I was not going to post on this as the day is late. In Science is a study whose conclusions are sobering, but on a topic that has for now worn out its welcome with most pubs, much of the public,  and with US politicians who are the ones who can do anything about it: global warming. There is not much pickup even though the conclusions suggest that, if evidence from rocks 30 million years old is correct, our planet is much more sensitive to rising CO2 (and its feedback side effects on Earth’s reflectance etc) than standard models say.

Then I saw this illus, with a blogpost at a site called Planetsave, by Zachary Shahan. Being a total scaredy-cat on climate change, this mashed-up illus and its utter hyperbole is one that just has to be shared. I don’t know where the pic originated, at this blog or elsewhere, but it’s an essay in itself. (Late addition: On second glance, sigh, one must quietly mumble that the artist put the planet’s terminator in the wrong place with unlikely shading … and that’s just me being tediously didactic, like I get when movie explosions in outer space’s near-vacuum emit billowing, slowing poofs rather than the ballistic trajectories that blasted stuff would take).

Other stories:

• USA Today – Dan Vergano: Ancient climate hints at much hotter times ahead ;
• Telegraph – Louise Gray: Climate change could happen much faster than previously thought;
• ANI – Earth’s hot past points to drastic global warming ;

Grist for the Mill: NCAR-UCAR Press Release ; NSF Press release ;

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Friday, January 14th, 2011 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.