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The Climate Crisis in 5 points There are several thousands of articles about the climate crisis. Where does one even start? How does one find one's way through the seemingly infinite, sometimes controversial, sometimes intimidating, and mostly alarming discussions? I list 5 starting points here, which, to me, are the most important 'angles' to begin with. I hope these will interest you into learning more and getting involved. 1. Does climate change affect you? Climate change affects you if - you eat or grow food (it affects agriculture) - ever step out of your house (makes weather unpredictable) - are affected by droughts, floods and heatwaves (makes extreme events more frequent) - live near the coastline (raises sea levels) - are vulnerable to disease (increases risks of infectious diseases) - live in a society (amplifies inequalities, leads to social disruption) I think that covers pretty much anyone who could be reading this, so my guess i...

← Part II : Man or Nature? What does the future look like? While trying to understand the climate crisis, it is natural to ask - " What's going to happen and how do we plan for it?" A "prediction" of the future is necessary to determine national policies. Each country or community has its own set of constraints, such as finite resources and other unsolved problems that compete for priority. Hence, often, instead of asking " How can we make it better? " we are forced to ask " How can we make it less worse? " How do experts answer questions about the future? Naturally, their answers depend on a lot of factors. While the basic science is based on well-understood laws of nature, the human touch makes matter very complicated. Simply put, how the climate affects us depends on how we affect the climate in the first place. The greatest uncertainty associated with determining our future emissions is us - what choic...

Kanhaiya Kumar has recently come under fire for publishing in a predatory journal to fulfil his PhD requirements. Since publishing, and hence predatory publishing, are academic concepts, I find it important to clarify some things regarding this issue. Predatory publishing is a very problematic practice which erodes quality of research. Predatory publishing spreads misinformation and puts extra burden on ethical researchers to check, contest and clarify the published misconceptions. If a researcher, even unknowingly and in good faith, publishes articles in predatory journals, they are complicit in an exaggeration of the certainty of those results. I'd like to place on record my categorical disapproval of predatory publishing, as I have also done in the past (less dispassionately, I must admit). Having said that, it is also clear that defining an unethical intent to publish in a predatory journal is not straightforward (see Grudniewicz et al., 2019 , for instance). A few re...

My wish for 2020 is for people to stop asking climate activists what gives us hope and start asking “how can I help?” — Mary Annaïse Heglar (@MaryHeglar) December 26, 2019 And that is one of my wishes too. "How can I help?" If you have some inkling that climate change is (a) real, (b) bad, and (c) solvable and you want to help but are not entirely sure what the right way to go about is, here are my suggestions: ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ ▂ Step 1: Get Informed Information (especially the right information) does not regularly come our way by its own self. It has to be sought. If you want to help, here is my suggestion for getting started. Step 1: Commit to learning about the climate crisis on a regular basis. There are many ways to do this. For starters, you can follow updates by (i)   Institutions that are work on this crisis (ii)  Media houses that cover the crisis (iii) Journalist...