Why kneeling before a deranged narcissist is a bad idea — In honor of Donald Trump’s recently launched effort to become history’s only thrice impeached President, I thought I’d re-up this piece to pinned status. Trump is a clinically unstable narcissist of low IQ, with a crippling need for attention and dominance. If you want to predict what he will do…

Who’s going to decide — governments or the oil industry? — As an average citizen of the United States, one with no particular power over our political trajectory beyond my ability to vote and encourage others to vote, I have very little say in how our descent into a hotter, resource-depleted world will play out. This contrasts with how much I…

What to learn, how to think, how to live — I originally published this post as one long article, but decided to divide it into two slightly more bite-sized pieces. In Part 1, we considered two questions anyone wanting to survive the 21st Century must answer for themselves: What predictions can you rely on? What will give your life meaning? …

How to live a meaningful life in a time of turmoil — I originally published this post as one long article, but decided to divide it into two slightly more bite-sized pieces. This is Part 1. Part 2 is here. I recently came across a post on Reddit that said, in part: “I’m a teen and I’m really scared for my future …

And why is that relevant to our energy transition aspirations? — We talk a lot about the need to drastically lower our annual CO2 emissions. In 2022, we dumped about 37.5 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That was up from 37.1 gigatons in 2021, and well above 25.5 gigatons we dumped in 2000 (source). As noted in a previous post…

I’m posting this reply here so I can add a little documentation … I have to quibble with your characterization of a 95% confidence interval between 2025 and 2095 as a "massive" period of time that "practically speaking ... means nothing". It's worth recalling that in terms of Earth climate…

Spoiler Alert: it doesn’t involve yelling at them about their carbon footprint — Monday, July 3, 2023, was the hottest day ever recorded by humans on Planet Earth. That is, until Tuesday, July 4, when it got hotter. Contributing to those record-shattering days was a massive heat dome that parked over Texas and other parts of the American Southwest for over two weeks…

The American media needs to radically change its definition of “disaster” — This “new post” is basically what used to be the second half of my last post, which I have shortened accordingly. I think the issues I raised there are worth considering separately. Why don’t people care as much about climate change as they obviously should? A big part of the…

What averages hide: Where, when, with what consequences? — In Part 1 of this post, I discussed why extreme temperatures distributed unevenly across the planet are more important than global average temperatures for understanding the effects of climate change on human civilization over the rest of this century and beyond. In this post, I want to consider how these…