Here is a graph of world population from 1000 AD to the present:

Here is a graph of carbon dioxide emissions from 1000 AD to present:

Here is temperature from 1000 AD to present:

Here is a thought experiment:

Posit a lily pond. On day one, it has one lily pad. The number of lily pads doubles each day. On day thirty, the pond is completely full of lily pads. On what day is the pond half full?

If you guessed day fifteen, you guessed wrong. The correct answer is day twenty-nine.

All of the above are examples of exponential growth. This is why those of us who have been following the science closely for a while are so worried.

The experts tell us that there is still time to avert the worst of what might lie ahead—but only just. They tell us that there is still room for discussion about exactly what the causes and outcomes will be—but that they aren’t good.

In other words, it’s only alarmist to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theatre if there is, in fact, no fire.

(Note, I couldn’t find the graph I wanted of species extinction rate, but it shows the same trend.)

you might want to visit this site:

More high culture from me to you today. It looks like sometimes, randomly, you have to click through an entry ad page to get to the actual DeviantArt destination page.

I just now wasted 20 precious minutes out of my life, jiggling my mouse around and clicking it to change the shape of the lines, and clicking the little round dots on the bottom edge of the screen to make further changes.

Yes, I’m pretty easily entertained. Yes, I know there are other things like it out there. This one felt particularly psychedelic because of the evanescent mandalas that you can make with it.

Props to Clicked for the link that originally led me to this charming trifle.

I’ll give you a hint: he’s not praying.

(Found at JonathanCoulton.com)