Outside the Beltway EARTH, WIND AND FIRE: Parts of California are warming at double the rate of the continental United States — and that pace has only accelerated over the past half decade. The shocking finding from our colleague Scott Wilson who analyzed more than a century of temperature data, helps explain the spate of intense wildfires, mudslides, prolonged extreme drought in once-predictable Southern California. Key: ” The cradle of the Earth Day movement is confronting the consequences of a warming Earth,” Scott writes. Hotter, drier, windier: “The changing natural world is in turn forcing a fundamental social reckoning, altering the choice of crops on some of the nation’s most bountiful farms, erasing the […]