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Climate Change: 'This Is Just the Beginning'

Mon, 07/16/2012 - 19:44 — Dave Culver
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  • If our news media, including—or especially—the meteorologists, continue to ignore the essential link between extreme weather and climate change, then we as a nation, the greatest per capita polluters on the planet, may not act in time to avert even greater catastrophe.
  • Do You Change the Weather When You Change the Climate? Yes!

Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan, Democracy Now!

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Evidence supporting the existence of climate change is pummeling the United States this summer, from the mountain wildfires of Colorado to the recent “derecho” storm that left at least 23 dead and 1.4 million people without power from Illinois to Virginia. The phrase “extreme weather” flashes across television screens from coast to coast, but its connection to climate change is consistently ignored, if not outright mocked. If our news media, including—or especially—the meteorologists, continue to ignore the essential link between extreme weather and climate change, then we as a nation, the greatest per capita polluters on the planet, may not act in time to avert even greater catastrophe.

More than 2,000 heat records were broken last week (June 24-30) around the U.S. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency that tracks the data, reported that the spring of 2012 “marked the largest temperature departure from average of any season on record for the contiguous United States.” These record temperatures in May, NOAA says, “have been so dramatically different that they establish a new ‘neighborhood’ apart from the historical year-to-date temperatures.”

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Related:

Do You Change the Weather When You Change the Climate? Yes! Jim Naureckas, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

  • Scientists can tell you whether we'd be more or less likely to have any given type of weather with an unaltered climate. And with droughts and forest fires, the answer is clear: We'd be having less of them.
  • This Is Your Ocean on Acid
     

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