#Climatechange roundup: Australia, Greenland, Aral Sea

Consensus about human-caused climate change continues to grow. Five groups of researchers, all collaborative efforts themselves, look at Australia's 2013 heat wave and all pin its ferocity on climate change, specifically its global warming portion.

“When we look at the heat across the whole of Australia and the whole 12 months of 2013, we can say that this was virtually impossible without climate change,” said David Karoly, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne who led some of the research.

Wingnuts still not listening, to be sure.

Next anthropogenic climate change is on the ground, not in the atmosphere. A number of years ago, due to irrigation diversions from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers in what was then Soviet Centra Asia, the Aral Sea, famed in antiquity, broke up into smaller parts. Now, the biggest of those, by surface area at least, has dried up and gone away.

The climate change here is regional, nt global, but it's bad enough. The loss of a major body of water is making all four seasons more extreme. Let's not forgot that this is a land of other extremes, like Islamic extremism, despite the majority of the Turkic peoples of this area opting for more moderate, traditional, nativist-influenced Islam.

Finally, Greenland's ice sheet is not entirely anchored on bedrock and thus could slide into the ocean sooner than previously expected. And, if it disappears faster than expected, we're definitely in a new ballgame.

Meanwhile, hacks and semi-hacks writing at places as disparate at the Wall Street Journal and ESPN's 538, continue to minimize much of our causing this, including minimizing natural-gas leakage from fracking wells, pumps and piles.