Hurricanes Harvey and Irma would not be as intense without warmer atmospheric and oceanic conditions. Nor, for that matter, would Jose and Katia. Science knows this. It is not theory; it is not speculation. We don’t need statistical models to prove this statement. If Atlantic basin climate conditions at the site of these storms were … Continue reading Warming Makes Storms Stronger
The Peace Synapse graph: Thinking through climate, peace and security connections in the real world This stunning image is actually a map of knowledge connections, between people, institutions, climate change impacts, and related response scenarios. It is a global knowledge graph (GKG) of climate, peace and security connections, running from January 2009 through 2016. Because … Continue reading Climate, Peace & Security Knowledge Graph
The ACCESS to GOOD Project is an open, collaborative, ongoing reporting process, aiming to identify observable levers of action for adding value, momentum, and scope to investments in climate action and resilient human development.
ACCESS is a framework for analyzing the level of progress on comprehensive climate action. The axis standard aims to measure six qualifications of public policy, investment prioritization and business action:
GOOD is a framework for analyzing the generative tendencies, inclucing community-building reinforcements and local value added of day to day economic activity, at the human scale. This analysis operates on the premise that all economic behavior has at its roots a basic and specific demand for generative optimizing capabilities operating organically through routine human behavior.
by Joseph Robertson and David Thoreson Published in The Guardian, February 12, 2016 On December 12, the 21st annual meeting of the world’s climate negotiators closed with adoption of the Paris Agreement. The task agreed by consensus among 195 nations is clear, ambitious, and complex: re-engineer the infrastructure of the global economy to eliminate practices that … Continue reading Welcome to the New Age of Climate Exploration
Australian PM Tony Abbott, who dismantled a policy to price carbon, rose to power by attacking and dividing—a strategy that eventually backfired. Tony Abbott came into office with a hard-charging campaign against his predecessors, and a vow to repeal Australia’s carbon pricing law. Abbott had been close to the coal industry and had opposed Australia … Continue reading Why Climate Action Opponent Tony Abbott was Ousted
[ The Note for January 2015 ]
The word politics comes from polis, the Greek word for city, or state. Politics is the art of living amongst people. It is, at the root, and in practice, a project of collaborative problem-solving. In its broadest sense, it is a way to describe our process of learning how to talk about value with those around us; it is the study of what happens when people make choices, relying on free will and individual expression. Cynics, with either too much or too little immediate access to power, often argue there can be no real freedom and little cause for faith in humanity. That has never been the case. We constantly exercise our power of observation, our judgment, and our freedom to choose; this is how we relate to every person we know. In this sense, politics is what Jacques Derrida referred to as peri-philías: an examination of the nature of friendship. We form affinities, friendships, families, communities, alliances; we apply our vision, our judgment, our imaginations, and our best use of shared language, to hold the world together. It is to our benefit that choices lead to consequence, so we can choose better, improve outcomes, redress our failings. The question is: Do we build on each other’s strengths?
The climate system is a complex of thermodynamic energy transfers, moving between the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. Our local experience of weather—hot summers, breezy autumns, monsoon rains, tropical cyclones, droughts, floods, blizzards and mudslides—is an expression of the way climatic forces play out over time.
Continue reading “Climate Security Threat Matrix Must Be a Priority”
HYPATIA SYMPOSIUM Weathering: Climate Change and the ‘Thick Time’ of Transcorporeality by ASTRIDA NEIMANIS, RACHEL LOEWEN WALKER ASTRIDA NEIMANIS—Researcher, Gender Studies, TEMA Institute, Linköping University, Sweden RACHEL LOEWEN WALKER—Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Saskatchewan, Canada The following is an EXCERPT Click here to read the full article Browse the entire special issue here Introduction: Toward a … Continue reading Weathering: Climate Change & ‘Thick Time’
The debate about climate change has, for too long, operated on the false premise that some scientists think one way, and some, who are equally qualified and experienced, think the opposite. This has led a large number of people, though by no means a majority, to believe climate science is pure theory. The fact is: no single issue in the history of observational science has been so widely peer-reviewed, by so many experts in so many fields, nearly all of whom concur that the actual, ongoing changes in the Earth’s climate are the direct result of the unregulated dumping of unnatural amounts of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.
Continue reading “Climate Liberty for a Secure & Prosperous Future”
For many Americans, climate change has long seemed like something remote in space and time, a crisis that would affect people in other places a long time into the future. For skeptics, it seemed like we didn’t have to prioritize climate mitigation in order to build a secure and prosperous American republic, even when thinking decades into the future. We are only just now beginning to see that the destabilization of Earth’s climate system is bringing real impacts directly into our communities, in the here and now.
The Third National Climate Assessment, released last month, makes this clear: Climate change is happening now, and it is affecting our economy and our daily lives in disruptive ways, and costs of dealing with this ongoing destabilization will only increase over time. In fact, the report specifically finds that “The observed warming and other climatic changes are triggering wide-ranging impacts in every region of our country and throughout our economy.”
The Poet Economist 