Month: January 2007

“People will expect Morgan to wear something unusual.” – my sister, in an email to my mother, about her wedding. Email leaked to me by operative known only as ‘Long Neck’. Looking forward to seeing the sibling and her Matt!
The Alligator and I are off to the South Island. I am inordinately excited, and very grateful to the Alligator who did all the work to make it happen.
Farewells were offered to the King of France, Leon the God, who has returned to London. (Any Londoners looking for a gamer to bolster their numbers, get in touch.) Go ye well, Royal Donkey.
Back in Welly on the 18th. If possible there’ll be a morgueatlarge email or two before then. Go sign up now!

It will be a surprise to no-one, I imagine, that (leftie) U.S. science body the Union of Concerned Scientists has issued a report that documents “ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science”.
(Direct link to the report: Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air. How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science, .pdf, 1.71MB)
It’s a damning picture, and it isn’t a new one – when I was investigating a letter to the editor that denied climate change, it was a trivial matter to find links between the letter writer and ExxonMobil’s money machine.
It’s worth looking a bit more closely at how this works. It would be wrong to claim that Vincent Gray, for example, is a liar, or is being paid to claim a position he doesn’t hold. It is clear that he does hold his views, very strongly. Gray’s morality is absolutely not in question here.
The corrupting influence of ExxonMobil operates because of two truths:
(a) science is uncertain, and there are always those who interpret things differently
(b) the real-world power of a scientific view is determined by the amount of patronage it receives
ExxonMobil’s work is not to create pretend dissension, but to funnel patronage to the dissension that is inevitably already there.
The report’s real genius is in its heavy referencing of the tobacco lobby. It is now clear and undisputed that Big Tobacco used exactly these techniques to cloud the issues surrounding the health risks of tobacco for literally decades. By making reference to these, the report is able to directly attack the integrity of the company without coming across as an ‘extremist’. It’s very clever message management.
I recommend downloading and reading the full report – it’s an easy and engaging read, very well presented. It includes several pages of potential responses to the disinfo campaign. I will quote one of these in full:

MEDIA ACOUNTABILITY
Too often, journalists’ inclination to provide political “balance” leads to inaccurate media reporting on scientific issues. Far from making news stories more balanced, quoting ExxonMobil-funded groups and spokespeople misleads the public by downplaying the strength of the scientific consensus on global warming and the urgency of the problem.
Citizens must respond whenever the media provides a soapbox for these ExxonMobil-sponsored
spokespeople, especially when the story fails to reveal their financial ties to ExxonMobil or those of their organizations.
Toward this end, citizens can send letters to the editor highlighting the financial ties that quoted
“experts” have to ExxonMobil or ExxonMobilfunded organizations. They can also encourage
individual reporters and media outlets to report science accurately. Well-established scientific
information should be reported as such, and members of the press should distinguish clearly
between those views of their sources that are supported in the peer-reviewed scientific literature
versus those that have only been propped up in the ExxonMobil-financed echo chamber.

Take it seriously. There is power in this (especially in New Zealand, where our few newspapers are read avidly by politicians with real authority over our collective future).

The first part of the Wellington Bypass is open.
The bypass is a road extension that adjusts the route of traffic coming through the city, to circumvent some semi-central areas in favour of a more peripheral route. In the process, a historic and vibrant chunk of central city has been turned into roading.
I’ve written about this before (and linked to another’s discussion). The changes to the end of the Cuba precinct (and to Cuba St itself) are profound.
It has been pointed out – most often by Mayor Prendergast and her crew – that the reason for the upper-Cuba-St hippie aesthetic was the artificially low rent due to the Bypass being in question, and that building the bypass simply ends an artificial situation. To which I say, lower Cuba St has its hippie aesthetic just fine without any artificially low rents, thank you very much. If the bypass had been definitively stopped, and rents returned to market levels, the development of that area would have proceeded in an organic fashion and the aesthetic would I suspect have simply taken on a new, more upmarket form. Infinitely preferable to driving a big road through a chunk of the inner city.
Apart from what has been lost, the psychological barrier erected by the new road is already heavy in the minds of Wellingtonians. It worked its way in across a long period of construction. In fact, it’s a relief to have the road open, because it is such an improvement over the construction site we’ve had for the past year. BUt the mental map of every Wellingtonian has shifted to accommodate this new road.
None of this is major. It isn’t as though suddenly I feel dizzy and nauseous when I’m in town. It is however real, and more importantly it is pernicious. This is a significant step away from the kind of Wellington I feel we should have towards one that we should avoid.
All of the above is speculative and subjective. There is no set of facts that could convince a Bypass-backer that the new road creates an unpleasant psychological barrier or squanders the area’s value. However, it is crucial to remember the other side of the coin, which is that the rationale given for the bypass was, and is, nonsensical. The bypass will not significantly improve congestion in the city, as car traffic will expand to meet the available roadspace. The bypass will not improve the productivity of Wellington’s business community, as was so earnestly claimed and debated in the Council Chambers. These claims are, quite simply, ridiculous. And they have cost us $40 million, and one more chunk of the city’s soul.

This blog is currently in the top ten google results for ‘morgue‘.
My nickname triumphs over 5.15 million other instances of morgue!
Edit: And a few hours later I’m fifth. Is that the effect of linking to my own search result?