|
Winds of Change Newsletter, December 2011 See sidebar for table of contents
CLIMATE CHAOS in the Mountain
State
Wild Weather, Weird Weather, Wacky Weather – And We’re Making It
Think the weather is weird these days? Scientists
concur. The 2011 blizzards, heat waves, crazy-intense rainfall events,
droughts and the rest of the year’s record-breaking extreme weather were
made worse because of human-induced climate change.
A September report titled "Current Extreme Weather and
Climate Change," released by the Climate Communication scientific group,
details how industrial emissions of greenhouse gases are making extreme
weather more likely.
Extreme weather events do not have a single cause but
instead have various possible contributing factors – and human-induced
climate change is now recognized as one of those factors. Weather
variability can be extremely costly. As of August 30, the US had
witnessed 10 weather disasters costing over $1 billion each so far this
year. This breaks the previous record for the number of such US weather
disasters in an entire year.
Changes in extreme weather threaten human health as
well as prosperity.
|
