Of the “the first F–5 tornado to strike Iowa since 1976″ that killed eight people Memorial Day weekend, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) rose on the Senate floor on June 5 to say:

In some ways, the storm may serve as a wake-up call to those of us who have become somewhat complacent about severe weather warnings.

Watch it:

The next day, Grassley joined 37 of his colleagues to filibuster climate legislation, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

This week, Grassley continued to ignore Mother Nature’s message. On Monday, June 9, he wrote on his blog:

My hometown of New Hartford was evacuated last night due to flooding just weeks after a tornado caused a lot of damage.

The next day, Grassley joined 43 other senators in a party-line vote to filibuster the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008.

UPDATE: Matt Stoller at Open Left writes:

I just got off the phone with a Congressional staffer, who couldn’t quite focus on the issue we were supposed to discuss because she is working overtime on the floods in the Midwest. So I turned on cable news, and found out that the floods are plastered all over, much as the wildfires in California were in October of 2007. And just like 2007, the major environmental groups are AWOL on the most covered climate event of the year so far.

For months the deniers have been extolling the fact that the Arctic sea saw record refreezing last fall. And they have been claiming that this somehow fits into the (absurd) claim that the planet is now in a major cooling trend.

But back in the real world the planet keeps warming, and the Arctic is taking the worst of it, which could lead to potentially catastrophic methane emissions from the tundra, as noted here. The National Snow and Ice Data Center just reported (here):

Arctic sea ice still on track for extreme melt

Arctic sea ice extent has declined through the month of May as summer approaches. Daily ice extents in May continued to be below the long-term average and approached the low levels seen at this time last year. As discussed in our last posting, the spring ice cover is thin. One sign of thin and fairly weak ice is the formation of several polynyas in the ice pack.

No surprise that a recent survey of leading experts with the international Arctic science community found they expect a “continuation of the recent trend of sea ice loss” this summer. How exactly does this year’s sea ice extent compare with last year and with the 1979-2000 average? NSIDC has a great figure (click to enlarge):

Although ice extent is slightly greater than this time last year, the average decline rate through the month of May was 8 thousand square kilometers per day (3 thousand square miles per day) faster than last May. Ice extent as the month closed approached last May’s value.

Okay so the ice area is shrinking fast. What about thickness — an equally important determinant of how fast the ice will disappear?

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Along with carbon, water is the other great problem of this century. And, of course, the two are intimately related because the biggest impacts of carbon-driven climate change are projected to be on the hydrological cycle.

The American Prospect magazine has a special report on the water crisis in its June issue. If you want to get up to speed on the water issue, this is a good place to start:

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The Associated Press writes that weather derivatives — used by companies to hedge against weather-related losses — “are one of the fastest growing segments of the commodities market.” How they work:

Investors, who sell weather derivatives, agree to take on the risk for a premium. Investors will profit from these transactions if nothing extraordinary weather-wise occurs. If the weather goes bad, the company that bought the derivative collects an agreed-upon amount.

The weather derivatives market is exploding. Begun in the late 1990s, trading in weather derivative contracts now values in the tens of billions of dollars a year. As Brian O’Hearne, head of the reinsurance company Swiss Re’s Environment and Commodity markets in New York, told the Associated Press:

Weather is becoming more volatile, and we recognize this as a new risk class.

A 2005 Swiss Re report spells out our responsibility:

Climate change is a fact: one of its effects is an increase in the volatility and unpredictability of weather events, for example maximum and minimum temperatures, the number of hot or cold days and precipitation levels. Human activity contributes to climate change, but it can also help mitigate its effects on weather events.

Extreme weather has always been deadly, but manmade global warming is bringing an “increase in frequency of hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation.” The investment community is recognizing this fact, and taking steps to deal with the risk. The question facing our country now is whether our media and politicians will.

A major new study published Friday in Geophysical Research Letters by leading tundra experts has found “Accelerated Arctic land warming and permafrost degradation during rapid sea ice loss.” The lead author is David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), who I interviewed for my book and recently interviewed again via e-mail about his recent work. The study’s ominous conclusion:

We find that simulated western Arctic land warming trends during rapid sea ice loss are 3.5 times greater than secular 21st century climate-change trends. The accelerated warming signal penetrates up to 1500 km inland….

In other words, if it continues, the recent trend in sea ice loss may triple Arctic warming, causing large emissions in carbon dioxide and methane from the tundra this century. What is especially worrisome is that 2007 provides strong evidence on behalf of this theory:

• NOAA reported that methane levels rose in 2007 for the first time since 1998 (see here).
• The tundra can emit vast amounts of methane when it defrosts (see Part 1).
• Scientific analysis suggests the rise in 2007 methane levels came from Arctic wetlands (see here).
• And 2007 saw record Arctic ice loss [see "Ice Ice Maybe (not)"].

So I would certainly pay attention to what these scientists have to say. How much warmer did the Arctic get last summer, and how much warmer might it get with further ice loss?

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In a June 9 Good Morning America report on the four-day heat wave that notes “90 records have been tied or broken” across the East, eminent climatologist Dr. Stephen Schneider explains:

While this heat wave like all other heat waves is made by Mother Nature, we’ve been fooling around by turning the knob and making a little bit hotter. . . . We’ve already increased by 35 percent the amount of carbon dioxide which traps heat. We’ve added 150 percent more methane, which also traps heat.

Watch it:

Jeff Poor, in a piece for the right-wing Newbusters headlined “‘GMA’ Features Professor Who Blames Greenhouse Gases for Current Heat Wave,” claimed, “global warming activists have another way to frighten the public – using steamy weather to suggest human greenhouse gas emissions are worsening a heat wave.” As the transcript shows, Dr. Schneider did not “blame” the heat wave on greenhouse gas emissions, but noted that we are making the climate hotter through carbon dioxide and methane emissions — an indisputable fact.

Poor previously distorted comments by Al Gore about the relationship between climate change and cyclones like Cyclone Nargis, likewise accusing “global warming activists” of “[u]sing tragedy to advance an agenda.”

The British and the Chinese understand global warming has driven their record flooding. The United States? Not so much.

Although you wouldn’t know it from most U.S. media coverage (here or here or here), the record “once-in-a-hundred-year flooding” the Midwest now seems to be getting every decade or so is precisely what scientists have been expecting from the warming.

A 2004 analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center found an increase during the 20th century of “precipitation, temperature, streamflow, heavy and very heavy precipitation and high streamflow in the East.” They found a 14 percent increase in “heavy rain events” of greater than 2 inches in one day, and a 20 percent increase in “very heavy rain events”-best described as deluges-greater than 4 inches in one day. These extreme downpours are precisely what is predicted by global warming scientists and models.

In fact, 2007 saw the second most extreme precipitation over the United States in the historical record, according to NCDC’s Climate Extremes Index (CEI). Here is a plot of the percentage of this country (times two) with much greater than normal proportion of precipitation derived from extreme 1-day precipitation events (where extreme equals the highest tenth percentile of deluges):

Didn’t know that our government kept a Climate Extremes Index? Why would you? The media never writes about it.

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