Think Of All The Rebuilding Jobs There'll Be After Tornadoes Fires And Floods Wreck The Country

Hey everybody, hot enough for you? We are pretty sure the bricks on the building across the street are melting. Not that we're complaining or anything. At least we don't live in the parts of the country that are burning down, or getting blown away, or swept away. Come to think of it, the fact that we have to wear wooden planks on the bottom of our shoes so the soles don't catch fire when we walk down to the mailbox is probably one of the lesser inconveniences people are going to face as the planet pin-balls between weather extremes on the way to cindering out. Too bad there's nothing we can do about it.

Oh wait, apparently there is.

The world’s scientists predicted decades ago that manmade global warming (caused by burning coal, oil and gas, cutting down forests, plus a few other large scale human activities) would mean that severe heat waves, drought and flood would quickly become more frequent … and at just the rate that they, in fact, have. — And sometimes more intense, as they in fact have.

OK, so if man made it, man can unmake it, right? It's times like these we turn to our leaders for...um...that vision thing. 

In a letter sent last Friday to their Republican counterparts, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL), the ranking member of the E and C subcommittee on energy and power, made what they counted as their 15th effort to hold a hearing into the matter.

Yeah baby, that's what we like, Decisive Action! Americans love a challenge. Let's roll up our sleeves and...wait, 15th request? Huh. Guess the republicans were busy protecting marriage or something, or maybe Waxman and Rush didn't say why they wanted hearings. Got to have a reason, you know. Can't just be spending taxpayer dollars on every cockamamie idea coming down the pike.

“Specifically, we request that you hold a hearing on the recent wildfires and extreme weather events the United States has experienced and the role global climate change played in these events,” wrote Waxman and Rush. They cited statistics detailing the unusually severe heat wave, droughts, wildfires, storms and floods that have struck the nation this year, pointing to scientific findings that climate change played a role in them. A new report by the National Climatic Data Center determined that the odds of this year’s extreme weather being a fluke — as opposed to the consequence of manmade carbon dioxide emissions — are extremely low.

 Oh. OK. Well, sounds like these guys have dome their homework so let's get to it guys. Like we said, America loves a challenge.

A committee spokesperson for Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) told TPM that Republicans had already addressed the issue in a March 2011 hearing. “The committee held a hearing last year to examine related issues including extreme weather events, patterns of warming, and the attribution of climate change to human activity,” the aide said. “With 41 consecutive months of higher than 8 percent unemployment, the committee’s focus continues to be on jobs and promoting commonsense solutions that protect both the environment and the economy.”

 Focus on jobs and promoting commonsense solutions that protect both the environment and the economy, huh? Guess we missed that. Must have been right after you voted for the 33rd time to repeal the Affordable Care Act.