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<font size="+1"><i>December 20, 2017</i></font><br>
<br>
[NYRenews video Dec 19]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.facebook.com/NYRenews/videos/2113746328912638/">NY
State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman </a></b><br>
<i>[political positioning - almost a stump speech on global warming
actions] </i><br>
"I'm hungry for the next special election"<br>
"Doug Jones ran on the strongest climate science"<br>
"New Yorkers, ever since Sandy, get climate science.. droughts,
wildfires, ... this is happening now and people are asking for
action."<br>
"There are no more generations beyond us and the solution"<br>
"Progressive Federalism gives power to the states... NYState takes
the aggressive action, ... three ways to show leadership Fill in,
Fight Back and Show now to move forward."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.facebook.com/NYRenews/videos/2113746328912638/">https://www.facebook.com/NYRenews/videos/2113746328912638/</a>
speaks at 38:38 and Q and A at 57:00 <br>
<br>
<br>
[Divestment watch]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-19/cuomo-urges-new-york-pension-fund-to-end-fossil-fuel-investments">Cuomo
Urges New York Pension Fund to End Fossil-Fuel Investments</a></b><br>
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday called on the $201.3
billion New York State Common Retirement Fund to stop all
significant fossil-fuel investments and develop a plan to
"de-carbonize" the portfolio.<br>
"Moving the Common Fund away from fossil-fuel investments will
protect the retirement savings of New Yorkers," Cuomo said in a
statement. He cited recent moves by the Norwegian sovereign wealth
fund to divest fossil fuels and the World Bank's announcement that
it will stop financing oil and gas exploration within two years.<br>
The state's pension fund - the third-largest in the U.S. - had
holdings of at least 50 oil and gas companies that have been
identified as some of the most carbon-intensive operations in the
world, the governor's office said.<br>
New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said that the fund has
"no immediate plans to divest our energy holdings" but would work
with the governor on ways it can contribute to the low-carbon
economy...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.pionline.com/article/20171219/ONLINE/171219793/new-york-governor-calls-on-common-retirement-fund-to-move-away-from-fossil-fuel-investments">http://www.pionline.com/article/20171219/ONLINE/171219793/new-york-governor-calls-on-common-retirement-fund-to-move-away-from-fossil-fuel-investments</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://twitter.com/nygovcuomo/status/943282600180936705">https://twitter.com/nygovcuomo/status/943282600180936705</a><font
size="-1"><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-19/cuomo-urges-new-york-pension-fund-to-end-fossil-fuel-investments">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-19/cuomo-urges-new-york-pension-fund-to-end-fossil-fuel-investments</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[carbon trading markets]<br>
<b><a
href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/12/19/china-unveils-market-based-plan-curb-global-warming/964050001/">China
unveils market-based plan to curb global warming</a></b><br>
China previewed a scaled-down version of its national carbon
emissions plan Tuesday that still is expected to dramatically reduce
pollution while creating the world's largest emissions trading
system.<br>
More than 1,700 power companies are expected to "trade" 3.5 billion
tons of carbon dioxide annually through a Shanghai-based
marketplace, China's National Development and Reform Commission
said. The "cap-and-trade rule" will allow polluters to buy "credits"
from lesser polluters. The bigger polluters can save money by
curbing emissions while the lesser polluters can make money by doing
the same.<br>
The plan drew high praise from the Washington-based Environmental
Defense Fund, which said it has been working with Chinese
authorities for more than two decades on plans for curbing
pollution.<br>
"China has stepped up its climate leadership dramatically in recent
years and is now increasingly seen as filling the leadership void
left by the U.S."...<br>
Krupp said he expects China to phase in additional industries, <b>and
by 2020 the plan could involve 5.5 tons of carbon dioxide
annually. <br>
</b><i>(typo? probably should read 5.5 Billion)</i><br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/12/19/china-unveils-market-based-plan-curb-global-warming/964050001/">https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/12/19/china-unveils-market-based-plan-curb-global-warming/964050001/</a></font><br>
-<br>
[How much CO2 goes into the air every year? <b>38 Billion tons. </b>]<br>
<b><a
href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/carbon-dioxide-emissions-rise-to-24-million-pounds-per-second/">Carbon
dioxide emissions rise to 2.4 million pounds per second</a></b><br>
Last year, all the world's nations combined pumped nearly 38.2
billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air from the burning of
fossil fuels such as coal and oil, according to new international
calculations on global emissions published Sunday in the journal
Nature Climate Change. Dec 2, 2012<br>
<font size="-1"><a
href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/carbon-dioxide-emissions-rise-to-24-million-pounds-per-second/">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/carbon-dioxide-emissions-rise-to-24-million-pounds-per-second/</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[RollingStone]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/southern-california-wildfires-climate-change-emergency-w513659">California's
Climate Emergency</a></b><br>
Eric Holthause<br>
Fires continue to burn Southern California, and climate scientists
have warned us for years that the region was entering a year-round
fire regime<br>
In the hills above the Pacific Ocean, the world crossed a terrifying
tipping point this week.<br>
As holiday music plays on the radio, temperatures in Southern
California have soared into the 80s, and bone-dry winds have fanned
a summer-like wildfire outbreak. Southern California is under
siege...<br>
For years, climate scientists have warned us that California was
entering a year-round fire regime. For years, climate campaigners
have been wondering what it would take to get people to wake up to
the urgency of cutting fossil fuel emissions. For years, we've been
tip-toeing as a civilization towards a point of no return...<br>
The sirens are wailing, the long-feared scenarios are coming true.
The era that scientists have warned us about for decades is here.
There's no denying the facts anymore: What's happening right now in
California is a climate emergency.<br>
A baby alive today has a good chance of living to the year 2100. The
people of the future are real people, you can already meet them.
Their climate futures are increasingly tangible. That climate change
is now a California emergency doesn't necessarily fate the region to
uninhabitability, it provides an opportunity for a radical rethink.
If we bungle this opportunity, all indications are that things can
definitely get a lot worse.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/southern-california-wildfires-climate-change-emergency-w513659">https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/southern-california-wildfires-climate-change-emergency-w513659</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[Betting on the Future]<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/12/19/12-year-old-bet-global-warming-about-pay-out"><b>A
12-Year-Old Bet on Global Warming Is About to Pay Out</b></a><br>
By Graham Readfearn <br>
A climate change modeler who bet two Russian solar physicists
$10,000 that the world would get warmer appears to have easily won
the 2005 wager with less than two weeks to go.<br>
British scientist James Annan says he is "confident" that he has won
his bet with the Russian pair Galina Mashnich and Vladimir
Bashkirtsev.<br>
Agreed 12 years ago, Annan bet the Russians that the six years
between 2012 and 2017 would be warmer than the six years between
1998 and 2003.<br>
Both sides of the bet agreed to use <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global/globe/land_ocean/ytd/12/1880-2016">temperature
data from the U.S. National Climatic Data Center</a>, which has
since been renamed the National Centers for Environmental
Information.<br>
Annan was sure that human emissions of carbon dioxide, mainly from
fossil fuel burning, would see temperatures climb. <br>
The two Russian scientists looked at forecasts of a drop in the
amount of energy coming from the sun, and put their money on this
keeping temperatures down.<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/dec/19/checkmate-how-do-climate-science-deniers-predictions-stack-up">Annan
told the Guardian: </a>"Yes, I am confident of winning the bet,
even the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/26/balis-mount-agung-jetstar-flights-resume-after-volcanos-second-eruption">threatened
eruption of Agung</a> [a volcano in Bali] couldn't matter … even
if it had happened earlier this year.<br>
"With only a few weeks to go, there is no chance of sufficient
cooling for me to lose."<br>
Annan last <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://julesandjames.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/temperature-bet-update.html">looked
in detail at the progress of the bet in 2015</a>, and even then he
appeared to be well in front...<font size="-1"><br>
</font>In 2016, climate science denial activist Marc Morano turned
down two $10,000 bets offered by science communicator and TV
presenter Bill Nye.<br>
In 2015, a study published in a journal of Britain's Royal Society
found that any bets against global warming placed on any 15-year
period from 1970 onwards would have lost.<br>
An email to Galina Mashnich went unanswered. DeSmog was unable to
find correct contact information for Vladimir Bashkirtse<font
size="-1"><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/12/19/12-year-old-bet-global-warming-about-pay-out">https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/12/19/12-year-old-bet-global-warming-about-pay-out</a></font><br>
-<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/dec/19/checkmate-how-do-climate-science-deniers-predictions-stack-up">Checkmate:
how do climate science deniers' predictions stack up?</a></b><br>
Graham Readfearn<br>
The years 2017, 2016 and 2015 will make up the three hottest years
on record for the planet... 2017 will likely be ranked either side
of 2015 as the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/06/2017-set-to-be-one-of-top-three-hottest-years-on-record">second
or third hottest year on record</a>, with 2016 still in top
spot...<br>
<b>The $10,000 bet</b><br>
In 2005, two Russian solar physicists, Galina Mashnich and Vladimir
Bashkirtsev, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/aug/19/climatechange.climatechangeenvironment">accepted
a $10,000 bet with the British climate modeller James Annan</a>
that will be concluded in a couple of weeks...<br>
He bet the two Russians $10,000 that the six years between 2012 and
2017 would be warmer than the six years between 1998 and 2003.<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global/globe/land_ocean/ytd/12/1880-2016">Temperature
data </a>from the US National Climatic Data Centre - since
renamed the National Centres for Environmental Information - would
be used.<br>
So far, only two years between 1998 and 2003 rank in the top 10
warmest years, compared with at least five years between 2012 and
2017.<br>
<b>El Nino enough?</b><br>
In 2011, a group of Australian and New Zealand "sceptics" predicted
that temperatures were about to plummet. The year 2011, they said,
would likely be "the coolest year globally since 1956 or even
earlier".<br>
Largely ignoring the role of increasing levels of greenhouse gases,
the group, led by Australian John McLean, thought instead that the
cycle of warming El Nino and cooling La Nina weather patterns would
be enough to explain what would happen that year. This natural cycle
had entered its cooler phase in late 2010...<br>
According to <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201113">data from the
US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</a>, 2011 tied
as the 11th warmest year on record. At the time, 2011 ranked as the
warmest La Niña year on record.<br>
<b>What about Newsweek?</b><br>
Advertisement<br>
In April 1975, Newsweek magazine <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/nov/08/tough-choices-for-the-media-when-climate-science-deniers-are-elected">ran
a story highlighting how some scientists thought the world was
heading for global cooling.</a><br>
Climate science deniers love to cite that Newsweek story to claim
there was a consensus among scientists in the 1970s that the world
was heading for global cooling. They cited it so often, it became
Newsweek's most popular ever.<br>
The dodgy logic goes like this. Because scientists were wrong then
about future temperatures, they might be wrong now about projections
of further warming...<br>
The real story is this. Some scientific studies in the 1970s did
suggest the world was going to cool. But even back then, <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1">analysis
has shown</a> that for every study predicting cooling there were
six studies predicting warming.<br>
<b>Plimer minus £1,000</b><br>
In 2008, Prof Ian Plimer, an Australian geologist and mining
industry figure, accepted a bet from a British climate policy expert
and economic modeller, Dr Chris Hope.<br>
Hope had been at a conference in Cambridge where, he later wrote,
"most of the participants were sceptical about the influence of
humans on the climate".<br>
Hope took the microphone and offered a £1,000 bet that 2015 would be
hotter than 2008. Plimer, who thinks climate change is all natural
and nothing to do with humans, accepted the bet.<br>
Oops. According to the UK's MetOffice, 2015 turned out to be the
hottest year on record. In fact, every year from 2009 to 2015 was
hotter than 2008...<br>
<b>Archibald prize?</b><br>
In 2006 and 2007, the Perth-based geologist David Archibald made
several predictions about the coming years and decades. It was going
to be cool, cool, cool.<br>
"The sun drives climate change and it will be colder next decade by
2C," wrote Archibald...<br>
What happened? When Archibald made his "prediction", 1998 was the
hottest year on record and he thought it would stay that way until
at least 2030.<br>
Now, 1998 has dropped all the way down to eighth warmest, <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201613">according to
the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA).</a><br>
Archibald last made headlines in early 2017, when the geologist was
running for the far-right One Nation party in Australia's federal
election, and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/01/albanese-hits-out-at-one-nation-candidate-who-called-single-mothers-ugly-and-lazy">called
single mothers "ugly" and "lazy"</a>.<br>
<b>Cooling any minute</b><br>
Don Easterbrook is a geology professor at Western Washington
University who has been making predictions of imminent global
cooling for the best part of two decades...<br>
In 2008 he wrote that his "predicted cooling seems to have already
begun".<br>
That year he also wrote: "In a nutshell, in 2001 I put my reputation
on the line and published my predictions for entering a global
cooling cycle about 2007 (plus or minus three to five years), based
on past glacial, ice core, and other data ... If the present cooling
trend continues, the [United Nations climate change] reports will
have been the biggest farce in the history of science."<br>
<b>Rapid cooling</b><br>
Kevin Long is an Australian mechanical engineer and one of those
"long-range" weather forecasters who pull together things like moon
cycles and sun spot activity to make predictions.<br>
In January 2014, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.thelongview.com.au/documents/RAPID-GLOBAL-COOLING-FORECAST-IN-2017-Kevin-Long.pdf?COLLCC=550309295&">Long
declared</a> the world was heading for "the most rapid global
cooling trend for two centuries" and that during 2016 this event
"should become very obvious to all"....<br>
Fellow Guardian environmental blogger Dana Nuccitelli wrote a whole
book about the predictive qualities of this failed army of
"sceptics", called Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the
Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics...<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/dec/19/checkmate-how-do-climate-science-deniers-predictions-stack-up">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/dec/19/checkmate-how-do-climate-science-deniers-predictions-stack-up</a></font><br>
-<br>
[Book Review]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/feb/23/climatology-versus-pseudoscience-new-book-checks-whose-predictions-have-been-right">Climatology
versus Pseudoscience book tests whose predictions have been
right</a></b><br>
... investigates climate prediction accuracy to determine who's
credible<br>
<font size="-1"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/feb/23/climatology-versus-pseudoscience-new-book-checks-whose-predictions-have-been-right">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/feb/23/climatology-versus-pseudoscience-new-book-checks-whose-predictions-have-been-right</a></font><br>
-<br>
[Mother Jones 2016]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/12/trump-climate-timeline/">Every
Insane Thing Donald Trump Has Said About Global Warming</a></b><br>
Well, most of them, anyway!<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/12/trump-climate-timeline/">http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/12/trump-climate-timeline/</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
AGU lecture video segment<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://youtu.be/44goD1w4TDo?t=19m10s">Why we fund science
- how academic science works </a></b><br>
Sadredin C Moosavi, Geological Society of America, Education,
Communication & Outreach<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://youtu.be/44goD1w4TDo?t=19m10s">https://youtu.be/44goD1w4TDo?t=19m10s</a><br>
<br>
[OpenDemocracyUK]<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/tim-crosland/why-there-s-moral-duty-to-sue-our-government-over-climate-change">Why
there's a moral duty to sue our government over climate change</a><br>
TIM CROSLAND 19 December 2017<br>
The UK government is leading us to climate tragedy, by failing to
align its climate change targets with science and international law.
So 11 UK citizens, plus the charity Plan B, have started legal
action against it. And we need your help...<br>
The UK, as a rich, developed country, and a historically high
greenhouse gas emitter, bears a particular responsibility to
mitigate climate change. Under the UNFCCC, developed country Parties
generally have a legal responsibility to take the lead. Ostensibly
that is a responsibility the UK Government embraces. It loudly
proclaims its 'international leadership on climate change'.<br>
Ten years ago the claim had some merit. The UK Climate Change Act
2008 was the first of its kind, and a model borrowed around the
world. More recently UK diplomats did much to advance the Paris
Agreement, and the UK has, of course, signed and ratified it.<br>
Yet the current Government knows its domestic target for 2050,
unchanged since 2008, is inconsistent with the Paris Agreement. It
does not deny this, but makes lame excuses about the difficulty of
setting a more ambitious target. Its leadership status makes this
failing all the more serious. UK 'leadership' and its global model
is now directing the world only closer towards the brink.<br>
We, as citizens, face a choice. Do we accept our government's
abdication of responsibility (and so become complicit)? Or do we
hold it answerable to the rule of law and demand that it does
whatever it takes to keep our children and ourselves safe - aligning
its targets to science and international law?<br>
It's not an easy thing to do. But twelve of us from all walks of
life have concluded we now have no choice but to take the government
to Court - before it's too late.<br>
You can read more about us <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/planb/">here</a>.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/tim-crosland/why-there-s-moral-duty-to-sue-our-government-over-climate-change">https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/tim-crosland/why-there-s-moral-duty-to-sue-our-government-over-climate-change</a></font><br>
-<br>
[Crowd Justice]<b><br>
</b><b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/planb/">Citizens sue
Government for safe Climate Target</a></b><br>
The UK Government knows its carbon target for 2050 doesn't align to
science or its legal obligations, and that it's not enough to keep
us safe. So twelve of us (aged 9 to 79) are taking them to court.<br>
..follow us on Facebook: @ThereIsAPlanB and Twitter: @PlanB_earth
for regular updates on case progress.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/planb/">https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/planb/</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[Solar Cooking]<br>
Join <b><a>Solar Cookers International (SCI)</a></b>'s sector
updates webinar on Wednesday, 10 January 2018. SCI and its partners
will share game changing recent developments including outcomes of
COP 23. Registration at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://solarcookers.salsalabs.org/solarcookingsectorupdatesjan2018/index.html">https://solarcookers.salsalabs.org/solarcookingsectorupdatesjan2018/index.html</a>
by 3 January, 2018 for your updates to be included (time
permitting). The webinar is from 8:00-9:00 am Pacific time
(15:00-16:00 GMT), immediately followed by a Refugee Working Group
call 9:00-10:00 am Pacific time (16:00-17:00 GMT). The webinar is
free and open to the public. A recording of the webinar will be
available to Solar Cookers International Associates (join at <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.solarcookers.org/our-work/sciassociation/">http://www.solarcookers.org/our-work/sciassociation/</a>).
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://solarcookers.salsalabs.org/solarcookingsectorupdatesjan2018/index.html">https://solarcookers.salsalabs.org/solarcookingsectorupdatesjan2018/index.html</a><br>
<br>
<b><br>
</b>[Clipping Services]<b><br>
<a
href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/republican-pr-firm-ends-controversial-contract-with-epa/">Republican
PR Firm Ends Controversial Contract With EPA</a><br>
</b>Rebecca Leber - Definers says it will no longer pursue other
federal contracts.<b><br>
</b>The Republican PR firm that was awarded a $120,000 EPA contract
for media monitoring has pulled out of the deal, days after Mother
Jones first revealed the controversial arrangement. The no-bid
contract drew widespread scrutiny in recent days, in part because
the for-profit firm, called Definers, is overtly partisan and is
connected to a network of GOP political groups, including America
Rising and America Rising Squared, that have performed
opposition-style research on environmentalists. Definers itself
specializes in opposition research and what it calls "war
room"-style media monitoring...<br>
"Definers offered EPA a better and more efficient news clipping
service that would give EPA's employees real-time news at a lower
cost than what previous administrations paid for more antiquated
clipping services," Definers president Joe Pounder said in a
statement on Tuesday. "But it's become clear this will become a
distraction. As a result, Definers and the EPA have decided to forgo
the contract<b><br>
</b><font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/republican-pr-firm-ends-controversial-contract-with-epa/">http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/republican-pr-firm-ends-controversial-contract-with-epa/</a></font><b><br>
</b><br>
<br>
[New Creation News]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://newcreationews.blogspot.com/2017/12/coping-during-great-unraveling.html">Coping
during the "Great Unraveling"</a></b><br>
Margaret Swedish<br>
There are many people who still get upset with me and others who
name the process, who state what appears obvious - that an old
normal, an old understanding of how life is ordered, of how we find
our places within this culture, how we understand ourselves within
it, is over.<br>
<blockquote>And there is no going back. What is underway is
underway, driven by forces bigger than any of us, an unraveling
that has come in its time, as inevitable as that the wildfires
driven by drought, record heat, Santa Ana winds, and living
completely inappropriately within the eco-communities of this
planet would end up devouring hundreds of homes in one of many
communities devoured by wildfires in the State of California this
year.<br>
It is becoming increasingly hard for me to pretend this is not the
case, to ease the message to something more soothing and
comforting. Given how slow we are to pick up the pace of our
collective understanding, we simply no longer have time for that.
We have to deal with reality now, because reality is not a static
thing. It is ever-changing, forever in motion, and reality is
changing much faster than we want to change...<br>
</blockquote>
And so it is changing us - and a lot of that change is occurring by
way of trauma, shock, and fear. If we understood what was going on
and why, we might do a better job of how we cope with it...<br>
In times of tremendous insecurity and fear, when nothing we know
works anymore, when uncertainty is extreme, people often look to
some leader who can save them, bring the old order back, ease the
uncertainty and relieve us of the fear....<br>
The other possibility is to gather all our courage together and face
the situation as it is. But how do we do that and keep our balance,
our equanimity - our sanity? How do we do that and remain tender and
gentle, patient and kind, generous and free of rage and hate and
fear?..<br>
<br>
Well, we do that, for one thing, in community. We do that together
or we won't be able to do it at all. I have repeated this principle
in many posts and in many workshops over the years, and it only gets
truer and truer by the day, with every intense event that increases
the dynamic of rapid change. To isolate ourselves from this reality,
either as individuals or in silos of class or culture, will only
weaken the bonds that can help keep the web intact enough to hold us
as we move through these turbulent times...<br>
video: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://youtu.be/qQ7QlKG70LE">Valerie Kaur speaking @ the
National Moral Revival Watch Night Service.</a>.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://youtu.be/qQ7QlKG70LE">https://youtu.be/qQ7QlKG70LE</a><br>
What else will we need in order to cope? We could do this list
together, yes?..<br>
<blockquote><b>- A spiritual practice, one that involves meditation,
deep inner stillness, restoring balance and equanimity, getting
to our core, getting rid of distractions so that we can see and
hear clearly what is stirring within us.</b><br>
<b>- A practice of compassion and solidarity with the most
vulnerable among us.</b> Engaging the sorrows, fears, and joys
of the world as partners in the journey - this is essential.<br>
<b>- A radical simplicity of lifestyle. </b>The Earth cannot
support affluence and economic excess any longer, not when half
the world is living in profound economic insecurity, poverty,
outright hunger and desperation, not when tens of millions are
wandering the world fleeing violence, famine, and climate change
disasters, seeking shelter, safety, a place to call home.<br>
<b>- Creating new ways of being.</b> There will be no one way, no
one set of directions. This road will only be made by walking it,
without any clear view of where we're going. We don't know. And
that can be terrifying (another reason we cannot set out alone).
It can also be exhilarating, an adventure. It will take courage.<br>
<b>- Cultural expressions of all kinds </b>- rituals,
celebrations, art and music, poetry and story-telling, laughter
and lots of play.<br>
</blockquote>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://newcreationews.blogspot.com/2017/12/coping-during-great-unraveling.html">https://newcreationews.blogspot.com/2017/12/coping-during-great-unraveling.html</a></font><br>
<br>
<b><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://medium.com/@DoctorVive/what-renaissance-literary-theory-tells-us-about-climate-communication-2ebf6ca37dc2">
What Renaissance Literary Theory Tells Us about Climate
Communication</a></b><br>
Genevieve Guenther<br>
Author and climate activist with a PhD in Renaissance Literature.
Member of Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Lecturer at
The New School. Dec 18<br>
...At that point, the spot would transition into a vivid
demonstration of how climate change threatens what the targeted
group values. And that threat must not be soft-balled. The campaign
should represent not the most certain projected effects of
continuing to emit carbon at our current rates, but the worst
projected effects within the category of what may unfold in the next
eighty years - in the lifetime of a child born today. The goal is to
visually and artfully convey what those effects would feel like in
the bodies of the people represented in the campaign. Yes, the idea
is to scare people. The goal is to enact vivid scenarios that, as
Sidney puts it, "strike, pierce, and possess the sight of our
souls."<br>
Of course, as social-science research tells us, we shouldn't just
scare people and then leave them hanging. Nor, as I have suggested,
should we implicitly reassure them about our current emissions
trajectory by immediately going on to describe climate solutions.
Those solutions still need to be implemented. Rather, we should
scare people with the truth, and then show them what to do - not by
listing tasks with what Sidney calls "wordish descriptions," but by
showing them concrete actions to emulate, "the form of goodness" as
Sidney puts it, so that not mere gnosis but praxis may be the fruit.<br>
In other words, in the conclusion of this theoretical campaign, the
people depicted in the video would both decarbonize their own lives
and fight politically to have decarbonizing policies implemented. So
the stay-at-home mother or the business person would be shown
turning down their thermostats, biking, joining with their neighbors
in erecting community solar, signing up for wind power, writing
emails, voting, marching, protesting, and so on. The final frame of
the spot might be a close-up of the lead actor looking right into
the camera, or, even better, the face of whatever child might have
appeared in the spot. Ideally, the campaign would end with a URL of
an advocacy group who specifically organized regular political
actions on climate....<br>
Like the comedic form of advocacy communication, this imagined
mini-epic has a tripartite structure, but rather than enacting what
we might call the "connection, fear, hope" dynamic it offers
something more like "love, fear, love" - a love sandwich, as it
were. The love is partly narcissistic, reinforced by identification
with one's ideals, but it's also connected, bound to the values and
the people for which one cares the most. And the fear is not just
fear of bodily harm (although vivid depictions of climate
possibilities rightly produce such terrors) but also the fear that
our happiness might be taken away if we don't struggle to change how
we produce and use energy. What we want is to model the harnessing
of that fear - literally to enact it on screen - in a way that
inspires emulation, or at the very least gives people a heroic
struggle to emulate rather than leaving them tragically
grief-stricken or comedically relieved. Instead of oscillating
between fear and hope, climate communication could inspire both fear
and love at the same time by generating powerful models for our own
personal and political actions. As Sidney himself insists,
paraphrasing Machiavelli: "the only means of avoiding contempt are
love and fear." We need stories that inspire these emotions as fuel
for the climate heroism of our ideal selves.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://medium.com/@DoctorVive/what-renaissance-literary-theory-tells-us-about-climate-communication-2ebf6ca37dc2">https://medium.com/@DoctorVive/what-renaissance-literary-theory-tells-us-about-climate-communication-2ebf6ca37dc2</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
<font size="+1"><b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/24/movies/earth-s-climatic-crisis-examined-by-nova.html">This
Day in Climate History December 20, 1983</a> - from D.R.
Tucker</b></font><br>
December 20, 1983:<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://youtu.be/T8JlBkOe6HU"> PBS airs "Climate Crisis: The
Greenhouse Effect,"</a> a<br>
"NOVA" special on global warming featuring Tennessee Rep. Al Gore.<br>
On the NOVA episode "Climate Crisis," Al Gore lays out the case for
human induced climate change in 1983, nearly 30 years ago. "I dont
know if our civilization has ever confronted a problem quite like
this. This problem has reached a new level of development. A
scientific consensus has emerged and now the debate is over when the
first effects will actually be felt."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/T8JlBkOe6HU">http://youtu.be/T8JlBkOe6HU</a><br>
<blockquote> PICKING up where a high-school chemistry class might
end, ''Nova,'' the public-broadcasting science series, offers the
nonmatriculating viewer an advanced course in worrying. The cause
of the concern is all the carbon dioxide that's being pumped into
the industrialized and motorized air. The hourlong broadcast is
called ''The Climate Crisis: The Greenhouse Effect,'' at 9 tonight
on Channel 13.<br>
<br>
The conclusion, conveyed with great authority by several
big-league climatologists from government and private research
organizations, is terrible: by the year 2000, the atmosphere and
weather will grow warmer by several degrees and life - animal,
plant, human - will be threatened. The experts say that melting
ice caps, flooded cities, droughts in the corn belt and famine in
the third world could result if the earth's mean temperature rises
by a mere two or three degrees. <br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/24/movies/earth-s-climatic-crisis-examined-by-nova.html">http://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/24/movies/earth-s-climatic-crisis-examined-by-nova.html</a><br>
<br>
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