“Two plus two is five – if the party says so” (George Orwell). Should anyone record the history of the 20th and 21st centuries, they may report that, while temperatures and sea levels were rising, the human sense of reality has been clouded by electronic system, including television, the internetand smart phones, by science fiction, virtual realities, public circuses,[Read More…]

  A species which has invented combustion, electromagnetic radiation and nuclear energy orders of magnitude more powerful than its own physical potential, needs to be perfectly wise and in control lest it is overwhelmed by these powers. As tipping points in the Earth’s climate amplify, including hurricanes, snow storms and wildfires, it appears to be beyond human power to contemplate[Read More…]

 The current warming of Earth (Figure 1),manifest in the rise in extreme weather events (Figures 2 and 3), including collapse of polar ice sheets, melting of the Arctic Sea ice, penetration of snow storms into mid-latitudes, permafrost thaw and methane release, hurricanes and wildfires(Figure 4), manifestsa shift in state of the atmosphere-oceansystem, constituting an existential threat to humanity and much[Read More…]

Arctic ice breakdown As is well known to students of the history of the climate, once a temperature threshold is breached, abrupt events follow due to amplifying feedbacks, even within a few years, examples being (1) stadial[i] freeze events which followed temperature peaks during past interglacial peaks due to influx of cold ice-melt water into the north Atlantic Ocean[ii]; (2)[Read More…]

“Dear Caesar, Keep burning, raping and killing, but please, please spare us your obscene poetry and ugly music“(From Seneca’s last letter to Nero) Astrophysicist Greg Laughlin came up with a figure of €3000 trillion for the worth of planet Earth, given its breathable atmosphere—a shield from cosmic radiation. A close estimate is by Greg Laughlinas as US$5000 trillion. By contrast[Read More…]