What Will It Take?

Trey Smith

Evidence supporting the existence of climate change is pummeling the United States this summer, from the mountain wildfires of Colorado to the recent “derecho” storm that left at least 23 dead and 1.4 million people without power from Illinois to Virginia. The phrase “extreme weather” flashes across television screens from coast to coast, but its connection to climate change is consistently ignored, if not outright mocked. If our news media, including—or especially—the meteorologists, continue to ignore the essential link between extreme weather and climate change, then we as a nation, the greatest per capita polluters on the planet, may not act in time to avert even greater catastrophe.

More than 2,000 heat records were broken last week around the U.S. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency that tracks the data, reported that the spring of 2012 “marked the largest temperature departure from average of any season on record for the contiguous United States.” These record temperatures in May, NOAA says, “have been so dramatically different that they establish a new ‘neighborhood’ apart from the historical year-to-date temperatures.”
~ from Climate Change: ‘This Is Just the Beginning’ by Amy Goodman ~

In sports, it has been said that "records are made to be broken." In and of themselves, new heat records do not indicate that human-caused climate change is the culprit. Records are set every year somewhere in the world. I understand this kind of perspective.

But we've been setting all sorts of weather-related records for several years now. We've set record highs and lows, most and least snowfall, most and least rainfall, and a variety of other records. At some point, with all of these records being set from year to year, one would think that most people would start to get just a little inkling that something is up. It's one thing to set widespread records here and there, but it's quite another thing to set them year after year after year after year!

In the sport of Major League Baseball, the Yankee Hall-of-Famer Joe Dimaggio set the record for most consecutive games with a hit at 56 games. He did this in 1941 and no one has broken this record since. The Chicago Bears of the National Football League set the record -- 73-0 -- of the most lopsided score in the championship game. This occurred in 1940 and no team has come close to it.

However, if these sports records mirrored recent weather-related records, each of them would have been broken several times during the past decade! The hit streak might be up to 93 and the most lopsided victory might stand at 112-0.

So, what I would like to know from all the climate change deniers out there, what will it take? How many records need to be broken until you admit that maybe, just maybe, there is something to the science of global warming? How many consecutive years of new records being set do we need before you will take climate change seriously?