Climate Change

A few facts from Bill McKibben, founder of the global climate campaign 350.org:

• Global warming has added 4 percent more moisture to the atmosphere since 1970. That means that the number of “extreme events” such as downpours and floods has grown steadily; the most intense storms have increased by 20 percent across the United States in the past century.

• Arctic ice is melting on an unbelievable scale – an area the size of Britain disappeared each week in late summer as the record for minimum ice cover, set in 2005, was shattered by more than 400,000 square miles, meaning about a 27 percent loss. Forget the Petraeus report – what historians will note about September 2007 is that the Northwest Passage was free of ice for the first time since humans started keeping track.

Sources: “Washington’s snowstorms, brought to you by global warming” and “The Race Against Warming” by Bill McKibben, The Washington Post