Here’s an excellent new video from Peter Sinclair, contrasting the recent weather disasters in the USA with the “we’ll adapt” line recently run by ExxonMobil boss Rex Tillerson. It’s a powerful message, to which I would only add one thought: this is only the beginning.
5 thoughts on “Welcome to the rest of our lives”
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The real wake up call is the realization that changes to local weather events, frequencies and severity will be far greater than the average increases in temperatures etc. While people seem to be lulled in to complacency by thinking that all that has happened so far is a 1 Deg C warming the reality of a 1 Deg C warming on average means that a lot more freak events and extreme conditions with local and continental extent as well as durations lasting weeks or months. And it will be the effects of these events which will drive the message home as can be seen this year in the USA. It is sad that it takes catastrophic events to wake people up to a message that science has repeated for decades loud and clear.
Further from The Guardian.
This is a great, compelling piece of film-making. I’m very glad I chose to sponsor his work recently! (‘Climate Crocks on Ice’; – it’s still going, I believe.)
Also of interest while we’re flicking through the Graun…
Stephen Harper faces revolt by scientists.
Yep, shooting the scientist messengers (firing them these days) is looking like a desperate move of the cowboy brigade running amok in Canada at the moment. With a libertarian right wing ideologue like Harper as President, who needs a Heartland Institute? Hope the Canadian people will help themselves out of this misery come the next elections and send the cowboy into the Wild West where he belongs….
There are some proposed cutbacks at NIWA too.
Mind you, when the science is settled, why do you need scientists to tell us that the human race is doomed?
We are only doomed if we throw the warnings into the wind, do nothing or pay lip service only. If we heed the warnings and start to get our act together to make this show survivable, then we will need a heck of a lot of science and technology going forward. The warning part is just the beginning, the minimization of AGW, mitigation and adaptation part is the hard bit. But silencing scientists by firing them and closing their institutions down because their warnings are inconvenient is the most idiotic reaction possible when faced by a crisis that has the potential to terminate us as a going concern. Well in a country of the ‘Canada Free Press’ a lot of idiocy must seem acceptable. Freely quoted in Mencken style: “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land of Canada reached their heart’s desire at last and their presidency was adorned by a downright moron…”
Mind you, all bets are on if humanity is clever enough to survive the hubris of the past century. As long as some of us allow the election of Harpers and their ilk, the odds are not good for the survival bet.