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https://www.theguardian.com/travel/gallery/2016/sep/06/abandoned-places-worlds-left-behind-in-pictures-kieron-connolly  
Abandoned places: the worlds we've left behind in pictures  

Kieron Connolly's new book of photographs of more than 100 once-busy and often elegant buildings gives an eerie idea of how the world might look if humankind disappeared. Here are 10 evocative, stylised images of nature reclaiming the manmade world

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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/5-11-september-2016/shortlist-revealed-illuminated-river-installation-competition/  
Shortlist revealed for £20 million River Thames permanent light installation  

The shortlist has been announced for a competition to design a permanent light installation on the River Thames.

The Illuminated River International Design Competition backed by the Mayor of London and the Rothschild Foundation will see one team develop concept lighting schemes for four famous London bridges: Westminster, Waterloo, London and Chelsea.

They will also design the masterplan for another 13 bridges between Albert and Tower Bridge.

The shortlist includes Adjaye Associates, AL_A, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Les Éclairagistes Associés, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, Sam Jacob Studio and Simon Hejidens.

Design, engineering and architecture firms

The six finalists have been whittled down from over 100 multidisciplinary teams, made up of 346 individual design, engineering and architecture firms.

Hannah Rothschild, chair of the Illuminated River Foundation, says: “The final shortlist represents an exhilarating mix of talent, inspiration and design approach. In November the finalists' concept designs will be unveiled, and London will have six possible visions of how the river and the city might be transformed after dark.”

After the concept designs go on display to the public in November, a jury made up ofsfigures including Lord Rothschild and Dame Julia Peyton-Jones will announce the overall winner in December.

The post Shortlist revealed for £20 million River Thames permanent light installation appeared first on Design Week.

 
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/5-11-september-2016/va-director-martin-roth-steps/  
V&A director Martin Roth steps down  

Director of the V&A Martin Roth, who set up the museum's design, architecture and digital department, has announced that he will stand down from his post this year.

61-year-old Roth leaves after five years doing the job, and was behind many of the museum's most successful exhibitions including David Bowie is and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.

His tenure also saw the museum's highest ever recorded visitor number of 3.3 million in 2014.

“We will have to get used to living without European funds”

Roth leaves his post after reportedly telling German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle in June that the UK's vote to leave the European Union was a “personal defeat”.

On how the decision would affect the cultural sector, he said: “On a national level, we will have to get used to living without European funds. That will especially affect research.”

He added that he felt affected “on an ideological level more than an economic one”, and that the phase of exiting the EU would be “horrible”.

The V&A was unable to confirm at the time of publishing whether Brexit played a part in Roth's decision to step down, but says there are “various reasons” for his departure.

“A significant contribution” to the museum's success

Roth, who was born in Germany, was previously president of the German Museums Association, and before that held director and curator roles at various science and history museums in Germany.

Roth himself says: “It's been an enormous privilege and tremendously exciting to lead this great museum…Our recent accolade as Art Fund Museum of the Year feels like the perfect moment to draw to a close my mission in London and hand over to a new director to take the V&A forward to an exciting future.”

He is set to step down this autumn, and the V&A's board of trustees is currently seeking a new director.

Nicholas Coleridge, chairman of the trustees of the V&A, adds: “Martin's tenure as director has been marked by a highly successful period of creativity, expansion and re-organisation of the V&A. He has made a significant contribution to the success of this museum.”

The post V&A director Martin Roth steps down appeared first on Design Week.

 
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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Farthur-molella%2F1900-worlds-fair-tech_b_11798128.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
The 1900 World's Fair Helped Shape How We Talk About Tech Today  
Debates rage today about the risks and benefits of modern technology -- driverless cars, robots and drones in warfare and commerce, surgery by robotic rather than human hands, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and genetic manipulation of food, organisms and even human beings.

The National Institutes of Health recently announced that it plans to end the ban on funding research for part-human, part-animal embryos, raising urgent ethical questions like: What if this produces an animal with a partly human brain?

But the origins of these very modern concerns date back more than a century, with lively discussions about "modernization" underway as early as the world's fair in Paris in 1900. One especially compelling, yet largely forgotten, analysis was penned by Henry Adams, the son of a congressman and diplomat, descendant of two U.S. presidents, a highly regarded historian and a conflicted technology enthusiast. His reflections were contained in his posthumously published autobiography, "The Education of Henry Adams."

What if this produces an animal with a partly human brain?

In a chapter titled "The Dynamo and the Virgin," he ponders the implications of the machine age, expressing deep concern over what he sees as a dangerous clash between the seductive grandeur of modern science and technology -- what he calls "the Dynamo" -- and the essential undergirding of humanity, religion and traditional values, which he christens "the Virgin."

More introspective than descriptive, "The Education of Henry Adams" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1919. It tops the Modern Library's list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century, outranking Booker T. Washington's "Up From Slavery," Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" and Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."

Today, Adams's work is not nearly as widely known as those, but not for lack of merit and timeliness. Indeed, one could argue that it is even more relevant today than it was when it was written.







After studying exhibitions on art, science and technology at the world's fair in Paris, Adams concluded that -- despite his own appreciation of the merits of "progress" -- Americans were too ready to embrace new technology at the cost of traditional values. This raised for him a disquieting question for the dawning century: Will the human spirit survive the new age of the machine?

Adams was anxious that American culture was about to take a fateful turn, sacrificing traditional values on the altar of technology. Prompting his reflections was a visit to the Hall of Electrical Machines. He fixated in particular on one of the gigantic dynamos on display. Its purpose was beside the point. Adams's focus -- and his fear -- centered on its size and mechanism, its "huge wheel, revolving within arm's-length at some vertiginous speed" while making hardly a sound. Its workings, he wrote, were an unfathomable but seductive mystery -- one that left him in awe. The dynamo became for him the incarnation of modernity and a symbol of the "revolution of 1900" -- interwoven revolutions in science and technology that ushered in, most impressively, the new age of electricity, along with automated production, the car and the airplane.

And then there was the art. Adams contrasted the dynamo with the figure of the Virgin, which he suggested was the central inspiration behind much of what he had viewed in the fair's acclaimed art pavilions. The Virgin became his symbol for Christian tradition and, equated by Adams to the Roman mythological Venus, the female force in general. Looking to the future, he wondered if the god of technology, the dynamo's apotheosis, was on the verge of replacing, as he put it, the church and the cross. Adams was in fact seeking a middle ground between religion and science.

Will the human spirit survive the new age of the machine?

Adams's guide through the Hall of Electrical Machines was a leading American scientist, S. P. Langley, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Although holding Langley in the highest esteem, he wrote of being puzzled and a bit disturbed by the scientist's laser-like focus on machines and forces, to the exclusion of the art displays and all else that was non-scientific at the fair. "Langley," he wrote, "with the ease of a great master of experiment, threw out of the field every exhibit that did not reveal a new application of force, and naturally threw out, to begin with, almost the whole art exhibit."

Adams, writing in the third person about his experiences, described how Langley taught him to appreciate, if not really understand, recent discoveries in radioactivity, radio and electricity. "[Adams] wrapped himself in vibrations and rays which were new, and he would have hugged Marconi and Branly [the inventor of the Branly coherer, one of the earliest radio wave detectors] had he met them, as he hugged the dynamo."

Long fascinated by modern physics, Adams later experimented with applying physical theories to the theory of human history, even in the face of skeptical feedback from scientist friends. But it was the dynamo that excited his strongest reactions at the Paris fair: "As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the 40-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross ... Before the end, one began to pray to it."







Indeed, Adams later did pray to it, composing a poetic tribute, "Prayer to the Dynamo: Mysterious Power! Gentle Friend! Despotic Master! Tireless Force!" he wrote, with more than a hint of ambivalence.

The rush of discoveries in science and technology sometimes left him longing for the solace of tradition, security and unity that he associated with medieval society and the church. That people who now seemed to be turning away from the Virgin worried him, for he believed it could mean the end of the great artistic traditions that were propelled by the power of Christian faith, "the highest energy ever known to man," surpassing even the power of the steam engine and the dynamo.

Adams noted that in Europe, the "force of the Virgin was still felt at Lourdes and seemed to be as potent as X-rays," while "in America, neither Venus nor Virgin ever had value as force." Despite his personal religious skepticism (he was attracted to religion but remained agnostic, never really reconciling the truths of science and religious faith), he regretted that his countrymen were apparently throwing in their lot with the machine worshippers.

'Before the end, one began to pray to it.'

So, what does Adams have to say to us today as we confront the dilemmas of our own technological revolution? Adams was enthusiastic about modern science and technology -- today we might refer to him as an early adopter -- but he remained an essentially 19th century man, mindful of the challenges to society posed by 20th century technology. His hope was that dynamo and Virgin would ultimately join together in support of both our spiritual and material lives.

To be sure, we no longer speak of dynamos and Virgins, much less of "hugging dynamos." Yet, in many ways, Adams was extraordinarily prescient. With today's advances in artificial intelligence and genetic manipulation, we face the very existential crisis that Adams foresaw.

Precisely 100 years after Adams toured the Paris Exposition of 1900, Bill Joy, the co-founder and former chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, wrote his now famous essay in Wired magazine, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," projecting a dystopian future in which "our most powerful 21st-century technologies -- robotics, genetic engineering and nanotech -- are threatening to make humans an endangered species." Adams was not half so gloomy as Joy. From the vantage of the revolution of 1900, he welcomed our technological future, but with a crucial caveat: make sure our technology has a soul, not in the sense of superseding us as sentient human beings, but of living in spiritual harmony with our better selves.

This was produced by Zocalo Public Square.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2016/sep/06/steve-bells-if-supernormal-owen-smiths-huge-left-wing  
Steve Bell's If ... Supernormal Owen Smith's huge left wing  
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Steve Bell on Theresa May, Brexit pledges and G20 cartoon  
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/5-11-september-2016/des/  
Deliveroo unveils new kangaroo as part of rebrand  

DesignStudio has rebranded food delivery service Deliveroo, introducing a new kangaroo character while overhauling typography and staff uniforms.

Deliveroo was founded in 2013 in London and has since expanded to 12 countries and more than 100 cities.

Old logo designed by friends

The original logo was designed by friends of Deliveroo co-founder Will Shu, who says that it was necessary to rebrand following the rapid expansion of the company as the identity now needs to work a lot harder.

Shu says that when Deliveroo started out he did the deliveries and his co-founder and childhood friend Greg Orlowski handled the tech and development.

“Our customers were my ex ­colleagues and our office was my flat. Back then, our logo was something that a couple of friends drew” says Shu.

The original brand was designed with the Deliveroo website, rider boxes and business cards in mind. Since then advertising campaigns have been launched and the most visible part of the brand has become the thousands of riders who work for the company.

DesignStudio rode Deliveroo bikes

After a pitch process DesignStudio was selected and in its research phase took part in customer service shifts, became riders and according to Deliveroo's in-house design team “ate enough to get a sense of what restaurant delivery really means.”

DesignStudio's semiotics analysis focused on what the Deliveroo logo meant in other cultures and countries while workshops across the business considered where staff could see the identity being used in the future.

A range of different routes were initially worked on, some of which kept the kangaroo, while others looked for a new direction. As part of the wider process it was established that the kangaroo was loved both internally and externally, according to Deliveroo's in-house design team.

A new “bold and impactful kangaroo” has been developed and made deliberately angular so that it can dovetail with a broader graphics system across other touchpoints such as the website and rider kits.

“A symbol recognised as a character”

DesignStudio executive strategic creative director James Hurst says: “We have created a symbol that can be recognised as a character the roo irrespective of what language you speak while the minimalist aesthetic reduces established cultural associations that might be positive in one culture but controversial in another.

“This is a mark that Deliveroo will imbue with meaning over the next few years.”

The rider kit has been designed with rider safety in mind, says Deliveroo, and developed in consultation with road safety organisation Brake and the riders themselves so they feel happy wearing it.

There is hyperreflective material on the waist, shoulders and wrists of jackets to demonstrate the movement of riders at night while the rest of the material has been designed to be visible by day.

Meanwhile riders in warm climates wanted to be cool and riders in cold climates wanted to be warm and protected from the elements so this has all been accounted for with a range of clothing.

Typographic direction

Typography also takes its cue from the angular “roo”, particularly headlines which use a customised version of Stratos, “which echoes the angles and shape within the symbol and is brimming with personality for bold punchy headlines,” says Hurst.

He adds: “Its the same type used across the rider jackets and while its been worked into, is also the basis for the wordmark.”

A photography style has been developed across the brand, which focuses on the colour and texture of food and this has been art directed to appear real, messy and up-close, according to Deliveroo.

A roll out begins this Friday and Hurst says: “There is much more still to come.”

The post Deliveroo unveils new kangaroo as part of rebrand appeared first on Design Week.

 
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/01/reading-prison-reopen-art-and-tours-national-trust-jail-oscar-wilde  
Walk on the Wilde side: Reading prison to reopen for art and tours  

Artists, poets, writers and National Trust join forces to show what incarceration was like in jail that held Oscar Wilde

Reading Gaol, made infamous worldwide by the grim ballad written by its most famous prisoner, Oscar Wilde, closed its doors to prisoners in 2013. Now, for the first time in almost two centuries, it will reopen to outsiders.

They will be welcomed with installations by artists, readings by poets and writers including De Profundis, the bitterly moving letter Wilde wrote from the jail, one page at a time on the single piece of paper he was allowed each day and offered tours into the darkest and most feared part of the compound, the underground punishment cells where the prisoners were held for days in complete darkness and silence. It has all been organised by the arts producers Artangel and the National Trust.

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/06/plantlife-jessica-albarn-creation-meadow-artwork  
Plantlife: Jessica Albarn's meadow art  

At the family farm in Devon, artist Jessica Albarn has turned a sheep field into a study plot for her electric ink drawings of spiders, crickets and bumblebees

Crickets bounce, bees wobble, hoverflies dart and Jessica Albarn stands in the middle of her steep, sunny meadow and scrunches up her hands in delight. “Quite a bit of my work is about layers,” she says, crouching down to investigate the depth of the grass with her fingers. “It's about being able to get right in there and explore an area.”

Albarn is a visual artist best known for her beautifully detailed pencil drawings of spiders, bees, butterflies and other insects. Perhaps it is inevitable that peering through a microscope at dead insects in her London studio led her to the lanes of south Devon to create a meadow, and capture some of its richness in a series of artistic adventures.

We've wired up these electric ink drawings put your hand neart and it activates the sound

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http://www.designboom.com/art/inside-a-rainbow-liz-west-immersive-color-landscape-bristol-biennial-09-06-2016/  
step inside a rainbow with liz west's immersive color landscape  

'our color' drenches viewers in the spectrum and surrounds them in a vibrant, prismatic expanse.

The post step inside a rainbow with liz west's immersive color landscape appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
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http://www.designboom.com/art/burning-man-art-installations-2016-round-up-09-05-2016/  
burning man art installations: a look at black rock city's fiery finish  

as burning man officially comes to a close, we take a look at some of the most mind-bending installations and architectural artworks to land on the playa this year.

The post burning man art installations: a look at black rock city's fiery finish appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/05/inside-review-a-momentous-artangel-project  
Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison review a star-studded tribute to Oscar Wilde  

HM Reading prison
Ai Weiwei and Steve McQueen are among the artists doing time at the prison where Wilde was an inmate. Our critic goes behind bars at Artangel's new show

• Nan Goldin: why I'm making art in Oscar Wilde's cell

Oscar and Bosie are sharing a cell. Their painted portraits hang on a wall spotted with graffiti, the tags and love hearts left by the young offenders who languished here before Reading prison, built in 1844, finally closed in 2013. Painter Marlene Dumas amplifies Lord Alfred Douglas's sly and shifty gaze, as he looks out of the corner of his eye towards an imperious and self-possessed Wilde. There is an enormous tension between the two portraits. This is more than just proximity.

The prison itself, with its echoing walkways and wings, suicide netting on its open stairwells, its rows of closed doors and cells, is also much more than just a setting for the artists and writers banged up in Artangel's latest project, Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison.

Related: Oscar Wilde's De Profundis one of the greatest love letters ever written

The larkish 'Room Service', scribbled by a prisoner beside a cell's emergency bell, is as redolent as any art

Related: Nan Goldin in Reading gaol: why I'm making art in Oscar Wilde's cell

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/05/inside-review-a-momentous-artangel-project  
Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison review a star-studded tribute to Oscar Wilde  

HM Reading prison
Ai Weiwei and Steve McQueen are among the artists doing time at the prison where Wilde was an inmate. Our critic goes behind bars at Artangel's new show

• Nan Goldin: why I'm making art in Oscar Wilde's cell

Oscar and Bosie are sharing a cell. Their painted portraits hang on a wall spotted with graffiti, the tags and love hearts left by the young offenders who languished here before Reading prison, built in 1844, finally closed in 2013. Painter Marlene Dumas amplifies Lord Alfred Douglas's sly and shifty gaze, as he looks out of the corner of his eye towards an imperious and self-possessed Wilde. There is an enormous tension between the two portraits. This is more than just proximity.

The prison itself, with its echoing walkways and wings, suicide netting on its open stairwells, its rows of closed doors and cells, is also much more than just a setting for the artists and writers banged up in Artangel's latest project, Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison.

Related: Oscar Wilde's De Profundis one of the greatest love letters ever written

The larkish 'Room Service', scribbled by a prisoner beside a cell's emergency bell, is as redolent as any art

Related: Nan Goldin in Reading gaol: why I'm making art in Oscar Wilde's cell

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/sep/05/kanye-west-famous-artist-overnight  
So, Kanye West has become a Famous artist overnight? Props to him  

Displayed in a gallery for two days, an automaton from the rapper's latest video is suddenly a $4m collector's item. Just don't call the work on show a sculpture

Is it or is it not on sale for $4m? In case it's not obvious, I'm talking about Kanye West's “sculpture” Famous. According to which reports you believe, his lineup of lifelike, automated models of celebrities in bed together is either going for a lot of money, or was never up for grabs in the first place. Perhaps the “creator” himself can't decide. That's if Kanye moulded these figures. Did he really shape that silicone or did he just pay for it?

Famous, originally made for the video of West's song of the same name, has been exhibited in an “exclusive” two-day exhibition at the Los Angeles gallery, Blum and Poe thus becoming art. Because it's in a gallery, it has to be, right? Cue the inevitable speculation that art inspires in our lofty culture: how much is it worth? Remarkably, what little of the media coverage has asked is whether Famous is a work of art (let alone a good or bad one) or in what sense West is a visual artist.

Related: Is Kanye West hip-hop's greatest cubist?

Related: Larger than life: Duane Hanson's hyperreal sculptures in pictures

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@POTUS at G20 summit, @FBI cites Russia in Arizona voter reg. hack, pro democracy wins in Hong Kong, and endangered species, #IntheNewsToday 
http://ifttt.com/missing_link?1473174877 

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US one sheet for ANTIBIRTH (Danny Perez, USA, 2016)Designers:...  

US one sheet for ANTIBIRTH (Danny Perez, USA, 2016)

Designers: Webuyyourkids

Poster source: IMPAwards

 
culture  

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160905114511.htm  
Earth's carbon points to planetary smashup  
Research suggests that virtually all of Earth's life-giving carbon could have come from a collision about 4.4 billion years ago between Earth and an embryonic planet similar to Mercury.  
astronomy  

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160905064829.htm  
First gravitational waves form after 10 million years  
If two galaxies collide, the merging of their central black holes triggers gravitational waves, which ripple throughout space. An international research team has now calculated that this occurs around 10 million years after the two galaxies merge -- much faster than previously assumed.  
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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2F500px.com%2Fphoto%2F171325433%2Fwindswept-by-tj-drysdale&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Windswept by TJ Drysdale  

Windswept by TJ Drysdale

Learn my editing techniques! www.tjdrysdale.com/finearttutorial In this 1hr tutorial, I'll discuss some of the tips and tricks I've discovered in Photoshop to give photos a cinematic/artistic feel! You won't be disappointed!

TJ Drysdale: Photos

 
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Asian small-clawed otter  

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Cute little fella :)
Taken at the Singapore Zoo

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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fsteven-cohen%2Fclimate-denial-and-sea-le_b_11873484.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Climate Denial and Sea Level Rise  
Like those who do not think the Holocaust took place, men landed on the moon, or President Obama is an American, there are equally deluded people who think that climate science is a hoax or some kind of left-wing conspiracy. As the New York Times reported last week, parts of Florida are already having 'sunny-day floods' due to the impact of sea level rise during some high tides. Last weekend I left my Long Island summer home early to return to the safety of Morningside Heights, a full 121 feet above sea level. The south shore of Long Island is no stranger to flooding, but where we once saw a 6-12 inch storm surge last weekend we saw a surge of 1-3 feet, from a storm that did not really come close to my summer home.

Scientists at Columbia's Earth Institute in our Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Center for Climate Systems Research, Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, and Center for International Earth Science Information Network have been studying each aspect of climate change for decades. They study tree rings, geology, soil sediments and arctic ice melts among many other forms of research to understand the human impact on climate change. They have analyzed historical data and have built models to project our possible climate future. The problem is real, and now the impacts have begun. The time for denial is over. But the political power of climate deniers continues.

The worldwide alarm over climate change was demonstrated last week when despite a great deal of disagreement on many issues, President Barack Obama and China's President Xi Jinping signed the Paris Climate Accord in a ceremony in Hangzhou, China. According to New York Times reporters Mark Landler and Jane Perlez:

At a ceremony in this picturesque lakefront city, the two leaders hailed the adoption of the Paris agreement as critical to bringing it into force worldwide. Though widely expected as the next step in the legal process, the move could provide a boost to those who want to build momentum for further climate talks by bringing the December accord into effect as soon as possible. Countries accounting for 55 percent of the world's emissions must present formal ratification documents for that to happen, and together, China and the United States generate nearly 40 percent of the world's emissions.

In the United States, our federal legal and political system represents places as well as people. We are very good at responding to local problems that can be seen, touched and smelled. Toxics, air pollution and water pollution are obvious and undeniable and much easier to act on. Climate change is a global problem that is caused everywhere and much of the impact will take place in the future. But in an excellent report in last week's New York Times, Justin Gillis reported that some of the impacts of climate change have already started to affect some of our coastal cities. According to Gillis:

Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding -- often called "sunny-day flooding" -- along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too...Local governments, under pressure from annoyed citizens, are beginning to act. Elections are being won on promises to invest money to protect against flooding. Miami Beach is leading the way, increasing local fees to finance a $400 million plan that includes raising streets, installing pumps and elevating sea walls. In many of the worst-hit cities, mayors of both parties are sounding an alarm.

The need to adapt to the current impact of climate change is already obvious in many cities and work is already underway to make cities more resilient to extreme weather events. New York City has begun to implement a resiliency plan that will cost at least $20 billion over the next decade. My hope is that the need to adapt to current climate impacts will lead to the deep understanding needed to develop political support to mitigate climate change.

The path to political understanding is not always direct. We often require visible, direct impacts to delve deeper into an issue. To John and Robert Kennedy, civil rights initially concerned them because they were worried about losing the votes of southern white democrats. Then television brought us the images of African American peaceful protestors and bystanders being attacked by dogs and fire hoses. JFK thought more deeply on the evils of segregation and gave a live TV address defining civil rights as a moral issue. The mere presence of racism and segregation should have been enough to foster change, but it required a dramatic visible image to bring the point home. Visible local impacts are often a prerequisite for action in our political process.

Climate adaptation may well be the path to climate mitigation. You don't need to understand or agree with climate science or computer models to invest in infrastructure to reduce damage from extreme weather events. This is a little ironic. When scientists at Columbia's Earth Institute and throughout the world first started studying climate adaptation, some scientists and activists considered it a distraction from the more important work of preventing human induced climate change. Like many other political issues, dealing with immediate visible impacts can lead to an attack on the causes of the problems we are addressing. We may provide food stamps to prevent starvation, but then some people start to look at the causes of poverty. This leads to an emphasis on education and job opportunities. I think we are seeing this political dynamic with climate change as well.

If we are going to make the transition to a renewable resource based, sustainable economy we will need a sophisticated partnership between government and the private sector. That will need to be informed by an understanding of ecology, earth systems science, and climate science. When your streets keep getting flooded you first work to stop the flood, and then you ask: Why is this happening?

The ideology of denying climate science does not prevent investment in resiliency infrastructure, but does prevent an objective search for causes. Just as civil rights are still subject to political struggle, we can expect a long battle with climate deniers in the United States. Fortunately, climate denial is mainly an American problem, and in a global economy other nations matter a great deal.

The way around climate denial has been carved out by the Obama team: Use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. The next step will be to do the basic research needed to develop renewable energy technologies that will drive fossil fuels from the market place. Even climate deniers will buy energy that is cheaper but as reliable as fossil fuels. This R&D must include dramatic increases in funding for renewable energy technology research by our national labs and research universities, along with substantial tax breaks for companies bringing this technology to the market and for individuals who replace fossil fuels with renewables.

Climate denial is an ideology based on the fear of losing the benefits of our energy intensive economy. It builds on the fear that government will take away our SUVs and air conditioners. Taking climate denial on directly is necessary but futile. The end run is to make climate denial irrelevant. The key is energy efficiency, distributed generation through microgrids and smart grids, and renewable energy. These are realistic and feasible updates to our aging energy infrastructure. They are also a stimulator of employment and economic growth. If we are able to develop a more modern and cost effective energy system, climate denial and sea level rise should slowly recede into history.

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