The NOAA oceanographer Gregory C. Johnson summarized the IPCC report in a very special way. You can see the result on Sightline Daily. Anna Fahey has a nice introductory text. She writes:
What if we could communicate the essence of (the IPCC and the summary for policy makers) in plain language and pictures? Well, that’s just what one Northwest oceanographer has done. He’s distilled the entire report into 19 illustrated haiku.
The result is stunning, sobering, and brilliant. It’s poetry. It’s a work of art. But it doubles as clear, concise, powerful talking points and a compelling visual guide.
Well, judge for yourself!
The haiku and paintings are the result of an involuntary break from work:
How did it come about? Housebound with a rotten cold one recent weekend, Greg Johnson found himself paring his key takeaways from the IPCC report into haiku. He finds that the constraints of the form focus his thoughts (He told me that he posts exclusively in haiku on Facebook.), and described the process as a sort of meditation. He never intended to share these “IPCC” poems.
Fahey suggests that he didn't actually write the haiku; instead, "he found himself paring" the IPCC report into haiku. Maybe this "spiritual" moment marks the transition from science to haiku:
Therein lies the beauty; stripped of the jargon and unfathomably large numbers, the limitations and the scales of confidence that confound and distract us laypeople, it is an arresting and informative entree into the science— not, of course, a substitute for the full report.
I like the idea of genre hopping, from science to haiku - both are very stringent forms. Maybe I should fold a booklet, following the instructions on the website. Or maybe not. This one is for Eduardo:
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2 comments:
What a strike for an ethnologist!
Werner, your collection of silly contributions is steadily growing.
"... distilled the entire report into 19 illustrated haiku. The result is stunning, sobering, and brilliant. It’s poetry. It’s a work of art. But it doubles as clear, concise, powerful talking points and a compelling visual guide."
"process as a sort of meditation"
"spiritual moment"
"an arresting and informative entree into the science"
"Ice melts, oceans heat and rise, air warmes ..."
"Coasts floss, air moistens, salt pattern shift, carbon sours oceans"
"More heavy rains fall"
"Ice sheets melt worldwide, speed increasing. Sea ice, snow retreat"
etc. etc.
Greg Johnson's laughable "poems" replace any useless scientific debate by far.
(Woher soll ich wissen, was ich denke, bevor ich höre, was ich sage)
Welcome to "genre hopping"
K. Lauer
K. Lauer,
thanks for letting me know that my contributions are silly and the haiku are laughable. You seem to be a man of good taste, and who doesn't have to argue. But I am glad to see that you are able to copy faultlessly lines from my post: as lovers of Japanese art know, copying the great masters is the beginning of all true art -:)
I don't know what you think anthropologists should do; for me, these haiku from Greg Johnson are a document that is worth to be considered. It is not my business to judge the quality of the art; my interest is in understanding the personal approach of scientists to their object of work; they deal with a delicate matter all the time, and from many conversations with scientists I know that there often is a stark contrast between the insistence on "facts" and "science" on the one hand, and strong personal feelings and commitments on the other.
What I am interested in is how other climate scientists judge these summaries - do they reflect correctly the content of the individual chapters of the IPCC?
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