Climate change is causing the extreme weather: Today's article by James Dyke

Today, James Dyke @JamesGDyke has this 6-tweet thread. In case Twitter doesn't stick around long, here are the comments and the links:

As someone who has spent over a decade writing/talking about climate change, I’ve often felt like I have been waiting for the penny to drop: for society to recognise the catastrophe that we are heading towards. 1/6

Would the brutal heat afflicting much of southern Europe finally be the moment when we would look up and realise things are going seriously wrong with the weather? 2/6

Killer Cerberus heatwave sweeping Europe turns heat maps black as health alerts issued: Greece and Spain give alerts to residents amid heat in excess of 40C, William Mata, July 13, 2023

The Telegraph did offer some advice on what to pack for a European holiday during a 45°C heatwave. 3/6

What to pack for a holiday in a 45-degree ultra-heatwave: With Mediterranean temperatures set to soar into the 40s, here’s how to stay sweat-free and stylish. Caroline Leaper, 12 July 2023

Good Morning Britain broadcast a surreal segment about whether the summer holiday period should be moved because getting heatstroke in a beachside resort isn’t most people’s idea of fun. 4/6

Not even a mention of the impact flying to these destinations has on the climate. Yes we must adapt to climate change, but this is unhinged! 5/6

Analysis: Aviation could consume a quarter of 1.5C carbon budget by 2050, August 8, 2016

Anyay, I ranted about this as part of my @theipaper column about heatwaves, climate change and our continued descent into the inferno. I hope those affected by Cerberus stay safe. 6/6

Is the extreme weather in Europe because of climate change? Yes, and here’s the evidence: Our route to safety is stopping burning coal, oil, and gas. Until then, we will continue our descent into the inferno, James Dyke, inews.co.uk, July 14, 2023

Hundreds are dead in Spain's floods. Scientists see a connection to climate change. Julia Simon, NPR. November 2, 2024

New Climate Action Tracker report - international aviation is wildly off track to fit in with climate goals. I've never seen a projected future trend so far from even the worst possible range (we should start with axing frequent flyer programs) climateactiontracker.org/sectors/avia...

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— Ket-arbon Emissions Joshi (@ketanjoshi.co) October 29, 2024 at 4:34 AM

Martin Edic on climate change: 'We're here...and we are not prepared'

Martin Edic:

"I've been writing about climate for years but this feels like a tipping point, some kind of corner we are turning into a new more hostile world.

This didn’t need to happen but that doesn’t matter now. We’re here, not in the past, and we are not prepared.

We’re not prepared because a years long, massive global campaign to keep it that way has been financed by the fossil fuels industry. Another news report from the Guardian this morning details how 1500 oil and gas lobbyists have worked their way into the entire anti-climate change world, as double agents of a sort, spending money for influence that is not to our benefit."

— Martin Edic, "The Witness Chronicles, July 12, 2023," The Grasshopper on Substack

Update

"European Scientists Make It Official. July Was The Hottest Month On Record By Far." The European climate monitoring organization made it official: July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin. Seth Borenstein, HuffPost, Aug 8, 2023

Earth sees hottest-ever March, the 10th record-breaking month in a row, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Washington Post, April 9, 2024

Before and after: See Dubai flooding from space, Mary Gilbert, CNN Meteorologist, April 22, 2024

Scientists find the fingerprints of climate change on Dubai’s deadly floods, Angela Dewan, CNN, April 25, 2024

For more: "Climate change is expensive, but that's not the point". It's a 9-minute read on Medium. Consider a paid membership on the platform.

An early example of the 'Drop the T' in 2015–2016

In a December 2016 anti-transgender essay “Not My Rights Movement,” Fred Litwin claims that while “the latest data from the U.K. suggests that 20 in 100,000 are transsexual,” nonetheless “referrals to gender dysphoria clinics are skyrocketing” and puberty blockers are “not uncommon,” yet “few people actually go forward to surgery.” To reconcile the elements of this narrative, he claims that children falsely believe they are “in the wrong bodies” because trans people are overrepresented in the media, and I guess later they figure themselves out.

He linked his article to an online petition started in November 2015 by a group LGB Voice. Their 2015 petition no longer exists live but is archived. Similarly, their website lgbvoice.org was only live during 2016, when they featured a few human rights stories with phrases like "LGB Syrian refugees" and "gay asylum seekers" in the headlines and were very clear in their topmost articles that their mission was to "drop the T." Their "About" page said: "We are a group of normal, everyday Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people," but they did not name themselves.

"When I was growing up,” Litwin says in his article — he was born in the mid-1950s — there were transsexuals and transvestites, but “Transgender” aka “Trans” is a new thing that means something else. He uses the word “trans” inconsistently: sometimes he says it means nonbinary identity, not getting hormones or surgery, or the belief that gender is a social construct. At other times, he uses "trans" as a synonym for “transsexual,” as when he quotes a psychiatrist “helping people transition” and these people are referred to as “trans patients.” In any case, he complains about “the omnipresent ideology of transgenderism,” for which he plainly has no definition, which suggests to me it isn't an ideology, less so an omnipresent one.

Yes, he says, “protect trans people from discrimination in housing and employment,” as for any minority. “But" — these people always do the but — "pronoun use?” And so he gave high praise to Jordan Peterson for “crusading against federal Bill C-16 which amends the Canadian Human Rights Act and the hate crimes section of the Criminal Code to include gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination and hate speech.”

So then I read his book I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak (see my comment on Goodreads). It did not address my question of why he would reject this one conspiracy theory and yet embrace transphobia which is another kind of conspiracy theory.

They restrict puberty-blockers and then keep you out of sports because you went through puberty

Quote:

"'Oh, now we care about fairness? Now we care about women’s sports? That’s total bulls**t. And show me all the trans people who are nefariously taking advantage of being trans in sports. It’s just not happening,' said Rapinoe, who over the weekend announced she would retire from professional soccer at the end of the 2023 National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) season.

* * *

The latest [March 2023 World Athletics] regulations prohibit athletes who have gone through what WA calls 'male puberty' from participating in female world rankings competitions. WA said the exclusion would apply to 'male-to-female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty.'

Meanwhile, multiple US states have passed legislation restricting trans youths’ access to the hormone therapies known as 'puberty blockers' – meaning some trans girls will be forced to undergo the very 'male puberty' that would now prevent them from competing in WA events."
— "Megan Rapinoe says US has ‘weaponized’ women’s sports against trans people, ‘trying to legislate away people’s full humanity’," Ben Morse, CNN, July 10, 2023

Also:

"In 2013, I started www.transathlete.com, a compilation of trans-inclusive policies. … But in 2019 I began noticing a backslide, with a spike of anti-trans lawmakers and hate groups … The first state in the United States to ban trans youth from school sports was Idaho in 2020. Following that, a wave of bills was introduced in over two-thirds of the country. In most states, lawmakers could not name a single trans youth in sports in their state nor an instance where there was any reason to bar them. In other states, the bills targeted just a handful of youth. Sports quite literally saved my life as an adolescent, and the thought of another young person not being allowed to have the same experiences is absolutely heartbreaking."
— Chris Mosier, “Running, Away and To,” in Surviving Transphobia. ed. Laura A. Jacobs. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023.

(Update: Idaho also tried to ban gender-affirming care....but in early 2024, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction.)

Amid a culture war over trans athletes, Team USA’s Chris Mosier says he’ll stay the course, Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN, Jan 18, 2026

Also, this attitude doesn't only affect trans people. Transphobia is linked to homophobia, which affects all kinds of LGBTQ people.

For example, in June 2023, the National Hockey League in the US and Canada (NHL) banned players from wearing Pride jerseys, and the following October, they banned players from using sticks wrapped in rainbow-colored tape even for warmups. The league explained that the athletes shouldn't be "put in the position of having to demonstrate (or where they may be appearing to demonstrate) personal support for any Special Initiatives."

Parker Molloy explained on Substack:

"You truly can't go, 'Get politics out of sports! Get things unrelated to the game out of sports! Just play the game! Shut up and dribble!' without being a hypocrite unless you actually mean to get all politics out of sports, including military displays and national anthems."

Then again, some gay people also explicitly exclude trans people. (Which might be internalized homophobia talking, or might be due to other reasons.) The thing is, no gay person or group is the gatekeeper for who else is gay.

But now Martina Navratilova is saying "Omg...a bloke cannot be a lesbian." (X, November 28, 2023) "She made the assertions," the Advocate reports, "in response to a video by Stonewall that promoted diversity and inclusion of lesbians from diverse backgrounds, including transgender women who identify as lesbians." (The Advocate)

Anyway, at first, someone might have been listening to Martina Navratilova's opinions on sports, like: Oh, she's an athlete, so she's informed about who can compete fairly in women's sports and who has an unfair advantage, and also she has a personal stake in the outcome because (though now 67) she's part of a community of athletes.

But then you realize that Martina Navratilova has opinions about who is a lesbian, and the fact that she's a former pro tennis player gives her no moral authority to go around saying who's legitimately gay. And then you realize: Oh, when she was talking about sports before, her opinions went broader and deeper. This was part of her plan the whole time.

But if trans girls take puberty blockers from a young age, they won't go through male puberty and then they can fairly compete with other teen girls, right?

Oh wait — sometimes you get puberty blockers and are still told you can't play girls' sports. Why? Because Florida. A trans girl, on hormone blockers since she was 11, played on a girls' volleyball team at a high school near Fort Lauderdale, and in November 2023, the principal and other staffers were reassigned due to "allegations of improper student participation in sports." (HuffPost)

But so many kids are on puberty blockers, right? So many? Wait:

See this

Pink News, July 1, 2024:

[Martina Navratilova said:] “I’ve been jettisoned by a lot of the groups in the LGBT community. But I’ve been speaking my mind for a long time. I’m not going to change that. ... I know I’m on the right side of history. I’m right on most people’s opinion about women’s sex-based spaces, and especially sports. ... Women are asked to be kind and inclusive, yet by including transgender-identified males in women’s sports, you’re excluding women.”

To which Megan Rapinoe has said:

"Show me all the trans people who are nefariously taking advantage of being trans in sports. It’s just not happening."

Rapinoe made a further point:

“When Martina or Sage [Steele, a former ESPN sports news anchor] are talking about this, people aren’t hearing it just in the context of elite sports. They’re saying: ‘The rest of my life, this is how I’m going to treat trans people’.”

Martina Navratilova rips the left over criticism of her fight to keep women's sports fair Navratilova spoke at a 'Take Back Title IX' rally, Ryan Gaydos, Fox, June 26, 2024

Also

Next Level Girls Basketball, based in Wilder, Kentucky, coaches girls in 3rd grade through high school. A 6th-grade team recently (according to a WVX story):

"entered a city-wide basketball league run by Southwestern Ohio Basketball. At the end of the regular season, the team posted a 7-1 record and was preparing to fight for the year-end tournament title in February. But they soon found out they were banned from playing because of one glaring issue: the league was for boys.

A text from the league's president, Tom Sunderman, was sent to Next Level's Director Larry McGraw, informing him that his team's participation in the league presented a liability risk.

McGraw believes another factor may have been at play."

The director, Larry McGraw, registered the girls for the boys' league. Why? According to the article, "Often times, teams with younger players playing at high levels might enter a league with older players for a new challenge, he says. It's also not unheard of for a girl to play on a boys team or for a girls team to play against boys..." In response: "Southwestern Ohio Basketball claims Next Level was deceptive by listing the team's gender as "male" in its registration, breaking the league's rules."

"University of Cincinnati assistant professor Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown says the issue is not whether Next Level broke the rules, but instead the rules themselves and their impact on young girls.

Brown focuses on Black women and girls in sports and how they're presented in media and culture. She says the team's banning is another unfortunate instance of girls getting punished for having success.

'It happens all the time,' Brown said, 'There's this mythos that boys and men are innately always better than girls and women when it comes to sports.'

Brown says this mythos stems from the idea that men have to present masculine traits and women must be feminine, pointing to examples in sports history where women were accused of 'gender fraud' for excelling in athletics and not fulfilling a specific gender stereotype."

In response to controversy, Southwestern Ohio Basketball issued a statement regarding, as WVX put it, "possible physical retaliation from other teams if the girls were to win the tournament." In other words, they were worried that boys with fragile egos, in response to losing a game to a girls' team, might (in the statement's own words) "retaliate against a girl. Then we have liability issues." The league decided that the appropriate way to deal with this risk to the girls was to prevent the girls from playing at all.

— A girls basketball team kept beating the boys. The league called foul Zack Carreon, 91.7 WVX, March 4, 2024 at 3:27 AM EST

See also

"World Athletics’ policy limiting trans women participation is ‘here to stay,’ says president Sebastian Coe," Amanda Davies, CNN, March 2, 2024

Helen Lewis’ Bait and Switch, Evan Urquhart, Assigned Media, March 19, 2024

For more on this topic: Oh, It's About Sports, Is It? It's a 14-minute read on Medium.

In the UK

4/ The worst thing about this case is that the information I requested did not even concern the DHSC at the time. It was about the judicial misconduct that was already corrected by the English and Welsh Court of Appeal in Bell v Tavistock.

— Ashleeee 🌊🪭 (@reactiveashley.bsky.social) October 20, 2025 at 2:26 AM

5/ Remember, the ban on puberty blockers originated from a court case led by Victoria Sharp, a highly controversial judge. Her family are Tory donors, she was made a senior judge, and her brother the Chair of the BBC (and turned it extremely transphobic). Her ruling contradicted Gillick competence.

— Ashleeee 🌊🪭 (@reactiveashley.bsky.social) October 20, 2025 at 2:36 AM

6/ Everything that followed, the Cass Review, the bans, the further bans, the permanent bans, and the non-existent research programs, all stemmed from that one court case, which was later overturned.

— Ashleeee 🌊🪭 (@reactiveashley.bsky.social) October 20, 2025 at 2:43 AM

This is very good. Clear, calm, factual, and devastating for proponents of bans on puberty blockers for trans youth. theconversation.com/puberty-bloc...

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— Evan Urquhart (@evanurquhart.bsky.social) November 23, 2025 at 6:42 AM

Christina of Sweden - in 'To Climates Unknown'

Today I learned something about Queen Christina

"In July 1661, Sweden's Stockholm Bank issued the first bank note in Europe to compensate for a shortage of silver coins. Although Sweden lacked silver, it possessed bountiful copper resources, and the government of Queen Christina (1634-1654) issued large copper sheets called platmynt (plate money), which weighed approximately 4 pounds each."
Jack Weatherford. The History of Money: From Sandstone to Cyberspace. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997. p. 130.

If you'd like alternate history about King Christina...

To Climates Unknown

Bookshop will ship it within the US. The ebook is on Kobo. Yes, also Amazon.

Everyone should hire sensitivity readers

Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, explains that

"having a trans-sensitive proofreader for his work was not out of fear of being 'cancelled', but to ensure that it does not 'wound or misrepresent' certain demographics.

The Scottish writer, 64, said that as a writer it was important to keep “an open mind” about a new culture in which “archetypes haven’t been established yet”.

* * *

His most recent novel, The Long Knives, features trans characters..."

Read the article on STV News.

'The Incel Rebellion': What is incel?

Lisa Sugiura's book The Incel Rebellion: The Rise of the Manosphere and the Virtual War Against Women (2021) is open access. It argues "that the ideology espoused by groups such as incels in the manosphere" predates the internet and continues to be "linked with the wider sociopolitical climate."

Homophobia and misogyny

MGTOW members are homophobic and sexist, tending to reject the idea that their members can or should have relationships with women, and "they use online harassment to police the borders of hegemonic and toxic masculinity." They "are influenced by the mythopoetic movement led by poet and author Robert Bly (1990), who suggested that men should return to their ingrained nature by embracing homosocial solidarity."

Giuseppina Scotto di Carlo's critical discourse analysis (CDA) found that Donald Trump's vocabulary about women in his 2016 campaign "perpetuates a male-centric hierarchy, significantly impacting upon his supporters...Seven core lexical and rhetorical strategies were identified by di Carlo (2020), which sound remarkably familiar to incel attitudes towards women ... Like incels, Trump’s Tweets portrayed his misogyny in an overt way, often used under the guise of humour..." Also, Trump invoked the "manosphere looks numerical scale," i.e., rating women on a scale of 1–10. The difference between Trump and incels is that Trump had a huge audience and was able to gain power.

Public figures who are "part of the so-called intellectual dark web" and are "the faces of men's supremacist movements" critique "the mainstream" (which they're actually part of) and serve as the "'respectable' faces of misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia and ableism."

What is incel?

The "essence of incel" is the idea that "men are marginalised from society, and are victims of the ‘natural social order’, initiated by second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution of the 1960s." To explain their "loneliness and self-loathing," they use "novel language...that obstructs outsiders and further perpetuates misogyny, racism, homophobia and ableism." This language aids in their community formation.

"Incels deny any connections with the alt-right [i.e., white supremacists and fascists] or, indeed, having a political purpose; however, there are overlapping ideologies..."

"Whiteness...is positioned as dominant of the racial hierarchy that exists within incels. ... homosexuality and transgender are disregarded and denounced ... Non-white incels are often told to commit suicide more than their white counterparts..."

Their ideology is fuzzy on the idea of choice. While they criticize women "for being uniquely superficial and shallow," they similarly mock women they find unattractive. Their continual rejection of the possibility of relationships with women suggests that their celibacy is chosen. What's the difference between an incel and a volcel? It isn't clear. Also, they choose to label themselves incels, to adopt the blackpill ideology (i.e., self-hating nihilism), and to be part of incel community.

Are they a cult?

"...ex-incels, those who have ascended – were able to leave the community – speak of feeling as if they were part of a cult. This is an interesting and concerning claim, and although I do not explore incel as a cult in depth, there is scope to describe it in this manner..."

Online, they perpetrate "overt misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism and ableism," excusing themselves by claiming they're being ironic or satirical.

What are their demographics?

The 2020 incel.co poll of 665 respondents found that 81% of their online users are from Europe and North America and 90% were under 30. Most are white. They claim to be depressed, physically unattractive, have low social skills, and have "never had a sexual relationship or kissed a woman." Despite the incel ideology that worries about heteronormative sexual attraction and conventional good lucks, height doesn't really determine who becomes an incel, as the average user claims to be of average height.

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