“Personally, I Would Rate the Likelihood of Staying Under Two Degrees of Warming As Under 10 Percent.” – Michael Oppenheimer 2017 “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite Read More
About Stephen Mulkey, PhD for the Natural Resources Council of Maine
Hurrichange is Here: Denial in the Time of Accelerating Climate Change
“So there is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it. You can accomplish a lot just by creating fear and panic, you don’t need a hurricane to hit anywhere.” —Rush Limbaugh, 7 September, 2017, a day before he evacuated from Read More
Ecology, Loss, and Triage
“I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that remains.” –Anne Frank On Sunday, 30 April 2017, the New York Times reported that global marine fisheries are being pushed to the brink. This and countless other imminent losses prompt me to once again point out that management of the global biosphere Read More
Normalizing Disruption and Loss
“A planet that can’t sustain its greatest reef will eventually become a place that won’t support human life.” – Tim Winton, 2017, Australian Marine Conservation Society For the first time, the Great Barrier Reef has experienced two back-to-back bleaching events, which have been driven entirely by extreme sea-surface temperatures. The devastation is hard to miss, unless Read More
Denial and Consequences: Advice for Scholars and Scientists
“I’m sorry, Gemma. But we can’t live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you.” ― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty Scott Pruitt’s immoral denial of the reality of climate change is part of an assault on science that Read More
Keeping the Torch Lit: Higher Education During The Great Disruption
“….the way we have structured research and organized universities is not consistent with how reality works…..the sciences and universities are stuck in the disciplinary status quo they have been in for centuries.” Anders Wijkman & Johan Rockström in Bankrupting Nature. 2012. “…..there has never before been a geological force aware of its own influence.” David Grinspoon in Earth in Human Read More
Diminishing Options and the Climate Endgame
by Stephen Mulkey, PhD for the Natural Resources Council of Maine One of the strongest hurricanes on record, Ivan, was photographed on September 11, 2004 from an altitude of about 230 miles by NASA Astronaut Edward M. (Mike) Fincke. At the time, Ivan was in the western Caribbean Sea and reported to have winds of Read More
Switching from Whiskey to Beer and the False Promise of Woody Biomass
by Stephen Mulkey, PhD “Well planned sustainable biomass power plants are a viable source of clean renewable electricity, and this is helpful for the task of phasing out coal-fired power plants. Knee-jerk opposition to all biomass projects has no sound scientific basis and is harmful to attempts to stabilize climate for the sake of our Read More
Rules of Engagement for the Environmental Century
by Stephen Mulkey, PhD Avoiding catastrophic climate change will be the organizing principle for humanity for the next 30 years. – Joe Romm, Founder of Climate Progress, 2016 The International Geological Congress is poised to officially designate the present as part of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. I call the 21st century simply The Read More
