Many parts of the world have already accepted the link between disastrous weather events and global warming. But during the recent flooding of the Mississippi and other Midwestern rivers, public officials and reporters seemed reluctant to discuss the possible connection. While it's easy to simply blame the catastrophe on "mother nature," a growing chorus of scientists, environmentalists, and even the U.S. government are pointing out that global warming models have long predicted flooding of this sort in the Midwest. For instance, there's this statement released today by the National Wildlife Federation:

The big picture is that global warming is making tragedies like these more frequent and more intense. Global warming is happening now. Our dependency on fossil fuels like oil and coal is causing the problem, and people and wildlife are witnessing the effects.

Many from the affected region agree. Gene Tackle, an Iowa State University agricultural meteorology professor had this to say to Reuters News Service:

There has been in the last 30 years a tendency toward more heavy rainfall events in the central U.S. We have a past trend and our models, based on increased greenhouse gases produced by humans, indicate that the trend will continue.

One of the most vocal advocates of climate change awareness is Joseph Romm, a former Clinton official and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Earlier this week, Romm stressed that even global warming skeptics should take note of the devastation in the Midwest:

The [...] conservative interpretation is that this season and other recent disaster years are an aberration, that the disasters are not the result of climate change and that weather will return to “normal”. Even if that were true, the natural disasters underway today are consistent with the predicted consequences of global warming and are very likely a taste of things to come.

In a recent Democracy Now interview Romm also decried the fact that media outlets don't encourage communication between their environmental reporters and their weather reporters. He argued the barrier between these two journalistic "beats" is leading to further ignorance about the causes of weather events.

The most shocking admission of a connection between heavy flooding and global warming came yesterday, when the Bush Administration's own Climate Change Science Program released a report on the effects of global warming:

The new report paints a grim scenario in which severe weather will exact a heavy toll. The report warned that extreme weather events "are among the most serious challenges to society in coping with a changing climate."

If there is a silver lining to all this, it's that we have some idea how to curb global warming. A reduction in Co2 emissions would decrease our chances of encouraging more catastrophic weather patterns.

The bad news is that many in Congress seem unwilling to take the threat seriously. As Romm points out: "[W]hile lives were being lost and families were losing their homes and possessions this month, Congress was busy avoiding a debate on cap-and-trade legislation." (For more on the demise of the cap-and-trade bill, check out this Ron Brownstein column from last week.)

Add to that the fact that John McCain and George Bush spent much of the past week pushing for increased offshore drilling, and we begin to see how misplaced our leaders' priorities have become.

Image used under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user BitHead.