Global Warming by the Numbers

This weekend Vermonters can take in not one but two feature films focused on global climate change. The Great Warming, narrated by Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morissette joins Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth in area theaters. (See "Flick Chick," page 60a.) Some climate change-related statistics from the films:

30% Percent of excess carbon in the Earth's atmosphere
20% Percent rate at which Chinese car ownership is increasing each year
600 million People in India who have yet to be connected to the power grid
0.5 Above-average degrees Celsius of temperatures during the 1990s
1.5-6 Average degrees Celsius at which temperatures are expected to climb in the next 100 years
10 Above average degrees Celsius temperatures are expected to climb in the Arctic if that happens
46 Years until 2050, when the Arctic is expected to be ice-free if global warming continues unchecked
1 million+ Species expected to be extinct by 2050
300,000 People expected to die annually from global warming-related causes if climate change continues unabated for the next quarter century