Nasa scientist's study quantifies climate change link to extreme weather

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/07/nasa-scientist-high-temperatures-climate-change?intcmp=122



The study concludes that climate change is responsible for the increase in global extreme heat events including wildfires and droughts. Photograph: Tom Gilbert/AP


Unusually hot summers, and the destructive droughts and wildfires that follow, are the product of climate change, according to a study of recorded global temperature data by a prominent Nasa scientist.

The study uses recorded temperature data, rather than prediction models, to assert that climate change is responsible for recent extreme weather events including last year's droughts in Texas and Oklahoma, the Russian heat wave in 2010 and the European heat wave in 2003.

The author of the study and head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Dr James Hansen, said: "We now know that the chances these extreme weather events would have happened naturally – without climate change – is negligible."

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1. Saw his interview on PBS the other day.

Devastating argument. We are beyond tipping points and Hansen knows this but, as a scientist, cannot say it. In spite of his caution, he has connected the dots. The extremes we are seeing is connected statistically to global climate change.

Inhofe should go fuck himself.

BTW, DUad at the bottom is appropriately an ad for the upcoming PBS film from Ken Burns, The Dust Bowl. Something is working right with those ads.