Okay, it happened again. Just this week, an article on mainstream media used the Hiroshima Bombs per Second (HpS) metaphor to describe how fast the planet is heating up. This time the conclusion was that the oceans are heating up at a rate of 5 HpS. And they got it Wrong! Wrong! Very wrong! The calculation of HpS is straightforward […]
I was live on YouTube for about an hour today. There was an excellent chat and some great questions, and at least two things I got very wrong (watch the video to find out what they are). Enjoy!
According to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five stages of grief that are outlined and accepted as normal in the process of coping with a tragic loss. A quick reminder — these are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Current psychological theory says these happen in no particular order and that they can recur many times during the grieving process. You […]
I’m re-posting the excellent YouTube video of Sam Mitchell (of Collapse Chronicles) reading my recent essay “Choking on Hope.” I humbly ask that you watch the first 5 minutes of this. Sam had me laughing out loud with his proficient choking skills. I promise, he will tickle your depressed doomer spirit. If the first 5 minutes doesn’t hook you, well, […]
Hope. Hope. Hope. Hope. Hope. Hope for a better tomorrow. A kernel of hope. Hope against hope. Keep hope alive. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Hope springs eternal. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Cross my heart and hope to die. Collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse, collapse. If you watched the Jeopardy episode that aired on October […]
“Let’s not worry. It’s too late now. It will always be too late, fortunately!” — Albert Camus, The Fall We are stampeding towards doom. That’s the big “we,” as in humanity, as in all of us, together, collectively engaging in an unstoppable onslaught against ecosystems, climate systems, vast regions of ice, superheated acidified oceans, permafrost, rainforests and every other life […]
“I have seen many humanitarian disasters in the world, but I have never seen climate carnage on this scale,” — Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, September 10, 2022 Many articles about climate change begin with a litany of recent climate events. The author just handpicks their favorite five to ten catastrophes, gives a quick reminder of each, and then moves […]
Methane (CH₄) has been in the news a lot lately, mostly because the monthly numbers released by NOAA continue to skyrocket into record territory, while simultaneously increasing year-over-year by record amounts. Methane currently stands at a near-record 1909.2 parts per billion (ppb) while having gone up by 20.4 ppb in just the last year. Methane is important for two major […]
Summer begins in two days, but collapse is already busting out all over. In case your limited time for news absorption is focused on politics, mass shootings and celebrity updates, you may have missed the news. Planetary and social systems are crashing. Species are going extinct. The world is coming to an end. You name it, it’s happening right now. […]
Being a doomer is nothing new, people have been talking about “the end of the world” for just as long as we’ve had the language to describe the idea. There was the Halley’s comet panic of 1910, the Y2K millennium computer bug, and more recently the Mayan calendar prediction for the end of the world in 2012. There is even […]
Have you ever relied on the media for facts and then been disappointed to find out the information is either out-of-date or just plain wrong? Well, that happened to me yesterday as I was working on a Twitter post. I recalled reading a headline about comparing the rate of heating of the planet to a number of Hiroshima bombs per […]
Sometimes I just have to write about it, what else is there to do? This morning my skin was crawling with how quickly collapse is accelerating. On every front worse shit is happening than ever before in recorded human history on a global scale. And yet we are still talking about solutions, as-if any of them would really work or […]
It’s the last day of April, 2022 and Summer in the Northern Hemisphere is quickly approaching. With it, heatwaves, hurricanes, fires and the La Nina driven mega-drought will continue their onslaught. The melt season in the Arctic is just getting started, with the possibility of a new low reminding us again of the inevitability of a blue ocean event. Siberian […]
Yesterday, April 22, was Earth Day. Curious fact: the letters in “Earth Day” can be rearranged to spell “Death Ray” — and isn’t that what the day is really all about? Solar radiation pummeling the planet, with death rays scorching every rock, tree and blade of grass. An energy imbalance caused by an abundance of gasses that don’t allow those […]
The latest 2022 release by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) subtitled “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” concludes with this call to action: “The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window […]
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…