Global Climate Change Linked to Extreme Weather?

I'm an unapologetic believer that we humans - especially us American humans - aren't exactly being great stewards of the earth. Frankly, I think you're not doing enough to help curb our wastefulness, our dependence on convenience, our use of chemicals. Incidentally, neither am I. I think no matter how we're living our lives - whether we eat Boston Market seven nights a week or cook homegrown foods on a wood stove - there's always room for one small change that will make a bit more of a difference on a global scale.

That difference? Just might prevent us from descending into the climate change scenario that Bill McKibben foresees in his book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. I wrote about McKibben's book on GeekMom eons ago, but let me highlight a quote from the book:

Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We’ve created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth.

In his book, McKibben addresses the human impact on global climate change and how it is likely to manifest in changed weather patterns and shifting climate zones. But he's not the only one talking. A recent article on the Popular Science website tackles the possibility that climate change can be implicated in the Joplin, MO tornado that took so many lives and left so many more in disarray.

As the author of the article points out, there is certainly some hesitancy on the part of scientists to state unequivocally that climate change caused the tornado, but:

Climate scientists are increasingly able to draw lines that suggest a correlation between climate change and extreme weather events. Causation is more complex, but faster computers and better models are beginning to point to a connection—a task that’s easier with temperature extremes than it is with tornadoes.

A lack of reliable historical tornado data makes it difficult for scientists to offer solid answers. Plus? There's this:

Climate scientists have become the abortion doctors of the scientific establishment: maligned, ridiculed, harassed, and even physically threatened.

We've got smart people telling us there's a problem and an awful lot of us don't want to hear it. Hearing it means that we'd need to acknowledge that our individual actions might just be contributing to the problem. But rest assured, there is a problem:

Determining whether climate change caused, or even worsened, an individual tornado seems to be beyond the epistemological limits of science. But if it’s impossible to prove causation, it’s easy to see a disturbing correlation. Climate change is happening; climate change should make many types of extreme weather more intense; extreme-weather events are already becoming more common.

Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters concurs.

We’ve set in motion a dangerous boulder of climate change that is rolling downhill, and it is too late to avoid major damage when it hits full-force several decades from now. However, we can reduce the ultimate severity of the damage with strong and rapid action. A boulder rolling downhill can be deflected in its path more readily early in its course, before it gains too much momentum in its downward rush.

The question is, how do we divert that boulder? What can one person do? Here are ten ideas for making some easy changes. And here are 63 more. Surely, we can each manage to make a little change?

This girl, the one who's afraid of tornadoes, thanks you.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoOrtvYTKeE[/youtube]

Photo via Wikimedia Commons