Igniting the climate change debate is a heat wave proving 2010 to be the warmest year ever



The climate change debate is intensified by a heat wave on the east coast. The debate was hot when blizzards hit the east also. Extreme weather events are being seized upon by both sides to support their global warming arguments in the debate that is all about climate change and the energy bill in Congress. And just in time for the heat wave, a British panel exonerated the "Climategate" scientists, saying it found no evidence the group manipulated research to back up global warming. 2010 is the hottest year in history thus far.



Source of article: Heat wave ignites climate change debate, 2010 warmest year ever by Personal Money Store



Around the globe is a heat wave



The heat wave is news because it is cooking places like New York and Washington where the national media hang out. You will find also other places getting hotter. As outlined by the Christian Science Monitor, the heat wave has gone global. Beijing hit a near-record 105 degrees Fahrenheit. It was 113 and 111 degrees on July 6 in Baghdad and Riyadh. Kuwait set the day’s world temperature high at 122 degrees. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) reports that the combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the first five months of the year was the warmest on record, and 1.22 degrees warmer than the 20th century average.



Climate change leads to more heat waves and blizzards



Climate change skeptics mocked Al Gore during March blizzards. But will heat waves continue if carbon emissions aren’t reduced? According to TIME, the fact no single weather event is caused by climate change is obvious, but politicians and lobbyists will try to use them in the climate and energy bill debate anyway. Actually, weather and climate aren't the exact same thing. It is tricky to determine how climate change affects the weather. But the March blizzards and the July heat wave conform to a general scientific consensus that climate change will result in more extreme weather.



Climategate scientists' research may be legitimate



The above climate change argument is the position of the Climategate scientists, a group of researchers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England. The New York Times reports that these people have played a leading role in efforts to understand the earth’s climate. Last year some e-mail messages which were sent by the scientists about global warming were stolen and posted to the Internet. Politicians, lobbyists and some of the other global warming skeptics seized upon the e-mails as proof that the scientists were hiding data that conflicted with their positions on global warming. But a report by the panel investigating Climategate said that there was no evidence found of behavior that might undermine their conclusions.



Climate change – better to be safe than sorry



Climate change is such a controversial issue because climate science is complex and hard to explain, and the people doing the explaining still do not understand climate as well as they would like. This opens windows of opportunity arguments on both sides of the issue. Ezra Klein at the Washington Post points out that if we can't deal with a disaster like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico 2010, how are we going to reverse concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere?



Pay me now or pay me later – carbon tax



This leads us to the climate and energy bill and its proposed cap and trade system or carbon tax. Republicans that are against government intervention are potentially setting up a future in which the government is forced to intervene on a planetary scale. Klein said he's a lot more comfortable with the government's ability to levy a carbon tax now than its ability to repair the atmosphere later. That's why when faced with the choice between being avoiding the economic risk of a carbon tax or taking a step to preserve the future of the planet, we should choose the planet.



More data available at these websites:



Christian Science Monitor

csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0707/Global-heat-wave-hits-US-reignites-climate-change-debate

TIME

ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/07/06/turning-up-the-heat-on-climate-change/?xid=rss-topstories

New York Times

nytimes.com/2010/07/08/science/earth/08climate.html?src=mv

Washington Post

voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/the_case_for_being_careful_wit.html