we have records and data and ice core samples and everything is on fire ...

"BuT iT GeTs hOt aLL tHe TiMe" you say.

Aug 21, 2023

a little really long note to bring this little climate rant from last week to the present

as I return to this unpublished draft, I am tweeting … ugh, I mean “xitting” (so dumb) with a friend in LA who is in the midst of what is being called a “Hurriquake,” which in true form sounds like a movie pitch but no, it’s just how her day is going. There are also tornadoes (not unusual with a hurricane, but also very unwelcome nonetheless) and I suspect that they are full of orca or shark because at this point all the crazy apocalyptic possibilities are on the table and Gaia is on a roaring tear.

Also, as it has been in almost everything I have written here since sometime around late June or so, it is still over 100°F (37.77777777778°C), usually over 105°F (40.5555556°C), and frequently over 107°F (41.666😈°C) like the temperature of Hell, and after 44 days in a row of this shit, it still hasn’t rained. To be in this oven day after day, watching everything crumble and die, putting water out for roaming wildlife and insects, being essentially stuck inside until nightfall is unsettling. We turn on news and scroll social media and see over and over again that things could be so much more unpredictable, destructive, deadly, and terrifying than where we are (unless we drew the short straw of disaster this week). Spin the globe, drop a finger to find people processing grief while searching for loved ones after surviving fires, storms, and floods, or drowning refugees — we all see this, right?

Here at home, the fucking governor of Texas decided to deter asylum seekers by linking bouys covered with razorwire and alternated with SAWBLADES and installing them in the Rio Grande to reject, maim, kill, punish people who need help —this is on purpose, this gun crazy monster who runs our state has so much blood on his hands already — he (again) deliberately chose to pursue a policy of utter cruelty. It is out in the open that horrible people who do not care about anything but money and being in charge are using their power to hurt people and they’re okay with that. The “conservatives” who run this state are not just a bunch of jerks who disagree with me about evolution, climate change, socialism, human rights etc. They are shutting down libraries, calling science ridiculous, and playing games with the truth — why? Climate change and the cascade of consequences were preventable, studied, and known, but because of avaricious trashy executives and politicians we are living through what may be looked back on (if we live to look back) as one of the most cruel and barbarous times in history.

This is not hyperbole — there are so many flavors of violence now it is really hard to choose which ones to write about, and being as intertwined as they are sometimes it is easier and actually apt to encircle them in a hyperobject and give it a name. I would take a cue from my religious upbringing and call it Adversary, but metaphorically/poetically, and it would probably be misinterpreted or I would come off as a kook because sometimes people take my apocalyptic language a little too seriously. Be not afraid though. I grew up immersed in religion and minored in religious studies and speak this language and use apocalyptic words fairly casually and heretically nowadays, not sure I could stop if I wanted to. Am I doing a heresy? Could I get in trouble for saying something like “Politicians use church as a fishing net to collect a loyal voting block and scatter all their shared fears as ground bait?” Which of us is doing devilish things? Me for being fed up and a little blasphemous or those who would exploit the way people connect with the divine and/or ancestors or places they left behind in order to spin ancient texts to justify atrocities?

But for real, the evidence points to this: we are living through the consequences of unchecked capitalism, and the greedy decisions of the 1%. So these things are going on and for me they pull together nature and our rich history of supernatural explanations for powerful forces of nature in such obvious and tangible ways. This creates issues when we point to actual chains of evidence leading from dirty industrial practices and shitty land use, show correlations with the changing climate, and present the climate markers from ice cores and tree rings to show that what is happening now is anomalous and corresponds in time with bad decisions by investors, industrialists, and politicians.

Of course as always there are people who disrespect their holy texts by using them as a tarot deck, cherry-picking verses with no context, and go “uh uh, God is mad because of (abortion/drag/critical race theory/dirty books/drugs/the existence of LGBTQIA people/immigrants/women doing literally anything with their brains) and he is sending disasters, repent!” as though these “punishments” aren’t actually “effects” from which we can trace very real “causes”.

And THEN there are still more people who have their heads so firmly lodged in their assholes that they can’t help but talk shit in the comment threads of climate scientists simply to be contrary dinosaurs or to shine a fossil fuel robber baron’s boot with their tongue. Honestly I have no idea because these people are completely unimaginative until they rattle off a bunch of goofy reasons the climate is behaving totally normal when it is so clearly fucked, and why dirty energy is better and more holy than clean energy. The internet desperately needs a good therapist, it is wild in here.

Anyway, that was an unexpectedly long introduction to what is probably a short little rant, thanks for getting this far.

Worlds that should never be on fire have burned to the ground this summer. Who could imagine Canada and Maui incinerated in a climate horror? It seems so impossible, even for people who have followed the destructive paths of climate change. I joke sometimes about having to have fun, eco-consious diversions to cope with the apocalypse, but literally this is the absolute worst year on Earth — and yet people 10-30 years older than I am still say weird things like, “I’m dickety-two years old and it has been hot before, this is no big deal!”

Please, I beg of them, please don’t double down on climate denial. If only they’d take an evening to fall into a rabbit hole and get some basic information about how climate works — if they are so afraid that reality will shake their faith, then there’s not much to it, is there? Consider if it helps that geophysics has built-in divine punishments for all living things, guilty or innocent, that will continue to emerge if we continue to siphon and burn fossil fuels, clearcut forests, blow up mountains, discharge waste into waterways, and consume resources rapaciously. Seriously, what benevolent or vengeful God would want to allow us into their nice, clean, divine realm after what we allowed to be done to this planet? Do they strive to fulfill ancient prophesies just to bring on the Rapture, like they’re contracted to dig a lake of fire to get a golden ticket to a celestial realm or something? Please, let’s observe our surroundings.

this was taken a few blocks from where I live. I didn’t take this picture or make the sign, I’ll just say the author gave up several days ago and nothing has changed. Also I’m not going back to recrop this, it’s too hot.

I mean, come on random internet Paw-Paw, you have AIR CONDITIONING now, y’all were sweating and using paper fans in church with the doors open, skinny dipping, and drinking ice cold lemonade outdoors after plowing the back 40 back when you thought it was hotter, get out! Your A/C was rolling down the windows on Ol’ Betsy and yee-hawing down a dirt road. If you did that now, in today’s mid-summer temperatures, you, along with your grit and gumption and your “back in my day …” talk would wilt like a delicate flower, dry to a golden husk, and blow away like dust in the wind.

Was beautiful Maui incinerated back in your day? It has been over 100° in beautiful Austin, Texas EVERY DAY SINCE JULY 8!!! I am trying to keep the trees planted “back in your day” from dying of thirst — the ground is gold and crispy with their leaves. As of today, that is 38 days, breaking last year’s record of 27.1 Between July 10th and 20th, it was over 105°, this is real. There is no rain in the forecast. The educational system failed us all because the local industrial plant sponsored the little league team and was a band booster and funded scholarships and groomed politicians and our parents worked for them so they fed and diapered us too as they censored our textbooks …

I’m having so many feelings. Here’s some music.

I started making a playlist while writing this because “Dust in the Wind” was playing on a loop in my brain and this was an attempt to exorcise it. Yes it is on the playlist. Where was I ... oh yeah,

hot

dry

every

damn

day

I challenge any of us to explain gently and firmly to whatever climate denier we know and love who will listen that what they are seeing and hearing is real, we see it too, that the changes in the weather and the out of the ordinary cataclysms are part of a massive global shift in climate that is caused by very real human actions and decisions. It was forseen by the scientists hired by fossil fuel companies. The response was to lock the information away and fight every tidbit of data that escapes so that the oil money continues to flow into the pockets of people who do not care about us — executives who chuckle like Mr. Burns when politicians, preachers, drunk uncles, and internet trolls spread their bullshit.2 When we receive religious tracts, book suggestions, and forwarded web pages asking how we will spend eternity or spreading bizarre conspiracy theories, offer to discuss concerns and read info but they should expect to discuss this thoroughly after reading an equal amount of climate science from at least three of the thousands of people writing about it,3 prepare an argument, bring notes. Point out “who benefits” from climate change denial, and what they do to cover their asses.4 If they worry that their faith can’t handle it, ask who is telling them it can’t — who are they to do this, and how does ignorance benefit them?

We all live here now and have a stake in the health of this planet. What isn’t on fire or too hot is flooding — these are not the normal seasonal changes. None of us have lived long enough to have had a grandparent with a grandparent who would remember such global catastrophes ever-increasing exponentially year after year — there is no good argument for that sort of silliness and there are piles evidence against it. I don’t know what will help anymore because we’re so immersed in a matrix of actions, inactions, and consequences, but what else is there to talk about with contrary old farts while the world burns?

as of revision, 45 days.

The five corrupt pillars of climate change denial

Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement Nearly a billion dollars a year is flowing into the organized climate change counter-movement

The Dirty Dozen: The Biggest Nonprofit Funders of Climate Denial

The Troll Army of Big Oil | Climate Town

How Do We Know Climate Change Is Real? There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.

Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans

FOURTH NATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENT Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States

The Gaia Hypothesis (1974) by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis

The revenge of Gaia Earth's climate crisis and the fate of humanity, by James Lovelock

James Lovelock: 'The biosphere and I are both in the last 1% of our lives' Jonathan Watts

ENCYCLICAL LETTER LAUDATO SI’ OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME