Leaning in - Circle of Concern, Effectiveness and Understanding

By Wayne Brown

 This relates to Covey's advice along these lines. We need to channel our energies to:

  • Things that concern us. Don't waste energy "renting yourself out" or giving in to "moral outrage";
  • Things where we can make a difference;
  • Things we understand.
What's new in this post is the last item: things we understand. This aligns with another Covey dictum:

Seek first to understand

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Panic Part 6 - The IPCC Summary for Policymakers

By Wayne Brown
Image
Love it or hate it, the discussion revolves around this report Bottom line: I accept the IPCC report as a kind of "hub" around which my view of climate issues must turn. It is important to understand what it is saying, along with its limitations. Legions of cherry pickers have descended on this report - many to raise alarm, many to rebut, many to blow smoke over it. It is not difficult for a reasonably intelligent person to read the report itself, especially to examine the baskets of cherries emerging from the forest. Generally speaking, I have found critics of the report to be highly misleading. To call the report "alarmist" is perhaps simply to admit that there is no shortage of worrying facts in the report. For example, the frequently cited concern of the "alarmists" - namely sea-level rise - is completely well documented. To me, the "let them drown" response at COP26 forms the basis of my assumption that the politicians of the world will not...
Read more

A Challenge to the "Settled Science" Meme

By Wayne Brown
Image
I've read at least a dozen books on the climate issue in the last month. This is the best. Koonin is not just another "skeptic." His approach to the matter rises above "controversy" and depends on evidence. Yet, he acknowledges where the panic is coming from. A lecture by Koonin covers much of the key material and provides color versions of the slides, which are black and white in the book. Another interview, without the slides, is here . In reading IPCC reports, it's evident that the "summaries" don't "summarize" the actual science. The ultimate summary, the speech by the head of the IPCC , bristles with inaccuracies and has no message beyond panic. As a senior climate scientist, Koonin provides some startling stories of the "blow-back" he gets by simply asking for an independent review of IPCC conclusions. In fact, there was a brief attempt to cripple such a review by denying federal funds to any study that challenged t...
Read more

The Carbon Offset Hoax

By Wayne Brown
Image
  Carbon Offsets Explained to the Kiddies (or " Pickle #4") John Oliver presents a funny but true overview of "Carbon Offsets" here . As he points out, the whole thing is a hoax. But it's much worse than he says. It wouldn't work even if it were not a hoax. Planting a tree takes C02 out of the atmosphere as it makes roots, barks and leaves out of the carbon it "breathes in".  But this is a one-time thing . The "carbon offset" idea is based on the tonnage of vegetable matter created by the tree, not the entire life cycle of the tree. The Amazon forest emits more C02 than it absorbs on a net basis. So, for example, the " trillion tree campaign ", in theory, would offset a tremendous amount of carbon once . Next year, we'd need another trillion trees to be planted (or, absurdly, not cut down). As John Oliver puts it, we can't offset our way out of climate change. Even if we could, the idea is fundamentally flawed. In the ...
Read more