People send me stuff. Here’s one about UEA offering a prize contest for “creative climate writing”. – Anthony
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: UEA Magazine – Climate Writing Clanger…
An article on page 16 of the University of East Anglia August/September
2012 Broadview Newsletter (see below/attached/link) invites MA students
to compete for prize money via creative writing on the subject of
climate change:
“The scholarship is open to all applicants to the Prose Fiction and Poetry strands of the MA, whose writing demonstrates a commitment to environmental themes, in particular to furthering the general understanding of the impact of climate change.”
Why not enter a synopsis of the output of Professor Phil Jones at the UEA Climate Research Unit? Many CRU pronouncements may not be ‘poetry’ but, rather than being based upon rigorous science, may eminently qualify as both ‘prose’ and ‘fiction’?
Here’s the text from: UEA–Broadview–August+12 (PDF)
£5,000 creative writing bursaries launched
Two new bursaries for postgraduates wanting to study creative writing at UEA have been announced. The Corsair Bursary will be awarded annually, and has been created to enable
someone to study for the MA Creative Writing (Prose Fiction).
The annual bursary, worth £5,000, is open to students undertaking the course who
will be aged 25 or younger at the start of the academic year in which they begin their
masters degree course at UEA.
The recipient will be chosen by a panel from Corsair, the literary imprint of publisher
Constable & Robinson, and based on the creative material submitted by students for
admission to the course. Meanwhile, the Onoto Creative Writing Scholarship will enable a student to study for the MA in Creative Writing at UEA.
The scholarship is open to all applicants to the Prose Fiction and Poetry strands
of the MA, whose writing demonstrates a commitment to environmental themes,
in particular to furthering the general understanding of the impact of climate
change.
The award is worth £5,000 towards the recipient’s course fees, plus an Onoto pen
worth £300. The first scholarship will be awarded in September 2013.
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Well, at least the bursary is for fiction.
Jokes here are way too easy……
Will it be called “The Briffa Prize”? Maybe it will spawn a similar contest/prize in the US – “The Mann Prize”.
They really are asking for it! Sock it to ’em, Anthony!!
Well UEA is famous for it’s creative writing, shame it influenced the other departments !
Fiction? NASAgis & HADcrut have that handled. Just submit one of there temperature graphs.
Might WUWT announce a contest for the best rebuttal to the winning fiction?
Hey! We could even have a contest to name the WUWT contest! Let the sarcasm fly!
…”plus an Onoto pen
worth £300.”
Is it better than a BIC?
It was a dark and stormy night; caused entirely by climate change…..
world tomato
red and ripe
soon will rot
bacteria
From my poetry from ‘The Aspen School of Contemporary Art’ 1965. Can I enter?
davidmhoffer says: “Hey! We could even have a contest to name the WUWT contest! Let the sarcasm fly!”
The Anti-Lysenkoist Fiction Award.
I would caution the new aspiring prose writers that the field of fictional climate change writing appears to be very close to saturation.
“The Corsair Bursary will be awarded annually, and has been created to enable someone to study for the MA Creative Writing (Prose Fiction)….. ….The scholarship is open to all applicants to the Prose Fiction and Poetry strands of the MA, whose writing demonstrates a commitment to environmental themes, in particular to furthering the general understanding of the impact of climate change.”
There are daily examples of fictional creative climate change writing. For example.
http://news.yahoo.com/climate-vs-weather-extreme-events-narrow-doubts-000143938.html
“Heatwaves, drought and floods that have struck the northern hemisphere for the third summer running are narrowing doubts that man-made warming is disrupting Earth’s climate system, say some scientists…. ….James Hansen, arguably the world’s most famous climate scientist, contends the link between extreme heat events and global warming is now all but irrefutable. The evidence, he says, comes not from computer simulations but from weather observations themselves.”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL047711.shtml
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L14803, 6 PP., 2011 doi:10.1029/2011GL047711
Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity
Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40-years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low.
Key Points
• In the past 5-years, global tropical cyclone activity has decreased markedly
• Tropical cyclone ACE is modulated by ENSO and PDO on a global scale
• Heightened North Atlantic hurricane activity is not unexpected
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns….
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe. Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted). It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity.
Does this replace the creative climate science prize? At £5,000 it’s a lot cheaper than the previous funding for creativity in the hiding of declines.
Michael Mann should enter. Nobody does it better. The prize would fund a lawyer for a couple of days.
jorgekafkazar says: @ur momisugly August 24, 2012 at 10:50 am
…The Anti-Lysenkoist Fiction Award.
________________________________
I like it.
That name has my vote.
Clear winner: ClareLondon in the Grauniad comments here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/17861272
The nutters at this comic get more and more shrill by the day.
Homeostasis: The tendency for a system taken out of its natural state to return back to that natural state. That is climate change.
AJB says:
August 24, 2012 at 11:28 am
“Clear winner: ClareLondon in the Grauniad comments here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/17861272
The nutters at this comic get more and more shrill by the day.”
If it’s this Clare London (with picture)
https://twitter.com/clare_london
she might actually be practising already as she deems herself an author.
http://clarelondon.livejournal.com/436670.html
Climate Clangers better credit their predecessor Trolley Song Judy Garland sang in the 1944 movie Meet Me in Saint Louis:
“Clang, clang, clang,” went the trolley,
“Ding, ding, ding,” went the bell.
“Zing, zing, zing,” went my heart-strings,
…
“Chug, chug, chug,” went the motor,
“Bump, bump, bump,” went the brake,
“Thump, thump, thump,” went my heart strings,
….
I could pass for 25 on a dark and stormy night. Right, my proposed entry is Hannah And Her Wierdsters, a Woody Allenish hilarous morality tale about global wierding and the dangers of poolside orgies during electrical storms. It’s absurd and has no connection really with the real world, but hey, according to Post Normal Science, the real world has no connection to the real world, so why should that stop me from winning the prize? (Never mind the pen. Can I have a leather jacket instead?)
L, as they say, OL.
It says poetry also, so here are a couple from Bishop Hill’s recent impromptu competition:
Who made the Maldives founder?
Who made the oceans boil?
Who made the coral crumble?
T’was us bad boys and goils.
There once was a group called “the Team”,
who invented the climate change meme,
but the data didn’t work,
so they made it all up,
and flatlined the whole Holocene.
Based on this poem,by Henry Reed,
http://www.solearabiantree.net/namingofparts/namingofparts.html
this was my effort.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/3/31/scaring-the-proles.html
I apply for a grant from Corsair!
I’m not young, but I can spout hot air.
Once I’m at UEA,
I will write what I may,
And I’ll [snip] all the young ladies fair.
There once was a writer named Mann
Who came up with a most absurd plan
A hockey stick they shall fear
Medieval warming gone, it shall appear
And so the plotting began…