The Time was right, a decade ago

Ten years ago this week, Time magazine published a landmark cover on global warming with the headline, “Be Worried. Be Very Worried.”

The main story was a very solid, even prescient, piece of reporting — warning about polar ice loss, sea level rise, severe drought, and other extreme weather.

Indeed, Time warned that “global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse” — tipping points that a decade of inaction has brought us right to the edge of. The article even warns of the possible ramifications if warming shuts down the Gulf Stream or if our dawdling locks in multi-meter sea level rise — much the same concerns that James Hansen and 18 leading climatologists warned of in their recent bombshell peer-reviewed paper.

Except Time magazine laid it all out for all Americans to see 10 years ago when the possibility of avoiding the worst impact would have been far easier to achieve.

Read the ClimateProgress story - “Time Magazine Got Global Warming Right In 2006: ‘Be Worried. Be Very Worried’.”