the cherished myths of climate change deniers

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GCC NuclearPowerPlant 1500 crop

PROPERLY, A MYTH is a “tra­di­tional story of os­ten­sibly his­tor­ical events that serves to un­fold part of the world view of a people or ex­plain a prac­tice, be­lief, or nat­ural phe­nom­enon” (Merriam-Webster). But we rarely use that de­f­i­n­i­tion today. Most of us use myth with its sec­ondary de­f­i­n­i­tion: “an un­founded or false no­tion.” And that is how it is used in an ar­ticle in the Sep­tember 18, 2019, edi­tion of Teen Vogue. READ MORE

more research on seeding oceans and space mirrors is needed

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GCC GeoEngineering mirror 1500

GEOENGINEERING IDEAS have been around for decades. Few such ideas have pro­gressed past the thought ex­per­i­ment stage, due in part to con­cerns that the cure could be worse than the dis­ease. But as dire warn­ings about cli­mate change’s im­pacts in­creas­ingly dom­i­nate the news, geo­engi­neering may once again be get­ting a closer look. 

De­mo­c­ratic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date An­drew Yang pro­poses funding large-scale gov­ern­ment re­search into mas­sive cli­mate in­ter­ven­tion projects such as giant solar radiation-reflecting space mir­rors or seeding the ocean with iron to pro­mote blooms of carbon-sequestering algae. READ MORE

a banana farm whose main business is producing biodiversity

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GCC BananaFarm 1500

RIO SIXAOLA IS A BANANA FARM in Costa Rica one of the first two Rain­forest Al­liance Cer­ti­fied farms in the world. It con­tains the only in­tact man­grove swamp on the At­lantic coast, and La Amistad In­ter­na­tional Park, a World Her­itage site that pro­tects the largest area of undis­turbed high­land wa­ter­sheds and forests in southern Cen­tral America. It is an in­ter­na­tion­ally renowned model of sus­tain­ability. READ MORE

climate change and the influence of the nuclear industry

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GCC CalmBeforeTheStorm 1500

AS SEA LEVELS RISE, a flawed un­der­standing of cli­mate sci­ence and the out­size in­flu­ence that the U.S. nu­clear in­dustry ex­erts on the NRC have con­verged, in­creasing the risk of dis­as­trous flood-induced ac­ci­dents at coastal nu­clear power plants around the United States.
 Turkey Point Nu­clear Gen­er­ating Sta­tion lies 25 miles south of down­town Miami. It houses two of America’s oldest op­er­ating com­mer­cial nu­clear re­ac­tors. READ MORE

cooler regions becoming more hospitable for mosquitoes

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GCC Nepal 1500

WHEN MOSQUITO SEASON brought past dengue out­breaks to re­gions across the Asian tropics, Nepal hardly had to worry. The high-altitude Hi­malayan country was typ­i­cally too chilly for the disease-carrying in­sects to live. But with cli­mate change opening new paths for the viral dis­ease, Nepal is now reeling from an un­prece­dented out­break. At least 9,000 people have been di­ag­nosed with dengue since Au­gust. READ MORE

can’t you simply enjoy the fall colors? (editorial cartoons)

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NewYorker cartoon LayOffTheClimateChange 1500 crop

RATHER THAN STICK ALL THE CARTOONS in this one ar­ticle, I moved all but the fea­tured car­toon by Pat Byrnes (for The New Yorker on Sep­tember 30, 2019) to other posts on this blog! Yeah, I know: It’s a sneaky way for me to get those of you hooked on cli­mate change car­toons to pe­ruse the other ar­ti­cles.

So, go pe­ruse …

NewYorker cartoon LayOffTheClimateChange

“Can’t you lay off the cli­mate change for one minute and simply enjoy the fall colors?” READ MORE

where there was once ice, there is now rock

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GCC MountBlanc glacier 1500 crop

YOU BROKE OUR GLACIER! That’s a damn clever teaser to get someone surfing the in­ternet to stop a mo­ment and check out the web­site. The ar­ti­cle’s full title is “You broke our glacier: the Mont Blanc re­sort on the cli­mate front­line” by An­gela Giuf­frida for The Guardian (Sep­tember 28, 2019). The sub­title is “Re­ports that a mass of ice is in danger of breaking away have spurred res­i­dents of nearby Cour­mayeur to de­mand ac­tion.” READ MORE

by 2100, earth passed the safe threshold of warming mark

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Iceberg BloodDimmed 1500

A LIKELY DOOMSDAY SCENARIO is pre­sented by Emily Atkin in the ar­ticle “The Blood-Dimmed Tide” for the New Re­public (Sep­tember 16, 2019). “It’s the year 2100. Many of the world’s major powers have spent the last sev­eral decades fo­cusing on them­selves. Bor­ders have closed. In­ter­na­tional in­vest­ments in ed­u­ca­tion and tech­nology have de­clined. The di­vide be­tween the de­vel­oped and un­de­vel­oped world has widened.
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the anti-trump and the weight of the world

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GretaThunberg NewYorker AntiTrump 1400 copy

THE NEW YORKER fo­cused on Greta Thun­berg today, pub­lishing an ar­ticle and a fea­tured car­toon. The ar­ticle is ti­tled “Greta Thun­berg Is the Anti-Trump” and was written by Masha Gessen: “She is young and he is old. She is honest and he is a ha­bitual liar. She re­lies on sci­ence and he re­lies on nothing but his gut. READ MORE