The Atlantic

• BALTIMORE, Dec. 19, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Baltimore Banner today announced Bob Cohn has been named Chief Executive Officer ("CEO") of the local nonprofit news organization as it approaches its second anniversary.
• Cohn replaces Imtiaz Patel, who left The Banner in July.
• "On behalf of our board of directors and our incredible staff, I'm thrilled to welcome Bob Cohn to The Venetoulis Institute and The Baltimore Banner as our new Chief Executive Officer," said Stewart Bainum, Chairman of the Board.
• "The Banner has already emerged as an indispensable source for local news in Baltimore and surrounding Maryland, and I look forward to leading its next phase of growth," said Bob Cohn.

• Reserve tickets through the Weinberg Center for the Arts website (Weinbergcenter.org) or by calling the box office at 301-600-2828.
• The program will feature bestselling author Clint Smith as he considers "The Power of Milestone Anniversaries: Celebrating and Reckoning."
• This event is made possible by support from the City of Frederick, the Rural Maryland Council, and the Tourism Council of Frederick County.
• Olivia Peterson, Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area, 240-815-0484, [email protected] , https://www.heartofthecivilwar.org/
  View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prweb.com/releases/bestselling-author-clint-smith-speaks-in-...

• Earlier that year, Earhart had flown as an observer on a Northwest Airways winter flight across the U.S., testing the possibilities of a “Northern Transcontinental” route.
• Meanwhile, the ecosystem of air travel has grown more elaborate, often leaving passengers squirming in their seats on the tarmac before or after flight.
• Coast-to-coast air travel is in a rut – but there are still efforts to improve this mode of transit.

Just another ordinary miracle

• Transcontinental air journeys are clearly different 90 years after Earhart’s record-breaking exploratory flights: Travelers now take such trips for granted, and often find them to be pure drudgery.
• In 2018, travel blogger Ravi Ghelani reviewed in minute detail a United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Seattle – roughly the same northern route that Earhart explored in 1933.
• But for Ghelani, seated in first class, it wasn’t the terrain or frigid temperatures that were the most cumbersome part of his adventure.

Little indignities multiply

• The high-risk adventure of air travel has been subdued, yet long flights today can paradoxically feel torturous.
• As philosopher Michael Marder puts it in his 2022 book “Philosophy for Passengers”: “When crew members wish passengers a ‘pleasant journey,’ I hear a dash of cruel irony in their words.
• Still, it’s worth noting that the majority of the human population has never boarded an airplane; flying cross-country remains a relatively exclusive experience.

2 futures of cross-country flight

• Where are the new frontiers for transcontinental flight today?
• One area of innovation is in a greener form of flight.
• Theirs is the high-flying equivalent of the Tesla electric sports car.” Solar Impulse was more recently reconfigured as a remotely piloted aircraft, with new experiments in long-distance solar flight underway.
• These are two starkly different visions of coast-to-coast flight, one a dystopian nightmare and the other a utopian dream.

• “Be very worried: Gulf Stream collapse could spark global chaos by 2025” announced the New York Post.
• This latest alarmist rhetoric provides a textbook example of how not to communicate climate science.
• These headlines do nothing to raise public awareness, let alone influence public policy to support climate solutions.

We see the world we describe

• It is well known that climate anxiety is fuelled by media messaging about the looming climate crisis.
• This is causing many to simply shut down and give up — believing we are all doomed and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
• This is also not the first time such headlines have emerged.

The currents are not collapsing (anytime soon)

• The latest series of alarmist headlines may not have fixated on an impending ice age, but they still suggest the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation could collapse by 2025.
• This is an outrageous claim at best and a completely irresponsible pronouncement at worst.
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been assessing the likelihood of a cessation of deep-water formation in the North Atlantic for decades.
• Other assessments, including the National Academy of Sciences Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises, published in 2013, also reached similar conclusions.

Understanding climate optimism

• Ritchie persuasively argued that more people located in the green “optimistic and changeable” box are what is needed to advance climate solutions.
• More importantly, rather than instilling a sense of optimism that global warming is a solvable problem, the extreme behaviour (fear mongering or civil disobedience) of the “pessimistic changeable” group (such as many within the Extinction Rebellion movement), often does nothing more than drive the public towards the “pessimistic not changeable” group.

A responsibility to communicate, responsibly

• This is only amplified in situations where scientists make statements where creative licence is taken with speculative possibilities.
• Climate scientists have agency in the advancement of climate solutions, and with that agency comes a responsibility to avoid sensationalism.