85 Fucking Degrees 10 Days Before Last Frost Date: Get Used to It

Like I keep sayin': climate change/global warming does not mean always hotter weather, as we discovered this record-setting winter.  It means fucked-up weather.

Joe Romm at Think Progress:

The National Climate Assessment is the definitive statement of current and future impacts of carbon pollution on the United States. And the picture it paints is stark: Inaction will devastate much of the arable land of the nation’s breadbasket — and ruin a livable climate for most Americans.

“Americans face choices” explains the Congressionally-mandated report by 300 leading climate scientists and experts, which was reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences. We’re already seeing serious climate impacts — such as more extreme heat waves, droughts, and deluges — and additional impacts are “now unavoidable.” But just how bad future climate change is “will still largely be determined by choices society makes about emissions.”

SNIP

One reason we can be confident in the report’s projections of the future is that the same scientists warned decades ago that we would start to see increases in heatwaves, droughts and deluges by now — and we have:

The global warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuels….
Over the last 50 years, much of the United States has seen an increase in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, more heavy downpours, and in some regions, more severe droughts.

The study notes, “Evidence indicates that the human influence on climate has already roughly doubled the probability of extreme heat events such as the record-breaking summer heat experienced in 2011 in Texas and Oklahoma.” At the same time, “In some regions, prolonged periods of high temperatures associated with droughts contribute to conditions that lead to larger wildfires and longer fire seasons.”

Don't come crying to me when weeks of triple-digit temperatures, months-long drought and massive flooding kill your garden this summer and lettuce goes for $100 a bag; tell it to the assholes with the "Friend of Coal" license plates.