by Geoff Mann in Uncertainty and Climate Change….What we need is a much more honest assessment of what we do not or cannot know, which is, among other important things, where the edge is. We might, in fact, be past it already, treading thin air like Wile E. Coyote before the fall. Today’s politicians don’t like uncertainty: it introduces doubt. Yet we are in desperate need of a politics that looks catastrophic uncertainty square in the face.
I want a better catastrophe
by Andrew Boyd in bettercatastrophe.com…The apocolypse is already happening.
Heat is not a metaphor
by Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Harpers Bazaar….Let me be clear: “Living on a menopausal planet” does not mean the extreme heat we are experiencing is just a natural part of Earth’s life cycle, as climate-change deniers claim. The volatile temperatures we are experiencing are a result of toxic human actions—just like the hot flashes experienced by menopausal people (many women, many gender-expansive people, anyone who has ever had a uterus or ovaries or stewarded the hormone estrogen) may be impacted by the prevalence of hormone-injected animals and processed food in our diets.
Where dangerous heat is surging
by Niko Kommenda, et al in the Washington Post….The danger of climate change is often associated with huge disasters: floods, fires, hurricanes. Heat, on the other hand, is a creeping, quieter risk — but one that is already transforming lives around the world.
The fear of a nuclear fire that would consume Earth
by Thomas Moynihan at BBC.com…..Perhaps the lesson for AI is that the dramatic risks should command our attention, but so too should the more tangible, less attention-grabbing, ones. Neither should cancel the other out, especially when – once again – our world is possibly at stake.
America is using up its groundwater like there’s no tomorrow
By Mira Rojanasakul et al, in The New York Times…..“From an objective standpoint, this is a crisis,” said Warigia Bowman, a law professor and water expert at the University of Tulsa. “There will be parts of the U.S. that run out of drinking water.”
More in this category
What the fossil fuel industry doesn’t want you to know
In TedX with Al Gore……In a blistering talk, Nobel Laureate Al Gore looks at the two main obstacles to climate solutions and gives his view of how we might actually solve the environmental crisis in time. You won’t want to miss his searing indictment of fossil fuel companies for walking back their climate commitments — and his call for a global rethink of the roles of polluting industries in politics and finance.
Canada in the year 2060
by Anne Shibata Casselman in Maclean’s….“Some years we’re going to have to restrict water and essentially ration it. And there’ll be other years when we’ll perhaps be one of the few places in the world that can still produce food reliably.”
Climate-changing human activity could lead to 1 billion deaths over the next century, according to new study
by Jeff Renaud in Phys.org…..”If you take the scientific consensus of the 1,000-ton rule seriously, and run the numbers, anthropogenic global warming equates to a billion premature dead bodies over the next century. Obviously, we have to act. And we have to act fast.”
We are witnessing the first stages of civilization’s collapse
by Michael T. Klare in The Nation….Will our own elites perform any better than the rulers of Chaco Canyon, the Mayan heartland, and Viking Greenland?
Global heating likely to hit world food supply before 1.5C, says UN expert
by Fiona Harvey in The Guardian….“Climate change is a pandemic that we need to fight quickly. See how fast the degradation of the climate is going – I think it’s going even faster than we predicted.”
Atlantic collapse: Q&A with scientists behind controversial study predicting a colder Europe
by Peter Ditlevsen in The Conversation…..But what we see now with more and more frequent extremes, heat waves and storms and floodings, is the possibility of actually hitting a nonlinearity, a tipping point. That’s a much more challenging phenomenon to model.
From debt to diversity: A journey of rewilding, carbon capture and hope
by Elizabeth Fitt in Mongabay….A study also shows that the rewilded farmland at Knepp absorbs more carbon dioxide than conventional farms, providing hope for climate change mitigation and soil restoration.
Instead of moving to escape climate chaos, build social trust where you are
by Bill McKibben in Common Dreams….And I think it’s on a lot of minds, especially right now, as it becomes clear that many parts of our Earth won’t be habitable going forward.
Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganism
by NJ Hagens in Ecological Economics….Our environment and economy are at a crossroads.
Climate variability and natural hazards like floods and earthquakes can act as environmental shocks or socioecological stressors leading to instability and suffering throughout human history.
by Creon Butler in ChathamHouse.org…The stark disconnect between climate science and financial market sentiment will eventually end. It looks increasingly likely to be a sudden and painful adjustment..
Extreme heat is deadlier than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined
by Terri Adams-Fuller in Scientific American….When dangerous heat waves hit cities, better risk communication could save lives
Top 40 impacts of climate change
by Eliot Jacobson in Climatecasino.net….I am not suggesting that this is a list of problems that will be “solved” by addressing climate change. It’s too late for that. The events in this list will happen with ever increasing severity the deeper we get into the climate crisis.
With our food systems on the verge of collapse, it’s the plutocrats v life on Earth
by George Monbiot in The Guardian…Climate breakdown and crop losses threaten our survival, but the ultra-rich find ever more creative ways to maintain the status quo.
The struggle for environmental justice in Africa
by Nnimmo Bassey at resilience.org….Today, Africa is facing multiple ecological challenges. All of these have resulted from the actions of entities that have seen the continent as a sacrificial zone.
Earlier collapse of Anthropocene ecosystems driven by multiple faster and noisier drivers
by Simonn Willcock in Nature…..Accelerating stress levels, increasing frequencies of extreme events and strengthening intersystem connections suggest that conventional modelling approaches based on incremental changes in a single stress may provide poor estimates of the impact of climate and human activities on ecosystems.