Year 2, Month 1, Day 15: You Bet Jurassic!

USA Today notes that last year tied 2005 as the warmest year the planet has ever experienced since we began keeping records. I thought I’d use it as a hook to scold some of the deniers, and bring the car-crash analogy out for another run.

Yes, 2010 was Earth’s warmest year in recorded history. As the slow-motion disaster of climate change unfolds, that record won’t stand for long. Along with many who deny it’s happening at all, there are those who claim that humans will thrive on a warmer earth. After all, they say, the planet was a lot warmer during the time of the dinosaurs! Left out is the fact that it took millions of years to build up high levels of atmospheric CO2 back in the Pleistocene — while human industrial civilization is accomplishing the same feat in a century or less. A million years gives life time to adapt; on a geological time-scale, a hundred years is shatteringly abrupt — like hitting a cement wall at ninety miles an hour. Unfortunately, the climate-change deniers in the House of Representatives are going to make sure we’re not wearing our seat belts.

Warren Senders