In this installment: A report on the new type of futurism that’s being spearheaded by highly regarded scientists and scholars for the purpose of studying the reality and scope of existential threats to human survival. The triumph of fear as a central motivating reality in contemporary geopolitics. The global plague of feral pigs. Renowned author…
Category: Environment & Ecology
Disruption, catastrophe, and resilience in a hyperfast, hyperconnected world
From The Chronicle of Higher Education, a thought-provoking examination of the ins and outs, both philosophical and practical, of the contemporary reality of disasters, catastrophes, and “resilience” — a word and concept that, as the article points out, is currently all the rage among scholars and policy wonks: In all, [Japan’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear…
If climate scientists are terrified, how should the rest of us react?
Well, there you have it. Using scientific theories, toy ecosystem modeling and paleontological evidence as a crystal ball, 18 scientists, including an SFU professor, predict the Earthâs ecosystems are careering towards an imminent, irreversible collapse. In “Approaching a state-shift in Earthâs biosphere,” a paper just published in Nature, the authors examine the Earthâs accelerating loss…
Energy, food, and the upside (or not) of dystopia
This piece from The Telegraph’s Jeremy Warner is supposed to be about the upside of the fact that we’ve transitioned definitively to a new era of elevated food and energy prices, but the upshot that Warner arrives at sounds less like a silver lining than a recipe for a Promethean desperate-dystopian transformation of human…
Scientists forecast a century of drought, warn of a catastrophic “new normal”
This appeared in The New York Times last Saturday. It’s written by three scientists: Christopher R. Schwalm, research assistant professor of earth sciences at Northern Arizona University; Christopher A. Williams, assistant professor of geography at Clark University, and Kevin Schaefer, research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. [I]t is increasingly clear that…
U.S. corn growers “farming in hell” as drought, heat portend another global food price spike
Things are grim if you’re a U.S. corn farmer right now: The worst U.S. drought since Ronald Reagan was president is withering the worldâs largest corn crop, and the speed of the damage may spur the government to make a record cut in its July estimate for domestic inventories. Tumbling yields will combine with the…
Heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, superstorms: The future is here
Last year my family and I weathered (in all senses of the word) the great Texas drought-heatwave-wildfire apocalypse of 2011. Twice within a span of three weeks, my wife and I stood on our back porch and watched the smoke from a major fire several miles away billowing up from behind a span of folds…
Technology, ecology, and the real sin of Dr. Frankenstein
I first read Lewis Thomas’s wonderful Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Sympthony as an undergraduate communication major (philosophy minor) at the University of Missouri. In more than one of the essays contained therein, Thomas expresses the belief that many or most of humanity’s basic problems, including environmental and ecological ones, can only…
Report warns of society-wide increase in mental illness due to climate change and severe weather
I grew up an hour from Joplin, Missouri, and spent a lot of my formative years heading over there for high school debate-and-drama contests, martial arts lessons, and more. I know people in Joplin and the surrounding small towns. My wife and I still drive through Joplin when traveling home for the holidays. So this…
NASA says aliens may destroy earth over global warming. NASA says nothing of the kind.
Here’s a regrettable object lesson in the necessity of maintaining a properly skeptical attitude in today’s hype-prone mass media society, even in the face of the coolest headlines ever: Word recently surfaced of a new report from NASA that sounds like something from a science fiction film. It started on August 18 in, of all…