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Friday, May 15, 2015

Noam Chomsky


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Noam Chomsky
Chomsky.jpg
On a visit to Vancouver, British Columbia in 2004
Born (1928-12-07) December 7, 1928 (age 86)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Other names Avram Noam Chomsky
Alma mater University of Pennsylvania (B.A.) 1949, (M.A.) 1951, (Ph.D.) 1955
Era 20th/21st-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Generative linguistics, Analytic philosophy
Institutions MIT (1955–present)
Main interests
 Linguistics ·
Metalinguistics
Psychology
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of mind
Politics · Ethics

Website
chomsky.info

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,[21][22] cognitive scientist, logician,[23][24][25] political commentator, social justice activist, and anarcho-syndicalist advocate. Sometimes described as the "father of modern linguistics",[26][27] Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy.[21] He has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is currently Professor Emeritus, and has authored over 100 books. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the "world's top public intellectual" in a 2005 poll.[28]

Born to a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from relatives in New York City. He later undertook studies in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his BA, MA, and PhD, while from 1951 to 1955 he was appointed to Harvard University's Society of Fellows. In 1955 he began work at MIT, soon becoming a significant figure in the field of linguistics for his publications and lectures on the subject. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, the Chomsky–Schützenberger representation theorem, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger enumeration theorem. Chomsky also played a major role in the decline of behaviorism, and was especially critical of the work of B.F. Skinner.[29][30] In 1967 he gained public attention for his vocal opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, in part through his essay The Responsibility of Intellectuals, and came to be associated with the New Left while being arrested on multiple occasions for his anti-war activism. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also developed the propaganda model of media criticism with Edward S. Herman. Following his retirement from active teaching, he has continued his vocal public activism, for instance supporting the anti-Iraq War and Occupy movements.

Chomsky has been a highly influential academic figure throughout his career, and was cited within the field of Arts and Humanities more often than any other living scholar between 1980 and 1992. He was also the eighth most cited scholar overall within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index during the same period.[31][32][33][34] His work has influenced fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, logic, mathematics, music theory and analysis, political science, programming language theory and psychology.[33][34][35][36][37] Chomsky continues to be well known as a political activist, and a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, neoliberal capitalism, and the mainstream news media. Ideologically, he aligns himself with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.[38]

Early life

Childhood: 1928–45

Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, in the affluent East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia.[39] His father was the Ukrainian-born William "Zev" Chomsky, who had fled to the United States in 1913 and his mother was the Lithuanian-born Elsie Simonofsky.[40] Both of his parents were Ashkenazi Lithuanian Jews. Having studied at Johns Hopkins University, his father went on to become school principal of the Congregation Mikveh Israel religious school, and in 1924 was appointed to the faculty at Gratz College in Philadelphia. Independently, William researched Medieval Hebrew, and would publish a series of books on the subject. William's wife, Elsie, was born in Belarus. They met at Mikveh Israel, where both taught Hebrew language classes.[41] Described as a "very warm, gentle, and engaging" individual, William placed a great emphasis on educating people so that they would be "well integrated, free and independent in their thinking, and eager to participate in making life more meaningful and worthwhile for all", a view subsequently adopted by his son.[42]
"What motivated his [political] interests? A powerful curiosity, exposure to divergent opinions, and an unorthodox education have all been given as answers to this question. He was clearly struck by the obvious contradictions between his own readings and mainstream press reports. The measurement of the distance between the realities presented by these two sources, and the evaluation of why such a gap exists, remained a passion for Chomsky."
Biographer Robert F. Barsky, 1997.[43]
Noam was the Chomsky family's first child. His younger brother, David Eli Chomsky, was born five years later. The brothers remained close, although David was more easy-going while Noam could be very competitive.[44] Chomsky's parents' first language was Yiddish, but Chomsky said it was "taboo" in his family to speak it. Unlike her husband, Elsie spoke "ordinary New York English".[45] The brothers were raised in this Jewish environment, being taught Hebrew and regularly discussing the political theories of Zionism; the family were particularly influenced by the Left Zionist writings of Ahad Ha'am.[44] Being Jewish, Noam Chomsky faced anti-semitism as a child, particularly from the Irish and German communities living in Philadelphia; he recalls German "beer parties" celebrating the fall of Paris to the Nazis.[46][47]

Noam described his parents as "normal Roosevelt Democrats", having a centre-left position on the political spectrum, but he was exposed to far left politics through other members of the family, a number of whom were socialists involved in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.[48] He was influenced largely by his uncle who owned a newspaper stand in New York City where Jewish leftists came to debate the issues of the day.[47][49]
Whenever visiting his relatives in New York City, Chomsky frequented left-wing and anarchist bookstores, voraciously reading political literature.[47][49] He later described his discovery of anarchism as a "lucky accident", allowing him to become critical of other radical left-wing ideologies, namely Marxism-Leninism.[50] Chomsky's primary education was at Oak Lane Country Day School, an independent institution that focused on allowing its pupils to pursue their own interests in a non-competitive atmosphere. It was here that he wrote his first article, aged 10, on the spread of fascism, following the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War. From the age of 12 or 13, he identified more fully with anarchist politics.[51][52] Aged 12, he moved on to secondary education at Central High School, where he joined various clubs and societies but was troubled by the hierarchical and regimented method of teaching that they employed.[53]

University: 1945–55

Anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker (left) and English democratic socialist George Orwell (right) were both influences on the young Chomsky.

Aged 16, in 1945 Chomsky embarked on a general program of study at the University of Pennsylvania, where his primary interest was in learning Arabic. Living at home, he funded his undergraduate degree by teaching Hebrew.[54] Although dissatisfied with the university's strict structure, he was encouraged to continue by the Russian-born linguist Zellig Harris, who convinced Chomsky to major in the subject.[55] Chomsky's BA honor's thesis was titled "Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew", and revised it for his MA thesis, which he attained at Penn in 1951; it would subsequently be published as a book.[56][57] From 1951 to 1955 he was named to the Society of Fellows at Harvard University while undertaking his doctoral research.[58] Being highly critical of the established behaviourist currents in linguistics, in 1954 he presented his ideas at lectures given at the University of Chicago and Yale University.[59] In 1955 he was awarded his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania for a thesis setting out his ideas on transformational grammar; it would be published in 1975 as The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory.[60]

In 1947, Chomsky entered into a romantic relationship with Carol Doris Schatz, whom he had known since they were toddlers. They were married in 1949,[61] and remained together until her death in 2008.[62] They considered moving to Israel, and in 1953 spent six weeks at the HaZore'a kibbutz; although enjoying himself, Chomsky was appalled by the Jewish nationalism and anti-Arab racism he encountered in the country, and the pro-Stalinist trend that he thought pervaded the kibbutz's leftist community.[63]

On visits to New York City, Chomsky frequented the office of Yiddish anarchist journal Freie Arbeiter Stimme, becoming enamored with the work of contributor Rudolf Rocker, whose work introduced him to the link between anarchism and classical liberalism.[64] Other political thinkers whose work Chomsky read included the anarchist Diego Abad de Santillán, democratic socialists George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, and Dwight Macdonald, and works by Marxists Karl Liebknecht, Karl Korsch, and Rosa Luxemburg.[65] His readings convinced him of the desirability of an anarcho-syndicalist society, and he became fascinated by the anarcho-syndicalist communes set up during the Spanish Civil War documented in Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938).[66] He avidly read leftist journal Politics, remarking that it "answered to and developed" his interest in anarchism,[67] as well as the periodical Living Marxism, published by council communist Paul Mattick. Although rejecting its Marxist basis, Chomsky was heavily influenced by council communism, voraciously reading articles in Living Marxism written by Antonie Pannekoek.[68] He was greatly interested in the Marlenite ideas of the Leninist League, an anti-Stalinist Marxist-Leninist group, sharing their views that the Second World War was orchestrated by Western capitalists and the Soviet Union's "state capitalists" to crush Europe's proletariat.[69]

Early career: 1955–1966

In 1955, Chomsky obtained a job as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), spending half his time on a mechanical translation project and the other half teaching linguistics and philosophy.[70] He later described MIT as "a pretty free and open place, open to experimentation and without rigid requirements. It was just perfect for someone of my idiosyncratic interests and work."[71] In 1957 MIT promoted him to the position of associate professor, while from 1957–58 he was also employed by New York City's Columbia University as a visiting professor.[72] That same year, the Chomskys' first child was born,[73] and he published his first work on linguistics, Syntactic Structures, a book that radically opposed the dominant Harris-Bloomfield trend in the field. The response to Chomsky's ideas ranged from indifference to hostility, and his work proved divisive and caused
"significant upheaval" in the discipline.[74] Linguist John Lyons later asserted that it "revolutionized the scientific study of language."[75] From 1958–59 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study.[76]

In 1959 he attracted further attention for his review of B.F. Skinner's 1957 book Verbal Behavior in the journal Language,[77] in which he argued that Skinner ignored the role of human creativity in linguistics.[78] Becoming an "established intellectual",[79] with his colleague Morris Halle, he founded the MIT's Graduate Program in linguistics, and in 1961 he was made professor of foreign language and linguistics, thereby gaining academic tenure.[80] He was appointed plenary speaker at the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, held in 1962 at Cambridge, Massachusetts; the event established him as the de facto spokesperson of American linguistics.[81] He continued to publish his linguistic ideas throughout the decade, as Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1966), Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar (1966), and Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Linguistic Thought (1966).[82] Along with Halle, he also edited the Studies in Language Series of books for Harper and Row.[83] He continued to receive academic recognition and honors for his work, in 1966 visiting a variety of Californian institutions, first as the Linguistics Society of America Professor at the University of California, and then as the Beckman Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.[84] His Beckman lectures would be assembled and published as Language and Mind in 1968.[85]

Rise to prominence

Anti-Vietnam War activism: 1967–1975

1967 marked Chomsky's entry into the public debate on the United States' foreign policy.[87] In February he published an influential essay in The New York Review of Books titled The Responsibility of Intellectuals, in which he criticized the country's involvement in the Vietnam War.[85][88] He expanded on his argument to produce his first political book, American Power and the New Mandarins, which was published in 1969 and soon established him at the forefront of American dissent.[89] In 1971 he gave the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lectures in Cambridge, which were published as Problems of Knowledge and Freedom later that year, while other political books at the time included At War with Asia (1970) and For Reasons of State (1973).[90] Coming to be associated with the American New Left movement,[91] he nevertheless thought little of prominent New Left intellectuals Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, and preferred the company of activists to intellectuals.[92] Although he had initially arisen to attention for his political views in The New York Review of Books, throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was virtually ignored by the mainstream press.[93]

Along with his writings, Chomsky also became actively involved in left-wing activism. Refusing to pay half his taxes, in 1967 he publicly supported students who refused the draft, and was arrested for being part of an anti-war teach-in outside the Pentagon.[94] During this time Chomsky founded the anti-war collective RESIST along with Mitchell Goodman, Denise Levertov, William Sloane Coffin, and Dwight Macdonald.[94] Supporting the student protest movement, he gave many lectures to student activist groups, though questioned the objectives of the 1968 student protests.[95] Along with colleague Louis Kampf, he also began running undergraduate courses on politics at MIT, independent of the conservative-dominated political science department.[96] His public talks often generated considerable controversy, particularly when he criticized actions of the Israeli government and military.[97] His political views came under attack from right-wing and centrist figures, the most prominent of whom was Alan Dershowitz; Chomsky considered Dershowitz "a complete liar" and accused him of actively misrepresenting his position on issues.[98] As a result of his anti-war activism, Chomsky was arrested on multiple occasions, and U.S.
President Richard Nixon included him on his Enemies' List.[99] He was aware of the potential repercussions of his activism, and so his wife began training to become an academic in order to support the family in the event of Chomsky's unemployment or imprisonment.[100]

Although under some pressure to do so, MIT refused to fire him due to his influential standing in the field of linguistics.[101] His work in this area continued to gain international recognition: in 1967 the University of London awarded him an honorary D. Litt while the University of Chicago gave him an honorary D.H.L.[102] In 1970, Loyola University and Swarthmore College also awarded him honorary D.H.L.'s, as did Bard College in 1971, Delhi University in 1972, and the University of Massachusetts in 1973.[103] In 1974 he became a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.[104] Chomsky continued to write on the subject, publishing Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar (1972).[101] In 1971 he carried out a televised interview with French philosopher Michel Foucault on Dutch television; he largely agreed with Foucault's ideas, but was critical of post-modernism and French philosophy generally, lambasting France as having "a highly parochial and remarkably illiterate culture."[105]

Work on the media: 1976–1989


Noam Chomsky (1977)

Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Chomsky's publications expanded and clarified his earlier work, addressing his critics and updating his grammatical theory.[106]

In 1979, Chomsky and Herman published the two-volume The Political Economy of Human Rights, in which they compared U.S. media reactions to the Cambodian genocide and the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. They argued that because Indonesia was a U.S. ally, U.S. media ignored the East Timorian situation while focusing on that in Cambodia, a U.S. enemy.[107] The following year, Steven Lukas authored an article for the Times Higher Education Supplement accusing Chomsky of betraying his anarchist ideals and acting as an apologist for Cambodian leader Pol Pot. Although Laura J. Summers and Robin Woodsworth Carlsen replied to the article, arguing that Lukas completely misunderstood Chomsky and Herman's work, Chomsky himself did not. The controversy damaged his reputation.[108] Chomsky maintained that his critics printed lies about him to discredit his reputation.[109]

Although Chomsky had long publicly criticised Nazism and totalitarianism more generally, his commitment to freedom of speech led him to defend the right of French historian Robert Faurisson to advocate a position widely characterised as Holocaust denial. Chomsky's plea for the historian's freedom of speech would be published as the preface to Faurisson's 1980 book Mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire.[110]
Chomsky was widely condemned for defending Faurisson.[111] France's mainstream press accused Chomsky of being a Holocaust denier himself, and refused to publish his rebuttals to their accusations.[112] The Faurrison Affair had a lasting, damaging effect on Chomsky's career;[111] Werner Cohn's Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers contained numerous falsified claims.[113]

Increased political activism: 1990–present

In the 1990s, Chomsky embraced political activism to a greater degree than before.[114]

Chomsky at the World Social Forum (Porto Alegre) in 2003

His far-reaching criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S. power have raised controversy.[115][116] Chomsky has received death threats because of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy.[117] He has often received undercover police protection at MIT and when speaking on the Middle East, although he has refused uniformed police protection.[118] The Electronic Intifada website claims that the Anti-Defamation League "spied on" Chomsky's appearances, and quotes Chomsky as being unsurprised at that discovery or the use of what Chomsky claims is "fantasy material" provided to Alan Dershowitz for debating him. Amused, Chomsky compares the ADL's reports to FBI files.[119]

Chomsky resides in Lexington, Massachusetts, and travels, giving lectures on politics and linguistics.

Linguistic theory

The basis to Chomsky's linguistic theory is that the principles underlying the structure of language are biologically determined in the human mind and hence genetically transmitted.[120] He therefore argues that all humans share the same underlying linguistic structure, irrespective of socio-cultural difference.[121] In this he opposes the radical behaviourist psychology of B.F. Skinner, instead arguing that human language is unlike modes of communication used by any other animal species.[122]

Chomskyan linguistics, beginning with his Syntactic Structures, a distillation of his Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1955, 75), challenges structural linguistics and introduces transformational grammar.[123] This approach takes utterances (sequences of words) to have a syntax characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a context-free grammar extended with transformational rules.

Perhaps his most influential and time-tested contribution to the field is the claim that modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts for the "productivity" or "creativity" of language. In other words, a formal grammar of a language can explain the ability of a hearer-speaker to produce and interpret an infinite number of utterances, including novel ones, with a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms. He has always acknowledged his debt to Pāṇini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar, although it is also related to Cartesian approach[124] and rationalist ideas of a priori knowledge.

Chomsky has argued that linguistic structures are at least partly innate, and that they reflect a "universal grammar" (UG) that underlies and can account for all human grammatical systems (in general known as mentalism).[125]
Chomsky based his argument on observations about human language acquisition. For example, while a human baby and a kitten are both capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same linguistic data, the human will always acquire the ability to understand and produce language, while the kitten will never acquire either ability. Chomsky labeled whatever the relevant capacity the human has that the cat lacks as the language acquisition device (LAD), and he suggested that one of the tasks for linguistics should be to determine what the LAD is and what constraints it imposes on the range of possible human languages. The universal features that would result from these constraints are often termed "universal grammar" or UG.[126][127]

Chomsky's ideas have had a strong influence on researchers of language acquisition in children, though many researchers in this area such as Elizabeth Bates[128] and Michael Tomasello[129] argue very strongly against Chomsky's theories, and instead advocate emergentist or connectionist theories, explaining language with a number of general processing mechanisms in the brain that interact with the extensive and complex social environment in which language is used and learned.

Generative grammar

Different grammatical deep structures of a sentence
Time flies 1.svg Time flies 2.svg Time flies 3.svg Time flies 4.svg
The Chomskyan approach towards syntax, often termed generative grammar, studies grammar as a body of knowledge possessed by language users. Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that much of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn certain parochial features of their native languages.[130] The innate body of linguistic knowledge is often termed universal grammar. From Chomsky's perspective, the strongest evidence for the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact that children successfully acquire their native languages in so little time. Furthermore, he argues that there is an enormous gap between the linguistic stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich linguistic knowledge they attain (the "poverty of the stimulus" argument). The knowledge of Universal Grammar would serve to bridge that gap.
Chomsky's theories have been immensely influential within linguistics, but they have also received criticism. One recurring criticism of the Chomskyan variety of generative grammar is that it is Anglocentric and Eurocentric, and that often linguists working in this tradition have a tendency to base claims about Universal Grammar on a very small sample of languages, sometimes just one. Initially, the Eurocentrism was exhibited in an overemphasis on the study of English. However, hundreds of different languages have now received at least some attention within Chomskyan linguistic analyses.[131][132][133][134][135] In spite of the diversity of languages that have been characterized by UG derivations, critics continue to argue that the formalisms within Chomskyan linguistics are Anglocentric and misrepresent the properties of languages that are structurally different from English.[136][137][138]
Thus, Chomsky's approach has been criticized as a form of linguistic imperialism.[139] In addition, Chomskyan linguists rely heavily on the intuitions of native speakers regarding which sentences of their languages are well-formed. This practice has been criticized on general methodological grounds. Some psychologists and psycholinguists,[who?] though sympathetic to Chomsky's overall program, have argued that Chomskyan linguists pay insufficient attention to experimental data from language processing, with the consequence that their theories are not psychologically plausible. Other critics (see language learning) have questioned whether it is necessary to posit Universal Grammar to explain child language acquisition, arguing that domain-general learning mechanisms are sufficient.

Today there are many different branches of generative grammar. One can view grammatical frameworks such as head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar, and combinatory categorial grammar as broadly Chomskyan and generative in orientation, but with significant differences in execution.

Chomsky hierarchy

Chomsky is famous for investigating various kinds of formal languages and whether or not they might be capable of capturing key properties of human language. His Chomsky hierarchy partitions formal grammars into classes/types,[140] or groups, with increasing expressive power, i.e., each successive class can generate a broader set of formal languages than the one before. Interestingly, Chomsky argues that modeling some aspects of human language requires a more complex formal grammar (as measured by the Chomsky hierarchy) than modeling others. 
For example, while a regular language is powerful enough to model English morphology, it is not powerful enough to model English syntax. In addition to being relevant in linguistics, the Chomsky hierarchy has also become important in computer science (especially in programming language,[141] compiler construction, and automata theory).[142] Indeed, there is an equivalence between the Chomsky language hierarchy and the different kinds of automata. Thus theorems about languages are often dealt with as either languages (grammars) or automata.

Political views

Chomsky's political views have changed little since his childhood.[143] His ideological position revolves around "nourishing the libertarian and creative character of the human being",[143] and he has described his beliefs as "fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism."[144] He has praised libertarian socialism,[145] and has described himself as an anarcho-syndicalist.[146] He is a member of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and the Industrial Workers of the World international union.[147] Chomsky is also a member of the interim consultative committee of the International Organization for a Participatory Society, which he describes as having the potential to "...carry us a long way towards unifying the many initiatives here and around the world and molding them into a powerful and effective force."[148][149] He advocates popular struggle for greater democracy.[150] He has stated his opposition to ruling elites, among them institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and GATT.[151]

Authority

Chomsky asserts that authority, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate, and that the burden of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. An example given by Chomsky of a legitimate authority is that exerted by an adult to prevent a young child from wandering into traffic.[152] He contends that there is little moral difference between chattel slavery and renting one's self to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that undermines individual freedom. He holds that workers should own and control their workplace.[153]

Capitalism and socialism

Chomsky is critical of both the American state capitalist system[155] and the authoritarian branches of socialism. He argues that libertarian socialist values are the proper extension of classical liberalism to an advanced industrial context,[156] and that society should be highly organized and based on democratic control of communities and work places. He views the radical humanist ideas of his two major influences, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, as "rooted in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, while retaining their revolutionary character."[157]

United States foreign policy

Chomsky has strongly criticized the foreign policy of the United States. He claims double standards in a foreign policy preaching democracy and freedom for all while allying itself with non-democratic and repressive states and organizations such as Chile under Augusto Pinochet and argues that this results in massive human rights violations. He often argues that America's intervention in foreign nations — including secret aid the U.S. gave to the Contras in Nicaragua, an event he has been critical of — fits any standard description of terrorism,[158] including "official definitions in the US Code and Army Manuals in the early 1980s."[159][160] Before its collapse, Chomsky also condemned Soviet imperialism; for example in 1986 during a question–answer session following a lecture he gave at Universidad Centroamericana in Nicaragua, when challenged about how he could "talk about North American imperialism and Russian imperialism in the same breath," Chomsky responded: "One of the truths about the world is that there are two superpowers, one a huge power which happens to have its boot on your neck; another, a smaller power which happens to have its boot on other people's necks. I think that anyone in the Third World would be making a grave error if they succumbed to illusions about these matters."[161] Martha Nussbaum criticizes Chomsky for failing to condemn atrocities by leftist insurgents because "for some leftists … one should not criticize one's friends, that solidarity is more important than ethical correctness."[162]

Free speech

Chomsky has a broad view of free-speech rights, especially in the mass media, and opposes censorship. He has stated that "with regard to freedom of speech there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it and prefer Stalinist/fascist standards".[163] With reference to the United States diplomatic cables leak, Chomsky suggested that "perhaps the most dramatic revelation … is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government – Hillary Clinton, others – and also by the diplomatic service."[164]
Chomsky refuses to take legal action against those who may have libeled him and prefers to counter libels through open letters in newspapers. One example of this approach is his response to an article by Emma Brockes in The Guardian at the end of October 2005, which alleged that he had denied the Srebrenica massacre in 1995.[165][166][167] At issue was Chomsky's attitude to the writings of journalist Diana Johnstone on the subject.[168] His complaint prompted The Guardian to publish an apologetic correction and to withdraw the article from the paper's website,[169] which remains available on his own website.[170] Nick Cohen has criticised Chomsky for frequently making overly critical statements about Western governments, especially the US, and for allegedly refusing to retract his speculations when facts become available that disprove them.[171]

Debates

Chomsky has been known to defend vigorously and debate his views and opinions, in philosophy, linguistics (Linguistics Wars), and politics.[21] He has had notable debates with Jean Piaget,[172] Michel Foucault,[173] William F. Buckley, Jr.,[174] Christopher Hitchens,[175][176][177][178][179] George Lakoff,[180] Richard Perle,[181] Hilary Putnam,[182] Willard Van Orman Quine,[183][184] John Maynard Smith,[185] and Alan Dershowitz,[186] to name a few. The Guardian said of Chomsky's debating ability, "His boldness and clarity infuriates opponents—academe is crowded with critics who have made twerps of themselves taking him on."[187][188] In response to his speaking style being criticized as boring, Chomsky said, "I'm a boring speaker and I like it that way. ... I doubt that people are attracted to whatever the persona is. ... People are interested in the issues, and they're interested in the issues because they are important."[189] "We don't want to be swayed by superficial eloquence, by emotion and so on."[190]

Personal life

Chomsky endeavors to keep his family life strictly separate from his political activism and career,[191] and considers himself "scrupulous at keeping my politics out of the classroom."[192] He is uninterested in appearances and the fame that his work has brought him.[193] He also has little interest in modern art and music.[194] He has been banned from entering Israel since 2010.[195]

Chomsky is known for his "dry, laconic wit", although he has attracted controversy for labeling established political and academic figures with terms like "corrupt", "fascist", and "fraudulent".[196] When asked if he is an atheist, Chomsky replied, "What is it that I'm supposed to not believe in? Until you can answer that question I can't tell you whether I'm an atheist."[197]

Chomsky was married to Carol Doris Schatz (Chomsky) from 1949 until her death in 2008. They had three children together: Aviva, Diane and Harry.[198] In 2014, Chomsky remarried to Valeria Wasserman.[199]

Influence

Chomsky's legacy is as both a "leader in the field" of linguistics and "a figure of enlightenment and inspiration" for political dissenters.[200] Linguist John Lyons remarked that within a few decades of publication, Chomskyan linguistics had become "the most dynamic and influential" school of thought in the field.[201] Chomskyan models have been used as a theoretical basis in various fields of study. The Chomsky hierarchy is often taught in fundamental computer science courses as it confers insight into the various types of formal languages. This hierarchy can also be discussed in mathematical terms[202] and has generated interest among mathematicians, particularly combinatorialists. Some arguments in evolutionary psychology are derived from his research results.[203]

Chomsky's work in linguistics has had implications for modern psychology.[36] Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a study in animal language acquisition at Columbia University, was named after Chomsky in reference to his view of language acquisition as a uniquely human ability.[citation needed] The 1984 Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine and Physiology, Niels Kaj Jerne, used Chomsky's generative model to explain the human immune system, equating "components of a generative grammar … with various features of protein structures". The title of Jerne's Stockholm Nobel Lecture was "The Generative Grammar of the Immune System".[204] Computer scientist Donald Knuth read Syntactic Structures during his honeymoon and was influenced by it. "I must admit to taking a copy of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures along with me on my honeymoon in 1961 ... Here was a marvelous thing: a mathematical theory of language in which I could use a computer programmer's intuition!"[205]

Academic achievements, awards, and honors

In early 1969, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University; in January 1970, the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at University of Cambridge; in 1972, the Nehru Memorial Lecture in New Delhi; in 1977, the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden; in 1988 the Massey Lectures at the University of Toronto, titled "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies"; in 1997, The Davie Memorial Lecture on Academic Freedom in Cape Town,[206] in 2011, the Rickman Godlee Lecture at University College, London[207] many others.[208]
Chomsky has received many honorary degrees from universities around the world, including from the following:
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. In addition, he is a member of other professional and learned societies in the United States and abroad, and is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal, the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and others.[212] He is twice winner of The Orwell Award, granted by The National Council of Teachers of English for "Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language" (in 1987 and 1989).[213]

He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Social Sciences.[214]

In 2004 Chomsky received the Carl-von-Ossietzky Prize from the city of Oldenburg (Germany) for his life work as political analyst and media critic.[215] In 2005, Chomsky received an honorary fellowship from the Literary and Historical Society.[216] In 2007, Chomsky received The Uppsala University (Sweden) Honorary Doctor's degree in commemoration of Carolus Linnaeus.[217] In February 2008, he received the President's Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of Ireland, Galway.[218] Since 2009 he is an honorary member of IAPTI.[219]

In 2010, Chomsky received the Erich Fromm Prize in Stuttgart, Germany.[220] In April 2010, Chomsky became the third scholar to receive the University of Wisconsin's A.E. Havens Center's Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship.[221]

The Megachile chomskyi holotype
Chomsky has an Erdős number of four.[222]

Chomsky was voted the leading living public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll conducted by the British magazine Prospect. He reacted, saying "I don't pay a lot of attention to polls".[223] In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted seventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".[224]

Actor Viggo Mortensen with avant-garde guitarist Buckethead dedicated their 2006 album, called Pandemoniumfromamerica, to Chomsky.[225]

On January 22, 2010, a special honorary concert for Chomsky was given at Kresge Auditorium at MIT.[226][227] The concert, attended by Chomsky and dozens of his family and friends, featured music composed by Edward Manukyan and speeches by Chomsky's colleagues, including David Pesetsky of MIT and Gennaro Chierchia, head of the linguistics department at Harvard University.

In June 2011, Chomsky was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, which cited his "...unfailing courage, critical analysis of power and promotion of human rights."[228]

In 2011, Chomsky was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for the "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems".[229][230]

In 2013, a newly described species of bee was named after him: Megachile chomskyi.[231]

Bibliography

Filmography

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Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism

Original link: http://www.chiltonwilliamson.com/books/the_conservative_bookshelf_suicide_of_the_west.html

Highly recommended reading is the Suicide of the West, by James Burnham, in 1964.  Despite his stated theory, that liberalism is not the cause of the decline but the means by which the West reconciles to its demise, is clear from his writings that liberalism does contribute. Basically, the left's obsession with progress often causes it to oppose its own culture, crippling its psychological ability to defend it, including progress itself.

Burnham's nemesis at the time was universal communism, and based on that he was wrong.  But we still see the same psychology working in the West today; e.g., left-leaning minds both blame America for Islamic terrorism, see it as no worse than our own, and routinely call those who criticize Islam as bigots.  Noam Chomsky, among others, have been making this clear for some time.  Yet if they succeed, the West, and the progress it holds so dear, cannot survive for long.  We must accept that the West, despite its warts and history (which it has largely learned from), is still infinitely better than the Middle Age Islamic movement which seeks to usurp it.

Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning
and Destiny of Liberalism
By James Burnham
(1964)

James Burnham (1909-1987) ranks unquestionably as one of the most original and penetrating thinkers of the twentieth century, not alone in the context of modern conservative literature but in the history of Western thought in the twentieth century. Indeed, it was probably not until late in his career that Burnham regarded himself as a "conservative" at all--if indeed he ever did--for the reason that the term seems too warmly emotional to describe his dispassionate, nearly scientific attitude toward toward human affairs. The son of a wealthy New York City railroad executive, he became a Trotskyite and a member of the inner circle of Partisan Review before breaking with the Left and devoting the remainder of his life to resisting the Communist assault on the West. A man of vast erudition, Burnham was for many years Professor of Philosophy at New York University, and in 1955 became a founding editor of the young William F. Buckley, Jr.'s National Review, to which he contributed a regular column, "The Protracted Conflict," until 1977, almost the end of the Cold War. Had his career extended through another decade, Burnham might well have prevented NR's slide leftward into neoconservatism, where the magazine is presently moored.

As the dominant intellectual presence at National Review, Burnham was admired by staff and readership alike for his lucidity of mind and prose; though one could argue that, in abandoning the Marxist dialectic for conservative anti-Communism, he threw out the original content of his mind without changing its mold. In fact, the intellectual rigidity so characteristic of the man ("Who says A must say B..") may well have intensified in later life. In 1977, James Burnham suffered a crippling stroke that made reading and writing impossible for him thereafter. He died just two years before the collapse of his arch-enemy, the Soviet Union; yet it seems probable that, had he lived, the sudden demise of the system he had argued for thirty years was destined to rule the world would have caught him entirely by surprise.

Suicide of the West, first published in 1964, has affinities with Kenneth L. Minogue's The Liberal Mind, released a year earlier in England. While the two books make overlapping statements regarding the nature of liberalism as an ideology, as between the two, Burnham's is the more accessible to the general public, though written by a man with academic philosophical credentials to match Minogue's own. More importantly, Burnham, after delineating the logic of liberalism and analyzing the liberal mentality, goes on to suggest the implications pervasive liberalism has for the future of the United States, and for geopolitical arrangements in the coming decades.

Burnham tells us in his Preface that this is a "third generation" book, revised and expanded over a period of four years from two sets of university lectures. Following his classic The Managerial Revolution by nearly a quarter of a century, Suicide of the West reveals a more relaxed and humorous writer than the man who put his name to the earlier work. By 1964, James Burnham had worked as a journalist for nine years in the offices of National Review. Time and journalistic practice honed his polemical skills, while modifying somewhat the professorial pretence to scientific dispassion and disengagement. Suicide of the West is an eminently readable, mordantly witty, and genuinely unpleasant book, though it closes on a slightly more optimistic note than The Managerial Revolution does. "There are a few small signs, here and there," Burnham writes in his concluding lines, "that liberalism may already have started fading. Perhaps this book is one of them." (It wasn't.)

Burnham's thesis is straightforward. ".Liberalism," he writes, "is the ideology of western suicide. When once this initial and final sentence is understood, everything about liberalism-the beliefs, emotions and values associated with it, the nature of its enchantment, its practical record, its future-falls into place. Implicitly, all of this book is merely an amplification of this sentence." That is not to say, Burnham adds, that liberalism is "'the cause'" of the contraction and probable death of Western civilization. ("The cause or causes have something to do, I think, with the decay of religion and with an excess of material luxury; and, I suppose, with getting tired, and worn out, as all things temporal do.") Rather, "liberalism has come to be the typical verbal systematization of the process of Western contraction and withdrawal; .liberalism motivates and justifies the contraction, and reconciles us to it." Liberalism's hold, furthermore, on public opinion and policy makes it extremely difficult for the Western nations to invent-and even to imagine-a strategy equal to the challenge to its existence by which the West is presently confronted.

Burnham categorizes liberalism, though a looser concept than Marxism and socialism, as ideological in nature--unlike its still more loosely conceived opponent, conservatism. Ideology, by his definition, is "a more or less systematic and self contained set of ideas supposedly dealing with the nature of reality (usually social reality), or some segment of reality, and of man's relation (attitude, conduct) toward it; and calling for a commitment [i.e agendum] independent of specific experience or events." Liberalism, heir to the "main line.of post-Reaniassance thought" and dominated in its formative phase by Francis Bacon and René Descartes, is rationalistic by nature. 
Considering human nature to be plastic, rather than pure or corrupt, it finds no reason to believe humanity incapable of achieving the peace, freedom, justice, and well-being embodied in the liberal dream of the "good society," and rejects therefore the tragic view of man held by non-Christian, as well as Christian, thinkers before the Renaissance. It is also anti-traditional, believing that ideas, customs, and institutions held over from the past are suspect, rather than worthy of respect. Suspicion of hoary error and injustice makes liberalism progressive; a characteristic which, as John Stuart Mill observed, "is antagonistic to the law of Custom, involving at least emancipation from that yoke.."

"Professor Sidney Hook," Burnham remarks with goodhumored malice, "has squeezed the entire definition of liberalism into a single unintentionally ironic phrase: 'Faith in intelligence.'" The dig, despite its humorous intent, explains why liberalism's commitment to rationality has never precluded an exuberant irrationalism of its own: To the extent that modern liberalism has replaced reason with faith as its foundation, its faith in reason is unreasonable. 
Assured that all human wrongheadedness and intransigence can be cured by education, and that the social expressions of these undesirable qualities signify "problems" to be solved by political action, liberals envision politics as "simply education generalized" and the end of politics as social perfection (entailing, as Michael Oakeshott noted, social uniformity). Yet the human record demonstrates that human beings, individually and collectively, are not perfectible: also, that every attempt to prove experience wrong has had highly unpleasant effects. For liberals, the fact of human imperfectibility would be tragic--if liberal ideology were inclined to understand history as tragedy, which it isn't. The excessive rationalism of liberalism, moreover, commits it paradoxically to a relativistic theory of truth which holds that no objective truth exists-and that, if it does, we could never prove that objective truth was, in fact, what we had hold of. This reasoning amounts to a form of anti-intellectualism that is wholly unexpected from the premier intellectual tradition of modern intellectualism. It amounts also to what Burnham perceives as "an inescapable practical dilemma" for liberalism. "Either [it] must extend the [liberal] freedoms [of speech, conscience, association, etc.] to those who are not themselves liberals and even to those whose deliberate purpose is to destroy the liberal society.or liberalism must deny its own principles, restrict the freedoms, and practice discrimination." This dilemma, Burnham notes, is particularly sharp in our own day, when liberal societies have been infiltrated by agents of aggressive totalitarianism. "Surely there would seem to be something fundamentally wrong with a doctrine that can survive in application only by violating its own principles." It is why, he suggests, so many liberals tend to shrink from any explicit statement of the fundamental principles of liberalism.

Liberalism, though surely a rational system, is not by virtue of its rationality a reasonable one. Liberalism amounts to a fasces of propositions (Burnham lists nineteen) not all of which all liberals assent to. So logical is the structure of liberal ideology, however, that if certain of these liberal beliefs can be shown to be false or problematical, logical argument based upon the chain of logical propositions simply dissolves. And so, "The liberals, whether they like it or not, are stuck with liberalism." As with Frank Sinatra, for them it's "All, Or Nothing at All"-a desperate situation in politics, as well as love.

The ideology of reason, Burnham shows, in reality lives by faith; the ideology of rationality harbors deeply irrational tendencies. Guilt, Burnham argues, is integral to liberalism, in which it is a motivating force. But while the liberal's conviction of his own guilt in the face of oppression and misery may or may not bespeak some moral obligation on his part, neither the guilt nor the obligation can be derived from liberalism's own principles, since liberal theory is atomistic and rejects the organic view of society on which the notion of collective guilt depends. Therefore, liberal guilt is not only irrational, it is irrational "precisely from the point of view of the liberal ideology itself." The genius of liberalism in relieving the burden of personal guilt--though without ever absolving anyone from it, and forebearing to exact penance-- is, Burnham concedes, a "significant achievement, by which [liberalism] confirms its claim to being a major ideology." Nevertheless, in the context of his argument and of the condition of the Western world today, the problem of liberal guilt comes down to this: "that the liberal, and the group, nation, or civilization infected by liberal doctrine and values, are morally disarmed before those whom the liberal regards as less well off than himself."

The element of guilt, added to liberalism's egalitarianism, universalism, and internationalism, is the activating ingredient that makes the liberal compound such a deadly one for the Western world. Guilt, when it becomes obsessive for the liberal, flowers as a generalized hatred for his own country and the wider civilization of which it is a part; it is hatred that causes him to sympathize with their enemies, toward whom he is already inclined by the fact of liberalism's intellectual kinship with socialism and communism. The relationship (which is instinctively felt by liberals, though never acknowleged by them) explains why, for the liberal, the implicit rule of thumb is "Pas d'ennemi à gauche"-which translates as "No enemy to the left" and means, "The preferred enemy is always to
the right."

This inclination, Burnham insists, "is in a pragmatic sense a legitimate and inevitable expression of liberalism as a social tendency. It is not merely arbitrary prejudice or quirk of temperament." A partial explanation has to do with liberalism's anti-statism in the nineteenth century, before it was the state; and the discomfort-even disbelief-experienced by an historically anti-establishment movement in having become the establishment, after seizing the apparatus of government and accepting the role of despised authoritarian from the Right. (Something else to feel guilty about, perhaps). Be that as it may, it remains a fact of history that liberalism, both as an active movement and an ideological doctrine, has nearly always opposed the existing order. In result, Burnham says, "Liberalism has always stressed change, reform, the break with encrusted habit whether in the form of old ideas, old customs or old institutions. Thus liberalism has been and continues to be primarily negative in its impact on society: and in point of fact it is through its negative and destructive achievements that liberalism makes its best claim to historical justification."

Universalism, relativism, materialism, moral perfectionism, guilt, self-criticism amounting to self-hatred, ideological reflex self-disguised as scientific thinking, anti-establishmentarianism, perpetual social and spiritual restlessness, endless reform and the ceaseless sturm und drang accompanying it-plainly, liberalism is not the governing philosophy appropriate to a beleaguered civilization engaged in the greatest struggle for existence in its history. What is wanted, rather, is confidence arising from a proud sense of self-appreciation and self-worth, and a value system transcending affluence and comfort, such as men are willing to die for. "Quite specifically, [what the West needs is] the pre-liberal conviction that Western civilization, thus Western man, is both different from and superior in quality to other civilizations and noncivilizations..[Also it requires] a renewed willingness, legitimized by that conviction, to use superior power and the threat of power to defend the West against all challenges and challengers."

Such conviction and willingness are things liberalism by its nature is incapable of providing, even in the face of what Burnham identifies as the three crucial challenges to civilization: the "jungle" overtaking society; explosive world population and political activization in the Third World; and the Communist drive toward world domination. Against these dangers, Burnham sees, liberalism in its Gaderene stampede from reality is worse than ineffectual: It is, quite literally, suicidal. For him, the mixture of utopian social policies at home and a foreign policy whose survivalist instincts were often confused and sometimes negated by moralistic and ideological tendencies amply demonstrates that fact.

Suicide of the West bears directly on a contemporary internecine debate sparked by the left wing of the anti-liberal alliance, members of which have recently claimed this distinguished social critic, political commentator, and geopolitical strategist as "the first neoconservative." The case for Burnham as a "neocon" appears limited to his frequent advocacy of global interventionism-armed, if necessary-by the United States to protect and forward American and Western security. This tendency (so the argument goes) places him squarely in the camp of the global democrats, multinational capitalists, and "American Greatness conservatives" of the present day, all of whom are eager for Washington to impose American values and institutions upon a reluctant world. A closer look from a less parti pris standpoint suggests otherwise.

Burnham, to begin with, was concerned with the survival of the United States and the West, and not with the welfare of the world. He wished Third World and other backward countries to be controlled by the West in the West's best interests, not reformed by it, and doubted that most--if any--of these so-called developing nations were capable of being trained up to civilization at the Western level. While James Burnham called for the preservation-not the exportation--of Western civilization, there is no evidence that he considered consumer capitalism and mass culture, American style, to be among its glories. Unlike the neoconservatives, Burnham did not read the Founding Fathers as sharers in the European Enlightenment's optimistic (that is, liberal) view of human nature. Rather, he seems to have taken them at their word on the subject, as when John Adams wrote that "human passions are insatiable;" that "self-interest, private avidity, ambition and avarice will exist in every state of society and under every form of government;" and that "reason, justice and equity never had weight enough on the face of the earth to govern the councils of men." For himself, James Burnham, espousing the tragic view of history, had no use whatever for neconservative triumphalism. So far from believing the United States would prevail over all, he appears to have expected it, and with it the West, to become something other than the West-that is, to perish. 
Burnham in maturity was a realist rather than an optimist, a thinker rather than a careerist. He never told you what he thought you wanted to hear, or what it would make him rich and powerful to say. He gave you the truth as he saw it, and went on to write another book.
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El Niño


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The 1997–98 El Niño observed by TOPEX/Poseidon. The white areas off the Tropical Western coasts of northern South and all Central America as well as along the Central-eastern equatorial and Southeastern Pacific Ocean indicate the pool of warm water.[1]

El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (commonly called ENSO) and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific (between approximately the International Date Line and 120°W), including off the Pacific coast of South America. El Niño Southern Oscillation refers to the cycle of warm and cold temperatures, as measured by sea surface temperature, SST, of the tropical central and eastern Pacific Ocean. El Niño is accompanied by high air pressure in the western Pacific and low air pressure in the eastern Pacific. The cool phase of ENSO is called "La Niña" with SST in the eastern Pacific below average and air pressures high in the eastern and low in western Pacific. The ENSO cycle, both El Niño and La Niña, causes global changes of both temperatures and rainfall.[2][3] Mechanisms that cause the oscillation remain under study.

Developing countries dependent upon agriculture and fishing, particularly those bordering the Pacific Ocean, are the most affected. In Spanish, the capitalized term "El Niño" refers to the Christ child, Jesus (literal translation "The (male) Child"). La Niña, chosen as the 'opposite' of El Niño, literally means "The (female) Child". El Niño was so named because periodic warming in the Pacific near South America is often noticed around Christmas.[4]

Definition

El Niño is defined by prolonged warming in the Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures when compared with the average value. The U.S NOAA definition is a 3-month average warming of at least 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) in a specific area of the east-central tropical Pacific Ocean, other organizations define the term slightly differently. Typically, this anomaly happens at irregular intervals of two to seven years, and lasts nine months to two years.[5] The average period length is five years. When this warming occurs for seven to nine months, it is classified as El Niño "conditions"; when its duration is longer, it is classified as an El Niño "episode".[6]

The first signs of an El Niño are a weakening of the Walker circulation and strengthening of the Hadley circulation[7] and may include[citation needed]:
  1. Rise in surface pressure over the Indian Ocean, Indonesia, and Australia
  2. Fall in air pressure over Tahiti and the rest of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean
  3. Trade winds in the south Pacific weaken or head east
  4. Warm air rises near Peru, causing rain in the northern Peruvian deserts
El Niño's warm rush of nutrient-poor water heated by its eastward passage in the Equatorial Current, replaces the cold, nutrient-rich surface water of the Humboldt Current. When El Niño conditions last for many months, extensive ocean warming and the reduction in easterly trade winds limits upwelling of cold nutrient-rich deep water, and its economic impact to local fishing for an international market can be serious.[8]

More generally, El Niño can affect commodity prices and the macroeconomy of different countries - and not always for the worst. It can constrain the supply of rain-driven agricultural commodities; reduce agricultural output, construction, and services activities; create food-price and generalised inflation; and may trigger social unrest in commodity-dependent poor countries that primarily rely on imported food.[9] A University of Cambridge Working Paper shows that while Australia, Chile, Indonesia, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa face a short-lived fall in economic activity in response to an El Niño shock, other countries may actually benefit from an El Niño weather shock (either directly or indirectly through positive spillovers from major trading partners), for instance, Argentina, Canada, Mexico and the United States. Furthermore, most countries experience short-run inflationary pressures following an El Niño shock, while global energy and non-fuel commodity prices increase.[10]

Effects of ENSO warm phase (El Niño)

South America

Because El Niño's warm pool feeds thunderstorms above, it creates increased rainfall across the east-central and eastern Pacific Ocean, including several portions of the South American west coast. The effects of El Niño in South America are direct and stronger than in North America. An El Niño is associated with warm and very wet weather months in April–October along the coasts of northern Peru and Ecuador, causing major flooding whenever the event is strong or extreme.[11] The effects during the months of February, March, and April may become critical. Along the west coast of South America, El Niño reduces the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water that sustains large fish populations, which in turn sustain abundant sea birds, whose droppings support the fertilizer industry. The reduction in upwelling leads to fish kills off the shore of Peru.[8]

The local fishing industry along the affected coastline can suffer during long-lasting El Niño events. The world's largest fishery collapsed due to overfishing during the 1972 El Niño Peruvian anchoveta reduction. During the 1982–83 event, jack mackerel and anchoveta populations were reduced, scallops increased in warmer water, but hake followed cooler water down the continental slope, while shrimp and sardines moved southward, so some catches decreased while others increased.[12] Horse mackerel have increased in the region during warm events. Shifting locations and types of fish due to changing conditions provide challenges for fishing industries. Peruvian sardines have moved during El Niño events to Chilean areas. Other conditions provide further complications, such as the government of Chile in 1991 creating restrictions on the fishing areas for self-employed fishermen and industrial fleets.

The ENSO variability may contribute to the great success of small, fast-growing species along the Peruvian coast, as periods of low population removes predators in the area. Similar effects benefit migratory birds that travel each spring from predator-rich tropical areas to distant winter-stressed nesting areas.

Southern Brazil and northern Argentina also experience wetter than normal conditions, but mainly during the spring and early summer. Central Chile receives a mild winter with large rainfall, and the Peruvian-Bolivian Altiplano is sometimes exposed to unusual winter snowfall events. Drier and hotter weather occurs in parts of the Amazon River Basin, Colombia, and Central America.

North America


Regional impacts of warm ENSO episodes (El Niño)

Winters, during the El Niño effect, are warmer and drier than average in the Northwest, northern Midwest, and northern Mideast United States, so those regions experience reduced snowfalls. Meanwhile, significantly wetter winters are present in northwest Mexico and the southwest United States, including central and southern California, while both cooler and wetter than average winters in northeast Mexico and the southeast United States (including the Tidewater region of Virginia) occur during the El Niño phase of the oscillation.[13][14]

Some believed the ice storm in January 1998, which devastated parts of New England, southern Ontario and southern Quebec, was caused or accentuated by El Niño's warming effects.[15] El Niño warmed Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics, such that the area experienced a warmer than average winter during the games.[16]

The synoptic condition for the Tehuantepecer is associated with high-pressure system forming in Sierra Madre of Mexico in the wake of an advancing cold front, which causes winds to accelerate through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Tehuantepecers primarily occur during the cold season months for the region in the wake of cold fronts, between October and February, with a summer maximum in July caused by the westward extension of the Azores High. Wind magnitude is greater during El Niño years than during La Niña years, due to the more frequent cold frontal incursions during El Niño winters.[17] Its effects can last from a few hours to six days.[18] El Niño is credited with suppressing Atlantic hurricanes, and made the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season the least active in 12 years.[19]

Tropical cyclones

Most tropical cyclones form on the side of the subtropical ridge closer to the equator, then move poleward past the ridge axis before recurving into the main belt of the Westerlies.[20] When the subtropical ridge position shifts due to El Niño, so will the preferred tropical cyclone tracks. Areas west of Japan and Korea tend to experience much fewer September–November tropical cyclone impacts during El Niño and neutral years. During El Niño years, the break in the subtropical ridge tends to lie near 130°E, which would favor the Japanese archipelago.[21] During El Niño years, Guam's chance of a tropical cyclone impact is one-third higher than the long-term average.[22] The tropical Atlantic ocean experiences depressed activity due to increased vertical wind shear across the region during El Niño years.[23] On the flip side, however, the tropical Pacific Ocean east of the dateline has above-normal activity during El Niño years due to water temperatures well above average and decreased windshear.[24] Most of the recorded East Pacific category 5 hurricanes occur during El Niño years in clusters.

Elsewhere

In Africa, East Africa — including Kenya, Tanzania, and the White Nile basin — experiences, in the long rains from March to May, wetter-than-normal conditions. Conditions are also drier than normal from December to February in south-central Africa, mainly in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Botswana. Direct effects of El Niño resulting in drier conditions occur in parts of Southeast Asia and Northern Australia, increasing bush fires, worsening haze, and decreasing air quality dramatically. Drier-than-normal conditions are also in general observed in Queensland, inland Victoria, inland New South Wales, and eastern Tasmania from June to August.

Many ENSO linkages exist in the high southern latitudes around Antarctica.[25] Specifically, El Niño conditions result in high pressure anomalies over the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas, causing reduced sea ice and increased poleward heat fluxes in these sectors, as well as the Ross Sea. The Weddell Sea, conversely, tends to become colder with more sea ice during El Niño. The exact opposite heating and atmospheric pressure anomalies occur during La Niña.[26] This pattern of variability is known as the Antarctic dipole mode, although the Antarctic response to ENSO forcing is not ubiquitous.[26]

El Niño's effects on Europe appear to be strongest in winter. Recent evidence indicates that El Niño causes a colder, drier winter in Northern Europe and a milder, wetter winter in Southern Europe.[27] The El Niño winter of 2009/10 was extremely cold in Northern Europe but El Niño is not the only factor at play in European winter weather and the weak El Niño winter of 2006/2007 was unusually mild in Europe, and the Alps recorded very little snow coverage that season.[28]

As warm water spreads from the west Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the east Pacific, it takes the rain with it, causing extensive drought in the western Pacific and rainfall in the normally dry eastern Pacific. Singapore experienced the driest February in 2014 since records began in 1869, with only 6.3 mm of rain falling in the month and temperatures hitting as high as 35 °C on 26 February. The years 1968 and 2005 had the next driest Februaries, when 8.4 mm of rain fell.[29]

Transitional phases

Transitional phases at the onset or departure of El Niño or La Niña can also be important factors on global weather by affecting teleconnections. Significant episodes, known as Trans-Niño, are measured by the Trans-Niño index (TNI).[30] Examples of affected short-time climate in North America include precipitation in the Northwest US[31] and intense tornado activity in the contiguous US.[32]

During strong El Niño episodes, a secondary peak in sea surface temperature across the far eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean sometimes follows the initial peak.[33]

Recent occurrences

These maps compare temperatures in a given month to the long-term average temperature of that month from 1985 through 1997. Blue shows temperatures that were cooler than average, white shows near-average temperatures, and red shows where temperatures were warmer than average. The maps are made from data collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E) compared to historical data collected by a series of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites.Some sea surface temperature anomalies are simply transient events, not part of a specific pattern or trend. Other anomalies are more meaningful. At irregular intervals (roughly every 3-6 years), the sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator become warmer or cooler than normal. These anomalies are the hallmark of El Niño and La Niña climate cycles, which can influence weather patterns across the globe. This time series shows the building and subsiding of a La Niña event from early 2007 through mid-2008.

Since 2000, a number of El Niño events have been observed. El Niño events were observed in 2002–03, 2004–05, 2006–07 and 2009–10.[34] A strong El Niño has not occurred since 1997–98.[35]

In September 2014, the Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño Watch, stating a 60-65% percent chance of El Niño development during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter.[36]

In December 2014, the Japan Meteorological Agency had declared the onset of El Niño conditions, as warmer than normal sea surface temperatures were measured over the Pacific, albeit citing the lack of atmospheric conditions related to the event.[37] Months later both Climate Prediction Center and Australian Bureau of Meteorology had declared the arrival of El Niño conditions, in March and May 2015, respectively.[38][39]

Remote influence on tropical Atlantic Ocean

A study of climate records has shown that El Niño events in the equatorial Pacific are generally associated with a warm tropical North Atlantic in the following spring and summer.[40] About half of El Niño events persist sufficiently into the spring months for the Western Hemisphere Warm Pool to become unusually large in summer.[41] Occasionally, El Niño's effect on the Atlantic Walker circulation over South America strengthens the easterly trade winds in the western equatorial Atlantic region. As a result, an unusual cooling may occur in the eastern equatorial Atlantic in spring and summer following El Niño peaks in winter.[42] Cases of El Niño-type events in both oceans simultaneously have been linked to severe famines related to the extended failure of monsoon rains.[43]

Global warming

During the last several decades the number of El Niño events increased,[44] although a much longer period of observation is needed to detect robust changes.[45] The question is whether this is a random fluctuation or a normal instance of variation for that phenomenon or the result of global climate changes as a result of global warming.

The studies of historical data show the recent El Niño variation is most likely linked to global warming. For example, one of the most recent results, even after subtracting the positive influence of decadal variation, is shown to be possibly present in the ENSO trend,[46] the amplitude of the ENSO variability in the observed data still increases, by as much as 60% in the last 50 years.[47]

It may be that the observed phenomenon of more frequent and stronger El Niño events occurs only in the initial phase of the global warming, and then (e.g., after the lower layers of the ocean get warmer, as well), El Niño will become weaker than it was.[48] It may also be that the stabilizing and destabilizing forces influencing the phenomenon will eventually compensate for each other.[49] More research is needed to provide a better answer to that question.

The "Modoki" or Central-Pacific El Niño


Map showing Niño3.4 and other index regions

Map of Atlantic major hurricanes during post-"Modoki" seasons, including 1987, 1992, 1995, 2003 and 2005.

The traditional Niño, also called Eastern Pacific (EP) El Niño,[50] involves temperature anomalies in the Eastern Pacific. However, in the last two decades, nontraditional El Niños were observed, in which the usual place of the temperature anomaly (Niño 1 and 2) is not affected, but an anomaly arises in the central Pacific (Niño 3.4).[51] The phenomenon is called Central Pacific (CP) El Niño,[50] "dateline" El Niño (because the anomaly arises near the dateline), or El Niño "Modoki" (Modoki is Japanese for "similar, but different").[52][53][54][55] There are flavors of ENSO additional to EP and CP types and some scientists argue that ENSO exists as a continuum often with hybrid types.[56]

The effects of the CP El Niño are different from those of the traditional EP El Niño—e.g., the recently discovered El Niño leads to more hurricanes more frequently making landfall in the Atlantic.[57]

The recent discovery of El Niño Modoki has some scientists believing it to be linked to global warming.[58]
However, comprehensive satellite data go back only to 1979. More research must be done to find the correlation and study past El Niño episodes. More generally, there is no scientific consensus on how/if climate change may affect ENSO.[59]

There is also a scientific debate on the very existence of this "new" ENSO. Indeed, a number of studies dispute the reality of this statistical distinction or its increasing occurrence, or both, either arguing the reliable record is too short to detect such a distinction,[60][61] finding no distinction or trend using other statistical approaches,[62][63][64][65][66] or that other types should be distinguished, such as standard and extreme ENSO.[67][68]

The first recorded El Niño that originated in the central Pacific and moved toward the east was in 1986.[69] Recent Central Pacific El Niños happened in 1986–1987, 1991–1992, 1994–1995, 2002–2003, 2004–2005 and 2009–2010.[70] Furthermore, there were "Modoki" events in 1957–59,[71] 1963–64, 1965–66, 1968–70, 1977–78 and 1979–80.[72][73]

Health and social impacts of El Niño

Extreme weather conditions related to the El Niño cycle correlate with changes in the incidence of epidemic diseases. For example, the El Niño cycle is associated with increased risks of some of the diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, such as malaria, dengue, and Rift Valley fever[citation needed]. Cycles of malaria in India, Venezuela, Brazil, and Colombia have now been linked to El Niño. Outbreaks of another mosquito-transmitted disease, Australian encephalitis (Murray Valley encephalitis—MVE), occur in temperate south-east Australia after heavy rainfall and flooding, which are associated with La Niña events. A severe outbreak of Rift Valley fever occurred after extreme rainfall in north-eastern Kenya and southern Somalia during the 1997–98 El Niño.[74]

ENSO conditions have also been related to Kawasaki disease incidence in Japan and the west coast of the United States,[75] via the linkage to tropospheric winds across the north Pacific Ocean.[76]

ENSO may be linked to civil conflicts. Scientists at The Earth Institute of Columbia University, having analyzed data from 1950 to 2004, suggest ENSO may have had a role in 21% of all civil conflicts since 1950, with the risk of annual civil conflict doubling from 3% to 6% in countries affected by ENSO during El Niño years relative to La Niña years.[77][78]

Cultural history and prehistoric information


Average equatorial Pacific temperatures

ENSO conditions have occurred at two- to seven-year intervals for at least the past 300 years, but most of them have been weak. Evidence is also strong for El Niño events during the early Holocene epoch 10,000 years ago.[79]

El Niño affected pre-Columbian Incas [80] and may have led to the demise of the Moche and other pre-Columbian Peruvian cultures.[81] A recent study suggests a strong El-Niño effect between 1789 and 1793 caused poor crop yields in Europe, which in turn helped touch off the French Revolution.[82] The extreme weather produced by El Niño in 1876–77 gave rise to the most deadly famines of the 19th century.[83] The 1876 famine alone in northern China killed up to 13 million people.[84]

An early recorded mention of the term "El Niño" to refer to climate occurred in 1892, when Captain Camilo Carrillo told the geographical society congress in Lima that Peruvian sailors named the warm north-flowing current "El Niño" because it was most noticeable around Christmas. The phenomenon had long been of interest because of its effects on the guano industry and other enterprises that depend on biological productivity of the sea.

Charles Todd, in 1893, suggested droughts in India and Australia tended to occur at the same time; Norman Lockyer noted the same in 1904. An El Niño connection with flooding was reported in 1895 by Pezet and Eguiguren. In 1924, Gilbert Walker (for whom the Walker circulation is named) coined the term "Southern Oscillation".

The major 1982–83 El Niño led to an upsurge of interest from the scientific community. The period 1991–1995 was unusual in that El Niños have rarely occurred in such rapid succession.[85] An especially intense El Niño event in 1998 caused an estimated 16% of the world's reef systems to die. The event temporarily warmed air temperature by 1.5 °C, compared to the usual increase of 0.25 °C associated with El Niño events.[86] Since then, mass coral bleaching has become common worldwide, with all regions having suffered "severe bleaching".[87]

Major ENSO events were recorded in the years 1790–93, 1828, 1876–78, 1891, 1925–26, 1972–73, 1982–83 and 1997–98,[43] with 1997-1998 episode being one of the strongest ever.[88]

In 1997, the comedian Chris Farley performed his last skit for Saturday Night Live in which he personifies El Niño as a 'bombastic professional wrestler',[89] saying "I am El Niño. El Niño is Spanish for… the Niño." The skit helped enter El Niño into the popular lexicon and Farley has often since been referenced in relation to El Niño.[90][91][92]

Climate networks

Analysis of El Niño events using climate networks shows the dynamics of the climate network is very sensitive to El Niño events. Many links in the network fail during El Niño events.[93]
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