Weather Whiplashing and Jetstream Waviness
https://youtu.be/RS_0GNk_CfE?si=pAEyL8ImmySD5UrI



The Climate Emergency Forum welcomes Dr. Jennifer Francis to discuss two of her recent papers on Weather Whiplashing, which is defined as an abrupt shift from one persistent set of often extreme weather conditions to another.

This video was recorded on February 27th, 2024, and published on March 10th, 2024.

Dr. Francis introduces the concept of weather whiplashing and provides examples like sudden temperature drops and shifts from drought to heavy rain, highlighting the impact of these events on regions like Florida and California. Dr. Francis explains how weather whiplash events are diagnosed by analyzing patterns in the jet stream using self-organizing maps, emphasizing the role of the Arctic's warming in increasing the frequency of these events.

The dialogue delves into the intricate relationship between atmospheric patterns, jet stream dynamics, and weather phenomena. Dr. Francis illustrates how anomalies in the upper-level atmosphere can lead to significant shifts in weather patterns, affecting regions like Florida with freeze events and temperature extremes. She discusses the use of AI tools to analyze atmospheric patterns over time and predict future trends in weather whiplash events, particularly focusing on scenarios where the Arctic's warming plays a crucial role in driving these shifts.

Participants engage in a thought-provoking discussion on the complexities of jet stream behavior, climate factors influencing atmospheric dynamics, and implications for global weather patterns. Questions raised by participants highlight key aspects such as variations in jet stream configurations, heat transfer between equator and poles, and the impact of Arctic warming on jet stream speed and waviness.

Dr. Francis addresses inquiries about ocean currents' correlation with jet stream patterns and explains how subtleties in jet streams affect phenomena like record low transit times for airplanes flying across continents. The dialogue underscores the interdisciplinary nature of climate research and the interconnectedness of various environmental factors shaping our planet's weather systems.


https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022JD036717

A Criminology Of the Human Species: Setting An Unsettling Tone — Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/a-criminology-of-the-human-species-setting-an-unsettling-tone

The book sketches out how the criminological lens could be used in the climate change debate around possible human extinction. It explores the extent to which the human species can be considered deviant in relation to other species of the contemporary biosphere, as humans seem to be the only species on Earth that does not live in natural balance with its environment (anymore). It discusses several unsettling topics in the public debate on climate change, specifically the taboo of how humans may not survive the ongoing climate change. It includes chapters on the Earth’s history of mass-extinctions, on the global state of denial including toward the possibility that the human species could go extinct, on the inward extinction of humanity through "human enhancement" and artificial intelligence (AI)/singularity, and it considers humans' future as a deviant, fatal species - "a planet-eating people" - outside of Earth, in outer-space, possibly on other celestial bodies. It puts forward and enriches the critical criminological tradition by conceptualizing and setting an unsettling tone within criminology and criminological research on the human species and our extinction, by daring criminologists (and victimologists) to ponder and seek empirical answers to controversial imaginations and questions about our existence and possible extinction.

New climate paper calls for charging big US oil firms with homicide | Oil | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/22/big-oil-companies-homicide-harvard-environmental-law-review

The paper is rooted in part in the growing body of evidence fossil fuel companies knew of the harm their products caused and misled the public about them.

Attorneys general and cities have used that information to sue oil companies for financial damages caused by rising seas, wildfires and heat. But the new paper argues that oil companies’ climate research and continued fight to delay climate regulations amount to a “culpable mental state” that has inflicted harm on people, including death.

“Once you start using those terms, you come to realize that’s criminal law,” said Donald Braman, a law professor at George Washington University and Arkush’s co-author. “Culpable mental state causing harm is criminal conduct, and if they kill anybody, that’s homicide.”

Braman argued that pursuing homicide charges would have a greater impact on fossil fuel companies than the cases currently wending their way through court in part because the penalties would be steeper. Rather than paying a fine, homicide charges could open up an array of other outcomes that could materially alter how companies operate.



Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths by David Arkush, Donald Braman :: SSRN
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4335779

Prosecutors regularly bring homicide charges against individuals and corporations whose reckless or negligent acts or omissions cause unintentional deaths, as well as those whose misdemeanors or felonies cause unintentional deaths. Fossil fuel companies learned decades ago that what they produced, marketed, and sold would generate “globally catastrophic” climate change. Rather than alert the public and curtail their operations, they worked to deceive the public about these harms and to prevent regulation of their lethal conduct. They funded efforts to call sound science into doubt and to confuse their shareholders, consumers, and regulators. And they poured money into political campaigns to elect or install judges, legislators, and executive officials hostile to any litigation, regulation, or competition that might limit their profits.

Today, the climate change that they forecast has already killed thousands of people in the United States, and it is expected to become increasingly lethal for the foreseeable future. Given the extreme lethality of the conduct and the awareness of the catastrophic risk on the part of fossil fuel companies, should they be charged with homicide? Could they be convicted?

In answering these questions, this Article makes several contributions to our understanding of criminal law and the role it could play in combating crimes committed at a massive scale. It describes the doctrinal and social predicates of homicide prosecutions where corporate conduct endangers much or all of the public. It also identifies important advantages of homicide prosecutions relative to civil and regulatory remedies, and it details how and why prosecution for homicide may be the most effective legal remedy available in cases like this. Finally, it argues that, if our criminal legal system cannot focus more intently on climate crimes—and soon—we may leave future generations with significantly less for the law to protect.

Analyza v UK, co ma vliv na verejne mineni ve vztahu k zivotnimu prostredi

Modelling the fall and rise in the importance of the environment to the British public: 2006–2019
Attention given to the environment by the British public has fluctuated over recent decades. Having peaked in 2007 it declined, yet has recently risen dramatically. This raises questions about why public attention to the issue changes over time and to what extent this is driven by other actors and exogenous forces. This article examines these processes at the monthly level through a system of simultaneous equations. Methodologically, protest is an important confounding factor when analysing the relationship between media and public salience. Substantively, protest itself can be predicted by prior public attention, but in turn, can be successful in increasing broader environmental salience.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13691481221080651

Living in The Time of Dying

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/livinginthetimeofdying

Living in The Time of Dying is an unflinching look at what it means to be living in the midst of climate catastrophe and civilisational collapse. Once we lift the veil of denial and see the time we are living in clearly for what it is, how then do we find purpose, meaning and courage to meet it.

Recognising the magnitude of the crisis we are facing, independent filmmaker Michael Shaw, sells his house to travel around the world looking for answers. Pretty soon we begin to see how deep the predicament goes, and how our cultural systems and ways of thinking brought us here. Stan Rushworth, a Native American Elder, brings an especially enlightening viewpoint to these questions. It becomes clear that climate change is going to ruin our way of life and this then opens up a whole new set of questions: How did we get here as a civilisation to begin with? How do we choose to live in these times with purpose and clarity? and what actions make sense at this time? The people interviewed in the documentary, all highly regarded and well known spokespeople on the issue, argue it's too late to stop catastrophic climate change but in no way too late to regain a renewed life giving relationship with our world and with each other

2021 Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m#chapter.2

Where is humanity going? How realistic is a future of fusion and space colonies? What constraints are imposed by physics, by resource availability, and by human psychology? Are default expectations grounded in reality?

This textbook, written for a general-education audience, aims to address these questions without either the hype or the indifference typical of many books. The message throughout is that humanity faces a broad sweep of foundational problems as we inevitably transition away from fossil fuels and confront planetary limits in a host of unprecedented ways—a shift whose scale and probable rapidity offers little historical guidance.

Salvaging a decent future requires keen awareness, quantitative assessment, deliberate preventive action, and—above all—recognition that prevailing assumptions about human identity and destiny have been cruelly misshapen by the profoundly unsustainable trajectory of the last 150 years. The goal is to shake off unfounded and unexamined expectations, while elucidating the relevant physics and encouraging greater facility in quantitative reasoning.

After addressing limits to growth, population dynamics, uncooperative space environments, and the current fossil underpinnings of modern civilization, various sources of alternative energy are considered in detail— assessing how they stack up against each other, and which show the greatest potential. Following this is an exploration of systemic human impediments to effective and timely responses, capped by guidelines for individual adaptations resulting in reduced energy and material demands on the planet’s groaning capacity. Appendices provide refreshers on math and chemistry, as well as supplementary material of potential interest relating to cosmology, electric transportation, and an evolutionary perspective on humanity’s place in nature.