It's Getting Hot In Here

As someone who likes to debate the news of the day there are few topics that I like to digress from. So when someone tells me that the issue of climate change is still in the air, it irks the hell out of me. Some people (Republicans mainly) just can't come to terms with the FACT that the planet is warming up and erratic weather is becoming more and more commonplace. Here in Jerusalem just yesterday, it snowed in the morning, became sunny, then it sleeted, became sunny again for a bit before a massive thunderstorm came upon us.

Of course one example from Israel does not prove anything. It is the overall weather patterns that are slowly but surely changing for the worse. NOAA reported today that the Northern Hemisphere recorded its warmest winter ever since records were kept in 1880. Despite a few chilly months where I am normally at in the Northeast, the weather has been very mild if not downright hot (Remember that day in January when it hit 70?).

Here are the facts:

A record warm January worldwide pushed average temperatures to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit (0.72 degrees Celsius) above normal for the 20th century, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

It was the highest average temperature for the December-February period since records began in 1880, the NOAA, said in a report released Thursday.

The report came less than a month after a UN panel said that global warming was almost certainly caused by human activity and several governments and international bodies have sounded the alarm over the need to cut carbon emissions.

Experts say that the El Nino phenomenon played only a small part in the record-breaking warmth. In fact, most of the conditions for El Nino dissipated in early January. The 'Inconvenient Truth' is that the heating of our planet is occurring at increasing levels and the need for change becomes more pressing by the day. Bush refused to ratify Kyoto when he took office and his proponents often whine that other countries didn't ratify it either. Whenever someone says that to me, I always respond with: "If your neighbor left a trashpile in his backyard, would that give you the excuse to do the same with yours?" The fact is, we need to take responsibility for our share of the damage being done to Earth. We claim to be a world-leading country...it is time to lead by example.