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even most people on the right aren't dumb enough to say climate change isn't happening...they just dispute that we have anything to do with it.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of debate though, about whether or not the polar ice caps are melting, which should be a pretty fucking obvious indicator that something serious is actually occuring...unless either of you wants to step up and deny visible, empyrical evidence of that phenomenon, I suggest you don't entirely leave the reservation of sanity, and at least tac town to..."but we aren't doing it...so there."

edited to say that I just pulled out of my ass that most people on the right don't believe climate change is happening...this is not a tested hypothesis, and my own hopes for the state of humanity may have led me astray.

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Your post is as vague as ever, which suggests to me after reading a long history of such posts from you that you don't have any specific reasons why you believe anything you believe, you just like to believe it.

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I do tend to think it wise to weigh heavily the opinions given by those with expertice, over those who once did a science project in 6th grade and can now dismiss climate change as God accidently leaving the freezer door open.

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I do tend to think it wise to weigh heavily the opinions given by those with expertice, over those who once did a science project in 6th grade and can now dismiss climate change as God accidently leaving the freezer door open.

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We just argue to see which side can one-up the other.

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But the truth remains that climate change or global warming is utterly immaterial to the lifestyle changes we need to make as human beings. The proposed improvements to resource management, fuel efficiency, and alternative energy are absolutely embraceable for their own independent merits.

I believe the argument on Global Warming and Climate Change is a sideshow, and distracts from the main goal of improving how we manage ourselves and the planet we live on.

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I don't see how this particular debate about whether climate change is man made or natural is any more or less pointless than any other debate we have on the forums.

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1. An all-time record high in Los Angeles. 97 degrees is nothing compared to September 28. That day, downtown L.A. registered at 113 degrees, besting the old mark of 112 set in 1990.

2. Houston's hottest month ever. While Houston's residents are used to hot days, they've never seen heat like this, with an average temperature of 87.8 degrees in August, a new record for the hottest month in the city's history.

3. A new all-time high in Asia. Temperatures in Pakistan's ancient city of Mohenjo-daro reached a scorching 129 degrees on June 1, marking the hottest weather ever recorded in Asia, and the fourth-highest temperature in history.

4. An unprecedented heat wave in Russia. With smoke from burning peat-bogs clogging the muggy air, the heat in Moscow on August 6 broke the "psychological barrier" of 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

5. Record heat in Sudan. While searing weather is common in Sudan, the 121-degree temperature recorded on June 25 in the city of Dongola was the hottest the country has ever seen. The previous record was set in 1987.

6. New all-time highs in the Middle East. U.S. troops in Iraq endured some of the most intense heat of the summer. The mercury hit a blistering 125.6 degrees Fahrenheit in July, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country.

7. The hottest month in world history — four times in a row. June 2010 was the warmest month ever recorded on planet Earth. The previous mark had been set in May. The mark before that had been set in April. The one before that in March.

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 Recent data from Antarctic ice cores indicates that carbon dioxide oncentrations are now higher than at any time during the past 650,000 years, which is as far back as measurements can now reach.

 2005 was the warmest year on record since atmospheric temperatures have been measured.
The ten warmest years on record have all been since 1990. In summer 2005, heat records were
broken in hundreds of U.S. cities.

 Over the past 50 years, the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in
recorded history.

 In 2003, heat waves caused over 30,000 deaths in Europe and 1500 deaths in India.

 Since 1978, arctic sea ice has been shrinking by about 9 percent per decade.

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Record temperatures of well over 35 degrees Celsius were recorded all over Europe this week. On Jul. 20 Paris and Berlin registered 39 degrees. In Belgium, Jul. 19 was the hottest day ever in July, with 37 degrees.

The July maximum temperature record was also broken in Britain. The mercury reached 36.5 Celsius at the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens at Wisley in Surrey. The previous record for July, 36 degrees, was set in Epsom in 1911.

The heat wave has led to several deaths across Europe.

French minister of health Xavier Bertrand said Jul. 19 that at least nine people had died this summer, victims of the heat.

In Spain, at least two heat wave deaths have been reported. Both victims were bricklayers, who died at work. In Germany and the Netherlands, four people died of cardio-vascular complications provoked by the heat.

But this year's death toll remains low compared to some 35,000 people who died across Europe in the heat wave of 2003. That year 15,000 people, mostly the elderly, died in France.

Gerstengarbe said that over the last century temperatures in Germany rose 0.8 degrees. "Over the next 75 years, we expect a warming of between 1.8 to 3..6 degrees for our region."

The heat is also taking its toll on agriculture, and affecting the generation of electricity, especially in nuclear power plants.

The lack of fresh water for the nuclear plants' cooling systems has led German private electricity suppliers to slow down their generators.

In France, the state-owned Electricité de France (EdF) was allowed to continue to drain hot water from the cooling system into rivers, although the water temperatures exceeded the limits imposed by environmental authorities. But output has had to be lowered.

EdF has been importing electricity to compensate the nuclear power plants' lower performance. Eighty percent of electricity generated in France is produced by nuclear power plants.

In Italy, hydroelectric plants have had to slow down due to a shortage of water in rivers.

European agriculture has also been hit by the heat wave and the drought.

In Germany, president of the association of farmers Gerd Sonnleitner told the press that this year's harvest on cereals would be 10 to 15 percent lower than in 2004, for which figures are available. "We had excellent expectations, but the heat and the drought have destroyed them."

In France farmers say the heat has damaged harvests. Livestock breeders said they have been forced to exhaust their forage reserves.

"This is the fourth successive drought we are suffering," Jean-Luc Poulain, commissioner for risks management at the French Association of Farmers told IPS. "We have not been able to reconstitute our stocks. And the situation gets worse by the day."

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Total heat records now stand at 671 record highs broken this month (plus another 293 record high minimums, for a total near 1,000).



The temperatures are really extreme, in many cases exceeding what you'd normally see at the peak of the summer. Grandfather Mountain, NC hit 80 yesterday (update, they hit it again today) - their warmest ever in April and only 3 degrees away from their all-time record high (for any month)! At Central Park they broke their daily record set in 1929.

Mid 90s have been seen by official stations; 95 was recorded at Leesburg and Louisa in Virginia, and it rose to 94 at Hagerstown, Maryland this afternoon - just over the Pennsylvania border! As they say about the Desert Southwest, "it's a dry heat" though - relative humidities are as low as 9% at Petersburg, Virginia.

- Only one day (out of more than 41,000) has ever been warmer than this, this early. We hit 86 F at Penn State yesterday, April 6th; only March 31, 1989 saw a warmer temperature (87) before April 15th!

- We don't normally get this warm any time of year. The 86-degree reading is 5 degrees above our normal high during the peak of the Summer in July/August.

- Last night was much warmer than a normal Summer night. Joe Bastardi's weather station south of town (which I installed and am confident that is sited correctly) did not fall below 74 degrees last night -- 12 degrees above the normal overnight low at Summer's peak, making for a +34 temperature departure for the 24-hour period.

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