Is It Hot Enough for Doomsday?

Record-breaking high heat is expected to remain another day in the northeast and midwest, with temps above 100 in New York and Washington, along with high humidity. This extra day beyond what was initially predicted will strain power throughout the east coast. When the heat breaks, some areas will face punishing thunderstorms, which have already hit parts of New England. Meanwhile, what's likely to become the first hurricane of the season is gearing up near Puerto Rico.

So maybe these governors and mayors will get together before next summer to deal with the problem they are likely to have many more times the rest of this century. But they still have August and September of this year to get through. Just getting through Thursday is going to be major.

As for stopping future global heating, hours after the California Environmental Protection Agency announced its prediction that the state will be hotter and drier by the end of the century, in Los Angeles former President Bill Clinton said that his Clinton Foundation, previously targetting its efforts on poverty, AIDs and childhood obesity, will begin a new initiative on curbing greenhouse gases. It will begin with a partnership with the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group to develop ways to reduce heat-trapped gases in urban centers. But Clinton said it will become a larger focus of his Foundation in the future.

“It seems to me that there is now a consensus in the world that climate change is real and that we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “What we need now is more information about how to do it quickly, economically, and organize the efforts to do it."

However, House Minority Whip Roy Blount also announced that if Republicans retain control of Congress next year, there will be no meaningful legislation passed to deal with the Climate Crisis.

"There's a huge disconnect between what professional scientists have studied and learned in the last 30 years, and what is out there in the popular culture," said Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at the University of California, San Diego, in an article in the Seattle Times, in which scientists skeptical of the climate crisis a decade ago are now fully convinced. (Hat tip to Steven D at Booman Tribune.) Fuel companies contribute to that gap by supporting a small cadre of global-warming skeptics, whose views are widely disseminated by like-minded think tanks and Web sites.

On the other hand, if the tipping point has already been passed, or if we're saved from the suspense of whether the Climate Crisis unheeded will end civilization by the apocolypticians currently working on starting World War III to end civilization shortly after the November elections, the Alliance to Rescue Civilization is ready to break ground--with the particpation of the prime ministers of all five Scandinavian nations--on a "doomsday vault" to stockpile seeds. They also advocate (according to the NY Times) a backup for humanity by way of a station on the Moon replete with DNA samples of all life on Earth, as well as a compendium of all human knowledge — the ultimate detached garage for a race of packrats. It would be run by people who, through fertility treatments and frozen human eggs and sperm...

It's a sign of the time that this group is not composed of koolaid drinkers waiting for magic aliens but a couple of scientists not previously known to be mad, and other reputable folks with high powered credentials. This actually is a fairly common science fiction idea, because it is a pretty reasonable alternative to dying out entirely when doomsday is not such a weird idea anymore.