#Climate Change Feedback Loops

[neechees]

Settler colonialism is legit one of the most evil things to exist and I think it's the root of many of the world's problems today.

[reasonsforhope]

No paywall version here.

"Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated...

In the end, I said yes, but reluctantly. Frankly, I was sick of admonishing people about how bad things could get. Scientists have raised the alarm over and over again, and still the temperature rises. Extreme events like heat waves, floods and droughts are becoming more severe and frequent, exactly as we predicted they would. We were proved right. It didn’t seem to matter.

Our report, which was released on Tuesday, contains more dire warnings. There are plenty of new reasons for despair. Thanks to recent scientific advances, we can now link climate change to specific extreme weather disasters, and we have a better understanding of how the feedback loops in the climate system can make warming even worse. We can also now more confidently forecast catastrophic outcomes if global emissions continue on their current trajectory.

But to me, the most surprising new finding in the Fifth National Climate Assessment is this: There has been genuine progress, too.

I’m used to mind-boggling numbers, and there are many of them in this report. Human beings have put about 1.6 trillion tons of carbon in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution — more than the weight of every living thing on Earth combined. But as we wrote the report, I learned other, even more mind-boggling numbers. In the last decade, the cost of wind energy has declined by 70 percent and solar has declined 90 percent. Renewables now make up 80 percent of new electricity generation capacity. Our country’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling, even as our G.D.P. and population grow.

In the report, we were tasked with projecting future climate change. We showed what the United States would look like if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius. It wasn’t a pretty picture: more heat waves, more uncomfortably hot nights, more downpours, more droughts. If greenhouse emissions continue to rise, we could reach that point in the next couple of decades. If they fall a little, maybe we can stave it off until the middle of the century. But our findings also offered a glimmer of hope: If emissions fall dramatically, as the report suggested they could, we may never reach 2 degrees Celsius at all.

For the first time in my career, I felt something strange: optimism.

And that simple realization was enough to convince me that releasing yet another climate report was worthwhile.

Something has changed in the United States, and not just the climate. State, local and tribal governments all around the country have begun to take action. Some politicians now actually campaign on climate change, instead of ignoring or lying about it. Congress passed federal climate legislation — something I’d long regarded as impossible — in 2022 as we turned in the first draft.

[Note: She's talking about the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act, which despite the names were the two biggest climate packages passed in US history. And their passage in mid 2022 was a big turning point: that's when, for the first time in decades, a lot of scientists started looking at the numbers - esp the ones that would come from the IRA's funding - and said "Wait, holy shit, we have an actual chance."]

And while the report stresses the urgency of limiting warming to prevent terrible risks, it has a new message, too: We can do this. We now know how to make the dramatic emissions cuts we’d need to limit warming, and it’s very possible to do this in a way that’s sustainable, healthy and fair.

The conversation has moved on, and the role of scientists has changed. We’re not just warning of danger anymore. We’re showing the way to safety.

I was wrong about those previous reports: They did matter, after all. While climate scientists were warning the world of disaster, a small army of scientists, engineers, policymakers and others were getting to work. These first responders have helped move us toward our climate goals. Our warnings did their job.

To limit global warming, we need many more people to get on board... We need to reach those who haven’t yet been moved by our warnings. I’m not talking about the fossil fuel industry here; nor do I particularly care about winning over the small but noisy group of committed climate deniers. But I believe we can reach the many people whose eyes glaze over when they hear yet another dire warning or see another report like the one we just published.

The reason is that now, we have a better story to tell. The evidence is clear: Responding to climate change will not only create a better world for our children and grandchildren, but it will also make the world better for us right now.

Eliminating the sources of greenhouse gas emissions will make our air and water cleaner, our economy stronger and our quality of life better. It could save hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives across the country through air quality benefits alone. Using land more wisely can both limit climate change and protect biodiversity. Climate change most strongly affects communities that get a raw deal in our society: people with low incomes, people of color, children and the elderly. And climate action can be an opportunity to redress legacies of racism, neglect and injustice.

I could still tell you scary stories about a future ravaged by climate change, and they’d be true, at least on the trajectory we’re currently on. But it’s also true that we have a once-in-human-history chance not only to prevent the worst effects but also to make the world better right now. It would be a shame to squander this opportunity. So I don’t just want to talk about the problems anymore. I want to talk about the solutions. Consider this your last warning from me."

-via New York Times. Opinion essay by leading climate scientist Kate Marvel. November 18, 2023.

[alchemusprime]

Life's Principles in Biomimicry 3: Being Locally Attuned and Responsive Part III

Previously, we shared two of the strategies of this life’s principle: leveraging cyclical processes and using readily available materials and energy. In this post, we share two more exciting ones. The first is using feedback loops. A positive feedback loop is when one variable increases, leading another to increase too, or move in the same direction. One example from nature is the increasing…

[scifigeneration]

ChatGPT and the movie ‘Her’ are just the latest example of the ‘sci-fi feedback loop’

by Rizwan Virk, Faculty Associate and PhD Candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology at Arizona State University

In May 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sparked a firestorm by referencing the 2013 movie “Her” to highlight the novelty of the latest iteration of ChatGPT.

Within days, actor Scarlett Johansson, who played the voice of Samantha, the AI girlfriend of the protagonist in the movie “Her,” accused the company of improperly using her voice after she had spurned their offer to make her the voice of ChatGPT’s new virtual assistant. Johansson ended up suing OpenAI and has been invited to testify before Congress.

This tiff highlights a broader interchange between Hollywood and Silicon Valley that’s called the “sci-fi feedback loop.” The subject of my doctoral research, the sci-fi feedback loop explores how science fiction and technological innovation feed off each other. This dynamic is bidirectional and can sometimes play out over many decades, resulting in an ongoing loop.

Fiction sparks dreams of Moon travel

One of the most famous examples of this loop is Moon travel.

Jules Verne’s 1865 novel “From the Earth to the Moon” and the fiction of H.G. Wells inspired one of the first films to visualize such a journey, 1902’s “A Trip to the Moon.”

The fiction of Verne and Wells also influenced future rocket scientists such as Robert Goddard, Hermann Oberth and Oberth’s better-known protégé, Wernher von Braun. The innovations of these men – including the V-2 rocket built by von Braun during World War II – inspired works of science fiction, such as the 1950 film “Destination Moon,” which included a rocket that looked just like the V-2.

Films like “Destination Moon” would then go on to bolster public support for lavish government spending on the space program.

Creative symbiosis

The sci-fi feedback loop generally follows the same cycle.

First, the technological climate of a given era will shape that period’s science fiction. For example, the personal computing revolution of the 1970s and 1980s directly inspired the works of cyberpunk writers Neal Stephenson and William Gibson.

Then the sci-fi that emerges will go on to inspire real-world technological innovation. In his 1992 classic “Snow Crash,” Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” to describe a 3-D, video game-like world accessed through virtual reality goggles.

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and innovators have been trying to build a version of this metaverse ever since. The virtual world of the video game Second Life, released in 2003, took a stab at this: Players lived in virtual homes, went to virtual dance clubs and virtual concerts with virtual girlfriends and boyfriends, and were even paid virtual dollars for showing up at virtual jobs.

This technology seeded yet more fiction; in my research, I discovered that sci-fi novelist Ernest Cline had spent a lot of time playing Second Life, and it inspired the metaverse of his bestselling novel “Ready Player One.”

The cycle continued: Employees of Oculus VR – now known as Meta Reality Labs – were given copies of “Ready Player One” to read as they developed the company’s virtual reality headsets. When Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021, it did so in the hopes of being at the forefront of building the metaverse, though the company’s grand ambitions have tempered somewhat.

Another sci-fi franchise that has its fingerprints all over this loop is “Star Trek,” which first aired in 1966, right in the middle of the space race.

Steve Perlman, the inventor of Apple’s QuickTime media format and player, said he was inspired by an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” in which Lt. Commander Data, an android, sifts through multiple streams of audio and video files. And Rob Haitani, the designer of the Palm Pilot’s operating system, has said that the bridge on the Enterprise influenced its interface.

In my research, I also discovered that the show’s Holodeck – a room that could simulate any environment – influenced both the name and the development of Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality glasses.

From ALICE to ‘Her’

Which brings us back to OpenAI and “Her.”

In the movie, the protagonist, Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, acquires an AI assistant, “Samantha,” voiced by Johansson. He begins to develop feelings for Samantha – so much so that he starts to consider her his girlfriend.

ChatGPT-4o, the latest version of the generative AI software, seems to be able to cultivate a similar relationship between user and machine. Not only can ChatGPT-4o speak to you and “understand” you, but it can also do so sympathetically, as a romantic partner would.

There’s little doubt that the depiction of AI in “Her” influenced OpenAI’s developers. In addition to Altman’s tweet, the company’s promotional videos for ChatGPT-4o feature a chatbot speaking with a job candidate before his interview, propping him up and encouraging him – as, well, an AI girlfriend would. The AI featured in the clips, Ars Technica observed, was “disarmingly lifelike,” and willing “to laugh at your jokes and your dumb hat.”

But you might be surprised to learn that a previous generation of chatbots inspired Spike Jonze, the director and screenwriter of “Her,” to write the screenplay in the first place. Nearly a decade before the film’s release, Jonze had interacted with a version of the ALICE chatbot, which was one of the first chatbots to have a defined personality – in ALICE’s case, that of a young woman.

The ALICE chatbot won the Loebner Prize three times, which was awarded annually until 2019 to the AI software that came closest to passing the Turing Test, long seen as a threshold for determining whether artificial intelligence has become indistinguishable from human intelligence.

The sci-fi feedback loop has no expiration date. AI’s ability to form relationships with humans is a theme that continues to be explored in fiction and real life.

A few years after “Her,” “Blade Runner 2049” featured a virtual girlfriend, Joi, with a holographic body. Well before the latest drama with OpenAI, companies had started developing and pitching virtual girlfriends, a process that will no doubt continue. As science fiction writer and social media critic Cory Doctorow wrote in 2017, “Science fiction does something better than predict the future: It influences it.”

[doomer-diva]

"A 63 year-old climate activist and professional cellist faces up to seven years in prison after being arrested on Thursday, August 8th 2024, while performing a Bach solo outside the headquarters of one of the world’s largest fossil fuel financier Citibank in downtown New York"

This is why groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion continue to block roads, highways, glue themselves to art, and throw paint on private jets.

Since June, climate protesters have been protesting institutions funding fossil fuel projects and almost no coverage has reached the mainstream media. These are scientists, activists, and indigenous peoples asking for the bare minimum of ending fossil fuel funding that are met with extreme violence.

They are risking their comfort, their foundations, their very lives to tell you that we are in an emergency, that we are in dire times that needs addressing right now. You keep requesting protesters target the "main culprits" of Climate Collapse instead of throwing soup on paintings and they are! So please, support them!

Also, please remember the desperation of the people that are gluing themselves to paintings because we are trying to warn you. We want you to be angry, to ask questions, to be afraid, because these are the emotions that stur into actions. Fear isn't a moral failing, it is the very basis of humankind's reaction to their surroundings. If you are afraid, there is a reason, and you should analyze and acknowledge that fear. It is okay to be afraid, because you deserve to be.

You have been misled, gaslit, and lied to about the crumbling biosphere around you and you deserve to know the truth. You deserve to decide your future and humanity's future. You deserve a just and honest collapse. You deserve freedom and control of your lives.

1.5C degrees of warming, as decided by the Paris Agreements in 2015, was the threshold to mitigate dangerous climate change feedback loops such as ocean heat+deoxygenation (probably the worst of climate collapse due to the fact that the oceans absorb most of climate change heating, have only been getting hotter, and the ocean accounts for 50-75% of all life on Earth), permafrost melting, glacial melt, and forest desertification. It wasn't some ambitious goal that would be okay if we missed it, because 1.5C degrees of warming spells catastrophe for modern, globalized civilization. So far, fossil fuel use has only increased with no indication of slowing AND we've been past 1.5C warming for over a year, and this is why we protest.

We are asking for the bare minimum and are still ignored. We are polite and still ignored. We assert direct, unconventional action and are condemned.

We are trying to save you. We can decarbonize, degrow, and depave anything we put our minds to. This is the unifying crisis of our time and you should listen to the young adults throwing soup on Van Gogh paintings, because we are desperately trying to just warn you. Ask yourself what people who genuinely believe we are in mortal, existential danger would do to warn their fellow humans to the danger, what desperate displays of attention would look like, and ask yourself why they want your attention so bad.

Please, read and follow scientists like Peter Kalmus and Gianluca Grimalda and activists like Roger Hallam, that have dedicated their lives to climate collapse. They have been protesting for years for exposure to our impending collapse.

[pppeonies]

For the first time on record, global warming has exceeded temperatures of 1.5° celsius over 12 months. This is an abject failure and the blood of every living thing is on the hands of the governments, politicians, billionaires, and people passionately against scientific truth that have refused to accept the reality and take the health of the climate seriously.

We have been warned by specialists for decades that this was going to happen if we didn't make drastic changes and here it is. Escalating conflict and funding genocide and endless wars only exacerbates this problem.

An acidic ocean cannot support life. An atmosphere full of co2 cannot support life. It will eventually reach a point where it is a positive feedback loop and we cannot undo any damage that was done.

This is where we are heading. The normal that we are desperately clinging onto does not exist anymore and it hasn't for a while.

WE DO NOT HAVE UNLIMITED TIME TO MAKE THE CHANGE WE NEED. THIS IS BEYOND WHAT ELECTORAL POLITICS CAN DO.

WE NEED URGENCY. WE NEED RADICAL, REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE THAT CANNOT BE ACHIEVED BY "VOTING BLUE NO MATTER WHO" OR "THE LESSER EVIL"

OUR LIVES AND THE HEALTH OF THE PLANET QUITE LITERALLY DEPEND ON IT.

Which brings me to my next point:

Democrats and Republicans are the same party with different faces. That is why, no matter how many promises sither party makes, nothing changes. Reject bourgeois "democracy." Believing there's a meaningful choice between different flavors of fascism and neoliberalism is a fallacy. Furthermore, the idea that voting for a third party as a meaningful act of resistance against the establishment is fundamentally misguided.

Instead of focusing on the election, CHANNEL YOUR TIME AND ENERGY INTO ORGANIZING. Organize with your community!! Radicalize the people around you. Help them understand that together we can make real, meaningful, lasting, change!!

The Amerikkkan political landscape is at a critical juncture and as the contradictions of capitalism increase exponentially, it's extremely important that we prepare for the impending collapse.

We are witnessing the sacrifice of all life in pursuit of maintaining capitalism and the west's rule over the world. What does power mean or hold when everything is dying? What does it matter that you have amassed wealth beyond comprehension when the cost is this big?

NOTHING is worth the needless death and suffering we are facing.

I do encourage you to vote locally, when you know it will matter, for things that will improve the quality of life for you and your community (WHILE ORGANIZING!!).

BUT!!:

NEVER BE DECIEVED INTO BELIEVING THAT OUR CAPITALIST OPPRESSORS WILL ALLOW YOU TO VOTE AWAY THEIR POWER.

[rjzimmerman]

Scientists may have figured out why a potent greenhouse gas is rising. The answer is scary. (Washington Post)

Excerpt from this Washington Post story:

Almost two decades ago, the atmosphere’s levels of methane — a dangerous greenhouse gas that is over 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide in the short term — started to climb. And climb.

Methane concentrations, which had been stable for years, soared by 5 or 6 parts per billion every year from 2007 onward. Then, in 2020, the growth rate nearly doubled.

Scientists were baffled — and concerned. Methane is the big question mark hanging over the world’s climate estimates; although it breaks down in the atmosphere much faster than carbon dioxide, it is so powerful that higher-than-expected methane levels could shift the world toward much higher temperatures.

But now, a study sheds light on what’s driving record methane emissions. The culprits, scientists believe, are microbes — the tiny organisms that live in cows’ stomachs, agricultural fields and wetlands. And that could mean a dangerous feedback loop — in which these emissions cause warming that releases even more greenhouse gases — is already underway.

“The changes that we saw in the last couple of years — and even since 2007 — are microbial,” said Sylvia Michel, lead author of the paper published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Wetlands, if they are getting warmer and wetter, maybe they’re producing more methane than they used to.”

It’s difficult for scientists to identify all the sources of methane in the world. It comes from leaking oil and gas operations, from cows belching, from landfills and marshes, and from thawing permafrost in the Arctic. When methane emissions increase, finding the cause is like solving a complicated algebra problem with too many unknowns.

And it’s a problem that will determine the fate of the climate.

For a time, scientists thought that soaring methane emissions stemmed from the growth in the use of natural gas, which is largely methane. Leaks from drilling or from pipelines can leach the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

But the new paper points to microbes as the biggest source of the methane spike. Michel and her co-authors analyzed samples of methane, or CH4, from 22 sites around the globe at a Colorado laboratory. Then they measured the “heaviness” of that methane — specifically, how many of the molecules had a heavier isotope of carbon in them, known as C13.

Different sources of methane give off different carbon signatures. Methane produced by microbes — mostly single-celled organisms known as archaea, which live in cow stomachs, wetlands and agricultural fields — tends to be “lighter,” or have fewer C13 atoms. Methane from fossil fuels, on the other hand, is heavier, with more C13 atoms.

As the amount of methane has risen in the atmosphere over the past 15 years, it’s also gotten lighter and lighter. The scientists used a model to analyze those changes and found that only large increases in microbial emissions could explain both the rising methane and its changing weight.

[lemonplanter]

I think there's a certain type of person who claims to want to protect and preserve nature who equates that to "humans should never interact with nature in dramatic ways, ever" and I find that both very fascinating and very frustrating.

Like, there's obviously eternal discussions to be had on methods and intensity for any action that humans take; new information and models should always update our plans for the future. And obviously thoroughness, consistency, and safeguarding need to be focused on, and they often times are not; accountability is also important. This is not about that.

But there's a certain attitude I see that intentonal, large scale impacts should be avoided at all costs, and I find that baffling.

Cause, like.... we're already doing that in ways that DESTROY the environment. And while some of those issues can resolve themselves with us simply stopping our activities, or with low impact solutions (cleaning plastic from the oceans doesn't need to be disruptive, for instance - WHICH IS NEAT, I NEED TO STRESS THAT) there are others that will not fix themselves!!!

CO2 in the atmosphere is one example! If we completely stop all CO2 production, it's still likely that we would continue to see warming, because the effects are a positive feedback loop (higher temps melt more snow near the poles, less snow lowers the albedo of the planet, lower albedo leads to more warming - AGAIN, WITH NO NEW CO2). Or invasive species!! My province has an issue with moose, because they are not native to the island and have few-to-no natural predators, so they're increasing I population, causing both higher road accidents and doing more damage to the ecosystem. But there's usually a lot of backlash to hunting initiatives to reduce their populations, because hunting always bad.

Or mosquitos!!! Mosquitos are one of the biggest ones!!!

There are a load of people who think that the measures we want to take to curb mosquito populations should be thrown out altogether because human intervention bad, but human intervention is what caused the increased population to begin with!! Human industry leads to exponentially more stagnant water than would exist otherwise, which is the place that mosquitos breed. we Are the reason that there are so many, and there being so many is the reason that there are so many issues with pathological transmission, and ecological displacement.

So my question to those people is: are we not responsible for remedying the issues that we have caused to the planet? Do we not have a responsibility to correct the ways that we have ALREADY fucked things up? Because if you don't think that we should take action on invasive species, then what is your rational for taking action on climate change?

Do you think we SHOULD address climate change? If so, why are you not willing to engage with the reality that we will need to do radical things to resolve it?

I don't know, it just feels like the attitude got boiled down to "human bad for planet" which is both overly simplistic, and also completely ineffectual for actually solving a lot of the issues that they claim to care about.

[P.S. To be absolutely, clear, this is not about everyone who says they care about the planet. This is a very specific mindset that I see in a very specific type of person. I find it overlaps most with the vibe of "meat is bad, but I'm eating unsustainable quinoa from a country that exploits its workers" or "fur is murder, but I am polluting the planet with all my plastic clothes that I have to throw out in a year" types. Very much the vibe of people who care more about feeling good about their values than they do about actually following through. And i find that performative aspect extra infuriating]

[dailyanarchistposts]

Anthropogenic climate change cannot be meaningfully denied. What's worse, it cannot be prevented. Theoretically, we might be able to slow it down and keep it at a more or less manageable level. According to the models of the IPCC, it is still "possible within the laws of chemistry and physics" to keep global warming within the level they consider vital (1.5ºC from pre-industrial temperatures) but it would require "unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society."[1] Given that global CO2 emissions have been steadily rising despite the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol, there seems to be little hope that such transitions are likely to happen any time soon. We can therefore expect global warming to accelerate with disastrous consequences for ecosystems and human societies.

How bad these consequences will be depends on two factors that are both very hard to predict. The first is the level of warming and the changes to the natural world that result from it. These things are hard to model because the Earth's climate is a complex system with many feedback loops and tipping points that can accelerate the process in a non-linear trajectory.[2] For example, even if anthropogenic emissions were to be completely stopped, the warming that we have already caused is currently leading to loss of sea and polar ice. As the ice melts, greenhouse gasses stored in the permafrost are released leading to further emissions. Ice also reflects solar radiation, so the loss of polar ice in itself leads to higher temperatures. A tipping point is reached when the process we have started initiates other processes beyond our control.

Some of the consequences to the natural world are known, as they are already happening: More severe and more frequent droughts, heat waves, and forest fires in parts of the world, increased flooding and rising water levels in other parts, loss of habitat for animals, increased ocean acidification, more frequent and violent hurricanes, to name just a few. For humans, some places will become uninhabitable and there will be increased food insecurity. This is already happening. The question is how bad it will get.

The second factor is how human societies respond to these changes, i.e. how we adapt politically and socially to a changing natural world. The birth and growth of the industrialized world of capitalist nation-states was dependent upon exploitation of the Earth's resources and thus changed the planet and now its own continued existence depends upon how it changes in response to the changes it caused. Human society and behavior are arguably even more unpredictable, complex, and hard to model than the Earth's climate system. It too consists of many interconnected factors, feedback loops, and tipping points.

This paper discusses some of the models that have already been proposed, and it examines how the political, economic, and social forces have responded to disasters in the recent past, in order to show which tendencies we should expect to see more of in the near future. But a central claim is that these models themselves can be part of the "feedback loops" that push the sociopolitical processes in one direction or the other. A prediction of the future is an intervention in the present where the tracks for that future are laid. Rejecting both political "idealism" and "realism," I draw upon affect theory to argue that our embodied, emotional reactions to the fact of climate change have an impact on our ability to act on climate change.

I start by describing the widespread sense of doom that permeates both climate science and popular culture. Both scientific think tanks and Hollywood fiction are, in their respective ways, drawing from and promoting a particular ideology and philosophy when they imagine that environmental disruption will lead to societal collapse and chaos. There is a strong Hobbesian influence in this way of thinking. Hobbes is often considered a "realist" regarding political theory and human nature, but his philosophy was not merely descriptive. It was also meant to make his readers fear any challenge to the political order. He thus used emotions to affect the political reality. When we make our scenarios for the future we need to pay attention to how they affect people in the present.

The political tendencies described here should therefore not be seen as predictions but as warnings - things to be aware of when we step forward so we can avoid them. A fixation upon a particular vision of the future, as if it is predetermined by the past, can constrain our conceivable options in the present and thus make that future inevitable. We must therefore look not only for the warning signs but also for positive signs: the things that can expand our notion of what is possible and enable us to take actions that change the course of events. The collective imagination is a causal factor in historical development: In order for another future to become possible we must imagine that it is. Looking at how some communities have already survived disasters and changed their social relations in the process might give us a sense of direction. Our imagination of what is possible is best served by examples of what is actually realized, and by participating in its realization.

[doorbloggr]

The Pikmin Series

Thursday 23/2/23

Media Recommendations #45

I've been in a really compulsive mood lately. I'm pretty sure I have some form of mild ADHD, but lack the initiative to actual go and confirm this. To me, this means joy in the completion of small tasks, and a low attention span. And although I've been waiting almost a decade for the next game, I feel the series that best scratches this itch is Pikmin.

Pikmin is one of my favourite series of all time, and lately, news of Pikmin 4 has me more hyped than news of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. So in today's article, I wanna discuss what I love about Pikmin, and also just compare the different games in the series.

The Pitch

The Pikmin Games are classified as Real Time Strategy Games, but comparing them to other RTS's like Age of Empires is folly. Instead of large scale conflict on a huge scale, the Pikmin Games have you follow one guy with an army behind him, and while you can have several groups doing tasks at a time, you must physically approach each soldier to interact with them.

You control a space Captain of a tiny alien species who has landed on PNF-404, a planet of lush greens, and strange monsters. Each game has different reasons for your protagonist to be there, but essentially you are tasked with collecting things and bringing them back to your ship in order to leave the planet and go home. But you cannot do this alone. Amongst the various scary creatures that dwarf the player character, there are the Pikmin, small plant/animal hybrids that follow your every command. It is up to you to direct the Pikmin into defeating enemies and carrying your quarry home, while avoiding all the obstacles that get in your way.

The Gameplay Loop

Your Pikmin army is a fragile, but determined species that can easily die but also easily multiply. Defeated enemies or resources called Pellets can be carried by the Pikmin to their mothership, a structure called the onion, and when it absorbs nutrients, it spits out new Pikmin. Having more Pikmin is crucial because bigger items require more Pikmin to carry.

As an example, Pellets have numbers on their top that indicate how many Pikmin require to carry them. A "1" Pellet can be carried by 1 Pikmin, but a 5 Pellet requires 5 Pikmin. Small enemies might require 3 Pikmin, most larger intimidating enemies require at least 10, and if you defeat a boss, that could require at least 20. But the more Pikmin you have, the more they can carry, and this will produce more Pikmin. It is a positive feedback loop. But there is a cap. All Pikmin games allow no more than 100 Pikmin in the field at a time, but spare Pikmin can rest in the Onion, and be summoned to strengthen your ranks if others die.

In Pikmin, there is only so much you can do in a day, and this is typically between 13 and 18 minutes depending on the game and difficulty. At the start of each day, you will have to summon Pikmin from their onion to start work, and at the end of the day, you must bring them back to home base. Any Pikmin idle in the field when the day ends are left to die. Due to the ferocity of nocturnal life, the protagonist and the Pikmin's Onion leave the Earth's surface during night and take refuge in low orbit. So you must make sure you finish any tasks well before the final countdown, or risk losing tens of Pikmin who are not accounted for.

Each game has a different limit to the number of days you have to finish the game, but I will get into these differences later in this post. Depending on the state of your Pikmin army, some days may be more productive in terms of working on your main objective, while others might be spend just building up your army after a major loss. It is a balancing act.

The World

As a lover of Scifi, particularly Speculative Biology, the Pikmin series really tickles my fancy. The game's setting, PNF-404, is in fact planet Earth in the far off future. The continents have changed positions, and the climate is overall more lush and moist. But we only ever see the world at a micro-scale. This provides a unique take on speculative evolution.

When we think of how animals will evolve into the future, most popular culture focuses on megafauna, but when your player character is 2 centimetres tall, the most common type of threat will be creepycrawlies. There's quite a deep taxonomic web of genetic families with high biodiversity and adaptation radiation. The Bulborb or "Grubdog" family has about 10 unique subspecies in Pikmin 2 alone.

Starting in Pikmin 2, the Captains document each species of enemy in the Piklopedia, giving each a binomial scientific name and a general description. I've spent many hours just reading through these entries and observing the critters.

Beyond what has become of the world, we can also explore what used to be of the world. Leftovers from human civilisation, such as bricks, garden beds, and ceramic tiles form obstacles to exploration. Recognisable earthly fruit such as cherries, strawberries, and watermelons litter the forest floor. Knick knacks and junk such as AAA batteries, bottle caps, and NES cartridges can be dug up and collected. This is a world that was once lived in by humans, and like fossils, their impact is left to be found by future explorers.

Comparison of Games in the Series

At the time of writing, there are 3 main Pikmin games, with a fourth coming out later this year (thank goodness, it's been sooo long). Despite the same world and gameplay loop; grow pikmin, defeat enemies to grow more pikmin, collect thing to get to new areas and get new pikmin; each game tasks the player with a vastly different objective and restrictions on game time. Therefore, there can arise disagreements in which game provides the best experience.

In Pikmin 1, Olimar's ship accidentally crashes down to Earth and smashes to pieces. He cannot breath Earth's atmosphere, and his suit will only keep him alive for 30 days. He must spend these 30 days collecting as many parts of his ship as he can, so he has the capacity to leave Earth's orbit and warp back home. There are 30 ship parts to collect, but careful planning means you can easily get multiple pieces a day, and only 25 pieces are required. This game can feel very stressful with this looming time limit, but it is very unachievable to complete the game a few days early.

Pikmin 2 has Olimar and coworker Louie returning to PNF-404 on a treasure hunting mission. Their freight company is almost bankrupt, but junk from Earth can be sold on their home planet, Hocotate, for a fortune. There is no limit on how many days you need to spend on the distant planet, and you reach the first ending when you pay off the 10'000 poko debt. In addition, this is the only game in the series to feature Caves, underground sublevels of exploration. No time passes between entering and exiting a dungeon, but you can not go back to recruit more pikmin until you leave. Most of the game's treasure is found in dungeons.

In Pikmin 3, you take control of three spacemen from the planet Koppai, Alph, Brittany, and Charlie. Their planet is running out of food, and in their journey to find food on other planets, the three land on Earth. The three are tasked with collecting fruit, taking the seeds to grow back on Koppai, and the juice from the fruit are converted into rations for the three to continue their stay. There are 66 fruit to collect, and a few different endings depending on how many are collected.

In my opinion, Pikmin 3 achieves the best balance of time limit to challenge. Unlike Pikmin 1, there is not a hard deadline. 1 jar of juice means one day's rations. Different fruit will fill different amounts of juice; 20 grapes are needed to fill a jar, a cherry might only fill half a jar, while a watermelon can fill 3 jars on its own. Since there is a limited amount of fruit in the game, you can run out of new ones to find, but this gives the player upward of 50 days to beat the game. So unlike Pikmin 2, the time limit is not infinite, but actively pursuing the objective gives you more time.

Caves are an interesting way to pump extra challenge and content into a limited overworld, but since each floor is randomly generated, they are less deliberately complex and interesting than they could be. Pikmin 2 does offer the most main story content, and although I would like Dungeons in the next Pikmin game, I would like them better designed.

Conclusion

I am carefully optimistic for the next Pikmin game. These games scratch a mental itch no other series I've played can, and although I'm not a fan of games blatantly ripping unique concepts, it really sucks there's no "Pikmin-likes", because I would really love more of this type of game.

If you read this far, thankyou so much, this was really long. If you know any games that come close to replicating Pikmin's gameplay loop, please let me know in the notes. Also tell me what you want from Pikmin 4, I'm pretty damn excited for it.

[mariacallous]

Because you’re a smooth-skinned mammal, no weather feels quite as oppressive as a humid heat wave. The more water vapor in the air, the less efficiently your sweat can evaporate and carry excess heat away from your skin. That’s why 90 degrees Fahrenheit in humid Miami can feel as bad as 110 in arid Phoenix. 

Climate change has supercharged this summer’s exceptionally brutal heat all around the world—heat waves are generally getting more frequent, more intense, and longer. But they are also getting more humid in some regions, which helps extend high temperatures through daytime peaks and into the night. Such relentless, sticky heat is not just uncomfortable, but sometimes deadly, especially for folks with health conditions like cardiovascular disease. 

One of the more counterintuitive effects of climate change is that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor than a colder one. A lot of it, in fact: Each 1.8 degree Fahrenheit bump of warming adds 7 percent more moisture to the air. Overall, atmospheric water vapor is increasing by 1 to 2 percent per decade. That additional wetness is why we’re already seeing supersize downpours, like the flooding that devastated Vermont earlier this month. 

Water vapor is actually a greenhouse gas, like carbon dioxide or methane, responsible for about half of the planet-warming effect. (It's supposed to be up there, whereas humans have been pumping in way too much extra carbon.) More warming evaporates more water, which causes more warming—a climatic feedback loop. 

In landlocked areas, heat waves evaporate water from plants and soils. But humidity gets especially oppressive near the ocean, where water is more readily available. “Coastal regions in general are seeing more humid conditions as ocean temperatures warm,” says Alexander Gershunov, a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who studies humidity and heat waves. “Air sitting over a water body tends to be close to saturated. It has a lot of moisture in it—close to 100 percent relative humidity.”

Sea surface temperatures have been steadily climbing globally, as the oceans absorb something like 90 percent of the excess heat that humans are adding to the atmosphere. But since March, global sea surface temperatures have been skyrocketing above the norm. The North Atlantic, in particular, remains super hot, loading Europe’s air with extra humidity. 

The waters around Florida are also logging truly astonishing sea surface temperatures: On July 24, a buoy recorded a temperature of 101 degrees Fahrenheit. “You have incredibly warm Gulf water that warms the atmosphere, which can then absorb more moisture. So it's kind of a feedback loop,” says Kent State University biometeorologist Scott Sheridan. “In a lot of the areas around the Mediterranean, where there's been really bad heat, and then in Florida and the Gulf Coast, those have been the really big driving factors for why the humidity is so high.” 

Accordingly, in Miami the heat index—a measurement that combines temperature and relative humidity—has been above 100 for over 40 days in a row, smashing the previous record of 32 days in 2020.

Meanwhile in California, Gershunov’s research has confirmed that heat waves are getting stickier. “It's not just more frequent, more intense, and longer-lasting heat waves, like is the case all over the world with the warming climate,” says Gershunov. “Here, the heat waves are also changing flavor. They're becoming more expressed disproportionately in nighttime temperatures. It turns out it's because of humidity, and that's related to the warming of the ocean.”

If you’re in a desert and suffering days of 110-plus-degree heat, you can at least look forward to those temperatures coming down at night, as the landscape sheds built-up heat. But when it’s humid, the atmosphere stubbornly holds onto that heat. “With more and more humidity, more people will be impacted during the night. And I don’t think we’re ready at all for that,” says Tarik Benmarhnia, an environmental epidemiologist at the UC San Diego. “There's basically no break, no pause in the stress that heat is going to cause to humans.”

The more humid it gets, the harder it is for water to evaporate off the body and the less effective sweating becomes. “If that’s not effective, the only way is to have more and more exchange between the blood and the skin,” says Benmarhnia. “To do that, our body sends more blood, faster and faster.” 

That’s why skin flushes if it’s hot out—the body is trying to expel heat via the water in the blood. That means blood is diverted from vital organs to the skin, a sort of physiological panic that’s especially dangerous for people with cardiovascular disease. “But if it's not effective, we just waste a lot of energy, and our circulation system is going to be overwhelmed and lead to very severe complications,” says Benmarhnia. “This is the main cause of hospital admission and emergency department visits during a heat wave.” High heat is correlated with risk of heart attacks and strokes; indeed, heat kills more Americans each year than any other kind of disaster.

It can also potentially cause issues for babies developing in the womb. “For people who are pregnant, blood flow is also diverted from the placenta when the core body temperature increases,” says Rupa Basu, chief of the air and climate epidemiology section at the California EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. “That also could provide less nutrients to the fetus, and sometimes, in more extreme cases, could cause preterm delivery.”

Getting more people access to air conditioning will go a long way in preventing heat-related deaths, since AC both reduces indoor temperatures and humidity. “Cooling centers” are a key tool—facilities where people who don’t have AC, or the unhoused population, can take refuge. But because high humidity extends scorching temperatures through the night, people often need that respite through the evening, when cooling centers are closed. 

City planners are increasingly turning to green spaces to lower temperatures in the first place. Vegetation “sweats,” which significantly cools the landscape. (Thanks to their lack of greenery, plus all that concrete and brick, urban areas can get way hotter than rural ones.) 

Adding vegetation can be helpful, says Edith de Guzman, an environmental researcher at UCLA—but it depends on how you deploy it. “In an arid environment, that's a very good thing, because you create basically an evaporative cooler,” says de Guzman, who is also the director and cofounder of the Los Angeles Urban Cooling Collaborative, a partnership of researchers who work with communities on cooling strategies. “But in a more humid environment or during a more humid heat wave, it's not necessarily good. You have a bit of a penalty for that.” 

Basically, sweating greenery adds more humidity to already humid air. And there are trade-offs based on the kind of plants you pick. Big trees have the additional benefit of providing a lot of shade, which makes people feel much cooler, regardless of the added humidity. Vast expanses of lawn are stupid for a number of reasons—they waste water and are awful for biodiversity—plus they provide extra humidity but not a bit of shade. 

As the world continues to rapidly warm, humidity will grow worse. But with the right infrastructure and social policies, people won’t have to suffer for it. “Any heat-related death is preventable,” says Benmarhnia. “There is no exception.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Literally actually temporally spatially and for all species the biggest news of our time has been and will be the climate and what we do about it, and here's an incredibly important and hopeful aspect summed up with great clarity:

"The climate crisis is really a fossil-fuel crisis. There are other components of it, for sure, but eighty per cent of it is the burning of fossil fuels. And scientists now know—and this is a relatively new finding, a very firm understanding—that, once we stop net additions to the overburden of greenhouse gases, once we reach so-called net zero, then temperatures on Earth will stop going up almost immediately. The lag time is as little as three to five years. They used to think that temperatures would keep on worsening because of positive-feedback loops—and some things, tragically, will. The melting of the ice, for example, will continue, though we can moderate the pace of that; the extinction crisis will continue without other major changes. But we can stop temperatures from going up almost immediately, and that’s the switch we need to flip. And then, if we can stay at true net zero, half of all human-caused greenhouse-gas pollution will fall out of the atmosphere in twenty-five to thirty years. So we can start the long and slow healing process almost immediately, if we act."

--from Al Gore in the NYer

[Thank you Rebecca Solnit]

[greatgreenwelshadventures]

Habitat Wales Grant

(Our latest reply to our ongoing application)

Thank you for the letter regarding the updates and for the extension of the contract deadline.  Our local farmers union office has been completely overwhelmed with queries from anxious members and we have been unable to take advice on this yet.

We appreciate that change is necessary and that implementing a new scheme will always come with its challenges; however the management of information has been absolutely shambolic. ��We respectfully and constructively offer the following feedback:

There seems to be a complete lack of understanding of what it takes to manage land half way up a mountain in North Wales.  We have around 40 acres of valuable habitat (peat bog and upland heath) that we sensitively manage and conserve on a voluntary basis, and we planted over 1000 trees well before the 10% of land as trees idea was a 'thing'.  We really don't need advice from well meaning politicians on how to minimise our impact and live in partnership with the land.

This leaves us with only 20 acres used for small farming practices. How on earth should we be penalised for not complying on the 1/3 of our land when 2/3 does comply if indeed this is actually about habitat, the environment and mitigating climate change?

On our application, we removed the parcels of land which are the only livestock grazing because we have no option but to supplementary feed in winter.  Please do take a visit when half the farm is under water if you have any other suggestions (bring waders). We also need to chain harrow and roll when we get the very small window of weather and ground conditions opportunity.  This is based on local knowledge and experience not an arbitrary date in the calendar.  We are working on organic / biodynamic farming permaculture.  Muck spreading is an essential component of that.

As a result, we unchecked the land parcels on which we could not meet the conditions (which we were able to do on our original application), only to be subsequently advised that the offer was on a whole farm basis.  Your office amended our application without our consent and selected those land parcels we had omitted, then advised us it was too late for us to make changes (changing it back for the above valid reasons).

It is very difficult for us to understand how the restrictions are designed to improve habitat without altogether making farming impossible for many responsible land custodians.

We will take advice and decide whether or not the contract is possible for us to sign but certainly will not be accepting it and then notifying you via SAF if we are unclear on whether or not penalties would apply, which despite many years dealing with nationwide contracts, we are not.

We would appreciate a review of cases such as ours where it would be more appropriate to assign the scheme conditions to select parcels of land provided that this meets a certain percentage of the land overall (in our case 70% compliant habitat already exists).  Otherwise many rural smallholders running sustainable and closed loop farms will be forced to give up in favour of the mass commercial monoculture environment and local community harming farms, which would be counterproductive to the published scheme outcomes, surely?

We wholeheartedly support the farmers that will be protesting against the current changes and sadly cannot join them since as it is just the two of us and we cannot be away from the land or animals. And please note that it has taken numerous attempts to reply as we kept receiving error messages on the site wasting the best part of a preciously dry morning.

Additionally, while you sit in your warm, dry offices, pouring over your satellite and drone images of our farm and the surrounding land, in order that you can remove a few more rocks or gorse bushes from our BPS claim; please note just how many abandoned mountain small holdings together with their now derelict farmhouses surround us.

Indeed we are the only such remaining property on this part of the mountain which is actually still farming.

There is a reason for that. The land and weather conditions here, particularly in winter can only be described as tough and harsh.

Aside from the sometimes inhospitable weather, there are also constant pressures in terms of the massive hikes in the cost of hard feed, fodder and energy costs.

It is an exceptionally hard life basically, and you are making it harder. Tipping over into impossible.

That is why farmers (in Wales) are protesting.

Saying that it is about farmers being anti change or resistant to tree planting woefully misses the point.

That is why the Welsh government will need to rethink this proposed policy. Because in its current form it is not viable for actual farmers!

[science-criticaltheory]

Leaked JPMorgan Report: 'Cannot Rule Out' Human Extinction.

Most Wall Street reports are dry and deal with the stock market, but a leaked file from bank JPMorgan caught our attention: analysts are concerned about the tail risks of climate change and they "cannot rule out" catastrophic outcomes that threaten the survivability of the human race.

They are concerned about the uncertainty of how much temperatures will rise in response to increasing CO2 levels, and warn of the half dozen, unpredictable feedback loops that could worsen manmade warming.

The bank's analysts are also concerned of a lack of collective action politically, and explain that this will probably lead to world governments doing nothing to reduce carbon emissions meaningfully before 2100 — openings the Earth up to "tail risks" of 5 or 6 degrees (Celsius) of warming that could threaten most complex life.

They predict governments will likely turn to geo-engineering solutions later this century, such as cloud modifying or sun shields, each having their own set of risks.

[oakappleday]

Meanwhile they also just published this very straightforward piece about The King's COP28 speech:

The world has embarked on a “vast, frightening experiment” on the natural world, King Charles has told world leaders, which risks triggering “feedback loops” in the climate system that will cause irreversible disaster. Noting that 2023 was the hottest year on record, the king told the Cop28 UN climate summit on Friday: “Records are now being broken so often that we are perhaps becoming immune to what they are really telling us. We need to pause to process what this actually means: we are taking the natural world outside balanced norms and limits, and into dangerous, uncharted territory.” In an opening speech calling on leaders to make Cop28 “a critical turning point”, he warned: “We are carrying out a vast, frightening experiment of changing every ecological condition, all at once, at a pace that far outstrips nature’s ability to cope … Our choice is now a starker, and darker, one: how dangerous are we actually prepared to make our world?”