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Poll Vault: Is this heat wave a result of global warming?

An Associated Press report earlier this week quoted scientists as saying the extreme heat and drought we've seen is “what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level.”

“This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about,” said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona.

But others are skeptical that climate change is occurring.

“The guilty party in my view is Mother Nature,” John Christy, a scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told The Associated Press.

The fact is, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. has set more than 40,000 heat records since Jan. 1, compared to fewer than 6,000 cold records.

But is that an indicator of global warming or just a statistical blip? What do you think?

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