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Last weekend the sun shined.
 I know that doesn't seem novel, but I promise it's newsworthy for us here in the American mid-Atlantic. After five years of living the pampered winter life, four months of heavy snow, bitter cold, and all-around insufferableness have made this season a throwback classic--a winter remix if you will.
So now we're on to spring: everyone's favorite reprieve. The rivers flood. The trees bud. The flowers bloom. And Mets fans everywhere are still filled with optimism.
The good news is that spring is getting longer, at the expense of winter. And autumn is also getting a bit longer, electing to cut the fingernails off the impending icy grip brought forth each November and December. The bad news is that this phenomenon, a clear result of climate change, may signal that we've lost control of Earth's greenhouse effect.
Of course, spring and autumn aren't getting any longer on the calendar or in an astronomical sense. Also remember this is infinitely more applicable to the Northern Hemisphere. Instead, we're referring to the integrity of the plant life as temperatures drop, and how soon plant life rebounds as temperatures rise. To determine this, researchers had the ignominy of scouring 25 years-worth of satellite imaging. They then measured the relative greenness of each day during those 25 years across several types of terrain zones. Their conclusion was that forest and grasslands have been staying greener later in the year, and are also getting greener earlier.
 This news came just two days before the UN Scientific Panel released a report that global warming has reached a critical point. One of the report authors summed it up terrifyingly.
"We're all sitting ducks." Ouch. Duck Hunt, anyone?
More than 100 governments approved the report, which ominously concludes that the global warming projections made by the UN panel in 2007 were awfully optimistic. It predicts relentless heat waves for Europe, wildfires in the United States, droughts in Australia, and flooding across Asia and Africa. Furthermore, poverty, sickness, and violence will be aggravated, as crops become threatened and political ties are strained. Finally, it will widen the gaps between economic classes: the rich will be able to afford necessities, while the poor will suffer without.
All of the above, simply because Earth temperatures are expected to rise by about 7° F from now until the year 2100. Taking things a step (and a billion years) further, many scientists believe that eventually Earth will resemble Venus, a planet whose  runaway greenhouse effect has boiled away its oceans. In fact, this scenario is virtually a guarantee considering what we know about star cycles--the Sun is going to grow until it heats Earth to a ridiculous degree and annihilates all of known life.
The table at right illustrates potential temperature increases for the next 85 years. The top row is a best-case scenario, while the lowest row represents a worse-case scenario.
But there is a chance we can delay our impending apocalypse, if we can finally agree to curb greenhouse emissions. This objective has been repeated a million times, but it needs to be repeated a billion more. Else we face another extinction event, one humans likely won't survive.
The last extinction event, the Quaternary event, began 50,000 years ago. It killed off sabertooth tigers, woolly mammoths, and thousands of other species we recognize only through fossils. But the Quaternary extinction event hasn't ended; as our Earth's environment continues to evolve, so to must its fauna. Experts believe two things likely initiated the Quaternary event: humans, via overhunting and disease distribution, and climate change. So when it's humans causing the climate change, these two variables becoming much more terrifying.
This coming spring and summer, while enjoying the warmth of the Sun's rays, remember life only exists because sometimes it isn't so sunny.
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