Logo of the Climate Summit, COP28, in the United Arab Emirates, Dec. 2023. Wikipedia. Prologue The Petroleum Kingdom is the  United Arab Emirates .  The chief negotiator is the president of the UAE’s petroleum company, Sultan al-Jaber. This petroleum businessman probably oiled his influence onto the UN officials. And without a second thought, he assumed the responsibility of being president of the UN Summit as well. One wonders if Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, was so innocent about this brutally obvious corrupt connection with UAE and al-Jaber in particular. This  oil executive  revealed his contempt and ignorance of science when he said there is no reason to believe that fossil fuels must be phased out in order to prevent global temperature from reaching 1.5 0  Celsius above preindustrial levels. “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5[degrees Celsius,” he said. And this is the same

  Geography   Shepherd’s stone house and enclosure for sheep / goats, about 4,000 years old. Mt. Ainos, Cephalonia, Greece. Photo: Evaggelos Vallianatos   Mainland Greece was never sufficient for all its inhabitants. About 80 percent of the land is dominated by mountains. Even the gods chose Mt. Olympos in Thessaly for their home. Thessaly is unusual because it has enough flat land for growing food. Prosperous valleys are rare in Greece. Attica that nourishes Athens is a valley, but, according to Thucydides, the great historian of the Peloponnesian War, the soil of Attica was so poor that Athenians were autochthonous people, that is, they were born in Attica and did not come to Attica from any place else.      Polis and civilization   Thus the geography of Greece, a country of mostly mountains, explains to some degree the passion of Greeks for freedom, their determination to live free or die. The advantages of living in the difficult conditions of mountainous Greece, or islands, were m

  Logo of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Public Domain.   Prologue   The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a large group of scientists from all over the world. These scientists study climate. They focus on the science that explains the origins and consequences of changing climate, particularly the anthropogenic origins and effects of global warming. In other words, how human activities are changing the planet’s climate.    Every year IPCC publishes a report that examines the state of the natural environment and climate. The report even summarizes the science for policy makers, making their climate education easier. The United Nations manages the IPCC and its studies. The UN sponsors an annual climate summit that brings together prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, and scientists. The yearly IPCC reports inform this powerful politicians the world over. The purpose of this summit is enlightened and possibly convince the nations of

    US gold coin of 50 dollars depicting the buffalo. Public Domain.   I watched a  PBS documentary  by Ken Burns on the extermination of the American buffalo in the nineteenth century. Buffalos by the millions roamed the plains for millennia.   Buffalo and Native Americans   “For thousands of generations,” said the documentary transcript, “buffalo (species   bison bison ) have evolved alongside Indigenous people who relied on them for food and shelter, and, in exchange for killing them, revered the animal. The stories of Native people anchor the series [about the buffalo], including the Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne of the Southern Plains; the Lakota, Salish, Kootenai, Mandan-Hidatsa, and Blackfeet from the Northern Plains; and others.”   Countless buffalo kept the land healthy and productive. Grass and flowers filled the immense land of the plains. Moreover, the buffalos were the backbone of the culture of indigenous peoples who ate some of the animals and lived their lives around th

I gave a talk on climate change at the Claremont University Club. A friend made a video of most of the presentation. The link below gives you a chance to watch it. For me, climate change is not merely ominous, but it is the giant of giants in the history of civilization and Earth history. Either people unite and protect themselves, or they are doomed.  Click on the link.  https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=D7mlehiYafc

German pellet factory on fire, Easter 2017, Port Arthur, Texas. Courtesy Annette Mitchell and John Beard.   The scientist and politician in Pope Francis   A few years ago, in 2015, Pope Francis issued an encyclical that sided with the environmentalists fighting polluters. In his  “ LAUDATO SI’ , mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord,”   Pope Francis imitated  Saint Francis of Assisi in praising “our common home,” Mother Earth. In his latest political foray into the controversial climate change / crisis / emergency/ global warming, the Pope is more straightforward and science-based than ever before. He named his October 4, 2023 letter, “ Laudate Deum /  Praise God. ” He addressed this 7,000-word letter to “all people of good will” and he defined the purpose of his apostolic exhortation to highlighting the political and technological complexity of the climate crisis.   With the exception of a few sections at the end dealing with spiritual / Biblical sayings about the Earth, most of t