The Story No One's Paying Attention to: Deadly Australia Floods Point to Global Climate Change

[marmar]

from the Booman Tribune, via AlterNet:



The Story No One's Paying Attention to: Deadly Australia Floods Point to Global Climate Change


I know everyone wants to talk about the Giffords assassination attempt, who's to blame for it, issues regarding mental health, gun control, etc. etc. etc. Some stories seem to suck all the oxygen out of the air in this country when they occur.

But while we continue with our endless and probably futile discussion of all things related to the Tucson Massacre, larger events are occurring on our planet, extreme weather events that were predicted by climate scientists years ago. Like the massive snow storms along the East Coast (again) and even more devastating, the immense record flooding in Australia:

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Climate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia's Queensland state, scientists said on Wednesday, with several months of heavy rain and storms still to come. (...)

"I think people will end up concluding that at least some of the intensity of the monsoon in Queensland can be attributed to climate change," said Matthew England of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

"The waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon," he told Reuters.

Warmest ever recorded. How often have we heard that phrase repeated over the last decade? Warmest year. Warmest Arctic temperatures. Warmest summer in Russia. Record warm temperatures for cities and states in the US. Warmest ever is almost in danger of becoming a cliche. We are becoming desensitized, numb even, to those words "warmest ever recorded." .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/434641/the_story_no_one%27s_paying_attention_to%3A_deadly_australia_floods_point_to_global_climate_change/

[progressoid]

1. I wouldn't say no one. But unfortunately it is overshadowed by another tragedy.

I don't really watch much TV news so I can't comment on that but I listened to a story on NPR this morning about it.

And as I logged on this morning, on the top of Google news summary there were over 6000 articles about it.
http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&ncl=dEWZfUqty5gUDwMmJ9YuOBBTRRt8M&topic=h


My hope is that as we return to "normal" some of our leaders will try to acknowledge that these weather problems are getting worse.