Tag Archives: climate-change

Blog

Maybe the media isn’t doing such a great job covering global warming

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beckLiverpool media researcher Neil Gavin doesn’t think so.

Our research suggests that the media is not treating these issues with the seriousness that scientists would say they deserve. The research company lpsos-MORI found that 50% of people think the jury is still out on the causes of global warming. The limited amount of media coverage – which tends to be restricted to the broadsheets – means that this statistic is unlikely to alter in the short-term.

Bit of a rant: Isn’t “climate change” just a weasel term for global warming? And, regrettable thouhg it is to see newspapers dying, could it be that one reason is that they’re not doing a very good job?

[Image: Fox News host Glenn Beck in 2007 (his low-rated show was on CNN then) by The Rocketeer]

Blog

Lovelock: give up on trying to save the planet

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lifeboatJames “Gaia Theory” Lovelock suggests that there may be as few as one billion human beings left in 100 years time:

Lovelock’s point seemed to be that we should give up on trying to save the planet and the entirety of the human species by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and focus instead on equipping “lifeboat nations” with the necessary infrastructure (schools, roads, houses) to support swarms of climate refugees.

The UK and Canada are lifeboat nations, in case you’re wondering. Probably Siberia too. Basically, anywhere that will be relatively cool and have water in a world that is on average 5°C warmer than it was 100 years ago.

Which sounds interesting and… controversial. The suggestion that places like the UK and Canada should massively overinvest in infrastructure over the next few decades may be be Quite A Good Idea in any case (fiscal stimulus, anyone?).

But is this giving up too soon?

[image from Troon Lifeboat on flickr]

Blog

Don’t burn all the fossil fuels (yet)

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icebergAccording to Professor Gary Shaffer of the University of Copenhagen we should stop burning fossil fuels now so that we will have enough coal, oil, and gas left when we need to fend off the next ice age over the next several hundred thousand years:

…for a management scenario whereby fossil fuel use was reduced globally by 20% in 2020 and 60% in 2050 (compared to 1990 levels), maximum global warming was less than one degree Celsius above present. Similar reductions in fossil fuel use have been proposed by various countries like Germany and Great Britain.

In this scenario, combustion pulses of large remaining fossil fuel reserves were then tailored to raise atmospheric CO2 content high and long enough to parry forcing of ice age onsets by summer radiation minima as long as possible. In this way our present equable interglacial climate was extended for about 500,000 years, three times as long as in the “business as usual” case.

Nice to see some people are cranking up their Buxton indices into the 100, 000 years range.

[via FuturePundit][image from nick  russill on flickr]

Blog

Could global warming drive us mental?

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globally-mentalLast year Australian doctors wrote up a case of a 17-year-old Melbourne boy who was convinced if he took a drink, people would die.

[The doctors call it] the first known instance of “climate change delusion” …

The psychiatrist who runs the inpatient unit where the boy was treated, Robert Salo, has now seen several more patients with psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change, as well as children who are having nightmares about global-warming related natural disasters.

It would be surprising if global warming — or “climate change,” if you will — had no effect on people’s psyches.

After Hurricane Katrina, problems like severe mental illness rose, including depression, PTSD, anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and a variety of phobias.  These rates went from 6.1 percent to 11.3 percent, among those who lived in affected regions, a 2006 study by the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group said.

The rates of mild-to-moderate mental illness also double, going from 9.7 percent to 19.9 percent.

Denial, and Gore derangement syndrome, may be other symptoms.

[Let It Snow by Bah Humbug]

Interviews

INTERVIEW: BRUCE STERLING on Caryatids, Viridian and the death of print

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Bruce SterlingNovelist, pundit, design theorist and iconoclast – Bruce Sterling is all of these and more, and is one of the people that the Futurismic project has always looked to for inspiration.

Sterling has a new novel called Caryatids out at the end of February, the writing of which has somehow been shoehorned in between him bouncing around Europe, lecturing on design theory and keeping an eye on the maelstrom of global multimedia culture and politics.

He was good enough to cave into the pestering of this irredeemable fanboy and answer some questions about the new novel, the closing of the Viridian Green project and the relentless demise of science fiction print media. Continue reading INTERVIEW: BRUCE STERLING on Caryatids, Viridian and the death of print →