Even the darkest night will end

“The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.” TW: Enter at your own risk.

[climatesupport]

The Next IPCC Report: A Few Words

Hi people. I hope you’re all doing well.

So tomorrow, the next IPCC climate report (IPCC Assessment Report 6, Working Group I) will come out at around 10am CEST. It is expected to be an incredibly strong warning about the climate crisis, with a lot of alarming language. And most news sites will likely talk about this report in one way or another.

It is, of course, your choice whether or not you read this report, or whether or not you read the summaries that will be on news sites tomorrow. I will be doing so, and I suggest that you do as well, but only if you are in the right frame of mind to engage with what could be a lot of bad climate news.

If you do choose to read the report and/or the summaries in the news, or go on social media to talk about it or read about it, here are a few heads-up.

–

1) The news headlines about this report may be misleading. Do you remember when the last IPCC report came out in 2018? It told us that we had around 12 years (at that point) to halve global emissions if we wanted to limit warming to below 1.5 degrees C.

The media, and especially people on social media, focused so heavily on the ‘12 years’ figure that a lot of people - especially a lot of young people - thought that the IPCC had said that there were only 12 years left until the literal end of the world, or that we would all die if we went over 1.5 degrees. None of which is actually true.

I worry that the media, as well as social media, will do the same with this report. They’ll take one part of the report, and use it as a frightening headline in order to catch people’s eyes and make them panic.

And sometimes this works. Sometimes fear can be used to mobilise people. But don’t forget who these headlines are intended to scare: people who aren’t aware of the climate emergency yet. If you’ve been paying attention to the climate crisis, you know what’s going on, and you’re likely already dealing with climate anxiety. These headlines are not for you.

I read this article about the IPCC report today, and I immediately wanted to share it on here, so there it is. Please read it -  I’m sure some of you will find it useful.

Here are some quotes from the article that stood out to me:

“…there’s going to be an onslaught of downright dystopian headlines in the news this week. They will be designed for maximum terror. And for those of us, like me, who are prone to incapacitating climate grief and anxiety, browsing the internet is going to be a mental health minefield.”

“As you’re exposed to headlines that are crafted to grab the attention of the disengaged, don’t let fear eat you alive.”

Please keep these in mind tomorrow. I certainly will do - they’re good advice. It might be hard, but please take steps to take care of your mental health. Basically, stay safe and stay sane - or at least try to. Don’t ignore or forget about the climate emergency, but take some time to yourself, and try not to let yourself get swallowed by your own (or other people’s) fear and despair.

–

2) Social media will likely be full of misinformation about the report. I’ve talked about ‘climate doomers’ before on here, and if you’ve been following me for a while, you know how I feel about them.

After the release of this report, there is going to be a lot of climate doomism on social media. There will be people on social media - people outside of the scientific community - who insist that this IPCC report means that it’s too late to do anything about the climate crisis, or that any sort of action is futile, or that we just have to accept our fate and go quietly.

Please do not listen to these people. The IPCC reports do not say ‘it’s too late’ - they say the opposite, as do the vast majority of climate scientists. We do not have to ‘give up’ or ‘accept our fate’; what we do still matters, and it will always matter.

Some of these people will tell you that the IPCC is “too conservative” (i.e. underestimates climate change), and therefore cannot be trusted. Therefore, they follow outsider ‘scientists’ (whose predictions are often much more wrong than those of the IPCC), and use their research as ‘evidence’ that we’re doomed. 

(Again, these people are wrong, and this is basically the anti-vaxxer and climate denier level of science.)

While the IPCC has sometimes underestimated some impacts of climate change, i.e. past sea level rise, impacts have still generally been within their expected range, and not wildly outside of it. Also, scientific models and predictions are never 100% accurate - there is always a margin of error.

I will repeat myself: our house is on fire, not burned to ashes. We won’t be able to save everything, but we still have to work to save everything and everyone that we can. What climate doomers want us all to do is to just stand there in the burning house and quietly await the end without even trying to save ourselves and everything else. That doesn’t make sense to me, and in terms of the climate crisis, it’s a massive abdication of responsibility.

Please think critically about what you read on social media about this. If you need to, take a break from social media. Even without the doomism, there will likely be a lot of grief and fear and anger on social media tomorrow - if this will affect your mental health, please step away from it.

Don’t forget that no matter what you read, and no matter what anyone on social media tells you, the vast majority of climate scientists will agree with these things: it’s real, it’s bad, but it’s not over.

–

3) Nothing in this report should be particularly new to us. As I’ve said before: if you’ve been paying attention, what is in tomorrow’s report should not be new to you. The IPCC reports are basically aggregations of thousands of different research papers about different aspects of the climate emergency, including its impacts.

If you follow climate news on a regular basis, you should already know about these impacts, as well as what could be coming if we don’t do the right thing. As scary as all of this together may be, none of this is new to us.

I may be wrong about this. Maybe there will be something in the report that comes as a surprise to some of us, like another ‘deadline’, a tipping point we’ve reached, or some research that didn’t make the news. Be prepared for that possibility. But as it stands right now, most if not all of this stuff should already be known to us.

And again, no matter what comes up in the report, what we have to do remains the same: cut greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible, as quickly as possible.

–

4) The report will probably be extremely worrying and contain a lot of bad news, and that’s a good thing in a way. Back in 2018, when the last report was released, we were warned that we did not have a lot of time left to keep warming below 1.5 degrees C.

After that, what did we see? We saw Extinction Rebellion’s civil disobedience movement. We saw Greta Thunberg’s school strike movement. We saw millions of people, all over the world, waking up to the climate emergency, and making it clear that we wouldn’t go down without a fight. We saw a huge increase in climate activism, both on the streets and online, because people started to realise what was at stake and what we had to do to ensure a safe future for human civilisation. More people were talking about the climate emergency than ever before.

And this next IPCC report is expected to be an even stronger warning than the last. Is it going to be scary? Probably. But as I’ve said before, a healthy level of fear is sometimes useful, especially in a crisis. If people read this report or see it being talked about in the news, become aware of what is happening to this planet, and then are able to channel their fear and anger and grief into action, then that is a very good thing.

In this situation, knowledge is power. We can’t fight the climate crisis if most people do not know about the climate crisis. If this report creates a collective knowledge of the climate crisis within society, then hopefully that knowledge will one day become our power.

And we need kindness as well - we need to be there for each other through all of this, and we need people, especially young people who have just become aware of the climate emergency, to know that their worries are justified, but that they will not be alone through all of this. We can’t just terrify people with bad news and leave them on their own with their fear, we have to provide them with resources and support as well.

–

I will leave you with all of this, and I will pin this post so everyone can see it. If you’re going to read the report tomorrow, please stay safe, stay sane, take care of yourself, and keep all of this in mind.

And always remember: we don’t yet know what is going to happen next, and anyone who tells you that they know the future is lying to you. We know that we can’t save everything, but all isn’t lost either. There is still joy in the world, and there are lots of beautiful things and wonderful people on our planet, and all of them deserve a safe future.

Take care, people. Have a great day. 💚

[climatesupport]

A few more things, before I go to bed:

^ (Important advice from @leavenotrace)

^ (Important reminder from @sawkinator)

[knit-soup]

So this is part of my masters and I’m about to start a PhD in this area - a couple of my lecturers have been directly involved in producing this report. The reason these headlines are going to be so dire is because the 2050 carbon neutrality deadline is creeping closer - less than 30 years is very short.

In order for governments and corporations to have the incentive to adhere to their climate commitments, they need a high intensity of sustained pressure - not just a week’s worth of shock headlines. They need a concerted push from their voter base. The language of the report is designed to try and build that. There’s one of these reports every five years, but a government van change completely in that time. The main thing is to keep the pressure steady. Not so much in terms of reblogs and the like, but in terms of votes, responses to politicians, phone calls - general pressure, you know the story.

Also - don’t let people tell you that pollution reduction, changing away from plastic, or reducing personal energy use is a bad thing, or futile. You think that and nothing gets achieved. Yes, large companies and about 100 people are responsible for most of the damage but that doesn’t change that individual actions are hugely important. Don’t forget that the more people go eco, the more people around them are likely to as well. Same with voting - one vote? Not much, but lots have a huge impact.

[star-anise]

Feminist fantasy is funny sometimes in how much it wants to shit on femininity for no goddamned reason. Like the whole “skirts are tools of the patriarchy made to cripple women into immobility, breeches are much better” thing.

(Let’s get it straight: Most societies over history have defaulted to skirts for everyone because you don’t have to take anything off to relieve yourself, you just have to squat down or lift your skirts and go. The main advantage of bifurcated garments is they make it easier to ride horses. But Western men wear pants so women wearing pants has become ~the universal symbol of gender equality~)

The book I’m reading literally just had its medievalesque heroine declare that peasant women wear breeches to work in the field because “You can’t swing a scythe in a skirt!”

Hm yes story checks out

peasant women definitely never did farm labour in skirts

skirts definitely mean you’re weak and fragile and can’t accomplish anything

skirts are definitely bad and will keep you from truly living life

no skirts for anyone, that’s definitely the moral of the story here

[beatrice-otter]

Now, a skirt that's too long will be harder to work in--skirts brushing the floor may look elegant, but is also a tripping hazard--but that is not a problem with skirts in general, it's a problem with that particular skirt not being suited to being worked in. Skirts are very practical. You can hike them up if you're hot or need more freedom to maneuver (this is called "girding your loins"). If you need to carry something, you can lift up your hem and make a pouch just like the person in yellow in the bottom picture above. If you need to handle something hot, a skirt generally has enough material you can hold it out from your body to use as a hot pad. (Tight skirts were only used by people who didn't need to work/move until the invention of elastic fabric.)

[star-anise]

Long skirts were markers of class almost as much as gender. Both men and women in the European middle ages wore extravagantly long garments to indicate both “I’m so rich I can afford THIS MUCH fabric” and “I don’t walk in the mud, I pay servants to do that for me.”

Skirt hiking: Definitely a Thing. (Janet’s tied her kirtle green/above the knee and not below...)

[gwenfrankenstien]

god yes, these writers somehow don’t realise that when they do this all they are doing is betraying their own hatred of femininity which..... is feminist how exactly?

[sartorialadventure]

Viking dresses by Savelyeva Ekaterina

[nellygwyn]

If you support Stephen 'Ugly Bitch' of Blois over Matilda, by the grace of God, Queen of the Romans, get da fuck off my blog

[headspace-hotel]

thinking about how in ancient times, at least people knew that the lives their children would lead would….vaguely resemble their own???

People have always fondly reminisced about The Good Old Days and complained about Kids These Days, of course. But—and I cannot stress this enough—when my mom was born the Internet did not exist.

[headspace-hotel]

like I’m thinking about how I am a college student and during the pandemic, work, education, and relationships have been almost totally dependent on a network of technology that literally did not exist when my parents were college students.

When my mom was in college, she just wouldn’t have been capable of predicting what college would be like for me. I took a full semester of college from 5 hours away because I can virtually attend class through a pocket sized device that projects my image and voice into a shared virtual classroom where I can interact with my professor and other students. I wrote research papers without physical access to a library because I could read my college library’s books on my computer.

If you’re a Mesopotamian farmer, hitching his oxen to a plow, like…idk, man. I can’t picture myself at 40. I feel like a Mesopotamian farmer, trying to imagine his sons riding John Deeres.

[headspace-hotel]

It’s so persistently portrayed as this eternal, cyclical thing: Get a job, buy a house, get married and have kids, save for their college, send them off to college. This is the cycle of life. 2.5 kids, buy a house, have a steady career. Just as your father before you did, and his father before him.

Except they didn’t. His father before him didn’t do this, and your son will not live like you. This is not enshrined in tradition. This is not life. This is not how things are, or have been, or how they ever been. Look at it. This beautiful, ageless world of saving for your kids’ college and paying off mortgages and nuclear families. There is no way of life to pass down to your children, no tradition, nothing your father gave you that you can give to your son! You were born into a world that is unintelligible and inaccessible to the children you wanted to inherit it, and you and your children will both die in a world that is as foreign to you both!

I don’t envy the Boomer generation, nor do I have some kind of conceited disdain for them for not being able to adapt to now. So, so much of what defines our lives happened for the first time in their lifetime, and the absence of those things cannot be explained to us. Do you remember what it was like before television? Well…what is “it?”

It’s like our generation’s dim memory of childhood before Internet, and the vast, panicky knowledge that our childhoods were mostly full of a quality best described as the absence of internet, and there is no way to transmit that idea to the kids of today or explain it. We remember it, so, so clearly. It was real. But it’s gone. Annihilated.

[meirmakesstuff]

There’s a midrash that before he died, Moses was worried about what would become of the Israelite people after he was gone. God brought him forward in time to the schoolhouse of Rabbi Akiva. Moses listened to the discussion but could not understand a thing, and nearly despaired, until he heard a student ask Akiva, “how did you arrive at this conclusion?” Akiva responded, “it follows from what Moses taught.” Reassured, Moses returned to his own time and died.

I taught this midrash last week to a class of about ten 3rd-8th graders whom I have been teaching since September and have never met in person. I asked them to continue the midrash: if Moses made a second stop in 2021, what would confuse him, and what would reassure him?

The youngest kids had a fantastic time imagining Moses trying to use an iPad, trying to understand that he was in a classroom, that we were doing remotely what he had seen Akiva do in person. The older kids wondered if he would be astonished at our level of literacy, or our coed learning.

When I asked what would reassure him they were momentarily stumped: it wasn’t the first time this group has struggled to identify positives about their lives and experiences, except in a guilty “some people have it worse” kind of way. I reminded them of what reassured Moses in the schoolhouse of Akiva: knowing that what he taught had evolved from rather than superseded the traditions of our ancestors. “Who are we learning about right this very minute?” I prompted.

One of them acted it out: Moses peering suspiciously at his iPad, then exclaiming, “They’re learning my Torah in there!” We are not unmoored, we are evolving. It is easier to see the changes than the things that remain constant, but I think there is value, whatever your cultural tradition, in asking “what would reassure my ancestors?”

[lazaefair]

“The children are using this vast, incomprehensible magical network to mock that damned Ea-Nasir and his terrible copper. Good.”

[vrabia]

i love to think about how my ipad holds vastly more knowledge than was available to sumerians in 2000 bce, but if one of them saw me scribble away on it with my stylus, they would know what it is! from 4000 years across history, they would recognize this object if they saw me use it! and maybe they’d say ‘you know, we use something like this where i’m from’. and i’d say ‘i know. in school we learn that you invented them.’ and in a weird, convoluted, wonderful and very comforting sense, they invented my ipad too.

[childweanedonpoison]

not to be controversial on main but the moment the arabs came and planted pistachio, almonds and oranges they did more for sicily than the spanish or any Italian government ever did

[tombliboos]

they brought us (naples) the word tamarro

[occlusivavelare]

Wait, we say tamarro too in Sicily! :D

(And also gebbia, zibbibbu, tannura, zammù ...) Arab-Norman Sicily will always be such peak beauty. ❤

[casper-ghostly]

Anyway, daily reminder from a culturally isolated Romani person.

Gypsy does not mean wanderer.

It literally means ‘people from egypt’ or similar, as europeans believed Romani people were from Egypt. It has become known similar to nomad due to how our ancestors have been forced to be nomadic due to racism and ostracization, but it is a SLUR.

Romani people are STILL being forcibly sterilized.

Romani people are STILL being forced into ghettos.

Romani people are still facing violence and danger in countless European countries- and recently, I’ve seen the beginnings of the extremes in the United States.

Have a little fucking respect and DON’T USE A SLUR THAT’S BEEN USED FOR CENTURIES AGAINST US.

And for the love of whatever’s up there, ESPECIALLY do not use it to describe your witchcraft. It is playing on the ‘magic gypsy’ trope, and is EXTREMELY insulting.

non romani people, please reblog this.

[midnighthatters]

Tag 9 people you want to know better/catch up with

Tagged by @lottiesnotebook more than two months ago... but I have only now opened tumblr again after a very, very long time.

Last song: What I’ve Done by Linkin Park. Feeling very nostalgic.

Last film: Always Amber, a documentary about nonbinary teenagers, which was interesting and cute at times but there were moments that were also very hard to watch and emotionally draining. Also You’ve Got Mail (only bits and somewhat unintentionally) and it’s actually worse than I remember.

Currently watching: Carmilla the web series. I’ve just finished all four seasons (after some six years) and apparently there’s a movie too! (Yeah, I’m catching up fast..)

Currently reading: Six Walks in the Fictional World by Umberto Eco

Currently craving: Sleep.

Tagging @shiryawashere @evolverburuu

[the-memeblades-chosen-one]

it really is ok to be Basic™, ya know?

scented candles are comforting and nice, sweet coffee drinks and black coffee drinks are both valid, romcoms are called “feel good” for a reason and you can watch them to feel happy it’s not a crime, decorate your room with fairy lights, drink hot cocoa with marshmallows, listen to that cd that everyone talks about and that you hear playing in the Starbucks all the time, popular things become popular because a lot of people like them and it’s ok to also like those popular things it doesn’t make you boring. I could go on but you know what I mean.

your interests and simple pleasures are meant to entertain you, not meant to make you look entertaining to others.

if you enjoy Basic™ things then embrace that enjoyment. that’s for you. enjoy it.

[black-bloc-antifa]

[provoice]

I support anyone who has had an abortion.

Any reason. No exceptions.

[semirahrose]

Maybe it’s just me, but. When I’m reading something and am just flat-out enjoying it, like filled to the brim with glee at the author’s wording or characterization or imagination or ingenuity or pacing, I stop reading. I am so full of excitement and love that I have to stop wherever I am and pace around or do something because Words Are So Damn Cool I need to expend some energy or I’ll explode.

[blazepress]

[halcyon-ia]

break the rules

[lord-kitschener]

no gods no kings no masters

[lustik]

Photos by Miles Herbert, Matt Binstead. Via 41 Strange

[infp-infjbrain]

Introverts being mistreated by extroverts

Do any of you have any stories about times you were hurt by an extrovert?

[glumshoe]

extroverts kidnapped me while I was brooding alone in the forest and dragged me under a hill, where I was forced to dance to their enchanted fiddles for what felt like a few hours but was actually many years… when I returned home, my wife had remarried and my children were grown and did not recognize me.

another time an extrovert paid me in cash that turned into dead leaves the next day. fuckin hate those guys.

[glumshoe]

and how could I forget that time I went flower-picking and came back pregnant with an extrovert’s child? smh. and extroverts are always fucking up my crops and livestock and spoiling my milk. have they no boundaries?!

[aprilwitching-deactivated201808]

i swear, introverts are so TOUCHY. all we try to do for you people is add beauty, excitement, and intrigue to your dull, brief little lives, and what do we get in return? complaints, complaints, complaints. “oh, an extrovert seduced me, and in the morning i found myself lying next to a loathly worm.” “waah-waah, extroverts keep abducting my finest livestock and returning them inside-out.” “the eldritch music of the extroverts out in yonder pines has been keeping me awake for weeks.” pfft. suck it UP.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

I know nothing about modern adaptations of Les Mis but Jean Valjean would totally give 5 star reviews on anything no matter how bad 

“This hotel? 5 stars the bugs were very mild-tempered and hardly bit me. Breakfast was great, nice staff!”

“My uber driver tried to rob me but he still drove me home when I gave him all my money and isn’t that what uber is all about? Tom if you’re reading this, the picture of my daughter that was in that wallet. could I get it back?”

“Inspector Javert works hard and is very reliable, good memory, principled, sharp dresser-  would run from again.”

[hellenhighwater]

Javert, on the other hand, gives ratings extremely honestly, and with very little sense of how bizarre his life looks from an outside perspective.

[waesrdtyuijhfhnghvjklkkjh-deact]

My country’s literal revolution is happening right now but nobody cares bc it’s not impacting the US/Europe

[waesrdtyuijhfhnghvjklkkjh-deact]

Millions of people in the capital of Sudan (Khartoum) have gathered to protest the regime of the dictator President Omar Al Bashir who has been in power since 1993

[waesrdtyuijhfhnghvjklkkjh-deact]

People of all walks of life are protesting non violently and 60 have been killed since yesterday

[waesrdtyuijhfhnghvjklkkjh-deact]

Revolts have been going on for years and prior to this uprising children have been gunned down by the police for even being in the general vicinity of protesters. The state in my country is so bad that people in the army who have been told to stop the protests are joining in (including high ranking officers).

***quick fix: 60 people have been killed or seriously injured sorry for the misinformation y'all

PLEASE BOOST THIS

[lucrezianoin]

I’ve seen this on the TV news, it’s pretty scary, it was in all the news, I hope it’ll end in an actual power to the people.