the wicked witch of the east has returned to oz

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Australia fire Hillville 1500

“AUSTRALIA TODAY IS GROUND ZERO for the cli­mate cat­a­strophe. Its glo­rious Great Bar­rier Reef is dying, its world-heritage rain forests are burning, its giant kelp forests have largely van­ished, nu­merous towns have run out of water or are about to, and now the vast con­ti­nent is burning on a scale never be­fore seen. The im­ages of the fires are a cross be­tween Mad Max and On The Beach: thou­sands driven onto beaches in a dull or­ange haze, crowded tableaux of people and an­i­mals al­most me­dieval in their strange muteness—half-Bruegel, half-Bosch, ringed by fire, sur­vivors’ faces hidden be­hind masks and swim­ming gog­gles.” READ MORE

2018 another year of record temperatures around the world

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PatrickChappatte CaliforniaDrought 04 28 2015 1500 crop

THE GREENHOUSE GAS BULLETIN from the World Me­te­o­ro­log­ical Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WMO) pro­vided fig­ures for glob­ally av­er­aged con­cen­tra­tions of three key climate-heating gases in 2018: ni­trous oxide (N2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and methane (CH4). The pres­ence of these three gases in our at­mos­phere have in­creased by 123%, 147%, and 259% of pre-industrial levels (levels prior to 1750). READ MORE

alaskan permafrost under assault from warming climate

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Alaska permafrost cliff 1500 crop

THE TERM “PERMAFROST” refers to ground that re­mains frozen for at least two straight years. Per­mafrost is most common in re­gions with high moun­tains and in higher lat­i­tudes; it covers large re­gions of the Earth. Al­though the ground is frozen, per­mafrost re­gions are not al­ways cov­ered in snow. Per­mafrost is made of a com­bi­na­tion of soil, rocks, and sand that are held to­gether by ice. READ MORE

oldest arctic ice melting faster than the rest of the icecap

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GCC ArcticsOldestIce 1500 crop

HOW MANY TIMES ARE WE GOING TO READ that cli­mate change is hap­pening “faster” than ex­pected be­fore we change our expectations—or, at least, our de­f­i­n­i­tion of fast? “Stretches of the Arctic’s oldest ice, and its thickest—the last refuge ice that should sur­vive even when the Arctic Ocean tech­ni­cally be­comes ice-free in sum­mers later this century—are now dis­ap­pearing twice as fast as the rest of the Arctic icecap. READ MORE

holy hannah! is greta thunberg a time-traveler from the future?

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TimeMachine 1960 George 3 1500 crop

THE TITLE OF THE ARTICLE is “Is Greta Thun­berg a Time Trav­eler Here to Save Us From Cli­mate Emer­gency? 120-Year-Old Photo Sparks Flood of Con­spiracy The­o­ries” by the Common Dreams staff (November 21, 2019). Well, there seems to be a con­spiracy theory for just about every­thing, so why not Miss Thun­berg as a vis­itor from the fu­ture! Here are the first para­graphs from the ar­ticle:

“Is 16-year-old Swedish ac­tivist Greta Thun­berg a time trav­eler here to save us from the global cli­mate emer­gency? READ MORE

find bleeding heart liberal petitions on facebook

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BleedingHeart Facebook 1500

I HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE ti­tled Bleeding Heart Lib­eral Pe­ti­tions. Most days, I re­ceive a slew of emails with pe­ti­tions for var­ious causes such as saving an en­dan­gered species, urging my rep­re­sen­ta­tives in state and fed­eral gov­ern­ment to vote for or against a par­tic­ular bill, protest an in­jus­tice, etc. I read them all, sign most of them, and add a few to the Face­book page. READ MORE

chamber of commerce changes approach to climate change

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ChamberOfCommerce building 1500 crop

AS ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL lob­bying groups in the country, the U.S. Chamber of Com­merce has long been a cen­tral player in the net­work of or­ga­ni­za­tions seeding de­nial about cli­mate change. Its work in­cludes spending mil­lions of dol­lars in­flu­encing elec­tions and lob­bying in sup­port of new oil and gas de­vel­op­ment, roll­backs of U.S. methane reg­u­la­tions, and the re­peal of the Clean Power Plan. READ MORE

climate change denial and inaction are related

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GCC ThreeTypesOfDenier 1500 crop

THE TWIN PHENOMENON of de­nial and in­ac­tion are re­lated to one an­other, at least in the con­text of cli­mate change. They are also com­plex, both in the gen­eral sense of “com­pli­cated and in­tri­cate,” and in the tech­nical psy­cho­log­ical sense of “a group of re­pressed feel­ings and anx­i­eties which to­gether re­sult in ab­normal be­hav­iour.”

In his book States of De­nial, the late psy­cho­an­a­lytic so­ci­ol­o­gist Stanley Cohen de­scribed three forms of de­nial. READ MORE