Experts say record-breaking heat and an uncommonly dry winter created perfect conditions for the Colorado wildfires.
And over the weekend, the eastern/middle U.S. baked under record temperatures from Athens, Georgia, to Cairo, Illinois, while violent storms killed 15 people and knocked out power to millions.
Human-caused climate change? While the science of attributing extreme events to global warming develops, let's just say it's not very scientifically sound to look at the window for a few days and conclude one way or another.
For example, when it snows a lot, as it did in February 2010, or at an unusual time of the year like it did in October 2011, science-is-bad skeptics are quick to conclude that climate change is a hoax.
So, should science-is-good climate change believers do the same and conclude that the heatwave is proof of climate change?
On Friday, Ed asked Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University, about the wildfires in Colorado, temperature trends and what we can do about it.
"What's unusual is to see this kind of explosive fire event occur early in the season. Usually, this kind of thing will occur later," Oppenheimer said. "This is a dire picture of what the future holds if we don't bring global warming under control."
Also on Friday, Doug Kammerer, chief meteorologist for WRC-TV in Washington, D.C., said he believed global warming was adding a few degrees to the already intense heatwave.
Watch the video:
"If we did not have global warming, we wouldn't see this," Kammerer said. "I really believe that, I really think that this is because — maybe we would have seen 101, maybe we would have seen 102, but not 104.”
Of course, the science-is-bad global warming skeptics have attack Kammerer for his analysis, labeling him a "propagandist."
Bill Nye the Science Guy will join Ed to discuss Kammerer's analysis, and climate change in general, tonight at 8pET on The Ed Show on MSNBC!
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Anybody who doubts climate change or global warming isn't paying attention.
ANYBODY who lives East of the Mississippi who doubts it hasn't been outside this Summer.
I am watching birds panting and fleeing into the bird bath. I never saw birds pant.
I just went to turn off the soak-er hoses in the flower beds and the birds were standing around the hoses in beds in flocks. I felt I was depriving them of something. So I got out a lot of plastic bowls and put them in the shade and filled them with water and turned on a sprinkler. My lizard's and the bees from the hives need water as well.
There are some idiots here in our neighborhood already setting off fireworks. Yesterday the front page of the paper ran this story..... the headline reads.
"FIREWORKS STAND MAKES HAITI MISSION POSSIBLE"....
I lost it. Please don't sale something so dangerous in this extremely dry weather with out of control , to raise money for a mission. I have no sympathy for fire works being sold. If I want to donate to HATTI, I'd just make a donation or find something less dangerous to sell than fireworks.
It's summer, and guess what? In the summer it tends to get hot out. It's called WEATHER!
You nuts attribute everything to Glbal Warming.
TM, I imagine the T-Party will be putting them off as often as possible. They get everything else ass backward.
It is too stupid to imagine people putting off fireworks in a tinder box like this!
I know India. It's downright scary. And it's not letting up anytime soon. It says in the Bible the Earth will be consumed by fire next time. I hope this isn't IT! You know the idiot Repubs will continue to deny climate change though.
MJB, They'll deny that till we're all dead. I am ready to scream at these T-party types who do nothing but lie and deny! Ryan's budget will send 3 Trillion dollars more in tax cuts to the wealthy. Yet, today I saw a mind-blowing statistic: Since 1996, 130% more people today live on $2.00 A DAY! I thought it would be for a place like India, not the USA!
The Ryan budget plans to take more from these people in order to benefit the rich. JUST WHAT THE HELL DO THEY PLAN TO TAKE FROM PEOPLE LIVING ON $2.00 a day??????????
MY GOD, WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY? People had better wake up soon. Now the GOP governors are saying they won't take the free medicaid money from Obamacare to see that the poor get health care coverage.
This is monstrous. It is vile. I cannot get my mind around this kind of mentality.
That's right, keep smokoing your crack and listening to MSNBC's lies!
The Global Warming lie claims that there is a consensus among climate scientists that a known man-made global warming crisis exists. Official statements to the contrary presented by more than 650 international climate-related experts who presented contrary official testimony recorded in a 2008 U.S. Senate minority report suggest otherwise. So do petitions signed by more than 30,000 scientists that have challenged IPCC's 1995 procedures and report representations. Those circumstances prompted Dr. Frederick Seitz, former president of the U.S. Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, and Rockefeller University to write in The Wall Street Journal: "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer review process than events that led to this IPCC report."
It is estimated that over 5 trillion dollars has already been spent fighting global warming. Five trillion dollars for a hoax! Imagine how much better off we would all be if that money had been spent fighting global hunger or any of the other problems facing humanity.
If Gobal Warming were such an emergency why are so called 'developing' nations like China and India (and scores of other countries) gievn a waiver. It's another redistribution-of-wealth scam with American taxpayers footing the bill!
My only response to that crazy, right-wing, empty-headed, lying pile of horse$#@& is, "You're on ignore."
Regardless of the cause, the result will be the same. Population masses displaced by rising sea levels. Famine from failed crops. Expanding deserts. Lack of potable water. The most immediate threat is the increasing acidification of the worlds oceans. The oceans are dying. Just remember, when the oceans die, we all die. It won't matter then where to place the blame, but that maybe humans could have done something about it were it not for greed and selfishness. Look forward to a massive ecological collapse. Do you think I'm full of @!$%#? You are wrong!
It would be better ot listen to the crying earth, than to make a point to make a point and declaring that "WE ARE ALL SMOKING CRAKE PIPESS". No proof of that either?
Good I don't need your ignorant responses. It's obvious you would rather keep your head in the sand then entertain the possibllty that what you have been told is WRONG! Look it up yourself instead of just listening to what MSNBC tells you. Your reply was typical for a lib, when you don't like the opposing view, CALL NAMES!
You ever wonder how much Al Gore has made with his Global Warming BS. Bet its in the millions.
When you two put your heads together, there's a loud "BONG!"
Chris. And they're still empty. But I notice he says he don't need our ignorant responces, but keeps reading them
They only have one head and two hands to type. He must both be reading "The Hocky Stick Illusion".....that would be my bet.
Actually, Michael Mann's Hockey Stick graph has been thoroughly discredited. He fudged the numbers to get the results he wanted.
Chris, is that all you have? Lot of empty air flowing through your head I bet. LOL.
How do you think he paid for his beachfront home in Malbu? I guess he really doesn't believe in the rising sea level BS... lol
How did Romney pay for all of his?????? Make a lot of sence......I think not.
Hi didn't pay for his by running the Global Warming scam like Gore has!
I love it. those responses that say we don't need the EPA.
let's see if I remember right growing up in Long Beach Ca. yep I still remember, couldn't see Signal Hill even though it was right smack in the middle of Long Beach!
oh ya, my dad took us to the mountains and going thru Riverside and San Bernardino counties and you could reach out the car window and grab puff balls of pollution in the air.
nahhhhhhhhhhhhh....we don't anymore regulations....this puff ball is for you....
I'm not saying we don't need clean air regulations. I often would go up to Big Bear Lake and remember how the smog covered the valley so you couldn't see it. I saying Gobal Warming is a scam!
The EPA regulating carbon dioxide as if it were a pollutant is a radical overreach of it's mandate.
Just like any agency run by am obama appointee
Idiot.
I thought you put me on Ignore... lol
India: The sky is falling! The sky is falling! lol
Bottom line up front: Global warming is accepted as a fact by U.S. government agencies, NOAA, and the U.S. military. The Naval War college is studying the military implications of global warming on foreign policy and military affairs. The U.S. Army War College also does academic research into strategic planning concerning global warming.
Go to the Department of Defense has a green energy blog for many articles about DOD activities that conserve energy and projects that promote green energy. Go to the Department of Defense Sustainability website and go listen to videos on the Pentagon's Admiral Mullen and his successor on the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Sullivan talking about how critical green energy and energy conservation is for reducing our fuel bills in the DOD. The DOD uses more energy than any agency in the U.S. The number of projects in the Department of Defense are huge. Solar and wind energy systems are being installed on bases nation wide. Biomass fuels and coal to liquid fuels are being studied for the Navy and Air Force aviation fuel. Infantry units in the Army and Marine Corps are trying to reduce fuel consumption by installing solar panels and energy conservation measures for camps to reduce fuel convoys vulnerable to roadside attacks. The Department of Defense is spending billions of dollars on green energy and energy conservation. Peak world oil and global climate change are part of the future business model of the DOD supported by Secretary of Defenses from both parties. It makes no difference to the DOD who wins the election these programs are planned with a ten to thirty year time plan. I simply can not list all the green energy and energy conservation because the list is too long. The vehicles in the military will be converted to electric hybrid and flex fuel over this next decade. These are huge billion dollar programs all predicated on the reality of peak oil production and global warming.
The U.S. Naval War College has a webpage discussing the strategic implications for climate change with a large number of references. The website is at the U.S. Naval War College, Library Guides, "Climate Change" website. You can read report after report from NOAA, the IPCC, and a whole spectrum of government sources and international agency sources about global warming. Scientific information and strategic implications for climate change not only tell naval officers that global climate change is real but that the military must plan for the conflicts and humanitarian disasters.
The U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College has numerous books, academic papers, and discussions about the implications of global warming/climate change on our national security. We can not list them all here because it would take too many pages. Go the the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College for a partial listing. The point is the U.S. Army wants its future generals to know about global warming and be able to plan for humanitarian disasters and conflicts arising from global warming.
While nature has its dry spells, droughts, and other extreme events, the facts are in that global warming is an absolute reality. Professors in classes point to data showing at least a 1.5 F degree rise in average temperatures since the 1880's. Ice cores from scientific research in Antarctica, Greenland and other areas going back tens of thousands of years show a dramatic increase in global greenhouse gases that closely correspond to the onset of increased fossil fuel consumption in Europe, North America, and Asia during the Industrial Revolution (NASA Global Climate Change website). The glacial studies at Antarctica clearly show considerable increases in greenhouse gasses such as CO2, methane, and nitrogen trifluoride with the Industrial Revolution (Extreme Ice Survey website, 2012). The world is at or passed peak oil production. Human activity increasing amounts of fossil fuels puts CO2 and other pollutants in the atmosphere that traps heat from the sun. The greenhouse gases refers to the greenhouse effect.
I served in the military for 20 years as a combat information analyst for the U.S. Army. The U.S. Department of Defense does not have time nor the money to waste on stupid ideas. The DOD uses the best engineering, science, and information available for decisions for allocating scarce resources for its programs. Green energy is a high priority. We have taken heavy losses of soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan due to roadside bombs that his fuel convoys. Officers who have to write home to families about soldiers lost in battle are determined to reduce the size and vulnerability of those fuel convoys. Anyone who denies global warming had best not join the military because they will straighten you out quickly. 70% of all Iraq, Afghanistan, and Persian Gulf War era veterans support our getting rid of imported OPEC oil as soon as possible. Green energy saves red American GI blood. Anyone who denies global warming and peak world energy production had best pull their head out of their rectums and start seeing the real world for what it is. Global warming is real and the Colorado fires have been exacerbated by human consumption of fossil fuels.
The military and other goverment agencies have to adhere to the PC BS mandated by the obama administration!
Global Warming has bee thoroughly discredited and only the ignorant and those that make a buck off it defend it.
Sullyman: Get off of your lazy stupid conservative butt and do some research. The DOD makes its decisions based on science, engineering, economics, and other factors to formulate a strategy for dealing with threats faced by the country. Go listen to the videos of General Sullivan and Admiral Mullen on the DOD Sustainability website. Then go read some of the articles listed on the DOD Energy blog and Sustainability websites. The Department of Defense is one of the largest consumers of fossil fuels on the face of this earth. Energy conservation and green energy programs are big in the DOD because with a world at peak oil production, prices will do nothing but continue to go up. These green energy programs will save huge amounts of money for the military so more resources can be spent on new weapons programs like robotics and drone aircraft where demand is almost insatiable by troops and their commanders. Global warming has been proven a fact. Go to the NASA websites and look up information about Climate Change. There are satellite photographs showing the diminishing polar ice, with lots of clear concise reading on global warming.
So when you are smarter than the Joint Chief of Staff, NASA, NOAA, the professors at both the U.S. Naval War College, and the U.S. Army War College, and many of the officers and enlisted people in the military services who work with green energy programs everyday, you come and tell us all about why the military wastes so much money on green energy programs? The reality is that we are at peak world oil production and global warming is a reality. You are like the isolationists before Pearl Harbor who were in denial about Fascist militarism and aggression. Global warming deniers and peak oil deniers are almost always conservatives who do not like facts that face them. You have been given government sources and information about global warming and green energy programs. When your head is stuck up your rectum in denial, it is your own responsibility to pull it out yourself.
Thanks, Rex, I couldn't agree more. The sound of the truth is so refreshing!
India - you can't make a decent argument yourself so you simply resort to applauding other peoples efforts, even if there wrong. I think that makes you the idiot
Rex, While there is a lot of reading material on Man-Caused Global Climate Change, the vast majority of it has one thing in common, data used to support the opinion is limited to 1850 or after. Even the data collected consistently from 1659 to date, in England is discarded. Man-Caused Global Climate Change fails to address the many Ice Ages and periods of extended drought and high temperatures that occurred prior to the First Industrial Age. Scientist that support Man-Caused Global Climate Change focus their studies on changes taking place from 1850 to present, while the earth is 400 Billion Years Old. They are making scientific conclusions based on a very small sample of data. Perhaps the most interest thing about the data and the conclusion, is that data used to base this scientific conclusion was collected starting in 1850, immediately after the end of the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age was an extended cold period from 1550 to 1850. If the earth was exiting a period of excessive cold, is it not reasonable to expect temperatures to increase over the next 100 years or more? Is it also not reasonable to believe that temperatures would increase regardless of man's influences? After all the earth had Ice Ages long before man and certainly before the Industrial Age. Making such scientific conclusions based on limited data would be like saying an infant child will not earn any money in its life because it earned none in its first 5 years. In this case I believe it is apparent, Scientist advocating Man-Caused Global Climate Change seek out only data that supports their preconceived notion and exclude any data that contradicts their foregone conclusion. Basically it is not science.
I repeat the military brass follow whatever PC policy is mandated no matter how ridiculous because if they don't tow the line they lose their career, especially under 'payback is a bitch' obama.
You obviously don't know how politicized the DoD has become. I spent some years in the military and I saw it first hand.
Rex - the more read your post the more I realize how ignorant you are! I did believe in AGW for a few years after it first made the news. The more I read on the subject the more sceptical I became.
If you expect me to believe ANY information put out by this administration. the dimocrats (I bet you love Nancy Pelosi) or MSNBC you're as stupid as you sound!
Ever wonder why MSNBC consistently has the lowest ratings among the cable news channels?
Sully: I think you are a little pussy who does not read anything. You have been given good sources of information from NOAA and NASA plus the DOD. Cut your hogwash and go read about global warming at NOAA and NASA written by scientists not people who work for the RNC. Both the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agencies show overwhelming evidence of carbon based emissions increasing greenhouse gases that cause temperatures to rise over this last century. Try and refute these two examples:
1. Ice core samples taken in Antarctica and in Greenland by glaciologists can show atmospheric composition from many thousands of years ago. The atmosphere showed a very consistent CO2 and greenhouse gases over this time frame until about 150 years ago when dramatic increases in CO2, methane, and other emissions related to fossil fuel combustion during the Industrial Revolution. Why the sudden increase in greenhouse gases if human activity is not the cause? No other natural explanation has been found for this phenomenon.
2. Look at the satellite photographs of the Arctic ocean over the last 30 years. You can plainly see that the polar ice is retreating over this time period. Glaciologists who study and measure this type of phenomenon have been alarmed for decades at the rapid melting of glaciers on mountains and in the polar regions. Huge chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island have broken off at both the Antarctic and in the Arctic ocean. Greenland has large glaciers that are melting away at ever increasing rates. Glaciologists on the ground also confirm that this melting is accelerating due to warming of the earth of about 1.5 degrees since the 1880's. Projections are that another degree of warming in coming decades.
3. Go look at pictures of glaciers of the mountains of the world. It really does not matter if you look at the Alps, the Andes, the Hymalayas mountains, or the Rockies the findings are the same. Glaciers in the mountains are in steady retreat due to a rise in greenhouse gases. Again glaciologists say that this is not some temporary warming streak or temporary condition. The glaciers on the mountains are melting at a rapid rate due to greenhouse gases warming the earth's temperatures. Many climatologists are concerned about reduced snow pack and retreating glaciers in mountainous areas around the globe. Fresh water shortages are one example faced around the world. The drinking water and irrigation water for crops for the people who live in the countries affected downstream.
One last point, U.S. Forest Service officials are warning about earlier snow melt in the mountains. Drier conditions, record breaking temperatures for most of the last decade and beyond, coincide with earlier and later periods of fire. Some officials are warning that with the beetles that are spreading into Rocky Mountain forests due to climate change will mean more dead trees and undergrowth. In coming decades these officials warn that vicious fires will burn out ever larger chunks of our forests.
Sorry dude you need to start reading websites that end in ".gov" or "edu". The DOD makes policy based on threats to the nation as seen by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The cost of running an aircraft carrier task force group for instance is astronomical. F-18's suck thousands of gallons of JP-4 fuel when they take off. It has nothing to do with ideology, its just physics and economics. We have spent huge sums of money patrolling the Persian Gulf with these carrier task force groups since the 1970's. Many other military units are permanently tied down in the Persian Gulf region. The Pentagon needs to cut its huge fuel bills by reducing the amount of fuel it consumes and energy in buildings. These savings will allow more money during tight budgets to freed up for research into better weapons programs such as robotics. Go listen to Admiral Mullen and General Sullivan give their speeches on green energy and energy conservation on the DOD website "Sustainability".
You obviously know nothing about the current military because a whole new generation of officers are committed to reducing our reliance on foreign oil. The casualties on the road convoys were prime targets for insurgent bombers were gruesome. Too many soldiers in the gun trucks and fuel trucks got blasted too pieces delivering what was the equivalent of $400 per gallon gasoline into Forward Operating Bases. The Army and Marine Corps are making serious sustained efforts to reduce fuel and energy consumption. Go read about the huge number of items being accomplished at the Department of Defense. Solar panels, wind farms, fuel efficient vehicles, biomass fuels, recycling, coal to liquid fuels, and a whole range of electric hybrid vehicles are being promoted by the DOD to reduce the huge fuel bills that the services all pay out of their budgets. Anyone who says this is all about partisan ideology is an incompetent fool. Its all about reducing fuel consumption at the FOB's to reduce our vulnerable fuel convoys to attack. Refute NOAA, NASA, and the DOD on green energy programs and global warming. Plus the Department of Energy has vast sections of information about green energy programs and research programs at NCAR in Boulder, Colorado. Science and information seem to not be your thing because you have offered no scientific sources to back your anti-global warming. I couldn't care less about your ignorant conservative ideology where are your scientific sources that can discredit NOAA's and NASA's satellite photographs of declining polar ice in the Arctic Oceans? Why are all those huge icebergs, the size of Rhode Island breaking off in Antarctica? The experts who study this stuff say global warming is the cause of these increasingly rapid rates of ice melt. You prove these experts wrong Mr. Jerk-off conservative. You just do that. All you have is empty right winged propaganda and manuscript masturbation. I will stick with NOAA, NASA, the DOD, and the Department of Energy before I listen to a right winger like you who spreads your false filth everywhere like a puppy that is not housebroken, leaving others to clean up the mess.
Rex, You are back to citing Greenland and are ignoring the fact that the presence of the remains of a forest under the ice is indicitive of a much smaller ice pack and much warmer temperatures that we have today. And this occurred between 450,000 and 900,000 years ago, long before man's influence. "Two kilometres under the ice sheet in Greenland, scientists have found the oldest samples of DNA ever recovered, providing evidence that the island was much warmer hundreds of thousands of years ago than previously thought. The samples from trees, plants and insects of a boreal forest were taken from "silty ice" at the bottom few metres of an ice core drilled through a glacier in southern Greenland, said University of Alberta glaciologist Martin Sharp. The evidence of forest life shows that "this part of the world was significantly warmer than most people thought," he said. The samples have been dated to between 450,000 and 900,000 years ago; previously, there was no evidence of a warm period in Greenland any later than 2.4 million years ago."
1. Ice core samples taken by glaciologists show consistent levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases for thousands of years then 150 years ago greenhouse gases show rapid increases. This corresponds with the onset of the Industrial revolution. Glaciologists also report the rapid melting of mountain glaciers in the Andes in South America, Rocky Mountains in North America, and in the Himalayas in Asia.
Source: Scott Pelley, August 19, 2007, "60 Minutes: Watching the World Melt Away" CBS News website. Note this is a video with interviews of professional glaciologists and scientists.
2. Here is a report that discusses the relationship to our recent severe weather to global warming in PDF form.
Source: Dr. Kevin Trenberth, 2012, "Framing the way to relate climate extremes to climate change", Springerlink website. Note Dr. Trenberth is the Senior Scientist at NCAR in Boulder, Colorado.
3. Here is a good source for reports about the retreating ice pack in the Greenland that is experiencing rapid glacier melting threatening significantly rising sea level changes in coming decades.
Source: Andrew Freedman, June 29, 2012, "Greenland Ice Sheet Melt Nearing Critical 'Tipping Point'", Climate Central website.