#vsi — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #vsi, aggregated by home.social.
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As warming forces this line northward, vast territories inside the physical Arctic Circle are ecologically transforming into sub-Arctic zones. On the ground, this manifests as shrubification, where the treeless tundra is overtaken as the boreal forest marches northward. -
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As warming forces this line northward, vast territories inside the physical Arctic Circle are ecologically transforming into sub-Arctic zones. On the ground, this manifests as shrubification, where the treeless tundra is overtaken as the boreal forest marches northward. -
5/
As warming forces this line northward, vast territories inside the physical Arctic Circle are ecologically transforming into sub-Arctic zones. On the ground, this manifests as shrubification, where the treeless tundra is overtaken as the boreal forest marches northward. -
5/
As warming forces this line northward, vast territories inside the physical Arctic Circle are ecologically transforming into sub-Arctic zones. On the ground, this manifests as shrubification, where the treeless tundra is overtaken as the boreal forest marches northward. -
5/
As warming forces this line northward, vast territories inside the physical Arctic Circle are ecologically transforming into sub-Arctic zones. On the ground, this manifests as shrubification, where the treeless tundra is overtaken as the boreal forest marches northward. -
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1. The Shrinking BoundaryWhile the Arctic Circle remains a fixed astronomical boundary at 66.5° N, the ecological Arctic is retreating.
Climatologists define the true Arctic using the 10°C July isotherm—the thermal line where average summer temperatures stay at or below 10°C.
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1. The Shrinking BoundaryWhile the Arctic Circle remains a fixed astronomical boundary at 66.5° N, the ecological Arctic is retreating.
Climatologists define the true Arctic using the 10°C July isotherm—the thermal line where average summer temperatures stay at or below 10°C.
-
4/
1. The Shrinking BoundaryWhile the Arctic Circle remains a fixed astronomical boundary at 66.5° N, the ecological Arctic is retreating.
Climatologists define the true Arctic using the 10°C July isotherm—the thermal line where average summer temperatures stay at or below 10°C.
-
4/
1. The Shrinking BoundaryWhile the Arctic Circle remains a fixed astronomical boundary at 66.5° N, the ecological Arctic is retreating.
Climatologists define the true Arctic using the 10°C July isotherm—the thermal line where average summer temperatures stay at or below 10°C.
-
4/
1. The Shrinking BoundaryWhile the Arctic Circle remains a fixed astronomical boundary at 66.5° N, the ecological Arctic is retreating.
Climatologists define the true Arctic using the 10°C July isotherm—the thermal line where average summer temperatures stay at or below 10°C.
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• Summer lightning strikes are 10 times more frequent than a decade ago.
Driven by Arctic amplification, highly reflective sea ice is lost and replaced by dark, heat-absorbing ocean water. Consequently, the Arctic warms at least twice as fast as the global average, with hotspots like the Barents and Kara Seas warming three to four times faster. -
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Staggering climate data underscores this transformation:• In June 2020, Verkhoyansk recorded 38°C (104.4°F)—a 100-degree Fahrenheit heat wave inside the Arctic Circle.
• Rain is actively replacing snow across the region.
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THE ARCTIC - BEYOND THE ICE
The Arctic is transforming from an impenetrable ice barrier into a dynamic, contested frontier due to human-induced climate change. A lone polar bear on a shrinking ice floe represents the literal evaporation of the traditional Arctic, rewriting the rules of geography, biology, and global trade.
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The goal of the lecture is to unpack the biological, evolutionary, and psychological architecture behind this phenomenon, using clinical insights from texts like Anxiety: A Very Short Introduction, an essay titled The Mean Reds and the Amygdala, and various visual case studies. -
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Chapter Breakdown:• Introduction & Chapter 1: The High Wire of Anxiety — Featuring Minka’s High-Wire Act. The psychological vertigo of adolescent anxiety, capturing the state where foundational stability has been pulled right out from under your feet.
#anxiety
#photojournalism
#photography
#video
#Australia
#VSI
#adolescence -
2\
Chapter Breakdown:• Introduction & Chapter 1: The High Wire of Anxiety — Featuring Minka’s High-Wire Act. The psychological vertigo of adolescent anxiety, capturing the state where foundational stability has been pulled right out from under your feet.
#anxiety
#photojournalism
#photography
#video
#Australia
#VSI
#adolescence -
2\
Chapter Breakdown:• Introduction & Chapter 1: The High Wire of Anxiety — Featuring Minka’s High-Wire Act. The psychological vertigo of adolescent anxiety, capturing the state where foundational stability has been pulled right out from under your feet.
#anxiety
#photojournalism
#photography
#video
#Australia
#VSI
#adolescence -
2\
Chapter Breakdown:• Introduction & Chapter 1: The High Wire of Anxiety — Featuring Minka’s High-Wire Act. The psychological vertigo of adolescent anxiety, capturing the state where foundational stability has been pulled right out from under your feet.
#anxiety
#photojournalism
#photography
#video
#Australia
#VSI
#adolescence -
2\
Chapter Breakdown:• Introduction & Chapter 1: The High Wire of Anxiety — Featuring Minka’s High-Wire Act. The psychological vertigo of adolescent anxiety, capturing the state where foundational stability has been pulled right out from under your feet.
#anxiety
#photojournalism
#photography
#video
#Australia
#VSI
#adolescence -
THE REAL FACES OF ANXIETY
Moving beyond dry textbook definitions, this video essay uses the raw truth of photojournalism to explore anxiety as a visceral, physical, and environmental reality. By capturing moments of profound personal and systemic crisis, these images document what it truly means to live under siege.
#anxiety
#photojournalism
#photography
#video
#Australia
#VSI -
10/
2. The #Hydrosphere: All liquid water on the planet, including oceans, river networks, and groundwater aquifers. Acting as the planet's circulatory system, it transports heat from the equator to the poles and distributes nutrients.
3. The #Atmosphere: The thin envelope of moving gases wrapped around the planet. It regulates surface temperature via the greenhouse effect and protects life from cosmic radiation. -
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Structural Architecture: The 5 Spheres of Earth
Earth system scientists traditionally view the planet as a complex, interconnected machine composed of four interacting load-bearing components, or "spheres:"1. The #Lithosphere: The Earth's crust, solid rock, shifting tectonic plates, mountains, and ocean floors. It functions as a physical foundation and holds massive, slow-moving reservoirs of carbon and essential minerals.
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It returns humans to the center of the narrative, framing them not as passive biological sideshows, but as a dominant force of nature whose collective activities rival the physical power of shifting tectonic plates or devastating asteroids. -
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• The Anthropocene Shift:The core argument of the Anthropocene is that human activity has broken out of this environmental "Goldilocks zone." The lecture describes this realization as a "second Copernican revolution." While the first Copernican revolution hundreds of years ago displaced humans from the physical center of the universe to a small rock orbiting an ordinary star, the Anthropocene narrative flips this concept
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In contrast, the Holocene served as an abnormally stable 11,000-year interglacial period where global temperatures barely fluctuated. This narrow, predictable band of climate stability was the mandatory prerequisite for human history, allowing for the invention of agriculture, surplus food, cities, writing, and complex civilization.#Holocene
#Anthropocene
#VSI
#podcast
#lecture
#agriculture
#civilisation
#history -
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The Holocene vs. The Anthropocene• The Holocene Baseline: The Holocene is the geological epoch that officially characterized the last 11,700 years. Historically, Earth's deep past was marked by extreme volatility—wild swings between grinding ice ages and greenhouse "hot houses."
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During a session where environmental scientists repeatedly used the term "Holocene" as their baseline data, Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen interrupted the room, declaring, "Stop it. We are no longer in the Holocene. We are in the Anthropocene.". This outburst reflected a profound shift that scientists were beginning to observe in ice cores and atmospheric data.
https://youtu.be/un73L-jJgSE -
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Overview and Origin of the Term
The podcast centers on a deep dive into the concept of the Anthropocene, a term representing a new geological epoch driven by human activity. The term was famously thrust into the scientific lexicon during a conference in the year 2000 in Cuernavaca, Mexico. -
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This podcast traces the transition from a highly stable, predictable climate epoch to an unprecedented era where a single biological species acts as a dominant geological force. -
HOW HUMANS BECAME A GEOLOGICAL FORCE
The narrative of human history has traditionally been viewed as a series of social, political, and economic events occurring against a static environmental backdrop. However, modern Earth system science has revealed that human civilization has fundamentally altered the physical operating system of the planet.
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6. Where are we going? The Future of the Anthropos◦ The video concludes by questioning how humanity will use its newfound planetary power.
◦ It offers a hopeful perspective, noting that humans are aware of their impact and possess the agency to consciously shape a "good Anthropocene.
This brief explainer is based on the book The Anthropocene by Ellis Erle, Oxford UP, VSI 2018
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6. Where are we going? The Future of the Anthropos◦ The video concludes by questioning how humanity will use its newfound planetary power.
◦ It offers a hopeful perspective, noting that humans are aware of their impact and possess the agency to consciously shape a "good Anthropocene.
This brief explainer is based on the book The Anthropocene by Ellis Erle, Oxford UP, VSI 2018
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6. Where are we going? The Future of the Anthropos◦ The video concludes by questioning how humanity will use its newfound planetary power.
◦ It offers a hopeful perspective, noting that humans are aware of their impact and possess the agency to consciously shape a "good Anthropocene.
This brief explainer is based on the book The Anthropocene by Ellis Erle, Oxford UP, VSI 2018
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6. Where are we going? The Future of the Anthropos◦ The video concludes by questioning how humanity will use its newfound planetary power.
◦ It offers a hopeful perspective, noting that humans are aware of their impact and possess the agency to consciously shape a "good Anthropocene.
This brief explainer is based on the book The Anthropocene by Ellis Erle, Oxford UP, VSI 2018
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7/
6. Where are we going? The Future of the Anthropos◦ The video concludes by questioning how humanity will use its newfound planetary power.
◦ It offers a hopeful perspective, noting that humans are aware of their impact and possess the agency to consciously shape a "good Anthropocene.
This brief explainer is based on the book The Anthropocene by Ellis Erle, Oxford UP, VSI 2018
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5. The Scale of Human Mass: Weighing Our Impact◦ As of 2020, anthropogenic mass (human-made materials like concrete, bricks, and asphalt) hit 1,154 gigatons, officially outweighing all living biomass on Earth (1,120 gigatons).
◦ The video notes that every person on Earth effectively produces more than their body weight in human-made materials every week.
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5. The Scale of Human Mass: Weighing Our Impact◦ As of 2020, anthropogenic mass (human-made materials like concrete, bricks, and asphalt) hit 1,154 gigatons, officially outweighing all living biomass on Earth (1,120 gigatons).
◦ The video notes that every person on Earth effectively produces more than their body weight in human-made materials every week.
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6/
5. The Scale of Human Mass: Weighing Our Impact◦ As of 2020, anthropogenic mass (human-made materials like concrete, bricks, and asphalt) hit 1,154 gigatons, officially outweighing all living biomass on Earth (1,120 gigatons).
◦ The video notes that every person on Earth effectively produces more than their body weight in human-made materials every week.
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6/
5. The Scale of Human Mass: Weighing Our Impact◦ As of 2020, anthropogenic mass (human-made materials like concrete, bricks, and asphalt) hit 1,154 gigatons, officially outweighing all living biomass on Earth (1,120 gigatons).
◦ The video notes that every person on Earth effectively produces more than their body weight in human-made materials every week.
-
6/
5. The Scale of Human Mass: Weighing Our Impact◦ As of 2020, anthropogenic mass (human-made materials like concrete, bricks, and asphalt) hit 1,154 gigatons, officially outweighing all living biomass on Earth (1,120 gigatons).
◦ The video notes that every person on Earth effectively produces more than their body weight in human-made materials every week.
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4. Searching for the Golden Spike: The Geologic Proof◦ To formalize the epoch, geologists seek a "golden spike" (GSSP)—a physical marker appearing globally in the rock record at the same time.
◦ Candidates for this marker include plutonium-239 from nuclear testing (starting in 1945), synthetic plastics, soot from fossil fuels, and even the global spread of the broiler chicken.
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4. Searching for the Golden Spike: The Geologic Proof◦ To formalize the epoch, geologists seek a "golden spike" (GSSP)—a physical marker appearing globally in the rock record at the same time.
◦ Candidates for this marker include plutonium-239 from nuclear testing (starting in 1945), synthetic plastics, soot from fossil fuels, and even the global spread of the broiler chicken.
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4. Searching for the Golden Spike: The Geologic Proof◦ To formalize the epoch, geologists seek a "golden spike" (GSSP)—a physical marker appearing globally in the rock record at the same time.
◦ Candidates for this marker include plutonium-239 from nuclear testing (starting in 1945), synthetic plastics, soot from fossil fuels, and even the global spread of the broiler chicken.
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5/
4. Searching for the Golden Spike: The Geologic Proof◦ To formalize the epoch, geologists seek a "golden spike" (GSSP)—a physical marker appearing globally in the rock record at the same time.
◦ Candidates for this marker include plutonium-239 from nuclear testing (starting in 1945), synthetic plastics, soot from fossil fuels, and even the global spread of the broiler chicken.
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4. Searching for the Golden Spike: The Geologic Proof◦ To formalize the epoch, geologists seek a "golden spike" (GSSP)—a physical marker appearing globally in the rock record at the same time.
◦ Candidates for this marker include plutonium-239 from nuclear testing (starting in 1945), synthetic plastics, soot from fossil fuels, and even the global spread of the broiler chicken.
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3. The Great Acceleration: The Point of No Return
◦ While impacts built over millennia, a "violent, nonlinear break" occurred around 1950.
◦ Near-exponential jumps in population, GDP, and fertilizer consumption mirror spikes in CO2 concentrations and biosphere degradation.
◦ This has pushed the Earth into a "no-analog" state, where humans are effectively "flying blind". -
4/
3. The Great Acceleration: The Point of No Return
◦ While impacts built over millennia, a "violent, nonlinear break" occurred around 1950.
◦ Near-exponential jumps in population, GDP, and fertilizer consumption mirror spikes in CO2 concentrations and biosphere degradation.
◦ This has pushed the Earth into a "no-analog" state, where humans are effectively "flying blind". -
4/
3. The Great Acceleration: The Point of No Return
◦ While impacts built over millennia, a "violent, nonlinear break" occurred around 1950.
◦ Near-exponential jumps in population, GDP, and fertilizer consumption mirror spikes in CO2 concentrations and biosphere degradation.
◦ This has pushed the Earth into a "no-analog" state, where humans are effectively "flying blind". -
4/
3. The Great Acceleration: The Point of No Return
◦ While impacts built over millennia, a "violent, nonlinear break" occurred around 1950.
◦ Near-exponential jumps in population, GDP, and fertilizer consumption mirror spikes in CO2 concentrations and biosphere degradation.
◦ This has pushed the Earth into a "no-analog" state, where humans are effectively "flying blind". -
4/
3. The Great Acceleration: The Point of No Return
◦ While impacts built over millennia, a "violent, nonlinear break" occurred around 1950.
◦ Near-exponential jumps in population, GDP, and fertilizer consumption mirror spikes in CO2 concentrations and biosphere degradation.
◦ This has pushed the Earth into a "no-analog" state, where humans are effectively "flying blind".