As world leaders gather to assess the planet’s health, most reports are gloomy, save for a couple bits of good news.
The world’s political and environmental leaders gather in Rio de Janeiro tomorrow to assess the state of the planet’s health 20 years after the first such gathering in 1992. But if science is any guide, Earth still needs some help.
Several new climate studies reveal various aspects of the same foreboding problem: the atmosphere continues to warm, glaciers continue melting and seas keep rising.
But there is a tiny bit of good news — the United States and Europe have been able to cut their heat-trapping industrial emissions by switching to less-polluting natural gas, driving fewer miles and of course, sinking into an economic recession where fewer factories are working across much of the globe.
“good news — the United States and Europe have been able to cut their heat-trapping industrial emissions by … sinking into an economic recession ”
I am detecting nearly toxic levels of irony here.
Yeah, the temperature keeps rising and rising and rising….uhm, but it hasn’t for nearly 15 years. Uhm…yeah.
So far this year we’re on track to having 2012 be the coldest land surface temperature of the past 15 years, even as the oceans continue a slight warming trend.
The temperatures stopped rising, and over the course of my lifetime the extremes have leveled out – at least in the upper Midwest. Other than gloating over how good it is that the world is mired in an economic depression with no end in sight, this article has nothing whatsoever to say.