This is no porno. This is planet earth, where last year we saw a tie for the hottest year on record and the wettest year since record keeping began in 1880. What does this mean? Greenhouse gases are clearly affecting our planet and climate change isn’t some future problem. It is here, now.
Climate scientists predict that the continuing affects of climate change will bring about not only a hotter planet, but also more extreme weather in general. In 2010 our planet endured massive snowstorms that broke records in the U.S. and Europe, a record-breaking heat wave in Russia that caused mayhem, massive flooding around the globe, and a severe die-off of coral reefs. It was also the 34th year running that global temperatures have been above the 20th-century average.
With the evidence piling up, year after year, it’s unfathomable that politicians remain inept at passing climate legislation. With a Republican-controlled Congress threatening to take away the EPA’s ability to control greenhouse gas emissions, the prospects looks dimmer than ever. But it is about time our politicians start paying attention to the news and do something, because these increasingly hot and wet years are going to catch up with our species very soon.
Indeed, they already are.
(via NYT)
Photo: Truck cabs poke out of flood waters in Nashville, TN on May 4, 2010. (Jeff Roberson/AP)