By early August 2010, two weeks of devastating monsoon rains had transformed the landscape of Pakistan, pushing rivers over their banks, inundating villages, washing away bridges and roads, destroying crops, and killing livestock. Photo from NASA

Must-read editorial of the week: Take Climate Change Off The Back Burner – And Do It Now. Click here to read it.

Media breakthroughs on climate change are happening everywhere this summer due to the extreme weather all over the planet.  It’s like a little lightbulb went off over their heads.   ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer looked amazed last week at the news on global warming, asking, Could this extreme weather be caused by global warming? The answer was less important (a big yes) than the fact that she brought it up, and then actually interviewed a scientist and did not interview a denier.  (Why should anyone interview deniers?)  A weatherman on CNN finally admitted global warming is happening too. This is progress, finally.  Now if only we could get the politicians to pay attention to us.  From ThinkProgress:

One of America’s most influential global warming skeptics, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers, has finally admitted that global warming is “caused by man.” During the hottest year ever recorded, following the hottest decade ever recorded, Russia is burning under heat not seen for at least 1000 years. Heat waves have set records throughout the United States and throughout the world. A monsoon season of unprecedented intensity has displaced tens of millions of people across Asia, threatening the nuclear states of China, Pakistan, India, and North Korea. The largest iceberg to calve from Greenland in fifty years has added to its precipitous decline of ice mass since 1980. Decades ago, scientists predicted these consequences of burning fossil fuels and heating the planet.

Yesterday, in what CNN anchor Rick Sanchez billed a “good, smart conversation,” Myers actually recognized the reality of a “consequential global warming caused by man,” when not repeating climate-denier talking points . . . .

He then sort of ruined it by bringing up “sunspots” and the sun in general, which is notoriously and reliably hot. Of course, climate scientists allow for known factors such as the sun’s cycles and heat.  But the sun has been quiet for two years, not active.

Unfortunately, “scientist expert” Chad Myers (actually a bachelor-degree meteorologist, not a climate scientist) also made the blatantly false claim that we are “now in a very hot sun cycle.” [NOPE]  In fact, the sun is just emerging from an extremely low two-year minimum of activity, with years to go before it will reach another peak. Since 1980, average solar irradiance has been on the decline, even as global temperatures have risen.

Americans believe in global warming, according to new surveys, and contrary to right-wing opinion, so we are wondering why the weather “experts”  often skirt the issue.  Not always, but especially [...]