One Republican candidate's hellfire - Rick Perry - Salon.com

"This summer's temperatures were about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average in Texas," John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist and a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M, told Salon. "My rough calculation is that about 74 percent of those 5.4 degrees was due to La Niña [the oceanic-atmospheric phenomenon that influences weather patterns across the Western Hemisphere] and about 9 percent from greenhouse gas emissions." These higher temperatures made the impact of the drought worse, Nielsen-Gammon explained, by increasing evaporation and reducing soil moisture -- thereby making trees and grasses more vulnerable to fire -- while also boosting the demand for water on the part of humans and livestock.

"There are no skeptics involved in climate change science in Texas," Nielsen-Gammon said, but public opinion is mixed