Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Alternative Lives R Available's avatar

Firstly, thank you for posting your excellent researches and analyses that contribute so much to the understanding of so many of us. Your work is valuable to us, so please try to keep going with it.

I have a small request: it seems to me that we are at a point where some research (and images) include AMOC declining or turning off altogether and some do not, depending on the models used. For us in Europe the difference is massive, so it would be very useful to know if it is AMOC corrected. I will also mention that I find myself hoping for AMOC to turn off much sooner than even the latest models - sooner the better! It seems the one morsel of relative hope in an otherwise very difficult scenario of mass extinctions and human collapse, although I do appreciate many northernmost Europeans won't feel the same way!

Of course you must also pace yourself, give yourself spaces, have other plans and reasons, as we all do. My own time includes walking my dog 3 or 4 times a day (a couple of hours), meditating most days, coffees with friends, consciously listening to music, daytime naps, and NOT watching the mainstream news (most of which is irrelevant to me). I'm sure you have developed your own strategies to decompress.

I posted the other day about the 5 stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

I said that after decades watching and studying climate change, and with the help of Lovelock's Gaia interpretations, I was mostly at 'acceptance' with occasional forays into anger (at the corrupted politics and lack of action) and bargaining (my personal survival stratégies). Perhaps if you are still mostly in the depression stage (that I understand very well), you could look forward to emerging into acceptance too. I'm sure it will come.

The other week someone criticised me for the 'acceptance' idea, angry that I was 'giving up' and I was supposed to be fighting for what I believed in. I wrote a long reply, but then didn't send it. I realised that she needed to find her own path through, and my comments and 'excuses' (to her) would fall on deaf ears. We can only do what we can do.

Whilst we are all complicit in what we have done to this extraordinary planet, the only one we have ever found that we know can sustain life, you nor I are personally responsible for it because we have not been given the godlike power to change this path. We can only be spectators and commentators. To assume more responsibility is an arrogance, even hubris!

Please keep up the good work as a spectator, commentator and explainer. Our tour guide!

And please forgive yourself for your lack of godlike powers! 🙂

Expand full comment
Bad Home Cook's avatar

As a longtime (former) journalist, my mantra is this: Never Read the Comments.

And please keep writing. You are doing important work. I am not alone in appreciating it, dire as it is. Thank you.

Expand full comment
42 more comments...

No posts