A Message from a Republican on Climate Change: I'm going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real. I'm a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability, self-empowerment and sound science. I am not a climate scientist. I'm a Penn State meteorologist, and the weather maps I'm staring at are making me very uncomfortable.
posted by spacewaitress on Apr 5, 2012 - 120 comments

"From extreme drought, heat waves and floods to unprecedented tornado outbreaks, hurricanes, wildfires and winter storms, a record 12 weather and climate disasters in 2011 each caused $1 billion or more in damages". The US National Weather service has put together a great online exhibit of what was a whirlwind (*ahem*) year for extreme weather events. The exhibit has lots of videos and photographs of these events, such as satellite imagery of the Grounhog Day Blizzard from back in February and a picture of a car damaged by a tornado in Ft. Benning, GA.
posted by MattMangels on Dec 29, 2011 - 20 comments

Weather History Offers Insight Into Global Warming. Weather History Offers Insight Into Global Warming. The problems that often haunt other weather records — the station is moved, buildings are constructed nearby or observers record data inconsistently — have not arisen here because so much of this place has been frozen in time. The weather has been taken (at Mohonk House, [map] ) in exactly the same place, in precisely the same way, by just a handful of the same dedicated people since Grover Cleveland was president... That extremely limited number of observers greatly enhances the reliability, and therefore the value, of the data. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu on Sep 16, 2008 - 11 comments

"Global warming is now a weapon of mass destruction. It kills more people than terrorism, yet Blair and Bush do nothing." So writes Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office and co-chair of the scientific assessment working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
posted by homunculus on Jul 28, 2003 - 24 comments

Scientific backlash for warming theorists -- High clouds over the western tropical Pacific Ocean could significantly reduce the estimates of future global warming now being put forward by IPCC's computer models of the Earth's climate. And, in a newly published interview, MIT's Dr. Richard S. Lindzen describes the Kyoto Treaty on climate change as "absurd". Backlash begun?
posted by frednorman on Mar 6, 2001 - 7 comments