Global Warming: Be Worried, Be Very Worried

Jeffrey Kluger in his April 3, 2006 cover story in Time Magazine clearly and succinctly sounds the alarm about the immediacy of global warming (This link will take you to the article at Time’s website. If you are not a subscriber, you can still read the article by watching a short advertisement.)

Polar Ice Caps Are Melting Faster Than Ever... More And More Land Is Being Devastated By Drought... Rising Waters Are Drowning Low-Lying Communities... By Any Measure, Earth Is At ... The Tipping Point

Foot draggers and non-believers have routinely dsimissed global warming as something for future generations to deal with, the impacts would not be felt for decades or centuries. Kluger argues that we are already experiencing the impact of increased CO2 levels which are now at record levels now the hightest in 650,000 years.

“Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.”

Kluger continues:

…glaciers, it turns out, can move with surprising speed, and so can nature. What few people reckoned on was that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse.

He points out that Grennland ice is melting at a rate of 53 cubic miles per year, about 250 times the amount used by Los Angeles in a year. That sounds awfully immediate to me.


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