Comments Hmpf has made

  • Actually, talking about drying racks, this here is the most useful version, IMO: http://www.yatego.com/tv-versandshop/p,492d0d58f2c96,480ddbe256e190_6,flügel--wäscheständer?sid=08Y1258550240Y11aad775ad81ccb6de It's pretty much the German standard, I'd say. I suspect it may also be something of a German specialty, though - or at least I wasn't able to find anything like in when I lived in Britain. The advantage of the German model over the British one (which tends towards the vertical, like the one linked by Splashy above) is that it allows you to hang a fairly great amount of larger pieces like shirts and trousers and big towels (not to mention sheets!) without having to hang them all over each other so they impede each other's drying. Everything hangs in parallel. It's also big enough to take one entire load of laundry from an average washing machine.On A surprising sneak peek at the clothesline revolution posted 1 week, 2 days ago 33 Responses
  • Just to encourage people who don't have expansive lawns or a warm climate: I'm European, living in a temperate to cool climate (Germany), in a *very* small flat without a garden, balcony, or veranda. I dry all my clothes in my flat; always have done. So do my three flatmates. Each of us has her or his own clothes drying rack, which we keep in our respective rooms. So, it's entirely possible in most climates and at all times of the year to dry your clothes inside the house without a dryer - I even did it when I lived in Britain, which is fairly cool and fairly wet.On A surprising sneak peek at the clothesline revolution posted 1 week, 6 days ago 33 Responses

  • I've been reading Colin Beavan's blog, on and off, for more than a year, and I think Elizabeth Kolbert is selling him a bit short. In the time I've been reading his blog, Beavan has written repeatedly about the larger social implications of his experiment and has encouraged his readers to act as politically conscious citizens. He has encouraged, and (I think) participated in acts of civil disobedience and has asked his readers to contact politicians. He is also currently working on setting up a website and organisation that will help people to change their lives towards sustainability. No Impact Man may have started as one individual's gimmicky eco stunt, but it definitely seems to have worked as a consciousness raising exercise for Beavan, and that's an important step in the journey towards activism.

    The impression I get from his blog is that Colin Beavan understands that we need, not only individual action, *and* not only political action, either, but a fundamental culture change - and like so many of us, he is trying to work for that culture change as best he can. Conducting and publicising an experiment that shows people that a radically different lifestyle is possible, and may even make people happier than the current one, seems like a very valid approach. Not the only thing we should do, no, but it's good that a blog like that, and a book and movie like that, are out there.

    On No Impact Man, Elizabeth Kolbert, and the civic sphere posted 3 months ago 5 Responses

  • Regarding the odds

    This is how I figure it:

    There may be a 99% chance that we're already screwed.

    But if we don't even try to do anything about it, then that becomes a certainty.

    A 1% chance of being saved is still infintely better than guaranteed catastrophe. On NASA: Another brutally hot year for the Siberian tundra posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 3 Responses

  • @ MAD MAC

    There's a difference between 'habitable for humans' and 'habitable for civilisation as it now exists'. (You probably noticed that I wrote: "I'm not equating the three things separated by slashes in the previous sentence, btw - I'm just listing them in the order of likelihood of their being threatened.")  

    Sure, a few million or even a few billion will probably survive even the most catastrophic potential outcomes (except if we get a repeat of the Perm-Triassic Extinction, but even then, with some preparation, it would probably be possible to build refuges for a few thousand or so)... But to me, even 'just a few' billion dead is quite apocalyptic enough. Mass starvation etc. certainly will not be very conducive to world peace, either... So, the observation that humanity will probably survive in some form, is not much consolation.

    Also, even if it could be assured that we, i.e. humans, would be able to deal with the impending changes just fine, there's still the issue of the rest of the biosphere that does not have culture and technology to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. On Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 2 months ago 31 Responses

  • @ biodiversivist: RE: hope

    Something I posted earlier today in the boingboing thread about this news (it's the latter part that concerns the issue of hope in the face of really bad odds):

    Seems to me as if the only truly reasonable reaction to this is, for each of us, to turn our lives around so as to reduce our personal emissions as much as possible, right now - and start to get politically active so as to get society to adopt that course, as well.

    Of course, that's for a definition of 'reasonable' which is based on two assumptions:

    1.) The survival of civilisation/humans/life on earth is a priority that overrides individual desires for unnecessary luxuries. (I'm not equating the three things separated by slashes in the previous sentence, btw - I'm just listing them in the order of likelihood of their being threatened.)

    2.) In a complex system which we do not fully understand, we should not be too ready to declare that 'it's over' and 'we're screwed'. As long as there are factors that aren't understood, there is hope. This means that giving up now is unreasonable, because only by giving up (and, by implication, continuing our lives the 'business as usual' way as long as it's still possible) do we condemn ourselves with absolute certainty.

    (Addendum: yes, I know that so far, all the previously ignored factors that were discovered made things worse instead of better. Even so, I would argue that hope is always better than, well, surrender, because only surrender guarantees defeat. The problem with this kind of really rather desperate hope is, of course, that it is a kind of hope that requires, hm, a kind of mental discipline, you could almost call it 'work'. It's not an obvious or easy hope, and thus may be difficult to reach for most people. I think I read just enough Tolkien as a teenager to 'get' this kind of hope. ;-)) On Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 2 months ago 31 Responses

  • Good idea about the news media, actually.

    Though I've just found the first article about it in a magazine here - apparently they're just lagging a few days behind Britain. But I can certainly write a few e-mails/letters to other papers.

    As for friends and relatives, though... I'm already blogging about this topic fairly frequently, and I don't get the impression that there's much headway to make, there. Not that my f&f are a particularly doubting bunch - they're probably more progressive than average - but whenever I do broach the topic in personal conversation, I get the impression that people are a) bored, b) fatalist, c) too stressed out by other concerns in their lives to really care/do anything. So I tend to avoid 'spamming' their personal e-mail accounts with this stuff - they all know they can get this kind of info from my blog on a semi-regular basis, if they want to seek it out.

    It would be easier, I imagine, if there were more concrete things I could suggest people do - something that would give them the feeling that they can actually get active about this. (Of course, reducing personal consumption/emissions is something to do... but to far too many people, that feels like effectively doing nothing - and they're not entirely wrong, because we do need change on a large scale.) On Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 2 months ago 31 Responses

  • Addendum

    I think there is something inherently hard to believe about The End of the World as We Know It or The End of Civilisation or whatever you want to call it. I mean, I'm pretty much convinced that that is indeed what we're about to face, if not this decade or next then a couple of decades later, yet even I constantly have to keep reading about it etc. to be able to keep believing that the danger is real. The world we see around us just seems too stable, too real - we can't really process the idea of it being fragile and poised on the verge of collapse. I think this tendency to take the world for granted is a big part of the reason why we can't seem to start to act properly to counter a threat as large as this. On Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 2 months ago 31 Responses

  • @biod.: Well, I tested the news on some people...

    and so far the reactions have been as described in my previous comment, so I'm not sure, at this point, if there is any way of getting 'the public' to take this seriously.

    One issue is apparently that people just generally refuse to believe really bad news, especially regarding the environment. The idea seems to be that "environmentalists have talked about 'The End of the World' before and they have always been wrong, so this must be a load of claptrap, too".

    BTW: I live in Germany, and I've been somewhat disturbed, these last few days, to see that this news - which I regard very important indeed - has not been covered by any of the major news media here, as far as I can see. It doesn't even turn up on environmentally-oriented websites (though to be fair, I don't know many German ones).On Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 2 months ago 31 Responses

  • Okay. What now?

    I feel like a broken record, because this is the thing I seem to keep posting to every other climate-related website, but: How. Do. We. Get. The. Word. Out? How do we move people, and governments, to decisive and fast action?

    Because whenever I talk to people about this, reactions range from cyncially-amused disbelief to fatalism, so apparently either people just don’t believe that things can really be as bad as all that, or people do believe that but think that everything is lost already and they therefore don’t have to do anything. And the political sphere, as we all know, is twiddling its metaphorical thumbs.

    How do we inspire people to act?

    (This has been posted to the comments sections for this bit of news at Climate Progress and worldchanging, too, because I’m really curious/desperate for replies.)On Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 2 months ago 31 Responses

  • ITAC? (Is There a Cabal?)

    I don't know if I believe in a cabal, exactly. I do believe there are strong forces lobbying for destructive policies, on the higher levels of the political system.

    However, it also seems to me that, short of a genuine revolution - and I think we can't build the necessary groundswell for that kind of thing in the time remaining for the needed changes - the only option we have is to get 'the system' to change course as much as possible while still keeping the system itself. (Believe me, I'd rather lose the system, but, as I said, I don't believe that's doable in the available time.) We can either do this by achieving a massive change of consciousness among the general population, or by achieving the same/a similar kind of change among a smaller group with more direct influence. (Ideally both, of course.)

    Campaigns like the 350 campaign try to do the former - and I think it's a great campaign, make no mistake! But it's hard to reach the entire population, especially since the media, by and large, are not on our side. Also, even if we managed to miraculously create this massive change in consciousness, it would then still have to be taken up by the 'people in power'.

    So, I don't think we should put all our eggs in the 'independent campaigns' basket - we need to make use of all available channels of influencing public consciousness/opinion. Working within parties to spread awareness there seems to me to be one of those channels, and a potentially powerful one:

    Fifty 'private individuals' who are concerned about an issue are just fifty private individuals, or, at best, a grassroots group. They may get some attention on a local level occasionally.

    The same fifty individuals within a party, however, could form a potentially more powerful group that might even get national attention. They could also help to change the party, from the ground level up. The inevitable party inertia notwithstanding, it may be easier to change the thinking of a relatively small group of people, such as a party, than it is to change the thinking of the entire population. And, higher-up politicians are still dependent to some degree on the approval of their parties; they need to get nominated and elected for posts etc. Creating a more 'eco-friendly' political climate on the ground level might help to influence the 'higher-ups'. It would also, probably, confer a higher degree of visibility to environmental concerns in general.

    Of course, all of this only applies if more than a couple of people are willing to try this approach. A certain 'critical mass' is needed for any change... On Breaking news: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss posted 1 year, 5 months ago 10 Responses

  • So how do we get politicians to take this serious?

    If they don't, we're screwed, aren't we?

    Here's an idea. What if environmentalists went and, en masse, joined existing parties, ideally parties in power? If enough of us did that, we might be able to influence the political agenda - arguably to a greater degree than as individual citizens. (Though maybe that's a plan that makes more sense where I live - Germany - than in America, I don't know.) On Breaking news: Permafrost loss linked to Arctic sea ice loss posted 1 year, 5 months ago 10 Responses