Over the edge: Climate scientists reach tipping point

Is it time to start panicking yet?

After years of issuing academically dry, if increasingly dire, warnings about the accelerating pace of climate change, it seems leading scientists have now been pushed over the edge into new and more emotionally charged territory.

Here in the UK, for example, the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has taken to calling the Government’s top environment agencies “small yapping dogs” whose policies on global warming are “dangerously optimistic.”

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the pond, top US climate scientist James Hansen has gone from vocal criticism to chain-yourself-to-the-fence activism, getting himself arrested at a West Virginia protest against mountaintop removal coal mining.

“(I)t is our responsibility to make sure our representatives feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not what is politically expedient,” Hansen told the crowd of protesters.

Even the Climate Congress’ latest synthesis report, released in advance of the coming climate talks in Copenhagen this December, is peppered with charged words like “irreversible,” “inexcusable” and “The clock is ticking.”

Whether or not the climate has actually reached one or more tipping points, it seems some climate scientists have.

What do you think: is it time to get truly and dramatically serious about climate change yet?