Links tagged “wacky”

WaPo: “Yes, the planet will get hotter. Sea levels will rise further. Extreme weather will worsen, and more people will suffer,” writes WaPo. “[M]ore people than ever could experience serious challenges to their mental health as a result.”

“A nonprofit organization called the Good Grief Network, [created] a 10-step program inspired by the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous whose meetings provide ‘social and emotional support to people who feel overwhelmed about the state of the world,’ says it has reached over a thousand people in four years. Steps in the program range from accepting ‘the severity of the predicament’ to reinvesting ‘into meaningful efforts.’”

“There are 20 countries that are responsible for about 80 percent of all the emissions in the world, and if those countries are not doing enough, the rest of the world is doomed by their actions — or lack of actions, as the case may be,” Kerry said. ... 

According to the intergovernmental International Energy Agency, the top 20 emitters as of 2018 were China, the U.S., India, Russia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Iran, Canada, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and France. ...

“If we do not do enough, between 2020 and 2030, then 1.5 degrees is dead, gone — that will happen; even 2 degrees will happen,” Kerry added. “And currently, as we’re talking today, we are regrettably on course to hit somewhere between 3, 4 degrees at the current rate.”

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Earth ‘serially doomed’: The official history of climate ‘Tipping Points’ began in 1864

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is calling for “urgent action” on climate change in a bid to tackle “abnormal” weather that he blames for the nation’s crippling food shortage. Kim ordered his officials to clamp down on climate change during a Politburo meeting last Thursday, according to the Korean Central News Agency. Kim said the “danger” of climate change had increased in recent years and “disastrous weather” was only getting worse. “Our country is also lying vulnerable to its danger,” Kim said.

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Flashback: Newsweek Headline Celebrates Taliban Vow to ‘Fight Terror and Climate Change’ & Seek ‘World Recognition’

Climate change is ‘greatest threat’ to global public health, say 200 medical journals: Declare COVID-19 'response' could be 'template' for climate response:

CNN: Further corruption of public health orgs: More than 230 medical journals warn (made-up number of) 1.5°C of 'global warming' could be 'catastrophic' for health - (Despite 99% drop in climate-related deaths since 1920!) - Human health is already being harmed by the climate crisis, and the impacts could become catastrophic and irreversible unless governments do much more to address global warming, the editors of more than 230 medical journals said in a joint editorial Monday..Among them are an increase in heat deaths, dehydration and kidney function loss, skin cancer, tropical infections, mental health issues, pregnancy complications, allergies, and heart and lung disease, and deaths associated with them..."Despite the world's necessary preoccupation with Covid-19, we cannot wait for the pandemic to pass to rapidly reduce emissions," the authors wrote, calling on governments to respond to the climate crisis with the same spirit of "unprecedented funding" dedicated to the pandemic.

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Reality Checks:

The Collapse of Climate-Related Deaths: Deaths have ‘fallen over 90% since 1920’

Global Warming Is Actually Sparing Lives …Cold Kills 17 Times More Than Heat, According To Lancet!

Cold kills 20 times more people than Heat

Book reveals UN’s goal of ‘2 degree’ limit of ‘global warming’ has no scientific basis – ‘Pulled out of thin air’

Justine Lejoly, a soil scientist with the University of Alberta in Edmonton researching the effects of earthworms on soil carbon dynamics, says the earthworms' voracious appetite has serious implications for the boreal forest's capacity to store carbon. 

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Scientists say some earthworm species are potentially speeding up climate change by feeding on leaves, then pooping out a mix that's fodder to tiny microbes and fungi that spew carbon into the atmosphere. By contrast, other worms are helping lock carbon in soil.

"The average household in England produces more carbon dioxide every year in their home than they do by driving."

But CBS News was singing a different tune 6 years ago when it blamed “opium profits” — not climate change — for strengthening the Taliban in a 2015 story headlined: “Taliban set to double opium profits this year?” CBS News said in 2015 that the Taliban derived 40 percent of its funding from the illicit opium trade, which “fuel[ed] their insurgency.” Climate change wasn’t even mentioned in the 2015 story. Talk about a whopping narrative shift. [Emphasis added.]

Korte ignored mentioning the “billions” in profits the Taliban made off of its illicit drug trade until the seventeenth paragraph of her story. But she blamed the opium trade on the false narrative that farmers were struggling to produce other crops and climate change. Korte said in the first paragraph of her piece that the Taliban derived its strength from three decades of “floods and drought” that have “destroyed crops and left people hungry.”