Butingtaon's Corner

The scope and magnitude of the potential effects of climate change is makes it hard to put into perspective, leaving the mind that comprehends it overwhelmed. Slow collapse is an infohazard.

Even now, I struggle to find the adequate word to describe the moment. It makes sense: our 21st century existence is characterized by the repeated confrontation with sprawling, complex, even existential problems without straightforward or easily achievable solutions. Theorist Timothy Morton calls the larger issues undergirding these problems “hyperobjects,” a concept so all-encompassing that it resists specific description. You could make a case that the current state of political polarization and our reality crisis falls into this category. Same for democratic backsliding and the concurrent rise of authoritarian regimes. We understand the contours of the problem, can even articulate and tweet frantically about them, yet we constantly underestimate the likelihood of their consequences. It feels unthinkable that, say, the American political system as we’ve known it will actually crumble. ~

Climate Crisis shall intensify class struggle as people begin to realize their relationship to the economy and to their local ecology, and realize that their interests are fundamentally incompatible. More bloodshed is to come.

Behind the veil of the Covid-19 pandemic, 227 people were killed last year protecting forests, water and other natural resources under increasing stress from climate change, making 2020 the deadliest year on record for environmental defenders according to a report published Monday. ~

• Noah S. Diffenbaugh, "Verification of extreme event attribution: Using out-of-sample observations to assess changes in probabilities of unprecedented events" , Science Advances
• Alan Buis, "Study Confirms Climate Models are Getting Future Warming Projections Right" , NASA.gov
• Jeff McMahon, "Science Underestimated Climate Impacts On Everyday Heat And Weather, Stanford Scientist Says" , Forbes.com
• "Arctic Circle sees 'highest-ever' recorded temperatures" , BBC News
• Michael Irving, "Human-induced climate change reversed 6,500-year global cooling trend" , New Atlas
• "Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds" , Sydney Morning Herald
• Polar Drift in the 1990s Explained by Terrestrial Water Storage Changes

  From the article:

  The accelerated terrestrial water storage decline resulting from glacial ice melting is thus the main driver of the rapid polar drift toward the east after the 1990s. This new finding indicates that a close relationship existed between polar motion and climate change in the past.

• Ancient sea rise tale told accurately for 10,00 years

  Without using written languages, Australian tribes passed memories of life before, and during, post-glacial shoreline inundations through hundreds of generations as high-fidelity oral history. Some tribes can still point to islands that no longer exist—and provide their original names.

• The climate crisis needs a feminist response

  In this militarized way of thinking, the danger lies not in crop failures but in the uprooted migrants seeking safety at our borders. The threat is not the drought, but the armed groups controlling water supplies. This definition of national security divides us and diverts attention from addressing a global crisis that will require us to work together as allies, not enemies, to solve.

• Study from MIT that predicts collapse

  The 1972 paper dealt with a system dynamics computer model named World3, which was generated to study interactions between a number of factors that influence population growth and industrial output. The original study and subsequent research was funded by the Club of Rome, a European organization focused on solving the larger problems facing humanity.

• Hotter than the human body can handle

  With this region of Pakistan along the Indus Valley considered one of the places most vulnerable to climate change in the world, there are fears that Jacobabad's temperatures may increase further, or other cities may join the club.

• IPCC says the planet will reach 1.5 degrees warming a decade early. (disable javascript and ads to view without paywall.)

  A long-overdue report by the world’s climate scientists will on Monday reveal that global warming is accelerating faster than thought, with temperatures set to punch through the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold by the early 2030s, a decade earlier than anticipated just three years ago.

• Old leaders are preventing the world from addressing climate change
• Birds fall from the sky as heatwave scorches India
• Programming in the Apocalypse
• The Junk-Food Effect

  Every leaf and every grass blade on earth makes more and more sugars as CO2 levels keep rising, We are witnessing the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history ― an injection that dilutes other nutrients in our food supply.

• Exxon Knew about Climate Change 40 Years ago
• We delude ourselves in thinking we can make the Green Revolution happen.

  Simon : Even though they were talking about the new energy future, there was absolutely no awareness of our current dependency on fossil fuels... So the problem is not a new technology. We can’t have the raw materials to do it any other way. So take away coal, all our existing technology, including solar panels and wind turbines and electric vehicles and their batteries, will stop. And we haven’t got a substitute for that...