It’s official: human activities that cause climate change are changing global rainfall patterns. Earlier today the “BBC Newshour” interviewed one of the authors of the study just released in the British journal “Nature.” The scientist said his study is the first to show that human activities are largely to blame for changes in rainfall patterns over the last century. The author hopes his report will serve as a wake-up call that we need to act now to curb global warming.
The report was released as record rains caused severe flooding in Britain, China and Indonesia.
Tewkesbury, Britain, and its famous Abbey are seen swamped by floodwaters on Monday.
I can’t help but notice a very disturbing discrepancy here:
When it rains in biblical proportions in Europe, conversations understandably turn to global warming. Not so in the U.S.
We’re not very good at remembering weather patterns but the U.S. has been drenched before. Last June the East Coast received 7.09 inches (180 mm) of rain in a 24-hr period. This past week Britain got 85 mm of rain in 2 hours. Pretty similar amounts of rain. Very different reactions. Last June no one was talking about climate change. I wrote this piece, which was immediately shot down by the Post as being too controversial.
I asked in that essay and will ask it again: At what point are we permitted to talk about the 600-pound gorilla in the room? Every week there’s a new peer-reviewed study in yet another prestigious scientific journal linking a host of weather-related anomalies to global warming: hurricanes, forest fires, dying coral reefs, droughts and, of course, extreme rainfall.
And while it’s impossible to link any single weather event directly and definitively to global warming, the pattern is unmistakable in our region and across the world and yet we’re still not talking about it. When will be stop being so cautious and start acting on the overwhelming scientific evidence telling us that our climate is spinning dangerously out of control?
