by Jess Zimmerman. Mother Jones has posted everything you might want to know about the record flooding along the Mississippi, including the big question: Is this destruction just the ravages of an angry Nature, or is it the ravages of an angry Nature that's pissed about climate change in particular? The answer to “did climate change cause this?” is basically “well, no.” Of course the direct cause of the flood was massive rainfall: up to four times the normal amount in some areas this April. But what caused the rainfall? As usual, we're going to pussyfoot around saying that climate change is definitely to blame, because the fact is it's hard to prove how the global climate contributes to any single weather event. But can climate change cause more precipitation, severer storms, and worse flooding? Uh, yeah, that's kind of its thing . Treehugger sums up : Record flooding along the Mississippi, devastating drought and wildfires in Texas — we can't just build more dikes, bust more levies, or seek federal aid when these extreme weather events hit. We need to start understanding that they're being exacerbated by climate change, and will continue to grow more severe as time passes. And that's why mitigating these storms must be made part of the dialogue. Republican politicians can deny climate change all they want — but it's happening right now. Actually, it's pretty much slapping us in the face. Let's see if it'll wake anyone up.
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Is climate change causing the Mississippi flood?
May 11th, 2011 at 12:45 am
Republican factory owners killed your family and friends in the catastrophic blizzards, floods, tornadoes, massive wildfires and other climate change that has been wiping out the bible-belt. This is the Climate Change that their factories created. This is the Climate Change that the Republicans lie about not existing. This is the Climate Change that they program their constituents to deny exists. This is the Climate Change that killed people, destroyed homes, further destroyed the economy that the Republican factories emissions caused so they could make profits by killing those people. Republicans deny Climate Change at all costs in order to keep their factories from having to pay to stop it. The Climate Change that is destroying massive pats of our country can no longer be hidden or denied.