Crazy weather in US ‘proof of global warming’

The relentless, weather-gone-crazy heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare it cannot be anything but man-made global warming, a top Nasa scientist says.

By The Newsroom

Published 6th Aug 2012, 07:00 BST

The research, by a man often called the “godfather of global warming”, says the likelihood of such temperatures occurring from the 1950s through the 1980s was rarer than one in 300. Now the odds are closer to one in 10, according to the study by Professor James Hansen. He says that statistically what is happening is not random or normal, but simply climate change.

“This is not some scientific theory. We are now experiencing scientific fact,” Prof Hansen said.

Prof Hansen is a scientist at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a professor at Columbia University. But he is also a strident activist seeking government action to curb greenhouse gases.

But his study, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, is unlikely to sway opinion among the remaining climate change sceptics.

NASA New York