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I am sitting here stunned. I have just found out that the climate is changing much faster than scientists used to think. The extraordinary process of sudden climate change is not somewhere down the road. It is staring us right in the face. What is worse, we are absolutely unprepared. A large minority of the public actually believes the loopy idea that nothing is wrong with the climate. This silliness goes on, despite the warnings of science and the very visible–and violent– deterioration of the weather. Last summer was one of the warmest on record. This winter, the northern hemisphere– especially Siberia and Mongolia–have experienced terrifying cold, almost record-breaking cold.
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British scientists have discovered a period in geologic history where abrupt cooling occurred during a period of rapid warming. While the mechanism for this event approximately two million years ago remains unknown, the event happened very suddenly, and left the entire planet with a profoundly different weather system.

The struggle to survive the change is believed to have contributed to the evolution of the human species.

According to a report in the magazine Science, the event resulted in a dieback of the lush vegetation of the period, and must have triggered a desperate survival struggle among most species existing at the time, including early man.
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Mt. Popocatapetl, the restless volcano 35 miles from Mexico City, has once again begun erupting. On Monday, January 21, the volcano sent a massive plume of smoke and ash to an altitude of 25,000 feet. According to the Mexican volcanologists, the volcano experienced an earthquake measuring 2.8 on the Richter scale Monday afternoon. 17 minutes later, there was an eruption of steam, followed by the emission of the ash cloud.

Since 1994, Popo has been in an eruptive state, with unpredictable periods of activity that have gradually been increasing. On December 12, 2000, the volcano experienced its worst eruption in 1,200 years. As a result, over 40,000 people living within the danger zone evacuated the area.
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A group of scientists from 99 different countries have issued a warning that the climate change problem has become urgent and Earth could heat up by over 40 degrees Fahrenheit this century.

The report was issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, agroup of experts assembled by the United Nations, and its conclusions areharder-hitting than most earlier reports about the extent and causes ofglobal warming. “The scientific consensus should sound alarm bells in everynational capital,” said Klaus Toepfer of the UN Environment Program.
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