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Saturday, December 16, 2023

CLIMATE 499.1001--Noah, The Achaeans, Omaha Beach--AND "THE FOG"

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(Somewhere out on the ocean) -- Noah probably didn’t pay much attention to all the debris from the land that rushed into the sea when it rained forty days and nights during the Great Flood. But in those days, everything was of Biblical proportion. There was also no mention in the Old Testament as to who was going to clean it all up when the waters receded; the chapter forgotten, left out, assigned to a lesser uncredited scribe.

The Achaeans having sacked, pillaged, looted and burned Troy to the ground, didn’t pay much attention to the mess they left behind in the harbor as they sailed away victorious with the spoils of war. Homer fails to mention the condition of the Mediterranean, concerned more with what Odysseus would encounter next in his twenty-year journey to return to Ithaca.

When the Brits retreated from Dunkirk, they left behind a monumental heap of garbage; when the Allies hit Normandy on D-Day, the last thing on Ike’s mind was policing the beach, some enlisted personnel out there on trash detail. Those responsible were hidden in the holds of the ark, the galleons and the landing craft.

     Now it's modern times, the 21st Century. Out on the oceans huge whirlpools, known as “gyres” controlling the flow of water between the continents, have collected all the debris from centuries past. There are old fishing nets that have been lost in storms or cast overboard intentionally, buoys broken loose and reduced to pebbles. There is garbage, dumped indiscriminately by coastline developing nations as mountains of it in the poor districts of the cities collapse in monsoon avalanches, killing the poor who live by them in crudslides. There is plastic, reduced by saltwater into billions and billions of particles, floating like a primordial soup in the gyres, from the surface down to several fathoms.  It can’t be spotted on Google Earth because of the miniscule sizes of the particles, which makes it metaphorically akin to sweeping it under the carpet; an invisible floating continent. 

     Of the many environmentalist organizations active in monitoring the crisis, Greenpeace is the one with the most name recognition.  Press coverage of the group throughout the years has bordered on negative, its ocean-going fleet consists of but three serviceable ships. The Rainbow Warrior has been at the forefront of challenging the whaling industry but beyond that, little attention has been paid to focus world attention on toxic cleanup of the oceans. Part of the reason may be the organization’s budget, a paltry $250 million; possibly also due to the evolution of Greenpeace into a bureaucracy, with a title that conjures up negative publicity and linking it to radicalism on the high seas.  Other efforts to create a clean ocean mindset surround attempts to remove the negative stigma of radical response in general, likening it to “marine activism.” Reduced to yet another hippie-type utopian worldview, nations, corporations and individuals responsible for the mess actively seek to address the issue as paranoia generated by those who want clean water on the planet for humans as well as for the creatures who live in it.

     Where in the scope of things does clean ocean water fit into the generalized category of climate change? Consider the effect of a plastic soup extending for thousands of square miles, hundreds of feet deep, under the constant pressure of current, solar temperature and saltwater. Next, consider the recent phenomenon known as “atmospheric river” that develops out in the South Pacific and streams inland, inundating the western coastline.  It makes for great headlines on an otherwise rather mundane nightly weather report, but little attention is paid to its origin in recent years.

Those same gyres responsible for centering the floating plastic continent out on the ocean are also directly related to the flow of the river of rain onto the shore; the air superheated by the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) aqueous solution at sea level.  Combined with other forms of atmospheric pollution, commonly aggregated into the category of “acid rain,” the degree of PVC reintroduction via the atmospheric river into the immediate environment may well be underestimated.  Due to five years of drought on the West Coast, all of which came to a stunning reversal in a recent winter that saw lakes and reservoirs fill up overnight, no one seemed to care about the Ph content of the water that fell from the sky.

It wasn’t until Bhopal (1964), 3 Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Exxon Valdez (1989) that the true nature of environmental disregard, small or large, became a cumulative effect for the world. If I was a defense attorney and my client, the planet Earth, was on trial, it would not be necessary for me to establish its innocence or guilt. The burden of proof would fall on the prosecution. as to why we do not need to protect the environment. The state would show the futility of safe storage of nuclear waste in deep mine shafts at Yucca Mountain. It would argue that it is unnecessary to sink old cargo ships full of toxic chemical weapons in secure containers off the Atlantic seaboard when it was simpler and more cost effective to destroy them by burning. In its summary, the government’s legal eagles would prove beyond reasonable doubt that the presence of iodine in the atmosphere has nothing to do with ozone depletion.

     Thus, it becomes unnecessary for me, in defense of planet Earth, to offer any form of rebuttal that would exonerate my client. I would leave to the scientific experts in the field the task of cleaning up the floating PVC continent; I would let activists march in the streets to demand immediate remedies; I would defer to legislators in the halls of Congress their duty to enact proper legislation to regulate disposal of waste materials.


I can, however, appeal to those who might read this and offer an allegory from a John Carpenter film “The Fog” (1980). At the end, DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau), broadcasting for radio KAB from the lighthouse, had this warning,

     “I don't know what happened to Antonio Bay tonight. Something came out of the fog and tried to destroy us. In one moment, it vanished. But if this has been anything but a nightmare, and if we don't wake up to find ourselves safe in our beds, it could come again. To the ships at sea who can hear my voice, look across the water, into the darkness.


Look for the fog.”




References: 


Ocean gyre: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/ocean-gyre/

 Ecotoxicology of Plastic Marine Debris:
https://bml.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/pdf/cameos/TheEcotoxicologyofPlasticMarineDebris.pdf 

afternotes:

     Many years ago, along with friends having a keg party at Lake Tahoe, we all noticed just how much trash, cans and bottles littered the beach. We decided it was a great idea to clean up the beach, so we threw all the cans and bottles into the lake. In another representation of the cavalier mentality that existed while growing up, following yet another keg party out at Pyramid Lake, we would hold rolls of toilet paper out the windows of cars on the way back into Reno and watch with laughter as they unrolled and littered the roadside in long streams. All of us were guilty at one time or another of these foolish acts against the environment.
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HUMANITIES 499.1001-- Primary Sources and Codified Language--THE "HAL" SYNDROME

HUMANITIES 499.1001

HAL

     “Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?” This iconic phrase from Stanley Kubrick’s film  2001, A Space Odyssey ushered in the new millennium way back in 1968. It became a stark warning for the world as it accelerated into yet another technological revolution. Although Earth never made it to Jupiter by the turn of the century, virtually it went far and beyond into another frontier, cyberspace. The question now is, what lies out there? Like the universe itself, are there no boundaries or are there terrifying limits such as black holes and event horizons? This is a great problem not just for the 21st Century, but for civilization itself. Beyond the problem is a greater one, how does man shut technology down when, and if, it comes to that?


Consensus of opinion is in order to write a convincing essay one must first state a thesis, then find evidence to back it up. What if something else surfaces while the search for evidence is underway? For instance, a thesis is stated:

     “What is the problem of the 21st Century, and what do we do about it?” 

Let’s say the problem of the 21st Century is, as in the opening paragraph, “HAL,” the “Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer.” The psychotic computer represents runaway technology of the new millennium and has to be terminated, how to go about it? Given a set of primary sources to first, define the problem and second, define the solution, is the assignment. However, if all the primary sources were written in the wrong “codified language,” which defines the problem as social or philosophical such as racial or political in context, the evidence will not support the thesis. Controls on investigation are limited by the fact that the given primary sources are broken down chronologically into four groups and analysis can only be made by drawing evidence from two to four sources in each group. The objective, therefore,  is to find in the sources evidence contrary to conclusions normally drawn from the text, in other words, the consensus of opinion.


    The following primary source ranges are considered: 

Group 1: Pre-colonial to 1855 (pre-Industrial Revolution); 

Group 2: Antebellum to 1899 (Industrial Revolution);

Group 3: 1900-1939   (post-Industrial Revolution)

Group 4: 1940-present (The Technological Revolution).


 In each group it will be necessary to extract evidence that runs contrary to the accepted value of the context as to what it represents. 

     Beginning with the first group, in the account of A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, published in 1682, Mary refers in the “Eighth Remove” to one of her duties in captivity:

     “During my abode in this place Philip spake to me to make a shirt for his boy...and afterwards I made a cap for his boy...There was a squaw who spake to me to make a shirt for her Sannup...another asked me to knit a pair of stockings.” (Rowlandson, 23)

Common interpretation of the autobiography is that Mary Rowlandson had it tough at the hands of whom she referred to as “savages.” Completely overlooked is what she did, she sewed and knitted, why? Because it would be ninety years before the invention of the spinning-jenny. What has knitting to do with a computer running amok 300 years later? It’s in the anticipation of technology, and the lack of it, written clearly into the text.

     Next, in 1744, the Onondaga chief Canassatego delivered his Speech at the Treaty of Lancaster in which he stated:

     “It is true that above one hundred years ago the Dutch came here in a ship and brought with them several goods, such as awls, knives, hatchets, guns…” (Canassatego, 29)

The conclusion drawn from the speech is that the Indians were treated unfairly, their land stolen through dubious charters and an offer to send the tribes’ children to settlers’ schools rejected in favor of swapping settler kids into tribal culture. What’s missing is the acquisition of technology by the Iroquois Confederacy in the form of awls, knives, hatchets and guns. The foundation for the advance of technology in the New World is clearly visible in the speech by Canassatego.

    The cotton crisis was mentioned in Correspondence Between Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln, dated January 28, 1865 and included in Group 2: Antebellum to 1899. In the early 1800’s the cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney placed unreasonable demands on the South to produce the crop, as noted in the Eric Vanhaute report titled  The European subsistence crisis of 1845-1850: a comparative perspective:  (external document)

     “‘The Commercial Crisis of 1847’, which claims that in Britain in 1847 the downturn in production applied only to cotton, and that this was due to an exogenous factor - the shortage of raw cotton in the U.S. South.” (Vanhaute, 2)

Directly related to pressure on the South was the rise of territories in the immediate west and the desire to expand slavery into the regions for the further development of the cotton crop. Marx was keen to observe the demand for labor and crop in his letter to Lincoln:  

     “The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?” (Marx, 1)

The expansion of the slave market as a result of the cotton gin gave birth to the early days of the Industrial Revolution creating a series of on again, off again monetary crises leading up to the Civil War. Combined with the telegraph and railroads, technology was a runaway freight train that pushed to all corners of the continent, as noted by Simon Pokagon in The Red Man’s Greeting:

     “A crippled gray-haired sire told his tribe that in the visions of the night he was lifted high above the earth, and in great wonder beheld a vast spider-web spread out over the land from the Atlantic Ocean toward the setting sun.”

Once again, there is the anticipation of technology prophecy as seen in Rowlandson, continuing:

     “It’s network was made of rods of iron; along its lines in all directions rushed monstrous spiders, greater in strength, and larger far than any beast of earth. Clad in brass and iron, dragging after them long rows of wigwams…” (Pokagon, 146)

Pokagon compared the old man’s dream to the extensive network of railroads that had sprung up as the nation expanded west toward the Pacific, and 25 years had already passed since he wrote Red Man and the spike was driven that connected the two oceans.

     By the turn of the century, the question of what would become a major concern for America wasn’t what it would be, but how to manage it. Due to the rise of the assembly line, emphasis shifted from process to impact on the work force as presented in The Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor: 

    “Prosperity depends upon so many factors entirely beyond the control of any one set of men, any state, or even any one country, that certain periods will inevitably come when both sides (the worker, the boss) must suffer, more or less.” (Taylor, 377)

Again, as before, the anticipation factor is considered but in terms of globalization, summarized in the phrase “any one country.” Faced with the rise of mass production, Taylor had to rationalize the relationship between worker and boss in order to streamline production. What lie in the immediate future wasn’t localization of production, but globalization of it. The kernel components for the problem of the 21st Century were becoming manifest in the early days of the 20th Century. 

     By the end of World War Two, President Harry Truman found himself thrust headlong into a brave new world highlighted by what came to be known as “The Atomic Age.” He called upon Vannevar Bush of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) to suggest a road to the future and Bush wrote back with Science, the Endless Frontier:

     “The bitter and dangerous battle against the U-boat was a battle of scientific techniques-and our margin of success was dangerously small. The new eyes which radar has supplied can sometimes be blinded by new scientific developments. V-2 was countered  only by capture of the launching sites.” (Bush, 390)

Alluding to sonar, radar and rocketry certainly placed Bush on a firm foundation for the advance of what was eventually to come in the form of computer technology, satellites and space exploration.

     The spinning-jenny was invented in England by James Hargreaves in 1764. (Wikipedia)  Without it Mary Rowlandson was forced to knit caps for King Philip’s tribe; it was a problem of the 17th Century. Today, we are forced to recognize that the problem of the 21st Century is not as simple although we can see precisely how it gets to be defined in uncodified primary source texts.  We have HAL as an example, or perhaps Failsafe (1964), The Andromeda Strain (1971), The China Syndrome (1979), and one that isn’t always mentioned, On the Beach (1959). When the day of reckoning comes Dave had better know exactly what he’s doing.


  1. A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Classic American Autobiographies, edited by William L. Andrews,  Signet, 2003  Page 23.

  2. The Treaty of Lancaster, Five Hundred Years (FHY), Casper, Davies & deJong, Pearson Learning, 2016, Page 29.

  3. The European subsistence crisis of 1845-1850: a comparative perspective: E. Vanhaute, helsinki.fi/iehc2006/papers3/Vanhaute.pdf, Page 2.

  4. Correspondence Between Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln, The Bee-Hive Newspaper, Nov 7, 1865

  5. The Red Man’s Greeting, Simon Pokagon, FHY, Page 146.

  6. The Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Winslow Taylor, FHY, Page 377.

  7. Science, The Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush, FHY, Page 390.

  8. Spinning Jenny, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_jenny

  9. Failsafe (1964), The Andromeda Strain (1971), The China Syndrome (1979), On the Beach (1959). Internet Movie Database

  10. Image credit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46178930

     

CH203.1002
Dr S Pasqualina
University of Nevada, Reno Fall 2018
James L’Angelle    12 Dec 2018


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