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Spending Christmas with ‘Dr. Doom’

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Tuesday, December 17, 2024

I was 11 years old the year my older stepsister brought her high school boyfriend home for the first time. It was Thanksgiving in 2006, and his Southern manners fit right in as we bantered between mouthfuls of cornbread stuffing, fried okra, and marshmallow-topped sweet potato casserole. Then, in the overstuffed lull before the desserts were served, my dad plunked his laptop in the center of the table. He opened it up and began clicking through a PowerPoint presentation chock full of data on ice sheet melt and global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.  My stepsister’s eyes grew wide with embarrassment. In an effort to welcome her sweetheart to the family, my dad had rolled out his version of a red carpet: one of his many family lectures on the horrors of climate change.  This wasn’t the first — or last — time my dad’s climate obsession took center stage at our family gatherings. On that particular occasion, he was doling out factoids about Arctic amplification — the prevalence of which was then a debate among climate scientists. It was just a warm-up to a typical holiday season spent quibbling over the ethics of farmed Christmas trees and openly scoffing at scientific inaccuracies during a movie theater showing of Happy Feet, the year’s seasonal offering about a dancing penguin named Mumble. A month later, on Christmas Eve, he forwarded me an email about how Santa Claus’ body would disintegrate if he were to travel through the atmosphere at the speeds necessary to meet his seasonal duties, adding a personal note: “Not to mention the emissions!” Over the years, these tendencies earned him the family nickname “Dr. Doom” — a nod to his university professor title and compulsive need to share terrifying facts about our warming world. My dad hammed it up, interrupting his own lamentations by hooting out, “We’re all gonna die!” in a cartoonish falsetto. More than anything, it was a term of endearment. After all, we knew other households that spent their holidays arguing over whether climate change was even real. Many of us know a Dr. Doom in our lives, or at the very least, a pessimist with a particular fixation. We each have our own ways of responding to it, such as my brother’s pragmatism, my stepmom’s knee-jerk optimism, my stepsister’s exasperation. Or, perhaps you are the doomer yourself.  I’m usually tempted to respond with, “I see hope in the next generation.” But doomerism — a label often used to describe climate defeatists — doesn’t typically leave room to talk about a better future. It’s a contagious kind of despair, often too credible to dismiss. Nowadays, my brother and I both work in climate-related fields, undeniably thanks to Dr. Doom’s influence. But growing up, it only took a few days of dad’s soapboxing before I’d tune out of anything climate-related until the New Year. This Christmas, as we once again prepare to pass around the cranberry sauce and discuss the end of the world, I can’t help but wonder how my dad became Dr. Doom. And in a world of rising doomerism, what influence do such tidings have on others? Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist My dad’s journey to becoming “Dr. Doom” started with his formal training as a tropical ecologist. Until the early 2000s, his work meant trudging through rainforests, studying photosynthesis while battling mosquitoes. Then, the wear of human activity on his surroundings became too much to bear. He switched gears and has since spent his career leap-frogging between climate education jobs — from director of an environmental science program at the University of Idaho to president of a small school in Maine, which, in 2012, he led to become the first college to divest fully from fossil fuels. Those entrenched in science, like my dad, seem to be especially susceptible to climate despair. That’s according to experts like Rebecca Weston, the co-executive director of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, a community of mental health professionals trained to address the emotional and psychological challenges emerging in our warming world. Many in scientific fields, Weston says, are first to document and review the data behind irreversible loss. The facts of the crisis are so dire that despair seems to be a hazard for many — scientists or not. After all, a study by researchers at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that some 7 percent of U.S. adults report potentially serious levels of psychological distress about climate change. Gale Sinatra, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education who studies how people learn about climate change, put it more simply: “Your dad’s problem is that he knows too much.” The issue only gets worse when the climate-informed try to share what they know. In a short-lived position in 2007 as science advisor to the Florida state government (back when then-Governor Charlie Crist would actually acknowledge “climate change”) my dad was silenced during a presentation to the Legislature. A report later said that the “awkward” situation arose when a Republican senator took issue with a discussion topic that “had not yet been accepted as fact.” According to my dad, the controversy stemmed from his decision to share the famous “hockey stick” graph, a data visual that shows that global average temperatures began spiking after human societies industrialized.   “We’re starting to understand it as moral injury,” said Kristan Childs, co-chair of a committee to support climate scientists with the Climate Psychology Alliance, referring to a psychological phenomenon that happens when people witness actions that violate their beliefs or damage their conscience. “They’ve been informing people for so long, and there’s just such a betrayal because people are not believing them, or are not doing enough to act on it.” Like many, my dad’s response to this was to get louder — and darker. There’s conflicting research on how different kinds of messaging can affect peoples’ behavior. Some studies show that those experiencing distress are also more active, while others say that emphasizing worst-case scenarios, like so-called climate “tipping points,” is an ineffective strategy that can overwhelm and demotivate audiences instead. It can also backfire on a personal level: Listeners of the podcast “This American Life” may be familiar with a story about a climate activist dad whose zeal led to his children cutting him out of their lives.  Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist As a journalist on the climate beat, I’ve interviewed dozens of self-described “doomers,” and yet I’ve found the term is a bit of a misnomer. While many fixate on the worst possible climate scenarios, they’re generally not quitters. As Childs put it, “I don’t know anyone who’s just given up on it all.” Instead, nearly all have dedicated their lives to addressing climate change. And they can’t help but evangelize, warning everybody within earshot of the ways the coming century could change their lives.  Throughout these interviews, I’m tacitly looking for any insight that might help my own Dr. Doom. (Recently, I accompanied my dad to a physical therapy appointment where, upon seeing a disposable blood pressure cuff, he attempted to regale his doctor with facts about the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the U.S. healthcare system.) Childs might just have one. She offers a 10-step program for professionals who work in science-oriented fields, affiliated with a larger collection of support groups offered by the Good Grief Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to processing emotions on climate change.  “The group work is powerful because it really, really helps dissolve the sense of isolation,” Childs said. As she spoke, I shifted uncomfortably, wondering how many times my teenage tendency to tune out or respond flippantly made my dad feel I was invalidating his concerns. The best place to start is often the hardest: acknowledging how bad the problem is. “It’s actually helpful to give people a place to share their biggest fears,” she said, adding that the typical workplace culture in scientific fields discourages expressing emotions. “Somehow some acceptance of how bad it is, and the fact that we can then still stay engaged, shifts the question to who we can be in these times.”   Weston agrees that entirely erasing climate anxiety isn’t realistic, especially as the effects of Earth’s changing atmosphere become more apparent and frightening. Instead, her group suggests reframing ideas of what having a meaningful impact looks like. “It depends on breaking through a kind of individualist understanding of achievement. It’s about facing something that will be resolved past our own lifetimes,” she said. My dad has spent his career chasing that elusive sense of fulfilment — never quite satisfied with the work he’s doing. But lately, he’s found a reason to stay put. In 2019, he returned to my hometown to teach climate change to undergraduates at the University of Florida. Now and again, I’ve wondered how these 18- to 22-year-olds, many of whom grew up in the increasingly red state, respond to his doomsaying. This year, while home around Thanksgiving, I sat in on his last lecture of the semester — a doozy on how economic systems can destroy natural resources. His students seemed completely at ease — chatting with him at the beginning of class, easily participating when he asked questions. I was already surprised. “He’s just sharing the facts,” one of his students told me, when I asked a group of them about his teaching style after the class.  Another quickly interjected: “He’s too dogmatic. It’s super depressing, it’s super doom.” Others nodded.  A third chimed in: “It helps me feel motivated.”  Later that week, while I was reporting a different story at a local climate event, both his former students and local activists flagged me down to say how much they appreciated my dad’s courses and op-eds in local newspapers.  “We need all sorts of climate communication. People are responsive to different messages,” said Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, the markedly anti-doomer author of What If We Get It Right?, a recent book that puts possibility at the center of climate action. In 2019, a Yale study on how people respond to different messaging tactics underscored this point — finding that “hope is not always good, and doubt is not always bad.” For Johnson, getting through the climate crisis starts with who you surround yourself with. “This is not solitary work. Individual changemakers are not really a thing,” she said. “We never know the ripples that we’re going to have.” Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist The Christmas stockings on the mantle at my dad’s house haven’t changed in years, but the dinner conversations have. Now, Instead of trying to brush aside Dr. Doom’s digressions, we lean in. Our evenings are spent butting heads over the recent climate optimism book, Not the End of the World, by data scientist Hannah Ritchie; swapping notes on heat pumps; and debating how to make the most of used-EV tax credits. My baby nephew, Auggie, the latest generation to be saddled with our hopes and fears, brightens the room with his cooing at all manner of round fruits and toy trucks.  Between sips from warm mugs, my dad leans back in his chair and frowns at some news on his phone’s screen. “The wheels are really coming off the wagon, kids. Humanity faces an existential threat,” he says, to no one in particular. From the next room, my step mom calls, “The sky’s been falling since I met you, Stephen.” It’s hard not to smile. Who knows how many people my dad has influenced, or if he will ever feel satisfied with his mission. But as his doomy, gloomy self, he’s built a community and family that shares his values. At that moment, I find myself thinking of something Childs told me: “You cannot protect your kids from climate change. But you can protect them from being alone with climate change.”  In our changing world, these conversations feel like something to be thankful for.  This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Spending Christmas with ‘Dr. Doom’ on Dec 17, 2024.

How my climate-obsessed dad brought our family closer together.

I was 11 years old the year my older stepsister brought her high school boyfriend home for the first time. It was Thanksgiving in 2006, and his Southern manners fit right in as we bantered between mouthfuls of cornbread stuffing, fried okra, and marshmallow-topped sweet potato casserole. Then, in the overstuffed lull before the desserts were served, my dad plunked his laptop in the center of the table. He opened it up and began clicking through a PowerPoint presentation chock full of data on ice sheet melt and global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. 

My stepsister’s eyes grew wide with embarrassment. In an effort to welcome her sweetheart to the family, my dad had rolled out his version of a red carpet: one of his many family lectures on the horrors of climate change. 

This wasn’t the first — or last — time my dad’s climate obsession took center stage at our family gatherings. On that particular occasion, he was doling out factoids about Arctic amplification — the prevalence of which was then a debate among climate scientists. It was just a warm-up to a typical holiday season spent quibbling over the ethics of farmed Christmas trees and openly scoffing at scientific inaccuracies during a movie theater showing of Happy Feet, the year’s seasonal offering about a dancing penguin named Mumble. A month later, on Christmas Eve, he forwarded me an email about how Santa Claus’ body would disintegrate if he were to travel through the atmosphere at the speeds necessary to meet his seasonal duties, adding a personal note: “Not to mention the emissions!”

Over the years, these tendencies earned him the family nickname “Dr. Doom” — a nod to his university professor title and compulsive need to share terrifying facts about our warming world. My dad hammed it up, interrupting his own lamentations by hooting out, “We’re all gonna die!” in a cartoonish falsetto. More than anything, it was a term of endearment. After all, we knew other households that spent their holidays arguing over whether climate change was even real.

Many of us know a Dr. Doom in our lives, or at the very least, a pessimist with a particular fixation. We each have our own ways of responding to it, such as my brother’s pragmatism, my stepmom’s knee-jerk optimism, my stepsister’s exasperation. Or, perhaps you are the doomer yourself. 

I’m usually tempted to respond with, “I see hope in the next generation.” But doomerism — a label often used to describe climate defeatists — doesn’t typically leave room to talk about a better future. It’s a contagious kind of despair, often too credible to dismiss. Nowadays, my brother and I both work in climate-related fields, undeniably thanks to Dr. Doom’s influence. But growing up, it only took a few days of dad’s soapboxing before I’d tune out of anything climate-related until the New Year.

This Christmas, as we once again prepare to pass around the cranberry sauce and discuss the end of the world, I can’t help but wonder how my dad became Dr. Doom. And in a world of rising doomerism, what influence do such tidings have on others?

an illustration of a burning earth ornament on a fir branch
Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist

My dad’s journey to becoming “Dr. Doom” started with his formal training as a tropical ecologist. Until the early 2000s, his work meant trudging through rainforests, studying photosynthesis while battling mosquitoes. Then, the wear of human activity on his surroundings became too much to bear. He switched gears and has since spent his career leap-frogging between climate education jobs — from director of an environmental science program at the University of Idaho to president of a small school in Maine, which, in 2012, he led to become the first college to divest fully from fossil fuels.

Those entrenched in science, like my dad, seem to be especially susceptible to climate despair. That’s according to experts like Rebecca Weston, the co-executive director of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, a community of mental health professionals trained to address the emotional and psychological challenges emerging in our warming world. Many in scientific fields, Weston says, are first to document and review the data behind irreversible loss.

The facts of the crisis are so dire that despair seems to be a hazard for many — scientists or not. After all, a study by researchers at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that some 7 percent of U.S. adults report potentially serious levels of psychological distress about climate change. Gale Sinatra, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education who studies how people learn about climate change, put it more simply: “Your dad’s problem is that he knows too much.”

The issue only gets worse when the climate-informed try to share what they know. In a short-lived position in 2007 as science advisor to the Florida state government (back when then-Governor Charlie Crist would actually acknowledge “climate change”) my dad was silenced during a presentation to the Legislature. A report later said that the “awkward” situation arose when a Republican senator took issue with a discussion topic that “had not yet been accepted as fact.” According to my dad, the controversy stemmed from his decision to share the famous “hockey stick” graph, a data visual that shows that global average temperatures began spiking after human societies industrialized.  

“We’re starting to understand it as moral injury,” said Kristan Childs, co-chair of a committee to support climate scientists with the Climate Psychology Alliance, referring to a psychological phenomenon that happens when people witness actions that violate their beliefs or damage their conscience. “They’ve been informing people for so long, and there’s just such a betrayal because people are not believing them, or are not doing enough to act on it.”

Like many, my dad’s response to this was to get louder — and darker. There’s conflicting research on how different kinds of messaging can affect peoples’ behavior. Some studies show that those experiencing distress are also more active, while others say that emphasizing worst-case scenarios, like so-called climate “tipping points,” is an ineffective strategy that can overwhelm and demotivate audiences instead. It can also backfire on a personal level: Listeners of the podcast “This American Life” may be familiar with a story about a climate activist dad whose zeal led to his children cutting him out of their lives

an illustration of a melting snowman on a fir branch
Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist

As a journalist on the climate beat, I’ve interviewed dozens of self-described “doomers,” and yet I’ve found the term is a bit of a misnomer. While many fixate on the worst possible climate scenarios, they’re generally not quitters. As Childs put it, “I don’t know anyone who’s just given up on it all.” Instead, nearly all have dedicated their lives to addressing climate change. And they can’t help but evangelize, warning everybody within earshot of the ways the coming century could change their lives. 

Throughout these interviews, I’m tacitly looking for any insight that might help my own Dr. Doom. (Recently, I accompanied my dad to a physical therapy appointment where, upon seeing a disposable blood pressure cuff, he attempted to regale his doctor with facts about the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the U.S. healthcare system.) Childs might just have one. She offers a 10-step program for professionals who work in science-oriented fields, affiliated with a larger collection of support groups offered by the Good Grief Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to processing emotions on climate change. 

“The group work is powerful because it really, really helps dissolve the sense of isolation,” Childs said. As she spoke, I shifted uncomfortably, wondering how many times my teenage tendency to tune out or respond flippantly made my dad feel I was invalidating his concerns.

The best place to start is often the hardest: acknowledging how bad the problem is. “It’s actually helpful to give people a place to share their biggest fears,” she said, adding that the typical workplace culture in scientific fields discourages expressing emotions. “Somehow some acceptance of how bad it is, and the fact that we can then still stay engaged, shifts the question to who we can be in these times.”  

Weston agrees that entirely erasing climate anxiety isn’t realistic, especially as the effects of Earth’s changing atmosphere become more apparent and frightening. Instead, her group suggests reframing ideas of what having a meaningful impact looks like. “It depends on breaking through a kind of individualist understanding of achievement. It’s about facing something that will be resolved past our own lifetimes,” she said.

My dad has spent his career chasing that elusive sense of fulfilment — never quite satisfied with the work he’s doing. But lately, he’s found a reason to stay put. In 2019, he returned to my hometown to teach climate change to undergraduates at the University of Florida. Now and again, I’ve wondered how these 18- to 22-year-olds, many of whom grew up in the increasingly red state, respond to his doomsaying. This year, while home around Thanksgiving, I sat in on his last lecture of the semester — a doozy on how economic systems can destroy natural resources. His students seemed completely at ease — chatting with him at the beginning of class, easily participating when he asked questions. I was already surprised.

“He’s just sharing the facts,” one of his students told me, when I asked a group of them about his teaching style after the class. 

Another quickly interjected: “He’s too dogmatic. It’s super depressing, it’s super doom.” Others nodded. 

A third chimed in: “It helps me feel motivated.” 

Later that week, while I was reporting a different story at a local climate event, both his former students and local activists flagged me down to say how much they appreciated my dad’s courses and op-eds in local newspapers. 

“We need all sorts of climate communication. People are responsive to different messages,” said Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, the markedly anti-doomer author of What If We Get It Right?, a recent book that puts possibility at the center of climate action. In 2019, a Yale study on how people respond to different messaging tactics underscored this point — finding that “hope is not always good, and doubt is not always bad.”

For Johnson, getting through the climate crisis starts with who you surround yourself with. “This is not solitary work. Individual changemakers are not really a thing,” she said. “We never know the ripples that we’re going to have.”

An illustration of stars on a fir branch
Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist

The Christmas stockings on the mantle at my dad’s house haven’t changed in years, but the dinner conversations have. Now, Instead of trying to brush aside Dr. Doom’s digressions, we lean in. Our evenings are spent butting heads over the recent climate optimism book, Not the End of the World, by data scientist Hannah Ritchie; swapping notes on heat pumps; and debating how to make the most of used-EV tax credits. My baby nephew, Auggie, the latest generation to be saddled with our hopes and fears, brightens the room with his cooing at all manner of round fruits and toy trucks. 

Between sips from warm mugs, my dad leans back in his chair and frowns at some news on his phone’s screen. “The wheels are really coming off the wagon, kids. Humanity faces an existential threat,” he says, to no one in particular. From the next room, my step mom calls, “The sky’s been falling since I met you, Stephen.”

It’s hard not to smile. Who knows how many people my dad has influenced, or if he will ever feel satisfied with his mission. But as his doomy, gloomy self, he’s built a community and family that shares his values. At that moment, I find myself thinking of something Childs told me: “You cannot protect your kids from climate change. But you can protect them from being alone with climate change.” 

In our changing world, these conversations feel like something to be thankful for. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Spending Christmas with ‘Dr. Doom’ on Dec 17, 2024.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Under a Coalition government, the fate of Australia’s central climate policy hangs in the balance

Both major parties agree Australia must reach net-zero emissions. That’s why winding back the safeguard mechanism would be reckless policy.

RobynCharnley/ShutterstockThe future of Australia’s key climate policy is uncertain after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said a Coalition government would review the measure, known as the “safeguard mechanism”, which is designed to limit emissions from Australia’s largest industrial polluters. According to the Australian Financial Review, if the Coalition wins office it will consider relaxing the policy, as part of its plan to increase domestic gas supplies. Evidence suggests weakening the mechanism would be a mistake. In fact, it could be argued the policy does not go far enough to force polluting companies to curb their emissions. Both major parties now accept Australia must reach net-zero emissions by 2050. This bipartisan agreement should make one thing clear: winding back the safeguard mechanism would be reckless policy. What’s the safeguard mechanism again? The safeguard mechanism began under the Coalition government in 2016. It now applies to 219 large polluting facilities that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. These facilities are in sectors such as electricity, mining, gas, manufacturing, waste and transport. Together, they produce just under one-third of Australia’s emissions. Under the policy’s original design, companies were purportedly required to keep their emissions below a certain cap, and buy carbon credits to offset any emissions over the cap. However, loopholes meant the cap was weakly enforced. This meant greenhouse gas pollution from the facilities actually increased – rising from 131.3 million tonnes to 138.7 million tonnes in the first six years of the policy. Labor strengthened the safeguard mechanism after it won office, by setting a hard cap for industrial emissions. The Coalition voted against the reforms. Dutton has since labelled the safeguard mechanism a “carbon tax” – a claim that has been debunked. Some members of the Coalition reportedly believe the policy makes manufacturers globally uncompetitive. Now, according to media reports, a Coalition government would review the safeguard mechanism with a view to weakening it, in a bid to bolster business and increase gas supply. Why the safeguard mechanism should be left alone Weakening the safeguard mechanism would lead to several problems. First, it would mean large facilities, including new coal and gas projects, would be permitted to operate without meaningful limits on their pollution. This threatens Australia’s international climate obligations. Second, if polluters were no longer required to buy carbon offsets, this would disrupt Australia’s carbon market. As the Clean Energy Regulator notes, the safeguard mechanism is the “dominant source” of demand for Australian carbon credits. In the first quarter of 2024, about 1.2 million carbon-credit units were purchased by parties wanting to offset their emissions. The vast majority were purchased by companies meeting compliance obligations under the safeguard mechanism or similar state rules. If companies are no longer required to buy offsets, or they buy fewer offsets, this would hurt those who sell carbon credits. Carbon credits are earned by organisations and individuals who abate carbon – through measures such as tree planting or retaining vegetation. The activities are often carried out by farmers and other landholders, including Indigenous organisations. Indigenous-led carbon projects have delivered jobs, cultural renewal and environmental benefits. The safeguard mechanism, together with the government pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, also provides certainty for the operators of polluting facilities. Many in the business sector have called for the policy to remain unchanged. And finally, winding back the safeguard mechanism would send a troubling signal to the world: that Australia is stepping back from climate action. Now is not the time to abdicate our responsibilities on climate change. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen dramatically since 1960. This increase is driving global warming and climate change, leading to extreme weather events which will only worsen. A hard-won policy The safeguard mechanism has not had time to deliver meaningful outcomes. And it is far from perfect – but it is hard-won, and Australia needs it. The 2023 reforms to the mechanism were designed to support trade-exposed industries, while encouraging companies to invest in emissions reduction. Undoing this mechanism would risk our climate goals. It would leave the government limited means to curb pollution from Australia’s largest emitters, and muddy the roadmap to net-zero. It would also create uncertainty for all carbon market participants, including the polluting facilities themselves. Felicity Deane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Why 50-Degree-F Days Feel Warmer in Spring Than in Fall

There are real, physiological reasons why the same temperature feels different in April and October

In the first few weeks of spring, a 50-degree-Fahrenheit (10-degree-Celsius) day might call for a light jacket or no jacket—or even short sleeves, depending on the person. But in the fall, the same weather might have you reaching for a parka.It’s not just in your head. The relative warmth of spring is physiological as well as psychological; after a long, biting winter, your body has changed in ways that can make 50 degrees F seem downright balmy.“I fully experience this on a regular basis with my work,” says Cara Ocobock, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, who studies how the human body adapts to cold. Her work often takes her to Finland, where she studies populations of reindeer herders who spend lots of time in extreme cold.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“The human body is very good at acclimatizing to different environmental situations that are not permanent—and the changes that your body experiences during this time also aren’t permanent,” she says. Some of these changes involve a heat-generating organ that was only recently discovered in adults.Scientific American spoke with Ocobock to learn more about the changes our bodies undergo during winter—including to that strange, newfound organ—and how these changes affect us when the winter chill finally gives way to the warmth of spring.Have you personally experienced this “50 degrees feels warm” phenomenon?Yes, I have a story from my last trip to Finland. I was 300 kilometers [185 miles] north of the Arctic Circle during what should have been the coldest time of the year. There were maybe four or five days where it didn’t get above –20 degrees Fahrenheit [–29 degrees Celsius]. But then five days later, it was in the positive 40s Fahrenheit [or five to 10 degrees C], which should not exist that far north that time of year. After those days of extreme cold, I started sweating [when it went] above freezing. I wouldn’t even wear a coat. My body just kind of reversed course—like, “We need to cool you down; this is not what we have been used to.”How quickly do these physiological changes happen when someone is exposed to more extreme temperatures?There’s always going to be individual and populational variation, but we see the changes start happening pretty quickly. It can start within 24 hours, but they don’t fully set in for about seven to 10 days. You will maintain those changes until you go and switch environments again, and then you’ll lose your acclimatization. This can be to heat, cold, humidity, dryness or high altitude as well. For example, when I [returned to sea level from] field work in the Rocky Mountains, I was able to do two full lengths of an Olympic swimming pool without breathing. Within two weeks, that was gone.So how do our bodies change when we are exposed to cold weather?There’s a constant balancing of several different systems going on here. One of the quick changes is an increase in your resting metabolic rate—the baseline number of calories your body burns in order to survive. Your body is kind of increasing its own thermostat to produce more heat because you are losing more heat to the environment.We also see changes in the way your blood vessels [tighten or expand] to respond to the cold. In the cold, [vessels constrict to] reduce how much blood is flowing through and the heat that can potentially be lost to the environment. And when you’re cold, blood will be shunted more to the deep blood vessels that are further away from the surface, whereas in a hot climate, the opposite happens.We also see and increase in brown adipose tissue activity—this is an active area of research. “Brown fat,” as we call it colloquially, is a type of fat that burns only to keep you warm during acute cold exposure. In adult humans, it’s located [just above your clavicles], as well as along your major deep blood vessels. This organ, and we do consider it kind of its own organ, uses energy to produce heat—not energy to [activate your muscles] to go run a mile or anything like that. We used to think that human adults never have brown fat. We knew that babies have it [for the first few months of life], but we thought that once they burned through it, that was it. But we are now seeing brown adipose tissue everywhere we look in adult human populations.How is brown fat different from regular fat?Brown adipose tissue is very, very rich in mitochondria. Instead of being the powerhouse of the cell, those mitochondria are the furnace. It basically short-circuits the typical process so that this tissue produces heat rather than energy.In adults, to date, we have seen brown fat in populations in Russia and Finland—cold climates, which makes sense. We’ve seen it in Albany, N.Y.—temperate climate but cold winters. And we’ve also seen it in Samoa—a tropical island climate. So we’re beginning to think that brown adipose tissue might be a very deeply ancient tissue and that it could have been around in our evolutionary history for a very long time.How does brown fat activity change during cold seasons?One study on seasonal changes in brown adipose tissue [was] conducted by my former graduate student, Alexandra Niclou. She looked at seasonal variation in a brown adipose tissue among folks in Albany. She found that people were able to maintain higher body temperatures from brown fat in the winter but at a reduced caloric cost. And so it seemed the brown fat actually got more efficient the more it was being used to maintain body temperature in the winter. So there does seem to be a physiological difference in how brown fat is responding between the seasons. I’m going back to Finland this spring [to measure this further] among reindeer herders and indoor workers.Given all of those factors, what do you think is happening to our bodies on that first “warm” spring day?In the winter, you’re going to have an increase in resting metabolism. You might see an increase in your brown adipose tissue activity in order to keep you warm. Then all of a sudden it’s 50 degrees Fahrenheit outside, but your resting metabolic rate is still going to be higher, [and your brown fat might be more active], which means your body is producing more heat than it typically would have been. That’s probably why you feel like it’s way warmer out and start sweating. That acclimatization process is going to take a week or more to get you used to this new, warmer temperature setting.There’s also a developmental aspect of this—where you grew up likely has a massive, massive impact on how your body responds to different extremes and changes in seasonal temperatures. I’m a college professor [in Indiana], and walking around campus this time of year, you can tell the kids from the East Coast and the Midwest versus those from the South and the West Coast [by who is wearing] short T-shirts and sandals when it’s, like, 50 degrees and [who is] still in puff jackets. It always cracks me up. And we might actually see happening with brown adipose tissue as well—that the more you are exposed to cold during critical developmental periods as a child, the more active and responsive your brown adipose tissue may be as an adult.Do these seasonal changes still impact you if you spend most of the winter indoors?They are definitely still impacting you. It might not be as much, obviously, and this is part of what we’re doing with our work in Finland with reindeer herders, who spend more time outside in the extreme cold, and indoor office workers in the same region. But because you still go outside, you still experience acute cold, [even if it’s not] for hours and hours on end.Why is it important to understand how our bodies acclimatize to extreme temperatures?Understanding how bodies rapidly respond [to changes in temperature] is going to be even more important in the face of climate change, when we have highly and dramatically variable environments —where you get ice storms in Texas, for example. [Helping people acclimatize via what we know about] biology, behavior and technology is going to be critical, I think, because no matter what, our bodies are going to be physiologically limited in coping with both extreme cold and extreme heat. Our bodies are not limitless, so we have [to adjust our] behavior and turn to technology to make up for what our bodies can’t do.

The Psychological Effects of Climate Change: The Scientific Explanations — and Solutions That Can Empower Your Mind

Our minds can flip the script on climate change. Here are ways to reframe our perceptions and make us more resilient and empowered. The post The Psychological Effects of Climate Change: The Scientific Explanations — and Solutions That Can Empower Your Mind appeared first on The Revelator.

Are environmental and climate change problems overwhelming you? As psychologists my colleagues and I increasingly see the psychological and physiological effects of climate stress on our clients. These effects — including “fear of the unknown,” instability, catastrophizing, financial insecurity, and biophysiological alterations due to unseasonal weather events — create an ominous feeling of chaos, adversely affecting people’s emotional and mental equilibrium and making it hard to focus on clear actions, solutions, and effective pathways to fighting back climate confusion. This can leave us feeling deeply uneasy about the future. How can we cope with these feelings of overwhelming apprehension or hopelessness? As individuals we can’t take on the world — that’s an impossible task. So do we just turn away and give up? Of course not. Instead let’s look at more productive approaches to applying the brakes when anxiety, nihilism, and emotional shutdown leave us stuck in place. There’s a new and growing field in psychology focused on addressing the increasing burdens on our psyches due to climate chaos. Climate psychology addresses the emotional, mental, and sociological processes that contribute to the climate crisis, and human responses and adaptations to that can make positive, proactive, and productive solutions to climate-change events. As I’ve seen with my clients, friends, family, and community, the effects of climate change on mental and emotional wellbeing require a fresh approach to this lived experience challenge. For many people the first step to addressing this psychological crisis starts in our own minds. Psychologically this is known as “taking back the power”: Choose to do something — something that will empower you, energize you, and heal the trauma of climate insecurity, ignorance, and willful destruction by the rich and powerful. Before we do that, though, it helps to understand the psychological and physiological damage we’re trying to heal. “Where Did the World I Used to Know Go?” The word “solastalgia” describes the emotion of longing for a natural world that no longer exists. You’ve probably experienced this: The ongoing disruption of seasonal weather’s traditional timing makes us feel deeply disoriented, moody, depressed, confused, irritable, and uneasy on a subconscious level as our bodies’ biological, mind-affecting chemicals become unbalanced — much like what’s happening to our planet. There are biochemical reasons for these emotions caused by climate disruption. Climate trauma causes remarkable physiological — and therefore psychological — alterations to human biochemistry that significantly alter brain chemistry, leading to dysregulation of neurotransmitters and hormones like cortisol, norepinephrine, and dopamine. This adversely affects normal stress response, memory, and emotional regulation. Physiologically, increased heat and climate instability can even accelerate the aging process, new research suggests. Examples of events that disorient and alter our minds include: Plants bloom too early for the wildlife that depend on them, pushing them out of synch with the natural system. Salt and freshwater wildlife migrate with warmer temperatures, disrupting our food systems. Wildlife and plants become infected with disease or poisoned due to algae blooms or poisonous flood runoff. Drought causes water insecurity, increases costs, and threatens livelihoods. The loss of slow “transitional seasons” like spring and autumn causes deep temperature swings — and mood swings. Warmer climates mean invasive species, whether planted by humans or caused by “species creep” out of inhospitable climates. Diseases kill wildlife who historically have kept disease-carrying pest populations down. These disruptions alter our behavior and affect some of our most significant life choices. Climate Change Affects Life’s Biggest Decisions People are now questioning important life decisions under an uncertain climate context. Should we have children? Should we buy a home? Where should we live? Can we afford children and a home mortgage? Will there be food and clean water? How secure is my job? This is the psychological trauma and uncertainty of displacement, which leaves us feeling trapped, without agency or control. We can’t look into a crystal ball and see the future, but climate anxiety and resource insecurity create a very difficult, confusing decision-making process when planning family, home, job, and community. The increasingly likely threats of displacement — loss of life and health, region, or country — are highly stressful and traumatic because they’re unpredictable. Globally we see the increasing geographical relocation of individuals, cultures, and communities. Leaving behind generations of the family sense of “home” is highly traumatic as entire cultures must relocate due to resource insecurities caused by drought, floods, invasive species, or the extinction of native species. These insecurities cause extreme and enduring stress. A few examples include the rising cost or unavailability of insurance for disasters, community dissolution, loss of a “home” or place, and friends and family scattering to new geographic locations because of better opportunities there. Globally these events affect local, federal, and international government and political decision-making. Huge migrations of wildlife and humans to other geographical locations upset existing populations, which causes perceived cultural threats, so emigrants are demonized, segregated, and violence erupts, destabilizing societies and governments. All of this creates a universal sense of helplessness: “There’s nothing I can do, so why bother?” Take Back Your Power: Try This Psychology 101 Exercise Exercise 1. Spend an hour enviro-dooming online. It’s easy. Go for it with gusto: Furiously repost the bad things, “like,” and share — send the doom to all your groups and friends. The algorithms and AI will direct you to every negative environmental disaster online, because the scientists hired by Big Tech know what excites your brain chemicals and tickles your brain’s pleasure centers. It’s based on addiction science: Create exciting content, keep supplying more stimulation and agitation. Big Tech is a drug dealer for negative, aggressive, pleasurable chemicals. You’ll always get a fix, because Big Tech algorithms and AI now know your mind — and offers your brain maladaptive chemical and behavioral solutions. Now stop and check yourself. Scan your mind and body. How do you feel? Exercise 2: Turn off all your electronics. Get up and go for a walk, stroll into town and see what’s happening. Art shows? Community events? Farmers markets? What’s new at the library and community center? Is there a park to kick back and enjoy nature? Smile and be nice to strangers and shop clerks, open a door for someone, help someone with directions, or help an elderly or disabled person reach that can of corn on the top shelf. Research shows that when we smile and act nice to strangers, we get a burst of serotonin and other happiness chemicals in our brains. And the people we help do too. It’s contagious. Now how do you feel? We can all take advantage of that reset. Whether we’re talking about climate change, civil rights, politics, or anything else, you control the mediums you expose yourself to. Use your critical thinking, set limits and boundaries, resist the manipulation of media. It takes some practice to resist bad habits. But we can do it. Let’s reframe your relationship with the world in its current health. Start with your mindset, then, using what you discovered above, branch out into your community. Get involved with others around you and you’ll soon find yourself making small local changes, then bigger ones as your positive engagement ripples outward to others. See how those positive brain chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins — which play crucial roles in regulating mood, promoting well-being, and fostering feelings of pleasure and satisfaction — are radiating out to others, and the world. Be kind to yourself. It all starts with you. Scroll down to find our “Republish” button Previously in The Revelator: Why Climate Grief Is an Essential for Climate Action The post The Psychological Effects of Climate Change: The Scientific Explanations — and Solutions That Can Empower Your Mind appeared first on The Revelator.

Scientists Shielding Farming From Climate Change Need More Public Funding. but They're Getting Less

Public funding for agricultural research in the U.S. has been declining for the last two decades, a process Trump has rapidly accelerated by freezing or pausing support for a variety of research programs financed by the USDA, EPA and other organizations

Erin McGuire spent years cultivating fruits and vegetables like onions, peppers and tomatoes as a scientist and later director of a lab at the University of California-Davis. She collaborated with hundreds of people to breed drought-resistant varieties, develop new ways to cool fresh produce and find ways to make more money for small farmers at home and overseas.Then the funding stopped. Her lab, and by extension many of its overseas partners, were backed financially by the United States Agency for International Development, which Trump's administration has been dismantling for the past several weeks. Just before it was time to collect data that had been two years in the making, her team received a stop work order. She had to lay off her whole team. Soon she was laid off, too.“It’s really just been devastating,” she said. “I don’t know how you come back from this.”The U.S. needs more publicly funded research and development on agriculture to offset the effects of climate change, according to a paper out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this month. But instead the U.S. has been investing less. United States Department of Agriculture data shows that as of 2019, the U.S. spent about a third less on agricultural research than its peak in 2002, a difference of about $2 billion. The recent pauses and freezes to funding for research on climate change and international development are only adding to the drop. It’s a serious issue for farmers who depend on new innovations to keep their businesses afloat, the next generation of scientists and eventually for consumers who buy food.“This is terrible news for the U.S. agricultural sector,” said Cornell associate professor Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, the lead author of the paper. Trump administration hastens funding cuts As the Trump administration pauses and shutters research programs funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, USDA and other agencies, Ortiz-Bobea and other experts have seen field trials stopped, postdoctoral positions eliminated and a looming gap forming between the reality of climate change and the tools farmers have to deal with it.The EPA declined to comment, and the USDA and USAID did not respond to Associated Press queries.Ortiz-Bobea and his team quantified overall U.S. agricultural productivity, estimated how much it would be slowed by climate change in coming years and calculated how much money would need to be invested in research and development to counteract that slowdown.Think of it like riding a bike into a headwind, Ortiz-Bobea said. To maintain the same speed, you have to pedal harder; in this case, R&D can be that extra push.Some countries are heading that direction. China spends almost twice as much as the U.S. on agricultural research, and has increased its research investments by five times since 2000, wrote Omanjana Goswami, a scientist with the Food and Environment team at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in an email.Spending cutbacks have also shuttered agricultural research across almost all of the Feed the Future Innovation Labs, of which McGuire's was one. Those 17 labs across 13 universities focused on food security, technical agriculture research, policy and various aspects of climate change. The stop-work orders at those labs not only disappointed researchers, but made useless much of their work.“There are many, many millions of dollars of expenditure that will generate nothing now because the work couldn’t be finished,” said David Tschirley, a professor who had been directing another one of those programs, the Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research, Capacity and Influence at Michigan State University, since 2019. Finding new funding for agricultural research Some researchers hope that other sources of funding can fill the gaps: “That’s where private sector could really step up,” said Swati Hegde, a scientist in the Food, Land, and Water Program at the World Resources Institute.From an agricultural point of view, climate change is “really scary,” with larger and larger regions exposed to temperatures above healthy growing conditions for many crops, said Bill Anderson, CEO of Bayer, a multinational biotechnology and pharmaceutical company that invested nearly $3 billion in agricultural research and development last year. But private companies have their own constraints on R&D investment, and he said Bayer can't invest as much as it would like in that area. “I don’t think that private industry can replicate" how federal funding typically supports early stage, speculative science, he said, “because the economics don't really work.” He added that industry tends to be better suited to back ideas that have already been validated. Goswami, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, also expressed concerns that private research funding isn't as trackable and transparent as public funding. And others said even sizeable investments from companies don't give anywhere near enough money to match government funding. Researchers, farmers and consumers feel the fallout The full impact may not be apparent for many years, and the damage won't easily be repaired. Experts think it will be a blow in other countries where climate change is already decimating yields, driving hunger and conflict. “I really worry that if we don’t really look at the global food situation, we will have a disaster,” said David Zilberman, a professor at UC Berkeley who won a Wolf Prize in 2019 for his work on agriculture.But even domestically, experts say one thing is almost certain: this will mean even higher prices at the grocery store now and in the future.“More people on the Earth, you need more productivity to prevent food prices going crazy,” said Tom Hertel, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. Even if nothing changes right away, he thinks “10 years from now, 20 years from now, our yield growth will surely be stunted” by cuts to research on agricultural productivity.Many scientists said the wound isn’t just professional but personal. “People are very demoralized,” especially younger researchers who don’t have tenure and want to work on international food research, said Zilberman.Now those dreams are on hold for many. In carefully tended research plots, weeds begin to grow.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

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