As this summer carves its way through the year, any dumb-ass can see something fishy is going on with the planet’s weather systems, like an old, old radiator busting its seams — heat and more heat.
Global warming might be beyond the “tipping point.”

(Illustration found here).

Climate change has always been a serious subject here at Compatible Creatures, a topic seemingly even more horrifying, and scarer, than even stuff like war, the Great Depression, rectal cancer, or John McCain, and carrying with it this unfurling scenario which now can be readily seen by anyone with any kind of walking-around sense — unless you’re in the ilk of Jim Inhofe or any of his kin.
Just in the last three years, from all indications, the environment in which humanity dwells appears to be accelerating much-quicker than anticipated toward some type of near-unlivable condition as witnessed this past week with a report, titled “State of the Climate 2009,” from US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: “When we follow decade-to-decade trends using multiple data sets and independent analyses from around the world, we see clear and unmistakable signs of a warming world,” says Peter Stott, a climate scientists with the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.

Less than a year ago, The Climate Change Science Compendium 2009 reported blowbacks within climate change were moving faster, and quicker than anticipated:

In addition, increased absorption of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by oceans is leading to acidification of seawater faster than expected.
For example, water that can corrode a seashell-making substance is “already welling up along the California coast — decades earlier than existing models predict,” the report said.

Climate change is not THE can to kick further down the road for future generations to deal with, like oil, for instance, which apparently will keep the planet machined-in up for a little while longer, or maybe peak oil is another worm in the apple in the eye of mankind — President Obama was in Detroit on Friday to relish in the financial uptick of US auto makers, never mind the coming years; instead of bailing out the car makers last year, Obama should have started the process to “phase” them out, but that’s too much to ask, huh?

Well, the assholes in the US Congress couldn’t get a climate bill passed this year, despite everything.
The problem, though, was priority — it was either health care or climate change.
And one must remember this about climate change: The situation will soon become horrifyingly and depressingly mega-obvious.
Two years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark:

Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised.
For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived.
These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events.
There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.

Now, financial and health care reform are indeed needed, but next to climate change, neither can hold a waxing candle.