Climate Change Update: Heat unlikely to cool climate change debate - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience - msnbc.com

Heat unlikely to cool climate change debate - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience - msnbc.com: "No one weather event, including this heat wave, can be attributed directly to climate change, since climate is the sum of weather over time. Rather, climate change loads the dice, making it more likely that with any roll, you'll come up with extreme weather, including heat waves and heavy precipitation.
This tendency toward weather extremes is why a warming planet can expect more heat waves in summer, and at the same time, heavy snowfalls in winter.
The inability to directly pin a single weather event on climate change makes it tough for scientists to communicate the realities of climate change, Li told LiveScience. Public opinion is split on global warming, a split that tends to fall along party lines.
The Democrat-Republican divide has been growing in recent years. A 2008 Gallup analysis found that in 1998, just under half of both Democrats and Republicans said the effects of global warming had already begun. In 2008, 76 percent of Democrats agreed with that statement, while only 41 percent of Republicans did."