No need to hide in a corner: There are a few signs of hope when it comes to climate change. (Photo by Zen Sutherland.)

Cross-posted from Huffington Post.

With magazines like Scientific American publishing articles titled "Global Warming Close to Becoming Irreversible," and 15,000-plus temperature records set this spring in the U.S., it's no wonder the CFO of the business I work for said to me recently, "I have this crippling anxiety about climate change ... what are our children going to have to deal with?"

At Keystone, in Colorado, ski season is still going on, but a nearby fire meant the lodge was being used as an evacuation center a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Washington Post expressed bafflement about U.S. inaction in the face of obvious climate threats highlighted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

This all leaves most of us in the movement to solve climate change with a borderline-debilitating creeping terror that haunts our daily activities, and inclines many of us to want to rock in the corner holding our knees, eating Chinese food out of the box.

But that's neither productive nor healthy, and Kung Pao stains carpet.

Instead, we need to find signs of hope. And surprisingly, there are a few.

It wasn’t surprising that the Wall Street Journal published an error-riddled op-ed about climate change last week, essentially saying it was bunk and we shouldn’t “panic” about it. We’ve gotten used to that. But what has really started to amaze me about that newspaper’s editorial page and the far right is that they now venture beyond delusion or misinformation. They lie, and they know they are lying.

That’s a big claim, but how else do you account for the statement that “the earth hasn’t warmed for well over 10 years now” when it is well known by anyone working on climate that 2010 was the hottest year on record?

Despite the fact that many of the authors of the article are funded by ExxonMobil through the George C. Marshall Institute, and despite the fact that none of them are leading scientists, they, and the editor of the opinion page, simply had to know that that statement was false. They may be unethical, but they are not stupid.

st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Events of 2011 show that no matter how solid the science, some people will never accept that humans are causing global warming.  So how can we cut the Gordian Knot that is manmade global warming? by Auden Schendler, reposted from the Atlantic One version of the myth of King Midas holds that he was not greedy. Instead, he loved his daughter so much that he longed to leave her a stable future. When …

"In a place without people, be a person." -old saying, source unknown to me. I am a parent and a 41-year-old human denizen of planet earth, climate warrior, dormant mountaineer. So like others of my ilk, I spend a lot of time in mid-life/existential crisis. That state of mind is ameliorated to some extent by my charitable giving, often done at this time of year. To that end I'm offering Grist readers my annual philanthropic suggestions. I will preface the suggestions with a short description of the conditions of my life that lead, on any given day, to me enjoying …

/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Photo: Kenn WilsonCome Friday, I'm usually pretty torched after a typical week of being attacked as a hypocrite for working on climate change in the ski industry. So, often, I'll join our company CFO for a cocktail. Our favorite is a Manhattan, which I mix up with some Gentleman Jack if possible, because I like owner Brown-Forman's work on climate change. And, in theory, I escape. Or so I thought. But …

There is dancing in the streets in the climate world these day after another of the deniers bit the dust. I'm talking of course about Richard's Muller's study that shows warming is, in fact, happening. http://tinyurl.com/3ntvrom Not only that, but the big baddies at Koch funded the study. And even better, the biggest baddie of all, the Wall Street Journal op ed page, published the public mea culpa by the scientist in question.  Told you so. But actually if you read Muller's piece, you realize he's debunking something that even most of the deniers now take as fact--the idea that …

Cross-posted from Climate Progress. On Oct. 17, Newsweek will release its attention-getting rankings of the top "green" publicly traded global companies. Last year, the magazine ranked Dell as No. 1. Dell is no slouch on operational greening: The company, along with Hewlett Packard, has led the tech industry in lifecycle stewardship, with a willingness to take back and recycle its old hardware, among many other progressive internal waste reduction measures. Dell also leads in the energy efficiency of its products. But is Dell really the greenest company in the world? It depends on your criteria. The Newsweek analysis looks at …

Photo: Shay HaasThis essay was originally posted on OutsideOnline and is reprinted here with their kind permission. If there's snow around, and you give an Inuit child one ski, or a Moroccan elder a plastic bag, both will naturally do one thing. They’ll slide downhill. Why? Because having fun is a piece of being human. A big piece. That's why 1,500 youth, but also some grandparents and half a dozen infants, gathered Sept. 23 on a rainy night in Whistler, British Columbia, for the world premiere of All.I.Can, a new ski film by some young and ambitious Canadian upstarts called …

This was originally published by High Country News' Writers on the Range syndicate. Thanks for their permission to reprint it here. Last month, three little girls, ages 8, 5 and 2, and their mother, were killed in a Wyoming flash flood that washed away their van. It was the kind of torrential downpour climatologists predict will increase as the planet warms. Their father survived. He alone can speak of the horror of trying to save his family, only to realize he could barely save himself. In the rushing water, he ran up against the greatest fear humans can experience: that …

One of the hallmarks of tipping points is that you don't know when you're in one. There's growing agreement that peak oil, for example, happened between 2004 and 2008. Still, you're never sure about such inflection points until well after the fact. This week, though, sure feels like the tipping point on public opinion on climate, and so I'm going to stick a fork in it right here, folks. Climate opinion just tipped. Why do I say that? In the last week: Australia, with huge coal reserves -- but rapidly passing the Arctic as ground zero for climate impacts with …