Clyde Burnett, Rolinsville. Front Range residents may very well wonder: Was last year’s September Front Range “1000-year,” “biblical” flood an early indication of human-caused climate change?

We may define Climate to mean the long-term average condition of all the various environmental conditions and their weather variability. So we can understand the experts’ reluctance to identify any individual extreme weather event as climate change. In any case, it is futile to identify present changes to describe a 30-year average, particularly for the future. A few more years of data toward a possible tipping point may permit a better prediction of a future rapidly changing climate. Perhaps we should be satisfied with Mark Twain’s “Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get!”

So we may understand those who have suffered damage from our recent flood for ignoring any connection to environmental concerns of climate change. And I join the experts in maintaining an uncertainty in my answer.

However, my awareness of the IPCC predictions of extreme weather, my expectation of increased atmospheric water from the warmer oceans, and the likely atmospheric circulation changes due to the open Arctic lead me to say “that flood is probably an early indication of further weather extremes!”  I say this with a confidence rating of about 6; we’ve never been here before.

Our planet’s natural laws of heat trapping by the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect have been plodding along without pause. And Earth’s response will occur independently of our awareness of the cause.