Here Are Some Tangible Effects of Climate Change in the U.S.

Despite what the Koch brothers may or may not want Americans to believe about climate change, the White House has gone ahead and released a report describing the real, tangible impact of morphing climate conditions in the U.S. in recent decades.

Titled the 2014 National Climate Assessment, the report, which will likely be dismissed out of hand by the climate change denial camp due to its Obama-centric influences, offers details about atmospheric and environmental alterations “driven primarily by human activity” (via BBC News):

Between 1958 and 2012, the amount of precipitation falling in very heavy events increased by 71% in New England and the north east, while in the drier West it went up by just 5%.

“There is no equivocation,” said lead author Prof Gary Yohe from Wesleyan University.

“It is fundamentally the pace of observations of extreme weather that makes it clear it is not natural variability.”

The report suggests that it is not just wet events that are becoming more common. The human influence on climate has “roughly doubled the probability of extreme heat events”, it says.

The authors point to the record-breaking summer temperatures in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011, where even during the night the mercury continued to soar.

CNN, momentarily demonstrating that the network’s news staff actually can cover something other than missing airliners, offered this helpful list of tips that everyone can follow to help with planetary damage control. We might suggest a precursory addition to that lineup: Believe it, people.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson