TIRAR O QUE NÃO NOS PERTENCE, NÃO SÓ É ROUBAR

como um acto cobarde e condenável!

Tudo o que foi saqueado, em séculos de colonização, até mesmo ‘comprado’ (quem teve a procuração para representar um povo, uma cultura oprimidos?) deve ser restituído e ponto final. É uma questão de justiça e de bom carácter.

A recente trapalhada, mais uma, inglesa, sobre as esculturas gregas, e a atitude snobe e sobranceira do primeiro-ministro Rishi Sunak é demonstrativa da patética atitude pós-colonialista e pós-saque que ainda empesta algumas mentes, para não dizer sociedades. Inglaterra é, com certeza, um dos maiores detentores de artefactos roubados por esse mundo fora por homens pouco recomendáveis, e que pode ser equiparado a quem rouba, por exemplo, pinturas de museus e as vende no mercado negro; algo deplorável e que a justiça se encarrega de punir. Então porque não os roubos históricos?

E como se a injúria já não fosse suficiente, cancelar um encontro com o homologo grego é, de facto, ilustrativo da mesquinhez e da falta de honestidade.

DENIAL ON THE NILE

On December 10, 1985, the US Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee on Hazardous Wastes and Toxic Substance held a hearing to discuss how the greenhouse effect might change the global climate system and possible solutions. The guest speaker was CARL SAGAN

Here’s a transcript of his prescient, but scientifically based, talk:

 

Senator Durenberger: 

'Our next witness is Doctor Carl Sagan of Cornell University, a man who needs no introduction. He comes to us today from the Centre for Radio Physics and Space Sciences. We welcome you and we’re very pleased that you would take the time out of your schedule to come to a place like Washington where everything seems to be living in today and not in tomorrow, to share with us your particular view of how our past and our present may well affect our future. Carl, thank you very much!'

 

Dr. Carl Sagan:

'Thanks very much senator Durenberger! Senator Gore, senator Burdick, I’m glad to be here. As I understand my function it is to give some sense of what the greenhouse effect is, to try to say something about greenhouse effect on other planets, to again underscore that this is a real phenomenon, and then perhaps I can take the liberty to say a few remarks about what to do about it. The power of human beings to affect and control and change the environment is growing as our technology grows, and at present time we clearly have reached the stage where we are capable, both intentionally and inadvertently, to make significant changes in the global climate and in the global ecosystem, and we’ve probably been doing on a smaller scale things like that for a very long period of time. For example, slash and burn agriculture, which has been with us for tens of thousands of years probably, changes the climate to some extent by changing the albedo, the reflectivity of the earth. That massive changes have occurred is clear from the historical records. For example Egypt was once the bread basket of the roman empire, it may be the same role as the American Midwest plays today. That is certainly no longer the case, it’s not a greenhouse effect issue it may be an overgrazing issue but is an example of how human are perfectly capable of making these unexpected and inadvertent changes. Because the effects occupy more than a human generation there is a tendency to say that they are not our problem. Of course then they are nobody’s problem. Not on my tour of duty, not on my term of office, it’s something for the next century, let the next century worry about it. But the problem is that there are effects, and the greenhouse effect is one of them, which have long time constants, if you don´t worry about it now it’s too late later on and so in this issue as in so many other issues we are passing on extremely grave problems for our children when the time to solve the problems, if they can be solved at all, is now. If you ask what determines the earth´s climate, clearly the main thing that determines it is sunlight. Sunlight is what heats the earth. Not all the light that arrives at the earth from the sun goes to heating the earth, some of it is reflected back, it’s just the part that is absorbed. What happens is there’s a certain rate at which sunlight is absorbed by the earth’s surface, and there’s a certain rate at which the earth’s surface radiates to space. What comes from the sun is in the ordinary visible part of the spectrum that our eyes are sensitive to. What the earth radiates  into space is in the infrared part of the spectrum, longer waves than red that our eyes are not sensitive to, but it’s legitimate a form of light as the kind that we’re used to.  Now, if you calculate what the temperature of the earth ought to be from how much sunlight is being absorbed equalling how much infrared radiation would be radiated to space you find that the earth’s temperature by this simple calculation is too low, it’s about 30 centigrade degrees too low. Why is it too low? Because something was left out of the calculation. What was left out of the calculation? The greenhouse effect. The air between us is transparent, except in Los Angeles and in places of that sort. In the ordinary visible  part of the spectrum we can see each other, but if our eyes were sensitive at, say, 15 microns in the infrared we could not see each other, the air  would be black between us, and that’s because in this case carbon dioxide is very strongly absorbing at 15 microns and other wavelength in the infrared. Likewise, there are parts of the infrared spectrum where water vapour absorbs where we could not see each other if we were only as far apart as we are in this room.  If you had this infrared absorbing gases to a planet then what happens is: the sunlight comes in as before but when the surface tries to radiate the space in the infrared it is blocked, it is impeded by the absorbing gases, and so, the surface temperature has to rise so that there’s an equilibrium between what comes in and what goes out. So, this is the greenhouse effect it is a misnomer for more reasons than one, it’s a misnomer in particular because that’s not how the florist greenhouse works, but that’s a very minor point. There are other gases which absorb in the infrared, all of many of which have been mentioned already: nitrous oxide, methane, the halocarbons. These are products partly of agriculture, it’s fertilizers, refrigeration , aerosol spray cans and so on, all products of our technology. We don’t generate much water into the atmosphere but we certainly generate a great deal of carbon dioxide through the burning of wood, fossil fuels and, apparently, benign activity; who could object to humans burning oil and coal, gas and wood?

I’d like to stress that the greenhouse effect makes life on earth possible. If there were not a greenhouse effect the temperature would as I say be 30 centigrade degrees or so colder and that’s well below the freezing point of water everywhere on the planet, the oceans would be solid after a while. A little greenhouse effect is a good thing, but there is a delicate balance of these invisible gases. Too much or too little greenhouse effect can mean too high or too low a temperature. Here we are pouring enormous quantities of CO2 and these other gases into the atmosphere every year with hardly any concern about its long-term and global consequences.

Now, certainly not all aspects of how increased CO2 and other gases into the atmosphere affect the climate are known. There are still many uncertainties, although the overall picture is, I think, quite clear and quite widely understood and accepted. But there are questions about aerosols: about clouds who heat up the earth; how much increase or decrease in cloudiness is there; how does that change the albedo or reflectivity of the earth? There’s questions about the ocean and it’s response time to an increase in CO2. There are feedback effects, therefore it is certainly worthwhile to spend some additional money on further research on the subject. Another point is that the significant temperature changes on the earth between ice ages and out of ice ages, glacial and interglacial time periods seems to be connected with quite small changes in the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth due to changes in the earth’s orbital properties, and that is a suggestion that the earth’s climate system may be very delicately dependent on the sorts of factors that we are talking here. That’s why it makes sense to study past climatic change on the earth as an attempt to obtain some calibration. Another source of calibration is the other planets. Every planet with an atmosphere has some degree of a greenhouse effect. The most spectacular case by far is the greenhouse effect of Venus. It’s the nearest planet, it’s a planet about the same mass radius density as the earth but it is spectacularly different in several respects, one of which is that the surface temperature is about 470 degrees centigrade, 900 Fahrenheit. That enormous temperature is not due to being closer to the sun, because Venus is surrounded with bright clouds, and in fact because it reflects so much light back to space; if that’s all that was happening it would be cooler not warmer than the earth. The reason for this absurdly high temperature on the surface of Venus, which is well understood, I mean soviet spacecraft have landed on Venus and in effect stuck out a thermometer, there’s no doubt that the surface temperature is very high, and later US spacecraft have as well. The reason is a massive greenhouse effect in which carbon dioxide plays the major role. Now, the amount of CO2 in the Venus’s atmosphere is much larger than here. The atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide and there’s 90 times more of it there than here, but it is an indication of what can happen in an extreme case. You look at Mars, or Jupiter, or Titan, the big moon of Saturn, and you have additional examples of greenhouse effects. Different gases, different amounts of sunlight reaching the surface, different planetary albedos and cloudiness, and in all those cases there is also a greenhouse effect. In addition, it has been possible to calculate those greenhouse effects fairly accurately, so that the kind of theoretical armamentarium which is used to calculate the greenhouse effect changes on the earth is also used for other planets and, therefore, can be calibrated to some extent against those other planets. If we keep coming out with the right answer in all those different cases then, probably, we understand fairly well how greenhouse effects work. It would, however, be worthwhile in along that the lines senator Gore was talking about to have an increased program through Nasa to understand the greenhouse effects on other planets. This might be a very practical application of planetary exploration. As you’ve heard, the best estimates, they certainly have some uncertainty attached to them, are that at the present rate of burning of fossil fuels, the present rate of increase of minor infrared absorbing gases in the earth’s atmosphere that there will be a several centigrade degree temperature increase on the earth global average by the middle to the end of the next century. That has a variety of consequences, including redistribution of local climates and through the melting of glaciers, an increase in global sea level. There is concern on a somewhat longer time scale about the collapse  of the west Antarctic ice sheet and a general rise of many, many meters in the sea level. So, we have a kind of handwriting on the wall, certainly there’s more research to be done but, as I say, there is a consensus what can be done about it. The idea that we should immediately stop burning fossil fuel has such severe economic consequences that no one, of course, will take it seriously. But there are many other things that can be done. One has to do with subsidies for fossil fuels, more efficient use could be encouraged by fewer governments subsidies, secondly there are alternative energy sources, some of which are useful at least locally. Solar power is, certainly, one that might be of more general use, safe fission power plants which are in principle possible, and then on a longer time scale the prospect of fusion power. Fission and fusion power plants in principle vent no infrared active gases and therefore, whatever other problems they may provide they do not provide a greenhouse problem. I’d like to close by just saying a few words on the kind of perspective that this problem, as related problems, pose to us. Here is a problem which transcends our particular generation, it is an intergenerational problem. If we don’t do the right thing now, there are very serious problems that our children and grandchildren will have to face. It is also a global problem. It is no good if just one or two major industrial nations take major steps to prevent a major increase still further in CO2 and other greenhouse gases, because other nations may through their industrial development cause the problem by themselves. And not to say this is inevitable but just to give an example, the largest coal reserves on the planet are the United States, the Soviet Union and China. China is undergoing a very major industrial development and the burning of coal is certainly something that must be very attractive for the Chinese looking into the future. I would say that there is no way to solve this problem even if the United States  and the Soviet Union were to come to a perfectly good accord on this issue without involving China, and many other nations that will be developing rapidly in the time period we’re talking about. So, here is a sense in which the nations to deal with this problem have to make a change from their traditional concern about themselves and not about the planet and the species. A change from the traditional short-term objectives to longer-term objectives, and we have to bear in mind that in problems like this, the initial stages of global temperature increase, one region of the planet might benefit while another region of the planet suffers, and there has to be a kind of trading off, of benefits and suffering, and that requires a degree of international amity which certainly doesn’t exist today.  I think that what is essential for this problem is a global consciousness, a view that transcends our exclusive identifications with the generational and political groupings into which by accident we have been born. The solution to these problems requires a perspective that embraces the planet and the future, because we are all in this greenhouse together. Thank you Mr. Chairman!'

 

Here is the video link to the full hearing, on C-SPAN, which is in the public domain.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?125856-1/greenhouse-effect

 

A few years later, at the Keynote Speech at Emerging Issues Forum at NCSU, on February the 9^th 1990, Carl Sagan pressed on climate observations and energy strategies, but this transcript focus on military spending. 

 

Transcription at 41:47/46:05:

 

'I’d like to pose the following question. Imagine this kind of thinking back in the height of the Cold War. How much money do you think the United States has spent since 1945 on the Cold War? Sometimes I ask this question, and from the back of the audience comes an answer: billions and billions. A huge underestimate, billions and billions. The amount of money that the United States has spent on the Cold War since 1945 is, approximately, 10 trillion dollars. Trillion, that’s the big one with the T. What could you buy for 10 trillion dollars? The answer is: you could buy everything in the United States except the land. Everything! Every building, truck, bus, car, boat, plane, pencil, baby’s diaper. Everything in the United States except the land that’s what we’ve spent on the Cold War. So, now, let me ask, how certain was it that the Russians were going to invade? Was it hundred percent certain? Guess not since they never invaded. What if it was only, let’s say, ten percent certain? What would advocates of big military build up have said? They would said we must be prudent, it’s not enough to count only the most likely circumstance. If the worst happens and really extremely dangerous for us we have to prepare for that. Remote contingencies if there’s serious enough have to be prepared for. It’s classic military thinking, you prepare for the worst case. And so now I ask my friends who were comfortable with that argument, including the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal,  why doesn’t that same argument apply to global warming? You don’t think it’s a hundred percent likely? Fine, you’re entitled to think that. If it’s only a small probability of it happening, since the consequences are so serious, don’t you have to make some serious investment to prevent it or mitigate it? I think that there’s a double standard of argument working, and I don’t think we should permit it. Now, let me indicate , what is it you would do if you took greenhouse warming seriously? What I’m going to try to argue is that, virtually, every one of the things that you would do to ameliorate greenhouse warming make sense on completely separate grounds. They are worth doing apart from greenhouse warming, unlike the defence build-up, which made sense whatever except if you were confident that there was a real danger of Soviet troops pouring across the Elbe. There was no other mitigating circumstances, the least efficient way to spend money if you want to pump the national economy. It drew all sorts of scientific as well as fiscal resources out of the civilian economy. It is largely responsible for the economic chaos of the United States, whereas, I will argue, spending money on mitigating greenhouse warming makes an enormous amount of sense for other reasons.'

The video link for the full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xz3ZjOSMRU

NÃO SEI O QUE FIZ, SÓ SEI QUE NÃO O FIZ

Agora que a hemorragia das demissões estancou, e que parece não haver, nem fumo de fogo, nem fogo de fumo, aprecio com mais calma o estertor do cadáver político; apesar de todas as tentativas para o ressuscitar creio que se pode falar já de uma morte certa, senão, pelo menos cerebral. Já nada de inteligível se pressente, muito menos inteligente. Morto ao vivo, em directo e para inglês ver, também.

Mas ninguém chora, nem os familiares da política, essa mal encarada. Devem ser os tempos modernos, os culpados, e talvez não seja de criticar a falta de tal decoro sentimentalista, tão propício, no passado ainda recente, a tanto pranto demagogo, até mesmo fora do lugar apropriado. Das dores de cotovelo percebo eu, das outras dores, que os políticos dizem não existir, percebem eles. Nós, no fundo, estamos sempre no fundo, e já tão habituados que ansiamos por nos afundar ainda mais um bocadinho, e mais um bocadinho se faz favor. E muito obrigado! E desculpe! Tudo de bom!

VENHA O DIABO E ESCOLHA

Os grandes problemas deste nosso país são a sua pequenez intelectual, a falta de civilidade, e a falta de exigência popular.

O senhor primeiro-ministro despediu-se, e lá terá as suas razões -supostamente de ética mas que durante a sua governação pareceu não ter, infelizmente.

O país está, por isso, outra vez no calvário -a dificuldade para de lá sair é centenária!

As notícias até seriam boas não fosse o facto de não haver alternativa melhor, pelo menos ao nível do maior partido da oposição -que parece condenado à travessia não de um mas de vários desertos tal a aridez de ideias que por lá deambulam desde que Rio foi obrigado a aviar as malas. Este era, de longe, o único político que poderia alternar com Costa, mas Costa desprezou-o -aqui a ética partidária falou mais alto que a ética nacional- quando este lhe ofereceu a possibilidade de trabalharam juntos em prole do interesse maior nacional; a Costa apenas lhe convinha o interesse menor partidário e eleitoralista que, convenhamos, exige menos esforço e mais compadrio.

Agora vamos para eleições, e daí nada de bom advirá: porque os tempos são de adversidade, e por aí deverão continuar no médio prazo; porque não há alternativa credível na pessoa de Montenegro; porque o mediático presidente da republica vai pender para o lado mais fácil em vez de pressionar uma solução governativa ao PS com a inclusão de alguns independentes idóneos e competentes para pastas tão importantes como a da Saúde e PRR, TAP e Habitação, passando a mensagem que a impunidade não será compensada e que o interesse nacional é inegociável,  atribuindo o ónus da questão ao partido que a criou. E alimentou!

Juízo, senhores, e honradez!