Publication Date August 13, 2010 | Grist

Climate experts agree: Global warming caused Russian heat wave

Russia
Smoke of the wildfires over Moscow. Photo: A.Savin
Smoke of the wildfires over Moscow. Photo: A.Savin

As Russia chokes from a heat wave of unprecedented ferocity, president Dmitry Medvedev has strengthened his call for the world’s leaders to take action to fight global warming pollution. The scientific community has warned for decades that burning coal and oil without limit would intensify heat waves, droughts, and floods...Some scientists are now stating the obvious: Russia’s heat wave simply would not have happened without the influence of fossil fuel pollution on our atmosphere. University of Texas climate scientist Michael Tobis is “hazarding a guess” that “the Russian heat wave of 2010 is the first disaster unequivocally attributable to anthropogenic climate change.”