Newf wrote: "How many thousands of people, like you and I, have read that article? "
The comment section for the article itself has nearly 1000 remarks, and it seem to be widely shared and commented on in social media, so I'm guessing it is quite a few more than just a few thousand.
"We have no mechanism..."
I may be misunderstanding your intent here, but 'we' do have
some mechanism for 'coping,' however horribly flawed it may seem...Paris Accords. If they could have been strengthened and built on, and say a President Bernie Sanders and perhaps a few other somewhat enlightened world leaders had arisen and showed some true leadership, and pointed the way toward rapidly crashing carbon emissions while protecting many/most of the most vulnerable...
OK, we probably still wouldn't be able to avoid 2 C increase, but perhaps shaved a bit off of the very worst of the horrors that now pretty inevitably face us. But that's not quite how it went down, was it.
I hope more and more major publications lay out these worst case scenarios. I think a majority of the country is realizing that not wanting to consider or imagine the (for them) political 'worst case scenario' of a Trump presidency is helping them to realize that hiding under the bed doesn't make the boogie men go away. So they may now be willing to stare into the face of other horrors that are now upon us.
Consider this recent advice from Eric Holthaus:
My advice for climate journalists going forward:
1. Don't hold back. Readers can take it. (As long as it's rigorously grounded in the science, of course.)
2. The weird shit that climate change could cause—the tail risks, the megastorms, the blinking out of entire ecosystems—is compelling.
3. Climate journalists should find those stories—things scientists wouldn't bother with b/c they're unlikely—& report the hell out of them.
4. AND THEN (this is the most important part) you plant the seed of possibility at the end & invite the reader to become part of the story.
Because that's the reality: We are all part of this story. This is our story, we are shaping it every day.
http://tinyletter.com/sciencebyericholt ... -july-17th