The Wonk Room

Climatologist On Heat Wave: ‘We’ve Been Fooling Around’ With ‘Mother Nature’»

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.”