"You've got to ask yourself one question"

"You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?"

Well, do you? These words, loud and clear, come forth from Dirty Harry when Harry stops a bank robbery in progress but this post, obviously, is not about Harry and crime but rather about global warming and the grave implications it has for the world if we do nothing.

"A new analysis of climate risk, published by researchers at MIT and elsewhere, shows that even moderate carbon-reduction policies now can substantially lower the risk of future climate change. It also shows that quick, global emissions reductions would be required in order to provide a good chance of avoiding a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level — a widely discussed target. But without prompt action, they found, extreme changes could soon become much more difficult, if not impossible, to control."

So if nothing else, we have to ask ourselves one question, "Do we feel lucky?" or do we do something before it's too late.

Addendum: "The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that."

The clock is ticking.