Heat waves linked to climate change; even Pat Robertson is convinced

Will Evolution Be Next?

Experts agree: damn, it's hot! And you might as well get used to it. At the rate global temperatures are rising, blistering heat waves like the ones that have recently baked parts of the U.S. and Europe will become more frequent and severe, according to climate researchers. Of course, no individual weather event can definitively be traced to global warming; global warming simply loads the dice in favor of extremes. Nonetheless, the scorching heat has led to an unusually vigorous and open discussion of climate change. Hell, even evangelical huckster Pat Robertson, who's spent much of his career lambasting godless enviros, is a convert: the heat is "the most convincing evidence I've seen on global warming in a long time," said Robertson on his 700 Club. (Guess he didn't like all those charts and graphs we kept trying to show him.) Said NASA atmospheric physicist Drew Shindell, "This is not like 'Centuries from now the ice sheets will melt.' This is, 'In a few decades it will be dramatically different.' To me, that's alarming." Such a worrywart!

straight to the source: The Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin, 04 Aug 2006

straight to the source: Reuters, 03 Aug 2006

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Comments: (4 comments)

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Global warming and Religious morons

Why do you waste space voicing the opions of religious small brains? This guy believes in the supernatural desguised as dogma. We want facts not blowhards. No speculation, no guesses, no psychics, we want facts! Does 100 plus degrees all over the US ring a bell???

by RobPellucid at 6:42 PM on 04 Aug 2006

Feeling the Warm Sky

"Of course, no individual weather event can definitively be traced to global warming;". But the heat felt outside on any clear day is directly related to global warming.

Put a hot skillet outside on a stump under a blue sky or under a clear night sky and it will not cool down as fast as it did last year while the air temperature remains the same.

In technical terms, the sky has a blackbody temperature that radiates infrared. This infrared radiation affects the comfort level of people and slows night cooling of the gound.

Building designers know that warm walls make air feel warmer and cold walls make air feel colder. The difference is significant. Closing shutters on nighttime windows makes rooms feel instantly warmer, significantly reducing the need for heating air.

We can feel the radient heat from the sky. This is not the same as air temperature. (Of coures, air temperature is also affected by a warm radient sky warming the Earth.)

by sunflower at 7:48 PM on 04 Aug 2006

Re-irradiation on the spelling

Radiant ground heat is the other blackbody, of course.

Great story on this evening's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer PBS on global warming consensus and "criminal" inaction.

by sunflower at 8:05 PM on 04 Aug 2006

Religious Moran Might Be Our Salvation

Over the last couple of week David has been trying to show us the light of religious thinking in presenting our sense of good and evil to world. He makes the good argument that for many seeing things in the terms of religious good and evil is a clearer choice and one that can be retained under strong opposition. Religious leaders such as Richard Cizik and Jim Ball of National Association of Evangelicals have been doing their part to get more religious leaders to adopt this view that abusing the earth is not what God intended when he gave us dominion. We were to exercise some wisdom.

For whatever reason many of us take a very intellectual view of policy and in fact are uncomfortable assuming a stance of it simply being a sin. And of course if it is not something you truly believe you can not fake it.

I think David points us in a correct direction. I think that it is wrong to abuse the world and the people in it and I think that religious leaders have an obligation to carry that message forward. Rev. Robinson may be one of those leaders.

It takes a lot of people to make up the world, it is a mix of creeds, races, nationalities, and etc. All in all that mix makes us better. I believe that Rev. Robertson has probably caused a number of people to alter their thinking in a favorable manner regarding global warming.

One thing we have to realize is that as global warming gets to be better understood people whom we have little regard will become supporters. It is even very possible that republican leaders, such as Sen. Snowe and others may become new conservative leaders who will support greenhouse gas controls. It will not just be liberal intellectuals who will carry the word.

Personally I like the liberals intellectuals better, but truth has a way of finding many speakers.

by ffletcher at 9:35 PM on 04 Aug 2006

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