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Quote by: rdnor Also using Time magazine as a source leaves me questioning your gullability . |
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Quote by: Mr.Vicchio What's breaking news about TIME doing a fear piece? |
The significance of the
TIME piece is not that they were the source of the data. They weren't and they didn't claim to be. They're a journalism news magazine. More than that, they are one of the preeminent large circulation, general audience news magazines in the world. Their target market is the broadest possible demographic interested in the significant stories that define national and international current events and culture.
TIME has one of the most outstanding reputations in journalism for reporting what's important and interesting, and getting it right, fair and in depth.
Over the years,
TIME and it's major competitor,
Newsweek, have done a variety of stories reporting what science has been finding out about global warming and the environment, making no conclusions beyond what was being reported. The significance of this story is that
TIME brought together an amalgamation of many dramatic reports that have appeared over the last several months, from a variety of sources, and for the first time, made a clear and unequivicable announcement -- that the scientific community has come to a dramatic consensus: that global warming is an uncontested
fact, that it is caused specifically by human activity, and to the shock of the researchers who have been studying this over many years, it's been determined that the warming phenomena is occurring at a rate much faster than previously thought.
On top of that, TIME reported that the
effects of global warming, once merely predicted, have become dramatically measureable.
Specifically...
1. Polar ice caps are melting faster than ever.
2. More and more land is being devastated by drought, which has more than doubled since the 1970's.
3. Rising waters are already drowning low-lying communities, with creeping seas and increasingly savage monsoons making for deadlier floods.
4. Worldwide, weather events - storms - are increasing in ferocity due to increased water vapor in the air, due to warming.
5. Once cool and wet forests are falling victim to drought, then fire, both reducing the amount of forest carbon sinks and increasing warming.
6. Warming affects are compounding each other. Burning fossil fuels increases CO2 and warming... warming increases deforestation, reducing the earths natural ability to absorb CO2 and creating oxygen, melting more ice, glaciers and permafrost, which reflects heat, and by melting also releases trapped carbon into the air, which in turn means even more heat.
What the
TIME article is reporting is that researchers are anouncing that these things are no longer simply speculation... they're varified
fact.
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