On February 2, in addition to it being Groundhog Day, two more significant events happened. My wife and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary, and the IPCC published their first report of 2007.
Phil made a short-term six-week forecast about the weather, and depending on where you were, it was warming or colding.
My wife said she was ready for another 50. [smile]
The IPCC said matters were pretty certain. Mankind had caused the changes we are seeing in the climate, and things are going to get worse. Some others were saying the changes could even be far worse than what the IPCC suggested.
And the number of deniers dropped percipitously.
I closely follow news reports from a variety of sources, and spend a lot of my time looking at the trend of the news, rather than the specific items. As the leaks filtered into the news media, I saw more and more pundits stepping forward to say there was a problem, and we had something to worry about. Once the report was published, there seemed to be almost no politicians willing to speak against its conclusions. It was as if the world had turned over.
Indeed, I believe we reached a tipping point in the mind-set of the world's civilization, and what happens in the next year is vital to the human race.
If mankind has indeed bought in to the fact that we have caused the climate change, and therefore, we can do something about it, I expect there to be a growing momentum toward doing something about the problem. We will have indeed tipped into the positive approach to solving our problems.
On the other hand, if after a year the momentum has dwindled to stagnation, I see the human race and its civilization starting its slow but accelerating decline into the next Dark Ages.
Apocalypse is not a given, it is a choice.
sam
