Il cinema futurista

by Giovanni Lista
Le Mani Editore, 2010
p. 264
ISBN: 978-88-8012-538-9

La casa editrice Le Mani di Genova ha pubblicato Il cinema futurista di Giovanni Lista. Il libro offre una sintesi critica e cronologica del cinema futurista dagli anni ’10 agli anni ’30, proponendo inoltre una raccolta dei principali scritti teorici dei futuristi su questo tema.

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The publishing house Le Mani in Genoa has published Il cinema futurista by Giovanni Lista. The book offers a critical and chronological synthesis of futurist cinema from years ‘10 until the thirties, proposing a selection of the most important theoretical texts written about this theme by the futurists.

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Coal executives at the Hearing April 14th (click for more)

The Arctic, the far north, northern Canada and Alaska, are all seeing electric storms that have never been seen before.   Indigenous people in the far north have no words in their language for “lightning”.   The atmosphere has 5% more moisture in it than it had 40 years ago, which is leading to wild temperature changes and electrical storms in places where they didn’t used to occur — with varying and disturbing consequences.  Birds are migrating out of sync, animals are going extinct at a rapid rate, we are burning through water and top soil like never before — our planet is in an obvious climate crisis right now.   Climate change keeps progressing,  and desperate coal executives are seeing support for their industry begin to slip away (as it should). Last week there were fireworks over coal during hearings in Washington.

From  Greenwire – Executives split on carbon caps, climate science

“A trio of executives from the world’s largest coal companies told Congress last week on April 14th that their industry is providing the fuel of the future [an insane claim] . . . . Under scrutiny from Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and other Democrats on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, — and under fire from protesters who briefly disrupted the hearing — top executives from Peabody Energy Corp., Arch Coal Inc. and Rio Tinto PLC all called coal an irreplaceable source of energy in the United States and abroad. They stood united on the need for federal support for carbon capture and storage technology that would prevent emissions from coal-fired power plants from entering the atmosphere.”

CCS (Carbon capture and sequestration) technology could be ready for commercial-scale use sometime in the 2020s, said Peabody CEO Greg Boyce.   [whether it will work or not is another thing entirely]  But the consensus broke down over carbon regulation.  Boyce blasted the House-passed energy and climate bill (H.R. 2454 (pdf)) that would put a price on carbon emissions. Congress should wait until carbon capture and storage technology is ready before it regulates carbon, said Boyce.”

Congressman Markey responded by saying that there will absolutely be a price put on carbon so they should cooperate and work with the Senate.  We cannot wait years for carbon capture because climate change is progressing too quickly.   It will be 10-20 or more years until CCS works on a large scale.    If, as they claim, coal is “irreplaceable” what is their plan when it runs out? Like all fossil fuels, it’s finite. I guess they plan on manufacturing coal somehow, or perhaps blowing up more and more land in search of the coal that is hiding.

Unfortunately, these hearings were not advertised well, and there is no video either on the Select Committee hearing website or on C-SPAN. (Government transparency continues to fail us) . . .

On that [...]

You can watch live coverage of Cochabamba, “The World People’s Climate Summit” via the video below.

Your browser does not support iframes.

Watch this video for live coverage of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, April 20-22, courtesy of OneClimate.net

The pioneering OneClimate Channel has already enabled millions of people around the world to participate in global climate talks – most recently during the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2009. But in Bolivia, the promise of an ‘open process’ (there will be no secret discussions behind closed doors) combined with OneClimate’s groundbreaking interactive coverage, means that anyone with access to the internet will have a free pass right to the heart of the summit.

The following is an unbelievable development, reported by  DemocracyNow:

US Cancels Climate Aid to Bolivia, Ecuador over Copenhagen Opposition

“…The Obama administration has confirmed it’s denying climate aid to at least two countries that refused to sign on to last year’s Copenhagen environmental accord. The State Department has canceled funding of $3 million to Bolivia and $2.5 million for Ecuador. Bolivia vocally opposed the accord, while Ecuador has issued its tacit rejection by refusing to sign on so far. A coalition of southern, island and developing countries opposed the non-binding accord largely over its exclusion of mandatory and robust emissions cuts at the levels recognized as necessary to avert devastating climate change. There are fears the funding cuts could signify the Obama administration will attempt to punish nations financially for defying the US stance on climate agreements. In a statement, Kate Horner of Friends of the Earth said, “The US is acting like a bully, strong-arming the most vulnerable countries to get them to sign onto an ineffective and unfair deal that will not move the world closer to a just climate agreement.”

If this is in fact true, it’s a ridiculously bad move by the Obama administration.  By this rationale, the United States should stop sending aid to Israel because they have defied us and continue to build settlements in Palestinian areas. That is much more serious than a country speaking out against an ineffective non-legally binding Accord,  reached by only a few countries in Copenhagen last December.  It’s unconscionable that the U.S. is denying climate aid to countries that need it, especially after the American corporation Bechtel’s attempt to steal and profit from Boliva’s water years ago.  What is the matter with the Obama administration on climate aid, especially when the U.S. is one of the world’s biggest polluters?

Catalogo generale delle opere di Pippo Oriani, primo volume

Edited by Fondazione Oriani
Edizioni Giorgio Mondadori, Milano; 2009
p. 464
ISBN 978-88-6052-195-8

Le edizioni Giorgio Mondadori di Milano hanno pubblicato il primo volume del Catalogo generale delle opere di Pippo Oriani con prefazione di Giovanni Lista e Mariastella Margozzi. Il secondo volume è in corso di preparazione. Coloro che possiedono opere di Oriani, possono rivolgersi alla Fondazione Oriani, 6620 Tommary Drive, Greely On-K4P 1G8 – Canada.

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The publishing house Giorgio Mondadori in Milan has published the first volume of the Catalogo generale delle opere di Pippo Oriani, with preface by Giovanni Lista and Mariastella Margozzi. The second volume is in preparation. Anyone who own Oriani’s works, can apply to Fondazione Oriani, 6620 Tommary Drive, Greely On-K4P 1G8 – Canada.

E-mail: oriani@simpatico.ca

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From Copenhagen to Cochabamba, via the Amazon

On his way to the World Peoples’ Conference in Bolivia, a member of the Indigenous Environmental Network from the Six Nations in Ontario revisits the scenes of struggle to defend indigenous communities and rights in the Peruvian Amazon.

by Ben Powless

This article first appeared in rabble.ca, and is published here with the author’s permission. Photos he took in Peru (one is on the left)  can be viewed on Flickr.

“The Amazon, it is often said, functions like the lungs of Mother Earth. The dense forest and undergrowth absorb much of the carbon dioxide that we manage to pump into the skies — an ever more important and taxing effort in light of the threats to our climate.

In December, countries around the world gathered in Copenhagen to reach an agreement to protect the climate, even if purely face-saving, and failed. With that sour taste gone, Bolivia has invited governments, social movements, Indigenous Peoples, politicians, really anyone who cares, to attend the so-called World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. The conference will be held the 19th-22nd in Cochabamba.

Ahead of that trip, I’ve flown into Lima, Peru to head back into the Amazon. It has been almost a year since the tragic day of June 5th, 2009 left over 30 people dead in the worst violence Peru has seen in modern history. The dispute was over a series of laws the government wanted to push through to open the Amazon to foreign companies, an effort linked to the Free Trade Agreement Peru’s President Alan Garcia signed with Canada and the United States.

Amazon Indigenous Peoples resisted the laws with a blockade outside the town of Bagua, on the outskirts of the Amazon, and the government’s decision to send in armed forces still reverberates here. You can see my coverage from Peru last year here.

Indigenous groups here and elsewhere have maintained that their role in protecting their lands, their resources, their ecologies is paramount, and also serves the rest of humanity. In this case, the Awajun and Wampis peoples were concerned about the entry of oil companies into their lands, ultimately polluting the waters, the flora, the fauna, everything, as has been the case so many times in other parts of the Amazon.

Bagua today is a much different place than in those tense days after June 5th, when military patrols roamed the streets, and a curfew kept people in hiding. Now, the only sense of tension was between teenage boys and girls in the plaza, whistling and blasting around on motorbikes. As they say, calm waters run deep, and the Amazon has a long memory.

I managed to catch up with Salomon Awananch, who since I ran into him [...]

March 2010 was the warmest on record.

Getty Images/Tim Boyle

(AP) Last month was the warmest March on record worldwide, based on records dating back to 1880, U.S. scientists reported Thursday.   The average temperature for the month was 56.3 degrees Fahrenheit (13.5 degrees Celsius), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported.

That was 1.39 degrees F (0.77 C) above the average for the month over the 20th Century.   NOAA researchers said the warmer-than-normal conditions were especially notable in north Africa, South Asia, Tibet, Delhi, India and Canada.

Cooler-than-normal regions included Mongolia and eastern Russia, northern and western Europe, Mexico, northern Australia, western Alaska and the southeastern United States  [aka "The South" -- home of many deniers.]   ….

In addition, climate researchers have been reporting rising global temperatures for several years as a result of what is called the Greenhouse Effect, in which rising levels of carbon dioxide and others gases in the atmosphere trap heat instead of allowing it to escape out into space.

NOAA also reported that in March Arctic sea ice, which normally reaches its maximum on that month, covered an average of 5.8 million square miles (15.1 million square kilometers).    That was 4.1 percent below the 1979-2000 average expanse, and the fifth-smallest March coverage since records began in 1979.

What is the Obama administration doing about escalating climate change?  President Obama is basically leaving it up to others.  The EPA is slowly doing what they can, but it’s not enough to stop climate change, and the EPA is under the mistaken impression, along with Obama, that we can continue to use coal.  Today, Obama’s  chief of staff Rahm Emanuel met with environmental leaders for a half hour.

We expect more from this “science-driven” administration,  and promises are not enough.   From Greenwire:

“President Obama’s chief of staff summoned environmental leaders and other key administration allies to the White House today to discuss energy and climate legislation expected to be released in the Senate on Tuesday. Rahm Emanuel met for about 30 minutes with a group that included League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski, Sierra Club Chairman Carl Pope, Center for American Progress President John Podesta, Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke, National Wildlife Federation President Larry Schweiger and Sheila O’Connell of Unity ‘09, a Democratic umbrella group.

Rahm Emanuel met for about 30 minutes with a group that included League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski, Sierra Club Chairman Carl Pope, Center for American Progress President John Podesta, Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke, National Wildlife Federation President Larry Schweiger and Sheila O’Connell of Unity ‘09, a Democratic umbrella group.

The environmental groups are hopeful Obama will keep pushing Congress during this election year to pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation amid several of his other top domestic agenda [...]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released the15th annual U.S. greenhouse gas inventory report, which shows a drop in overall emissions of 2.9 percent from 2007 to 2008. The downward trend is attributed to a decrease in carbon dioxide emissions associated with fuel and electricity consumption.

Total emissions of the six main greenhouse gases in 2008 were equivalent to 6,957 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. The gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. Though overall emissions dropped in 2008, emissions are still 13.5 percent higher than they were in 1990.

The Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2008 is the latest annual report that the United States has submitted to the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The convention sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change. EPA prepares the annual report with experts from multiple federal agencies and after gathering comments from a broad range of stakeholders across the country.

The inventory tracks annual greenhouse gas emissions at the national level and presents historical emissions from 1990 to 2008. The inventory also calculates carbon dioxide emissions that are removed from the atmosphere by “sinks,” which occurs through the uptake of carbon by forests, vegetation and soils.

More information at the EPA’s website.

Environmental groups all have the same idea on climate change, that this is the year we get to work.

I’m not sure what that means.  We spent last year pressuring lawmakers to lead on climate change, and they didn’t.  They did nothing to stop climate change, and even fought the few things the EPA is doing.  What will be different this year? 350.org has the idea to start locally and get local leaders to do things, but that won’t stop climate change.  In fact, it’s too late to stop climate change, since it’s already happening.  We can still pressure lawmakers to act but they won’t stop what’s happening with our climate because they are getting no public pressure to do anything.  The latest I read about it today is that Obama plans on a modified, moderate cap and trade approach, which will do nothing at all for climate change and in fact, might make it worse. I’m not optimistic at all.

In fact, I just began to read Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth, and he’s not optimistic either. (See this video from DemocracyNow from the April 15th interview with McKibben). Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, also feels it’s too late to prevent climate change, that it’s just beginning to happen, and that we must try to adapt to climate change. That is doable if there is a 1-2 degree temperature increase. If the temperature rises more than that, no one knows if humans can adapt at all. We may be on our way to extinction, because there is nothing presently stopping the rise in temperature. March 2010 was the hottest March ever recorded. (See post below)

Here’s someone you should read instead of me, someone who is still optimistic, from e360.

Beyond the Limits of Earth Day: Turning Up the Heat on Climate

This month marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, an event that has attracted millions to environmental causes. But winning passage of meaningful legislation on climate change requires more than slogans and green talk — it demands intense, determined political action.

by Denis Hayes

. . . In 21st century American democracy, massive public support is certainly desirable, especially over the long run. But what really counts with Congress is intensity.

A huge majority of Americans favor gun control, for example. According to the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, four out of five believe a police permit should be required for the purchase of a firearm.

But a small, intense set of Second Amendment absolutists will vote against any politician who favors such an approach. In most elections, a dedicated group of 10 percent, or even 5 percent, of voters can tilt the outcome. So politicians cater to the position whose supporters are most intense — who make sure a politician aligns with them on [...]

Peak Coal is coming sooner rather than later. As long as its literally killing people, both from mining and from burning, we might as well phase it out starting now.  What are we waiting for?

The guest writer is JW Randolph, Legislative Associate for Appalachian Voices.

Daniel Stone published a piece on coal and energy over at Newsweek’s The Gaggle called “West Virginia Mine Disaster Unlikely to Affect National Energy Debate.” David Roberts at Grist responded to Energy Committee Staffer Bill Wicker for a quote he had in the article, and it’s well worth the read. But the article was so full of misinformation and false pretexts that I wanted to spend some pixels correcting a few things, beginning with this paragraph:

Coal is the one fuel that powers most of what we do. It accounts for 49 percent of American power consumption, and as demand for power increases while the cost of alternatives (wind, solar, biofuels) remains high, coal is poised to play a bigger, not smaller, role in our energy landscape. To put it more crassly, the cost of coal is just too cheap. A kilowatt hour of coal power costs about $0.04, less than a third of renewables.

Facts:

A) For 2009, coal provided just 44.6% of electricity, not the 49% Stone suggests (likely from the 2008 data.) If you are looking at “energy” then it is 22-23%, much less.

B) Saying that coal is poised to play a “bigger” role is ridiculous. Coal is declining, particularly production in Central Appalachia. It has been declining for the past two decades and is projected to continue downward. But not only that. It is getting deeper, thinner, and of less quality. The heat content is in decline as well, meaning that it takes more tons of coal to produce the same amount of electricity.

C) Delivered costs of coal are wildly different in different locations and in different coal plants. Central Appalachian coal (like that in West Virginia) is the most expensive coal on the domestic market.

D) Stone uses ballpark figures for the cost of a coal plant that is already built, but renewables that are not yet built. If you are looking at building a new coal plant versus investing in renewables, the two are cost competitive, even without a price on coal pollution (EIA). In fact, except for solar, nothing even doubles the cost of coal, and that’s without CCS.

E) The deeper we go for thinner seams of less quality coal, the more expensive central Appalachian coal gets and the more competitive natural gas, wind, geothermal, or biomass may look. The same is true for safety regulations. Coal companies fight them tooth and nail because safety isn’t [...]

Progetto Futurismo (e dintorni)

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Conservatorio di Musica G.B.Pergolesi – Fermo
Organized by Nicola Verzina and Fausto Bongelli

5pm | Movie and Lecture with Ugo Gregoretti and a screening of his 1960s documentary on Futurism

6pm | Piano Concert “Uccidiamo il chiaro di Luna – futuristi e futurismi” by Fausto Bongelli  with music by Pratella, Mix, Scelsi, Antheil, Ornstein, Tesei, De Rossi Re and Lucio Gregoretti

8:15pm | Futurist Dinner at “il Borghetto”

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CONFERENCE

100 anni di idee futuriste nel cinema
[100 Years of Futurist Ideas in the Cinema]

April 21-22, 2010
Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa di Napoli

- With the partecipation of Paolo Bertetto, Gianni Rondolino, Augusto Sainati, Giovanni Lista, Sandro Bernardi and others.

PDF Schedule

Comitato Nazionale per le celebrazioni
del centenario della pubblicazione del Manifesto del Futurismo

100 anni di idee futuriste nel cinema

Convegno di studi
Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa
ia Suor Orsola, 10 – 80135 Napoli
Sala degli Angeli

21-22 aprile 2010

Programma provvisorio

Mercoledì 21 aprile – ore 15,30 – 19,30

Francesco De Sanctis (Rettore dell’Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa)
Apertura dei lavori

Emma Giammattei (Preside della Facoltà di Lettere)
Indirizzo di saluto

Giovanni Lista (CNRS, Paris)
In che senso è stato futurista il cinema futurista?

Paolo Bertetto (Università La Sapienza, Roma)
L’irradiazione del futurismo nel cinema

Antonio Costa (Università IUAV, Venezia)
Le folli notti dell’ingegner Norsen. Ovvero: futurismo export-import

Pausa

Antonio Somaini (Università di Genova)
Cinématique e cinématisme. Il confronto con il futurismo nel cinema e negli scritti di Ejzen_tejn

Mario Franco (Accademia di Belle Arti, Napoli)
La macchinolatria

Giovedì 22 aprile – ore 9,30 – 13

Gianni Rondolino (Università di Torino)
Sarebbe stato davvero possibile un cinema futurista?

Carmelo Marabello (Università di Messina)
Macchinemondi: Afriche lontane, antropologie futuriste e altre allocronie nel cinema di Corrado D’Errico

Pausa

Augusto Sainati (Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, Napoli)
Linee, chiazze di colore, musica cromatica: il cinema senza il cinema

Marco Pistoia (Università di Salerno)
Riflessi e rifrazioni”futuriste” tra anni Sessanta e anni Settanta

22 aprile – ore 15,30 – 19,30

Sandro Bernardi (Università di Firenze)
Cinema del terzo millennio, il ritorno del montaggio dinamico futurista

Sandra Lischi (Università di Pisa)
Pixel in libertà. Le eredità dei futurismi nell’arte elettronica

Tommaso Pomilio (Università La Sapienza, Roma)
Tsukamoto: il (non)futuro dell’uomo di ferro

Pausa

Cosetta G. Saba (Università di Udine)
Artefatto poliespressivo: l’opus filmico e non filmico di Matthew Barney

Massimiliano Gaudiosi (Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, Napoli)
“Visione-sensazione”: il futurismo e lo spazio-tempo cinematografico

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A falling, melting glacier chunk in Peru killed at least 3 people, wounded 50 and caused a tsunami.  More evidence that climate change is continuing to melt the world’s biggest glaciers.

December 2004. Two images of the Yanamarey glacier show a retreat in only 7 years. From Greenpeace.

A huge piece of a glacier broke off and plunged into a lake in Peru, causing a 75-foot (23-meter) tsunami wave that swept away at least three people and destroyed a water processing plant serving 60,000 local residents, government officials said on Monday.

Around 50 people suffered injuries, a disaster the local governor attributed to climate change.

The mass of glacial ice and rock fell into the so-called “513 lake” in the northern Ancash region, causing a ripple effect down the Hualcan, destroying 20 nearby homes.  Investigators said the chunk of ice from the Hualcan glacier measured 1,640 feet by 656 feet.

“Because of global warming the glaciers are going to detach and fall on these overflowing lakes. This is what happened today,” Ancash Governor Cesar Alvarez told reporters, linking climate change to the disappearance of a third of the glaciers in the Peruvian Andes over the past three decades.

A 2009 World Bank-published report warned Andean glaciers and the region’s permanently snow-covered peaks could disappear in 20 years if no measures are taken to tackle climate change.

According to the report, in the last 35 years Peru’s glaciers have shrunk by 22 per cent, leading to a 12 per cent loss in the amount of fresh water reaching the coast – home to most of the country’s citizens.

The ice block tumbled into a lake in the Andes on Sunday near the town of Carhuaz, some 200 miles north of the capital, Lima. Three people were buried in debris.

“This slide into the lake generated a tsunami wave, which breached the lake’s levees, which are 23 meters high — meaning the wave was 23 meters high,” said Patricio Vaderrama, an expert on glaciers at Peru’s Institute of Mine Engineers.

Authorities evacuated mountain valleys, fearing more breakages. It was one of the most concrete signs yet that glaciers are disappearing in Peru, home to 70 percent of the world’s tropical icefields. Scientists say warmer temperatures will cause them to melt away altogether within 20 years.   The glaciers in Peru have lost 22% of their area in the last 27 years according to a study made by the Peruvian Institute of National Resources.

In 1970, not far from Carhuaz, an earthquake triggered an avalanche of ice, rock and mud on the mountain of Huascaran that buried the town of Yungay, killing more than 20,000 people who lived below Peru’s tallest peak, which sits 22,204 feet above sea level.

from LIMA (Reuters) and AFP stories.

EPA Faults California Waste Plant for Chemical Disposal

The Environmental Protection Agency has found that a major California waste facility linked to birth defects in nearby communities improperly disposed of hazardous chemicals. On Thursday, the EPA said Fresno’s Chemical Waste Management landfill had violated federal laws on disposing PCBs. The plant is the largest hazardous waste facility in the western United States. Nearby residents have blamed it for at least eleven birth defects since 2007. — from DemocracyNow

EPA Launches Blog on Acid Rain

April 8 – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is hosting a month-long online discussion to expand the conversation on acid rain. Acid rain is a serious environmental problem that affects large parts of the United States and is particularly damaging to lakes, streams, and forests and the plants and animals that live in these ecosystems. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), the pollutants that form acid rain, can cause serious respiratory illnesses and premature death.

Starting today (April 8th) , EPA is posting daily blogs to inform and engage the public in an interactive Web discussion. Topics will include an overview of acid rain and its effects, a description of the Acid Rain Program’s cap and trade policy, an explanation of how EPA monitors power plant emissions, and how air and water quality monitoring data are used to measure environmental improvements.

EPA established the Acid Rain Program 20 years ago under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and it requires major emission reductions of sulfur dioxide SO2 and nitrogen oxide NOx from the electric power industry. The program sets a permanent cap on the total amount of SO2 that may be emitted by electric generating units in the United States, and includes provisions for trading and banking allowances. Since the first year of the program in 1995, SO2 and NOx emissions have each been cut by more than 60 percent.

For the kickoff Greenversations blog: http://blog.epa.gov/blog/

The Greenversations blog is nothing new.  In 2008, Climate Progress called Greenversations “the world’s blandest environmental blog,. . . . . paid for by your taxpayer dollar.  To be honest, in 2010 it’s still pretty bland.

Acid Rain has not gone away!  It is still connected to burning coal and other fossil fuels.  It’s still a very serious problem.   “In the US, About 2/3 of all SO2 and 1/4 of all NOx comes from electric power generation that relies on burning fossil fuels like coal.”

After the latest mine incident, we should be expediting the phase-out of coal burning as soon as possible. Why didn’t the media focus on why we are still using COAL in 2010?  It’s not 1810 anymore . . . yet the media was focused on noting that this is West Virginia’s “way of life”.  I even heard that coal mining is in the DNA of the people of West Virginia.  Oh really? That would be [...]

Pubblicità e propaganda. Ceramica e grafica futuriste
Wolfsoniana (Genova-Nervi)
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LA MOSTRA E’ STATA PROROGATA FINO AL 2 MAGGIO

Una mostra sulla produzione ceramica futurista, in occasione del centenario del manifesto di fondazione del movimento futurista.

Accanto al primato albisolese con manufatti degli artisti più noti, quali Diulgheroff, Farfa, Fillia, Munari, Gaudenzi, Aquaviva, la mostra intende indagare anche esperienze artistiche che hanno tangenze linguistiche con il movimento futurista, come la produzione di alcune manifatture italiane, tra cui le Ceramiche Rometti in Umbria, la BMC in Toscana, la FACI in Lazio.

In occasione della mostra, viene inoltre presentata la produzione di argenti del milanese Arrigo Finzi (La Spezia 1890 – Milano 1973) che la figlia Olga Finzi Baldi ha affidato in comodato alla Wolfsoniana.

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First, here’s some inspiration.  Earth Day is April 22. It’s the 40th anniversary and here’s the official site.

Now, some  reality:  How are the new talks about climate change with official negotiators going?  Not well.   They are having a hard time implementing or doing anything with the Copenhagen Accord,  which was decided upon by some countries last December. There are hard feelings all around due to how it was passed and because it doesn’t provide a clear-cut legal framework.  I’m beginning to wonder if official negotiators will ever arrive at an agreement, much less one that does something meaningful to stop climate change. I’m getting the distinct impression countries like the U.S. will be relying heavily on geoengineering, the more I hear about it. There have been several conferences on geoengineering already.  The official negotiators at the climate talks mean well, but they all end up arguing for their own country’s needs, not the world’s.   Maybe we need a new approach entirely.  A room full of climate scientists, telling the rest of the world what needs to be done, when and where, first.   Leave the capitalists at home to watch the shopping channel.  From UN News:

Skirmishes renewed at UN climate conference

BONN, Germany — Climate negotiators renewed their skirmishes this weekend at their first conference since the acrimonious summit in Copenhagen, split over how to continue efforts to reach an all-encompassing agreement to control greenhouse gases and help poor countries deal with global warming.

After the letdown of Copenhagen, delegates and officials appeared determine to dampen expectations of a final deal this year, and said negotiations are almost certain to stretch past the next major conference at Cancun, Mexico, in December.

“We should not be striving to get answers to each and every question in Cancun,” Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. climate secretariat, said Sunday. “The quest to address climate change is a long journey, and achieving perfection takes practice.”

The unusual three-day meeting attended by 175 countries was called to plot out a course of negotiation up to the Cancun conference. It was likely to approve two unscheduled meetings at a cost of $7 million to $15 million, depending on where they are held.

But procedural questions quickly spawned divisions on issues touching nerves among rich countries, led by the United States, and developing countries.

The split was expressed in the debate on authorizing a committee chairwoman to prepare a draft agreement for the next meeting in June, drawing on the results of the summit four months ago in the Danish capital.

The question is how Margaret Sangarwe of Zimbabwe will incorporate the agreement crafted by President Barack Obama in the closing hours of the Copenhagen summit with a small group of other leaders. Also on the table is [...]

It’s time to revisit the science of climate change, because the deniers and skeptics are still out in force.  Some of them are in our government, inexplicably.  It’s inexplicable because I once assumed that people in Congress are maybe a little bit smarter than the average Dude, but it’s now clear this is not the case at all.  So many people, including those in government, need to be educated on the basics of the climate crisis and the enormous, eventual threat to all life on earth it presents.

There are many other resources within Futurism Now for people to look at the climate science through links to various websites, on the Links page for starters.   There are also many links in the right-hand column. I rarely update it because there is already so much there and the science supporting climate change is very well-known and widely accepted. You would not know that by listening to or reading the writings of conservatives, however.  Keep in mind what motives them is politics, not science or facts.  The facts are clear and unequivocal.  Skeptics often have a political agenda, also.  Very few scientists, despite what some people say, are skeptical about climate change and what is causing it.

Still it’s a good idea to republish links to climate change sites that contain info, proof and data.  This is from Real Climate and then I have more to add after it.

There are a number of topics in climate science that are frequently misunderstood or mis-characterised (often by those trying to ’scientize’ their political opinions) that come up again and again in climate-related discussions. RealClimate tries to provide context on many of these issues, and commentaries on the 1970s ‘global cooling myth‘ or whether water vapour is a feedback or a forcing are among our most referenced pieces (see our FAQ category). However, our explanations of specific points have often appeared in the middle of a larger piece, or in the comment section and are not clearly referencable. Since many of these same points keep coming up in comments and discussions, having a clear and precise resource for these explanations would be very useful and we have thought about doing just that. But it now appears that we have been beaten to the punch by a new blog run by Coby Beck, a frequent commenter here and at sci.env. His new blog ‘A few things ill-considered‘ has a point-by-point rebuttal of almost all the most common ‘contrarian’ talking points. The list of topics by category is a good place to start, and it shows the huge amount of work done so far.

Another great site for publications and articles and other writings by preeminent climate scientist James Hansen is here on his website. Many more resources and a podcast below!

I’m always telling people to go to look at the NASA website, which you can find at that [...]

Hansen speaking in Adelaide, March 2010

NASA climate scientist James Hansen has been very busy lately, discussing climate change all over the world.  James Hansen is considered the U.S. voice of authority on climate change.  He still works for NASA, and soon NASA is getting a big infusion of money for climate change research – $2.4 billion. Below are two recent articles Hansen has written.  The second one is already widely distributed because it’s about President Obama and his leadership on climate change.

Most environmental groups do not agree with Hansen’s stand on nuclear power as a good option, (but some do).  He doesn’t talk about nuclear power a lot, but he does say it’s a good source of power to compete with renewable energy and that it has to be used. In his speech in Sydney he goes much further.   Another reason to republish the first article is that although this article appears on an Australian media website, it does not appear in American ones, at least not so far.  He wrote it while he was in Australia in March.

Only a carbon tax and nuclear power can save us

“It is clear that we have a crisis — a planetary emergency.” — Hansen, in his speech in Adelaide.

by Dr. James Hansen, reprinted from The Australian

AUSTRALIA will suffer if fossil fuel use continues unabated. Climate extremes will increase. Poleward expansion of the subtropics will make Australia often hotter and drier, with stronger droughts and hotter fires, as the jet stream retreats southward.

But when ocean temperature patterns bring rain, the warmer air will dump much more water, causing damaging floods. Storms will become more devastating as the ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland begin to disintegrate and cool the neighboring ocean, as I describe in [my book] Storms of My Grandchildren. Ice discharge from Antarctica has already doubled in the past five years.

Science has shown that preservation of stable climate and the remarkable life that our planet harbours require a rapid slowdown of fossil fuel emissions. Atmospheric carbon dioxide, now almost 390 parts per million, must be brought back to 350ppm or less. That is possible, with actions that make sense for other reasons.

But the actions require a change to business-as-usual. Change is opposed by those profiting from our fossil-fuel addiction. Change will happen only with courageous political leadership.

Leaders must draw attention to the moral imperative. We cannot pretend that we do not understand the consequences for our children and grandchildren. We cannot leave them with a situation spiralling out of their control. We must set a new course.

Yet what course is proposed? Hokey cap-and-trade with offsets, aka an emissions trading scheme. Scheme is the right word, a scheme to continue business-as-usual behind a fig leaf.

The Kyoto Protocol was a cap-and-trade [...]

Climate talks resume, very small chance of 2010 deal

Thousands of acres of forest have been slashed and burned in Rondônia, a state in northwest Brazil, mostly to make room for cattle ranching.

BONN, Germany (Reuters) – Climate negotiators meet in Bonn on Friday for the first time since the fractious Copenhagen summit but with scant hopes of patching together a new legally binding U.N. deal in 2010.

Delegates from 170 nations gathered on Thursday for the April 9-11 meeting that will seek to rebuild trust after the December summit disappointed many by failing to agree a binding U.N. deal at the climax of two years of talks.

Bonn will decide a program for meetings in 2010 and air ideas about the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, backed by more than 110 nations including major emitters China, the United States, Russia and India but opposed by some developing states.

The Accord seeks to limit world temperature rises to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F), but without saying how. (Magic?)

“We need to reassess the situation after Copenhagen,” said Bruno Sekoli of Lesotho, who speaks on behalf of the least developed nations who want far tougher cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to limit temperature rises to less than 1.5 C. . . . .  it is unclear what will happen to the Copenhagen Accord.

The United States is among the strongest backers of the Copenhagen Accord, but many developing nations do not want it to supplant the 1992 Climate Convention which they reckon stresses that the rich have to lead the way.

“I don’t believe that the Copenhagen Accord will become the new legal framework,” Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told reporters in a briefing about Bonn last week.”

Yvo de Boer has actually resigned, so it’s unclear how involved he is at this point.  And a legal framework of any kind will simply be ignored by the U.S. if right-wingers are ever in power again.  They are already working to ignore any laws passed by Democrats from now on.

READ more here.

Green Groups Fight to Keep EPA’s Power Over Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Good luck, green groups — you’re going to need it, but I hope they are successful.   Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham are working hard behind the scenes to chop the EPA off at the knees and render it useless on climate change.  With friends like that . . . . .

Environmental activists this week are stepping up a battle to protect U.S. EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, staging demonstrations and lobbying lawmakers at their local offices.

Carrying signs with slogans like “Fight Climate Change Now” and “We Can’t Wait for Climate Action,” members of the coalition 1Sky already have rallied outside the regional [...]

LECTURE AND BOOK PRESENTATION of  Speed Limits

Jeffrey T. Schnapp
professore di Letterature Comparate, Stanford University, California

Monday, April 19, 2010 – 5:30pm
Palazzo Ducale, Salone del Minor Consiglio
Genova
Organized by : Settore Musei/Wolfsoniana; Fondazione Regionale per la Cultura e lo Spettacolo

Durante la conferenza verrà presentato il volume “Speed Limits” a cura di Jeffrey T. Schnapp, edito da Skira in occasione della mostra omonima del Canadian Center for Architecture di Montréal e The Wolsonian-FIU di Miami Beach.

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This is the first time a study has demonstrated that offshore East Coast wind energy can provide
“a reliable supply of smooth power”

New from ScienceNow, and it’s more good news about wind power.  So why aren’t we investing more in this, instead of in finding and using more fossil fuels?

“Individual wind turbines and even whole wind farms remain at the mercy of local weather for how much electricity they can generate. But researchers have confirmed that linking up such farms along the entire U.S. East Coast could provide a surprisingly consistent source of power. In fact, such a setup could someday replace much of the region’s existing generating capacity, which is based on coal, natural gas, nuclear reactors, and oil.

In terms of potential, wind-energy resources are tremendous. One estimate puts it at nearly five times as much as the world’s entire existing electricity demand. And for environmentalists and anticarbon advocates, wind offers an energy source that does not require drilling, mining, or enriched uranium—and its carbon footprint is essentially zero.

But wind is erratic. A region might get gale-force winds one day and dead calm the next. To balance things out, engineers have proposed linking up wind farms to take advantage of wind variability across a wider area. But until now, no one had ever quantified whether meteorological conditions would justify such a linkup.

In the new study, energy policy analyst and electrical engineer Willett Kempton of the University of Delaware, Newark, and colleagues did just that. “Instead of just looking at the statistics of connecting turbines,” he says, “we also decided to look at the meteorology.” First the researchers chose a region known for its relatively constant winds. They compiled 5 years of wind data from 11 offshore weather-monitoring stations buoyed along 2500 kilometers of the East Coast. They estimated how much power offshore wind farms could produce if they had been placed at the same locations as the monitoring stations—which would be the case under current wind-farm configurations. Then they calculated the combined power output of the farms if they were all connected into a single grid.

As the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, at no time during the 5-year span of the study did the winds die down completely along the hypothetical grid. That means it would have been possible for the hypothetical offshore wind-power grid to generate electricity continuously for all of that time. Moreover, Kempton explains, linking the wind farms showed “a tremendous amount of smoothing” of power output. Farms located, say, in the Northeast might be operating at full tilt under gale-force winds, while the southeastern portion of the grid languishes under sunny skies and tepid breezes. As the wind data showed, he added, the quick swings between [...]