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.
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: @ 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…
This is will a fine addition to their current offering Creative Statistics (Numerical Fiction).
Hmm.
It was a dark and unprecedentedly rainy night…
Just when you think it’s safe to come out of the bomb shelter..
The gods and goddesses do have a refined and delicate sense of humour.
Hey — I have a candidate to suggest…
http://pesticidetruths.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Reference-Culprit-Forman-2010-00-00-Biography.pdf
Mr. Forman holds a Master’s degree in philosophy from McGill University. He interned at The
Nation – America’s oldest weekly journal – and studied creative writing at the Banff Centre for the Arts. From 1997-2004, he was Vice President of Strategic Communications Inc., a firm that
provides political consulting and fundraising advice to the non-profit sector. In 1999, Strategic
Communications was named to The Profit 100 as one of Canada’s fastest growing firms.
In 2004, he became Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the
Environment (CAPE). Under his leadership, CAPE won a gold medal at the 2006 Canadian
Environment Awards. In 2007, he was the co-winner of a Virtuoso Award from the International
Association of Business Communicators (London, England). He is currently a Judge for the Green Toronto Awards. His reviews and essays have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Forum, and The Toronto Star, among other publications.
As head of CAPE he makes things clear:
About the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE)
The association is an award-winning group of 5,400 doctors and concerned citizens working to provide education and advocacy to win environmental protection across Canada. Based in Toronto, the association is now working to close asbestos mines in Quebec, phase out coal-fired power in Ontario and ban lawn pesticides in British Columbia.
In its coal campaign, association members met with cabinet ministers to present reports showing coal contributes to cancer, climate change and brain damage. In recent years, the association has had a lot of success – banning pesticides in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes and pressuring the Ontario government to close all its coal plants by 2014 – the equivalent of removing six million cars from the road.
What more could you ask from an environmentalist…???
Ah, I see Blair (August 24, 2012 at 10:34 am) is mining the same muse.
However, not many remember how Bulwer-Lytton’s notable fiction continues:
A powerful work of fiction.
Clearly, all of us should submit a piece to this contest to give them something of substance to read on their way to acclaiming the usual puff-piece as the winner. Given a few thousand additional skeptical pieces they might ponder the truth.
The prize should be carbon credits. And may be they get to live “Green” for 6 months. In a grass and mud house without electricity or toilet paper or toilet..
How about a poetic climate blues riff…….
They call it Stormy Monday
But Tuesday’s just as bad.
They call it Stormy Monday
But Tuesday’s just as bad.
Mann, and Wednesday’s worse
And Thursday’s all so sad.
The eagle fry’s on Friday,
Saturday I can’t go out to play.
The eagle fry’s on Friday,
Saturday I can’t go out to play.
Sunday I go to CAGW church,
Gonna kneel down and pray.
Mann have mercy,
Team have mercy on me.
Gore have mercy,
Team have mercy on me.
Though I’m tryin’ and tryin’ to find my Gaia,
Won’t someone please send her home to me.
Apologies to the song writers and all the great blues bands that have performed this song. Please have mercy on me.
Hmm, five grand, huh?
Will this do?
Yesterday, all was fair
I noticed Mann just wasn’t there
He turned up when it rained today
I wish that Mann would go away
Can the Onoto pen write on Bristlecone pine paper? If not, I don’t want it!
Derek Sorensen says:
August 24, 2012 at 4:02 pm
Hmm, five grand, huh?
Will this do?
http://dereksorensen.com/?p=119
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
EXCELLENT!
By now. surely, “furthering the general understanding of” needs to be included with ‘terminological inexactitude’ and ‘economy with the truth’ as one of the great euphemisms for ‘telling lies’.
Hmm…just about anybody at UAE can write some garbage about the sky falling – Jones probably sponsored the prize too – he needs some fresh creative writing skills to replace his severely lacking scientific portfolio! Still, my 7 yr old writes better (as in, more believable) science fiction than those folk……..
Neil says:
August 24, 2012 at 1:36 pm
lol – have you seen east anglian women? you’ve seen Deliverance, right? nuff said……..
Unfortunately, nobody at the UEA knows how to operate ‘The Excel’ (hushed silence).
…consequently these suggestions will be stored as pieces of paper in Phil’s shoe box. After some months, Keith will make a shambolic effort to rank the entries – but this will be halted when Keith loses his loaner laptop in Norwich. Finally Mann will write an abrupt email announcing that he is the winner.
On an isle south of England known as Mann,
Loomed bird mincing towers and their fans.
While those props spun the rotors
Of their giant backwards … motors
The Manx cursed the soul ‘o Mike-E. Mann.
They already have the Hugo Award….
Now we know how we can all do our part to save the world from global warming.
Here’s a hint — it’s not by writing poetry.
If the CO2 rise we cannot stall
Then the sea will rise over the atoll
But if golfers fret
That their balls will get wet
The Maldives won’t sink after all.
Many CRU pronouncements may not be ‘poetry’ but, rather than being based upon rigorous science, may eminently qualify as both ‘prose’ and ‘fiction’?
———-
But isn’t the CRU temperature record your favorite? Because it shows a recent plateau that supposedly means that climate change had turned the corner.
And now your claiming this plateau is a fiction?
I am so confused.
Can Kenji enter?
Sorry. Try as we may, no one can compete with the stuff that’s already been published in peer reviewed journals, and on RealClimate.org.
Maybe I can plagiarize Ray Ladbury.
Here’s my entry. I first entered this under “Weather Cows” back in April. (“Weather Cows” had to do with which direction cows face in a storm.)
“All this talk of cows and weather predictions got me curious about something. So, to satisfy my curiosity, I checked out some old emails on the UVa. server. Lo and behold, I discovered that the lesser known but very first “Hockey Stick” wasn’t based on tree rings at all! It seems a certain someone studied a series of preserved hoof prints. Not being a farm boy, he could only tell which direction they faced by noting the location of any assoiated cow pies. After discarding those that didn’t have a cow pie, he determined the direction of the remainder. Assuming any wind coming from the direction of Tennessee would be warmer (for some unknown reason), he plotted his proxies and the very first “Hockey Stick” was born! But … alas … someone saw his raw data and it was discovered that he wasn’t looking at cow prints and cow pies at all but rather bull prints and bull … scat. But he liked his “Hockey Stick”! Rather than admit what “The Stick” was really based on, he looked for something else to plot that would produce the same results as the original bull-based plot. When he noticed the first rise of his stick seemed to correspond to Al Gore’s winning his first election, he turned to something wooden. This is how the second but better known “Hockey Stick” was born. And now you know the rest of the story!”
(Of course, I’d be disqualified if this turns out to non-fiction.8-(
If, as is quite possible, the IPCC use the winning entry in it nth Assessment Report, will it then be classified as non-fiction and the winner will have to hand back the Onoto pen and repay the monies paid towards their MA?
I thought I’d written fiction
but, my diction,
whilst quaint
was used by the IPCC
so my fiction,
ain’t
It was the best of climes, it was the worst of climes, ……
You forgot the sarc tag Anthony.
You were taking the piss out of us?
Creative Writing, like as in Creative Accounting!
More of the same, support CAGW, get rewarded.
Science Fiction or Fantasy?
It was a dark and stormy night. The screen door slammed. Suddenly a shot rang out.
Global warming entered the kitchen and the climate changed. Buxom Betty knew it was not the weather. She knew she had to hide the decline, so she grabbed her hockey stick and called out to her Mann…………
(Feel free to add…………..)
Charles Gerard Nelson says:
August 24, 2012 at 6:57 pm
Science Fiction or Fantasy?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Horror.
Whether the weather be hot,
Whether the weather be cold.
Whatever the weather, we’ll weather the weather,
Whether we like it or not.
Neil McEvoy says:
August 24, 2012 at 11:21 am
Michael Mann should enter. Nobody does it better. The prize would fund a lawyer for a couple of days.
Not the kind of lawyer he’s going to need. Couple of hours more like!
They’ll be up against some stiff competition who’ve had years of practice.
Poetic licentiousness?
The computer models were all in vain,
The ‘hockey stick’ scientist has struck again!
This says it all:
There once was a student named Rufus,
who thought climate change he could prove-us.
He tried and he tried,
but his theory, it died.
And now he just looks like a doofus.
This is an abstract of my submission for the prize:
A large outbreak of tornadoes, caused entirely by climate change, ravages Kansas. A farm house within which there is a little girl name Dori and her dog Toga is struck by a tornado and whirled into the air. It crashes far far away in the land of Penn where it kills an evil climate change warlock. The local people are so happy to be rid of the warlock they ask Dori and Toga to stay with them but Dori just wants to go home. So the locals give Dori some money and put her on the road to a nearby town where she can catch a bus to take her back to Kansas. On the way she meets several colorful characters and experiences some very unusual weather cause entirely by climate change. When she gets to the bus station she finds she doesn’t have enough money so she falls asleep in the waiting room. When she awakes she finds she’s back in the farmhouse, the tornado was just a dream and she realizes that climate change is the pre-eminent danger of all mankind. The End. PS I’d rather have the $300 than the pen (small bills please).
Six Scientists of Climate Change
There were six learned scientists
Who spoke upon a dais
They were environmentalists
And each one had a bias:
Each scientist within this list
Knew climate change would fry us.
These honest women, honest men
Read others’ proclamations
And sure they were: each one of them
From all the Earthly nations
Thought Climate Change results were in
— at everyone else’s stations
The first one measured Greenland ice
And nearly went berserk
It’s thicker! But upon advice
From his new PR clerk
He learned that Climate Change relies
On someone else’s work.
The second measured CO2
And how fast it would grow
He looked at rocks and ice cores too
From very long ago
It’s much less now! But this won’t do
So “that part we won’t show.”
For if we’ve got a tiny part
Of CO2 we had
When plants evolved and got their start
Why, more would make them glad
And grow much faster! But take heart:
He’s sure it’s really bad.
Another looks at temperature
By Jones and Mann and Hansen
The Hockey Stick is now unsure
(Poor methods they were chancin’)
Small towns are cooler? He’ll obscure
With clever software dancin’
The fourth? She quantifies our star
And how hot it appears
It’s now more radiant by far
Than in eight thousand years
But that increase won’t make the bar
Man can’t change solar gears
And still another looks at salt
The ocean deeps are trappin’
Effects aren’t large in ice, basalt
Or mud, but still they’re yappin’:
“New movies! Books! It’s mankind’s fault!
‘Cause you know, it COULD happen!”
The last of all is hunting trees
For signs unprecedented
He seeks in rings the cool degrees
He hopes the past presented
But evidence of warmth he sees
So that part he’s invented
And so on. Each researcher knows
Catastrophe is near!
And mankind is the cause. It grows
More dire every year
Despite that solid evidence
Is “everywhere but here.”
Each day they chanted, loud and long
To ward off private doubts
The news folks made the language strong
And now are doomsday touts
But read the research! PR’s wrong!
The data is what counts.
– – – – – – – – –
With apologies to John Godfrey Saxe. I wrote the above years before ClimateGate.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
“It was a dark and stormy night; caused entirely by climate change…..”
Blair, you owe me a new laptop! I shall be instructing my lawyers forthwith.
Now, where’s that bloody coffee cup?
Apologies to CCR. Feel free to sing along
I see the cold sun arising.
I see trouble on the way
I see snowstorms afrightnin’.
I see bad times today.
Don’t go around tonight,
Well, it’s bound to freeze your life,
There’s a cold sun on the rise.
I hear no hurricanes ablowing.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear ice rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.
Don’t go around tonight,
Well, it’s bound to freeze your life,
There’s a cold sun on the rise.
All right!
Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like we’re in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.
Don’t go around tonight,
Well, it’s bound to freeze your life,
There’s a cold sun on the rise.
Don’t go around tonight,
Well, it’s bound to freeze your life,
There’s a cold sun on the rise.
Everything on the climate from the UEA is creative writing, so what’s new? Let’s be fair though creative writing as such is what the university excels at and it is a shame that in the end the whole university’s name will stink of the climate studies department’s incompetence and dishonesty..
Hansen gets the prize! We’re done.
Y’all just wait till I whip out my Detective Mandingo climate-noir. That prize is mine!