The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See!

Submitted by Charles Frost on Thu, 01/03/2008 - 22:50.

Link To A You Tube Video

It's called The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See, and it's taking the web by storm. Essentially, it's little more than a high school science teacher named Greg Craven, set up in his home with a whiteboard and a felt-tipped marker.

 

But he's made the case to over 4 million viewers on multiple websites that An Inconvenient Truth simply didn't go far enough. And that's impressive. Particularly when you consider the fact that he's done it without the aid of anything more high tech than his YouTube account.

 

To pull it off took him months of living on take-out and energy drinks while his wife and two daughters moved out for weeks at a time as he filmed away back at home, working hard on his 44-part series. Not surprisingly, all the hard-livin' took it's toll, ending him up in the emergency room with chest pains as a result of it.

 

And he's found his share of critics among the ostrich-crowd as well... With almost 7000 negative comments in return for his efforts. All of which, it seems, served to help him refine what he had to say as he patched the holes in his original video with a follow-up called "How It All Ends".

 

As Craven himself puts it,

 

This is not just another environmental issue. This may eat our lunch. This is fundamentally different because in a complex system like the climate, there may be tipping points where irreversible damage is done, but you don't see it until it's too late to do something about it. That's what really has motivated me.

 

Nope, you can't keep a high school teacher down, no matter how hard you try... So give it a look, the clocks tickin'!

 

From: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/the_most_terrifying_video_youll_ever_see.php


The Video on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ

 

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I'll pass it on

I know far too many people who don't take Global Warming or the consequenses of way they live seriously. I read the criticisms of this video -- they sound like mostly selfish, ignorant people. Regardless of what flaws there may be in his arguement, I admire the time and energy Greg put into the message. If it affects the way millions live and vote maybe then we will have a chance.

Solastalgia

Jargon Watch: Solastalgia

 

by Collin Dunn, Seattle on 01. 3.08

 

 

Solastalgia -- "a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home," according to Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht; in essence, it's pining for a lost environment. It's the mashup of the roots solacium (comfort) and algia (pain), which, when combined, forms a term (and an idea) reminiscent of nostalgia.

 

Coined from responses from interviews Albrecht conducted over the past few years, the word describes Australians' deep (and growing) sense of loss as they watch the landscape around them change. "They no longer feel like they know the place they've lived for decades," he says.

 

The theory is also a very interesting approach to thinking about climate change; it brings local context to a global problem that, to this point, has been very difficult to contextualize on an individual level. In addition to the predicted rising sea levels (that's San Francisco, above) and other additional consequences like habitat loss, ecosystem destruction and species' extinction, Clive Thompson argues in Wired, "we should also be concerned about the huge toll climate change will inflict on our mental health. In the modern, industrialized West, many of us have forgotten how deeply we rely on the stability of nature for our psychic well-being."

 

"This is a neat mythos, but in truth it's a pretty natural human urge to identify with a place and build one's sense of self around its comforts and permanence. I live in
Manhattan, where the globe-hopping denizens tend to go berserk if their favorite coffee shop closes down. How will they react in 20 or 30 years if the native trees can't handle the 5-degree spike in average temperature? Or if weird new bugs infest the city in summer, fall shrinks to a single month, and snow becomes a distant memory? 'We like to think that we're cool, 21st-century people, but the basic sense of a connection to the land is still big,' Albrecht says. 'We haven't evolved that much.'"

 

Interesting stuff; this may be the first time we hear "solastalgia," but, until climate change is reigned in, it won't be the last. ::Wired

 

 

 

Clive Thompson on How the Next Victim of Climate Change Will Be Our Minds

 

By Clive Thompson clive [at] clivethompson [dot] net" target="_blank">clive [at] clivethompson [dot] net 12.20.07 | 6:00 PM

 

 


Australia is suffering through its worst dry spell in a millennium. The outback has turned into a dust bowl, crops are dying off at fantastic rates, cities are rationing water, coral reefs are dying, and the agricultural base is evaporating.

 

But what really intrigues Glenn Albrecht — a philosopher by training — is how his fellow Australians are reacting.

 

They're getting sad.

 

In interviews Albrecht conducted over the past few years, scores of Australians described their deep, wrenching sense of loss as they watch the landscape around them change. Familiar plants don't grow any more. Gardens won't take. Birds are gone. "They no longer feel like they know the place they've lived for decades," he says.

 

Albrecht believes that this is a new type of sadness. People are feeling displaced. They're suffering symptoms eerily similar to those of indigenous populations that are forcibly removed from their traditional homelands. But nobody is being relocated; they haven't moved anywhere. It's just that the familiar markers of their area, the physical and sensory signals that define home, are vanishing. Their environment is moving away from them, and they miss it terribly.

 

Albrecht has given this syndrome an evocative name: solastalgia. It's a mashup of the roots solacium (comfort) and algia (pain), which together aptly conjure the word nostalgia. In essence, it's pining for a lost environment. "Solastalgia," as he wrote in a scientific paper describing his theory, "is a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home.'"

 

It's also a fascinating new way to think about the impact of global warming. Everyone's worrying about resource management and the spooky, unpredictable changes in the ecosystem. We fret over which areas will get flooded as sea levels rise. We estimate the odds of wars over clean water, and we tally up the species — polar bears, whales, wading birds — that'll go extinct.

 

But we should also be concerned about the huge toll climate change will inflict on our mental health. In the modern, industrialized West, many of us have forgotten how deeply we rely on the stability of nature for our psychic well-being. In a world of cheap airfares, laptops, and the Internet, we proudly regard mobility as a sign of how advanced we are. Hey, we're nomadic hipster capitalists! We love change. Only losers get attached to their hometowns.

 

This is a neat mythos, but in truth it's a pretty natural human urge to identify with a place and build one's sense of self around its comforts and permanence. I live in
Manhattan , where the globe-hopping denizens tend to go berserk if their favorite coffee shop closes down. How will they react in 20 or 30 years if the native trees can't handle the 5-degree spike in average temperature? Or if weird new bugs infest the city in summer, fall shrinks to a single month, and snow becomes a distant memory? "We like to think that we're cool, 21st-century people, but the basic sense of a connection to the land is still big," Albrecht says. "We haven't evolved that much.

 

"What's more, Albrecht has noticed that the more quickly environmental change occurs, the more intense the solastalgia. The mental-health effects can be powerful. In the Australian outback, industrial activity — notably open-pit coal mining — has turned verdant areas into moonscapes seemingly overnight, and the suicide rate in the region has skyrocketed. Or witness
New Orleans , where a Harvard survey found that survivors of Hurricane Katrina reported suffering a "serious mental illness" at roughly double the rate of the city's residents three years earlier. Fully 6 percent have thought about suicide. Trauma and personal loss obviously play a role in this, but the decimation of the city's physical environment surely does as well.

 

Ironically, we may simply be rediscovering a syndrome that we thought was dead and buried. Back in the 1940s, the military considered homesickness to be a serious and potentially fatal illness, because drafted soldiers who got shipped overseas would often become savagely depressed. These days, Americans are rarely dislocated against their will, and the army is all-volunteer. Few of us have the experience of being unmoored in the world.

 

But that may be changing rapidly. In a world that's quickly heating up and drying up, you can't go home again — even if you never leave.

 

From: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-01/st_thompson

 

Via: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/jargon-watch-solastalgia.php 

 

 

Hard WIRED

We are hard wired to exploit our environment.  We are not the only species to procreate, set up territories, fight for our mates, build fancy nests, be attracted to RED things (watch the cardinals in February) and to migrate when our environment gets overrun with "competition."  We also face extinction.

Because we are not hard wired to SHARE.

GREG'S GLOBAL WARMING LOGIC - THERE'S MORE SUPPORT FOR IT

Bill, thanks for the link to Greg's great UTUBE post.   I agree with his rationale, but there are more reasons to react to global warming than just avoiding sea level rise catastrophe. 

There is a gargantuan economic upside to energy conservation and to rapidly adopting renewable energy sources.   The economic upside of new smart renewable energy sources is based in the elimination of the poisonous pollution externalities which the global population now suffers - but does not economically account for. 

 

Ground level ozone, mercury in our water, particulates in our lungs - what’s the cost of all this poison?  

 

Put that cost into the equation and Greg’s equation is faultless.

Global warming to alter Calif. landscape

Global warming to alter Calif. landscape

LOS ANGELES --California is defined by its scenery, from the mountains that enchanted John Muir to the wine country and beaches that define its culture around the world.

But as scientists try to forecast how global warming might affect the nation's most geographically diverse state, they envision a landscape that could look quite different by the end of this century, if not sooner.

Where celebrities, surfers and wannabes mingle on Malibu's world-famous beaches, there may be only sea walls defending fading mansions from the encroaching Pacific. In Northern California, tourists could have to drive farther north or to the cool edge of the Pacific to find what is left of the region's signature wine country.

Abandoned ski lifts might dangle above snowless trails more suitable for mountain biking even during much of the winter. In the deserts, Joshua trees that once extended their tangled, shaggy arms into the sky by the thousands may have all but disappeared.

"We need to be attentive to the fact that changes are going to occur, whether it's sea level rising or increased temperatures, droughts and potentially increased fires," said Lisa Sloan, a scientist who directs the Climate Change and Impacts Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "These things are going to be happening."

Among the earliest and most noticeable casualties is expected to be California's ski season.

Snow is expected to fall for a shorter period and melt more quickly. That could shorten the ski season by a month even in wetter areas and perhaps end it in others.

Whether from short-term drought or long-term changes, the ski season already has begun to shrivel in Southern California, ringed by mountain ranges that cradle several winter resorts.

"There's always plenty of snow, but you may just have to go out of state for it," said Rinda Wohlwend, 62, who belongs to two ski clubs in Southern California. "I'm a very avid tennis player, so I'd probably play more tennis."

------

Because California has myriad microclimates, covering an area a third larger than Italy, predicting what will happen by the end of the century is a challenge.

But through a series of interviews with scientists who are studying the phenomenon, a general description of the state's future emerges.

By the end of the century, temperatures are predicted to increase by 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit statewide. That could translate into even less rainfall across the southern half of the state, already under pressure from the increased frequency of wildfires and relentless population growth.

Small mammals, reptiles and colonies of wildflowers in the deserts east of Los Angeles are accustomed to periodic three-year dry spells. But they might not be able to withstand the 10-year drought cycles that could become commonplace as the planet warms.

Scientists already are considering relocating Joshua tree seedlings to areas where the plants, a hallmark of the high desert and namesake of a national park, might survive climate change.

"They could be wiped out of California depending on how quickly the change happens," said Cameron Barrows, who studies the effects of climate change for the Center for Conservation Biology in Riverside.

Farther north, where wet, cold winters are crucial for the water supply of the entire state, warmer temperatures will lead to more rain than snow in the Sierra Nevada and faster melting in the spring.

Because 35 percent of the state's water supply is stored annually in the Sierra snowpack, changes to that hydrologic system will lead to far-reaching consequences for California and its ever-growing population.

Some transformations already are apparent, from the Sierra high country to the great valleys that have made California the nation's top agricultural state.

The snow line is receding, as it is in many other alpine regions around the world. Throughout the 400-mile-long Sierra, trees are under stress, leading scientists to speculate that the mix of flora could change significantly as the climate warms. The death rate of fir and pine trees has accelerated over the past two decades.

In the central and southern Sierra, the giant sequoias that are among the biggest living things on Earth might be imperiled.

"I suspect as things get warmer, we'll start seeing sequoias just die on their feet where their foliage turns brown," said Nate Stephenson, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist who is studying the effects of climate change in the Sierra Nevada. "Even if they don't die of drought stress, just think of the wildfires. If you dry out that vegetation, they're going to be so much more flammable."

Changes in the mountain snowpack could lead to expensive water disputes between cities and farmers. Without consistent water from rivers draining the melting snow, farmers in the Central and Salinas valleys could lose as much as a quarter of their water supply.

Any drastic changes to the state's $30 billion agriculture industry would have national implications, since California's fertile valleys provide half the country's fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists' study.

"Obviously, it's going to mean that choices are going to be made about who's going to get the water," said Brian Nowicki, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz.

------

Among the biggest unknowns is what will happen along California's coast as the world's ice sheets and glaciers melt. One scenario suggests the sea level could rise by more than 20 feet.

Will the rising sea swamp the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the nation's busiest harbor complex, turning them into a series of saltwater lakes? Will funky Ocean Beach, an island of liberalism in conservative San Diego County, become, literally, its own island?

Among the more sobering projections is what is in store for marine life.

The upwelling season, the time when nutrient-rich water is brought from the ocean's depths to the surface, nourishes one of the world's richest marine environments.

That period, from late spring until early fall, is expected to become weaker earlier in the season and more intense later. Upwelling along the Southern California coast will become weaker overall.

As a result, sea lions, blue whales and other marine mammals that follow these systems up and down the coast are expected to decline.

The changing sea will present trouble for much of the state's land-dwelling population, too. A sea level rise of 3 to 6 feet would inundate the airports in San Francisco and Oakland. Many of the state's beaches would shrink.

"If you raise sea level by a foot, you push a cliff back 100 feet," said Jeff Severinghaus, professor of geosciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. "There will be a lot of houses that will fall into the ocean." 

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2008 The New York Times Company

The (shrinking) Snows of Kilimanjaro

The ghost of Hemmingway would be most sad :-(

Photo from the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/africa_enl_1197375562/html/1.stm