Bill McKibben is a Christian expert on climate change. The following summary is drawn from his June column in Sojourners magazine titled, "Signs of Things to Come."
1. "the signals we're getting from the natural world indicate we're crossing thresholds much more quickly than expected."
2. "February, for instance, was the most anomalously hot month ever recorded on the planet, crushing all records."
3. "The elevated temperatures were especially noticeable in the Arctic---for long stretches of the winter the region as a whole was as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit above average."
4. "Meanwhile in the Antarctic, new data showed that sea level may be set to rise far faster than expected, as the great ice sheets start to slide into the ocean."
5. "we had the most widespread coral bleaching ever observed."
6. "this is the nightmare vision of the future. . . the protesters killed by police in drought-stricken Philippines in early April."
7. "we need far faster progress if we have even the slightest hope of getting ahead of the physics of global warming."
My conclusion: drastic climate change is now irreversible; enormous damage is just around the corner; all we can do is slow it down. Three suggestions: reduce the federal speed limit to 55; a crash effort to expand the use of solar energy; a quick phase-out of coal.
Sorry I ruined your day with this extremely bad news.
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