Climate Crisis Science, News, Policy & Education Sites & Online Literature -Hottest Links

Page last updated on: 15/12/20  

COVID-19 is not guaranteed to slow or reverse the climate crisis, but it does provide us with a chance. See this first peer-reviewed scientific paper on the subject.

PINK LINKS: THESE WEBSITES ARE UPDATED DAILY [hottest links are denoted with !!!]

Africa Flood and Drought Monitor //// Berkeley Earth //// !!!Carbon Brief //// Carbon Capture Report //// Carbon Clock //// Climate Change Initiative //// Climate Reanalyzer //// !!!Climate Signals //// Copernicus //// Coral Reef Watch //// !!!CO2.Earth //// Everyday Climate Change //// Extreme Weather of the World //// Global Absolute Sea Surface Temperature //// Global Cryosphere Watch //// Global Disaster Alert and Co-ordination System //// !!!Global Forest Watch -Fires //// Global Health Map //// Global Snow Lab //// Grist //// !!!National Snow and Ice Data Center //// !!!Skeptical Science //// The Daily Climate //// !!!Trillionth Tonne

For young adults’ links click here -climate crisis science, news and policy resources I have curated for young adults, plus advice for young adults and their parents.

little Earth on pink

Page Contents

  • Back to WHWG Compendium contents
  • FULL ALPHABETICAL LIST of Climate Crisis Science, News & Policy links.
  • Page Guide 
  • !Beware the Paris Narrative!
  • Hottest Links -quick reference
  • Hottest Links reviews
  • Climate Psychology & Ecology-based Mental Health links here because the truth is hard to deal with.
  • Climate- and Eco- Activism links here.
  • Free workbook Fire! Fire! Fire! on how to communicate the climate crisis to different groups and types of people, and (if you want) how to communicate the need for civil disobedience as a response to the crisis.

Page Guide

Feel free to use the information on this page in conjunction with the emerging concept and practice of Pandemic Strategy. See the notes under my YouTube video here for an introduction.

Watch out for the flash of pink in the compendium page codes below. The pink codes indicate websites that are updated daily. Indigo codes, underlined, indicate websites that have been updated within the past three days (since the date written at the top of this page). Heroic activists need to cut through to the most up-to-date relevant information as quickly as possible!

Literature titled in blue indicates a mental health risk. Make sure you don’t keep this traumatic information to yourself! It needs processing, including by sharing with others. For more on mental health and the climate and ecological crisis, visit this directory page.

The hottest links are on this page –key climate data and the full list of sites and literature follows in alphabetical order on a separate page here. For hot climate-related YouTube videos on my free channel, go here. But before searching through the lists, please click on the link below!

!Beware The Paris Narrative!

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orange and black owl

Hottest Links -Climate Crisis Science, News and Policy Sites, & Online Literature

Sites which are very good at busting ‘climate crisis deniers’ are marked !Denial Busters! Scroll down below the list for full Epic Tomorrows’ hottest links’ reviews with activist strategy notes.

HOTTEST LINKS -QUICK REFERENCE (cause to rebel, cause to resist)                              

HOTTEST LINKS -REVIEWS

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Carbon Brief 

-Clear on climate

info@carbonbrief.org

https://www.facebook.com/carbonbrief

excerpt: ‘Carbon Brief is a UK-based website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy. We specialise in clear, data-driven articles and graphics to help improve the understanding of climate change, both in terms of the science and the policy response. We publish a wide range of content, including science explainers, interviews, analysis and factchecks, as well as daily and weekly email summaries of newspaper and online coverage.’

Epic Tomorrows’ review: There are some huge pluses and huge minuses to this site. It is arguably the best source of climate science and climate policy related news if you live in the UK, and are just looking for ongoing summaries of mainstream climate science reports and mainstream science and particularly policy news, as they are published from day to day. Email subscription to the ‘Daily Briefing’ makes this even more accessible and time-saving. This is certainly a good starting point to get a gist of what is going on at any moment in time in the mainstream global media (with a UK focus) relating to the climate crisis. Thus its use extends to critics of the mainstream.

However, despite the editorial team’s impressive climate science and journalistic credentials, due to the sources that they choose for summaries of climate-related news, a lot is left out, so that we are left with a mirror of the mainstream media bias towards the improbable / false ‘Paris narrative'(!) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which underlies much of the corporate media ‘debate’ -even left-wing publications like The Guardian.

Carbon Brief summarises the news from sources like The Telegraph (UK), The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and business-focused sites like Bloomberg. Mainstream left and centre-right sources result in a politically centrist ‘average perspective’, which, considering the artificially politically polarised nature of the climate crisis debate, can mean the exclusion or down-playing of important ‘outlier’ information -information which the mainstream media are generally fearful to publish / focus on. This fear is due to the risk of accusations of alarmism or the so-called ‘far left’ rejection of capitalist civilisation -the implied response to outlier ‘worse case’ or even ‘bad case’ science-derived climate scenarios for later this century. Independent media reports are relatively absent from CB briefings. Of course, by being such a strong reporter on government policy, CB is investing in the belief that government policies will solve the climate crisis (i.e. without the intervention of revolutionary mass movements).

As well as summaries of news and science, CB does present plenty of well-written and well-researched fresh articles written by their team, including some award-winning interactive diagrams. Some of these are more critical of the Paris narrative or more specifically, carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies that are integral to that narrative. The CB team does to an extent reflect and expand on some of the nuance and outlier views / science that can sometimes be found hidden within mainstream reports. Nevertheless, nowhere does the outright rejection of the Paris narrative occur, (including the idea of a remaining ‘carbon budget’ to remain below 1.5 degrees of warming, and the ‘too late’ 2050 zero carbon target).

Ultimately, CB is unlikely to fairly represent the whole media debate on the climate, and the whole range of peer-reviewed science available, when the site is funded wholly by the European Climate Foundation. Despite its good intentions the ECF explicitly supports the Paris Agreement, is Euro-centric, competitive with other parts of the globe and predicated on continuous economic growth -factors which make it biased in its understanding of and response to climate science, just as the IPCC is biased in its reports, if not its presentation of raw data.

On a more positive note, CB seems to have a great policy towards whistleblowers on their Contact page here, including technical advice on how to contact CB anonymously. But considering all of the above, what will they actually publish?

external review: It is testament to the politically polarised nature of the debate on climate science that the only critical articles I can find on Carbon Brief are baseless right wing ones. There seems no need to link to positive reviews of this ‘award-winning’ site.

activist strategy notes: As a serious activist on the climate crisis and related ecological crisis affecting all of Earth, you cannot afford to be lazy about where you source your information. My advice would be to stick to a few peer-reviewed science websites, and for science and policy news summaries make sure that you supplement any subscription to mainstream sites like Carbon Brief, with more independent news sources. For example, YouTube hosts some good independent media outlets.

tactics: We need to keep our fellow serious activists on their toes by encouraging them to question the holistic veracity of sites like Carbon Brief.

vegan dynamics: Suspiciously, the only article on veganism as related to climate change dates from 2016, here: https://www.carbonbrief.org/feeding-the-world-can-we-preserve-forests-go-organic-and-eat-meat Perhaps the editorial team are all meat eaters, or perhaps the European Climate Foundation is heavily invested in animal-based agriculture. Clearly there have been many items in the mainstream news over the past few years relating climate science to veganism.

life strategy notes: Don’t make the mistake I did a while back -that is, don’t assume that any website is ‘the best’ site for climate science and policy news, or any subject, just because someone you look up to within the climate activism movement ‘said so’. We are usually nowhere near as logical as we think we are. We need to be careful of clumping into clans and groups (even groups of two) who only go to certain sources of information, because that makes us feel comfortably like one of a tribe. Can we build a global tribe of genuinely free-thinking, healthily sceptical and yet consensus-building activists? This takes some discipline. 

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Existential climate-related security risk (papers and reports)

Dunlop, I. and Spratt, D. (May 2019) Breakthrough – National Centre for Climate Restoration, Melbourne, Australia. info@breakthroughonline.org.au

excerpt: ‘…to sustain human civilisation, it is essential to build a zero emissions industrial system very quickly. This requires the global mobilisation of resources on an emergency basis, akin to a wartime level of response.’

Epic Tomorrows’ review: Includes a forward by Admiral Chris Barrie, a member of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change and Chief of the Australian Defence Force from 1998 to 2002. This report is concise, very readable and relatively free from jargon. The gist of it is that IPCC projections (key data for the Climate COPs, the latest being COP25 in Madrid) are way too conservative, excluding or downplaying extreme scenarios for the sake of political consensus on action.

When the end of civilisation is at stake, Dunlop and Spratt argue that conventional risk management as done by organisations etc, becomes irrelevant. Risk management by responding to possibilities (by scenario planning) rather than high probabilities, could be the best way forward.

A 2050 scenario is then sketched. Based on scientific data the report argues that we could be looking at the collapse of global civilisation by 2050, due to ‘high-impact low probability warming’ of 3 degrees by this date, with 2 more degrees of warming locked in. This is the projected scenario if global emissions don’t peak until 2030 (which by my reckoning doesn’t seem that unlikely, looking at the latest Climate COP in Madrid, and with one of the worst global emitters, the USA, poised to leave the Paris Agreement. Even the Paris Agreement relies on unproven technologies!).  The 2050 scenario ultimate result…’a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end.’

In summary the report emphasises that security bodies (armies etc) are uniquely placed to mobilise and order the WWII level global infrastructure transformation that is needed to transition rapidly away from fossil fuel economies…Let us make sure that any military-led transformation of global energy infrastructures is decided democratically, with full co-operation of citizens globally, or what freedoms might be curtailed, and what human rights abuses may result? 

external review: https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/end-of-humanity-begins-in-2050-most-climate-change-models-too-conservative-report-6768451.html

activist strategy notes: Military and security force collaboration is key to the success of any revolutionary social movement, such as the one needed to force governments into WWII level mobilisation on the ecological and climate emergency. This could be a key text to persuade military personnel of the need for immediate action.

tactics: Try printing off this report and handing it to soldiers. I once trespassed into an army barracks with a megaphone to proclaim the climate emergency, but I didn’t have copies of this on me, unfortunately. Also try emailing this report to all military institutions in your country.

vegan dynamics: Consider what an urgent security forces-led mass transformation of agricultural systems from meat-based to plant-based would look like. Can you educate security forces now on plant-based agriculture as well as the ‘Existential….’ report?

life strategy notes: Bring a bit of ‘military organisation’ and toughness into your own life. Remain non-violent towards all life. (The window of a fossil-fuelled bank isn’t alive).

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Skeptical Science !Denial Busters!

-Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism

[no direct email contact] 

https://www.facebook.com/SkepticalScience

excerpt: ‘Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn’t what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?’

Epic Tomorrows’ review: The point is made on this site that genuine scientific skepticism is a good thing, and essential for the development of scientific understanding. However, man-made climate change denialism is not healthy skepticism. ‘Skepticism is a process, denial is a position’. 

The Skeptical Science site is based on peer-reviewed science, and although started as a blog is highly professional and has won awards for communication in climate science. A year or so ago, I would occasionally have severe doubts about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) after reading a particularly clever climate denialist paper. Returning to this site would always set me straight again.

The site is colourful, user-friendly and as light-hearted as possible whilst explaining serious science. It includes some graphics and pages that teens and young adults may find fun.

There is a regular feed of peer reviewed science articles on the front-page. The main climate myths (arguments used by AGW denialists) are listed conveniently down the left hand side of the front-page. There are ‘basic’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ explanations of all myths.

Includes selected content in 24 other languages.

Key page on site: ’10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change’

external review: https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/millions-of-times-later-97-percent-climate-consensus-still-faces-denial/ (not a review as such, but a good endorsement of the team at Skeptical Science).

activist strategy notes: It’s obvious that any social movement that is attempting to transform government and public opinion, must be based on the soundest science and must be able to communicate this effectively i.e. must have an excellent media & messaging strategy. Messy communication will lead to a messy understanding and thus diluted support for a movement. As an activist I would advise getting your main climate science information from just a few high quality, regularly updated peer-reviewed websites. Less is more.

tactics: Throughout this directory there will be many references to Extinction Rebellion (XR) -the only social movement I have had extensive experience of so far. XR is a useful reference point for movements attempting to respond to the global climate (and general ecological) crisis. As with any movement, there’s good stuff and there’s stuff to improve on. Regarding climate science communication, I was dismayed to see XR jump on the IPCC Paris Narrative (!) bandwagon in 2019, saying ‘We have 12 (now 11) years to turn things around’. This vague rhetoric was in my view a sloppy departure from the original hard-hitting talk of XR and a massive dilution of XR’s message and therefore call for support. It could have led the public to believe that we will all be okay if we follow the IPCC’s recommendations, which is not actually XR’s position at all. I have been told that XR’s messaging has since improved.

vegan dynamics: https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm

life strategy notes: Don’t have too much science in your life. Get some art!