(Image: Native bark beetle attack with near 100 percent mortality in spruce at Groundhog Park in the La Garita Mountains of south central Colorado at above 12,000 feet elevation. This attack was about 100,000 acres in the mid 20-teens.)
About the Climate Change Now Initiative
ClimateDiscovery.org is base camp for the Climate Change Now Initiative, founded in 2005, with IRS nonprofit 501c3 designation in 2013, we are the oldest independent climate science education organization in the world, tax I.D. 90-1006128. This is our charge: to read the science, talk to the scientists, interpret according to the rules of natural history, document impacts across North America and deliver to the people. The delivery is complicated by preconceived notions, lack of experience with climate change, politics, money, peers, religion, the climate change countermovement, and vested international players. Because of these great challenges, a new discipline of science is emerging: global warming psychology. This psychology tells us that because analytical left brain learning has not worked out so well with climate change, we need to use emotionally-based right brain learning strategies; and that is what we do, every day since 2005, to provide learning opportunities that work better, using images, stories, science and music. We help the public understand that delay has now created a world where simply avoiding the worst is no longer possible because tipping is activated in more than half of known tipping systems and once activated it cannot self-restore unless the tipping systems evolutionary boundaries are restored by lowering Earth’s temperature to below the temperature today that allowed these tipping systems collapses to activate. We show people climate change happening – seeing is believing – by seeking out impacts and bringing back images of climate change from some of the most important and treasured natural resources across North America, and by telling the stories of the science, of the people, and of the journey to witness the most rare natural events our civilization has ever experienced.
About Bruce Melton PE, Director
MeltOn has been the director of the Climate Change Now Initiative since 2005 – IRS 501c3 designation in 2013 – the oldest independent climate science education organization in the world. https://ClimateDiscovery.org His background is in 40 years of civil engineering specializing in critical environmental issues with primary research in nonpoint source stormwater pollution treatment (similar to nonpoint source climate pollution treatment). His part time engineering work for Melton Engineer https://meltonengineering.com supports most of the nonprofit’s revenue needs.
One of the main tasks of the nonprofit is filmmaking of climate change impacts across North America with our latest film winning two awards. Our work is backed up by over 600 reviews of academic climate science findings, scores of articles in the popular press, and climate policy work at national Sierra Club in 2019 where MeltOn was the single individual responsible for the Club lowering their warming target from a further warming 1.5 degrees C above normal to a restoration 1 C. In addition, he convinced the policy team, peers, review committees and the national Sierra Club Board to change their geoengineering policy from, “anything geoengineering – over our dead body,” to supporting research in geoengineering in case emergency cooling is needed. All of this is based on activation of collapse of some of our Earth’s systems and the associated foregone tipping responses whose irreversible completion is now locked in unless we restore our climate back to within the evolutionary boundaries of our Earth systems so the collapses can stabilize – before the point of no return.
Our films are adventure narratives with no talking heads others than MeltOn’s here and there, that features music with lyrics from his band “Climate Change” founded in 2002, in a rockumentary format overdubbed with a bit of climate science. Climate Change Now’s mission revolves around global warming psychology outreach that says the classic analytical left brain learning strategies have not worked out so well with climate change and that the much more effective emotionally based right brain learning is required.
The other main mission of the nonprofit is to help advocates and other leaders understand the implications of currently activated tipping collapses that we film and write about. These are relatively new and not yet robustly incorporated into the slow consensus science and climate culture of our world. What this new aspect of climate change effects means is that there is now little difference in our future regardless of the amount of emissions reduction or elimination that occurs, because irreversible tipping collapses with natural feedback emissions of greenhouse gases dwarfing humankind’s is now foregone unless we cool our climate back to normal with emergency strategies, so that longer term sustainability climate strategies can have time to be implemented.
Our work is heavy in real world examples that dispel myths about climate change solutions, clarifies what are now inappropriate solution strategies, and advances restoration strategies for carbon dioxide removal and geoengineering through recognition of current industrial processes or cultural behaviors that show both are things our advanced civilization has been doing routinely and robustly for over a century. Another very important part of our mission is to understand and communicate to the public and leadership, why it is that our current global climate culture does not yet support restoration and believes further warming is safe. This conundrum is grounded in eleven understating biases of our climate culture in our new learning tool, An Introduction to Advanced Climate Change, that also reviews tipping activation across North America, with 52 slides, 70 images of impacts, 18,000 words in plain English, over 600 summarized references in another 80,000 words in the notes. https://climatediscovery.org/Introduction_to_Advanced_Climate Change_October_2023.ppt