Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain. — T.S. Eliot
The past twelve months were the hottest in recorded history. According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the global mean surface temperature for April 2010 was the hottest of all Aprils since their record begins in 1880. March 2010 was similarly the hottest March, January-April 2010 the hottest start of any year. The twelve months from May 2009 to April 2010 were the hottest consecutive twelve months in history, over 1.18°F above the 1951-1980 average:
Fueled by this extreme heat, which comes despite an extended solar minimum, record-breaking catastrophic climate events have been devastating the United States:
April 2010: Biblical floods in Nashville
March 2010: Calamitous floods in Rhode Island and North Dakota
February 2010: Record warmth in Vancouver and another round of record snowstorms in the Mid-Atlantic
January 2010: The most powerful storm in the history of the Southwest
December 2009: Record snowstorm in the Mid-Atlantic
November 2009: Record heatwave in Arizona
October 2009: Record rainfall in the Midwest
September 2009: Epic flooding in Atlanta
August 2009: Record rainfall in Washington DC, Louisville, and northeast Indiana
July 2009: The record three-year drought in California continues
June 2009: Record storms in western Pennsylvania
May 2009: Catastrophic storms, heat waves, wildfires and floods in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and West Virginia
The climate is similarly becoming increasingly catastrophic around the globe, with the consequences of unrecoverable economic damage and untold human suffering. As the world burns, the national media ignores this terrible reality and instead promotes the propaganda of global warming conspiracy theorists, ideological cranks, and the fossil-fuel industry.
Update
Paul Krugman opines: “Now, I’m sure that the climate deniers will find a way to ignore the latest facts. But I’m not sure what that way will be.”
Update
,Climate Progress notes that NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center confirms the NASA results: “This was also the 34th consecutive April with global land and ocean temperatures above the 20th century average.”
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