Summit County Citizens Voice

Hotter days ahead …

May 2012 global temperature anomalies.

Opinion By Bob Berwyn

SUMMIT COUNTY — Showing signs of increasing desperation, global warming deniers are trying to deflect attention from the clear and present danger of heatwaves, severe storms and wildfires by publishing questionable long-range weather maps suggesting next winter will bring below average temperatures.

Hardly anyone is listening. It’s tough to pay attention to nonsense when the temperature outside is 107 and an unusually intense thunderstorm knocks out your power.

Plus, the same people, like infamous denier Joe Bastardi, to name just one, have made the same claims before, only to be proved wrong time and time again. During last summer’s brutal heat wave, they told us not to worry, next year will be cooler.

Guess what? Now it’s “next year” and it’s hotter than ever. Perhaps the exact location of the hotspots have shifted a bit, but the bottom line is, people are starting to notice that the extreme heat is not letting up. To the contrary, the ratio of record highs compared to record lows keeps increasing and the heatwaves are lasting longer.

Four tropical storms form early in the season; one of them soaks up energy from the bathtub warm waters of the Gulf, then converts all that excess energy into a fury of rain that leaves parts of Florida under water.

A few days later, an intense line of thunderstorms plows eastward, hitting major East Coast cities like a climate sledgehammer. A day later, similar storms, almost subtropical in nature, sweep across north-central Europe.

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Filed under: climate and weather, Colorado, Drought, forest fires, global warming | Tagged: climate, drought, global warming, heatwave, weather | 15 Comments »