Glacier expert says Earth's climate is changing abruptly

From the Washington Post via the Houston Chronicle:

Earth's climate is undergoing an abrupt change, ending a cooler period that began with a swift "cold snap" in the tropics 5,200 years ago that coincided with the start of cities, the beginning of calendars and the biblical great flood, a leading expert on glaciers has concluded.

The warming around Earth's tropical belt is a signal suggesting that the "climate system has exceeded a critical threshold," which has sent tropical-zone glaciers in full retreat and will melt them completely "in the near future," said Lonnie G. hompson, a scientist who for 23 years has been taking core samples from the ancient ice of glaciers.

Thompson, writing with eight other researchers in an article published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the ice samples show that the climate can and did cool quickly, and that a similarly abrupt warming change started about 50 years ago. Humans may not have the luxury of adapting to slow changes, he suggests.

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It may just be my own well-tended paranoia, but it seems now like reports such as this are coming out every other week, and each new one is usually worse than the one before it. All of this leaves me with the notion that not only is global warming man-made and really happening, but it's probably even worse than we think, and I already think it's pretty dire as it is. I understand why uber-polluting corporations would push a disinformation campaign about the issue on the country; unlike real people, corporations have no souls, existing for the sole purpose of maximizing profit--cutting greenhouse gas emissions probably would cut into that profit imperative heavily. Individual Americans, however, do have souls. How the hell can anybody not take this unimaginable threat seriously?

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