Writer
Andrew Glikson
Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleoclimate scientist.
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ANDREW GLIKSON. “The emperor’s new clothes: Greta Thunberg versus the climate contrarians”
It is not an accident that fascist philosophies and movements willfully ignore human-induced global warming leading to the Sixth mass extinction of species, the largest since 56 million years ago. The nature of denialists is manifest in their venting of hate on the 16 years-old Gerta Thunberg, the voice of a generation destined to Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. The ALP and the great moral challenge of our generation
There was a time when leaders fell on their sword if they were defeated in battle or lost their core beliefs. Nowadays they would not resign their privileged positions to take a stand against even the existential danger posed to advanced life on Earth, including their own civilization. While large parts of Earth are burning, Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. From climate denial to planetary arson. The planetary consequences of injecting >910 billion tons CO2 into the atmosphere
Last night (6 September) as fires were raging through the desiccated granite belt of southern Queensland, not a single reporter, politician or anyone else had the “temerity” of pointing out the inevitable relation between coal mining, carbon emissions, global and regional heating and the incendiary consequences. Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. The global significance of the Amazon and Siberian fires
As fires rage across tens of thousands of square kilometers of the Amazon forest, dubbed the Planet’s lungs as it produces some 20 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere, some 72,843 fires are burning in Brazil this year. Fires on a large scale including through Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, southern Europe and elsewhere, herald a world Continue reading »
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The changing face of planet Earth
With atmospheric CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas concentrations now above 500 ppm and average global warming approaching 1.5oC, there is a clear shift in the world’s climate zones, displayed for example on maps of the expanding wet tropical zones, drying sub-tropical latitudes and polar-ward migration of temperate climate zones. Large parts of southern Europe are suffering from droughts, heat Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. $trillion space games and false prophecies by billionaires while Rome burns
History testifies to powerful rulers’ aspirations for the position of gods, including the Pharaohs and Roman Emperors such as Caligula or Nero, nowadays mimicked by false messianic prophecies of “intergalactic civilization” made by billionaires and their followers in public and the media, including some scientists. This includes predictions of making life interplanetary by giant proprietors of space Continue reading »
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Beyond climate tipping points: greenhouse gas levels exceed the stability limit of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets
The pace of global warming has been grossly underestimated. As the world keeps increasing its carbon emissions, rising in 2018 to a record 33.1 billion ton CO2 per year, the atmospheric greenhouse gas level has now exceeded 560 ppm (parts per million) CO2–equivalent, namely when methane and nitric oxide are included. This level surpasses the Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Greta Thunberg . ‘You lied to us’
“The first law of humanity is not to kill your children” (Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, EU chief climate scientist). Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. The Newspeak road to four degrees Celsius warming.
While a price placed on the Earth, estimated at $5000 trillion (New Formula Values Earth), belongs to the unthinkable, the haggle by conservatives over the price of mitigation of climate change underpins the reality of the Faustian Bargain. Continue reading »
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The climate and the extinction rebellion
“The first law of humanity is not to kill your children.” (Joachim Hans Schellnhuber, Germany’s and the EU’s chief climate scientist.) “We will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it”… “Now we probably Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Under a greenhouse atmosphere
According to the UNHCR, since 2008 an estimated 22.5 million people have been displaced by climate or weather-related events. According to researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the University of Wisconsin global warming is already responsible for some 150,000 deaths each year around the world. In 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that climate Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. At a climate tipping point
According to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chief climate advisor to the European Union, “We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet”. As fascism and the horror of murderous hate crimes are spreading around the world, governments are presiding over runaway climate change which is leading toward a mass extinction of species, costing Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Imagining the real: Two minutes to mid-night on the Clock of the Atomic Scientists
On January 24, 2019, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists stated: “Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats—nuclear weapons and climate change—were exacerbated this past year (2018) by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON -The roots of the climate catastrophe
It is not a mere coincidence that extreme right wing movements reject the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change, which reflects their connections with the fossil fuel corporations from whom they receive funding, as well as a lack of concern for the living world. In the wake of Benito Mussolini’s adoption of “fasces” (a Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. The gathering climate storm: the media cover-up.
“Earth is now substantially out of energy balance. The amount of solar energy that Earth absorbs exceeds the energy radiated back to space. The principal manifestations of this energy imbalance are continued global warming on decadal time scales and continued increase in ocean heat content” (James Hansen 2018). “The people have no voice since they Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. The ABC 2018 year-roundup and the defining issue of our time.
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil – God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act” Dietrich Bonhoeffer The ABC 2018 year wrap-up included a few seconds of David Attenborough’s science-based warning to humanity of an impending global climate catastrophe (https://www.her.ie/news/david-attenborough-appealing-help-defining-issue-time-438220), as well Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Crimes against the Earth: a deep time perspective.
“Dear Caesar Keep Burning, raping, killing But please, please Spare us your obscene poetry And ugly music ” (From Seneca’s last letter to Nero) Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. The 2018 Queensland and California firestorms: there is no Planet B.
It takes only a spark, from a lightning or human ignition, to start a fire, but it involves high temperatures, a period of drought, a build-up of dry vegetation and strong winds to start a bush fire, such as is devastating Queensland and recently California. When all these factors combine firestorms ensue, enhanced by strong Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Climate cover-up and Orwellian newspeak.
In so far as it may have been assumed that the growing manifestations of global warming through extreme weather events will cause people to realize the reality and the implications of carbon emissions, this is only partly happening, due to ongoing attempts by large part of the mainstream media to attribute these events to natural Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Which planet is the media living on?
While extreme weather events are being reported almost daily on news bulletins, only rarely is it conveyed that these events constitute the manifestation of advanced global warming and a fundamental shift in the state of the atmosphere. Rarely do major ABC TV forums, such as The Drum, The Insiders, Q and A, Four-Corners, the 7.30 Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. High sea level rise and the IPCC.
In a key paper titled “Scientific reticence and sea level rise” (https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha01210n.html) (2007) James Hansen, the renowned climate scientist, is critical of what he regards as major underestimates of the magnitude and pace of global warming, as further elaborated in the article “How the IPCC Underestimated Climate Change: Here are just eight examples of where Continue reading »
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The road to 2oC and beyond: IPCC warnings of extreme global warming.
Scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicate that global temperature rise of 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures would constitute a threshold the planet cannot cross without suffering the worst effects of climate change. Yet according to the U.N. report, mean global land-sea temperatures have already risen above 1°C and the planet could pass Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Climate projections.A world on borrowed time.
Current temperature trajectories are on par with or exceed the IPCC’s dangerous projections (Figure 1). Acting as the lungs of the biosphere, over tens of millions of years the atmosphere developed an oxygen-rich carbon-low composition, allowing the flourishing of mammals. The anthropogenic release to the atmosphere to date of more than 600 Gigaton of carbon Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Human cognitive dissonance and the mass extinction of species.
The history of Earth is marked by at least seven major mass extinctions, including asteroid impact effects 580 million years ago, the end Ordovician glaciation, late Devonian asteroid impacts, end-Permian volcanism and ocean anoxia, end-Jurassic volcanism and Cretaceous-Tertiary asteroid impact—mostly associated with an extreme rise in atmospheric CO2. Currently the seventh mass extinction of species Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Last call on climate—evidence for a demise of the planetary life support system.
In a key paper titled “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene“, published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Science (6.8.2018), a group of 17 climate and environment scientists (Will Steffen, Johan Rockström, Katherine Richardson, Timothy M. Lenton, Carl Folke, Diana Liverman, Colin P. Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Sarah E. Cornell, Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Global fires and droughts while Nero fiddles (but don’t mention the words ‘climate change’).
There was a time when the contamination of drinking water constituted a punishable crime. Nowadays those who wilfully ignore or promote the destruction of the Earth’s atmosphere and ocean acidification through the rise in emission of carbon gases (2014 ~36.08 billion ton CO2/year ; 2017 ~36.79 billion ton CO2/year), hold major sway in the world. Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. A mainstream media drive towards a nuclear WWIII ?
For many weeks much of the mainstream media world-wide, including broadcasters, been warning of potential concessions in the negotiations between the US and North Korea and between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, lest vital interests of the west are compromised. In the process little has been said about the alternative for such negotiations and potential Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Abbott’s views on climate change
Since 2015 when the then Prime Minister stated Australia was making a “definite commitment” to a 26% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and possibly as high as 28% reduction”, now Abbott states he did not foresee as prime minister “how the aspirational targets we agreed to at Paris would, in different hands, become binding commitments”. Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. The rise of fascism on the sinking Titanic.
In her new book “Fascism: A Warning” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I27X9L8rReo), Madeleine Albright’s states that the Fascism of a century ago was not atypical: “In hindsight, it is tempting to dismiss every Fascist of this era as a thoroughly bad guy or a lunatic, but that is too easy, also dangerous,” she writes. “Fascism is not an exception Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Silence over the acceleration of global warming.
“To ignore evil is to become an accomplice” (Martin Luther King) If there is a single critical issue science has ever conveyed, it is that altering the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere can only bear fatal consequences for nature and humanity. It is estimated that, to date, some 150,000 to 400,000 people world-wide have perished Continue reading »