This is the way the world ends

Tonight I saw the pioneering 1951 science fiction epic When Worlds Collide, which made quite an impression on me when I was a kid. The film is an antique -- dated, obvious and occasionally laughable -- yet it maintain a hammerlock on the psyche. Slasher flicks stopped scaring me ages ago, but Armageddon still has the power to unnerve.

If you want to know real fear, take a look at this piece. NASA says that we have fewer years than previously thought before the most severe effects of global warming kick in:

With just 10 more years of "business as usual" emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas, says the NASA/Columbia paper, "it becomes impractical" to avoid "disastrous effects."

The study appears in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Its lead author is James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

The forecast effects include "increasingly rapid sea-level rise, increased frequency of droughts and floods, and increased stress on wildlife and plants due to rapidly shifting climate zones," according to the NASA announcement.

And:

The NASA research also reasserts the importance of the disappearing Arctic sea ice and snow, whose reflectivity has helped cool the planet by bouncing warm sunlight straight back into space.

The disappearance of that bright sea ice and snow is uncovering more and more dark water and bare ground -- creating another dangerous feedback loop.

These feedbacks all produce more heat, thus all reinforcing each other, leading to evermore thawing -- and thus releases of natural greenhouse gases (including CO2 and methane) in a viciously accelerating circle.

And:

The study says that "only moderate additional climate forcing (which would mean only moderate additional warming from such emissions) is likely to set in motion the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet" -- dubbed WAIS by polar scientists.

Many scientists say a disintegration of WAIS would mean catastrophically rapid sea-level rise.

At the beginning of When Worlds Collide, a scientist presents the doomsday scenario to the United Nations. The delegates prefer a more comforting analysis presented by a professional harrumpher. The leaders of the world miss their chance to rescue a larger number of human beings because they choose the science they prefer over the facts.