Grim news but no headlines

UN scientists released a new report over the weekend, one that should have achieved screaming headlines around the world. The end is nearer than you think, especially if you don't put much trust in your leaders and your fellow human beings to cease releasing carbon into the atmosphere. Since 2000, the earth has heated up 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). In a follow up story in Sunday's Washington Post:

To avoid heating the globe by the minimum possible, an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the world's spiraling growth in greenhouse gas emissions must end no later than 2015, the report said, and must start to drop quickly after that peak. By 2050, carbon dioxide and other atmospheric polluting gases must be reduced by 50 to 85 percent, according to the estimates.

What happens if we don't meet that 2015 emissions goal? It doesn't look pleasant:

But if the world misses that target and does not stabilize carbon dioxide emissions until 2030, for example, the planet's temperature will increase by as much as 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit above 2000 temperatures, the report said. That level of warming would result in widespread extinctions of species, a slowing of the global currents, decreased food production, loss of 30 percent of global wetlands, flooding for millions of people and higher deaths from heat waves.

2015 is just around the corner. With billions of human beings crowding the planet and scrambling for resources, things are not looking very positive. Americans, for the most part, are still living a mindless disposable lifestyle, without bothering to think about what life will be like for their children and grandchildren.

This latest UN report makes it plain: those of us alive in a mere 7 years, are going to experience the sad decline and rapid downfall of the human race that could not save itself from its own compulsion toward comfort and convenience at any cost.