Apolitical Apostasy

I'm devoting this blog to headlines and news leading toward 2012. As the stories come, they will begin to form a cohesive picture of what is going on presently on the planet.
The first story comes from Linda Moulton Howe's Earthfiles.

September 26, 2006 - Global Average Temperature
Near Warmest in A Million Years.

Global average temperature is within one degree Celsius
of the maximum temperature of the past million years. This color-coded map
shows how temperatures changed on average from 2001 to 2005. 2005 was the warmest
ranked year on record. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and purple
indicates the greatest cooling. Graphic courtesy NASA.

James Hansen, Ph.D., Atmospheric Physicist, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University, New York City, states in the most recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: "Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period. That means that further global warming of 1 degree Celsius defines a critical level. If warming is kept less than that, effects of global warming may be relatively manageable. During the warmest interglacial periods the Earth was reasonably similar to today. But if further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about three million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today."