It’s
hard to tell the difference in weather on a grand scale. Is this summer’s
weather really hotter than last year’s? Is it just a fluke? And of
course, it seems bad while we’re in it, but does that really mean that it’s
actually worse?
Luckily
that’s why we have scientists. While it makes sense logically that hotter
summers and droughts are the result of climate change a recent paper published
by James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, actually
set out to see if there was a measurable connection.
Hansen
didn’t just look at droughts, but also at other extreme weather events.
Things like hurricanes, forest fires, and unusually hot spells.
Essentially what he found was that climate change results in more extreme
weather across the board, hotter than usually, colder than usual, and unusually
warm weather.
In
fact, in Hansen explained that we’ve now managed to drive our climate outside
of the range that we’ve managed for the last 10,000 years- something that can
have a significant effect on the way we live.
He’s
also quick to bring up the fact that these extreme weather events have big
economic impacts that are actually changing our lives and the way we survive on
this planet. This is a connection that many scientists don’t make to the
public, which is unfortunate because it’s one of the few ways that individuals
can actually see the effect that global warming can have on their lives.
Without something like this recycling is just a nice thing to do when you don’t
have anything better to do.
With
this data, however, we can see just how important taking care of the
environment really is.
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