Frédérik Sisa

Once upon a time, there was an architecture firm whom I’ll refer to as “X,” who designed a school for the Los Angeles Unified School District. It was a difficult process, as LAUSD staff wasn’t always open to exciting design ideas and to working with “X” to get the best design bang for their somewhat limited number of bucks. But despite the difficulties, and despite LAUSD’s reluctance to pay on time, “X” persevered and delivered a final set of drawings “which was stolen by LAUSD and their pet architect.” By stolen, I mean that they removed “X’s” stamp, the professional seal that asserts ownership and establishes responsibility (read: liability) for the drawings. Instead, LAUSD placed “Y’s” stamp on it. Naturally, “X” was not amused and did what had to be done: dragged LAUSD and its very well paid herd of lawyers to court.

Armchair warmongers, just as safe in their seats as I am in mine, are fond of rhetorically forcing people into line. There’s us. There’s them. That’s it. Anybody who doesn’t take sides (i.e. their side), or asks for more than a rah-rah by way justifying violence, is made an honorary enemy. Questioning authority and popular opinion is discouraged. Mourning the loss of life — all life — is apparently outrageous, too.

Characteristic of that rhetoric is a lack of substance, because substance tends to raise more questions than it answers. This explains why Ari Noonan, in his response two days ago steadfastly refuses to discuss why it’s okay for civilians to die when Israel acts but not when its enemies act. He prefers diversions involving the strange mix of politics and Hollywood.

(Part 2)

In the nearly month-long Middle East War, Israel has not acted honorably or virtuously in its self-defense. With a record of violating human rights, it is impossible to come to Israel’s aid unconditionally. The territories it conquered in 1967 and has occupied since have entailed a lot of suffering for the people living there. Palestinians live in deplorable conditions. They are routinely and even violently harassed by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints. With a wall that goes far beyond even the 1967 Green Line, Palestinians are no longer even able to run their businesses or live their lives with any dignity.

And this is where we get to a common argument against those of us who oppose Israel’s use of force in Lebanon: that this isn’t about legitimate grievances against Israel, but about a war for the Jewish state’s survival.

War, war, war. Violence. Mutilation. Killing. Death. Destruction. Is that the only way we can resolve problems?

I refer, of course, to the insane crisis in the Middle East, which, with Al-Qaeda’s recent promise to join forces with Hezbollah and start a jihad against Israel (and the West in general), only promises to escalate catastrophically. What I’m particularly outraged about is the callous disregard for life everyone is showing, especially the John Boltons of the world who regard Lebanese civilians as less worthy than Israeli civilians.

How can anybody say, in all seriousness, that a Lebanese civilian, who has committed no crime and harmed no one, has less moral worth than an Israeli civilian who has committed no crime and harmed no one? I’ve heard a few waffly justifications that because some Lebanese may sympathize with Hezbollah, then they are “less innocent” than those who don’t. But that isn’t moral reasoning. That is rationalizing murder.

[Editor’s Note: In Part 1 (“Global Warming Gorilla: 900 Pounds and Growing,” July 14), Frederik Sisa wondered why it has been so difficult to convince global warming skeptics of the facts. He explored the nature of specific criticisms.]

[Part 2]

Less fanciful than Michael Crichton, but no less beloved, is climate skeptics’ hero Bjorn Lomborg whose book The Skeptical Environmentalist asserts that not only is global warming not really occurring at worrying scales, but “that the global environment has actually improved.” (http://www.lomborg.com/books.html.) He goes on to suggest that these are phantom problems for a self-inflating environmental movement.

But here’s the thing. He is praised by non-scientific publications such as The Economist, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Daily Telegraph. However, he has been severely criticized by the scientific community, who have not ignored him or refused to debate him. Scientific journals such as Scientific American and Nature, as well as science organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists — to name a few — have thoroughly discussed the flaws in his book. (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/ucs-examines-the-skeptical-environmentalist.html and http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00000B96-9517-1CDA-B4A8809EC588EEDF). Let’s see: scientists disagree with Lomborg, non-scientists agree. What is the public to decide?

This is where we play the credibility game. Lomborg is a political scientist who held an associate professorship of statistics in the department of Statistics at the Danish University of Aarhus. His critics include U.S. National Medal of Science and two-time Pulitzer recipient biologist Dr. E.O. Wilson, multiple award recipient and Honorary Visiting Fellow at Oxford University species extinction expert Dr. Norman Myers, among many, many more. So who has the background to evaluate the science behind global warming? Frankly, it’s not Lomborg. Similarly, it seems that given a choice between politicians and business leaders, and organizations/conferences such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Research Council, the American Meteorological Society, the Federal Climate Change Science Program commissioned by President Bush, the National Academy of Science (and equivalent academies in countries such as Brazil and China), and the 2003 World Climate Change Conference held in Moscow, I’ll go with the scientists on matters of science. And they’re telling us that we’re causing global warming, it’s a problem, and it’s getting urgent because we’ve been dawdling for a long time.

[Part 1]

If you’ve ever done a beach cleanup with Heal the Bay — or maybe just went for a stroll after a good rain — you undoubtedly noticed all the garbage that accumulates as a result of litter going down the storm drains. You might also remember the sea birds covered in oil as a result of the Exxon Valdez spill. And when you look up at the Los Angeles sky on a hot day, you’ve no doubt seen that big yellow belch of smog hovering ominously above the city.

There’s no doubt that humans have a dangerous impact on the environment. So why is it so difficult for some people to accept that, more than 100 years after the Industrial Revolution, pollutants from cars and power plants are drastically altering global temperatures?

I’m not going to go over the science of global warming. For that, I’ll refer you to Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. Whatever you may think of Mr. Gore himself, An Inconvenient Truth explains the science clearly, with good humor, and without cheap rhetorical attacks on business or overblown “sky is falling” hysteria. It’s also been vetted for its overall scientific accuracy, with a few minor criticisms, by scientists such as isotope geochemist Dr. Eric Steig at Real Climate, a climate science commentary site run by climate scientists. (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores-movie/)

Instead, I’d like to consider the nature of criticisms leveled against global warming, which seem to go beyond reasonable skepticism to unreasonable, radical doubt.

A few weeks have passed since the release of the controversy that squeaked, namely The DaVinci Code. Like most Hollywood hullabaloos, the dust settled down rather quickly despite news headlines about boycotts, waving fists, distraught Vatican officials and equally upset Christians. As far as I’m concerned, the real controversy is how such a poorly written and blandly crafted film — surprising, given Ron Howard at the helm  — could be so popular. But the more interesting issue is how it is supposedly anti-Christian with a story to “challenge” people’s faith.  

 

Disclaimer: I can’t really speak about Dan Brown’s book, since I never read it. I tried reading the prequel, Angels & Demons. I couldn’t make it past a few chapters of Brown’s painful, puerile prose. My comments, then, apply to the movie.

Does “God” evoke religious or secular notions? It sounds like a stupid question, but please bear with me. For our purposes, pick one of the following three interpretations:

1) God as a secular notion. Far-fetched, I know, even ludicrous . But there’s a philosophical precedent in the notion of an “uncaused cause.” The reasoning goes, if everything has a cause but you can’t have an infinite series of causes, there must be one cause that started it all. Plato called it a demiurge. Aristotle called it the “Prime Mover.” Everyone else knows it by how St Thomas Aquinas called it: God. Of course, none of these three august philosophers used the uncaused cause strictly as a scientific, impersonal explanation of how the universe came to be. But to define God as an uncaused cause does strip away any spiritual/religious dimension if one is inclined to do so. Or maybe secular just means that “God” is a meaningless word.

2) God as a historical notion. Similar to 1, with the difference that “God” mostly has significance as a historical artifact from the past — like Zeus or Osiris?

3) God as a religious notion. If “uncaused cause” seems too impersonal, and God is more than just a blast from the past, then God as a divine entity, a Creator, a Master Planner, is the other alternative. This is the God of the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, and other theologies; a God that judges, rewards, forgives or damns, redeems, inspires, and so on. In brief, a God that has a hand — and stake — in human existence.