Apocalyptic Thinking
Apocalyptic Thinking?
"Yes, It's Time to be Extremely Concerned"
• 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
A thru Z
A /
A Mayor Resigned: 'We're doomed'
B /
Deniers Double Down in Denial: Attack Green New Deal
Not a word about current costs and scientifically predicted spiraling costs of business-as-usual
Nothing said of risks, actuarial risks, but virtual captains of business-as-usual order -- "full-speed ahead"
• https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/02/09/the-green-new-deal-is-actually-a-brown-new-deal/
C /
Cascading Climate Change
Climate Change, "Existential Threat" or (Just) Catastrophic?
Clouds Cooling Effect Could Vanish in a Warming World
• https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00685-x
D /
Deep Adaptation
• http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf
"The climate change paper so depressing it's sending people to therapy"
"Doomsday Clock"
• https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/
"The 'Benefits' of Contemplating Doom
• https://www.wired.com/story/the-beautiful-benefits-of-contemplating-doom/
E /
'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
End Time (also called end times, end of time, end of days, last days, final days)
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_time
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
Extinction Rebellion
• https://extinctionrebellion.us
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
@BBCHARDtalk:
• https://twitter.com/BBCHARDtalk/status/1162309729735127040
F /
Flannery: Colossal failure... Words have not cut through
"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
Fukushima
• https://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/10/24/fukushima-untouchable-eco-apocalypse-no-one-talking
G /
Global Commission on Adaptation
M /
Merchants of Doubt
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Merchants_of_Doubt
N /
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 /
Re: the De-Nihilists by Mary Annaïse Hegler
• https://medium.com/@maryheglar/home-is-always-worth-it-d2821634dcd9
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 /
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
T /
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.facebook.com/NASAGoddard/videos/10153892374900898/?v=10153892374900898
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0VbPE0TOtQ&feature=youtu.be
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 /
Unless It Changes
W /
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...
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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