Preparing for the Long-Term Future Appropriately

If you have at least a little compassion within you, the long-term future will be of considerable concern to you, at least if you are aware of the most relevant evidence.

How do you read landscapes?

How do you read landscape paintings?

How do you read landscape photography?

Reading is an interpretive process.  It is an art.  You are practicing that art at present.

You may associate reading and needlework with close-up studies rather than long-distant ones.  The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee regards all types of reading and needlework to be important study tools.

What do you know about research and development?

How do you usually read the future?

How do you define the near future and the far future?

How do you interpret the past, including the immediate past?

And how do you distinguish between fact and everything else?

What do you know about urban design?

What do you know about ideal cities?

What do you know about garden design, landscape design and landscape architecture?

What do you know about architecture more generally?

What do you know about sustainable development?

What do you know about asset price bubbles?

What do you know about construction-led economics, and politics?

What do you know about destruction-led economics, and politics?

What do you know about irresponsible lending practices?

What do you know about irresponsible borrowing practices?

How do you compare economic overheating with planetary overheating?

Perhaps you do not have enough information and experience with which to answer such questions accurately, and usefully.  There are obviously many problems to solve in the world, but where is it best to begin if not with accurate information and adequate experience?

What do you know about the design of health care systems, the design of education systems, the design of food production and distribution systems, the design of economic systems, and the design of political systems?

A landscape shows the surface of a situation, but what else is necessary to know if an adequate understanding is to be achieved?

What, for example, do you already know about the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee, and how do you know it?

The surface of a needlework is often very different indeed from the unseen part.  The same applies to landscapes, of course, and to watercourses, and to oceans.

How do you compare language interpretation with heritage interpretation?

How do you compare English landscape gardens with French landscape gardens and other designed landscapes?

How do you compare designed, or otherwise deliberately modified landscapes, with natural landscapes?

What do you know about the history of landscape architecture?

What do you know about landscape assessment, landscape engineering, landscape archaeology, landscape history, landscape detailing, landscape maintenance, landscape ecology, landscape connectivity and landscape limnology?

What do you know about landscape genetics, landscape genomics and landscape epidemiology?

What do you know about the philosophy of interpretation, including aesthetic interpretation?

What do you know about mathematical physics and the philosophy of space and time? 

How do you distinguish between logical interpretations and other interpretations?

What do you know about allegorical interpretations?

There are many aspects to landscaping, not all of which are particularly obvious.

Different people feel different emotions towards different landscapes, different weather and different images of landscapes.

How do you assess and interpret your own emotions and moods in various times and places, and when interacting with images from various times and places?

How do your emotions connect with your economic experiences and political experiences?

How do all your senses contribute to your various interpretations?

How do you feel when comparing one image with another and another and another and another and another and another?

What do you know about property cycles and property management and real estate economics and housing bubbles and the law of rent?

What do you know about non-performing loans and financial defaults?

What do you know about the credit cycle?

What do you know about climate risk and climate risk insurance?

What do you know about nature photography and naturescaping and ecoscaping and conservation photography and aerial photography and underwater photography?

How do you compare one landscape artist with another?

How do you prefer to compare one landscape painting with another?

What, if any, have been your experiences of landscape planning?

How do you prefer to assess possible uses of land?

What do you know about environmental issues and how to address them?

What do you know about economic issues and how to address them?

What do you know about historical geography?

What do you know about environmental history?

What do you know about the history of landscape planning?

What do you know about bioarchaeology?

Of course, the committee does not expect you to be an expert on every aspect of preparing for the future though a little acquaintance with every aspect is likely to be useful to you, and to everyone else.

How are you preparing for the future? 

How, for example, are you preparing for pestilence, war, famine and death?

Perhaps this is your first experience of the committee, or not as the case may be.

If you are seeking to assist the committee in its work, welcome.

Have you ever been regarded as the personification of air?

Have you ever inherited anything valuable?

Are you expecting to inherit anything valuable in the future?

Perhaps you are the heir to nothing of any value whatsoever, whether to yourself or to anyone else.

Do you usually associate inheritance with the transfer of ownership or the transfer of responsibilities?

 

 

Perhaps you are already quite well acquainted with the principles of intelligent urbanism, and with the principles of intelligent rural experiences.

What do you already know about sustainable cities, landscape urbanism, ecological urbanism, sustainable landscaping and sustainable landscape architecture?

How do you incorporate knowledge of sustainable agriculture and suitable cooking methods into your understanding of urban and rural landscapes?

How do you prefer to include political assessments in your analysis of possible future needs?

What do you know about boundaries in landscape history?

What do you know about Australian Aboriginal sacred sites?

What do you know about panoramic views of landscapes and the development of panoramic paintings?

How do you compare asset prices with ordinary prices in relation to price stability, societal stability, slope stability and soil stability?

How have you been assessing land development, land degradation and methods of erosion control?

Perhaps you regard yourself as a polymath.

What is your acquaintance with Mary Somerville?

If you are quite unfamiliar with our committee and its work, please catch up quickly.  We have much to do in the weeks ahead.

 

 

What are your views on the Doctrine of Uniformity?

What have you discovered about landscape mythology and the anthropology of landscape?

What have you discovered through your studies of geology and other branches of the Earth sciences?

Climatology is obviously one of the Earth sciences itself as well as being part of atmospheric science, regardless of who happens to be studying it, and where.

Perhaps you are more interested in the climates of other planets.

Perhaps you are more interested in stars other than the Sun.

What have you discovered about the history of the Earth, and how?

Perhaps you have read Theory of the Earth by James Hutton.

Perhaps you prefer viewing the past and the future through a kaleidoscope or crystal ball.

Perhaps you prefer to view the past through one sort of painting or another.

Perhaps you prefer to view the past through other objects and artifacts.

 


How carefully have you been considering environmental health recently, and how do you intend to do so in the future?

How have you been considering public health more generally?

Perhaps you prefer to reflect upon the past and future through poetry rather than through science.

Perhaps you prefer to think in terms of town planning and conservation.

Perhaps you prefer to think in terms of exploring nature and conserving it.

What do you know about conurbations and urban sprawl?

What do you know about physical geography and the contributions of Mary Somerville to the subject?

What do you know about the prior work of Alexander von Humboldt?

How have you attempted to understand climate variability and change?

 

 

How have you attempted to understand economic variability and change?

How have you attempted to understand human variability and social change?

What do you know about fossil records?

What do you know about the chronology of the universe and its future?

How have you examined the geological history of Earth?

How have you examined the evolutionary history of life? 

What do you know about cosmological epochs?

What do you know about the economics of climate change?

What do you know about bank reserves and money supplies? 

Perhaps you only value art in terms of money.

Perhaps you only value art in terms of destination paintings.

Quite a few of the most expensive, and famous, paintings are portraits, not landscapes.

What do you regard as picturesque, and why?

How do you place value on scenic viewpoints?

How do you compare the Old Town of Edinburgh with the New Town?

Perhaps you only value life in terms of money.

Perhaps you only value science in terms of money.

Perhaps you only value photographs in terms of money.

Perhaps you only value sculptures in terms of money. 

Perhaps you only value books and manuscripts in terms of money.

How do you assess the value of the world economy, and from whose point of view?

How do you assess the value of the Earth as a home?

What do you know about life on Earth during the Last Glacial Maximum?

What do you know about climate-related changes in sea level?

You are probably aware that civilisation, as a concept and as a practice, must be properly constituted and otherwise supported through quality legal documents, quality legal structures and quality practices associated with the rule of law, and the improvement of laws.

Do you usually associate quaternary possibilities with enlightened progress?   

Are you sure you can accurately assess returns on investments?

It is quite easy for most people with relatively comfortable lives to drop from affluence to poverty, with little to protect them from doing so, whether in urban areas or rural areas or in the relatively natural parts of the world.

Who is most protected from such difficulties and dangers, and who is not, and why?

How do you learn from history about such matters, and what do you learn, and what do you do with the information you gain?

What have you discovered about the Late Glacial Interstadial and the Younger Dryas?

What have you discovered about the zonal and meridional flow of fluids around the Earth, and how?

What do you know about fjords?

How have you attempted to understand the Last Glacial Period and its end?

How do you attempt to understand glaciers and their economic importance?

What do you know about the retreat of glaciers since 1850?

What do you know about carbon sinks, including the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC)?

What do you know about research findings published in 2021 about climate change?

What do you know about various important environmental issues of current concern to well-informed persons?

How do you know you are holding powerful people to account properly?

How, for example, are you investing in quaternary possibilities?

How are you investing in improved constitutions and other political necessities?

What is your acquaintance with the philosophical law of the excluded middle?

You may or may not be aware that investing in improved constitutions is directly associated with investing in the delights of adequately ethical compatibility.

What do you know about the political influence of petrochemicals and petrodollars?

What, if any, is your preferred approach to well-informed investing, and how imaginative and kind is that approach?

How imaginative and thoughtful is your approach towards investing in civility, and how do you know?

How do you think about waste and pollution in relation to good faith and bad faith?

How do you know you are capable of investing in good faith in preparation for the long-term future?

How do you usually compare arts with crafts?

Perhaps you associate the arts with entertainment and fans rather than conservation practices for the common good.
 
When, if at all, have you experienced a confusion of options and opinions?

What have been your experiences of the diffusion of innovations?

Perhaps you usually only consider innovation to relate to investing money.
 
What have been your contributions towards investing in intelligent frugality over the past twelve months, or even the past twelve years? 
 
How, if at all, do you intend to invest in intelligent frugality over the next twelve months, and possibly even over the next twelve years?
 
How old will you be in twelve years time, if you are still alive then?
 
How rich or poor will you be in the future, and how do you know?
 
You may regard twelve years as a long time, especially if you are quite young or quite old.
 
Yet you have already has more than twelve years to learn about, and from, the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee.
 
Are you already more than twelve years of age?
 
Regardless of your current age, how do you compare influences from one culture in another?
 
What have you discovered from famous depictions of the atmosphere?
 
What do you learn from images of agriculture at particular times and places?
 
What do you know about the Firth of Forth and the Forth Bridge?

What do you know about the Tay Bridge disaster? 

What do you know about The Ninth Wave by Ivan Aivazovsky?

What do you know about A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) by Samuel Johnson?

What do you know about The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785) by James Boswell?

What is your acquaintance with John Ruskin and his writings, including his views on the picturesque?

How do you compare the picturesque with the sublime and the beautiful?

What do you know about The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice by Ruskin?

What do you know about the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, and how did you gain that acquaintance?

What do you know about the Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A. D. 1803 (1874) by Dorothy Wordsworth?

There is much to learn from the documented past, and through rock formations and other records of times past.

What have you discovered through, and about, important collections of scientific writings?

What do you know about the type of painting known as world landscape?

What is your acquaintance with the writings of Walter Scott?

What is your acquaintance with Effie Gray?

What do you know about John Hope and the Hopetoun Blunder?

Perhaps you are not aware of political gaps in your preparations for the future.

How carefully are you investing in awareness, and how do you know?

What do you know about John Everett Millais and his portrait of John Ruskin?

How do you interpret history?

What do you know about the conservation and restoration of immovable cultural property, including through the Cockburn Association?

What do you know about the conservation and restoration of movable cultural property?

What do you know about the preservation of natural heritage?

What do you know about Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park?

The delegates of the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee have booked a self-catering, Scottish baronial, neo-Gothic castle in the national park as their COP26 base, as to be expected.  They are not expecting to encounter any Jacobitism though they are obviously well prepared for anything.

The committee is never clannish.  Nor does it ever use shock tactics in its quest for a civilised atmosphere.

Even so, the committee is well acquainted with the history of the pell-mell, the Highland charge, the Battle of Culloden of 1745 and the Jacobite rising more generally.

The committee has also properly investigated plausible claims regarding hot air, hopeful heirs and horrible hotels.

Preparing for the long-term future appropriately must take all possible eventualities into consideration properly.

What have you learned through your investigations into the Porteous Riots and other riots?

What do you know about mobbing in animals?

What do you know about mobbing in humans?

What do you know about mobbing under Scots Law?

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