Year 2, Month 1, Day 1: Hangover Edition

Adam Morton gives a good summary of the past ten years’ worth of climate change in The Age (Australia). I figured I’d get a jump on the deniers with this letter…

Listening to the increasingly vociferous voices of those who deny the validity and relevance of climate science, one wonders: do these people live on the same planet we do? The planet climatologists are studying is buffeted by increasingly severe weather, uprooting people from their lands, crippling agricultural systems, and tearing holes in the fabric of life. On the alternate planet where global warming deniers live, it’s always the right temperature; crops aren’t wilting; floods aren’t wiping out villages; glaciers aren’t melting. On the planet we live in, we’re headed for a significant temperature increase in a time span so short it doesn’t even qualify as a geological instant. On the planet of the deniers, that’ll be fine, because when dinosaurs were alive, the atmosphere was a lot hotter than it is now. Our species is inadequately prepared for such an abrupt climatic shift — on this Earth, anyway.

Warren Senders