Oooh, it's hot in here, there's too much carbon in the atmosphere
July 18, 2011 11:12 AM   Subscribe

Texas has been swallowed by a a terrible drought. They are bracing themselves about 3 billions of dollars of crop damage. The question of course is, how large is the role of global warming in this catastrophe? The good probabilistic analysis finds that global warming caused half of the 2003 European heat wave that killed 40'000 people. Is the role of global warming's involvement in Texas as large? Larger? After all, this drought matches the long-term weather forecast. Odd, isn't it? that we have long-term weather forecast. It used to be the very-long-term weather forecast was, "next year?, same as last year." That's not going to work anymore. We're beating 11 hot-weather record for every cold record. We're drifting up. Millions of planning habits will have to change, at the city-level, state-level, and national-level. Any decision driven by "well, that worked in the past" will have to be revisited. Even "drought" --- the word --- will have to change. "Drought is too comfortable a word, drought connotes a return to normal." Global warming is a very satisfying issue to work on, politically, because you know that at some point between now and the planet turning into Venus, we win. Though the stage is heavy with professional denialists, lobbyist, and oil barons, at some point, they too will find their family struggle for water, and they will fold.
posted by gmarceau (0 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Heya, this is a bit on the personalized/bloggy side and not particularly focused for a post to the front page of Metafilter. -- cortex



 

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