Thanks to Seth Handy, Environmental lawyer and co-host

For sending us a stark reminder of what climate changes can look like as they wreck havoc on our environment. We need, as we've written, to get back in balance on sustaining a global economy, with 7 billion people feeding on that, with sustaining Mother Earth.

Will run this in two parts:  This is from The Guardian:

The Waldo Canyon wildfire burns as it moved into subdivisions and destroyed homes in Colorado Springs. Photograph: Galon Wampler/AP

"In the political world, this was the week of the healthcare ruling: reporters hovered around the supreme court, pundits pundited, politicians "braced" for the ruling, "reeled" in its aftermath. It provoked a "firestorm" of interest, according to one magazine; it was, said another, a "category 10 hurricane".

But in the world world, there was news at least as big, but without the cliched metaphors. News that can be boiled down to a sentence or two:

You ever wonder what global warming is going to look like? In its early stages, exactly like this.

Global warming is underway. Are we waiting for someone to hold up a sign that says "Here's climate change"? Because, this week, we got everything but that:

• In the Gulf, tropical storm Debby dropped what one meteorologist described as "unthinkable amounts" of rain on Florida. Debby marked the first time in history that we'd reached the fourth-named storm of the year in June; normally it takes till August to reach that mark.

• In the west, of course, firestorms raged: the biggest fire in New Mexicohistory, and the most destructive in Colorado's annals. (That would be the Colorado Springs blaze: the old record had been set the week before, in Fort Collins.) One resident described escaping across suburban soccer fields in his car, with "hell in the rearview mirror".

• The record-setting temperatures (it had never been warmer in Colorado) that fueled those blazes drifted east across the continent as the week wore on: across the Plains, there were places where the mercury reached levels it hadn't touched even in the Dust Bowl years, America's previous all-time highs.

• That heatwave was coming at just the wrong time, as farmers were watching their corn crops get ready to pollinate, a task that gets much harder at temperatures outside the norms with which those crops evolved. "You only get one chance to pollinate over 1 quadrillion kernels," said Bill Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, a Omaha-based commodity consulting firm:

"There's always some level of angst at this time of year, but it's significantly greater now and with good reason. We've had extended periods of drought."