Music to Soothe the Climate Denial Away?

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Climate activist Naomi Oreskes now has her own theme song, after the University of Utah commissioned a musician to compose a song about climate denial, to convince people to read “Merchants of Doubt”.

Does climate doubt have a sound? At least one composer thinks so

Alvin Powell Harvard Staff Writer
DATE June 22, 2021

What does “doubt” sound like? Specifically, scientific doubt, the kind of intentionally seeded, stalling uncertainty that has become an integral — and to many, a frustrating — feature of the debate over climate change.

To composer Yvette Janine Jackson, it has the low, somber insistence of the bass clarinet, skittering flute that cranks up anxiety, sonorous cello to hold things together, and the deep, doubting rumble of double bass.

Jackson, an assistant professor of music at Harvard, recently added her musical voice to efforts to reach those uncertain about global warming despite the scientific consensus that the Earth is warming and its climate is shifting in unpredictable and sometimes destructive ways.

Jackson’s 15-minute piece, “Doubt,” was written in collaboration with Naomi Oreskes, the Henry Charles Lee Professor of the History of Science whose academic work, including her 2010 book “Merchants of Doubt,” has focused on the denial of climate science. The composition was commissioned for Earth Day by Artivism for Earth, a project of the University of Utah. Elisabet Curbelo González, a University of Utah assistant professor of music and a project director, said Artivism’s intent is to foster an interdisciplinary exploration of the environment and so asked a variety of composers to pair with scientists to create work that ranges from Jackson and Oreskes’ piece on climate denial to collaborations on pollution, melting glaciers, the plight of the world’s whales, and water scarcity, among others.

Read more: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/06/challenge-creates-unusual-team-of-science-historian-and-music-professor/

I tried listening to a minute of the new music composition. It seems a very post-modernest piece, like one of those poems which don’t have a rhyme.

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Alexy Scherbakoff
June 23, 2021 10:25 pm

You’ll never get that minute back.

Bill Powers
Reply to  Alexy Scherbakoff
June 24, 2021 8:17 am

I try to avoid getting personal but Naomi bears a striking resemblance to Voldemort.

Nothing says the scientific method more than theme music and parades. All they need now is there own flag. .

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Bill Powers
June 24, 2021 11:08 am

You didn’t try very hard.

Archie
Reply to  Bill Powers
June 24, 2021 1:50 pm

Rainbow-flag?

June 23, 2021 10:27 pm

Never cared about her book that was exposed as junk reading.

Whenever I see Dr, Oreskes I recall Dark Shadows theme music, it is very creepy.

Dark Shadows / Original Open Theme (From the rare LP 1969)

Dark Shadows / Original Open Theme (From the rare LP 1969) – YouTube

It is CREEEEEEPY!

saveenergy
Reply to  Sunsettommy
June 24, 2021 1:48 am

Thanks, that lead me to this hilarious gem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcVFtu-ZmmM
enjoy

AGW is Not Science
Reply to  Sunsettommy
June 25, 2021 6:15 pm

No pics of Angelique?! The best part of the show!

Randy Stubbings
June 23, 2021 10:28 pm

Quebec Minister of Culture Nathalie Roy announced on Sunday at a press conference that, from now on, all government buildings will have to play all music by Quebec-native artists 100 percent of the time. “I was personally on hold on the phone line at the Ministry of Culture and was shocked to hear an American singer singing a little song in English,” commented Roy, saying that that made her notice that there was “no practice that encouraged the sharing of Quebec music in the State”

How long before Trudeau, who is no doubt shocked by the Minister’s shock, and who has recently legislated yet more restrictions on free speech in what was a great country until he got elected as Prime Drama Teacher, legislates that “Doubt” must be played in all federal buildings at least 97% of the time?

Radio stations will be next. Resistance is futile; you will be assimilated.

Reply to  Randy Stubbings
June 23, 2021 10:59 pm

So now the Soy Clan Cave drum circle has a lead singer?

E5D692BE-6060-4048-9679-99B957688B4E.png
Paul Johnson
Reply to  gringojay
June 24, 2021 12:16 pm

30,000 years B.P. – First neolithic vegans appear … and rapidly disappear.

Klem
Reply to  Randy Stubbings
June 24, 2021 12:38 am

“Radio stations will be next. Resistance is futile; you will be assimilated”

You will own nothing and you will be happy.
– Locutus of Borg

Reply to  Randy Stubbings
June 24, 2021 4:46 am

Canada’s theme song

MarkW
Reply to  Randy Stubbings
June 24, 2021 8:24 am

If something has to be subsidized and or mandated, it couldn’t have been very good in the first place.

June 23, 2021 10:47 pm

From the WHSN…

World Harvard Spin Network

A tax exempt hedge fund masquerading as a university…

June 23, 2021 11:08 pm

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, it does.

yirgach
Reply to  Chaamjamal
June 24, 2021 7:16 am

Did you know that The Addams Family will be headlining COP26?

leowaj
Reply to  Chaamjamal
June 24, 2021 8:46 am

You ought to have seen the VHS tapes vomited out of the new age movement in the 1980s and 1990s. I got weird. F*cking weird, especially when it collided with university education. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBlnrRUVfo0 (Sorry)

Reply to  Chaamjamal
June 24, 2021 8:58 am

Weird! The person blowing the sax thru a covid mask was crazy man, crazy.

n.n
June 23, 2021 11:08 pm

University of Utah, another woke and morally broke modern institution, and, NOW, lost in a conflation of logical domains. One step forward, two steps backward.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  n.n
June 24, 2021 12:04 am

Both steps lie along axes that are in units of √-1. This modern dance is not the kazatsky, but the lysenkosky.

Isn’t the University of Utah the home of the Melvin Dumar Institute of Hydrogen Fusion Studies?

Steve Z
Reply to  n.n
June 24, 2021 8:29 am

Not everything coming out of the University of Utah is woke or broke. My two stepdaughters have degrees from there, one in nursing and one in finance–the latter is unlikely to go broke! But she did take an elective course in gender studies, and thought it was hilarious!

Writing scary-sounding music about “denying” global warming doesn’t make it a real threat. People have written all sorts of scary music for movies about alien monsters from outer space or zombies, but that doesn’t make them a threat in reality.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  Steve Z
June 25, 2021 9:43 pm

Yet.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  n.n
June 25, 2021 5:24 pm

“University of Utah, another woke and morally broke modern institution”

I think the Left has broken all the Institutions of Learning, and have turned them all into indoctrination centers for leftwing ideology.

jorgekafkazar
June 23, 2021 11:44 pm

I was thinking it would be rap, but atonal, non-melodic felgercarb is also apropos. If the piece has a second movement, I’d suggest cowbell, kazoo, mouth harp, with a manualist sextet.

Alexy Scherbakoff
Reply to  jorgekafkazar
June 24, 2021 12:05 am

The second movement is – bowel

June 23, 2021 11:59 pm

These composers know about music as much as climate change. Sorry, but I sat my dog at the piano and he was able to compose something orders of magnitude better than this grotesque noise which the only ones on Earth who could call it music are its composers.

Mike McMillan
Reply to  Douglas Pollock
June 24, 2021 12:31 am

Where are the Beatles when you need a catchy tune? They won’t be playing this one in elevators decades hence.

Kenji
Reply to  Mike McMillan
June 24, 2021 5:11 am

What? Yoko Ono was unavailable?

robert Bradley
Reply to  Mike McMillan
June 24, 2021 9:59 am
Lrp
Reply to  Mike McMillan
June 24, 2021 10:32 pm

On the stairs, you mean. Elevators run only from 10th floor up and not at all times

Alastair gray
Reply to  Douglas Pollock
June 24, 2021 12:33 am

Nothing wrong with the music. i do wish though that like Nero ,she would give up her day job which is character assassination , hatchet jobbery and downright lying. Somehow though she goes up in my estimation ,albeit from a very low start point

pablo
June 24, 2021 12:17 am

the composition is already ridiculous to listen to in itself, but seeing the two wind instruments played with the mask, in deference to the other global scam, is priceless!
Moreover, if they really wanted to protect us from their breath, they should at least mask the output of the instrument too!

lee
June 24, 2021 12:30 am

“It seems a very post-modernest piece, like one of those poems which don’t have a rhyme.”
You mean like –
There was a young man from Dundee
Got stung in the head by a wasp
He went and told his ol’ cheese
So she k!lled it with a claw hammer ?

Sunshine
June 24, 2021 12:31 am

I needed that before bed. A good laugh!

AlexBerlin
June 24, 2021 12:45 am

I propose adapt the German Stalinist (“Democratic”) Republic’s hymn for the purpose: “Die Partei, die Partei, die hat immer recht!” (“The Party, the Party is always right!”). Fittingly naive, exaggerating and blunt for Oreskes’ purpose, and surely more tuneful than her present effort:

Bill Powers
Reply to  AlexBerlin
June 24, 2021 8:24 am

Settled Science and consensus are code words for political science and popular vote and we have seen how those can be manipulated by the Central Authoritarians.

June 24, 2021 1:23 am

Well that was a minute of my time wasted.
They should do a piece for the alarmists. It could be 1 hour of someone screaming into a microphone.

bill Johnston
Reply to  Andrew Wilkins
June 24, 2021 5:31 am

Accompanied by someone running their finger nails across a blackboard.

Reply to  bill Johnston
June 24, 2021 7:09 am

Mike Mann could tap out a rhythm with his fake Nobel Prize statue.

saveenergy
June 24, 2021 1:40 am

She gives us 15 mins of musical instruments without any music.

Just like she gives us climate science without any science.

June 24, 2021 1:46 am

Left me a bit cold, but really warms up to wards the end! 🙂

Reply to  Matthew Sykes
June 24, 2021 2:00 am

I saw what you did there

June 24, 2021 1:47 am

How is it possible to be sooooo lacking in self-awareness?

It is a piece of unremitting doom, gloom and depression and a perfect encapsulation of their thinking – have they never heard of ‘projection’

Or been ever in a school playground = Always be first to accuse others of what you’re guilty of
Have they ever even been to school?

Reply to  Peta of Newark
June 24, 2021 7:10 am

Greta hasn’t (well, not for long)

June 24, 2021 2:06 am

What does “doubt” sound like?” 

I doubt that it will win a Grammy but, then again, I didn’t even bother to listen to it.

Matthew Siekierski
Reply to  philincalifornia
June 24, 2021 4:06 am

They’ll probably create a new Grammy category just to award this song an award.

Ed Zuiderwijk
June 24, 2021 2:10 am

I know one for Naomi and her alarmist ilk. It’s called ‘the Piper’ and goes like this:

We’re following the Piper. And we dance beneath the moon.

Richard Page
Reply to  Ed Zuiderwijk
June 24, 2021 5:32 am

I still think that ‘O Fortuna’ – Carmina Burana should be her theme. Cliched but still great!

ozspeaksup
June 24, 2021 2:44 am

I think of music to suit her?
its bin lids being crashed down

Björn Eriksson
June 24, 2021 2:58 am

The song is interesting.
It sounds confused, emotional and lost.

leitmotif
June 24, 2021 3:34 am

Naomi Oreskes: The Unacceptable Face of Climate Alarmism.

Melvyn Dackombe
Reply to  leitmotif
June 24, 2021 5:57 am

well I think she is attractive !

Richard Page
Reply to  Melvyn Dackombe
June 24, 2021 12:36 pm

Who? Zorba the Shriek?

saveenergy
Reply to  Melvyn Dackombe
June 25, 2021 1:56 pm

For a blind man … you have a good imagination !

Reply to  Melvyn Dackombe
June 26, 2021 8:46 am

Is it true that her twin brother was Leonard Nimoy?

Bruce Cobb
June 24, 2021 3:53 am

What Climate Belief sounds like:


alastair gray
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
June 24, 2021 11:06 am

Sure and it is a philosopher you are Mr Cobb, but don’t you think you are a little unkind to La Jenkins

Josie
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
June 24, 2021 11:11 am

Awful but still too cheery.

saveenergy
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
June 25, 2021 3:20 pm

Here she is on film –
Actual film footage of FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS filmed 1934-41 at her in-famous recitals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcs9yJjVecs

Fascinating 2008 documentary, “Florence Foster Jenkins: A World Of Her Own”, telling the complete, factual, uncensored and tragic life story of Florence Foster Jenkins.

Sara
June 24, 2021 4:12 am

Oh, let’s just go back to “Strawberry Fields”

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It’s getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me…. – Strawberry Fields Forever / J. Lennon

Now, can we move on to living with the planet instead of making up imaginary things that no one else can see?

Jim Clarke
June 24, 2021 4:30 am

See? I told you the climate alarmists were insane!

June 24, 2021 4:33 am

I may have to reconsider alumnus donations to my alma mater.

P Wells
Reply to  Mark Whitney
June 24, 2021 5:43 pm

I stopped giving to one of mine some time ago! (M.I.T.)