We Are So Screwed

In your omg-we’re-gonna-inherit-the-earth-just-as-it-blows-up news for the week:

You know those imperfect climate models global-warming skeptics doubt? National Geographic News reports that Arctic ice is actually melting faster than predicted.

“We’re about 30 years ahead of what the models show,” said Julienne Stroeve, lead author of the study and a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

For those who missed it, I direct your attention to this terrifying article (“Six Steps to Hell”) from the Guardian, in which Mark Lynas outlines the changes that will result from each degree Celsius the planet’s temperature increases. Lynas found all this out doing research for his new book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. It’s not pretty.

On a lighter note, via Maud Newton’s fantastic blog, this meditation on the weirdness/surreality of a post-climate-change Earth. It actually sounds a lot like the trailer for Resident Evil: Extinction.

For more on global warming, check out Caroline’s article for last Thursday, “Double Burden,” about the greater effects of climate change on poorer countries.