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This summer is what global warming looks like: Increased average temperatures, forest fires, extreme weather episodes. Climate change is gradual and a matter of averages. Different parts of the globe will be affected differently. We could have a cold wet summer along the way. But on average, the summer of 2012 is what climate change will look like over time, only this version is the very early, mild one.

Human beings have opened the spigot and are pouring carbon dioxide and soot into the atmosphere in such amounts over a short time that it is unprecedented in earth’s 4.5 billion year history– and that is what is causing the warming, which is just beginning. In the worst case, where we burn all the coal and oil and gas in the world, over the coming centuries we could have an average increase of 9 degrees Fahrenheit, with the entire world being tropical including Antarctica and with a sea rise that would submerge a third of the world’s present land mass.

But:

Climate change no longer Americans’ top environmental concern”.

Hmm. I wonder why?

“Among Republicans, being more informed had no effect on the level of their concern…”

Nine out of ten climate-denying ‘experts’ have ties to ExxonMobil.

Did ExxonMobil break its promise to stop funding climate change deniers?

Hmmm.