The Crisis Report - 32

Humanity forms coral reef like environments called “cities”. We are about to have a “bleaching” event.

Healthy Coral — Bleached Dead Coral

I am always trying to come up with simple, effective, visceral descriptions of what Global Warming is doing to the planet. I know “Doomism” and “scaring people” as a way of getting them to listen to Climate Messaging is out of favor right now. I know that the Climate Activist tribe has decided “Optimism” and narratives of “hope” are what’s needed.

These days, lots of people think this.

Why climate ‘doomers’ are replacing climate ‘deniers’ WAPO 03/24

How U.N. reports and confusing headlines created a generation of people who believe climate change can’t be stopped.

The doomers are wrong about humanity’s future — and its past - The necessity of progress. VOX 03/20

The biggest danger we face today, if we care about actually making the future a more perfect place, isn’t that industrial civilization will choke on its own exhaust or that democracy will crumble or that AI will rise up and overthrow us all.

It’s that we will cease believing in the one force that raised humanity out of tens of thousands of years of general misery: the very idea of progress.

Progress solves the problems we didn’t know were problems.

Against doomerism VOX 03/20

It’s boom times for doom times, but from artificial intelligence to climate change to food supplies, there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic that the future will be better — if we make it so.

We need the right kind of climate optimism - Climate pessimism dooms us to a terrible future. VOX 03/21

People might defend doomsday scenarios as the wake-up call that society needs. If they’re exaggerated, so what? They might be the crucial catalyst that gets us to act on climate change.

Setting aside the moral problem of stretching the truth, this claim is wrong.

Scaring people into action doesn’t work. That’s true not just for climate change, air pollution, and biodiversity loss, but for almost any issue we can think of. We need optimism to make progress.

“CLIMATE CHANGE WILL END THE WORLD BY 2100…”

Climate doomism doesn’t help much. In fact, it’s counterproductive.

Climate denial and climate doom are both extremes on the climate action spectrum. And they are both as dangerous.

Climatologist Michael E Mann: 'Good people fall victim to doomism. I do too sometimes' The Guardian 02/21

Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic. Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, they are led down a path of disengagement. They unwittingly do the bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up.

“What is so pernicious about this is that it seeks to weaponise environmental progressives who would otherwise be on the frontline demanding change. These are folk of good intentions and good will, but they become disillusioned or depressed and they fall into despair.”

“Too late” narratives are invariably based on a misunderstanding of science.

“If the science objectively demonstrated it was too late to limit warming below catastrophic levels, that would be one thing and we scientists would be faithful to that.”

“But science doesn’t say that.” - Dr. Michael Mann

Then why do 4 out of 5 Climate Scientists think warming will be 2.5C or HIGHER? Michael is parsing his words very carefully. It hinges on what he means by “catastrophic”. If you don't know that, his statement that “scientists would say something” is a misleading “true lie”.

Really, Dr. Mann?

REALLY?

• Of the scientists who responded to this poll, 88% think global warming constitutes a crisis and nearly as many said they expect to see “catastrophic impacts of climate change in their lifetimes”.

• Just under half said that global warming has caused them to reconsider major life decisions, such as where to live and “whether to have children”.

• More than 60% said that they experience anxiety, grief, or other distress because of concerns over climate change.

Last year, some Climate Scientists were talking about “going on strike”.

February 2022

Dr. Glavovic, 61, a professor at Massey University in New Zealand, and two colleagues to send a jolt recently through the normally cautious, rarefied world of environmental research. In an academic journal, they called on climate scientists to stage a mass walkout, to stop their research until nations take action on global warming.

One protested in another way.

April 2022

Climate Activist Dies After Setting Himself on Fire at Supreme Court in Protest.

The court’s conservative majority had voiced skepticism of the agency’s authority to regulate carbon emissions, suggesting that a decision by the justices could deal a sharp blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change.

I guess that I have to believe, “These are folk of good intentions and good will” who have “become disillusioned or depressed” and fallen “into despair”. Because the alternative is to believe that Michael Mann doesn't know what he's talking about. Or that Michael Mann is deliberately lying about the Climate Crisis.

Perhaps Dr. Mann simply agrees with the “Climate Communicators” here on SubStack. The ones who have decided that telling you the TRUTH isn't a good idea.

Because, “Telling everyone the world as they know it is over and that they’re going to die isn’t an effective communications strategy, even if it’s true.”

Moving Beyond Doomism: Data-Driven Strategies for Effective Climate Content

Here's what the “non-Optimist” Climate Scientists are saying is about to happen.

The WMO thinks there is a 50:50 chance that global temperatures will spike up 0.4C over the next few years.

Last year the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) stated:

• Average global temperatures have a 50:50 chance of temporarily reaching 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels during at least one of the next five years.

• The likelihood of reaching this warming threshold, therefore increasing the risk of climate-related disasters, is only increasing over time

• Between 2022 and 2026, there is a 93 per cent chance that we will see the hottest year on record - dislodging 2016 from the top spot.

• There is a 93 per cent chance that global average temperatures over the next five years will be higher than in the previous five years.

The report from the WMO used expertise from internationally acclaimed climate scientists and the world’s best prediction systems to produce information for policymakers.

THEY ARE FORECASTING 0.4C OF WARMING IN JUST 4 YEARS! Almost half a degree of warming in just 4 years!

This information should scare the shit out of you.

Because it's April now and the forecast is for HEAT.

It isn't even being discussed by the “Climate Optimists”.

To them, the biggest problem that the World faces right now is DOOMERS like me shaking people's confidence in the bright future that will inevitably happen. If we all "believe in science" and have faith in human ingenuity.

I guess this means, that after a LIFETIME of study, research, and evangelizing on the dangers of Global Warming and the Climate Change it brings. I am now part of the PROBLEM. Because I’m a “Doomer” and I’m telling you things are worse than you think.

So be it.

Here is my Doomer Manifesto.

THE DOOMER MANIFESTO: A CLIMATE CRISIS CALL TO ACTION

OUR PLANET IS WARMING.

We can’t UNDO what’s been DONE.

Changes already set in motion are triggering climate tipping points, and after a tipping point, a system reorganizes itself.

A warmer planet, is a planet less hospitable to human life and human civilization. As our planet warms, things will tend to worsen exponentially.

Climate change can’t be about more culture war / social media crap. It is an “end of days” problem and it transcends all other issues.

At the very least, it’s tough to see our way out of climate change within the paradigm of capitalism and consumerism. Life “as we knew it” is over.

Doomism understands that everything we do now will make a huge difference, and we are not doing enough. We’re going in the wrong direction, and lack the uncorrupted political apparatus to set meaningful policies that move us in the right direction.

What do Doomers believe in doing?

To limit human suffering, both now and in the future.

This is the metric, the measuring stick we ought to use to consider ourselves moral beings: How do we reduce the suffering of our fellow humans and preserve enough of the planetary ecology that a FUTURE for humanity is possible.

Doomism is not incompatible with empathy.

Doomism is not incompatible with action.

Doomism is not being complacent.

Doomism is not thinking someone else will get the job done, not thinking we can carry on with business as usual.

We can’t carry on with business as usual.

“You can’t just sit around waiting for hope to come. Then you’re acting like spoiled, irresponsible children."

"You don’t seem to understand that hope is something you have to earn.” - Gretta Thunberg

WE NEED TO MOVE FASTER.

People are starting to get nervous about what’s going on, the disasters are getting too big to ignore. There seems to be a growing recognition that “something” is happening, and that maybe they need to start paying more attention to the science people on the television when they talk about “Climate Change”.

It isn’t happening quickly enough.

Bill McKibben famously said, “With Climate Change, winning slowly is the same as losing.”

We are winning too slowly. There still isn’t the political will to do anything about Global Warming because there still isn’t enough popular will to make that happen.

Consider this, there isn’t a single government in the world that’s dominated by a Green Party or a Green faction within an existing party. Not one.

Voters under 40 are the ones who are going to have to live in a world that’s rapidly getting hotter. They should be voting in record numbers. They should be voting Green like their lives depend on it.

They aren’t. Not yet anyway.

Understand this. It has been getting hotter, year by year, for the last 10 years. We have pushed the planet into a “new energy state”.

One joule is equal to the work it takes to make a watt of power for a second, a zeta joule is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules

We have FORCED the equivalent of FIVE BILLION HIROSHIMA BOMBS worth of ENERGY into the Earth’s Oceans.

35 bombs worth of energy for every square mile of ocean in the world.

The disasters we are having today are just the opening “build up” scenes of the disaster movie we all live in now. It’s going to get much, much worse.

Every person on the planet under 40 should be a single-issue Climate Change voter.

EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

They are going to have to live in a world getting rapidly worse for the rest of their lives. We have stolen their future from them.

World governments should be filled with Climate Hawks competing to see who can be the most aggressive on climate policy. The international debate should be about things like, “how severe to make the sanctions on nations that aren’t meeting their reduction pledges?” or “should nations found guilty of ecocide be subject to multinational military intervention?”.

Instead, we have the UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres pleading with the Developed World Nations for urgent investment to protect the world’s most vulnerable from the intensifying onslaught of extreme weather events. Literally begging them, hat in hand, to honor their pledges and come through with some money.

So that people who are living on Pacific Island nations that are about to vanish can be relocated. So that the several million people in Madagascar who are starving from Climate Change fueled droughts and the impact of Typhoon Freddie can be fed.

That’s where we are right now. That’s how big the difference between “where we should be” and “where we are” is.

That’s not going to change until people start voting like Climate Change is important to them.

That’s not going to happen until they have a sense of just how bad things have gotten.

We need “MEMES”.

We need clear explanations, analogies, and memes that everyone can understand.

Memes, that once you hear them, you won’t be able to forget. Memes that will make the issue simple and clear for people. Memes that will mobilize people and get them to vote.

So, here’s my newest climate meme. I hope it sticks in your head and you repeat it. I hope it spreads and helps people visualize how bad our current situation is; how urgently we need to be mobilizing if we are going to have any chance of managing what’s coming.

Because global civilization might survive a population die back of 50% if it happens at a controlled rate of 1% a year over 50 years. It won’t survive a 50% population crash if it happens in just 10.

The Meme

Coral reefs make up just 1% of the world’s oceans. Yet they support 25% of all the marine life in the oceans and have greater biodiversity than a tropical rainforest.

Since 1995 the world’s climate system has been absorbing the heat energy of 5 Hiroshima class atomic bombs, every second. That’s roughly 5 billion bombs worth of heat energy.

90% of that energy has been absorbed by the oceans.

The world’s oceans have been having “heatwaves”, much like the ones we have started experiencing year after year.

These heatwaves cause coral reefs to suffer “bleaching events” and die. When the coral dies, all the marine life that lived on it dies, all the biodiversity it supported vanishes.

Because of Ocean Warming coral reefs could go extinct by the end of this century.

The Top 10 cities generate over 30% of the US GDP.

52% of humanity lives on just 1% of the world’s surface. We call these human reefs, “cities”. Just like the real coral reefs they are densely populated, have high levels of diversity, and are enormously productive.

If we don’t control Global Warming, we are going to start having “bleaching” events.

These are going to be just as bad as they sound.

This is your children’s future if we wait too long to “get serious” about Global Warming. It may already be too late.

Democrats 24: Vote Like Your Life Depends on It

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If you think you can do better, please do. If the first job of a Climate Activist is to be a communicator so that people understand the issue, then the evidence is that we have failed.

There still is not enough popular will, to create the political will we need to take serious measures. We are still just tinkering around the margins and talking about band-aid solutions for sucking chest wound problems. We need to do better, a lot better.

We are winning too slowly.

This is my analysis.

This is what I see.

This is my “Crisis Report”.

— rc 040623