This past month, the climate crisis has fallen right into America's front yards — in some cases, literally. With trees crashing through their windows, fires burning through their neighborhoods, water flooding under their doorsteps, and blackouts putting millions of homes and businesses out of commission, Americans are hurting from the effects of extreme weather that scientists have predicted would happen as a result of climate change.

While no single weather event can be attributed to global warming, most climate experts agree that the weather that the U.S. is experiencing cannot be a random occurrence. These weather patterns are a harsh reminder of the serious consequences we face if we do not soon find solutions to the climate crisis. In a recent Associated Press article, scientist Jonathan Overpeck explained, “This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level. The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about.”

The start to the summer season across the United States has borne out scientists’ predictions, with the East Coast battered by massive thunderstorms and Florida and Minnesota devastated by floods. A nationwide heat wave has claimed dozens of lives in the last two weeks and shriveled the corn crop in the Midwest. Meanwhile, Agriculture Department Undersecretary Harris Sherman has called the record-setting wildfires raging in the West a “very strong indicator” that the climate is changing. This week, the National Climactic Data Center released a report showing that this June capped off the hottest 12-month period in the United States since they started keeping records in 1895.

As cases of extreme weather continue, people are searching for the facts about climate change in a way we’ve never seen before. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is experiencing a skyrocketing demand for climate change data from individuals, businesses and communities all across the country.

Meteorologists and reporters have been highlighting these extreme weather events and their connection with climate change. NBC Washington's Chief Meteorologist, Doug Kammerer, recently explained on air, "If we did not have global warming, we wouldn't see this."

On July 10^th, evening news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC were all talking about the link between global warming and the weather extremes. ABC News weather editor Sam Champion weighed in saying, “Now’s the time we start limiting manmade greenhouse gases.” On the same night, PBS ran a piece making the analogy that this extreme weather is “like a baseball player on steroids." It explained that just as giving a player steroids will increase the likelihood of hitting a home run, loading up our atmosphere with more global warming pollution will shift the odds toward extreme heat and precipitation events. As a result, climate catastrophes are hitting us harder and more often as greenhouse gas emissions increase.

As the cases of extreme weather continue to pile up, it’s clear that climate change is affecting us all. There is overwhelming consensus among scientists that global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. The links between climate change and extreme weather are real, they are dangerous, and the time to act is now. We simply can’t afford to wait any longer.

Near my home in Boulder, the wildfires in the past few years have hit a little too close to home. This year, I couldn’t help notice the irony of smoke rising in the foothills behind the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder – where scientists have warned of the risks of climate change for years.

In working with business on climate change, I’ve noticed a shift in recent years in how companies answer questions about whether climate change is real – and whether it’s happening. Many are now preparing for the possible shocks of extreme weather. The risks posed by climate change are so substantial that ignorance is no excuse for a business with assets to manage.

Last year, IETA convened a symposium to explore how companies are addressing the risks that climate change presents to their operations – in other words, how they need to adapt to climate change. The business presenters no longer doubted whether it is real. It was what to do to prepare. They see enough evidence of substantial risks to their operations to begin implementing strategies to reduce their exposure to climate change.

They consider whether offshore oil and gas platforms are tall enough to withstand the predicted amounts of sea level rise. Or whether a heat wave could cause cooling water problems at power stations. Or whether additional protections against storm surges or flash floods are needed in the energy and water infrastructure serving businesses and communities in coastal areas and on rivers. Or whether more robust planning is warranted for more frequent responses to floods, fire and extreme weather.

These are simple, pragmatic business matters – and they cost money to implement. I don’t think politicians appreciate that the solutions needed to adapt to the changing climate could exceed the cost of mitigating emissions - or that delaying action on climate change creates could relegate business to paying a high price tag for adaptation. Part of this is because mitigation costs have fallen in the U.S. with technology improvement and increases in unconventional natural gas production – and the costs of adaptation are rising.

Congress needs to take another look at the climate issue. Delay isn’t their friend, and failure to adopt a mitigation strategy means they are accepting an adaptation strategy. It would be much wiser for the U.S. to adopt a low cost policy for reducing emissions using market mechanisms – and at the same time, begin to lower the risk of adapting to the harsh impacts of climate change.

“This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level,” University of Arizona atmospheric scientist Jonathan Overpeck said last week. The searing heat waves, freak storms, and intense wildfires raging across the nation reveal what climate change means for our communities.

There are many causes of intense storms and droughts but leading scientists say it’s increasingly clear climate change is contributing to the greater frequency and power of this year’s extreme weather events. We have polluted our atmosphere with enough carbon dioxide to increase the concentration of this heat-trapping gas by 40 percent. What would be surprising is if it weren’t having an effect.

One extreme weather event wouldn’t mean too much. What matters are the unrelenting trends.

The United States has set more than 40,000 records for high temperatures this year, but less than 6,000 records for cold temperatures, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Sixty years ago, the ratio between new record highs and new record lows was roughly even. Meteorologists report that record-setting heat caused the powerful storm known as a “derecho” that left 23 people dead and 1.4 million people without power from Illinois to Virginia.

Meanwhile, a full 76 percent of the contiguous United States is abnormally dry or in a drought, the highest level ever recorded. And wildfires have burned more than 2.4 million acres of land. According to a report commissioned by the Bush administration and released by the US Global Change Research Program in 2009, earlier snowmelt and drier conditions have already intensified Western wildfires. In recent decades, the American West has been pummeled by a fourfold increase in bigger fires and fire seasons have grown longer by weeks, even months.

Even if we can contain the Colorado fires this year or clean up from the derecho, the pattern has been set: we will see more of these extreme events in the months and years ahead.

The question is will our leaders confront this challenge or ignore it? The Obama administration has proposed clean car standards that will cut carbon pollution from vehicles in half. It also released standards to limit carbon pollution from new power plants. This is a good start, but more needs to be done. Yet GOP lawmakers in Congress fight these and other low-carbon solutions at every turn.

We may not control the weather, but we do control how much pollution we put in the air and how much we fuel climate change. If our leaders don’t take bolder action soon, ruinous wildfires and deadly heat waves will become a steady presence in our lives.

Most of us talk about the weather every day. And lately, there’s been a lot to talk about. In the U.S. alone, we lived through record-setting heat waves, extreme storms, and crippling drought that set the stage for damaging forest fires.

Bad weather is nothing new. But it’s getting worse — and the uncomfortable fact is that it’s manmade.

This week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its 2011 State of the Climate Report. For good reason, this report made a lot of news. It found that much of the recent extreme weather we’ve seen is almost certainly tied to manmade climate change.

For instance, in La Niña years like 2011, extreme heat waves like the one we saw in Texas are now 20 times more likely than before. Last year’s warm November in the United Kingdom (the second-warmest on record) was 62 times more likely to happen.

These kinds of extreme heat waves are happening all over the world. And the reason is clear: Manmade pollution from greenhouse gases is warming the atmosphere. NOAA found that in 2011, the greenhouse gas concentration for the first time exceeded 390 parts per million. Weather events that would otherwise be occasional, freak occurrences are now becoming commonplace.

And let’s be clear: The scientific evidence is not in question. NOAA’s report is simply the latest word from the scientists that manmade pollution is increasing the risks of wild weather. These risks were also laid out in last year’s comprehensive report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Lately, the weather has been so bad that even Rupert Murdoch admitted that climate change is real.

This is often the point when climate deniers throw up their hands and say even if climate change is happening, there’s no way of knowing if humans are responsible. That simply isn’t true. Scientists have demonstrated over and over again that the steady rise in carbon pollution has been the primary cause of the steady rise in global temperatures since the mid-20th century. There’s no evidence that natural causes, such as volcanoes or solar activity, have played a significant role since then.

At this point in human history, we do more than talk about the weather — we’re actually influencing it. We know the solution. We need to end our dependence on dirty sources of energy like oil, coal and gas.

Natural variability can’t explain what’s happening with the weather. According to NOAA, more than 15,000 U.S. heat records were broken in March alone, and hundreds more have fallen since then. In decades past, the odds of record heat were roughly equal to the odds of record cold. But in the first decade of this century, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the United States endured twice as many heat records as cold records. A sustained long-term increase in record-breaking warm weather is not a fluke, it’s climate change.

The consequences are here and now. Last year the United States saw an unprecedented 14 weather-related disasters costing more than $1 billion each. So far, this year is looking no better, with continuing record-breaking heatwaves, historic wildfires in North Dakota, Colorado, and New Mexico, and severe flooding in Minnesota and Florida. And the National Climatic Data Center reported last week that drought has spread to more than half of the country over the past few months.

The rising risk of extreme heat, drought, wildfires, and heavy precipitation are well documented. Given long-standing predictions that climate change would increase the frequency and intensity of these events, the mounting evidence that this is in fact happening, and the rising costs we are incurring as a result, there is only one sensible thing to do: Take prudent action to reduce the risk.

Americans are a sensible bunch, and they have begun to notice what’s happening. In recent polling released by Yale and George Mason University researchers, 82 percent of Americans said they have personally experienced an extreme weather event in the past year, and more than a third said there were personally harmed by one. Most striking, large majorities believe that global warming made some of those events worse, including the last summer’s enormous heat wave, the warm winter, the Texas drought, the Mississippi River flooding, and even the “Snowpocalypse” blizzards and intense cold snaps of recent years.

There is plenty of science to back up this growing public perception. Independently, three peer-reviewed studies published recently by scientists at NOAA, Rutgers University, and Georgia Tech found that weather patterns are becoming more variable and extreme – and some are lasting longer – because of climate change. These studies show that shrinking sea ice in the rapidly warming Arctic is driving erratic movements of the jet stream, which has led to alternating periods of steamy and arctic conditions in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Central Asia. The authors say this phenomenon could be responsible for some of the most notable events in recent memory.

Now that we have a handle on what’s actually happening to the weather, it’s time – past time, actually – to do something about it. That something is risk management. Business leaders and policymakers manage risks every day. Individuals do it too: We buy fire insurance to protect our homes, carry an umbrella when there’s a chance of rain, and securely strap small children into specially designed car seats to protect them in case of a crash that probably won’t happen, but just isn’t worth taking a chance on. So risk management is nothing new. What’s new is the rising baseline of weather risk, which we have yet to incorporate into our risk management strategies. That is what we must do now. Managing the risk of climate change entails two strategies: limiting the ultimate amount of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing our exposure by adapting to the climate changes that are already unavoidable.

Although it has punted so far on the first strategy—reducing greenhouse gas emissions—Congress took an important step on adaptation two weeks ago when it reauthorized FEMA’s National Flood Insurance program. That program is strapped with nearly $20 billion of debt in part because its premiums are based on flood risk levels that prevailed when it was created several decades ago. Congress has now instructed FEMA to account for rising flood risk by using the “best available science regarding future changes in sea levels, precipitation and the intensity of hurricanes” to update its flood zone maps. In many cases, these actions will cause insurance premiums to rise, but that’s what’s needed for the program to have enough money to make the necessary payouts when disaster strikes. Otherwise, taxpayers will eventually be left holding the bag.

It’s a good step, especially in light of our fiscal realities, but a small one, given the enormity of the climate challenge. The weather is telling us something. We need to listen – and act.

Our nation is roasting through 2012 with extreme heat and drought, and tornadoes and fires. At coffee shops, truck stops and around backyard grills, many people are asking the same question: As the climate changes, can we expect more of this? According to a group of leading climate scientists at the Midwest’s Big 10 universities (of which there are now 12), the answer is: “Yes.” There is a strong probability that climate change is influencing certain extreme weather events.

In March, more than 15,000 warm-weather records across our country were broken. Chicago had its warmest March in recorded history as we swapped winter coats for shorts and enjoyed 80-degree afternoons. Meanwhile, other areas of the country endured tornadoes tossing multi-ton trailers around like children's toys. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration received 223 reports of tornadoes when 80 is the March norm. Ohio and parts of the Southeast faced a string of tornadoes in early March that caused $1.5 billion worth of damage. On Memorial Day weekend, high temperature records were set in 16 states.

The Big 10 scientists explain that the extreme weather events with huge costs thus far in 2012 unfortunately reflect a growing recent trend. In 2008, 2010 and 2011, there were 100- or 500-year floods in Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin. In April 2011, the nation suffered through 875 tornadoes; the previous one-month record was 542 tornadoes.

The costs are still being tallied from the early tornadoes and the Western wildfires, along with the losses from the corn withering in Illinois and Iowa fields, and the costs from the orchard losses when an April frost stripped March blossoms from cherry and peach trees in Michigan.

The Big 10 scientists explain that as the climate changes, Earth’s normal cycles become altered. Whether from human-related or natural causes, the shifts in temperature associated with the changing climate can change the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, and this can lead to major changes in the probability for extreme weather. Some evidence can be found by looking at the ratio of extreme highs and lows in U.S. weather over the last 50 years.

In the 1950s, our country had about the same number of extreme heat events as it did extreme cold. That is, the probability of an extraordinarily cold January day was as likely as an excessively hot July day. By the 2000s, however, we were twice as likely to see an extreme high in our weather report as we were an extreme low.

Scientific models are starting to suggest that disasters like the 2010 Russian heat wave, which resulted in the loss of 50,000 human lives and billions of dollars of wheat crops, were likely related to human-induced climate change. Recent studies have also shown that our oceans are changing, indicating major changes in the Earth's hydrologic cycle. As we understand more about the processes affecting climate, our understanding of the Earth's complex cycles becomes more nuanced. The evidence is rapidly mounting that climate change is affecting our weather, sometimes in extreme ways

Fortunately, there are common sense actions that America can take to mitigate climate change.

· We can grow America's investments in renewable energy, powering more homes with non-polluting wind and solar energy while creating good-paying domestic manufacturing and installing jobs and spurring economic growth in both rural and urban communities.

· We can advance smart energy efficiency policies and use more modern appliances, lighting and HVAC equipment that avoid wasting energy, reduce polluting, create installation jobs in commercial buildings, public facilities, schools and hospitals, and save businesses and residential consumers’ money on their utility bills.

· We can manufacture and drive more fuel-efficient cars that save us money at the gas pump, lessen America's dependence on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

· We can invest in building modern, fast, comfortable and convenient passenger rail systems that improve mobility, reduce pollution, create jobs and pull together the regional economies in the Midwest, East Coast and West Coast. We can improve infrastructure that makes trains and other public transit work better and bicycle riding a safer option for commuters.

To be sure, these energy and infrastructure investments come at a cost. However, the dangerous increases in extreme weather events are making clear that the costs of inaction are much greater. Let’s move forward with common sense solutions.

Yes.

Now let’s move on.

Climate deniers want to keep having this debate. It gives them the excuse to call for more studies, which is the most effective way in Washington to avoid solving a problem. It’s the same strategy deployed by cigarette makers as far back as 1946 in their ultimately failed attempt to fight scientists’ link between smoking and cancer.

As these dead-enders (to coin a phrase) trap us in what they hope will be an endless discussion over whether climate change is real, the rest of the world is moving to clean energy and energy efficiency. That’s creating a potentially $2.3 trillion global clean energy market that is driving innovation, reducing energy costs, and spurring manufacturing.

We have some of the solutions at our fingertips. With a few exceptions, cheaper, likely cleaner, natural gas is replacing coal across the United States. Electric vehicles that in many places will be charged with wind, solar, or nuclear-generated electricity, are rolling off assembly lines and into people’s driveways. The cost of solar and wind generation is plummeting. This is happening because of policies driven by Democrats like President Barack Obama and Republicans like former Governors Haley Barbour, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor Rick Perry, and Senator Lamar Alexander. It’s happening because of huge investments in China, South Korea, and by capitalists like T. Boone Pickens, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk.

Continued investments by companies, capitalists, and governments will enable the U.S. to benefit from the clean energy economy while simultaneously fighting climate change. But we won’t accomplish this until the media, the climate community, and our elected representatives stop playing the obstructionists’ game of endlessly talking about the weather.

Co-authored by Kevin Kennedy, Director, U.S. Climate Initiative, World Resources Institute.

It’s the question on everyone’s minds these days: What’s up with the weather?

The answer is increasingly clear: It’s our changing climate.

The trends we are currently experiencing– a warmer world with more intense, extreme weather events– could not be clearer. It’s exactly what climate scientists and their models have, for many years now, forecast global warming will bring.

Evidence of a Changing Climate

July 2011 to June 2012 was the warmest 12-month period on record for the contiguous U.S. Globally, June 2011 was the 316th month in a row that posted a higher temperature than the 20^th-century average. Spring 2012, not to be outdone, was the hottest on record in the U.S. And record drought in the Southwest has helped fuel the wildfires that have already consumed about two million acres this year. [See our colleague Kelly Levin’s recent piece on forest fires and climate change.]

For the impact such weather has on U.S. society and economy, look no further than the record-breaking heat wave that finally let up this week. The intense heat paired with the recent derecho storm left 35 people dead, 3.5 million people without power, two trains derailed, and Midwestern crops withered. As NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco vividly put it in a speech last week, climate change is now “playing out in real time.”

None of these events should come as a surprise. A small mountain of research not only corroborates what’s happening on the ground, but suggests that we are only getting a taste of what is to come. For the continental U.S., both the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the U.S. Academy of Sciences have shown that we will likely see warmer nights, more heat waves, and heavier downpours.

The Public Is Catching On

Not for the first time, the public is ahead of the politicians on an issue of increasing national importance. NOAA, says Lubchenco, is experiencing “skyrocketing demand” from individuals, businesses, communities, and planners, who are clamoring for climate change data and projections. “People's perceptions ... are in many cases beginning to change as they experience something firsthand that they, at least, think is directly attributable to climate change," she told an audience in Canberra, Australia.

A recent national poll from the Washington Post appears to support her statement, with 77 percent of respondents saying government should intervene to limit U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

More Urgency Needed from Government

So, with its chief atmospheric advisor ringing the alarm bell and the citizens it serves wanting action, where are leaders in Washington? Where’s the sense of urgency from a capital city that on Sunday endured its 11th straight day of temperatures that reached 95 degrees or higher – the longest such streak in 141 years of record-keeping?

Congress may be loath to tackle an issue that has become a lightning rod for America’s red-blue divide, but this is a threat that should transcend politics and receive bipartisan action. What’s more, it is in our economic interest to transition to a low-carbon economy now, rather than let other countries capitalize on clean energy markets.

The extreme weather is providing clear evidence that politicians should take action to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. While good progress has been made on reducing emissions from vehicles, the U.S. needs to take strong action to decrease emissions across the economy, whether through use of existing authority under the Clean Air Act or through new measures, such as Clean Energy Standard Act of 2012, introduced by Sen. Bingaman.

This election so far has been all about the economy, and for good reason. But if voters want to know what’s up with the weather, they require– and deserve– an honest answer. Nature may not have a vote, but it has a voice, and it’s speaking to us loud and clear. Climate change has already made our heat waves hotter and downpours more torrential, at great cost to American lives and livelihoods.

The question remains: How much longer will the very real risks of a rapidly warming world continue to be trumped by perceived political risks that favor last century’s energy system?

Did anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions cause the heat wave that afflicted the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions in late June and early July? Did those emissions also cause the derecho that uprooted trees, felled power lines, and left nearly a million households in the D.C. metro area without electricity and air conditioning?

Finding a greenhouse signal in specific weather events is beyond the capability of current science. Climate activists know this, but that doesn’t stop them from pointing the finger of blame at global warming.

For example, several climate scientists told AP reporter Seth Borenstein that although weather systems are too complex to attribute to any single cause, the recent extreme weather “looks like” global warming and “is consistent with what is to be expected in global warming.” One commenter on Georgia Tech Prof. Judith Curry’s blog noted the resemblance to an old courtroom trick: “Kind of like a lawyer asking an improper question and then withdrawing it, because all s/he really wanted was to put the idea in the jury’s mind.”

Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research goes further. He argues that climate change influences all weather, hence the burden of proof is on skeptics to show that global warming is not a factor when disaster strikes.

Well, far be it from me to try to prove a negative! Nonetheless, there is ample reason to be skeptical of those who link our recent bad weather to global warming.

To begin with, we’ve heard such claims before, and they did not withstand scrutiny. Many blamed global warming for the Russian summer heat wave of 2010, the most extreme in the instrumental record. A NOAA analysis found that the “heat wave was mainly due to natural internal atmospheric variability.” The study specifically addressed the question of a possible linkage to anthropogenic climate change:

“Despite this strong evidence for a warming planet, greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave. It is not known whether, or to what extent, greenhouse gas emissions may affect the frequency or intensity of blocking during summer. It is important to note that observations reveal no trend in a daily frequency of July blocking over the period since 1948, nor is there an appreciable trend in the absolute values of upper tropospheric summertime heights over western Russia for the period since 1900.”

Al Gore and others blamed global warming for the 2003 European heat wave that killed thousands of people. Yet the United Nations Environment Program (hardly a den of denialism) attributed the heat wave to an atmospheric circulation anomaly that trapped a bubble of hot dry air over Central Europe for several weeks. Chase et al. 2006, a team of scientists from Colorado and France, found “nothing unusual” in the 2003 European heat wave that would indicate a change in global climate. Take a look at the global temperature map included in the study. It clearly shows that during June, July, and August 2003, more than half the planet was cooler than the mean temperature from 1979 through 2003. Europe – a tiny fraction of the Earth’s surface – was the only place experiencing high heat. Greenhouse theory simply cannot account for this regional weather anomaly.

In similar vein, the indefatigable Anthony Watts provides a global temperature map for July 7, 2012. Although parts of the Northern Hemisphere were anomalously warm, parts of the Southern Hemisphere were anomalously cool. Watts comments: “A picture is worth a thousand words. It isn’t global. This is weather, not climate. It is caused by a persistent blocking high pressure pattern. In a day or two, that red splotch over the eastern USA will be gone.” And so it came to pass.

A reported 3,215 daily high temperature records were set in June. That may be what global warming “looks like,” but it is hardly dispositive. To begin with, the U.S. population increases by about 1 million per year. Most of this growth takes place in urban areas, so the number and extent of urban heat islands continually increase. It would thus be remarkable if U.S. summer temperature records were not continually broken, even in the absence of climate change. The Surface Stations Project, organized by Watts and University of Colorado Prof. Roger Pielke, Sr., found that urbanization and other local factors inject warming biases in roughly 90% of U.S. weather stations.

Nonetheless, Watts points out, far more U.S. daily high temperature records were set in the 1930s, before the dramatic increase in greenhouse gas emissions, than in the 1980s, 1990s, or 2000s. Consistent with this finding, the drought currently afflicting the U.S. Midwest and Southwest is less severe than the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s. The 1930s drought, in turn, was less severe than the pre-industrial drought that hit central and eastern North America in the 16^th century.

Hurricane data are also hard to square with claims that global warming is causing wild weather. Al Gore and others opined that 2004-2005 marked a shift to a new climate regime of increasingly powerful and destructive hurricanes. Dr. Ryan Maue of Florida State University reports that global tropical cyclone frequency has declined slightly from 1970 to the present, while global tropical accumulated cyclone energy (a measure of hurricane strength) has declined significantly since 2006. Over the past century, no greenhouse signal has emerged in hurricane-related damages once the economic losses are adjusted for increases in population, capital at risk, and the consumer price index.

In short, although the world is warming, and greenhouse gas emissions undoubtedly exert a warming influence, the weather of recent weeks “looks like” and is “consistent with” natural variability.

The good news is that, whatever effect greenhouse gases may be having on U.S. weather patterns, the recent heat wave caused far fewer deaths than earlier heat waves in 2006, 1999, 1988, and 1980. And over the past century and more, a period of overall planetary warming, global deaths and death rates related to extreme weather declined by 93% and 98%, respectively.

As environmental scholar Indur Indur Goklany explains, these decreases in weather-related mortality are due in large part to the very fossil fuel-based economic activities — electric power generation, motorized transportation, and mechanized agriculture – that produce greenhouse gas emissions.

The policy implication is exactly the opposite of some would have us believe. In Goklany’s words: “Reducing these emissions through efforts to make fossil fuel energy scarcer and more expensive could, therefore, be counterproductive in humanity’s efforts to limit death and disease from not only such [weather] events but also other, far more significant sources of adversity.”

Groucho Marx once observed about politics that “it is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” If he was alive today, he might say that about climate change alarmists.

It was a certainty that the alarmists blame the Colorado fires on human induced climate change and worked hard to get the media to push their story. This is unfortunate for the people who have lost their homes and possessions that were consumed by the fires.

A recent article in Salon online is an example. A Texas Tech professor stated categorically, “scientists now have enough information to confidently tie the increase in the number and severity of fires to climate change. Scientists found compelling agreement in long-term models that more fires would occur at mid-to-high latitude areas like North America.” The clear implication of the reference to “long term models” is that human created climate change is the culprit. And, another climate scientist, Jonathan Overpeck stated, “You can probably bet your house that, unless we do something about these greenhouse gas emissions, the mega-droughts of the future are going to be a lot hotter than the ones of the past.”

No one seriously disputes that the climate changes. A review of the past century in the US demonstrates that clearly. What is in dispute is what the share of human contribution is. People like Overpeck assert that it is significant; others say it is not that much. Alarmists rely on the results of models, but those are more like sophisticated guesses. They aren’t like weather models, which are reasonably accurate, most of the time for a seven day period.

The climate models that alarmists use to build their case have never been validated and are based more on assumption than scientific fact. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the alleged gold standard on climate science, has a chart in its latest report that covers radiative forcing components--factors that contribute to warming. Of the nine factors listed, which didn’t include ocean currents, the IPCC states that the level of knowledge is high for only two. Common sense would lead most people to conclude that if you don’t know much about the factors affecting climate, you can’t build a useful model or make categorical claims.

Focusing on one alleged cause of these fires--climate change--to the exclusion of all others is dangerous, and alarmists are doing affected families and their political leaders no service. A problem poorly or incorrectly defined is poorly solved. If we don’t stand back and carefully examine why these fires did so much damage, it is a virtual certainty that the wrong policies and plans will be adopted.

If the nation is undergoing a climatic change similar to the 1930s, where global jet streams deprived areas of needed rain, then the question is what actions represent prudent risk management? Constraining energy use to reduce CO2 emissions won’t work because the major source of atmospheric concentrations come from China, India, and other developing nations. Instead of riding the climate change hobby horse for political advocacy, it would be more fruitful to take the time to analyze the nature of these fires and the role that land use and forest management practices played in them.

Some in the west believe that environmental advocacy has led to a “hands-off” forest management philosophy on public lands. In Colorado, the result is millions of acres of densely packed, beetle-infested old-growth forest that’s now especially susceptible to wildfire. Historically there have been 20 to 80 tree stems per acre in national forests. The density now is more like 400 to 1,200 stems per acre. Historically, fires have been nature’s way of keeping growth in check and rejuvenating the ecological system, and practical land-use policies have reduce the risk of massive fires. But recent population increases in suburban and rural areas and greater restrictions on logging and land access have upset that balance to the point that many are now in danger.

It’s unfortunate alarmists would use the wildfires in Colorado to fuel speculation about climate patterns while ignoring basic, measurable causes like land management policies. The interest of those currently displaced by the fires, as well as those of countless individuals across the country who live in similar areas, would be much better served by talking about constructive, practical changes that could prevent future problems than by using the situation to propagate political issues.

Now the debate must turn to whether efforts are better spent trying to mitigate the damage by aggressively cutting emissions, to begin investing in new ways to adapt to this ‘new normal’ or to attempt to geo-engineer our way to some level of stability. Each of these paths is difficult, expensive and uncertain.

The one thing that that has become clear is that given the pace of change and the associated damage, the long term cost of doing nothing is simply too larger to consider.

It is time now for a very honest and thoughtful discussion about how we go forward.

(These comments were submitted by Weiss and also Dr. Joseph Romm, both senior fellows at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.)

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”

--“Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Bob Dylan, 1965

Nor do you need a forester to know which way the wildfire burns, or a fry cook to know how hot the sidewalk sizzles, nor a river guide to know how fast the flood flows. (We could go on but you get the idea.) Since 2010, extreme weather has hit the United States with a vengeance. That year, Americans experienced a record number of extreme weather disaster declarations by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Just 12 months later, extreme weather led to 20 percent more disaster declarations. In the last month, FEMA declared six extreme weather disasters, including flooding in New Hampshire and Oklahoma, wildfires in Colorado, and a tropical storm in Florida.

Now we are experiencing record heat across much of the nation, which led to at least 36 fatalities. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration identified at least 20 states with an “excessive heat warning” as of 7 pm EDT on Saturday July 7. This comes on the heels of 1,000+ new high temperature records set in the United States during the week ending June 27^th.

The Washington Post reported on July 8 that the Washington, DC metropolitan area has experienced an average of 10 days of 95 degrees or more from June 1 to July 7 over the last three years. Meanwhile, from 1995 to 2009, there was an average of only 1.5 days at this blistering temperature during the same time period.

Climate science deniers – perhaps some posting on this very energy site -- are eager to opine that no single weather occurrence is definitely caused by climate change. However, it is the wrong question to ask whether global warming caused a specific record smashing weather event. Nearly "all weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be." Climate change makes heat waves longer and more intense. This in turn makes droughts longer and more intense, which then makes wildfire seasons longer and more intense. And warmer temperatures yield more water vapor in the atmosphere, which makes rainstorms more intense.

These extreme weather conditions over the past several years – drought, severe storms, floods, heat waves – are precisely the events that scientists have spent years warning us would occur if human produced carbon pollution continued unchecked.

Scientists – real experts who spend their lives studying the climate and not senators funded by big oil and coal interests – determined that there is a strong relationship between climate change and extreme weather. The Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a “Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation” in March 2012, which reinforced this link.

Scientists reviewed “over 1,000 scientific publications,” to craft the report. The IPCC warned of “unprecedented extreme weather and climate events.”

· Medium confidence [50 percent likelihood] in an observed increase in the length or number of warm spells or heat waves in many regions of the globe.

· Likely increase [66 percent likelihood] in frequency of heavy precipitation events or increase in proportion of total rainfall from heavy falls over many areas of the globe.

· Medium confidence in projected increase in duration and intensity of droughts in some regions of the world.

An author of the report, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University, said last week that “It's really dramatic how many of the patterns that we've talked about as the expression of the extremes are hitting the U.S. right now.”

The Associated Press reports that scientists are speaking out about the link between extreme weather and climate change.

Kevin Trenberth, former head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado and currently a Distinguished Senior Scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the center, said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen.

“This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level," said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. “The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about.”

The IPCC and other scientists should of course continue their research to further understand the relationship between industrial carbon pollution, climate change, and extreme weather. But the time is long past when policy makers need more data before acting to reduce this dangerous pollution. In fact, in 2008 then Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson privately implored President George W. Bush that

The latest science of climate change requires the Agency to propose a positive endangerment finding… the state of the latest climate change science does not permit a negative finding, nor does it permit a credible finding that we need to wait for more research.

Also within the next several months, EPA must face regulating greenhouse gases from power plants, some industrial sources, petroleum refineries and cement kilns.

Bush ignored these scientific conclusions. Nearly two years later the Obama administration made the overdue endangerment finding. It then established carbon pollution reduction standards for motor vehicles and new, unbuilt power plants.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney both denies the science linking industrial carbon pollution to climate change, and opposes pollution reductions.

My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.

Unlike Romney, however, most Americans cannot afford to avoid the blistering heat by jet skiing on the lake at one of their vacation homes. Everyday people understand the human and economic costs of extreme weather and climate change that continue to climb unchecked. And polling shows that Republicans, independents, and Democrats all believe that the federal government must act to reduce the pollution responsible for this summer of our discontent.

Scientific observations and analyses not only have shown that the Earth’s climate is changing but also that human activities are the primary reason for this change. Observations show that as the climate changes, normal weather patterns are altered. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, and this leads to major changes in the probability for some types of extreme weather. As a result, the weather is not entirely "natural" anymore. The background atmosphere has changed and continues to change because of the changing climate. It is important to bear this in mind when one considers interpretation of specific severe events. It's a fallacy to think that individual events are caused entirely by any one thing, either natural variations or human-induced climate change. Every event is influenced by many factors. Human-induced climate change is now a factor in all weather events.

As an example, look at the ratio of record high and low temperatures in the U.S. over the last 50 years. In the 1950s, we had about the same number of record high temperatures as record lows. That is, the probability of an extraordinarily cold January day was about as likely as an excessively hot July day. By the 2000s, however, we were twice as likely to see a record high in our weather reports as we were a record low. So far in 2012, that ratio is about 10 to one.

Multi-day heat waves have generally become more frequent across the United States in recent decades, with western regions (including Alaska) setting records for numbers of these events in the 2000s. In the past 3-4 decades there has been an increasing trend in high-humidity heat waves, which are characterized by the persistence of extremely high nighttime temperatures, which offer no relief. At the same time, low-humidity heat waves associated with droughts are contributing to dry conditions that are driving wild fires. Numerous studies have documented the fact that human-induced climate change has increased the frequency and severity of heat waves, heavy downpours, fires, and other severe events across the globe. These studies show that the warming climate boosts the probability of extreme events occurring, such as the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Russian heat wave, and the record-breaking summer of 2011 in Texas and Oklahoma.

The likelihood for severe precipitation events is also changing. There has also been a large increase in the number very heavy precipitation events across all of the U.S. over the last 50 years. Analyses show that such events are occurring more often than in the past. Overall, the pattern of precipitation change is generally one of increases at higher northern latitudes and drying in the tropics and subtropics over land. In a general sense, the wet areas are getting wetter and the dry areas are getting drier. While cold snaps are less likely under the warming climate, such events will still occur, and, with the atmosphere holding more water vapor, large snowstorms could result.

We are now living in a changing world where human-induced climate change is affecting our weather, sometimes in extreme ways. While attribution studies for specific events have found associations with the changing climate, there does not exist a real time capability for attributing an ongoing event for its relationship to climate change. More research is needed. Further studies will help us more fully understand how a variety of specific types of weather events are being affected by the changing climate. Nonetheless, research already shows shows that severe heat and storm events are likely to become more common in the future.

As one recent article put it succinctly about July 7^th, “How hot is it? Hot enough to break records. On Saturday at 1:45 p.m. at Reagan National in Arlington, the temperature hit 104 degrees, and then 105 degrees—higher than the daily record of 102 degrees set two years ago, according to the National Weather Service.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports: a) 9 out of the 10 warmest years on record are from 2001 and after; b) Every year since 2000 is one of the 15 warmest years; c) It is the 34th consecutive year that was warmer than the 20th century average. NOAA scientist David Easterling said that the top ranking of 2010 reinforces the conclusion that the climate is continuing to warm because of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Atmospheric scientist Jim Hansen's September 2011 paper for Columbia University, says it all: "Global warming is expected to intensify climate extremes: (1) Warmer air holds more water vapor, and precipitation occurs in more extreme events. '100-year floods' and even '500- year floods' will become more likely. Storms fueled by water vapor (latent heat), including thunderstorms, tornadoes and tropical storms, will have the potential to be stronger. Storm damage will increase because of increased flooding and stronger winds. (2) Where weather patterns create dry conditions, global warming will intensify the drought, because of increased evaporation and evapotranspiration. Thus fires will be more frequent and burn hotter. Observations confirm that heat waves and regional drought have become more frequent and intense over the past 50 years. Rainfall in the heaviest downpours has increased about 20 percent. The destructive energy in hurricanes has increased (USGCRP, 2009)." Sadly, history is full of sad stories of humans failing to see the writing on the wall including the cutting of the last trees in Greenland and Easter Island. During World War I, US farmers planted an abundance of crops to feed the hungry in Europe during Turkish blockades. Twenty years later over plowing proved disastrous. The worst period of the drought in the Midwest occurred during 1934 and 1935. This is when dust storms continually blasted the plains with tons of dust. People and animals died of suffocation. There was no escaping the dust. Sometimes the dust storms traveled as far as New England and to ships off the coast of the United States. We call this "the Dust Bowl" in our history books, but it was human action that drove it. And even now, fishing stocks are declining, "According to a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 70% of the world’s fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. The dramatic increase of destructive fishing techniques worldwide destroys marine mammals and entire ecosystems. FAO reports that illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing worldwide appears to be increasing as fishermen seek to avoid stricter rules in many places in response to shrinking catches and declining fish stocks." The point being that human systems try to avoid the obvious, belittle "the canaries in the mine", and stick to business-as- usual. Add to the confusion about variability in weather patterns rather than long term climate patters is what the deniers, once supported by corporations like Verizon among many others, are trying to foster on the public. And unfortunately, the nurturers of doubt will be long gone when the next generations have to face the true severity of the problem we could has lessened now.

Humans have made some extreme weather events more likely, and they are happening.

Just as a back-street gambler might beat someone in an honest game but has a better chance with loaded dice, Nature might have caused this summer’s weather but we gave it a boost. More importantly, under business as usual, today’s children may one day think of this summer as cool.

We have high scientific confidence that human fossil-fuel burning, while giving us energy that lets us do many things we want, is raising the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2). Solid physics shows that this has a warming influence on the climate. Warming is indeed observed, in thermometer records of many sorts including far from cities, on satellites, in the ocean and in boreholes, as analyzed by many different groups with different funding sources, and as confirmed by changes in ice, biology, and more. The warming pattern in space and time matches that expected from the combined human and natural causes of climate change, with the rise in greenhouse gases most important.

In a warmer world, heat waves and record highs are more likely, record cold less likely, and that is occurring. Warmer air can “hold” more water, allowing more-intense downpours when conditions are right. In a warming world, drying can be faster, and many models project expansion of the dry zones in the subtropics (those latitudes that lie just poleward of the tropics). These manifestations of warming may contribute to increases in both floods and droughts in many regions. Ongoing changes match scientific projections from years and even decades ago: humans made it more likely, and it happened.

Estimates of available fossil fuels generally indicate that we could cause much larger atmospheric changes in the future than we have caused so far. In a study published not long ago in the leading journal Science, researchers found a more than 90 percent probability that average temperatures during growing seasons late in this century will be higher than during the hottest seasons recorded from 1900 to 2006 across large areas, including much of the tropics and subtropics and important parts of the US (D. Battisti, R. Naylor, 2009, Science, v. 23, p. 240). The study used a large and diverse group of computer models, and assumed only middle-of-the-road rise in CO2. This and much other research points to the likelihood that, whether or not we are responsible for this summer’s weather, these dog days of 2012 may help us understand where our current path can lead.