The personification of nature: a preface

With a post title like that, you might be expecting a long and well-written essay....well, as much as I'd like to do that right now, I have to have will power and keep working on "real" work (some deadlines are approaching fast and furious).


Instead, this post will be a short rant (and preface to a longer, more organized essay) about my dislike for these kinds of phrases:

"Mother Nature has been really cruel to our state the last four or five days."

This is a statement from Wisconsin governor about recent floods and the effect they've had on the people of that state. I really think that this personification of natural events should stop. We all do it, and I'm not excluding myself...I can think of a few instances where I've made similar remarks. Maybe you're thinking that this isn't such a big deal, that it's merely a colloquialism we use and there is no harm. Perhaps. But, I would argue that the practice of demonizing (and applauding) natural events or systems is unwise and, in the long run, a detriment to our advancement as a species.

But...I need to cut myself off before I blow off the work I'm supposed to be doing right now. If I start writing down my reasons for thinking this, then next thing I know, two hours will have elapsed! Hopefully I can come back to this topic very soon.

On the nonlinearity of drafting a manuscript

Do you write papers in a neat, orderly fashion? Kind of like they taught you back in grade school -- with the outline first, and then you go write each section and subsections?

I sure as hell don't.

I've been writing up another big chunk of my dissertation work lately (you'll notice my posting frequency has increased too....hmmm). I find it hard to stay in one section of the paper for more than 10-15 minutes. While working on the Introduction, I think of something I need to discuss in the....well, in the Discussion, so I type a few reminder phrases as a place marker. As I scroll back up to the Introduction I remember that I forgot to look up the number that goes where the highlighted red "X" is. That's right, I need to address that aspect in the Introduction so when I reveal my data later it all fits together nicely....yes, that'll be awesome! But, oh crap....now i'm opening a spreadsheet. Oh crap....I found a seemingly small, but cascading error in one of the tables. Did I really do that wrong? That was stupid. How bad is it?

Instead of dealing with it right away, I decide to go back to the text and finish my train of thought. What train of thought?


cartoon above from here

Designed natural cycles...

One of the favorite arguments used by one type of global warming denialist goes something like this:

The Earth has experienced natural and significant climatic swings in the past; therefore the current climatic swing we are experiencing is likely natural (not human-made); therefore we don't need to take any action.

In this view, they accept the results of paleoclimate studies (the source of knowledge of the natural cycles). This argument is typically trotted out by those who are motivated solely by a economic/political paradigm. That is, they predict that the regulation of emissions will result in global economic recession at best or a complete and total economic catastrophe (i.e., the collapse of modern civilization) at worst.

I've always been bothered by the mixing of discussions about scientific conclusions (i.e., the data and conclusions regarding attribution) with discussions regarding policy (i.e., what or what not to do about it). The policy debate is the true and timely discussion to be having at this point. There are legitimate concerns about how to go about mitigating problems that have global reach (and whether or not what we do will even have an impact anyway with all the feedbacks in the system). But, those who have those concerns should discuss them within the context of policymaking. Instead...they bring out the lame since-it-was-natural-in-the-past-it-must-be-natural-now routine. Why not talk about what you really want to talk about?

Anyway...so, then I was thinking about where the intelligent design crowd would fit in here. They can't possibly believe the flucuations that have been interpreted from paleoclimate proxies (e.g., the last 600,000 years) are an 'accident' (i.e., not by design). Do they think the current climatic changes are designed? Does climate even fall into that paradigm? Where is the "boundary" between what gets designed and what is left to evolve naturally?

I'm not sure what my point is.
I haven't really used this blog as a record of my stream-of-consciousness thoughts....this is probably one of the first ones.