Leaving Holocene
An iceberg twice the size of Manhattan broke away from the Petermann Glacier this week. In the United States, much of the nation's midsection is experiencing Dustbowl-like drought. High temperatures were broken or tied in 3,215 places in the U.S. in June. Out-of-control wildfires are raging in the American West. Weather and climate are different, of course, but scientists like Vermont's Bill McKibben are alarmed by the pattern. To him, the changes are epochal. The Holocene is the name for the current period in Earth's history. It is "the 11,000-year period of climatic stability we're now leaving... in the dust," McKibben warned in an important new article.
