sink of the world and it controls most of the weather in both the Southern and Northern hemispheres.  Weather patterns originate in the Pacific Ocean that control the climate of the Americas which in turn influences the weather patterns in Europe and Africa. 

Not, it is very hard to ignore climate change, but far too easy to deny it.

My View of the World Today

Syria

I have this vision of Syria at the end of their current civil war.  I see a field stretching out forever. This field is filled with destroyed buildings and dead bodies; human bodies that stretch to the horizon.  Standing atop a mound of these bodies are two men, Bashar Al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.  They are shaking hands and smiling.  Above them stands a banner that says, “Mission Accomplished!”  There is no question that Syria will end up a destroyed country with a leader who is inexorably tied to Russia.  I know that this I a very dystopian view of things, but can you imagine any other outcome?

Some editorial writers have decried the west’s reaction to the war in Syria.  Maybe if we had done something right at the beginning in 2011 things could have turned out differently.  But it was the season of the “Arab Spring” and we were actively or tacitly supporting the efforts of “friendly” rebels to overthrow dictatorial regimes.  As it turned out, only one of those movements had any successful impact.  The others either returned new dictators or devolved into bloody civil wars.  This ongoing war in Syria is the result.  Once Russia stepped in to support Mr. Al-Assad, it left very little room for the west to manoeuvre. The “pin prick” attack, as one commentator described last week’s missile attack by the U.S., Britain and France, was maybe as far as we can go and avoid a serious clash with Russia.  Russia has a way of carrying out proxy wars in someone else’s territory.  For the west to introduce thousands of troops, for that is what it would take to play a meaningful roll, would open a whole new can of worms to the area.  That region has already seen long, drawn-out encounters in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Do we want more of the same?  And who would we be fighting?  Certainly not just the Assad regime but several of the many factions already fighting in the country.  Whose side would we take, for example, between the Kurds, who have been the west’s ally, and the Turks, our partner in NATO?

If I had an answer to this dilemma I would voice it loud and clear, but I don’t.  And neither, it appears, has anyone else.  Even those editorial writers have only accusations, never suggestions.

Canada

Pipelines seem to be the topic of the last couple of weeks as controversy over the Trans-Mountain continue in the headlines.  The dispute between Alberta and British Columbia calls into question the varying interests between provinces.  That story, and another small one in the papers about the Supreme Court’s decision that provinces have a right to limit how much alcohol can be transported between provinces, begs the question of the integrity of Confederation.  Are we one country or thirteen individual fiefdoms only held together by the money that is dole out to the provinces by the federal government? One must wonder.  If British Columbia can block a national program what else can provinces do to other provinces or the country as a whole?  We have already seen the same thing when the actions of Quebec essentially sounded the death knell of the Energy East pipeline.  This pipeline would have benefited many people, particularly the Maritime Provinces who could have weened themselves off their dependency on foreign oil.  This program would have made sense for all of Canada.  If provinces can make laws that contravene national laws and can convince the Supreme Court of their right to do so, then it’s time to put up border crossings between every province and territory. 

Thoughts on Easter

It is Easter 2018.  I must admit that I did not attend a church service as we used to in years past, but we’ll get back to the reasons for that later.

A lot of people don’t stop to think about the Christian meaning of this day I would guess.  It used to be a day to celebrate spring for many people.  They would get new coats, suits and hats in summery colours and styles and proudly wear them to Easter Sunday church services.  They would have family together for an Easter meal; after all it was the end of Lent.  It was also a day of reflection:  about Christianity; about renewal; about sacrifice; and about resurrection.  Oh, we had things like Easter egg hunts for kids and sometimes country hikes for older kids, but it was all built around church and family.

Today you get the feeling that the Easter egg hunts, complete with giant chocolate rabbits, and the big dinners are the only part of the day for most folks.  The dinners must certainly be popular considering the number of people I saw shopping at the liquor store yesterday.  But the other things, particularly the church services and the reflection, don’t seem to be as prevalent.  Oh, I’m sure that there are still the people who only come to church at Christmas and Easter.  They have always been with us.

I wrote a short piece a few years ago about how holidays had become associated with sports events, particularly the years that the Masters Golf tournament coincides with Easter (The Easter Celebration.doc).  This weekend it is another golf tournament, but it is also the time of the countdown to both the hockey and basketball playoffs, with teams involved in both sports vying for a position into those playoffs.  And Maundy Thursday was the start of the major league baseball season. Oh, what did we do before there were so many distractions to keep our minds off things that are really important?

Easter is the remembrance of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the philosopher and preacher that spawned the Christian religion.  I say he was a philosopher because what he really gave us was a philosophy to live a good life.  The messages were often subtle, but they were clear.  The parable of the Good Samaritan was a lesson in tolerance of people of different ethnic or religious groups.  The example of feeding the crowd with five loafs and two fishes was the power of sharing.  It wasn’t that he magically transformed that meager fare into a feast; it was that by sharing the little that he and his disciples had caused other people who had food to share it with their neighbours.  Jesus wasn’t a magician; he just understood the human condition. 

Jesus also did not set out to start a new religion.  Jesus set out to reform the Jewish faith.  The Jewish faith at this time was in a state of discord, and had become fixated on rules and ceremony, factions and friction.  Jesus tried to break his fellow Jews of this obsession and make the religion more understandable and accessible to the common person.  To try and make it relevant.  Jesus was born a Jew and he died a Jew.  Nothing he said was meant to convene a new religion.  Christianity owes its founding to Paul.  He is the one who brought the Jesus message beyond the Jews and introduced it to the gentiles, in particular the Greek and Roman worlds.  Perhaps we should call it ‘Paulism’.