There’s no way to know whether the fires ravaging Colorado are
caused by global warming per se. Similarly, there’s no way to
know whether the all-time high temperatures expected to be set
in cities in the Midwest and South over the next few days are
caused by global warming. Or the all-time warm winter and spring
many states experienced this year. Scorching heat, high winds
and bone-dry conditions are fueling catastrophic wildfires in
the US west that offer a preview of the kind of disasters that
human-caused climate change could bring, a trio of scientists
said on Thursday. “What we’re seeing is a window into what
global warming really looks like,” said Princeton University’s
Michael Oppenheimer, a lead author for the UN’s climate science
panel. “It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like
this kind of environmental disaster … This provides vivid images
of what we can expect to see more of in the future.”