It’s been a busy week.In fact, it feels like the blitzkrieg of news about the new administration’s hostility to science— and even truth itself —is intentionally intended to provide cover for them to sneak truly insidious changes through the system. In more typical times, it would take any observer years to process the implications of what’s already happened in this first week, but we don’t have that luxury.The urgency of our current collective moment is two-fold: Rapid political change and rapid environmental change both force us to stay on our toes . My personal challenge I keep repeating to myself: Is this normal? If not, why not? And then—tell that story.One story I’m continuing to follow is the rapid changes taking place this winter in the Arctic. One way to measure that is by something called “freezing degree days” which is a calculation of the total amount of freezing “potential” accumulated over the entire winter. (For nerds, it’s calculated like this: total number of days x number of degrees below freezing of the entire Arctic north of 80°N for each day = freezing degree days) If the temperature was 10 degrees below freezing for 10 days in a row, that’s 100 freezing degree days. This calculation is one way of estimating the likely thickness of Arctic sea ice at any given time, because the colder it is, the thicker the sea ice gets.Of course, this winter, it hasn’t been very cold at all, relative to normal—which means the Arctic now has a record-setting lack of freezing degree days.As of this week, we’ve already passed the previous record-setting mark set in June of last year—five months early(!)—that’s shocking. Essentially, there has been no winter this year in the Arctic, at least not anything remotely resembling winters of even the recent past.What the heck is happening? Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, has a good description of the likely culprits. His conclusion: "after studying the Arctic and its climate for three and a half decades, I have concluded that what has happened over the last year goes beyond even the extreme."It’s not yet known what the consequences of this will be. The Arctic is changing far faster than most scientists believed was likely, or even possible, just a few years ago. Of course, the same can be said for our political system these days in the United States.I believe there is a connection between these two striking examples of rapid change. Already this week, there’s talk of a scientists’ march on Washington, and hundreds of thousands of people have pledged their support. While we’re clearly seeing a tipping point happening in real time in the Arctic, we may also be seeing the start of a human tipping point, as well.Thank you so much,EricP.S. If you're enjoying these emails, please forward to a friend, and ask them to subscribe . I'm also on Patreon, where you can support my crowdsourced climate journalism.