2010 Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change
What Others Are Saying
"Moscow may not have seen so much smoke since the city burned to the ground around Napoleon. A record-shattering heat wave has choked Russia's core, igniting runaway wildfires around the capital and coating it with a thick, gray cloud that is finally beginning to clear. The daily death count doubled during the heat wave, filling up Moscow's morgues."
"At the least, the events in Moscow and Pakistan serve as examples of the sorts of thing that scientists predict will happen more often in regions unprepared to cope, underscoring why people must take seriously the risks associated with continuing to pump carbon into Earth's atmosphere."
The Washington Post, Editorial, August, 15, 2010
"This summer’s desolating scenes of death and devastation from heat waves, fires, and floods may be taken as a forewarning of what awaits the planet if nothing is done soon to reduce man’s contribution to climate change."
"Political leaders in this country and the rest of the world ought to reflect on the scale of human suffering this summer in Pakistan, Russia, and China. If they could envision these catastrophes not as aberrations but as the coming state of things, maybe they would act now, in concert, to stop turning the earth into an inferno for their descendants."
The Boston Globe, Editorial, August, 12, 2010
"Rather than being spectators watching an increasingly grim climate reality show, lawmakers must overcome partisanship and special interest lobbying and rewrite the script."
The Houston Chronicle, Editorial, August, 14, 2010
"Floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Iowa and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown. It's not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way.”
"The U.S. remains the only major industrialized nation not to have legislated caps on carbon emissions, after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week withdrew climate legislation in the face of resistance from Republicans and some Democrats."
Associated Press, August 13, 2010
“Everyone is talking about climate change now….Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past.”
President Dmitri A. Medvedev, to the Russian Security Council, from The New York Times, August 14, 2010
"Climate change with all its severity and unpredictability has become a reality for 170 million Pakistanis…. The present situation in Pakistan reconfirms our extreme vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change."
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's Foreign Minister to the UN General Assembly, from AOL News, August, 19, 2010
“The climate is changing…. Extreme events are occurring with greater frequency, and in many cases with greater intensity.”
Jay Lawrimore, Chief of Climate Analysis at the National Climatic Data Center, from The New York Times, August, 14, 2010
The Select Committee was active during the 110th and 111th Congresses. This is an archived version of the website, to ensure that the public has ongoing access to the Select Committee record. This website, including external links, will not be updated after Jan. 3rd, 2010.
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