Dr. Genevieve Guenther Profile picture
Jul 17, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
#ClimateChange may ground much of the aviation industry.

"There is no agreed-upon temperature at which planes start having trouble taking off. But 110 F is generally considered the threshold."

The irony of this is, of course, excruciating.

eenews.net/climatewire/20…
The mythological figure Icarus flew with wings of feathers and wax crafted by his father Daedalus, but when he got too close to the sun his wings melted and he plunged to his death in the sea.

The ancient Greeks had a myth for everything.

2/n
Breugel's painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" is also relevant. Note the man plowing in the foreground, totally oblivious to the fallen man in the lower righthand corner, whose legs are still visible above the waves. This is an allegory for business as usual.

2.5/n Image
More business as usual: the trade ship with its sails billowing out towards sea, totally ignoring and speeding away from the drowning man who they could easily save if they suspended their goal of profit-making and colonial exploration even just for a moment.

2.75/n Image
See also the man in the lower right-hand corner, doing his futile best to save Icarus by holding out a stick for the tragic man to grab.

Unbeknownst to him, he is shadowed by a vulture—a symbol for death, to be sure.

2.9/n Image
Bruegel wants us to ignore this man, the activist trying to save the man of hubris who thought he could fly. He wants us to ignore Icarus too.

The central figure, the allegory for the economy, is dressed in a vivid red, which grabs all the viewers attention.

2.99/n Image
We must fight every day to keep our & other people's attention on the #ClimateEmergency, vultures circling or not.

And one way to do that is to talk about the reasons you've given up flying as much as possible.

Here's @drvox on social signaling:



fin/

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More from @DoctorVive

May 1
So I was supposed to deliver the keynote at a @columbia symposium on climate and language this Friday, but I have informed the organizers that, with true sorrow, I am pulling out because I will not be associated with this university at this political moment.

1/n
This was not an easy decision. One of the challenges for climate communication is that #ClimateChange tends to get kicked off the agenda any time anything else happens — part of my mission is to try keep the climate emergency at the foreground of everyone's attention.

2/n
And this event is not a Climate School event: it is a meeting of an ivy-league consortium of foreign-language scholars, who just happen to be convening at Columbia this year — and not even on campus, but at Riverside Church off site.

3/n
Read 21 tweets
Apr 30
I want to say a more about this @SenWhitehouse @RepRaskin @SenateBudget finding, because it is so important to understand the underlying political dynamic.

This kind of collaboration—this normalization of fossil-fuel propaganda through supposedly objective institutions...

1/n
This normalization of fossil-fuel propaganda through supposedly objective institutions stands as one of the greatest barriers to phasing out fossil fuels.

2/n
Fossil-fuel ideologies get laundered as ivy-league research (selected and elevated by the ff companies themselves), then get filtered through lobbyists to Congress and through the news media to voters, with the result that...

3/n
Read 6 tweets
Mar 1
✨I've launched the @EndClimtSilence newsletter, where each week I'll raise a climate-comms issue & give researched advice on how to solve it.

Relevant to you? Click👇, scroll down, & subscribe!

Want more details? Here's a 🧵about the first post.



1/nendclimatesilence.org
This week’s recomendation is to avoid the phrase “reduce emissions” and to start using the phrase “phase out fossil fuels” in its place.

2/n
This advice has a great deal of research behind it, but its importance was highlighted for me this week, when I read a report released by Potential Energy with @YaleClimateComm.

This report really signals a contradiction at the heart of our current climate politics.

3/n
Read 21 tweets
Dec 22, 2023
One of the most powerful English professors of the past 40 years stole an argument I made in a seminar presentation, turning it into the core of his next book.

The week after my presentation, he came into the classroom and...

1/n
...and he read a conference paper he was going to deliver at the Shakespeare Association that month, re-articulating exactly what I had said about the same material the week before. The 15 or so grad students around the seminar table were dumbfounded. Jaws on the floor.

2/n
It was the classic Trumpy move: do something illegal, but be so blatant about it, trusting that your power gives you immunity, that somehow committing the criminal act manages to normalize it simultaneously.

3/n
Read 15 tweets
Oct 25, 2023
Today @WilliamJRipple et al released the 2023 report on the terrifying state of our #climate.

It should be read by every policymaker, decisionmaker, and journalist on the planet.

Here is a thread of some key takeaways.

1/n Image
"Unfortunately, time is up." Image
"The rapid pace of change has surprised scientists and caused concern about the dangers of extreme weather, risky climate feedback loops, and the approach of damaging tipping points sooner than expected."

3/n Image
Read 12 tweets
Oct 10, 2023
Here is fossil fuel companies' new defense in lawsuits accusing them of deceiving the public about climate change:

They perpetrated no deception, they say, because the "alleged impact of fossil fuel use on the global climate has been ‘open and obvious’ for decades."

1/n Image
They're calling us stupid, you know.

2/n
I really love the contradiction between the claim that the impact of fossil fuel use on the global climate is "open and obvious" and the adjective "alleged," in "alleged impact."

Talk about wanting to have it both ways! Is the impact obvious, or is it "alleged"?

3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets

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