Apocalyptic Thinking

🥵 When it gets too hot

Apocalyptic Thinking, Existential Threats

• http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

 

Anthropocene Ecosystems Collapsing Due to Added Stresses

2024

Alex Steffen: ... a harbinger of the kind of forces threatening to push hundreds of millions of people into migration

 

Harbinger of.... .......

Climate Migration

• https://greenpolicy360.net/w/Climate_migration

Read more about the Migration Crisis at GreenPolicy360's associate -- Strategic Demands

• https://strategicdemands.com/costsofwar/

Migration Crisis Today & Tomorrow

UN: World facing greatest humanitarian crisis since 1945

○

Millions of displaced civilians continue to seek shelter from current wars, month-by-month, year-by-year.

Millions of people are being impacted by climate change disruption, millions more will be forced to migrate.

🥵

143 Million People May Soon Become Climate Migrants

Climate change will drive human migration more than other events, a new report warns. But the worst impacts can be avoided.

National Geographic / World Bank / March 2018

Climate change will transform more than 143 million people into “climate migrants” (#ClimateMigration) escaping crop failure, water scarcity, and sea-level rise, a new World Bank report concludes.

Most of this population shift will take place in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America—three “hot spots” that represent 55 percent of the developing world’s populations.

The report, Groundswell—Preparing for Internal Climate Migration, also shifts the focus from cross-border migration, which has drawn global attention as refugees and migrants flee war, poverty and oppression, to in-country migration, which involves many more millions of people on the move in search of viable places to live.

🥵

2023

A major concern for the world’s ecosystems is the possibility of collapse, where landscapes and the societies they support change abruptly. 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... Collapses occur sooner under increasing levels of primary stress but additional stresses... bring the collapses substantially closer to today by ~38–81%.

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01157-x?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Apocalypse Now? or Apocalypse Later?

'Hey Doomer', Don't Get So Apocalyptic!

Consider changing your perspective, try being a Planet Citizen on a survival mission

Welcome to the Anthropocene, Your life is your message

or

The Rise of 'Doomers': People who think climate change can't be stopped

Washington Post

Why climate ‘doomers’ are replacing climate ‘deniers’

March 24, 2023

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/03/24/climate-doomers-ipcc-un-report/

or

The End is Nigh

• https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apocalyptic

• https://www.goodreads.com/genres/apocalyptic

• https://www.britannica.com/art/apocalyptic-literature

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction

or

Bill Nye the Science Guy

The End is Nye

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Bill_Nye_the_Science_Guy

• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14325620/

• https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2569912857/

• https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3278619161/

Meanwhile.....

"It ain't over 'til it's over"

The man behind 'It ain't over till it's over'... Yogi Berra, telling people to wait, don't make a judgment yet, because the struggle still might be turned around.

And then there were those nuns who said get going, act up, you can stop the war. Did you ever hear about Sister Corita?

Art by Corita Kent - https://greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Corita_action.jpg

The story is don't give up, turn hope that thing's better into action to make things better... it's philosophical (read Hannah Arendt)

Make a difference, a positive difference

It's time, even as it may feel apocalyptic, to "Get over 'Doomism' and 'Denialism'"

Michael E. Mann on what doom 'n gloom Doomers get wrong

• https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/09/renowned-climate-scientist-michael-e-mann-on-what-doomers-get-wrong/

Time to get going, Going Green, step up, it's your time

Planet Citizens | Planet Citizens, Planet Scientists

Climate Problems, Climate Solutions

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Climate_Problems,_Climate_Solutions

Planet Citizen Action

Dr. Eunice Lo, Research Fellow in Climate Change and Health at the University of Bristol/UK:

“It is vitally important not to lose sight of our current Climate Crisis, which is a result of human emissions of greenhouse gases. While we are predicting an uninhabitable planet in 250 million years, today we are already experiencing extreme heat that is detrimental to human health. This is why it is crucial to reach net-zero emissions as soon as possible.”

Reference: “Climate extremes likely to drive land mammal extinction during next supercontinent assembly” by Alexander Farnsworth, Y. T. Eunice Lo, Paul J. Valdes, Jonathan R. Buzan, Benjamin J. W. Mills, Andrew S. Merdith, Christopher R. Scotese and Hannah R. Wakeford, 25 September 2023, Nature Geoscience.

• https://scitechdaily.com/mass-extinction-predicted-extreme-heat-likely-to-wipe-out-humans-and-mammals-in-triple-whammy/

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Apocalyptica, A thru Z

A /

A Mayor Resigns: 'We're doomed'

• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doomed-mayer-hillman-on-the-climate-reality-no-one-else-will-dare-mention

AI poses ‘risk of extinction’ on par with nukes, tech leaders say

Dozens of tech executives and researchers signed a new statement on AI risks, but their companies are still pushing the technology -- Online & front page Business news, Washington Post, May 30, 2023 ... "an existential risk to humanity"

(Note: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Nuclear Weapons Command & Control (C&C) systems are not a 'fail safe' match)

ARMAGEDDON: What the Bible really says about the end

By Bart D. Ehrman, 2023 | July 2023, Book of the Month Club

Ehrman is a Biblical scholar with many books of explanation of the Bible. In this most recent one he covers the final book of the Bible, Revelation. He instructs how to read it (like a book, not a ouija board or jigsaw puzzle) and summarizes what it actually says. He explains the context of the book in its time (there were many Apocalyptic productions: they were a recognized sub-genre, like science-fiction). Most importantly, he contrasts the violent, vengeful depiction of God and Jesus in Revelation with the Jesus of the other parts of the New Testament.

This is an important book to read to understand how this screed, (which was not much liked or read in the past), became newly relevant in America in the past 200 years. Recent surveys say a signifant fraction of Americans expect the world to end in the near future. This expectation shapes many of our current public policies.

Why conserve resources or act to alleviate climate change if God plans to destroy all the world and all the people in it, SOON?

B /

Blockers of Climate Action Attack a "Brown New Deal"

• https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/02/09/the-green-new-deal-is-actually-a-brown-new-deal/

First the Global Green New Deal

Not a word from those attacking the Green New Deal about the scientifically predicted spiraling costs of global warming and climate disruption's devastating consequences. The GND blockers push full-speed business-as-usual -- with atmospheric and climate disruption, eradication of species, loss of the commons ... on and on ...

Nothing is said by these deniers of existential risks, actuarial costs, apocalyptic scenarios, warnings on the horizon as orders for "full-speed ahead" are issued and these damn-the-future voices call for profit taking now. The short-term thinking astounds and future generations will harshly judge today's climate change deniers ...

Max Berger @MaxBerger

C /

Cascading Climate Change

• https://cleantechnica.com/2018/11/21/cascading-climate-change-events-could-resemble-a-terror-movie-by-2100/

Climate Change, 'Existential Threat', Apocalyptic, Catastrophic or 'End Times'?'

• https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/13/18660548/climate-change-human-civilization-existential-risk

Climate Crisis, 4 C Hotter, 6 Billion Die

• https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/09/18/Climate-Crisis-Wipe-Out/

'Climate Doomers' preparing for society to fall apart

• https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-51857722

Clouds Cooling Effect Could Vanish in a Warming World

• https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00685-x

"Contemplating Doom"

• https://www.wired.com/story/the-beautiful-benefits-of-contemplating-doom/

D /

Deep Adaptation

• http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf

"The climate change paper so depressing it's sending people to therapy"

• https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbwpdb/the-climate-change-paper-so-depressing-its-sending-people-to-therapy

Delay, Deflection, and Doomerism Divide Us

Asking what’s the line where we reach the real dangers of climate change, Dr. Mann said, “In California, Australia, Puerto Rico, Houston—[the line] has arrived.” The weather extremes we’ve seen show that “we are already committed to bad stuff. The real conversation needs to be ‘how bad are we willing to let it get?’” It’s not too late, but we have to “Act Now.”

He explained that while we can tolerate any individual year crossing the line of 1.5° C rise above pre-industrial levels set down by the Paris Climate Accord, we “don’t want the trend to cross it” on a regular basis. “We are one to two decades away” from that happening; to prevent it “we need to bring °C ( degrees Centigrade) down more than 5% per year.” (Recently the UN said we need to cut emissions by 7.6% every year for the next decade to stay below 1.5°C.)

"Doom on you.... Doom on you!... If you weren't smart enough to plan ahead, then doom on you, doom on you."

- Dodo Birds Song & Dance, Ice Age

-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBRjIWRc45s

"Doomsday Clock"

• https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/

"It’s Time to Listen to the Doomsday Planners"

• https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/doomsday-planners-united-states-trump-continuity-government/612208/

Looking at the US government’s so-called doomsday planners — the officials at every major agency who are tasked with preparing and rehearsing the nation’s classified continuity-of-government plans... COVID-19 hasn’t brought the United States to the precipice of doomsday, per se, but it has exposed how much citizens and states rely on a functioning federal government.

Doomism & Climate Change

“Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic. Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, they are led down a path of disengagement. They unwittingly do the bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up.” -- Michael E. Mann, The New Climate War (2021)

E /

Eco-anxiety

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-anxiety

'Ecocide’ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecocide / ec·o·cide /ˈēkōˌsīd,ˈekōˌsīd/

From the Oxford Dictionary - Destruction of the natural environment, especially when willfully done. "Their crime is nothing less than attempted ecocide."

"The rainforests of the Amazonia, sub-Sahraran Africa, and Borneo/Indonesia are indispensable ecological resources of the planet whose managerial control should not be left entirely to national discretion as exercised by governments, often on the basis of economistic and short-term policy goals, which is currently almost invariably the case. This statist sovereignty approach not only puts at risk the planet’s largest carbon sink and most valued source of biodiversity, as well as disrupting and imperiling the lives of 20 million or more people, mostly indigenous communities, living in Amazonia. Forest experts warn that once a rainforest is degraded beyond a certain point, a tipping point is reached, and the degrading will continue of its own accord until what was once a flourishing rainforest becomes a huge area savannah grasslands. Even before tipping points are reached it takes decades to restore forest ecosystems, including precious biodiversity resources." -- Richard Falk (2019)

Edward Teller & the Global Warming Petition Project (1998)

• http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php

The very large number of petition signers demonstrates that, if there is a consensus among American scientists, it is in opposition to the human-caused global warming hypothesis rather than in favor of it. Moreover, the current totals of 31,487 signers, including 9,029 PhDs, are limited only by Petition Project resources.

• https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-grandia/the-30000-global-warming_b_243092.html

• https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2006/02/14/700-club-anchor-touted-global-warming-skeptics/134878

End Time (also called end times, end of time, end of days, last days, final days)

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_time

'Evil Genius' Climate Crisis

• https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-10-28/climate-change-global-pollutants

Extinction

“We are living in the middle of a mass extinction today, but none of us feel that urgency, or that it really is so.”

-- Dr. Gerta Keller, Princeton University

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Extinction

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Extinction Rebellion

XR / Statement posted prior to the Glasgow COP26 International Climate Summit

XR Statement posted by Peter Carter - Climate Emergency Institute

• https://www.climateemergencyinstitute.com/

• https://xrscotland.org/the-charge-against-cop26/

• https://rebellion.global/COP26/

• https://rebellion.global/blog/2021/09/16/COP26-false-hopes-and-fears/

• https://rebellion.global/

• https://rebellion.global/about-us/

• https://rebellion.global/news/#press

• https://extinctionrebellion.uk/ • https://www.facebook.com/XRebellionUK/ • https://twitter.com/xrebellionuk

• https://rebellion.earth • https://extinctionrebellion.us • https://xrebellion.org

An Existential crisis -- "the scale of it is beyond imagination"

@ExtinctionR co-founder Roger Hallam tells @stephensackur six billion lives are at risk over the climate crisis

○ "#BusinessAsUsual is taking us towards catastrophe! If you don't understand that you are not paying attention. -- Extinction Rebellion @XRebellionUK

○ "On rare occasions the corporate media discusses the climate crisis a question they ask without fail is: ‘how will we pay for it?’ A question they never ask is: ‘how many will die if we don’t?’ It’s almost psychopathic." -- Extinction Rebellion @xr_cambridge

F /

Feedback Loops

• https://www.dw.com/en/when-nature-harms-itself-five-scary-climate-feedback-loops/a-43649814

Flannery: Colossal failure... Words have not cut through

• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/17/i-now-look-back-on-my-20-years-of-climate-activism-as-a-colossal-failure

"First Extermination"

• https://truthout.org/articles/this-is-not-the-sixth-extinction-its-the-first-extermination-event

Fox boss ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science

• https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2010/12/15/foxleaks-fox-boss-ordered-staff-to-cast-doubt-o/174317

Franzen Writes the End Is Nigh

• https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-blast-jonathan-franzens-climate-doomist-new-yorker-op-ed-2019-9

“The goal (of halting climate change) has been clear for thirty years, and despite earnest efforts we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching it.”

Fukushima

• https://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/10/24/fukushima-untouchable-eco-apocalypse-no-one-talking

G /

“The fear that the human race might not survive has been replaced by the fear that it will endure.” -- William Gass

Global Commission on Adaptation

• https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/10/climate-crisis-world-readiness-effects-gravely-insufficient-report

H /

Hallam, Roger et al. on Societal Collapse

• https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/09/18/Climate-Crisis-Wipe-Out/

How Capitalism Torched the Planet

• https://eand.co/how-capitalism-torched-the-planet-by-imploding-into-fascism-6d49db3720d5

It strikes me that the planet’s fate is now probably sealed. We have just a decade in which to control climate change — or goodbye, an unknown level of catastrophic, inescapable, runaway warming is inevitable. The reality is: we’re probably not going to make it. It’s highly dubious at this juncture that humanity is going to win the fight against climate change...

Hunziker @Counterpunch

Robert Hunziker goes apocalyptic. The "Permian-Triassic", the near termination of global life on land and in the seas, the "Great Dying", is here again, now, he points out. Hunziker counts the ways environmental disaster is happening around you and to you. He reminds his readers and listeners that he's been covering the environmental news beat for years at Counterpunch. So listen, read -- and weep as Robert Hunziker recounts in excruciating detail how things have gotten bad, are getting worse, and (as he deep dives and retrieves dark data) he makes his case that there's no hope of things getting better.

December 31, 2021

Bright Green Lies Torpedoes Greens

Bright Green Lies Book Review by Robert Hunziker

• https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/31/bright-green-lies-torpedoes-greens/

September 4, 2021

The Climate Apocalypse

by Robert Hunziker

Podcast

• https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/04/robert-hunziker/

I /

Insect Apocalypse

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Missing_Bugs

J /

Jurassic Park ... Michael Crichton

Dr. Ian Malcolm : John, the kind of control you're attempting simply is... it's not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh... well, there it is.

John Hammond : [sardonically] There it is.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiVVzxoPTtg

• https://giphy.com/search/life-finds-a-way/

Science, chaos, control... Michael Crichton's mind at work

• https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3376836-jurassic-park

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should...

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Dr. Ian Malcolm : If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now

[bangs on the table]

Dr. Ian Malcolm : you're selling it, you wanna sell it. Well...

John Hammond : I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before...

Dr. Ian Malcolm : Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.

John Hammond : Condors. Condors are on the verge of extinction...

Dr. Ian Malcolm : [shaking his head] No...

John Hammond : If I was to create a flock of condors on this island, you wouldn't have anything to say.

Dr. Ian Malcolm : No, hold on. This isn't some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction.

John Hammond : I simply don't understand this Luddite attitude, especially from a scientist. I mean, how can we stand in the light of discovery, and not act?

Dr. Ian Malcolm : What's so great about discovery? It's a violent, penetrative act that scars what it explores. What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world.

Dr. Ellie Sattler : Well, the question is, how can you know anything about an extinct ecosystem? And therefore, how could you ever assume that you can control it? I mean, you have plants in this building that are poisonous, you picked them because they look good, but these are aggressive living things that have no idea what century they're in, and they'll defend themselves, violently if necessary.

John Hammond : Dr. Grant, if there's one person here who could appreciate what I'm trying to do...

Dr. Alan Grant : The world has just changed so radically, and we're all running to catch up. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but look... Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?

John Hammond : [laughing] I don't believe it. I don't believe it! You're meant to come down here and defend me against these characters, and the only one I've got on my side is the blood-sucking lawyer!

Donald Gennaro : Thank you.

K /

“It is very plausible that we’ve fallen off a cliff already and don’t know it. I fear, honestly, that by the time any of this is settled science, it’s way too late to act.” -- Dr. Hali Kilbourne, University of Maryland, speaking of Atlantic Ocean overturning current changes that are predicted as climate 'tipping points' (ps, there's more to the Atlantic Ocean currents, eg read this Dr. Foley thread https://twitter.com/globalecoguy/status/1683956619892121600?s=61&t=14LnFHA-cgLSdk-DhRp7cw -- and doomer counterpoint, the doom, like a Hollywood disaster movie, is growing closer https://www.axios.com/2023/07/25/gulf-stream-collapse-atlantic-ocean-circulation

L /

Losing the Green

• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-stopped-getting-greener-20-years-ago/

M /

Michael Mann

"Doom-mongering, ironically, is one way to disengage us. If we are led to believe it's too late to do anything, then why do anything?"

Dr. Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. He has received many honors and awards, including NOAA's outstanding publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. Additionally, he contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. More recently, he received the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018 and the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union in 2018. In 2019 he received the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. In 2020 he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of numerous books, including Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, and The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.

January 2021 - Read Michael Mann's latest book --

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet

• https://www.amazon.com/New-Climate-War-Fight-Planet/dp/1541758234/

'Merchants of Doubt'

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Merchants_of_Doubt

Meet the 'Doomers'

• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/meet-the-doomers-some-young-us-voters-have-given-up-hope-on-climate

Michael E. Mann

• "Good people fall victim to doomism. I do too sometimes"... "Beware the climate doomsayers." -- Michael E. Mann - 'The New Climate War'

• https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/beware-the-climate-doomsayers-1.4506203

"Soft doomism..."

(Extract from 'The New Climate War' -- https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/02/08/new-climate-war-book-extract/

Soft doomism has become increasingly widespread. Its basic tenets have been adopted by groups like Extinction Rebellion, which takes the position that “we are facing an unprecedented global emergency. Life on earth is in crisis … [W]e have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown, and we are in the midst of a mass extinction of our own making.”

In mid-January 2020, a curious online article was making the rounds, ironically well-titled “Climate fatalism”. While the article was unsigned, it was sponsored by an organisation called the Freedom Lab, which describes itself as an “innovation hub” and “think tank” that produces “actionable insights” which it shares “through regular publications and public events”.

The article embodies the ambivalence and internal contradictions that have come to characterise soft doomism.

“Last year,” it begins, “several alarming reports made it clear that immediate and radical action is needed to prevent disastrous levels of global warming.” It’s a promising start, acknowledging the problem and entreating the reader to action. However, in the very next line, the author writes: “Action is nowhere to be found and we are bound to hit the tipping points of global warming that will render any further action irrelevant.”

It’s an abrupt turn towards doomism and futility that is made even more confusing by the sentence that follows, which warns of the threat of the very sort of fatalism that the article is promoting: “As this notion spreads, 2019 could see many of us falling prey to climate fatalism and a shift in political focus towards climate adaptation.”

Despite the contradictions, the piece has an agenda. It concludes with a prescriptive statement masquerading as a predictive one: “We will see a shift from preventing climate change to adapting to (and battling) the effects. Much of this will entail engineering, to build dams and extreme-weather-proof buildings, for instance. It’s likely that governments will shift funding from preventive measures to these kinds of adaptive solutions.”

'Monster Climate Change Essay'

• https://guymcpherson.com/climate-chaos/

• https://www.victoria.ac.nz/sgees/about/news/news-archives/2016-news/guy-mcpherson-and-the-end-of-humanity-not

 

N /

National Academy of Sciences in the U.S.

Scientist are increasingly describing a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.

• http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/05/1704949114.short

Notes from an Apocalypse / Apocalypse Now and Forever

• https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558414/notes-from-an-apocalypse-by-mark-oconnell/

• https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-03-13/apocalypse-now-and-forever-review-of-notes-from-an-apocalypse-a-personal-journey-to-the-end-of-the-world-and-back/

Nuclear Weapons Control Architecture Collapses

• https://www.strategicdemands.com/as-nuclear-weapons-control-collapses/

Nuclear Weapons Spending Booms

Nuclear Proliferation Accelerates under Trump Regime

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Nuclear_Weapons

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Nuclear_Proliferation

• https://www.strategicdemands.com/nuclear-issues-cold-war-2-0/

• https://www.strategicdemands.com/stewards-of-the-apocalypse/

• https://www.strategicdemands.com/regional-nuclear-conflict-global-nuclear-catastrophe/

As the World Returns to an Era of MAD "Mutually Assured Destruction"

Welcome Back 'End of Time - Armageddon'

 

O /

Open Letter - A warning on climate and the risk of societal collapse

Talk about it, prepare for it

• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/06/a-warning-on-climate-and-the-risk-of-societal-collapse

P /

Patrick Moore

• https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/greenpeace-statement-on-patric/

• https://www.desmogblog.com/patrick-moore

Check out @EcoSenseNow’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/EcoSenseNow/status/1104939381796724736

Check out @RepDonBeyer’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/RepDonBeyer/status/1105461822864441344

R /

Re: De-Nihilists by Mary Annaïse Hegler

• https://medium.com/@maryheglar/home-is-always-worth-it-d2821634dcd9

Richard Alley says seas could rise, really rise

• https://cleantechnica.com/2019/09/13/15-to-20-foot-sea-level-rise-possible-sooner-rather-than-later/

Runaway Greenhouse Effect

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect

S /

"We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science & technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science & technology. This is a prescription for disaster." -- Carl Sagan, 1995

Alex Steffen, The 'Carbon Bubble' & 'Pipelines to Nowhere'

• https://thenearlynow.com/trump-putin-and-the-pipelines-to-nowhere-742d745ce8fd

"We are not now capable of designing a future that works in continuity with our existing systems and practices while producing emissions reductions and sustainability gains fast enough to avoid truly dire ecological harm. This is an option that no longer exists." -- Alex Steffen (@AlexSteffen)

Professor Will Steffen, climate scientist presentation June 2018 on the urgency of our climate crisis

Will Steffen / Explaining the concept of 'tipping points'... https://twitter.com/i/status/1163720944982069248

"There is a tipping point around 2°C where we will loose most of the Amazon rainforest. If we loose the permafrost there is no way are going to stop at 3°C.... Tipping points are not going to act in isolation. Once we hit 2°C we hit a global tipping point that humanity cannot control.

• https://twitter.com/i/status/1163733007657832448

Will Steffen: "If we miss the 2°C target we might not be able to get to 3°C because of tipping points in the system. If we blow that target there is no guarantee we are able to control it."

• https://twitter.com/i/status/1163731212936130560

Will Steffen: "Can we go back? No! You break the climate system, you own it."

What would a 4°C warmer world look like? "Think of 20-40m sea-level rise at a rate of maybe 2m per century. Maximum carrying capacity about 1 billion humans. Humans will probably not go extinct but it will be a pretty rough ride from 7.5 billion down to 1 billion."

• https://twitter.com/i/status/1163734464696074240

Stewards of the Apocalypse

@StrategicDemands

• https://strategicdemands.com/stewards-of-the-apocalypse/

Suicidal course toward catastrophic climate change... -- Los Angeles Times Editorial

• https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-11-22/fossil-fuel-paris-agreement-trump-global-warming

T /

Tardigrade in nature -- and Jurassic quotes from Michael Crichton

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3376836-jurassic-park

Terrifying Climate Model: 6 ~ 7 degrees C. Increase by 2100

• https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/09/17/terrifying-new-climate-models-warn-6-7degc-warming-2100-if-emissions-not-slashed

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Via Semafor

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Tipping Points, Ice Melts, Oceans Heat, Seas Rise

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Antarctica

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thwaites_Glacier

• Elizabeth Rush is There in Antarctica

The ice stream in the west of the Antarctic continent is comparable in size to Florida.

It is melting and is currently in rapid retreat, accounting for around 4% of global sea-level rise - an amount that has doubled since the mid-1990s.

Researchers want to know if Thwaites could collapse.

Were it to do so, its lost ice would push up the oceans by 80cm (2.6 ft or more).

Some computer models have suggested such an outcome is inevitable if conditions continue as they are ...

Thwaites, a 182,000-square-kilometer glacier that abuts the Amundsen Sea... has a wide front on the ocean's edge and sits on ground below sea level, where warming waters can slowly melt its base. This deep seawater is held back by a submerged ridge, but once water surmounts this grounding line, the land slopes downward into a basin of uncertain topography and slipperiness...

In the North, in the Arctic, in Greenland, across the latitudes the ice melt continues breaking historic records ...

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Arctic

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Sea-Level_Rise

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:NASA_2002-2015_Grace_Observations_of_Ice_Mass_Loss_Greenland-Antarctica.png

• https://www.facebook.com/NASAGoddard/videos/10153892374900898/?v=10153892374900898

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0VbPE0TOtQ&feature=youtu.be

Courtesy of Tom Toles

So ask yourself, which way do you want to go?

And then there's Trump, the US president, rushing to burn fossil fuels unabated

Jay Inslee, Washington governor and Democratic party candidate for president sends out a stark warning

New Republic / The urgency of climate change is finally dawning on the public. Two-thirds of Democrats now say they view global warming as a “critical threat,” and most call it the most important issue to discuss in presidential debates.

• https://newrepublic.com/article/154539/trumps-reelection-doom-planet

U /

Umair: Wait, what are the Kardashians doing in lockdown?

• https://eand.co/will-coronavirus-really-change-the-world-77d16e860996

Unless It Changes

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2016/02/09/unless-it-changes-capitalism-will-starve-humanity-by-2050/

Unsurvivable

Dr. Steffen: A 'collapse scenario'

Check out @Jumpsteady’s Tweet on the collapse (Video) ...

• https://twitter.com/Jumpsteady/status/1179448676382580737

W /

James G. Watt became U.S. Secretary of the Interior in earlier 1981 as a key cog in the so-called 'Reagan revolution'. Watt immediately announced the administration's anti-environmentalist "crusade". Reagan's chief of staff, James Baker, when asked if Watt's extreme anti-environmental positions accurately reflected the president's view, answered with a blunt, unequivocal -- "Yes."

Carl E. Bagge, president of the National Coal Association (from 1971-1987) who was nicknamed "Mr. Coal" and called clean-air groups "extremists", said at the beginning of the Watt revolution "We're deliriously happy..." Watt's attacking environmentalists became a center piece of the Reagan presidency. A joke made the rounds of corporate suites: 'How much power does it take to stop a million environmentalists? One Watt.'

Via the Washington Post, June 2020

"We are all apocalyptic now."

• https://truthout.org/articles/rationally-speaking-we-are-all-apocalyptic-now/

Wells, David Wallace

PBS / Read a chapter from ‘The Uninhabitable Earth,’ a dire warning on climate change

David Wallace-Wells' new book (March 2019)

Chapter 1

It is worse, much worse, than you think.

The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all, and comes to us bundled with several others in an anthology of comforting delusions: that global warming is an Arctic saga, unfolding remotely; that it is strictly a matter of sea level and coastlines, not an enveloping crisis sparing no place and leaving no life un-deformed; that it is a crisis of the “natural” world, not the human one; that those two are distinct, and that we live today somehow outside or beyond or at the very least defended against nature, not circumscribed and literally overwhelmed by it; that wealth can be a shield against the ravages of warming; that the burning of fossil fuels is the price of continued economic growth; that growth, and the technology it produces, will allow us to engineer our way out of environmental disaster; that there is any analogue to the scale or scope of this threat, in the long span of human history, that might give us confidence in staring it down.

None of this is true. But let’s begin with the speed of change...

• https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586541/the-uninhabitable-earth-by-david-wallace-wells/9780525576709/

• https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/2/22/18188562/climate-change-david-wallace-wells-the-uninhabitable-earth

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uninhabitable_Earth

• https://grist.org/article/the-uninhabitable-earth-puts-words-to-a-future-you-dont-want-to-live-in/

Editorial Reviews

"The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet. . . . Wallace-Wells’s imagine-the-worst approach has become prescient. . . . I read it with an unfolding mix of horror and hopelessness, the way you might learn of a terminal diagnosis that affects yourself and your family and everyone else you might ever hope to know.” — Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times

“'The Uninhabitable Earth' is unabashedly pornographic. It is also riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.” — The Economist

"Most of us know the gist, if not the details, of the climate change crisis. And yet it is almost impossible to sustain strong feelings about it. David Wallace-Wells has now provided the details, and with writing that is not only clear and forceful, but often imaginative and even funny, he has found a way to make the information deeply felt. This is a profound book, which simultaneously makes me terrified and hopeful about the future, ashamed and proud of being a human." — Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated

"David Wallace-Wells argues that the impacts of climate change will be much graver than most people realize, and he's right. The Uninhabitable Earth is a timely and provocative work." — Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

"One of the very few books about our climate change emergency that doesn't sugarcoat the horror." — William T. Vollmann, author of No Immediate Danger

“Powerfully argued. . . . A masterly analysis of why—with a world of solutions—we choose doom.” — Nature

"This gripping, terrifying, furiously readable book is possibly the most wide-ranging account yet written of the ways in which climate change will transform every aspect of our lives, ranging from where we live to what we eat and the stories we tell. Essential reading for our ever-more-unfamiliar and unpredictable world." — Amitav Ghosh, author of Flood of Fire

“Urgent and humane. . . . Wallace-Wells is an extremely adept storyteller. . . . A horrifying assessment of what we might expect as a result of climate change if we don’t change course.” — Susan Matthews, Slate

“If we don’t want our grandchildren to curse us, we had better read this book.” — Timothy Snyder, author of Black Earth

“Lively. . . . Vivid. . . . If you’ve snoozed through or turned away from the climate change news, this book will waken and update you. If you’re steeped in the unfolding climate drama, Wallace-Wells’s voice and perspective will be stimulating.” — David George Haskell, The Guardian

"Trigger warning: when scientists conclude that yesterday's worst-case scenario for global warming is probably unwarranted optimism, it's time to ask Scotty to beam you up. At least that was my reaction upon finishing Wallace-Wells' brilliant and unsparing analysis of a nightmare that is no longer a distant future but our chaotic, burning present. Unlike other writers who speak about human agency in the abstract, he zeros in on the power structures and capitalist elites whose mindless greed is writing an obituary for our grandchildren." — Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear

"A lucid and thorough description of our unprecedented crisis, and of the mechanisms of denial with which we seek to avoid its fullest recognition.” — William Gibson, author of Neuromancer

"David Wallace-Wells has produced a willfully terrifying polemic that reads like a cross between Stephen King and Stephen Hawking. The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon. Written with verve and insight and an eerie gusto for its own horrors, it comes just when we need it; it could not be more urgent than it is at this moment. I hope everyone will read it and be afraid." — Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

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U.N. Warns of Coming Climate Change Catastrophe

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The Trinity Nuclear Weapon, 1945

Our two nuclear labs, Los Alamos and Sandia National laboratories, are the world's foremost facilities for the production of mass death on demand… Over the past 60 years, our country has spent $7 trillion of its citizens' labor and money to generate 70,000 nuclear warheads at an average cost of about $100 million apiece. We retain 10,400 such weapons today in our nuclear arsenal. -- Greg Mello, Director, Los Alamos Study Group, January 6, 2005

J. Robert Oppenheimer

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"

• https://strategicdemands.com/stewards-of-the-apocalypse/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove

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