With an unusual amount of extreme weather this year --- including hurricanes, tropical storms, tornadoes, blizzards, heat and drought --- it wasn’t a surprise to see an Associated Press story on nature’s fury appear over the weekend that suggested recent meteorological events were linked to global warming, notes Grumpy Editor.
And to complete nature’s action so far in 2011, writer Seth Borenstein worked into the story’s second paragraph non-meteorological-related recent Virginia, Colorado and Alaska earthquakes plus record wildfires in Arizona and New Mexico.
The story cited Germany-based insurance company Munich Re tallied 98 natural disasters in the U.S. in this year’s first half, “about double the average in the 1990s” --- without indicating how many were related to weather.
Nevertheless, recent “weather catastrophes” gave the writer an opportunity to compose this Las Vegas-style line:
“Man-made global warming is increasing the odds of getting a bad roll of the dice."
In summarizing what climate scientists said, toward the end of the text the writer mentioned, “Individual weather disasters so far can’t be directly attributed to global warming, but”…
Thus, the global warming saga continues.
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