(originally published on EthicsDaily.com, May 17, 2011)
by Robert Parham
Executive Editor, EthicsDaily.com; and Executive Director, Baptist Center for Ethics
Texas has been burning. Memphis has flooded. Tuscaloosa has been cleaning up after a tornado with 190-mile-per-hour winds smashed through Alabama. Kentucky has been drying out from almost one foot more rain in April than normal. And evangelical preachers are in denial.
Well, at least one out of the five things listed above is normal: evangelical preachers being in denial. The other matters are outside what we encounter on a regular basis.
What is beyond denial is that the nation is experiencing extreme weather events.
Just a year ago, Nashville had 19 inches of rain in two days in what the Army Corps of Engineers called a 1,000-year flood. The next month Oklahoma City had "record-busting rainfall." Arkansas experienced an 8-inch downpour that killed 20 campers.
In 2011, an estimated 95 percent of Texas faces a drought that Associated Press categorized as "severe or worse," with one of the state's driest Aprils on record.
During the same month, the nation had 305 tornadoes in a four-day period that killed more than 300 people. For the entire month, 875 tornadoes whipped across the land.
The Mississippi River crested in Memphis less than a foot below the record mark set in 1937. The Mississippi River has now had its second 500-year flood in less than 20 years – 1993 and 2011.View the NASA maps to see the extent of the flooding.
"April was a month of historic climate extremes across much of the United States, including: record-breaking precipitation that resulted in historic flooding; recurrent violent weather systems that broke records for tornado and severe weather outbreaks; and wildfire activity that scorched more than twice the area of any April this century," reported the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
What explains these extreme weather events? . . .
To read the entire article, click here.
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