pscot
pscot's Journal'Climate grief': The growing emotional toll of climate change
When the U.N. released its latest climate report in October, it warned that without “unprecedented” action, catastrophic conditions could arrive by 2040. For Amy Jordan, 40, of Salt Lake City, a mother of three teenage children, the report caused a “crisis.”
“The emotional reaction of my kids was severe,” she told NBC News. “There was a lot of crying. They told me, 'We know what’s coming, and it’s going to be really rough.’ “
...
The increasing visibility of climate change, combined with bleak scientific reports and rising carbon dioxide emissions, is taking a toll on mental health, especially among young people, who are increasingly losing hope for their future. Experts call it “climate grief,” depression, anxiety and mourning over climate change.
Last year, the American Psychological Association issued a report on climate change’s effect on mental health. The report primarily dealt with trauma from extreme weather but also recognized that “gradual, long-term changes in climate can also surface a number of different emotions, including fear, anger, feelings of powerlessness, or exhaustion.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/climate-grief-growing-emotional-toll-climate-change-n946751
From space, the ferocity of Queensland's bushfires is revealed
Rain forests will burn after all. Interesting graphics at the link
Professor Bowman, who has spent most of his career studying rainforest boundaries and fires, has visited all the stand-out fires events that have taken place in the world over the past few years.
What took place in Queensland, he believes, is entirely consistent with fires in other parts of the world, both in intensity and their links to a changing climate.
“It all ties together as being this signature of a warming, drying climate that makes vegetation burn but, more worryingly, burn in a way that is really outside our mainstream experience. So we’re on a learning curve.”
“This is the terrestrial equivalent of ice sheeting breaking up.”
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-08/from-space,-the-ferocity-of-queenslands-bushfires-is-revealed/10594662
Canada has highest per capita GHG emissions in the G20
Tar Sands
https://twitter.com/PatDeRocH/status/1063462349384880128
Fossil fuel money crushed clean energy ballot initiatives
...the lesson of this year’s energy initiatives is pretty clear: When big oil wants to, it can spend unlimited amounts of money and crush efforts at direct democracy.
And it wants to. Where it chose to spend — notably, on 1631 in Washington and 112 in Colorado — it won.
As I said in this piece, this rather puts the lie to the notion that oil and gas companies plan to be productive partners in the climate fight. They can and will fight it at the grassroots level.
More broadly, ballot initiatives, like US politics generally, are becoming a battle of billionaires. Big money flows in virtually unrestricted. And it is effective.
Decamping from the federal level to the states is not going to allow clean energy proponents to escape that dynamic.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/7/18069940/election-results-2018-energy-carbon-fracking-ballot-initiatives
"I'm sorry, I have very bad news for you,"
Energy sector carbon emissions will rise in 2018 after hitting record levels the year before, dimming prospects for meeting Paris climate treaty goals, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Wednesday.
The energy sector accounts for 80 percent of global CO2 emissions, with most of the rest caused by deforestation and agriculture, so its performance is key to efforts to rein in rising world temperatures.
"I'm sorry, I have very bad news for you," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told guests at a diplomatic function hosted by the Polish embassy in Paris.
"Emissions this year will increase once again, and we're going to have the COP meeting when global emissions reach a record high," he said, referring to the December UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland.
After remaining flat for three years, total global CO2 emissions in 2017 rose by 1.4 percent, dashing hopes that they had peaked.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-10-bad-news-co2-emissions-iea.html#jCp
This goes out to fans of a certain senator
Light in Babylon
Compared to What?
The video quality isn't great but there's nothing wrong with the sound.
Eddie Harris - tenor saxophone
Les McCann - piano, vocals on "Compared to What"
Benny Bailey - trumpet
Leroy Vinnegar - bass
Donald Dean - drums
Short thread here on the soul of America
Highly recommend you follow it all the way down.
https://twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/1013831446350450688
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