Firefighters battle the Bond Fire, started by a structure fire that extended into nearby vegetation, along Silverado Canyon Road on Thursday, December 3, 2020 in Silverado, California. (Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Common Dreams: During its four years in power, the oil-friendly Trump administration kept the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Change Indicators page completely frozen, suppressing an updated assessment of how the planetary emergency is affecting the United States and other parts of the world.
But on Wednesday, the Biden EPA relaunched the page with new data showing that U.S. cities are experiencing more frequent and intense heat waves, ocean and lake temperatures are climbing, sea levels on U.S. coasts are rising, and wildfire season is peaking earlier.
ambitiously slash carbon emissions in the coming decades. Sea levels, of course, wonât instantly rise by tens of feet: Miles-thick ice sheets take many centuries to thousands of years to melt. But, critically, humanity is already setting the stage for a relatively quick return to Pliocene climes, or climes at least significantly warmer than now. Itâs happening fast. When CO2
naturally increases in the atmosphere, pockets of ancient air
preserved in ice show this CO2 rise happens gradually, over thousands of years. But today, carbon dioxide levels are skyrocketing as humans burn long-buried fossil fuels. CO2 in the atmosphere has gone up 100 ppm in my lifetime, said Kathleen Benison, a geologist at West Virginia University who researches past climates. âThatâs incredibly fast geologically.
What Earth was like last time CO2 levels were this high msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.