Extreme
Weather, Climate Controversy Set the Political Stage
A strong and steady flow of climate change news is crossing news sites and blogs this week. With the
advent of fall in the Southern Hemisphere, Northern Australia is experiencing a
record-setting heat wave.
Threatened with the prospect of running out of water, the
Brazilian city of Sao Paulo (with a population of about 11 million people)
now has to cope with severe flooding. Having been buried in snow, residents and government
officials are trying to cope with severe flooding in the wake of
massive snow and rainfall across northern Spain.
Here in the U.S. snow pack in the Sierra Nevada indicates
drought will bite deeper into the economies and societies of California, Oregon
and Washington. The governors of Oregon and Washington have declared drought emergencies for parts of the
respective northwest U.S. states. California Governor Jerry Brown and state
legislators are proposing to spend $1.1 billion on emergency
funding for flood protection and drought relief.
Residents, along with government officials and power,
water and waste management providers across New England, meanwhile, are
struggling to cope with all the snow that has dropped down. Snowfall in some
parts of the region, such as Boston, “are blowing past all-time records,”
Weather Underground’s Jon Erdman reported in a March 23 post.
Record heat,
droughts, snowfall and severe flooding
In climate science news, the National Snow and Ice Data
Center (NSIDC) reports that this winter’s Arctic
sea ice maximum will
almost certainly set a new low this year. And newly published scientific
research reveals that Atlantic oceanic conveyor belt – sometimes known as the Gulf Stream system or more
formally as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – that keeps
northeastern North America and western Europe warmer than they would otherwise
may be slowing down.
Of course, fossil fuel companies and their supporters in
the U.S. Congress – including the new chair of the Senate’s Environment and
Public Works Committee James Inhofe (R-OK) – would have us believe that all
this is nothing more than normal variability in the earth’s climate.
Inhofe has long been known as the most vocal and strident
climate change denier in the U.S. Congress.
Late last month, Inhofe tossed a snowball on to the floor of the U.S. Senate chamber, a theatrical
stunt he employed to drive home his contention that the massive amount of snow
falling in the northeast is a clear sign that human activities – more
specifically, greenhouse gas emissions – aren’t causing climate change.
Many others believe otherwise. The world’s leading
climate scientists – those that have and continue to actually conduct primary
research and have built careers studying climate – are about as sure as it’s
scientifically possible to be that human activities are indeed the main factor
driving climate change to a possible tipping point.
This past week in the nation’s capital, environmental and
public health watchdogs say the EPA gave the U.S. oil and gas industry what
amounts to a free pass by failing to propose stricter new environmental regulations
governing hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” They laid a similar charge on
the EPA this past December in the
wake of the federal environmental agency issuing the first-ever rules governing
disposal of coal ash.
Climate change
debates heat up in the run-up to Paris climate talks
These latest EPA fossil fuel-related environmental rules
stand in stark contrast to the vigor with which President Obama and his
administration has been working to address climate change by reducing U.S.
greenhouse gas emissions, spurring development and deployment of renewable
energy and supporting investments that enhance energy efficiency.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will
hear oral arguments in three environmental cases that could
call into question the validity of regulations that limit emissions of mercury
and other hazardous toxins from coal-fired power plants.
This and forthcoming debates in Washington D.C. and
across the U.S. will collectively define national policy on energy and the
environment, as well as the prospect a global climate
treaty can be agreed at the upcoming U.N. Framework Convention on
Climate Change talks to take
place in Paris this December.
December’s U.N. climate treaty negotiations are likely to
be the last chance the community of nations will have to show that they’re
serious about addressing the wide range of interconnected issues centered on
climate change in our time. The results will go a long way towards determining
the standard of living and quality of life for generations to come.
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*Image credits: 1) Mashable; 2) Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research;
3) Americans Against the Tea Party