They Drove Off the Climate Cliff, podcast, with favorite interviewer, champion of many if not all precious things human and natural, Alex Smith. Paul’s segment, is called ‘Tracking the Big Picture with scientist Paul Beckwith‘.
His post also shares from famed generalist on policy, social change and pressure, acclaimed journalist of geopolitical ‘security scholar’ Nafeez Ahmed. As Alex says in clip below, and continues at full post.
‘Climate scientist Paul Beckwith says we are already off the cliff, falling into dangerous climate change. We get new science and the big picture. … This week‘, Alex ‘got hammered by some awful news from some great climate science, so’ he took his ‘troubles to University of Ottawa climate scientist Paul Beckwith. We get a cutting edge education…‘
‘Tracking the Big Picture with Scientist Paul Beckwith‘: we ‘read relentless headlines about our planet heading out of control. Most of them seem to cruise by without hurting us. Yeah, yeah, half the mammals will be extinct soon. The oceans are dying. Scientists declare Earth a toxic planet. Wait – did somebody say it’s going to be too hot to hold outdoor music festivals? That’s terrible! I love those!
… There have been recent studies showing more and more people are feeling climate stress. We don’t need science to watch this all happening, literally in our backyards. For example, in this year of 2017, the city of Chicago had no snow in January and February. That’s got to be pretty crazy for people who know the Great Lakes winters‘.
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Then Paul’s fourth of nine videos, on Changes in Energy Balances at Earth’s Surface // Published on Mar 15, 2017
Did you know temperature rise in the Southern Hemisphere has been slow & steady, compared to that in the Northern Hemisphere?
The amount of global warming at the Earth surface depends on net energy, in turn affected by incoming sunlight, heat balances, particles in the atmosphere & cloud characteristics. I discuss a recent scientific review paper on how this energy balance/warming has changed over the last few decades.
Paul Beckwith, Climate System Scientist 
A massive roadblock is the ability to get beyond whatever wilful ignorance or other cognitive bias exists in so many minds in regards to denialism and climate metamorphosis. There appears to be some deep failure of imagination at play, itself perhaps ennervated by pure, naked (yet repressed) fear. The old psychological games of classical (mechanistic, causally simplistic) object relations, mythologies of human-centrism and the selfish obstruction of environmentalist messages purely for the sake of being difficult and offensive – these belong to a world and paradigm of thought that is completely invalidated and dwarfed by the immensity represented by this stark existential threat of potential runaway climate change.
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Mr. Wallace, While your premonitions regarding climate change should be taken seriously, the words that are chosen to express this fear are just as important as the even itself. And so simplicity is key to both action and support. Even so, it should be remembered that humans have known about the seriousness of a nuclear war for at least 4 or 5 decades, with plenty of evidence to support those fears, and yet, in the greater scheme of things, nothing has changed with respect to the human potential to end most life on the planet… just sayin….
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