{"id":1289,"date":"2016-03-05T12:23:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T17:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/?p=1289"},"modified":"2023-10-07T11:33:30","modified_gmt":"2023-10-07T15:33:30","slug":"the-mercury-doesnt-lie-weve-hit-a-troubling-climate-change-milestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/2016\/03\/the-mercury-doesnt-lie-weve-hit-a-troubling-climate-change-milestone\/","title":{"rendered":"The mercury doesn\u2019t lie: We\u2019ve hit a troubling climate change milestone"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1290\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/record-low-sea-ice.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1290\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1290\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/record-low-sea-ice-300x212.jpg\" alt=\"Record Low Sea Ice Cover\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/record-low-sea-ice-300x212.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/record-low-sea-ice.jpg 512w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1290\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Record Low Sea Ice Cover<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Thursday, while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened. Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above \u201cnormal\u201d for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s important because the governments of the world have set two degrees Celsius as the must-not-cross red line that, theoretically, we\u2019re doing all we can to avoid. And it\u2019s important because most of the hemisphere has not really had a winter. They\u2019ve been trucking snow into Anchorage for the start of the Iditarod; Arctic sea ice is at record low levels for the date; in New England doctors are already talking about the start of \u201callergy season.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This bizarre glimpse of the future is only temporary. It will be years, one hopes, before we\u2019re past the two degrees mark on a regular basis. But the future is clearly coming much faster than science had expected. February, taken as a whole, crushed all the old monthly temperature records, which had been set in \u2026 January. January crushed all the old monthly temperature records, which had been set in \u2026 December.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/1UHuZhl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read the full article by Bill McKibben on the Bostonglobe.com website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday, while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened. Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above \u201cnormal\u201d for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[178,383],"tags":[543,215,544,214],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1307,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions\/1307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}