Friday, October 02, 2009

A "global climatic upheaval" whose "effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic"

"I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like [the year we had two years ago] in a row."
Time Magazine comes with a timely warning of "extremely serious, if not catastrophic" climate change (merci à Harrison Colter who perceptively points out that it "seems foolish … not to heed calls to solve the problem").
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.

…Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
Update: According to Jerome R. Corsi, back then (in the 1970s and 1980s), global warming — the artificial type attributable to mankind — was something to be… welcomed and… desired, even… actively worked for!
In their 1970s textbook, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources and Environment," last revised in 1977, [future White House science czar John] Holdren together with co-authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich argued on page 687 that "a man-made warming trend might cancel out a natural cooling trend."
Update: Newsweek picks up the good work…

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