We are like small children, distracted by baubles, with our parents too drunk to notice that our house is burning.*
Or too sociopathic to care.
Rolling Stone on The Secret Campaign of President Bush's Administration To Deny Global Warming (June 2007)
U.S. scales back climate science via satellites ("'Overall climate program in serious jeopardy,' NOAA and NASA experts say'") (June 2007)
The Threat to the Planet, by NASA's James Hansen, saying we have at most ten years to turn this around. "Not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions."
Published a year ago.
Interview with Hansen: (Apr 2007)
The average temperature is now 0.8 degrees Celsius higher than in the last century, with three-quarters of the increase happening in the last 30 years
...
There's another half degree Celsius in the pipeline due to gases already in the atmosphere, and there's at least one more half degree to come due to power plants which we're not going to stop immediately. Even if we decide now we've got to slow down as fast as is practical, there's still going to be enough emissions to take us to the warmest level [1.8 degrees Celsius] that the planet has seen in a million years...close to and possibly beyond what I would say is a dangerous level.
If we want to keep the planet looking close to what it looks like now, then we had better not accept an increase by more than one degree Celsius. Because if temperature goes up another two or three degrees Celsius, it will be the temperature of the middle Pliocene about 3 million years ago. That was a very different planet. There was no sea ice in the Arctic in the warm seasons, and the sea level was about 25 meters higher. We will be headed towards this situation if we continue with business-as-usual.
...
There's another half degree Celsius in the pipeline due to gases already in the atmosphere, and there's at least one more half degree to come due to power plants which we're not going to stop immediately. Even if we decide now we've got to slow down as fast as is practical, there's still going to be enough emissions to take us to the warmest level [1.8 degrees Celsius] that the planet has seen in a million years...close to and possibly beyond what I would say is a dangerous level.
If we want to keep the planet looking close to what it looks like now, then we had better not accept an increase by more than one degree Celsius. Because if temperature goes up another two or three degrees Celsius, it will be the temperature of the middle Pliocene about 3 million years ago. That was a very different planet. There was no sea ice in the Arctic in the warm seasons, and the sea level was about 25 meters higher. We will be headed towards this situation if we continue with business-as-usual.
The polar bears.
Our house is burning.
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