INTRODUCTION
There’s a kind of doomsday feel to things right now - have you noticed? It’s not just that the Mayan calendar runs out on December 21st of next year. It’s not even the plethora of new warnings from astrophysicists, doctors and geologists about the possibly catastrophic events that are now known to be on the not-too-distant horizon. It has more to do with the zeitgeist, an undifferentiated sense that things can’t go on like they are forever.
And, of course, there are clues. Almost daily, items half-buried in news reports point to the Doom scenarios just lurking around the corner. Maybe you are too busy or too trapped in denial to notice them all, so this blog is here to help you keep track.
Something to Worry About Today
There you have it-- the Earth is rapidly warming, a new report says.
Over 1.6 billion temperature readings by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Group show a net increase of .911 degrees in the last fifty years. This will come as a blow to the most feral climate change deniers, who have been claiming the Earth isn't warming up at all. The rest will now have to get busy finding another cause for the phenomenon that doesn't involve the actions of us humans.
Nine-tenths of a degree may not sound like much, but history says otherwise. The lowering of the global temperature by just half a degree in 1816 led to crop failures all over the world. The thermostat setting for human survival is much narrower than we think. If the anticipated raising of 3 degrees centigrade over the next century actually comes about, we're all toast.
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