Bill McKibben: The Mercury Doesn't Lie: We've Hit a Troubling Climate Change Milestone

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/35575-the-mercury-doesnt-lie-weve-hit-a-troubling-climate-change-milestone

hursday, while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened. Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above “normal” for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization.

That’s important because the governments of the world have set two degrees Celsius as the must-not-cross red line that, theoretically, we’re doing all we can to avoid. And it’s important because most of the hemisphere has not really had a winter. They’ve been trucking snow into Anchorage for the start of the Iditarod; Arctic sea ice is at record low levels for the date; in New England doctors are already talking about the start of “allergy season.”

This bizarre glimpse of the future is only temporary. It will be years, one hopes, before we’re past the two degrees mark on a regular basis. But the future is clearly coming much faster than science had expected. February, taken as a whole, crushed all the old monthly temperature records, which had been set in … January. January crushed all the old monthly temperature records, which had been set in … December.

In part this reflects the ongoing El Nino phenomenon — these sporadic events always push up the planet’s temperature. But since that El Nino heat is layered on top of the ever-increasing global warming, the spikes keep getting higher. This time around the overturning waters of the Pacific are releasing huge quantities of heat stored there during the last couple of decades of global warming.

And as that heat pours out into the atmosphere, the consequences are overwhelming. In the South Pacific, for instance, the highest wind speeds ever measured came last month when Tropical Cyclone Winston crashed into Fiji. Entire villages were flattened. In financial terms, the storm wiped out ten percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, roughly equivalent to fifteen simultaneous Hurricane Katrina’s.

[highprincipleswork]

1. Take note, and remember only Bernie has given Climate Change the importance it deserves.

[My Good Babushka]

2. But for a generous donation to the foundation

Clinton will use the State Department to twist the arms of leaders around the world to open their fragile land to hydraulic fracturing, a process with well-known and well-documented environmental and health risks. Is she going to answer to this denial of scientific fact? I won't condone neglect and dismissal of science in a republican and I won't be coerced into voting for it in a democrat.

[Downwinder]

3. "Boiling a frog."

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

5. Kicking...

#1 most important issue of our times.

[saturnsring]

6. just great

[Mojorabbit]

7. K&R nt

[Relentless Liberal]

8. Numbers Never Do

Math is the only truly honest science. Rec!

[Nihil]

9. ... unless used by statisticians, economists or politicians.