Washington Post misses another prime opportunity to report on climate change

The July 21 Washington Post contained an article written by reporter Martin Weil called Record nightly warmth followed last week's daily heat.  It was a pretty long article that discussed how the daily highs in the 90's each day were made more unbearable by the fact that the nights did not cool off below 80 degrees for several nights in a row.

"There’s a way of coping with day after day of temperatures in the 90s, besides staying in the shade, wearing loose clothing and drinking lots of water. It is to go home, let the sun set and feel the swelter subside.

But that traditional method of riding out a heat wave has not been particularly effective in recent days for those living close to the Washington area’s urban core near Reagan National Airport, where the National Weather Service takes the city’s temperature.

It has been hot during the day, yes. Saturday, with a high of 94, was the sixth consecutive day on which Washington’s official temperature was well above 90. But even beyond each day’s heat and humidity, Washington’s weather woes were made all the worse by how warm it remained at night."

This was the perfect set up to discuss how increased greenhouse gases increase the moisture content of the air, both of which serve to keep it warmer at night (and in winters).  But nothing.  Not a single word.

One would hope that this clear connection of dots between local weather conditions and the consistency of those conditions with anthropogenic global warming would be a key point made in an article like this.  Seems almost like negligence.

Climate Change Gets Personal - My Sister's House is Lost in Black Forest Fire

For 20 years I have worked on the issue of climate change--mostly from the angle of energy efficiency.  I understand the severity of the crisis and the need for fast and significant action.  But it's been a bit abstract from a personal standpoint.  I was not one of the 20 million Pakistanis dislocated by the flooding there in 2010.  I don't live in parts of New Jersey or New York that were ravaged by Hurricane Sandy.

But now it's different. 
Last year the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs destroyed 346 homes.  The most destructive day of that fire occurred when Colorado Springs experienced its first 100-degree temperature in recorded history.  And there had been a 3-year drought at that point.  My brother is a firefighter in Colorado Springs, and he worked on the fire.

Humankind wins the Darwin Award with anthropogenic climate change

People like me who follow climate-change news closely often find it difficult to understand why it is that we ("we" as in humankind) are doing so little to stop it.  Maybe I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly find it difficult.

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben's recent article in Rolling Stone was another hard slap in the face that exposed how close to doomed we are.  So close, yet so little is being done.  Why?

There have been many articles and studies and opinions written about this, claiming everything from genetics to politics to economics to obliviousness--most of which contains at least a little truth.  I think that the real answer is more Darwinian.  Like this: