I saw the new (2006-04-03) issue of time magazine. One of the cover articles says that
"By any measure earth is at ... the tipping point". Not in the text, mind you - that is the title of the article. It reads like the global warming articles here on dailykos.
The title of the issue: "Global Warming: be worried, be very worried"
It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry--a Category 4 storm with wind bursts that reached 125 m.p.h.--exploded through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked that way last year as curtains of fire and dust turned the skies of Indonesia orange, thanks to drought-fueled blazes sweeping the island nation. It certainly looks that way as sections of ice the size of small states calve from the disintegrating Arctic and Antarctic. And it certainly looks that way as the sodden wreckage of New Orleans continues to molder, while the waters of the Atlantic gather themselves for a new hurricane season just two months away. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast--when the emergency becomes commonplace--something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming.
To see the online version, you need to watch an ad all the way through first (and wait a couple seconds at the end before clicking the link). The online version doesn't show the diagrams and the
survey is separate.