Now, it might seem premature to talk about setting a new yearly record after just three months of data, but these months have been such an extreme departure from the norm that Gavin Schmidt, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has already made the call.
"I estimate [a greater than] 99 percent chance of an annual record in 2016," Schmidt wrote on Twitter last week, after NASA released its own record climate readings. A month ago—following the release of February's data—Schmidt wrote, simply, "Wow."
Since 1980, the world has set a new annual temperature record approximately every three years, and 15 of the hottest 16 years ever measured are in the 21st century. The chart below shows earth's warming climate, measured from land and sea, dating back to 1880."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-04-19/earth-s-temperature-just-shattered-the-thermometer
The economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment,
not the other way around.
Gaylord Nelson
Why have so many people shown up in the last 262 years?
10,000 BC... 1,000,000...
8000 BC... 5,000,000... x5 in 2,000 years
6000 BC... 10,000,000... x2
4000 BC... 20,000,000... x2 +10,000,000 in 2000 years
2000 BC... 35,000,000... x1.5
1... 200,000,000... x5.7
1750... 791,000,000... x3.95 in 1750 years
1900... 1,650,000,000...
2000... 6,070,581,000... x30.35 in 2000 years
2005... 6,453,628,000... +383,047,000 in 5 years
2008... 6,700,000,000... x33.5 in 2008 years
November 2011... 7,000,000,000... +929,419,000+ in 11 years
April 2016... 7,416,900,000... +426,900,000+ in less than 5 years
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
Zugzwang is when a chess player at a disadvantage
is forced to choose between two or more moves,
all of which end in a severely weakened position.
Mark Hartzman
If fossil fuel, pesticides, fertilizers, genetically modified seed,
irrigation, exponentially productive technology, arable land and fresh water
created enough food to keep pace with population growth so far,
is Earth’s industrialized civilization dependent
on ever increasing supplies of what appears to be finite resources?
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency,
the second is war.
Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin.
But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
Ernest Hemingway
If some economies fall like dominoes, with wealth transferring away from instability,
while large, relatively younger populations descend into more chaotic times,
what could happen
if a generation of underemployed, underpaid, educated and indebted young adults
become disillusioned by their elders’ financial mismanagement
and seek to remedy the predicament?
Think of the Earth as a living organism…being attacked by billions of bacteria,
whose numbers double every forty years.
Gore Vidal
