Hot election season cool to climate change discussion

The Morning Plum: Why is climate change MIA in presidential race?

By James Downie, WashPost

Don’t look now, but the single most important issue facing all of us is completely absent from the presidential campaign debate. The fate of the earth is literally at stake — and the two candidates aren’t even talking about it.

Did July feel especially warm? Well, it wasn’t just you: This past month was the U.S.’s hottest month on record. In the read of the morning, the New York Times reports:

The average temperature last month was 77.6 degrees — 3.3 degrees above the average 20th-century temperature, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported on Wednesday. July thereby dethroned July 1936, which had set the record at 77.4 degrees, the agency said. 

[...] A hot July also contributed to the warmest 12-month period ever recorded in the United States, the statistics showed.

(More here.)