Wednesday Open Thread

Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. What can I say? Damn, it’s hot. What are you doing to keep cool?

It’s super-hot today but according to a new study this may become the new normal.

The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a new climate study by Stanford University scientists. The results will be published later this month in the journal Climatic Change Letters.

In the study, the Stanford team concluded that many tropical regions in Africa, Asia and South America could see “the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat” in the next two decades. Middle latitudes of Europe, China and North America – including the United States – are likely to undergo extreme summer temperature shifts within 60 years, the researchers found.

“According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said the study’s lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science and fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford. The study is co-authored by Stanford research assistant Martin Scherer.

Oy. I don’t understand the people who think climate change is too expensive to address. I think it’s too expensive not to address.

Speaking of Weinerweiner, Weiner’s district was polled by Marist. The majority thought Weiner’s should not resign.

Specifically, 51 percent of voters in Weiner’s hometown said he should not resign. Thirty percent said he should step down, while 18 percent weren’t sure.

…

Thirty percent of respondents, for example, said that sending lewd photos over the Internet is a common practice by politicians; 54 percent said it was unusual.

An additional 24 percent said that Weiner was truly sorry for what he did, while 64 percent said he was only sorry because he got caught.

What do you think? Will Weiner survive this scandal? I think as long as no more revelations showing he’s still holding back the truth come out, he will survive.