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.
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!