Part II - Hot Flat & Crowded -Thomas Freidman

Part II (The parts are not based on the parts in the book but roughly based on my reading and review of the book)

I was unaware of the fact that things might be a lot worse and scarier than portrayed in the media or in the IPCC report. In the book Friedman says ‘ The scientists are punished for overstating and not punished for understating…..To make climate models scientists take little pieces of information of what we know happened in the past, check how it corresponds to how it actually happened and then try to project into the future from the earlier trend lines’

Bill Collins a senior scientists in the Earth Sciences division of the Lawrence berkely National Laboratory says ‘Nobody captured in their energy models the acceleration of emissions from china in the last five years. That is what is so scary. A lot of IPCC math was developed when emissions from China were going down in the 1990s and the Soviet Union was collapsing. What is happening now is worse than the worse case projections that went into the IPCC model’

IPCC builds a summary for policy makers, which is what we are all familiar with. The book talks about how the policy document is reviewed line by line by government representatives and they get to veto anything they don’t like. Click here for more information on how this is done. There is criticism that the summary doesn’t represent exact science and perhaps downplays the impact of global warming! What crazy weird world do we live in? The mankind itself is in danger and we lowball it! The policy makers should perhaps be tried for crimes against humanity. These people are no different than the perpetrators of genocide. If we cannot trust these reports to be accurate, what else can we not trust? I guess we know the answer to that question!

John Holdren who has spent much of his life studying the aspects of climate change Issue, has what he wryly calls “Holdren’s first principal “when it comes to climate change. It goes like this ‘The more aspects of the problem you know something about, the more pessimistic you are. Someone who studies atmospheric science is pessimistic. Some one who knows atmospheric science and oceans is more pessimistic and someone who knows atmospheric science, oceans and ice is even more pessimistic and someone who knows about atmospheric science, oceans , ice and biology is still more pessimistic and someone who knows about all those things , as well as engineering , economics , and politics is the most pessimistic of all – because then you know how long it takes to change all the systems that are driving the problem


Climate change discussion is not complete with out discussing the climate change deniers.
“If ninety eight doctors say my son is ill and needs medication and two say ‘No, he doesn’t need any medication. He’s fine’, I will go with the ninety-eight. It’s common sense - same with global warming we go with the majority, the large majority” says California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

Friedman says “I’m convinced that Climate change is real. But we not only need people to accept that it’s real, but also to accept just how real it could be…”

The book also talks about Dr Heidi Cullen, a Climatologist for the weather channel who says ‘Local meteorologist should give climate change science some mention in there daily weather reports’. Dr Cullen’s blog ‘Junk Controversy Not Junk Science’ did create a controversy. I have always wondered why the meteorologist don’t talk about this when it is so relevant and also has AMS (American Meteorological Society) seal. You know one would think meteorologist would know better, it turns out, they don’t.

To be continued in Part III

Part 1: Hot Flat & Crowded - Thomas Friedman

Part 1: Hot Flat & Crowded - Thomas Friedman
(The parts are not based on the parts in the book but roughly based on my reading and review of the book)

It is a comprehensive book that covers aspects of climate change and the connections to US oil consumption, Terrorism, China, and India and back to the US. I had bits and pieces of information from the media. This book kind of connected the dots for me. A must read as an environment literacy for a common man.

He starts with where we are now, explains what he means by Hot, Flat and Crowded.
Hot – Not a brain teaser – global warming
Flat – Rise of the middle class. The rise of American carbon copies all over the world
Crowded - The growth of the world population

He dedicates an entire chapter on American lifestyles and how it is changing the world. The discussion on how America’s oil consumption feeds the terrorists and creating petro-dollars/dictatorship is fascinating. The graph on Freedom Vs crude oil prices is a new piece of information that caught my eye. A phenomenon diagnosed as ‘resource curse’ or the ‘Dutch disease’


Few Excerpts from the book with my comments embedded:

I was still living in the post 9/11 world until this book came along. ‘I don’t think we’re post anything anymore – I think we’re pre-something totally new “, said David Rothkopf, the energy consultant, in the book and I agree. I think we are pre to a staggering disaster the mankind has every encountered. I think we are pre to finding a way out of the monumental environmental challenge that lies ahead of us

Friedman talks about what happens if everybody lives like the materialistic, consumption based American lifestyle (calling them ‘carbon copies’ in the book). What happens if the current 1 billion population living the American lifestyle increase to 2 billion or 3 billion? Simple answer – the planet will get hot !

In a world that is hot – a world that is more and more affected by global warming – guess who among us is going to suffer the most? It will be the people who caused it the least – the poorest people in the world, who have no electricity, no cars and no power plants and virtually no factories to emit CO2 into the atmosphere. The developing and the underdeveloped will be hardest hit

An Egyptian Cabinet minister remarked ‘It is like the developed world ate all the hors d’oeuvres, all the entrees and all the desserts and then invited the developing world for a little coffee” and asked us to split the whole bill. With US being 5% of the world’s population emits 25% of world’s green house gas emissions. When the time comes (it is already here) all will have to spilt the bill and this will muddy the international waters further more.

‘We Americans are in no position to lecture anyone’ says Friedman ‘ But we are in a position to know better…..if we Americans do not redefine what an American middle class lifestyle is , we will need to colonize three more planets. Because we are going to make this planet so hot and strip it so bare of resources that, nobody including us will be able to live like Americans one day‘ America is on the driver’s seat of the environmental pollution bus. Will it be in the driver’s seat of the environmental solution bus? So far it doesn’t seem like it.


To be continued in Part II

Shantaram

I picked up Shantaram, during the last month of my pregnancy. It was a very good pre-labor pregnancy stress reliever. It helped me relax and kept my anxiety at bay.

Well, Shantaram is an awe-inspiring novel of epic proportions. It’s an adventurous journey of an international fugitive, ignorantly seeking inner peace, after wronging his wife, daughter and the society. Semi-autobiographical in nature, one has to appreciate the perseverance of the author, Gregory Roberts, in writing this book. He first wrote the book in prison, which was destroyed. A subsequent one was also destroyed in jail. He wrote the book, once again, when he got out of prison

Most of the story is set in Bombay, India, thus showing Bombay in a new light. I promised myself to visit Bombay on my next Vacation. I’ll definitely drop by Leopold for a pint of beer. Who knows, I might bump into author himself. I read he still spends some time in Bombay and when he’s in Bombay he comes to Leopold.

The protagonist, Shataram, escapes from a maximum-security prison in New Zealand and comes to Bombay with a fake passport. He spends some time in a remote village, where he gets the name “Shantaram”. Running short of cash, he successfully procures some space in a slum, with the help of his friend Prabhakar. He treats the slum residents for minor illness with his first aid skills, while using the medical supplies obtained from the leper’s colony. He builds quiet a reputation in the slum,which kinda helps him stay in Bombay without proper Visa. He works day and night during the cholera outbreak which brings him closer to his girl friend. The cholera episode seems to me like an honest,but fruitless effort to redeem himself.

After a short stint in Arthur rd prison, he comes in close contact with bombay’s underground mafia don, Khader bhai, who he see’s as a father figure and eventually starts working for him. As the story unfolds he’s tricked by his American girlfriend and Khader bhai, to embark on a dangerous journey to war torn Afghanistan. It’s amazing how he comes out alive from that hell-hole.

It’s evident throughout the novel that Shataram has a flair for inviting trouble. Quiet a paradox to his given name “Shantaram”
The novel ,sometimes gets philosophical. It has lot of interesting quotes some of which are on Ashok Karnia’s blog.

The book is being made into a movie and is directed by Mira Nair with Johnny Depp playing the lead role and Amithab Bachan is cast as the Mafia Don.

A tree grows in Brooklyn

Our Book club met for the second time on 7th Nov in Sharon's house to discuss "A tree grows in Brooklyn". Sharon, Victoria, Elena & I were present. Sharon, the Tea connoisseur, served us pizza and some really good tea.

We started off discussing how different our book covers looked. All of us had different edition of the book. V’s book was the best as it contained images. So we started flipping her book. We pointed out the dickey, saw the big Christmas tree being thrown at Francie and Neely. The tree was way bigger than I had imagined. We were also able to lookup the “tree of heaven”. I did want to see how the spats looked on Neely, that made brooklynites laugh at him. But there were no pictures of the spats.

We discussed how strong the Rommely family women were. The author described them as “Made of invisible steel”. If not for Katie, that family would have fallen apart.

Johnny is a very charming person and an immaculate dresser. He tried hard to impress Katie, like when he took kids fishing, but luck was never on his side. Life seemed to fall apart after the arrival of Francie, made worse by Neely’s arrival. The news of Laurie just pushed him to the edge, resulting in his death. Betty doesn’t send a message to the reader anywhere that Johnny was an irresponsible father. He was not perfect like Katie, but he was no doubt a good father. There are numerous incidents that demonstrate that he’s good father. The most touching of all is the bouquet Francie receives from Sissy on the graduation night, as requested and paid by Johnny. What pushed Johnny to the edge? V pointed out the upbringing of Johnny, the death pillow, which in itself spoke volumes.

Then came the topic of why Katie and Johnny decided to ban Sissy from visiting them. I for one believed it might have been the cigarettes, where as Sharon and Victoria guessed it as condom. After reading out the passage aloud, we came to an agreement that it indeed was a condom.

The lighter part of the novel was when the author talks about Sissy and the Flittmans. The episode at school, when sissy learns that Francie was wetting her pants at school, just showed how comfortable and confident Sissy was about her sexuality. The horse episode where it falls in love with Eve is very comical.

Betty has skillfully laid out the beginnings of Francie’s writing. If not for Katie and the teacher, Francie could have grown up to be pathological liar.

V pointed out that the author was never offensive or opinionated about the Johnny’s alcoholism or Sissy’s promiscuity.

The night went on with great insights from V, which I don’t completely recall. All in all it was a good discussion and we were running out of time.

We are reading “Funny in Parsi” for our next meeting as suggested by S.