National Public Radio offers an excellent in depth piece about how the long running and devastating drought is permanently changing Texas.
The climate science is absolutely clear that such droughts are part of the effects of a warming globe (if you are a real wonk take a look at the academic papers on the changing climate, drought and forest health).
Of course, reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases causing global warming is not a targeted attack on that drought – but it is the only way to slow (and possibly reverse) the trend towards a world where such horrific and wrenching events are commonplace. A thought that should resonate here in already soggy New England as we brace for the impact of a hurricane and consider the climate science that tells us that a warming world will give us more extreme precipitation events.
The situation starts to veer towards the absurd when you consider that some leaders of Texas are denying the very existence of the phenomena playing out in their own state. Could it be that the people getting arrested in front of the White House trying to stop a tar sands oil pipeline are serving the people of Texas (and the future people who will have to endure similar biblical plagues like droughts and floods) better than the elected officials doing all they can to hobble efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Joseph D'Aleo
Actually 2007 was the wettest summer on record for Texas and this year’s heat wave and drought though very extreme was similar to the 7 year drought of the 1940s-1950s. There is no long term trend in either summer temperatures and precipitation for Texas since 1895.
[http://icecap.us/index.php (see 1895-2010 temperature and precipitation charts)]
This very severe heat wave and drought is related to a super La Nina, strongest since 1917/18 and 1954-56 and given the return of la Nina likely to continue into 2012.
[http://icecap.us/index.php (see Super La Nina PDSI maps)]
As usual; NPR can’t be relied on for providing truth just dogma.
Seth Kaplan
I agree completely that you should not get your climate science (or any science) solely from NPR or from any other news organization. That is why I included the links to some very serious peer-reviewed science that show how global warming “loads the dice” to make events like the disaster now unfolding in Texas more likely. Phenomena like this happened in the past – this just makes it even more likely.
Here is another news article, from the Houston Chronicle, about the same “permanent effects of the heat and drought”: http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/09-01-11-more-than-66-million-trees-expected-to-die-in-the-houston-area-city-canopy-will-never-look-the-same/