#climate is NOT just global warming it is quite literally the climate changing

[equixen]

THE SUN AND THE OCEAN: PETER/CASPIAN HEADCANONS

@eds-gryff and I were talking a while ago about Caspeter and she mentioned that they had sun/ocean dynamics—Peter being the sun and Caspian being the ocean. I immediately starting looking into the science (because that’s how my brain works) and proceeded to ramble on about how I saw that dynamic in their relationship. I rather liked some of the thoughts I had so I decided to expand and share :)

So, welcome to my first Caspeter headcanons post which I’ve presented through the lens of how the sun and ocean affect each other in nature :)

The Science: Sunlight penetrates the water, heats it and generates currents.

Caspeter: Peter brings warmth and light to Caspian’s life. Both figuratively, because Caspian was starved of love and affection while growing up under his uncle’s thumb, and literally, because he has always been far more susceptible to the cold while Peter has always run hot. So, not only did Caspian gain a family in the Pevensies and the love of his life in Peter, but he also gained a living hot water bottle to snuggle up to at night when he’s cold. The course of Caspian’s life was forever changed when High King Peter the Magnificent returned to Narnia.

The Science: The ocean absorbs the majority of the sun’s radiation, sometimes acting like a massive, heat-retaining solar panel.

Caspeter: Caspian is the best kind of listener and Peter trusts him more than anyone. This initially started out as Caspian encouraging Peter to tell him all his stories from the Golden Age. But, as time went on and they grew closer, this quickly evolved into Peter feeling like he could tell Caspian anything and everything. Also, once he became aware of Peter’s tendency to spiral emotionally when he gets stuck in his own head, Caspian started encouraging him to talk about whatever was bothering him just to break him out of that loop.

The Science: The ocean currents regulate global climate, helping to counteract its uneven distribution reaching Earth's surface.

Caspeter: Caspian is definitely the more level headed of the two and became quite adept at softening Peter's more dramatic emotions. Even calming him to the point that Caspian often stopped Peter from acting impulsively when he was really angry or upset about something. Either by talking Peter round and getting him to see that it’s not that bad, or simply by giving Peter a safe space to vent.

The Science: The sun's energies support life in the ocean and causes it to evaporate when heated beyond a certain point.

Caspeter: Peter nourishes Caspian’s soul. Both indirectly, as a result of Caspian hearing stories of the High King when he was younger, and directly, through Peter loving him and supporting him during the early days of his reign. And it’s through that nourishment that Caspian is lifted up to be more than he thought he could be in his role as King of Narnia. Although Caspian’s world never felt as bright or as warm after the Pevensies returned to their world, he’ll forever be grateful that Peter Pevensie was a part of his life. Even if only for a short while.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

"Y'all ever going to get around to proving man has an effect on climate, or are we just supposed to take it on faith?" I mean they have proved it. They've done so quite a lot. There is mountains of evidence proving that very thing. It's just ignored because it goes against the narrative of climate change being a myth and instead y'all suck on the cocks of the oil and coal industries saying that they're fine.

And yet, despite this so-called proof, literally zero of the apocalyptic predictions based off that proof have come true. Almost like it's all bullshit and they're just throwing out data that fits into the conclusion they've already drawn due to political and financial motivations. You cultists love claiming that skeptics are on the payroll of the oil industry, but ignore how the entire field of "climate science" is being bankrolled by politicians, government agencies, and special interest groups that all have a vested interest in man made global warming being real and an imminent emergency. But I guess the same people and organizations that constantly lie about everything are telling the truth and supporting The Science because they just care about humanity and the planet ever so much. We'll just ignore that every single proposed "solution" to "climate change" would do exactly nothing to reduce global carbon emissions, which is the boogeyman you people hold up as the only cause of bad weather.

[whywhatswrongwithblue]

DW REWATCH

S1E2 THE END OF THE WORLD

The Doctor takes Rose on her first voyage through time, to the year five billion. The sun is about to expand and swallow the earth. Amongst the alien races gathering to watch, a murderer is at work. Who is controlling the mysterious and deadly spiders?

WHAT was he doing in this scene.

You think you're so impressive. ---I am so impressive baby’s first flirt….

2. You lot, you spend all your time thinking about dying, like you're going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible, that maybe you survive. i adore this line. Iirc i read somewhere that this episode was made when a lot of negative climate focussed media was coming out and rtd wanted to assure young viewers that there was always hope? Not sure where i saw it but it’s stuck with me

3. Is that why we're here? I mean, is that what you do? Jump in at the last minute and save the Earth?-- rose we are literally here so i can trauma dump. Haven’t you heard of healthy coping mechanisms??

4. He's blue RTD my beloved. What an incredibly realistic, human observation—i feel like companions simply do not do this anymore. And they should!

5. Love the bark makeup. It’s so pretty!

6. The air from my lungs….this episode is so good damn it

7. Moxx of Balhoon better known as the CEO of sex. I give you the gift of bodily salivas lucky Rose

8. CASSANDRAAAAA

9. Rose being overwhelmed and running out. I can’t get over the amount of care and detail RTD put into writing her. She really is his baby. Can’t wait to see how he brings her back now (because he will. He will.)

10. Jabe’s device is unable to identify a timelord, probably because the rest of the universe thinks them dead? Although her reaction is very different from that of the Nestene Consciousness (who is implied to have lost quite a bit in the Time War), whereas Jabe doesn’t seem to have any personal connection. I wonder what the other outsider perceptions of the War were!

11. Ahhh Rose being kind to the plumber. I love my girl. LMAO at her realising she just hitched a ride with a complete stranger w/o thinking about it. The metal spiders are very Minority Report.

12. Your machine gets inside my head. It gets inside and it changes my mind, and you didn't even ask? the WRITING. Just chef’s kiss. Even in this sort of power dynamic, you never ever feel like Rose doesn’t have agency. She’s so smart and capable and fierce. i love her.

13. Gotta love how fast they switch from arguing to flirting. Jiggery-pokery <3

14. I might be late home. and then she comes back a YEAR later JESUS

15. Bad Wolf mention!

16. Hahahah i can’t watch the Jabe scene without thinking of plant sex now, courtesy of Katie

17. I was born on that planet, and so was my mum, and so was my dad. I love how much Rose loves her dad. Like if you’ve never even known a parent, you probably wouldn’t bring them up in a context like this, but the addition implies that Rose thinks of her dad quite a bit, and this is a nice little subtle setup to my favourite episode of the season, Father’s Day

18. The sun filter scene! It’s unexpectedly tense. I remember being really worried the first time I saw it

19. This whole event was sponsored by the Face of Boe. He invited us. Jack set them up….god that’s so sweet. The fact that he knows that they’re properly together in Pete’s World at this point <3333333 he is Literally Us. Putting his blorbos in Situations.

20. What are you going to do, moisturise me?

21. At least it'll be quick. Just like my fifth husband. HUHHH?? LMAO

22. I love the turning fan trope, every time it’s in any movie ever, it’s got me on the edge of my seat

23. Everything has its time, and everything dies. OOF. Appreciate Rose still wanting Cassandra to be saved! Something something parallel with how she changed the Doctor so much that he’s willing to give Cassandra a peaceful death in New Earth <3 the power of love, folks.

24. The Earth death scene is beautiful. I remember feeling so sad that everyone just missed it! And the Doctor finally realising that maybe this wasn’t a great first trip for his young companion xD

25. I'm left travelling on my own 'cos there's no one else.---There's me. What a beautiful moment of intimacy. And such great acting! The Doctor is finally beginning to let her in, and Rose has attached to this stranger so quickly, despite how prickly and condescending he can be. Soulmates <3

Loveee this ending. 10/10 again!

[bitterfates]

FFXIV WRITE 2023; PROMPT 14: CLEAR

It wasn’t that Nephele disliked his career path; far from it. His expertise on meteorology and how global aether currents influence climate and local weather patterns made him a very popular choice for young scholars to shadow (if only to predict the ideal spots for vacationing or taking breaks), and he adored all of his mentees, but the constant demand for his attention wore him down emotionally.

Every once in a blue moon —- quite literally more than metaphorically sometimes, as his current location was an enigma beyond the pale —- he would make his way to one of the many secluded, floating islands at the Elpis testing facility to immerse himself in the solitude it would offer him. (It helped to have a strong network of influential connections so he could come and go as he pleased without unnecessary questioning.)

He had been planning his small retreat for a few days, as weather events here often changed within the hour of their spawning, but he had predicted this time frame on this night would be perfect not only for some alone time but also for his favorite pastime of stargazing.

Nephele had truly missed this: the quiet of the nighttime, outside in a field of flowers under the ever-resplendent heavens, for once free of the burden of the company of others. Already, he could feel his worries and the tightness in his body scatter to the warm winds of fading summer. There had been a recent downpour of water-aspected aether in the area, so every inhale flooded his senses with calming scents of wildflowers and fresh dew.

Though there were clouds on the distant horizon that potentially threatened more wetness later, the rains had ceased for now, and according to his data, the morning would be just as beautiful and pleasant as it currently was for the evening.

He would be sure to see it.

[luxicides]

A Look (👀) Back on Don’t Look Up: Politics, Social Media, and Art

So, 2022, huh?

I'd say 2022 has been a pretty good year for film. We got NOPE, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Top Gun: Maverick, X, Bodies x3, et cetera et cetera. The list quite literally goes on.

And that got me thinking about the Oscars, past and present.

It's the big showstopper of awards shows, the inciter of daily fights on Twitter, the one definitive reflection of what the film industry feels...

Well, at least, that's what they're supposed to be. In reality, the Oscars have become a mere watered-down version of what it used to be, a blithe imitator of itself in its heyday. Now, instead of being a respected indicator of the film industry's changing perspectives and visions, it's become a shallow archival of all the big pop culture moments.

Okay, maybe I'm giving it too much flak. Maybe I am being too harsh on it. Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt.

But then again, Don't Look Up was nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay last year. Sooooooo.....

Alright, alright, I concede. Don't Look Up wasn't all that bad. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it - After all, it is a satire, and satires have jokes. Don't Look Up is full of them.

Some of them land.

One really curious thing about this whole discourse around Don't Look Up is how we treat its subject matter - that is, the film's symbolic impending comet that is set to annihilate the entire planet. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (literally!) to deduce what it hardly tries to subtly hint at. The comet is - duh - a representation of global warming and climate change and the inevitable course of destruction humanity is leading ourselves down.

Let me preface this by saying, yes, I agree with Don't Look Up's core message (which is in itself incredibly messy and difficult to untangle, but besides the point). I do think that we as a society (hah) have become dulled to the severity of these very real and very potent issues. We spend so much time online, seeing these horrific events through the partition of a screen that we don't really feel how terrible and important they are. I do think that our governments and institutions are far too concerned with saving face rather than saving its people, which is what they're meant to do. I do think that large tech giants are gaining a dangerous amount of power in our world, and I do think that that is something to be incredibly cautious of.

That all being said, I don't think Don't Look Up was exactly a great depictor of these issues.

Don't Look Up is 2 hours and 25 minutes long. It has a lot to say, and there's a lot it's trying to say. But even with the pretty long runtime, everything feels a little... short. I didn't feel all that absorbed in the story, nor all that invested in the characters and their lives. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that these characters were one of the most boring ones I've seen in a while. And, no, it's not that I can't relate to them. I can understand and empathise with their anger at these systems that have ignored them and slighted their warnings just to preserve their images. I know that feeling. What I don't know are the people at the core of this film.

And there are so many other things that made me ick at the film, like:

the editing, which was actually atrocious

the script, which at times was... questionable

the pacing, which was the main reason why i felt so out of place watching it

et cetera, et cetera

Of course, these are just my opinions. But regardless of what I, a single individual, feel, there are also plenty of film critics and academics (oh, how I hate saying that) who aren't too impressed with the film either. The film has a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes! I'm not saying that Rotten Tomatoes is an all-accurate estimator of a film's objective worth, but I am saying that there is some merit in popular (mostly) reputable opinion.

Okay. All that long spiel. And for what? Let me get into it - I think it's weird that everyone on the Internet seems to be conflating the film's message with its technical worth.

WHO CARES IF A FILM IS "BAD"?

I have watched plenty a "bad" film in my short time here on Earth. I liked the Twilight movies. I watched all of them. Did I think they were a great masterpiece rivalled only by GDT and Fincher and Gerwig themselves? ...Not exactly.

Besides, what even makes a "bad" film? Art is subjective, after all. There is no one definite way to analyse and understand at a film. Similarly, there is no concrete method to determine a film's "worth".

Does "bad" have to do with its technical aspects? The editing, the cinematography, the performances, and such? That isn't exactly the full picture, is it? What about the content? What about what it's trying to say?

As I've said before, Don't Look Up has an incredibly important core message. Its themes are current and pertinent and real - It's not like it is completely fluff. It has a message. It has a point.

Evidently, deeming a film "good" or "bad" is an incredibly perilous task. More often than not, no satisfying answer will present itself. There will always be loopholes with how we view art. Always opinions we haven't yet reconciled with, always sides we haven't considered.

So, we once again arrive at the question - Who cares?

Should we dismiss a movie simply because it's made "poorly"? No, not really, wouldn't that be a disservice to the filmmaker and his intent? Right, right, so, then, should a film's technical qualities impact our opinion of the message? Well, no, because what if it has a good message but a bad execution? We can't let some bad editing or bad directing get in the way of that!

But... Doesn't it?

NOTHING EXISTS IN A VACUUM.

Really. Nothing.

How we interpret a piece of media is affected by how it is presented to us. Obvious, no?

Well, can the same not be said for Don't Look Up?

One of the most basic effects in film editing, the Kuleshov effect, demonstrates this: If you show an audience a shot of an old man, cut to a family, then cut back to the man smiling, he's probably a kind old man. If you replace that shot of a family with a young girl sunbathing, he's a pervert. Gross.

(If you want to see Hitchcock explain this infintely better than I just did, you can watch it here.)

It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. You derive more meaning from sequential shots, things working together, rather than in isolation.

Film in general, really, does not work in isolation. You work as a team, to create a product that is greater than just the sum of its parts. When you make a film, the content and the meaning you want to get across as filmmakers affects the technical decisions you make. And the technical decisions you make then affect how your audience gets the meaning you are putting across.

Film does not work in isolation.

And that's precisely what I find so fascinating about Don't Look Up and the discourse surrounding it - Because so many people seem to view it in isolation.

For me? I couldn't click with Don't Look Up's message. Believe what you want, but I did try my hardest to get behind it. I really did. I wanted to like Jennifer Lawrence's character, I wanted to feel sympathy for Leo DiCap, I wanted to root for these characters.

But the film made it so, so difficult.

There's a lot of punching down - Criticising our generation for taking a global climate crisis and trivialising it into a social media trend. Calling out artists who capitalise on these issues for their own financial gain. And there's a lot of punching up too - The hyperexaggerated (yet still, kind of true) capitalist government that is willing to brush aside the threat of millions of casualties in the name of their own politics. The mega corporations helmed by manipulative CEOs who really only have their own interests in mind.

The film points its finger at everyone, until it's kind of hard to make out just what it wants us to do.

Thomas Flight and Demi Adejuyigbe both have really great reviews on LetterboxD:

[Don't Look Up is] a movie that will only be watched by people who already know the message by heart, while they pat  themselves on the back for “spreading” the message- meanwhile it just looks absurd to anyone who’s actually the target of its message. The important upside here is that unlike Christian Evangelicals Netflix can afford the cast to make it marginally entertaining.  [...] The pain of Don’t Look Up is that it just hits us in the face with something everyone who’s bothering to watch the movie is already frustrated about, and then acts kinda self important because it did. All while doing nothing to actually illuminate real issues. It’s part of the distraction, but imagines itself not to be.

— Thomas Flight

but i can’t help but feel like there’s a “kids these days” element to this movie that feels… pointless. like, okay, kids these days are distracted by other things. let’s say your movie works, and they are all paying attention. what now? is it the problem of the wealthy taking control or the problem of the people? because it seems like the former, but you spend so much time tsk-tsking the latter! i don’t know, man. I have a lot of respect for adam mckay for genuinely trying with this stuff (especially because let’s be honest, subtlety with stuff like this relegates political messaging in film to mid-budget indies and small essays no one will read) but i don’t know that this is it

— Demi Adejuyigbe

A film's objective worth does matter. Its execution does matter. As demonstrated by Kuleshov, nothing exists in isolation. When we talk about Don't Look Up, we talk about its political messaging as well as its technical aspects - Because one is informed by the other. And vice versa.

So there we have it. Our answer. Don't Look Up means well, but doesn't do well. Its meaning is befuddled by its execution, and for us, it is case closed.

Right?

WAIT... WAIT... HOLD ON.

WHO CARES?

LIKE, WHO ACTUALLY CARES?

At the end of the day, does it matter if Don't Look Up's message trumps its objective filmic qualities? Does it matter

...I'm inclined to say: No.

Film is a powerful medium for change. Yes. That is the way with art - The most ancient yet pervasive part in humanity's progress. We have waxed poetry about love, we have captured the brutality of war and sacrifice, we have used art for both good and for bad. All this to say: Art has purpose.

But still, there is a time and there is a place. Earlier, I wrote that film does not exist in a vacuum. I want to revisit that.

We can do this dance of good or no good? for eons, and it will get us nowhere. As a matter of fact, we have been doing this dance. We've been dancing all this while without even stopping to think about why.

Don't Look Up was meant to inspire a conversation. Spark change. Encourage debate.

Art is not made in a vacuum. Art is not meant to be discussed in a vacuum. When we talk about art, we must also talk about its context - Its past, its present, its future. And what all of that means for us. Humanity.

But what we are doing instead, is arguing with each other on Twitter about why it did or didn't deserve the Oscar nomination, going about in silly little trivial circles on whether or not it's objectively a good film or a bad film.

Just as I did before.

In an excellent article, Tony Dutzik writes:

“Dropping the storyline” might provide an opportunity to admit that when it comes to climate change, we are all “riding the blinds” [...], not quite knowing where it is that we’re headed. And it might liberate us to see ourselves and others neither as heroes nor villains, inexorably bound either for victory or disaster, but rather as people called upon to act in ways that create “less suffering” rather than “more suffering” – a decision that provides all of us with infinite opportunities for freedom of choice each and every day. 

— Trapped in the story: “Don’t Look Up” and the limits of climate narrative, Tony Dutzik

Don't Look Up showed us the problem. But now, all we do is talk about how good it was at showing it.

If you're seeing this, thank you for reading all the way through (I hope)! I know this is a really long post, and a far cry from what I normally publish on this blog. But this has been weighing on me ever since I saw Don't Look Up, and I decided to finally make that leap and actually write what I thought.

This is my first experience writing a sort of social commentary thinkpiece thing, so forgive me if I rambled in some parts. If you have any thoughts you would like to share, or even if you disagree wholeheartedly with me, please do feel free to share them in the comments!

Just know I am extremely sensitive to criticism and will breakdown in uncontrollable nervous sweat at the first hint of aggression. Whoops. /hj

But once again, thank you for reading. Hope you have a nice day!

[grison-in-space]

Y'all last night I realized that being physically hot for extended periods of time is literally a trigger, in that it cues me to remember and be emotionally braced for some fairly traumatic shit that happened when I was hot like that last... which means everything is worse and more stressful while it's happening.

If the only thing to do about it is to cease being hot, I have real bad news for my brain about "global warming" and "living in Minnesota (where there hasn't been as much investment in nuclear level AC)". Like, shit, at least you can ask dudes to clear out of your spaces without invoking King Canute quite that clearly. It's not any more reasonable, but it's marginally less absurd!

No, the thing you do about triggers is you learn to account for them and you practice learning to defang them. That means you gate your own exposure to triggers to minimize the odds of getting blindsided, but you also deliberately spend time around your triggers un-learning the association between them and the scar of your stress. Because asking half the world to avoid you for the rest of time is intrusive and unreasonable, just like asking the world to stop changing climate because that's really inconvenient for me is unreasonable.

It sucks, but that's life! Being aware is only the first step to healing, baby. The rest is like PT: long, shitty, and requiring both a good spotter and a lot of crappy effort to get anywhere with it.

you know i think i’ve come to the conclusion that the answer to “but what if a cis woman is traumatized by men/male presenting people/whatever?” irt safe spaces is this: if you can’t be in the same room with someone you assume to be male or a man without feeling triggered, it probably means you have a lot more solo therapy and healing to do before relying on group therapy or other communal healing.

because how do you decide who gets to stay and who gets kicked out based on a cis woman’s trauma response? is it based on appearance? should intersex women with facial hair not be allowed because beards are triggering? should butches and studs not be allowed because masculinity is triggering? should talk broad shouldered trans women who don’t want to voice train not be allowed because low voices are triggering? is it based on identity? should a pre transition trans man who came out two days ago not be allowed because he’s a man? is a nonbinary person with a full beard and deep voice allowed because they are not a man?

because if you base your entire set of rules for who’s not allowed in the safe space on what makes cis women uncomfortable or triggers them, you’ve just made that space unsafe for trans people. and you need to decide if you’re ready to own that.

[tech15]

The Nuclear Tango: India, Russia, and the Quest for a Cleaner Energy Future

Nuclear energy-now there's a topic that generates more buzz than a beehive on a summer day! It is a powerhouse of energy, derived from the nucleus of an atom, and mainly produced through nuclear fission. In this process, atoms get split, just like uranium-which releases a colossally enormous amount of energy. As nations around the globe anxiously seek alternatives to fossil fuels and to global warming, nuclear energy is quickly garnering all the lead. Of course, with great power comes great fireworks-literally and metaphorically.

Let's shine a light on the positive side, shall we? Nuclear energy is like the cleanest kid in school by far when it comes to electricity generation. Unlike wind turbines, which may sulk when the breeze takes a day off, or solar panels, which sulk on cloudy days, nuclear plants are boring, reliable workhorses. They just keep producing electricity, no matter the weather. Here's a little fun fact: compared to wind or solar farms, the land footprint for a nuclear plant is tiny. It would be quite a feat of engineering to put all this power in a space the size of a car-park-and, likewise, nuclear power is a dream source of energy for high-density areas where land is as precious as a winning lottery ticket.

But on the dark side, let's not forget that nuclear energy isn't sunshine and rainbows. One of the most glaring disadvantages is that of nuclear accidents which could be utterly devastating. You might have heard of Chornobyl or Fukushima. Once you learn about these disasters, you will know exactly why they are still fresh in your mind. It is like a constant reminder as to why one should treat nuclear technology with care - a whole idea. And then there is nuclear waste: radioactive leftovers to be safely stored for thousands of years. Managing this waste is a bit like cleaning after a toddler's birthday: much mess, and finding an appropriate means of getting rid of it is no easy feat!

Now, let's turn to that fascinating relationship between India and Russia. Their nuclear alliance is rather akin to a long friendship which has withstood so many storms. Indeed, Russia has played a significant role in India's nuclear trajectory, and notably, there are KKNPP reactors under construction in Tamil Nadu. It is the result of cooperation underway since 1998. One is building a nuclear metropolis with six VVER-1000 reactors. Units 1 and 2 are already operational while units 3 to 6 are under construction and are expected to be completed by 2027. This massive project is destined to give a quantum boost to India's nuclear power-generating capacity.

Recently, Russia proposed constructing small tropical nuclear power stations in India. Just imagine a nuclear beach party a nuclear shoreline with reactors as friendly neighbors rather than fearsome giants. This would fit directly with India's plans to expand its nuclear footprint and develop more domestic capabilities in reactor construction and operation. It is a win-win: developing technological capacity and ensuring energy security.

The benefits of such a partnership are immense. Russian fuel supplies and technology will keep this source stable as the country strives to more than quadruple its nuclear capacity from approx. 7.5 GW to over 22 GW by 2031-32. Russian know-how and its cutting-edge reactor technology are of extreme importance for the development. That amounts to diversification in the sources of energy generation and helps in reducing dependence on fossil fuels, thus ensuring that India supports some kind of global climate change mitigation strategies. In addition, the strategic cooperation in this regard strengthens India's geopolitics, thereby positioning India as having a strategic level playing ground in international nuclear politics. It opens up scope for India to play as a middle ground between its two giant nuclear rival nations in the world-United States and China-by taking a multipolar approach to international politics.

The partnership is not free from drawbacks. One of the main disadvantages of this partnership is the continuously growing rapport between Russia and China. The more China and Russia develop their relations, the tougher it gets for India. Historically, Russia has been a neutral ally during Sino-Indian tensions, but Moscow's closer relationship with Beijing will make this neutrality complicated. There is also a dangerous over-reliance on the technology that Russia provides. Since major parts of India's nuclear infrastructure rely on Russian support, any upset be it geopolitical or domestic within Russia may eventually hurt India's nuclear aspirations.

This issue of safety should be taken into consideration. Haunted by some past nuclear disasters, even the most advanced nuclear technologies find their path to the markets. It will help provide for strict safety measures and response preparations to build the confidence of the public in nuclear energy. Of course, another challenge is nuclear waste management. Safe storage and disposal of radioactive waste materials are demanding to be found with continued international collaboration.

In conclusion, any nuclear project does have economic viability. Costly initial investments may scare away funds and thus retard the entire project. As India diversifies its sources of energy, it must also ensure that the nuclear energy option is constantly compared favorably as to whether this will remain an integral part of India's power supply mix.

In the overall scheme of energy production, the India-Russia nuclear partnership is an interesting story of opportunity and challenge. The KKNPP project and more ambitious plans for new reactor technologies will undoubtedly improve India's energy security and technological competencies. However, much depends on overcoming geopolitics, safety considerations, and effective management of nuclear waste to sustain this partnership in the long run. Ahead of India and Russia, common goals in peaceful nuclear technology will be very crucial to overcome challenges and strengthen their strategic alliance in an increasingly complex world. To a Future where Nuclear Energy stays as a beacon of progress rather than a cautionary tale!

[so-true-overdue]

Congratulations, We've Perfected the Art of Self-Destruction

Human-caused climate change is real, and we're doing a stellar job at ignoring it. Let’s give ourselves a round of applause for making this planet almost uninhabitable.

We’ve filled the air with enough carbon dioxide to turn our blue sky into a murky haze. We’ve melted glaciers faster than you can say “global warming,” causing sea levels to rise and coastal cities to prepare for a watery demise. All the while, some still argue the science isn't settled. Bravo, us!

Deforestation? We’ve nailed that too. We chop down trees like there’s no tomorrow – and at this rate, there won’t be. Forests, which once absorbed carbon dioxide and provided us with oxygen, are now shrinking. But hey, who needs breathable air when we can have more paper?

Let’s not forget our oceans. We’ve managed to heat them up and acidify them to the point where coral reefs are dying en masse. Marine life is suffering, but let’s keep pretending our fishing habits have nothing to do with it.

Wildfires? Check. Droughts? Double-check. We’ve created the perfect storm – quite literally. Our relentless burning of fossil fuels ensures that extreme weather events are now the norm. Every year, we break new records for heatwaves and hurricanes. Who needs stability when chaos is so much more thrilling?

Despite overwhelming evidence from scientists worldwide, we still have those who claim it’s all a hoax. That’s right, ignore the polar bears stranded on melting ice. Ignore the residents of island nations watching their homes disappear underwater. Ignore the countless species going extinct. It’s all just a coincidence, right?

Let’s face it. We’ve perfected the art of self-destruction. Our relentless pursuit of economic growth at the expense of the environment has brought us to this tipping point. The reality of human-caused climate change is undeniable, and the consequences are becoming impossible to ignore.

It’s time to wake up. Time to admit our mistakes and take real action. Because if we don't, our planet will survive – but we won't. So here’s to us, the architects of our own downfall. May we find the wisdom to change before it's too late.

[dfnkt]

So the "green revolution" is just gonna be neolibs destroying South America for lithium as it becomes increasingly uninhabitable huh. It looks like the game plan is basically, fuck those mountains and those forests and the HUGE carbon sink potential it has if we'd stop deforesting it. The Panama canal is gonna dry up? Guess we'll just build a highway across the fucking continent like we always wanted to anyway.

Can't wait to see how America treats all the climate refugees at our southern border that WE created. 10k people a day or more some days at present. Picture hundreds of thousands and then millions as crisis looms and remember how our government handles people in need, regardless of whether its the red dictator or the blue dictator. Consider how both parties already weaponize fears about immigration using "displacement" or "loss of culture" or lack of available resources aka artificial scarcity. And then fucktuple that and tell me that genocide Joe is gonna make things better. Tell me that the American nation can get exponentially more radical and survive. We will be at full scale war and brazen occupation of South America probably by 2040 if I had to ballpark it, but we'll see. South America will basically resemble USNATO prison camps and military states. I can already imagine the justifications we'll offer about making trade possible in the region, curbing "terrorism" et cetera. Basically we'll do exactly what we did and are still doing to the middle east.

Gonna be fascinating. I get more sure that I'm going to witness the fall of modern civilization in my lifetime every year considering we cannot survive a 2C+ climate, but we can't avoid that climate without such extremely rapid degrowth and rewilding that it is only theoretically possible in human manpower. Like, our best case scenario is basically "if the whole global economy shifted overnight and everything was severely kneecapped especially for the most gluttonous capitalists corporations by a really huge factor then we have the *chance* at having a habitable planet for humans by 2100, albeit at a reduced population and with a smaller habitable zone for the foreseeable hundreds of thousands of years." And every single day is a case of "we should have done this a day/year/decade/century ago". Meanwhile emissions are rapidly increasing at exponential rates. The political will does not exist to save the planet. Even if we made all the right changes now, we are already locked in to changes that will reduce the quality of life of everyone on this fucking planet in the lifetime of every Gen Z and younger, and most millennials, even in wealthy nations. We may well already have signed the commitment for as much as 4C or more degrees of warming by 2050. Guess what doesn't exist at +4C? The global capitalist economy. New iPhones. Oh, or vertebrate mammals. That's you. Your mom. Your dad. Your best friends and future children. All the food you eat and everything you've ever loved. Why are we not acknowledging that we are being thrown off the cliff like Disney's lemmings?

I feel like I'm insane, living in a parallel reality. We should be shutting everything down. Nothing matters more than this. We should, quite literally, be shutting the world down in order to save it. Nothing else will. You can thank neoliberals for pushing this disaster off of capitalism and onto people's "personal carbon footprint". None of my friends can talk about this subject because they are just all too afraid, which I always respect. I don't know anyone else familiar with the science of things either, so I have no one really to commiserate with about the profound grief of watching the world end. Even if I get to live out my natural lifespan, I will witness some of the most horrible atrocities that mankind has to offer. We all are witnessing that right now. If you don't think climate change could be an extinction level event in your lifetime, then you should really seriously evaluate what kind of life you want to live and then live it while you can. That is all any of us can do anymore.

[zildpilled]

I said this would be my last reblog but I wanted to make a short propaganda for the last day. ^_^

I think there has been a lot that has said about his contributions to science and his exploration in South America in general and to the past propaganda that has been made about him. I'd like to talk about some part of his personal life and his personality since that alone was an attractive thing of him (he could either be the nicest person you'll meet or the most insufferable)

Okay I'm not good with yapping let alone a formally structured paragraph but I do know a lot about him and his character, there is literally so much to say about him and how complex his character was and how it affected his later days. I think the most attractive trait of his is that he'll literally help anyone including young scientists until he has nothing left, his sister in law even remarked that "he'd eat dry bread so they can have roast", (and of course I'm just typing out what I have remembered) he had literally exhausted his entire inheritance for the sake of science and for the sake of others. That remark alone is an indicator that he would help anyone including his friends for all their needs, especially during the expedition (although his impatience was quite irritating amongst his companions)

Oh and it's a worthy mention of how much of an affection friend he was especially to those who were close with him (which are....obviously men and very much homoerotic), he was deeply affectionate to many of his friends to the point he often fantasized about living with them or being with them forever in which he knew to himself was quite impossible. An example of this is that of his friendship with Reinhard von Haeften in which I won't go further on, but you could definitely say it was more than just a friendship (even Haeften's wife said "our Reinhard" to Humboldt). His intense attachment issues with people and deep connection with them was a result of the loneliness he has felt during the time his mother was still alive, but I won't go on that further as I try to make this as short as possible.

And in general, he was a very nice person who had a liberal ideology and an advocacy for environmental issues, he was the first to advocate about the climate changes and global warming that would affect the future and the entire civilization. But even with these attractive and nice traits, he of course has negative ones which are quite predominant.

I SWEAR I TRIED MAKING THIS AS SHORT AS POSSIBLE AND ALL, I even tried mentioning some of his negative traits but like I wanna make it very short >_<

Louise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz:

a. „g…g…irls….pr…etty”

b. “So sexy the whole country and her husband were obsessed with her. THE queen of Prussia that was more interesting than her husband (common Hohenzollern L)”

Alexander von Humboldt:

a. Influential explorer, researcher and polymath with many discoveries in the fields of geography, biology, zoology, astronomy and more. Also has experience with sticking things up his butt. For scientific reasons of course.

[roundedbyasleep]

I say this all the time, but Albertans are such stupid whiny babies. "Waaaahhhh, the government is expecting us to stop guzzling quite so many fossil fuels just because climate change is an existential crisis that threatens all other Canadians and indeed the entire world, but we don't wanna because we've refused to make any changes to our oil-based economy despite knowing about the threat of global warming for decades!!! The federal government is oppressing us by not bowing to our every whim and encouraging us as we find new ways to enthusiastically pump out greenhouse gases!!" Grow the fuck up. Other provinces not wanting to sacrifice their futures for your short-term gain is the obviously rational opinion if you were capable of seeing the world through anyone's eyes but your own. Sorry you weren't working on this forty years ago when you should have been but that is literally not our problem. We're all going to have to make sacrifices and you might as well get over yourselves and get used to it before the oil runs out instead of waiting until after you've already done the rest of us incalculable damage.

[anthonybialy]

Sick Experiments

Believing in science is the most unscientific idea imaginable.  Irony is confirmed by research.  A declaration of faith regarding the embodiment of skepticism shows true understanding.  Giggling while donning lab coats backward distracts from trying to figure out how to don goggles.  They just rest on your ears?

Adults struggle to be productive while keeping delinquents away from Bunsen burners.  Those who fail to grasp the subject shouldn’t even be allowed to handle safety scissors.  Confiscating autonomy is for their own safety and everyone else’s, too.  Caring about others means not letting the biggest fakers make decisions.

This method sure doesn’t seem scientific.  Those who insist on defying human nature, economics, and reality have their answers already determined, which doesn’t seem like it would please the average chemist.  A not particularly clever method for circumventing what happens next hasn’t exactly produced results.

Presume anyone who disagrees is awful as part of a commitment to kind open-mindedness.  Branding those with legitimate questions deniers is especially galling when conclusions make liberalism the equivalent of believing the Earth is shaped like a plate.  

Flailing about every temperature change makes it tough to enjoy nice seasons.  Histrionic liberals should be familiar with weather, which is a fairly common phenomenon.  In fact, it happens constantly, according to our present understanding.  That’s at least outside.  As for those who wish to reside in the past for more than its alleged relative coolness, freaking out at the thermometer does not appease climate gods.  There’s been an alarming spike in risible announcements about any high summer temperature or fire in a forest you may be aware is full of wood.

Changing to climate change didn’t trick the Earth into thinking it’s doomed.  Literally any variation prompts hollering about this apparently fragile planet’s imminent doom.  Our efforts to cool off cruelly make it hotter.  I miss when it was 60 degrees and mostly sunny every single day before the invention of air conditioning.

Gaia cultists are as good at science as they are at rhetorical trickery.  Fanatics are surely conforming to facts when they must change terms like a public relations campaign.  Global warming didn’t quite pan out, which means a rise in human-caused language melting.  We certainly aren’t going to return to fretting about global cooling like primitive dolts fretted about at the First Earth Day.  Those benighted troglodytes weren’t geniuses like today’s enlightened academics who think updating terms because their last one didn’t pan out reflects a new understanding of events.

Abortion is about controlling women as long as you ignore sonograms.  Oh: a baby can grow inside.  Noticing how life starts is portrayed as reverting to prehistoric times by those whose self-righteousness is surely logical.  People can’t afford baby food that is unavailable, anyway.

A lifetime spent denying results affects life outside of laboratories.  More gun control causes more crime as only the law-abiding obey, economies sputter when politicians attempt to compensate for their previous incursions, and unlimited complimentary health care is super unless you actually want to use some.  The case is clear in the real world.

A stubborn refusal to deviate from their precious ideology means never learning why everyone is hurting.  The unfailingly stubborn think they have evidence on their side when events contradict them right out front.

Economic science demonstrates the effect of removing motivation and rewards on humans.  Recession will remain the conclusion for several quarters.  

Deciding that a fearful knee jerk would protect us from passing along the plague is still contagious.  The magic cloak fails to perform Harry Potter-style no matter what spell clumsy politicians try.  Force people to breathe through cotton in case anxiety wasn’t severe enough without proper respiration.  Punishing us like children by making us go to our rooms failed to stop a virus.

Merely citing evidence is hateful in this wholly rational world of ours.  Not wearing a mask epitomizes selfishness unless hiding mouths did nothing more than signal virtue.  Confiscators of rights got every infiltration they desired for two years.  The outcomes made everyone sick.  People who managed not to panic are ticked after noticing what those who freaked inflicted on top of global illness.

The worst aftermath of the rampaging disease was making humanity irrationally scared.  Justifying endless infiltrations by claiming they’re for safety is a reason as lame as it is eternal.  Let’s take rights just to make sure, demand casual tyrants.  The only surety was infringing upon basic liberty without legal niceties or practical benefits.

Bothering others is their religion.  It’s tough for liberals to claim they want to separate church and state when the state is their church.  Even worse, adherents get all the doctrine wrong.  Worshiping Washington isn’t bad enough: adulating Joe Biden to form a trinity is the darkest mythology.

Distorting faith in a way that would make Pat Robertson cringe is a nice unintentional touch  The most zealous are the least likely to consider facts.  Fervency taints the experiment, as seen by how badly the American test subject has reacted to Biden’s demented notions.

Science is a process.  That fundamental opener shouldn’t need to be announced.  But its alleged defenders need remedial lessons.  The ironically ignorant know even less about it than algebra.  Rigorous testing is just another basic element they ignore.

Respecting the best present knowledge is anathema to heretics who misinterpret every prophecy.  Watch who claims to represent scientific values as they demonize increasing crop yields that prevent starvation as Frankenfoods.  Living in fields to reduce carbon footprints wouldn’t help, but it’s not like hypocrites would live up to their shrieking.

[fairycosmos]

But what do you mean it’s going to end you mean like global warming and they environment and shit or what

yeah like ending as know it climate change collapse of late stage capitalism etc it's like very imminent and not something we can just continue to disconnect ourselves from um basically i'm struggling because there's no decent future like quite literally. and it makes it very very hard to focus on things especially things that don't give me instant gratification it's almost impossible to think i'll still be alive when i'm 30 because i would rather kms than keep witnessing the mass effects of it which sounds dramatic but have no idea what else to do on top of everything else that has happened to me LOL. and i know it's kind of a privilege for me to be able to sit here and say it's all only just getting bad now because its been so bad for so long but just collectively, i think it's over. it's all happening

[mugasofer]

It seems like many, perhaps most, people historically believed in some immanent apocalypse.

Many philosophies claim that the world is passing into a degenerate age of chaos (Ages of Man, Kali Yuga, life-cycle of civilisation), or divine conflict will shortly spill over & destroy the Earth (Ragnorok, Revelations, Zoroastrian Frashokereti), or that the natural forces sustaining us must be transient.

Yet few panic or do anything. What anyone does "do about it" is often symbolic & self-admittedly unlikely to do much.

Maybe humans evolved not to care, to avoid being manipulated?

Many cults make similar claims, and do uproot their lives around them. Even very rarely committing mass suicide or terror attacks etc on occasion. But cults exist that don't make such claims, so it may not be the mechanism they use to control, or at most a minor one. "This is about the fate of the whole world, nothing can be more important than that, so shut up" may work as as a thought terminating cliche, but it doesn't seem to work that strongly, and there are many at least equally effective ones.

Some large scale orgs do exist that seem to take their eschatology "seriously". The Aztecs committed atrocities trying to hold off apocalypse, ISIS trying to cause it. Arguably some Communist or even fascist groups count, depending on your definition of apocalypse.

But even then, one can argue their actions are not radically different from non-apocalypse-motivated ones - e.g. the Aztecs mass-executed less per capita than the UK did at times & some historians view them as more about displaying authority.

I'm thinking about this because of two secular eschatologies - climate apocalypse and the Singularity.

My view on climate change, which as far as I can tell is the scientific consensus, is that it is real and bad but by no means apocalyptic. We're talking incremental increases in storms, droughts, floods etc, all of which are terrible, but none of which remotely threaten human civilisation. E.g. according to the first Google result, the sea is set to rise by 1 decimeter by 2100 in a "high emissions scenario", not to rise by tens or hundreds of meters and consume all coastal nations as I was taught as a child. Some more drastic projections suggest that the sea might rise by as much as two or three meters in the worst case scenario.

It really creeps me out when I hear people who confess to believe that human civilisation, the human species, or even all life on Earth is most likely going to be destroyed soon by climate change. The most recent example, which prompted this post, was the Call of Cthulhu podcast I was listening to casually suggesting that it might be a good idea to summon an Elder God of ice and snow to combat climate change as the "lesser existential risk", perhaps by sacrificing "climate skeptics" to it. It's incredibly jarring for me to realise that the guys I've been listening to casually chatting about RPGs think they live in a world that will shortly be ended by the greed of it's rulers. But this idea is everywhere. Discussions of existential risks from e.g. pandemics inevitably attract people arguing that the real existential risk is climate change. A major anti-global-warming protest movement, Extinction Rebellion, is literally named after the idea that they're fighting against their own extinction. Viral Tumblr posts talk about how the fear of knowing that the world is probably going to be destroyed soon by climate change and fascism is crippling their mental health, and they have no idea how to deal with it because it's all so real.

But it's not. It's not real.

Well, I can't claim that political science is accurate enough for me to definitively say that fascism isn't going to take over, but I can say that climate science is fairly accurate and it predicts that the world is definitely not about to end in fire or in flood.

(There are valid arguments that climate change or other environmental issues might precipitate wars, which could turn apocalyptic due to nuclear weapons; or that we might potentially encounter a black swan event due to our poor understanding of the ecosystem and climate-feedback systems. But these are very different, as they're self-admittedly "just" small risks to the world.)

And I get the impression that a lot of people with more realistic views about climate change deliberately pander to this, deliberately encouraging people to believe that they're going to die because it puts them on the "right side of the issue". The MCU's Loki, for instance, recently casually brought up a "climate apocalypse" in 2050, which many viewers took as meaning the world ending. Technically, the show uses a broad definition of "apocalypse" - Pompeii is given as another example - and it kind of seems like maybe all they meant was natural disasters encouraged by climate change, totally defensible. But I still felt kinda mad about it, that they're deliberately pandering to an idea which they hopefully know is false and which is causing incredible anxiety in people. I remember when Greta Thurnberg was a big deal, I read through her speeches to Extinction Rebellion, and if you parsed them closely it seemed like she actually did have a somewhat realistic understanding of what climate change is. But she would never come out and say it, it was all vague implications of doom, which she was happily giving to a rally called "Extinction Rebellion" filled with speakers who were explicitly stating, not just coyly implying, that this was a fight for humanity's survival against all the great powers of the world.

But maybe there's nothing wrong with that. I despise lying, but as I've been rambling about, this is a very common lie that most people somehow seem unaffected by. Maybe the viral tumblr posts are wrong about the source of their anxiety; maybe it's internal/neurochemical and they world just have picked some other topic to project their anxieties on if this particular apocalypse wasn't available. Maybe this isn't a particularly harmful lie, and it's hypocritical of me to be shocked by those who believe it.

Incidentally, I believe the world is probably going to end within the next fifty years.

Intellectually, I find the arguments that superhuman AI will destroy the world pretty undeniable. Sure, forecasting the path of future technology is inherently unreliable. But the existence of human brains, some of which are quite smart, proves pretty conclusively it's possible to get lumps of matter to think - and human brains are designed to run on the tiny amounts of energy they can get by scavenging plants and the occasional scraps of meat in the wilderness as fuel, with chemical signals that propagate at around the speed of sound (much slower than electronic ones), with only the data they can get from input devices they carry around with them, and which break down irrevocably after a few decades. And while we cannot necessarily extrapolate from the history of progress in both computer hardware and AI, that progress is incredibly impressive, and there's no particular reason to believe it will fortuitously stop right before we manufacture enough rope to hang ourselves.

Right now, at time of writing, we have neural nets that can write basic code, appear to scale linearly in effectiveness with the available hardware with no signs that we're reaching their limit, and have not yet been applied at the current limits of available hardware let alone what will be available in a few years. They absorb information like a sponge at a vastly superhuman speed and scale, allowing them to be trained in days or hours rather than the years or decades humans require. They are already human-level or massively superhuman at many tasks, and are capable of many things I would have confidently told you a few years ago were probably impossible without human-level intelligence, like the crazy shit AI dungeon is capable of. People are actively working on scaling them up so that they can work on and improve the sort of code they are made from. And we have no ability to tell what they're thinking or control them without a ton of trial and error.

If you follow this blog, you're probably familiar with all the above arguments for why we're probably very close to getting clobbered by superhuman AI, and many more, as well as all the standard counter-arguments and the counter-arguments to those counter arguments.

(Note: I do take some comfort in God, but even if my faith were so rock solid that I would cheerfully bet the world on it - which it's not - there's no real reason why our purpose in God's plan couldn't be to destroy ourselves or be destroyed as an object lesson to some other, more important civilization. There's ample precedent.)

Here's the thing: I'm not doing anything about it, unless you count occasionally, casually talking about it with people online. I'm not even donating to help any of the terrifyingly-few people who are trying to do something about it. Part of why I'm not contributing is, frankly, I don't have a clue what to do, nor do I have much confidence in any of the stuff people are currently doing (although I bloody well hope some of it works.)

And yet I don't actually feel that scared.

I feel more of a visceral chill reading about the nuclear close calls that almost destroyed the world in the recent past than thinking about the stuff that has a serious chance of doing so in a few decades. I'm a neurotic mess, and yet what is objectively the most terrifying thing on my radar does not actually seem to contribute to my neurosis.

[earthstory]

The forest is getting hotter This is a Mixed Forest, also called a Temperate-Broadleaf Forest, found in West Virginia. These are some of the classic forest types on Earth outside of jungles – they contain both conifers and broadleaf trees, the only continents without them are Africa and Antarctica, and they cover broad areas in North America, Europe and Asia. They occur in relatively warm, balanced climates – cold but not too cold in the winter, dry and warm but not too dry and worm in the summer. Scientists have characterized these forests worldwide, and a new study has found that they are seeing the fastest changes in the type of plants present out of any global ecoregion due to warming conditions.

Over the last few decades, scientists have collected literally hundreds of millions of observations of plants around the world. Plant type, leaf size, pollinator, plant health, growth rate, longevity, all sorts of things have been measured. By taking all these measurements and putting them into a gigantic database, it becomes possible to use data processing techniques to identify changes in the measurements. Using this large and available database of plant measurements, a group of scientists from the University of Miami queried it to determine whether there was a significant change in the plant populations measured over the last 40 years. In every biome that was studied, they found that this was in fact true, over time they were seeing a greater portion of heat-tolerant plants, at the expense of plants that could tolerate cold. Forests like this one, areas that were temperate and balances, were the ones seeing the largest shifts in plant population. They noted that the process was slow – in fact, the recorded temperature shifts in many areas are large enough that the plant populations would be expected to continue changing even if humans did something right now to stop warming of the world, just so that they could catch up. The forests that were known decades ago are changing, measurably, due to human-driven warming of the planet. It’s showing up in the species present, quite clearly. While hopefully forests will never go away, they’re going to have a lot of work to do to adapt to the dramatic changes currently being forced upon them by humans, and the forests a century from now may have to look very different from the forests a century ago. -JBB Image credit: https://www.nps.gov/neri/learn/nature/mixed-mesophytic-forest.htm Original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0873-2 Database: https://bien.nceas.ucsb.edu/bien/

[jkottke]

The New US Climate Normals

Every 10 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) updates its definition of what it defines as "normal" weather.

As soon as the 2021 New Year's celebrations were over, the calls and questions started coming in from weather watchers: When will NOAA release the new U.S. Climate Normals? The Normals are 30-year averages of key climate observations made at weather stations and corrected for bad or missing values and station changes over time. From the daily weather report to seasonal forecasts, the Normals are the basis for judging how temperature, rainfall, and other climate conditions compare to what's normal for a given location in today's climate.

They're set to release the updated 1991-2020 Normals in early May and, crucially, these new normal climate conditions are not adjusted for climate change.

The last update of the Normals took place in 2011, when the baseline shifted from 1971-2000 to 1981-2010. Among the highlights of the rollout was the creation of a map showing how climate-related planting zones across the contiguous United States had shifted northward in latitude and upward in elevation. It was a clear signal that normal overnight low temperatures across the country were warmer than they used to be.

The planting zone maps emphasized a key point about the Normals and climate change: the once-per-decade update means these products gradually come to reflect the "new normal" of climate change caused by global warming. What's normal today is often very different than what was normal 50 or 100 years ago. This gradual adjustment is the point: the purpose of the Normals is to provide context on what climate is like today, not how it's changing over time.

This is literally shifting baselines in action.

So what are shifting baselines? Consider a species of fish that is fished to extinction in a region over, say, 100 years. A given generation of fishers becomes conscious of the fish at a particular level of abundance. When those fishers retire, the level is lower. To the generation that enters after them, that diminished level is the new normal, the new baseline. They rarely know the baseline used by the previous generation; it holds little emotional salience relative to their personal experience.

And so it goes, each new generation shifting the baseline downward. By the end, the fishers are operating in a radically degraded ecosystem, but it does not seem that way to them, because their baselines were set at an already low level.

Over time, the fish goes extinct -- an enormous, tragic loss -- but no fisher experiences the full transition from abundance to desolation. No generation experiences the totality of the loss. It is doled out in portions, over time, no portion quite large enough to spur preventative action. By the time the fish go extinct, the fishers barely notice, because they no longer valued the fish anyway.

I've been thinking a lot about shifting baselines recently -- specifically in terms of how quickly people in the US got used to thousands of people dying from Covid every day and became unwilling to take precautions or change behaviors that were deemed essential just months earlier when many fewer people were dying. See also mass shootings.