Collide-a-scape

Have you ever known someone too proud or pigheaded to admit he was wrong? Let’s say it was a particular claim this person made, that turned out to be false, but which the person couldn’t admit to getting wrong.  Would this then lead you to think that the person’s stubbornness in this one instance masks a nefarious, hidden agenda?

George Monbiot thinks this is the case with Stewart Brand, the legendary (and, in recent years, controversial) techno-environmentalist. Last week, Monbiot wrote the second of two back-to-back columns on Brand, of which this was the subtitle:

The environmentalist is refusing to retract false claims that there was a worldwide ban on pesticide DDT. Does his obstinacy mask a hidden, pro-corporate agenda elsewhere?

I’ve already explained why I think this is a ridiculous leap of logic for Monbiot to make. Now let’s look at the headline of that same column:

Dear Stuart Brand: If we can’t trust your claims on DDT, why should we trust you on anything else?

Let’s go back to some recent history concerning Monbiot and “climategate,” of which a good number of people feel pretty strongly about. Funny thing, I wasn’t seeing any posts from Tim Lambert with headlines like this:

Dear George Monbiot: If we can’t trust your claims on “Climategate,” why should we trust you on anything else.”

Nor has the partial walk-back in July from Monbiot seem to have appeased his critics, judging by this recent comment at Deltoid:

he [Monbiot] still hasn’t apologised for condemning the CRU without reading the evidence…he still hasn’t acknowledged his part in the witch hunt that was called climategate.

I’m going to leave it up to Tim Lambert to tell me if this is true or not, since I didn’t see any response by him to that reader. (Come to think of it, were there any posts by Tim on Monbiot in the aftermath of “climategate” assessing Monbiot’s role?)

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it’s true (and anyone should feel free to weigh in on this)–that Monbiot has yet to admit or acknowledge “his part in the witch hunt that was called climategate.” Might the subtitle of that hypothetical Lambert post, taking Monbiot to task, read:

The environmentalist is refusing to retract false claims that were made about about the behavior of CRU scientists. Does his obstinacy mask a hidden, anti-scientist agenda elsewhere?

It’s coming up on a year since the email hack. Maybe Monbiot will devote his next column to a retrospective look back at his series of responses. Or maybe he’ll continue to make a mountain out of a semantic molehill and dazzle us with an email chain that is notable for his passive-aggressive tone and pretentiously polite salutations.

Yesterday, Justin Gillis published an excellent front page NYT article on climate change and sea level rise. Of course, the tone wasn’t catastrophic enough for this guy, but he’s never happy unless the story pummels the reader into “hell and high water” submission.

Today, Gillis blogs on an interesting side note to his main piece:

Archaeological discoveries that shed light on ancient sea level are prized finds for the experts in this field. One of the most compelling studies of recent years was carried out by an Australian scientist named Kurt Lambeck, who worked with colleagues in Italy. They focused on ancient fish tanks built at the edge of the Mediterranean by the Romans over the 300 years when their civilization was at its height, ending in the second century A.D.

These tanks were sometimes decorative, but mostly they were used as storage pens to keep fish fresh for the lavish banquets that wealthy Romans held in their seaside villas. The tanks, described in some detail by Roman historians, have long fired the imaginations of classicists, since they represent Roman civilization at its decadent height. The tanks made an appearance in the popular Robert Harris novel “Pompeii,” for instance.

The tanks were usually carved into rock at the edge of the shore and constructed in such a way that some of their features bore precise relationships to sea level at the time. For instance, walls and sluice gates had to be built to let water into the tanks while keeping fish from escaping at high tide. A few years ago, Dr. Lambeck, of the Australian National University, and his team realized that these features could be used to arrive at an estimate of sea level in the time of the Romans.

Both pieces by Gillis are well worth reading.