NASA reports that water levels on Mozambique’s Lago de Cahora Bassa betrayed signs of stress in late July 2016.
NASA reports that "water levels on Mozambique’s Lago de Cahora Bassa betrayed signs of stress in late July 2016." NASA

According to data collected by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July 2016 was not only the hottest July on record but also the hottest month ever recorded. July also had lots of anomalies and extreme weather events.


Our local weatherperson Cliff Mass would, of course, tells us that there is no evidence that connects this fact with the compelling science and predictions of global warming.

But the problem with Mass' way of thinking about global warming—a thinking that is all the more dangerous because it claims to itself not be in a state of denial about climate change but is only being careful not to ring the alarm unless with 100-percent certainty it can be said that this or that extreme climate event is indeed caused by global warming—is that everything about the economic system that currently dominates our modes of living (the way it produces and processes waste, the way it keep costs down for consumers by constantly passing the actual costs onto a public that's global), points directly to the kind of world that looks a lot like the one we are more and more finding ourselves in. (If you live in Port Angeles, you will have the opportunity to get a good dose of this way of thinking today at the Port Angeles Main Library.)

It's world that's getting hotter, more dangerous, and less stable. A world that has an Exxon Mobil as one of its largest and richest legal entities can expect to have the composition of its atmosphere transformed by increasing amounts of carbon. You can make that prediction intellectually, without a lab.