New Release: Not A Scientist

Ugh, you guys. When I picked up Dave Levitan's Not A Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science three weeks ago, I didn't expect it to be so ridiculously relevant by the time I read it. I sat here last night until 3 a.m. and read the entire 200 page book, filling it with post-its and scoffing out loud. This is a must read for anyone struggling to understand exactly how politicians manage to convince their constituents to ignore real science, regularly prefacing their stupidity with the "I'm not a scientist, but ..." line. Levitan purposely does not go into "why" because motive is near impossible to assign. He doesn't needs to discover motives though because what matters is that, let's be real, today's GOP politicians are presenting lies, half-truths, and misrepresentations of science to further their political agendas and they are harming our nation in countless ways.

This book is short and, because Levitan is a journalist, it reads like a nice, long article, very clear and easy to read. It assigns each tactic a chapter, twelve in all (with names like THE OVERSIMPLIFICATION, THE CHERRY-PICK, and THE BLIND EYE TO FOLLOWUP), that expose clear examples of each infraction and provide quick methods on how to spot them. It gives examples of politicians opposed to climate change action, wetlands preservation, and timely vaccines, just to name a few. It also shows how politicians use fake science to do things like further their anti-immigrant agendas or defund essential government programs. Levitan also includes 30+ pages of sources at the end in case you want to double check anything. All of your favorite science-denying idiots are in here -- Inhofe, Cruz, Paul, Bush (all three) -- and he even throws in a couple of Obamas to show how even a well-intentioned bad statistic can be harmful to a political cause. The only one that isn't included in the book is Trump because the book was completed before last November. The Foreword does acknowledge Trump's main tactic though, which he dubs "THE FIREHOSE", basically blasting us with an endless stream of utter crap so that we can't possibly notice/reply to it all. Yay.

This is the bottom line though -- 

Vigilance is the only antidote against a flood of misinformation, deception, and backwardness. If you spot any particularly egregious misuses of science from the President or any other politicians, call your senator or House representative--let them know that you want Washington to curtail its anti-science ways.

You don't have to be a scientist to notice when the "science" a politician uses seem fishy or incomplete. Though answers aren't always easy to come by on the internet, there are always actual scientists and experts out there to point you in the direction of the correct data/interpretations/studies. Let's stop letting politicians and constituents get away with being willfully ignorant of science. Regardless of what some believe, the only way to attain a safe, healthy nation and world is through the proper application of scientific research.

Done lecturing (for the moment),
K

Dipping My Toes Into Rising Cli-Fi

Now that I'm done hosting my favorite event of the year, it's back to regular reading for me and that includes my "issue" readings on climate change. As we all know, non-fiction isn't the only way to explore an issue. I was therefore very happy to see a post from Unbound Worlds with five "cli-fi" books listed. Per their post, "Climate Fiction, or Cli-Fi, is a growing branch of science-fiction literature that deals with the effects of climate change on human society." Of course, just because there's a new focus on these books, it doesn't mean that they haven't existed all along. Goodreads lists 134 books in this genre.

So, my question for all of you is

Have you read any cli-fi and, if so, do you have recommendations?

I think I will be starting with Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins for three reasons: I'm a fifth-generation Californian (even though I don't live there now), my great-great grandfather was instrumental in bringing water to Los Angeles, and my mom's cousin still runs a working citrus farm in the San Fernando Valley. This will make the read more heartbreaking but also give it more weight and relevance to my life.

Contemplating worst-case scenarios,
K

New-ish Release: The Great Derangement

After I decided to make climate change and the environment my issue, I searched "climate change" on my library system webpage and first got a lot of either kid books or books that looked overly alarmist. Then I was surprised to see a recent book by a well-known novelist, Amitav Ghosh. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, is based on four lectures that Ghosh gave at the University of Chicago in 2015. It's a short book--only 160 pages--but I'm still absorbing and thinking about its ideas weeks later.

The book is divided into three parts. The first, which takes up half the book, is called Stories and it mainly explores the current state of fiction and literature and why Ghosh believes it rarely addresses climate change even though this is something looming quite large on our human horizon. He wonders why books that work all-too-real future scenarios into their plots are immediately shunted off into the fantastical bin of science fiction. He also tells his own story of being caught in a freak weather event as a young man and how this underlying story in his life has occasionally surfaced in his own fiction. This section of the book was frankly completely unexpected but utterly fascinating as a reader and I can only imagine it would be even more so for a writer. The details are explored in both his home country of India and his adopted home of New York City and it was eye-opening to explore the problem of climate change perception from opposite sides of the globe.

The second part of the book is called History and was equally fascinating. Finding out little known tidbits about Asian history (like the history of oil production in Burma) and exploring the effects of colonialism on emerging carbon-based economies was yet another aspect of climate change that I had never considered. One tends to gloss over the past and look to the future for solutions but an understanding of the past enhances the picture of what we are facing and why.

The final part of the book is Politics and was every bit as disheartening and frustrating as you might imagine. I was honestly in tears while reading one passage that voiced the futility of many of our efforts as individuals and citizens because of the far-stronger forces of corporations whose interests do not line up with an effort to combat climate change. As I was making calls to my Senators denouncing a political appointee who obviously detested the organization that he was about to head, I was forced to acknowledge that my voice would never be as loud as the dollars that were flowing in to the opposing party from powerful fossil fuel barons. I honestly set down the book at that point and questioned my choice to choose this issue as my battleground. But eventually I picked it up again and found small glimmers of hope -- from the words of Pope Francis in his Encyclical Laudato Si' in regards to our stewardship of the Earth to the ability of the U.S. Defense Department to ignore the politics of the day and focus on the real effects climate change will have on our nation and world.

This book is not an easy read, probably more so because it doesn't delve into any of the unemotional science of climate change but rather into the souls, imaginations, and intentions of flawed humans. But, if we are to survive the Great Derangement--this time when we focus too much on self when a global viewpoint is essential to survival as a species--we need a change in attitude and focus as much as we need technological innovation. I am grateful to Ghosh for tackling this tough subject in a completely unique way.

Turning my inner eye outward,
K