UK Prime Minister on “weather extremes” and climate change

We weren’t going to come right out and make the direct attribution of the UK’s record floods to global warming, but those water-logged Brits are. PM Gordon Brown said

Obviously like every advanced industrial country we’re coming to terms with some of the issues surrounding climate change…. This has been, if you like, a one in 150 years set of incidents that has taken place in both Yorkshire and Humberside and now in Gloucestershire and the Severn.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn went further. He noted that “the scientific consensus was that the climate was changing,” and added

The world is going to have to come to terms, so the scientists are telling us, with more extreme weather events and that’s why we need to anticipate them and try and plan for them.

Kudos to Benn and Brown. Let’s hope we soon get U.S. leaders who are equally blunt.