The following is an excerpt from a New Yorker article about James Hansen, NASA’s head climate scientist, by Elizabeth Kolbert:
During the past few years, researchers around the world have noticed a disturbing trend: the planet is changing faster than had been anticipated. Antarctica, for example, had not been expected to show a net loss of ice for another century, but recent studies indicate that the continent’s massive ice sheets are already shrinking. At the other end of the globe, the Arctic ice cap has been melt- ing at a shocking rate; the extent of the summer ice is now only a little more than half of what it was just forty years ago. Meanwhile, scientists have found that the arid zones that circle the globe north and south of the tropics have been expanding more rapidly than computer models had predicted. This expansion of the subtropics means that highly populated areas, including the American Southwest and the Mediterranean basin, are likely to suffer more and more frequent droughts.
The point is that this is not something that will happen to our grandchildren. It is something that is happening to us.
Have a great weekend!