Sins of the father…

In many ways, we seem to be entering the era of cleaning up after our predecessors. I think there’s a degree to which every generation has to cope with the mistakes of their forebearers, but I believe the youth of today, and of generations to come, will face unique challenges in that arena. There’s climate change, of course. Our climate is headed to a hotter planetary temperature than our species has ever encountered. This could have been avoided, but it wasn’t, and now those of us alive today, and those still to come, will have to figure out how to deal with it. But that’s not all we’ll have to deal with

Climate Progress recently published an article about the start of a pollution cleanup effort in Nigeria. In the U.S., we tend to hear about things like oil spills when they’re big, sensational events, and usually only when they happen on our shores. In some ways, Nigeria has had one long oil spill around the Niger Delta that has never really been cleaned up, and it hasn’t gotten much attention in the media. [Read more…]

Renewables on the rise

One of the realities of a warming world is that for the rest of our lifetimes (barring big, big changes in our priorities as a species), we will see records broken for the hottest month, year, and decade on record, both at a local and at a global level. A related, but more pleasant reality, is that we are now on an inevitable road to the end of fossil fuel use. That means that pretty much every year, at least for a while, we’re going to see records broken in renewable energy capacity as we shift away from coal, oil, and natural gas. This is a good thing, and the steady release of articles about some town or country breaking a record for renewable energy has helped me keep my spirits up over the last few years.

While I’ll probably share more articles about this sort of thing, one in particular caught my attention this week. [Read more…]

Seriously…

Image shows two stick figures, one with the Shell oil company logo instead of a head. The normal figure on the left has a caption that reads,

It’s a serious problem that our government is actively supporting a business model that has created a real threat to the continued existence of our civilization.

What does caring about climate change look like?

I recently came across an article titled “What will it take for people to care about climate change?“. There are a lot of articles like this, all of them focused on some disaster linked to climate change. This one touches on the current heat wave in India, which has seen the highest temperature ever recorded in that country. This is the second year in a row in which the country had a heat wave that caused roads to melt.

“What will it take?” is a fair question to ask, but I think it may be the wrong question, at least if asked by itself. I think if you polled the planet, most people would say they care about climate change. Even if you polled the United States – a country famous for its science denial, it seems a majority of people care about the issue, at least to some degree. The problem is what that actually means. [Read more…]

Ending a period of silence

Over the last couple weeks I’ve had a combination of events that have kept me from being able to blog. Primarily, a health problem and a re-assessment of funding at work that means I’m now working half-time instead of full time.

The downside of all this is that I don’t currently have the funds to hire other writers for a series I had planned, so that’ll have to go on hold for a while. The upside is that I now have a lot more time for blogging and fiction writing. Starting Friday, I’ll be doing about one in-depth blog post about some aspect of climate change per week, plus a higher volume of less time-consuming posts, so this will become a more interesting place for all of us.

I’m also going to re-vamp my patreon page and put a link to that where it’ll be easier to find, so if you decide you like what I’m doing, and want me to do more of it, you will have the ability to make that happen! More on that later.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop a post to say I’m back in action, and stay tuned!

Conversations with Strangers: Pole shift

I’ve previously mentioned my hobby of talking to/arguing with strangers on the internet, and a while back I decided to copy and paste one of the conversations onto my blog, since it seemed wortwhile. Since then I’ve periodically added to the series when something interesting and fun comes up. So, without further ado, here is the latest installment of Conversations with Strangers, taken from the comments thread of this Huffington Post article.

Stranger:

So if a change in ice mass at a pole can cause the earth to sway from its position, then isn’t it possible over time that population changes could do the same thing? It that is possible, then couldn’t China and other over populated areas produced the same “balance” issue? Now, if this is possible, that could mean that Chna is a leader in carbon emissions and “Population Sway”.

[Read more…]