Global Warming is very real.  The Earth’s temperatures had been on a steady 5,000-year cooling trend until about a century ago when they sharply spiked higher and higher, and that’s causing changes you need to know about.

Researchers from Oregon State University and Harvard have analyzed more than 11,000 years of temperature data from around the world.  And the cooling that had occurred over 5 millennia suddenly was sharply reversed at the beginning of the industrial revolution.  The change was so dramatic that in just over a century, we’re already approaching the highest global temperatures of that 11,000-year epoch.

A U.S. government report (.pdf is available here) says ocean levels could rise more than 2 meters by the end of the century.  But even that might be underestimated, according to the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee, because even the most sophisticated climate change computer models can’t accurately predict what will happen as the polar ice sheets melt, which is occurring at a much faster pace than previously thought.

One thing that big business expects, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, is the opening of new shipping lanes across the Arctic Ocean and through Canada’s “Northwest Passage”, which would be the fastest shipping from Eastern North America to Asia.  What’s more, Icebreakers will be used to cut straight across the North Pole from Asia to Europe’s Nordic Countries.  Of course, this risks fouling the Arctic Ocean the same way we managed to mess up the others.

But big business shouldn’t count its silver pieces just yet.  Higher temperatures will likely take a big chunk out of global worker productivity.  Three scientists with America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tell us that in recent years, the higher temperatures and increased humidity in the summer months decreases workers’ ability by 10 percent.  In the year 2050, worker capacity drops to 70 percent in the peak months and by 2200, assuming humans are still around, it’ll drop to less than 40 percent. 

America contributes more than 18 percent of the world’s harmful greenhouse gasses (China is the Earth’s #1 offender, Oz is way down on the list).  And the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication reports (.pdf is available here) that Americans who are “alarmed” about climate change have grown from 10 percent in 2010 to 16 percent in 2012.  Americans who are “dismissive” about climate change have halved from 16 percent in 2010 to 8 percent in 2012.