The U.S. experienced 14 billion dollar weather disasters in 2011, the most in history: Prayer-proof drought in Texas; historic rain in the Northeast; record January snow from Hartford to Newark; 2,755 daytime temperature records and 6,171 nighttime records set or equaled; the third 100-year flood in 18 years on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers; tornado swarms through the south and midwest that killed a record 553 people; historic wildfires in Arizona and Texas; a hurricane (Irene) that made three U.S. landfalls and brought torrential rain and flooding, costing over $7 billion. And I have not even gotten to the extreme weather in the rest of the world.
Are these events swings in the weather, or the early warning signal of global warming? Using charts, animations, and movies that take full advantage of new technology, Going to Extremes provides the evidence you need to decide: is it weather, or warming?