The Boycott to Help Global Warming

Living in Vermont, I get to meet really interesting people sometimes -- and this weekend, I had the serendipitous fortune to meet a woman who decided she, one person, was going to try and make a difference in the battle against global warming. She has launched a one-women show, The Boycott Play, based on the 2400-year-old Greek sex comedy Aristophanes’ "Lysistrata", where the First Lady leads the women of the world to go on a sex strike to pressure political leaders (the fictional self-absorbed President, in particular) into taking action. As one reviewer put it, "If the planet gets hot, the men will get naught."

Here's one of her clips from Youtube:




What a nice reminder that one person can make a difference! You go, girl!

Manufactroversy

Leah Ceccarelli has just penned a fascinating analysis of how so-called scientific controversies are created to serve political purposes:

"With all the sophisticated sophistry besieging mass audiences today, there is a need for the study of rhetoric now more than ever before.  This is especially the case when it comes to the contemporary assault on science known as manufactured controversy:  when significant disagreement doesn't exist inside the scientific community, but is successfully invented for a public audience to achieve specific political ends.  Three recent examples of manufactured controversy are global warming skepticism, AIDS dissent in South Africa, and the intelligent design movement's 'teach the controversy' campaign."

The entire essay was published in the science policy journal of the Center for American Progress.  Dr.  Ceccarelli is an associate professor in the Communications Department at the University of Washington.  She reaches rhetoric and is the author of the award winning book Shaping Science with Rhetoric.   

Global Warming spreads tropical disease

Chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever, is not something you would expect to contract it Italy, but a recent outbreak in Castiglione di Cervia is the first indication that a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics is spreading because of global warming and globalization. According to a NY Times article today, Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program, “This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country...Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”

Better cracking on those transgenic mosquitoes we had blogged about earlier.