By Adeline Johns-Putra/The Conversation

Every day brings fresh and ever more alarming news about the state of the global environment. To speak of mere “climate change” is inadequate now, for we are in a “climate emergency.” It seems as though we are tripping over more tipping points than we knew existed.
But our awareness is at last catching up with the planet’s climate catastrophes. Climate anxiety, climate trauma, and climate strikes are now all part of many people’s mental landscape and daily lives. This is almost four decades after scientists first began to warn of accelerated global warming from carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere.
And so, unsurprisingly, climate fiction, climate change fiction, “cli-fi” – whatever you want to call it – has emerged as a literary trend that’s gained astonishing traction over the past 10 years.

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Posted on December 17, 2019

By NASA

Earth has many stories to tell, even in the dark of night. Earth at Night, NASA’s new 200-page e-book, is now available online and includes more than 150 images of our planet in darkness as captured from space by Earth-observing satellites and astronauts on the International Space Station over the past 25 years.
The images reveal how human activity and natural phenomena light up the darkness around the world, depicting the intricate structure of cities, wildfires and volcanoes raging, auroras dancing across the polar skies, moonlight reflecting off snow and deserts, and other dramatic earthly scenes.

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Posted on December 11, 2019

By Bobby Duffy/The Conversation

The world is often better and getting better than people think. Murder rates, deaths from terrorism and extreme poverty are all down. Life expectancy, health and education levels are up. But, as I explore in my book Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything, people mostly think things are worse than they are and going downhill fast because of the natural tendency of humans to focus on negative stories and forget how bad the past was.
But there is one vital, even existential, exception: People still don’t realize how bad the world’s climate and natural environment have become. Misperceptions about climate change and the ecological crisis are all too clear from a new survey of Americans that tested their understanding of how far the problem has progressed in their lifetimes.

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Posted on December 9, 2019

By SIU Press

Editor’s Note: I use SIU Press materials quite often here in the Books section. I love the SIU Press. I find their output quite interesting; it makes for great Beachwood content. So I have no problem – at nobody’s behest but mine – giving them a little promotion here. As far as I’m concerned, this is editorial content. Consider it part of the Beachwood Holiday Guide, because I think you can find some great gifts here. – Steve Rhodes
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Posted on December 5, 2019

By Christie Aschwanden/Undark

Standing in a powerful pose increases your testosterone levels. Ten thousand hours of practice leads to mastery and high achievement. Eating out of large bowls encourages overeating. These are just a few examples of big ideas that have formed the basis of popular science books, only to be overturned by further research or a closer reading of the evidence.
“Pop psychology is sort of built on this idea of the one true thing,” says Amanda Cook, executive editor at Crown who has worked on many science books. “Good scientists treat the truth as provisional. They know that science is dynamic and the scientific method is going to lead them to new truths or a refinement of truth, but readers want the one true thing, and in pop psych that means the one true thing that will change their lives.”
It’s a tension that Stanford University psychologist Jamil Zaki attempts to address in his recent book, The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World. The book is written in the breezy, accessible style typical of pop science bestsellers, but Zaki concludes it with a twist: an appendix that rates the robustness of the claims he makes. The numerical rating system is his attempt to acknowledge that some ideas have more evidence to back them than others, and that some of them might turn out to be wrong. Zaki hopes his system might provide a model for other authors who want to avoid trading in hype.

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Posted on December 4, 2019