Hope against hope. Hope springs eternal. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Cross my heart and hope to die. If you watched the Jeopardy episode that aired on October 3, 2022, you would have seen this clue, “This was all that was left after Pandora opened her box releasing all the evils into the world.” In Greek mythology, Pandora […]
(This is an update of the original by the same title, published Feb. 3, 2022.) From the 1985 hit, “We are the World, We are the Children,” to Martin Luther King’s famous “we as a people will get to the promised land,” the history of “we” is rich with hyperbole and hope. While an invocation of “we” is mostly a […]
I have heard the term ‘hopium’ used since my earliest days as a doomer. ‘Hope’ + ‘opium’ = ‘hopium.’ Hope as an opiate drug that numbs the mind and keeps us believing the delusion that a future without collapse is possible. Hope as a belief that there is a plan that could work. Hope as the blue pill, staying in […]
This is a follow-up to my article from January, 2024, titled: “How Hot is Hell? I mean Earth.” Of course, it is common knowledge that 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history and likely the hottest year in over 120,000 years, at about 1.6°C above the 1850-1900 baseline (Copernicus data). If the long-term average was one year alone, we […]
In this post, I gave Over/Under wagers for the global mean surface temperature anomaly, based on data availble through the end of 2024. I provided two methods to do this, one based on accelerating warming and the other based on temperature jerk. In the current post, I am going to update these forecasts using data through the end of 2025. […]
INTRODUCTION: I don’t know about you, but some of my posts get trolled — massive attacks consisting of hundreds and sometimes more than a thousand responses, repeating the same idiotic climate denier b.s., easily debunked, meant to swarm the content so that no meaningful discussion can be had. The idea is simple, if enough troll responses are posted in reply […]
In this post, published on December 23, 2024, I gave twleve “Wagers of Doom” for 2025. I’ve listed them below, with the reconcilliation of each wager in red. Let’s see how they did, and if you made any wagers, it’s time to pay up (or fake-pay up)! Here are the 2025 Wagers of Doom: The OVER/UNDER for the Arctic sea-ice […]
As Sam Mitchell famously said, if you ask 12 doomers to give a definition of what it means to be a doomer, you will get 13 different answers. Or 22. Or even more. In this post I’ve listed many of the most well-known types of doomers. I am sure there are plenty more, and each would define yet another new […]
This essay was originally published on Thursday, July 4, 2019 on Gail Zawacki’s Wit’s End blog. Sadly, our dear friend Gail Zawacki passed away on June 9, 2022, shortly after a diagnosis of cancer. Here is her obituary. Gail was known as the “Diva of Doom” and was an organizer along with her extensive writing about doom. I first met […]
Sandy is back! Please enjoy my live appearance on Environmental Coffeehouse on September 9, 2025. And don’t forget to like, share, comment and subscribe.
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I admit, I have poor comprehension skills when it comes to reading essays and creative writing. Give me numbers all day long, but ask me to make sense of word-soup, no, my head just swims. This lack on my part was put to the test when I tried to make sense of Genevieve Guenther’s so called “third and final form […]
It’s a tough time to be a doomer. Doomers are acutely aware of the planet’s acclerating collapse and ongoing sixth great extinction. This includes record-breaking fires, floods, heatwaves, storms and dozens of other human-caused impacts that are creating suffering for life around the planet. We are exhausted by the volume of information we ingest: that it’s happening faster than expected, […]
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There is a lot of research on how various feedbacks influence the hydroxyl concentration. I recommend an AI search.
Appreciated how this article was structured to walk through and eliminate the simple answers before getting to the tricky ones.…
An interesting read, especially when read in conjunction with your previous essay on Hope. Basing our understanding of the concept…
The punctuation makes a difference. That didn't sound correct, so I checked. The actual quotation begins : " Hope, in…
Thank you very much for your suggestions, Prof. Jacobson! I appreciate them very much and will start to check some…
Thanks so much for the typo catches!
Racing To Extinction by Lyle Lewis.
Gail was a close friend. Sometimes, she was fondly called the Ozonista. I miss not being able to call her…