My Apartment Will Be Underwater

It's been pushing 60 degrees pretty consistently for the past month here in the New York City area. Typically, January is the coldest month in this area but we've been enjoying crazy warm weather most of this month. This article from the Wahington Post covers the possible "tipping point" that we're approaching with regards to climate change.

Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend.

This "tipping point" scenario has begun to consume many prominent researchers in the United States and abroad, because the answer could determine how drastically countries need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. While scientists remain uncertain when such a point might occur, many say it is urgent that policymakers cut global carbon dioxide emissions in half over the next 50 years or risk the triggering of changes that would be irreversible.
...
Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer, who also advises the advocacy group Environmental Defense, said one of the greatest dangers lies in the disintegration of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets, which together hold about 20 percent of the fresh water on the planet. If either of the two sheets disintegrates, sea level could rise nearly 20 feet in the course of a couple of centuries, swamping the southern third of Florida and Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village.

However unpopular and harsh, people have to hear what the world's best scientists are telling us. This is apparently NOT what the Bush administration is about - check out this article from the NY Times on the shady suppression of one major scientist's attempts to spread the word. Before you call him a crackpot with some type of persecution complex, consider his stature in the scientific community - this isn't some guy putting together a time machine in his basement, but the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.