Does Our Dependence on Fossil Fuels Cause Extreme Weather Events?

Yesterday saw the publication of a paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society to the effect that climate change caused by human use of fossil fuels played a role in about a half dozen extreme weather events last year.  The paper was written by a team of experts who had examined 12 wild weather episodes in 2012, from droughts in the United States and Africa to heavy rainfall in Europe, Australia, China, Japan and New Zealand.  The peer-reviewed study, called “Explaining Extreme Events of 2012 from a Climate Perspective,” was based on and included 18 research teams from around the world.

What now?  Easy.  The 100-or-so climate change deniers in the U.S. House of Representatives, whose campaign funding comes predominantly from the oil companies, will call the members of these 18 research teams “frauds” and “liars,” and our de facto energy policy, based on fossil fuels, will continue along unabated.

“So it goes,” as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.