Meanwhile in srs bznss, Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) tweeted a link to a scary AP article on this summer’s raging U.S. scorchapocalypse. Is it global warming? Well, we can’t say that, because weather (such as a heat wave) and climate (long-term trends in temperature, storms, etc.) are different things. But hell yeah it IS global warming.
Inset quote time!
If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks. Horrendous wildfires. Oppressive heat waves. Devastating droughts. Flooding from giant deluges. And a powerful freak wind storm called a derecho. These are the kinds of extremes climate scientists have predicted will come with climate change, although it’s far too early to say that is the cause. Nor will they say global warming is the reason 3,215 daily high temperature records were set in the month of June.
Yeah uh huh. Meanwhile, North America is maggot-shot with political leaders who ignore scientists, minimize the dangers of climatic and ecological degredation and generally keep us throttled full-speed down the fossil fuel highway because they really care about jobs for their constituents hahaha no bales of money and fuck the future if it can’t take a joke.
Let’s have another scary inset quote!
Such patterns haven’t happened only in the past week or two. The spring and winter in the U.S. were the warmest on record and among the least snowy, setting the stage for the weather extremes to come, scientists say. Since Jan. 1, the United States has set more than 40,000 hot temperature records, but fewer than 6,000 cold temperature records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Through most of last century, the U.S. used to set cold and hot records evenly, but in the first decade of this century America set two hot records for every cold one, said Jerry Meehl, a climate extreme expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This year the ratio is about 7 hot to 1 cold. Some computer models say that ratio will hit 20-to-1 by midcentury, Meehl said.
aaaahhhhhhhh
And wait, wha?
While at least 15 climate scientists told The Associated Press that this long hot U.S. summer is consistent with what is to be expected in global warming, history is full of such extremes, said John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He’s a global warming skeptic who says, “The guilty party in my view is Mother Nature.”
Oh fuck off. There’s always gotta be one of ’em in every news story, doesn’t there? I’m not even gonna bother Googling John Christy to find out he’s an economist/geologist/creationist/paid fossil fuel shill/whatever. I’ll leave that to you guys.
Full story here, by the way.
UPDATE Yeah, I looked up John Christy. He actually IS a climate scientist! Apparently a very bad one.
