Two Items from New IPCC Report, "Sky Whale" Poem, and New Book

The above video by Dave Borlace's Just Have a Think is full of great information but I will focus on two items and what 5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial of 1850 means: 1) "It's actually more like about 5 degrees Celsius higher [ . . . . ] within 80 years or so at our current trajectory." and 2) "It's the small island developing states that are getting walloped right now but much of the western coast of America looks like being pretty vulnerable within the next 10 years or so."

3) 4 degrees Celsius, as I quoted before, means severe consequences according to Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Rockström noted "It’s difficult to see how [Earth] could accommodate a billion people or even half of that." Update: The Guardian, at Rockström's request, changed the quote for a 4 C world to "It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate eight billion people or maybe even half of that."

Here is a poem from my forthcoming book Between River and Street:

Sky Whale

After the last whale died

whale-shaped clouds appeared.

Some said “whale spirits.”

Others “just clouds.”

The ones who spoke the latter

were the same who

killed most of the planet.

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And this is from another poem in the book:

Now, our blue jewel planet undoes 4.54 billion years of evolution
to try again.  In a twist on Plato,
there can never be hope until scientists become politicians

or politicians become scientists.