The Political Climate: an ongoing commentary on the NH Primary and Climate Change

In this article from Foster’s Daily Democrat Eric Hagman, Dover Deputy Fire Chief, said “We never imagined we’d have two hundred-year storms in two years.”  According to Cameron Wake, a research associate professor at UNH’s Climate Research Center, this shouldn’t come as a complete surprise.  “We can’t say this is due to global warming,” Wake explains, but “it is part of this trend and it is a window into what our climate might look like in the future.”  The IPCC’s most recent global warming report projects that North America’s East Coast will be particularly susceptible to “rising sea levels and increasingly strong storms.”  

And as you’re bailing out your basement think about what you want your senators and the next president to do about climate change.  in 2005 Senator John Sununu  voted against an energy bill that would have expressed the Senate’s desire for the U.S. to take action on climate change.  His senior, Senator Judd Gregg, voted for the bill. Today Sununu believes “that the average temperature is increasing and that there is a human component there,” but “the best models out there can’t calculate how much is human influence and how much isn’t.”  This article from the Concord Monitor notes that 150 NH towns have voted to have the national government take action on climate change.  Coupled with the latest convincing science (the IPCC report) hopefully the Senator will rethink his position the next time this comes to a Senate vote.