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Help Cool the World
Sure you care enough for the environment – you segregate your wastes at home, teach your kids not to litter candy wrappers just anywhere, make sure your car’s emission parts are in good condition. But what will you say when respected scientists are now saying that apocalypse is at hand?
According to the website www.global-cool.com which aims to approach the challenge of climate change with a positive and informative attitude, the apocalypse is being heralded not by lunatics in white robes, but by sober and respected scientists.
An article at the website reports that members of the Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists have today moved the minute hand of their ‘Doomsday Clock’ two minutes closer to the midnight Moment Of Doom, with climate change being cited as a major cause of their pessimism.
In 1947 the symbolic clock was set up to warn the world how close it was to self-destruction during the then Cold War, with midnight being the moment of global atomic conflict. The clock started at seven minutes to midnight, and has got as close as two minutes to in 1953. There have been 17 alterations since the clock was founded.
The decision to move the minute hand to 11.55 was taken by the BAS board of directors and sponsors, which includes no less than 18 Nobel Laureates, and was announced at a joint news conference at both the Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC, and the Royal Society in London.
As well as the threat posed by the world’s 27,000 nuclear weapons, the scientists pointed to global warming as a new and serious contributor to potential apocalypse.
“The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival,” the statement from the BAS read.
So what are the facts? Every year, according to Global Cool, over 26.5 billion tonnes of CO2 is emitted around the world. Add an annual increase of 0.5 billion tonnes, and it is predicted that we are fast approaching the point at which the global climate will become irreversibly unstable.
The scary thing is that the general consensus amongst scientists is that we are now only a decade away from this point – with salvation coming in the form of a seemingly impossible reduction of our CO2 emissions by a minimum of one billion tonnes per year. And that isn’t even a permanent reprieve but only a buy out time for us to develop long-term solutions to the problem.
What to do? Maybe a visit to sites like Global Cool would help.
About the Author: Joe Thompson is the owner of a successful auto body shop in Ferndale, California. This 38 year old is also a prolific writer, contributing automotive related articles to various publications.
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