Big Changes!: And The More Things Change, The More They Are Changing In the WRONG Direction- GLOBAL WARMING and INCREASING WEALTH INEQUALITY

The news didn’t wait to come out on the day of Mr. Trump’s inauguration (if that’s what you were expecting): Last year we got the news on January 20th.  This year we got the news today. . . .

Last year, on January 20th, we learned that 2015 had set the record for the world’s warmest year ever, eclipsing 2014, which, in turn, had been the world’s warmest year ever.

This year we learned today: 2016 is the world’s warmest year ever.  That makes it three years in succession that the temperature has set escalating records.

When this was announced last year, we were told that the odds were starkly against the phenomenon of "two back-to-back record years," that they were only 1 out of 1,500 unless. . .  climate change with the ever present prospect of continually increasing temperatures is undeniably here. -

. . . so what are the odds of THREE successive years of annual increase?  What’s worse is that the New York Times reports that record-setting figures of 2016 were “trouncing” those set a year earlier.

Last year, National Notice looked at this frightful record setting with respect to our climate and connected it to another dismal trend in setting records: News had come out that world wealth inequality had increased to the point that just 62 of the world’s richest were as wealthy as as half of world's population.  See: Hot News Connection: 62 Billionaires Now Own More Than Half The Planet's Population And 2015 Far Outpaced 2014 as Planet's Hottest Ever Year (January 23, 2016).

Well, this week similarly brought news that last year’s record of wealth inequality has been trounced by this year’s record as well.  Now just eight individuals have as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population:  World's 8 Richest Have as Much Wealth as Bottom Half, Oxfam Says, by Gerry Mullany, January 16, 2017

Eight individuals (including Michael Bloomberg, who was hardly even on the map of wealth before becoming NYC mayor)?. .

. . .  Only six years ago in 2010 this power of holding as much wealth as half the world's population was dispersed among 388 multi-billionaires.

Are these racing increases in wealth inequality related to the fast racing increases in climate change?  Yes, they are.  That was exactly what I wrote and explained when I wrote last year in National Notice about those records being broken.. . .  Consider this just an update about how increasingly out of hand the situation is getting.

BTW: In a related vein, if you want to read about how one of the world’s most bizarrely wealthy man is buying a central destination library from the New York Public Library, which will be snuffing out its major science library just when what we need to know about climate change is vanishing from the libraries, there is a Noticing New York article you should read.