The second was to create on the internet in a blog form a space for conversation, questions, and contributions from anyone–a participatory network. As I contemplate what happened in the more than one hundred posts and three hundred comments with the site visited by an average of 3000 people a day, a number of new questions have formed:

what is the nature of participation on the internet?

On blogs or other forms of online conversation, people don’t seem to be talking to each other, but instead to the network as a whole. So do the conversational contributions remain as individual data bits linked to a larger community, without a direct relational experience of person to person?

how does conversation and pooled research create change?

does a conversation that is about climate, a phenomenon intimately linked to place, need to be located in a physical place, and take into account the context of that place in order to become more than generalized abstractions?

how can this experience of research and networking be defined as an aesthetics?

these are just a few questions I am left with? if you have any others, please contribute them in the comments.

Many thanks to all the core authors and guest authors who generously gave of their time and expertise to this experiment. And thanks to Matt Shanley, code guru and collaborator.

the image is from the april stepitup07 rally on boston commons, my 5 year old son bridge holding up a sign with a pic of the Earth and the word hope

a whiteout on a glacier in Iceland

Cheers,
Matt

Another way of understanding the presence of gift economies—which dwell like ghosts in the commercial machine—is in the sense of a public commons. A commons, of course, is anything like the streets over which we drive, the skies through which we pilot airplanes, or the public parks or beaches on which we dally. A commons belongs to everyone and no one, and its use is controlled only by common consent. A commons describes resources like the body of ancient Music drawn on by composers and folk musicians alike, rather than the commodities, like “Happy Birthday to You,” for which ASCAP, 114 years after it was written, continues to collect a fee. Einstein’s theory of relativity is a commons. Writings in the public domain are a commons. Gossip about celebrities is a commons. The silence in a movie theater is a transitory commons, impossibly fragile, treasured by those who crave it, and constructed as a mutual gift by those who compose it.

The world of art and culture is a vast commons, one that is salted through with zones of utter commerce yet remains gloriously immune to any overall commodification. The closest resemblance is to the commons of a language: altered by every contributor, expanded by even the most passive user. That a language is a commons doesn’t mean that the community owns it; rather it belongs between people, possessed by no one, not even by society as a whole.

Nearly any commons, though, can be encroached upon, partitioned, enclosed. The American commons include tangible assets such as public forests and minerals, intangible wealth such as copyrights and patents, critical infrastructures such as the internet and government research, and cultural resources such as the broadcast airwaves and public spaces. They include resources we’ve paid for as taxpayers and inherited from previous generations. They’re not just an inventory of marketable assets; they’re social institutions and cultural traditions that define us as Americans and enliven us as human beings. Some invasions of the commons are sanctioned because we can no longer muster a spirited commitment to the public sector. The abuse goes unnoticed because the theft of the commons is seen in glimpses, not in panorama. We may occasionally see a former wetland paved; we may hear about the breakthrough cancer drug that tax dollars helped develop, the rights to which pharmaceutical companies acquired for a song. The larger movement goes too much unremarked. The notion of a commons of cultural materials goes more or less unnamed.

Honoring the commons is not a matter of moral exhortation. It is a practical necessity. We in Western society are going through a period of intensifying belief in private ownership, to the detriment of the public good. We have to remain constantly vigilant to prevent raids by those who would selfishly exploit our common heritage for their private gain. Such raids on our natural resources are not examples of enterprise and initiative. They are attempts to take from all the people just for the benefit of a few.

Jonathan Lethem

Tim O’Reilly has a recent post about energy issues making it onto what he calls the “alpha geek radar”. I think another way of saying this might be that more and more people are having conversations like ours. He says, “It’s really interesting the way ideas spread and catch on, and suddenly get on everyone’s radar at the same time. It makes me think of Danny Hillis’ definition of global intelligence: ‘It’s that which decided that decaf coffeepots should be orange.’”

I would like to suggest we ask if a policy of replacing liquid fossil fuels for transportation with ANY form of ethanol makes any sense at all? Does this strategy yield the greatest degree of energy independence?

Consider, even cellulosic ethanol at 5:1 net energy will be burned in an I.C.E. with only 30% efficiency. As a result, the true net energy of the ethanol I.C.E. system is a mere 1.5:1

Given that buildings are the source of 48% of climate changing gases, perhaps we should look at a displacement strategy. That is, if we use solid biofuels for space conditioning we can re-allocate the displaced fossil fuels to transportation.

Our grass-based pellet fuels have a net energy of 14:1 and are combusted in systems with at least an 83% efficiency [USDA FS & PFI data]. As a result, the true net energy of grass fueled space conditioning is on the order of 11.6:1. This is a 673% increase in net energy of the system compared to ethanol.

Clearly a displacement strategy will yield much better returns on investment on many
levels.

Lastly, consider the disastrous impact of the $6.60 per million BTU ethanol subsidy on the Ag commodities market. This market had been relatively stable since 1996. Today, thanks to the ethanol mania, it is explosively volatile. Soy beans are heading for a 19 year high — perhaps as high as $12 per bushel.

If my company got the same subsidy per million btu produced as ethanol gets today, I could sell my fuel at a very nice profit for $70 per ton. This would provide space conditioning energy for the equivalent of 60 cents per gallon #2 oil. Think you might find that price attractive?

Why are we allowing the government to pick winners and losers with the grossly unfair
subsidy that is limited ethanol? There are many biofuels. Why not treat them all
equally? I thought the idea was to create a level playing field and let the market decide? Silly me. The ethanol subsidy is a heavy duty reality distortion field that is badly corrupting the market place. We should correct this situation.

Very curious.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Jock

This is a photo I took in April of 2004 in Resolute Bay. I was there with the film crew for our NOVA show, and they wanted the iceberg as a backdrop for their interview with Roy “Fritz” Koerner. They’d had Koerner bring an ice core from the Greenland glacier from which he had just returned, and his protest that standing in front of bay-ice with a core from a glacier might be misleading was ignored. He certainly looked the part of an arctic personality, with a narrow, grizzled face that could have stood beside an old photograph of Amundsen. He remained remarkably cordial throughout his interview, despite the cold and the fact that the producer kept having him re-do his lines to hit the specific points she was looking for.

The next day, which was our last, I came out by myself on a skidoo, looking for this berg, but I never found it. The tracks of the last day had been blown away in the arid, icy wind (the day’s high temp was minus 20), and there was no ariadne’s thread to be followed through the ice labyrinth.

Strange to think that all this may someday be gone, that Resolute Bay might be ice-free most of the year, and a berg of this sort melted long before it ever reached it. People ask me what it was like, how terrible the cold must have been, how isolated to be at a spot hundreds of miles from the nearest human settlement. I tell thim it was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.

Another recent conversation struck me and that deals with kids and science and parents and science. I started Windows Around the World so that I could virtually bring children with me or to other parts of the world and to let them see what it looks like and in places and talk with people that live there. As an oceanographer, one thing I have been very grateful about is how much I have gotten to travel and see the world. As a parent this has been extremely hard as it constantly divides us. I think science needs to become more inclusive and less exclusive both with regards to the public and to families. Whenever I have brought my children with me on a trip I find that I end of seeing and exploring something I never would have without them as they are bringing “new eyes” to the field. By this I means eyes that aren’t use to an area and eyes that aren’t blinded by “knowledge” or a work plan.

Climate commons has brought together people and discussions to find common grounds but I have found the most thought provoking things in uncommon ground. I like this conversation as it has brought so much diversity to the talk about climate change and the Arctic.

The attached images show light in the arctic throughout the year.

This program offers tools, training & materials for urban dwellers to participate in a city-wide transformation of underutilized backyards into productive growing spaces.

The project draws from the historical model of the 1940’s American Victory garden program to provide a basis for developing urban agriculture as a viable form of sustainable food practice in the city.

See the Video

a public sphere in which community values are expressed

a collaborative working space

distributed problem solving

a public library

an invisible college

a space for community owned assets

a piece of land over which other people—often neighbouring landowners—could exercise one of a number of traditional rights, such as allowing their cattle to graze upon it

any sets of resources that a community recognizes as being accessible to any member of that community

the tangible and intangible aspects of the environment that no-one owns but everybody enjoys

shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest

something that is used together, always changes but remains one

a shared social-ecological system

This project lies within a few different commons: an environmental commons (our environmental heritage - planet, water, air, biodiversity, and genetic variability), a Knowledge commons (knowledge incubated and maintained through social communities), a cultural commons, a science commons, and a technology commons. Each of these communities creates enclosures around their resources, and a project like Climate commons seeks to create porous networks between these different commons.