captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: temperatures in parts of the southwest soared above 110 degrees today while thunderstorms and showers continued to pummel the deep south, raising the concern of widespread flooding. good evening. i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. on the newshour tonight: as the extreme weather continues, we examine new data tracking this year's unusual run of heat, drought and even cyclones. >> woodruff: then, aids in black america. a special "frontline" report tonight looks at that subject. we talk to phill wilson of the black aids institute in los angeles. >> ifill: author david brody discusses his book, "the teavangelicals," about evangelicals and the tea party, and the romney campaign's effort to win their hearts and minds.

>> romney has three and a half years of president obama which is which has definitely helped these teavangelical voters come to his aid. the question is, they may be 80% there, but are they going to get there... what about those last 20%? >> woodruff: paul solman explores the prospect of eternal life with author, inventor and futurist ray kurzweil. >> there's a very good chance of making it through. >> when you say "making it through" you mean live forever? >> indefinitely. the goal is to put that that decision in our own hands rather than the medical community. >> ifill: and hari sreenivasan talks with wikipedia founder jimmy wales about the role the online encyclopedia plays online and off. >> woodruff: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> and by the bill and melinda gates foundation. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy productive life. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: the past 12 months

are the warmest ever recorded in the united states since record keeping began in 1895. that word comes as a new report from the national oceanic and atmospheric administration today says climate change, including human factors, has increased the odds of extreme weather. ( sirens ) the severe storms that finally broke the deadly heat wave in the united states blew in with their own set of dangers this week. in greensboro, north carolina, residents are struggling to recover from flooding and power outages brought on by slow moving storms yesterday. in fredericksburg, virginia, violent thunderstorms pummeled a cheerleading facility. >> we were scared, and we were just, like, praying to god and hoping that we weren't going to die. >> and we saw it. it just came in on us. >> woodruff: and in houston, texas, they sent ballplayers scrambling for cover. the scares come after high temperatures are being blamed

for at least 46 deaths and loss of power for close to a million people last week. for over 11 consecutive days, temperatures exceeded 100 degrees across much of the country. meanwhile, out west, wildfires fueled by near-record droughts have raged for weeks in colorado, forcing residents to leave their homes. nationwide, fires burned 1.3 million acres in june alone, the second highest acreage burned in june of any year. now, the national oceanic and atmospheric administration, noaa, is reporting the first half of this year was in fact the hottest on record, with 170 all-time heat records matched or broken. noaa has issued a report attempting to assess the role climate change, including human factors, played, if any, in six global extreme weather events in 2011.

about one of those, the report asked if the human influence on climate made the 2011 texas drought more probable? it concluded that it did. the report also examined climate change's role in last year's drought in east africa, heat wave across europe and floods in thailand. regarding thailand, the report said "climate change cannot be shown to have played any role" in the excess rain and flooding. for more on all this, we turn to thomas karl, director of noaa's national climatic data center, which oversaw the studies. i spoke with him this afternoon. thomas karl, thank you for joining us. >> thank you, judy. >> woodruff: let's start with the news. temperatures the first half of 2012 this year were the hottest on record. what's known about why that's happening? >> that is true. the temperatures the first six months of this year in the u.s.

are the warmest on record and, in fact, the last 12 months of the period may through june have been the warmest on record. why? we believe there is an important human component explaining these record-breaking temperatures, and that's the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. >> woodruff: so, how does that compare with what has happened historically? can you put in the some context for us? >> to give you an example, we have had warm conditions in the past. 1930s, many people are familiar with the dust bowl and the heat associated with the 1930s. what we're seeing today is equivalent or even greater than the temperature records that fell in the 1930s. and what we're seeing more frequently is record-breaking high temperatures.

again the more recent record even exceeds the heat that we saw in the 1930s. that is the warmth of the last year, the warmth of the past spring, last winter, last fall. and if you remember, the record heat last smer, particularly in the southern part of the u.s. where texas and oklahoma had such severe heat and drought. >> woodruff: you also released a study today looking at what last year's conditions were like and the relationship between greenhouse gases and human activity. what did you find? >> well, in that report there was a series of scientific teams across the world that contributed to trying to look at a number of selected extreme weather and climate events and to do an analysis to see if they could understand whether these events would have occurred all by themselves without human contribution or whether or not we could say humans clearly made the events stronger than what

they might otherwise have been. and in most cases we can actually say with some confidence that these events would not have been as strong or intense if it were not for the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. >> woodruff: and as i understand it there was some disparate. in the texas heat wave you found more of a connection but with flooding in thailand it was less clear. >> it's clear every extreme weather and climate event cannot be attributed to human activity or greenhouse gases. but there's an increasing number of these where they can. one specific example was the heat wave and drought in texas and oklahoma last year. the analysis just completed suggested that that event would have occurred normally with the kind of la nina conditions that occurred last year, but the severity of it made it much more

likely. in fact, the statistics suggest it was 20 times more likely to occur because of the current conditions we have with the increasing temperatures relating to increasing greenhouse gases. >> woodruff: la nina referring to ocean currents. but help us understand for the layperson watching the connection between human activity, climate and severe weather. >> well, the best way we can describe it, it's sort of like a baseball player on steroids. if you're going to break records home run records, you're likely going to have to be a home run hitter to break home run records. with someone on steroids, the likelihood of hitting a ball over the fence and hitting a home run increases, and this's what we're seeing. the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere leads to warmer global temperatures, those break global temperature records and they have other

impacts like increases in precipitation intensity, more intense droughts. these are the kinds of things we're seeing more records with greater severity and intensity than they would might have otherwise been. >> woodruff: and what do you say to those climate skeptics who who say that some of these changes are simply part of natural cycles that have been around all the time? >> i would say part of that answer is correct. some of the events are part of natural variability. natural variability has always been around. what we mean by natural variability is you're going to have a drought, you're going to have a heat wave even if you didn't have humans adding greenhouse gass to the atmosphere. but the scientific evidence, the analysis done, the look at climate models and observation of data leads one to believe that humans in fact are making these events more intense and stronger than they would otherwise have been. >> woodruff: thomas karl of noaa

thank you for joining us. >> well, thank you, judy, appreciate it. >> ifill: still to come on the newshour: aids in black america; mitt romney and the tea party evangelicals; and wikipedia's founder, jimmy wales. but first, with the other news of the day, here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: eurozone finance ministers agreed today on the terms of a $123 billion bailout package to help spain's ailing banks. the debt-stricken country will receive its first payment of more than $36 billion by the end of this month. the e.u. also gave spain an extra year to cut its deficit. and speaking in brussels, the spanish finance minister welcomed the aid but acknowledged there's still much work to be done. >> ( translated ): during the next 18 months, we have to clean up the spanish financial system. that also relates to a macroeconomic aspect: the deleveraging of the spanish economy. that's the reduction of spanish debt and adjusting the prices of assets to reality of the market. we can do this thanks to the financial assistance.

>> sreenivasan: the bailout boosted the spanish stock market. other european markets were cautiously optimistic, closing with slight gains. in early trading on wall street, stocks moved higher, but those gains were erased by falling oil prices. the dow jones industrial average lost 83 points to close at 12,653. the nasdaq fell 29 points to close at 2,902. the price of oil fell more than 2% to finish near $84 a barrel. there was word today syrian president bashar assad has agreed to a new u.n. plan for peace. the international envoy kofi annan said it would focus on containing the most violent areas of the country first, then expanding out. annan made the remarks as he traveled around the middle east to build support for peace efforts. today, he was in iraq and iran, countries he said are both affected by the violence in syria. >> if we do not make a real effort to resolve this issue peacefully and try for it to get out of hand and spread through

the region, it can lead to consequences that none of us could imagine. so let's work together to bring peace and stability to syria. >> sreenivasan: meanwhile, in syria today, amateur video showed shelling in the city of homs as residents ran to take cover. the international criminal court in the hague today sentenced a congolese warlord to 14 years in prison. it is the first time the tribunal has ever sentenced a convicted war criminal since the court was set up ten years ago. thomas lubanga was charged with recruiting and using children as soldiers in his rebel army back in 2002 and 2003. the congolese ethnic conflict claimed the lives of some 60,000 people. a court in israel today cleared former prime minister ehud olmert of the central charges in his corruption trial. they involved allegations he accepted cash-stuffed envelopes from a supporter and pocketed the proceeds from a double- billing travel scam. he was convicted of a lesser charge of breach of trust. olmert, who had resigned in 2009 as the allegations surfaced, will be sentenced in september. he is also standing trial in a

separate real estate bribery case. the house of representatives began debate today on president obama's signature health care reform law in another try at repealing it. >> rather than reform health care, this law epitomizes washington at its very worst. >> here we go again, wasting time that should be spent on improving the economy and putting people to work. >> sreenivasan: the latest effort comes less than two weeks after the supreme court voted 5- 4 to uphold president obama's "affordable care act." this afternoon, republican joe barton from texas said the law is not affordable and will not provide better quality health care. >> people like myself oppose the bill not because we don't want every american to have health care, but because we want americans to have choices and to make individual choices about their health care. >> sreenivasan: but house democrats like north carolina's g.k. butterfield said the impending vote only distracts from more pressing legislation. >> we all know that this bill

will never pass the senate and the president would assuredly veto it. this is purely an act of political posturing, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle should stop their obstruction. >> sreenivasan: the first house vote to repeal the health care law came in january 2011. >> on this vote, the yeas are 245, the nays are 189. the bill is passed. >> sreenivasan: three democrats joined with republicans on the measure, but that bill later failed in the democratic- controlled senate. this week's debate has also extended beyond the house floor. yesterday, the democratic congressional campaign committee launched online ads that target seven house republicans. >> your member of congress may vote to repeal important health ca b americans, but he protected generous health plans for congress at taxpayer expense. >> sreenivasan: and today, the republican group crossroads g.p.s. unveiled new television ads opposing the health care law in three states with competitive senate races. >> obamacare cuts medicare spending by $500 billion, gives a board of unelected bureaucrats

the power to restricts seniors care, and raises taxes by half a trillion dollars. >> sreenivasan: the vote is expected to take place tomorrow. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to gwen. >> ifill: and we turn to the toll aids is taking among african-americans. that's the focus of a two-hour frontline documentary tonight even as the international aids conference prepares to convene in washington next week. the frontline special tackles the many strands of the disease and its disproportionate effect on the black community, including the rise in h.i.v. infection among heterosexual women. one of them is a woman named nell, the mother of five and grandmother of 17, whose second marriage was to a man she trusted, a deacon in her church. happy time. we had a lot in common, great sense of humor. we liked to do a lot of things together. the only thing that was kind of different, he was a raider fan and i am a dallas cowboy fan so

that was a little... you know, didn't quite mix too well but we got through that. so he asked me to marry him and i said yes. so we were engaged for about a year. so we prepared... if you're going to get married in a church you have to go through six weeks marriage counciling. so we went through all of that. >> the first thing we do is go over the biblical concept of love and then we deal with finances, keeping the excitement in your marriage and then, you know, talking and how to communicate with your wife. six major subjects that it deals with. >> after the six weeks, we were fine. so then we got married. the children with there, the grandchildren actually... my grandchildren was my wedding

party. and my granddaughters were the little flower girls. so from there we took off and he wanted to go on a cruise and i wanted to go to disney world because i'm afraid of the water. so we went to disney world. and the whole while i was there i was sick. and i didn't think too much about it because, you know, the hustle and bustle of trying to get through the wedding and we both had bad colds so i was in bed basically the whole while i was in bed and couldn't eat and just really sick. >> after the honeymoon, months went by and nell didn't feel any better. but she settled into married life. >> so this one particular morning i was making the bed, making our bed and on his side of the bed was his bible.

so... i mean, i just kind of unzip it had bible and all of the contents of it fell out so when i was trying to get it back in... he wasn't there, i was trying to get it back in, i just felt like i had been invading his privacy so i was hurrying up trying to get it back in and this letter that i could not put back in its proper place it was a letter from the blood bank. so at first i didn't want to open it but i had this burning... it was like "you need to read that." i can't express to you what that feeling was, but it was like you must read this. so i did. i opened it up and i read it. and it started out saying... you know, informing him that he had been diagnosed with h.i.v./aids. and that he should, you know,

seek medical attention. and this letter was dated a year before we get married. so at that time i... i read it and i read it, i could not believe it. so... excuse me. but during that time, i still didn't put it together why i had been sick or ill or anything so i sat him down and i asked him was there something that he forgot to share with me before we got married? and he said "no. no. no, we have no secrets. i told you everything." and i said "i'm going ask you again, is there something you

forgot to tell me before we got married?" and he said no again. and i said "now i'm going to ask you again, think about this before you answer this time." and i asked again. and he said "no. no, no. there is nothing i... you know everything about me." and that's when i showed time letter. i said, well, did you forget to tell me this? and... what. at that time he said "i tried to tell you but i was afraid i would lose you if i told you." and i said at that time "how

could you love me and keep such a secret from me? this is the worst kind of betrayal that anyone could do to anybody." i said "this is not love." >> ifill: two weeks later, nell discovered she, too, was h.i.v.- positive. of the more than one million americans living with h.i.v., with one new diagnosis every ten minutes, government statistics show more than half are black. for a broader look at an epidemic many americans believe had faded, we're joined by phill wilson, the director of the black aids institute in los angeles. he's also featured in tonight's documentary. , phill wilson. half of these cases are black. why is there such a disproportionate impact on the black community? >> well, gwen, a number of reasons. one, aids initially was mischaracterized as a white, gay disease and as a result of that we got a slow start in the black community. h.i.v. is also the disease of sexual networks and so while we

were not paying attention, if you will, the virus had a chance to take hold in our communities and we have been playing catch-up all along. the second part of it is that the resources have not been in place in black communities to appropriately fight the epidemic and the third reason is quite frankly a story of a lack of leadership. only recently have we started to take the kind of ownership and have we started to experience the kind of leadership necessary to really fight the epidemic appropriately. >> ifill: is it also a factor in which there's a stigma stronger in the african american community? the silence,? the secret-keeping? the fear? >> i don't necessarily know if the stigma is stronger, but i do believe that the ramifications are more severe. i think that for black people we are in greater need of the sanctuary that comes in our racial ethnic communities. as a result the sacrifice that's

necessary that can happen when you're stigmatized can be more severe and i think that's how we experience it in a more severe way and that undermines our ability to talk about h.i.v. in an appropriate manner. >> ifill: you saw the story of the woman from california, nell. how was it... when was it that this disease went from being, as you dined, a gay white male disease to affecting women and children so broadly? >> well, you know, gwen, it was never really a white gay disease. it was characterized that way. but from the very beginning black people were disproportionately impacted. we respected 25% of the cases in the early, early days. and black women were always disproportionately impacted. and part of the challenge with that we're fighting is the disconnect. when you're talking about a disease like h.i.v., people don't want it to be about them. and when they're told it's not about them all the more reason for them not to pay attention. but what has happened in black

communities over time because of the way h.i.v. works and that no one is really safe the virus has had a chance to take ahold in our community and particularly take ahold among black women, young people. but it continues to be a problem among black gay and bisexual men as well. fill fill with you said this is a problem that could have been nipped in the bud long ago. is it being nipped in the bud now? is there enough awareness now? >> there certainly is not enough awareness now but we're doing a much better job than we were doing. i'm optimistic this film will help because this film not only addresses where we've been and addresses some of the problems but it speaks to some of the things that are working and some of the potential that we have, some of the hope that we have to bring about the end of the aids epidemic. we are certainly seeing a much greater awareness in black communities and much greater involvement among black

leadership than we have in the past. >> ifill: in this film magic johnson participates and talks about his virus and how he's lived with it for all these years. did that serve to make the disease more invisible in some ways? some people "well, imagine us's fine so it must be fine"? >> well, i actually think the work that magic has done in his doing is really important because, gwen, here's the deal: we actually can't end the aids epidemic in black communities. we have those tools and the message we have to get out to black folks is that we can win this battle. together we are greater than aids but there are a few things we have to do. we have to get informed about the disease. knowledge is a powerful tool. number two, we have to get tested. there's no reason why we don't know our h.i.v. status. many of the bare yes, sir that make it difficult by the h.i.v. status, they've gone away. last week the f.d.a. approved an

at-home test. today there's it's so easy to know your h.i.v. status. treatments are available. i've been living with h.i.v. for 32 years now. magic is alive today; i'm alive today because we are on treatment. now... gwen, the other part of the story is that aids... people are still dying from aids who are not on treatment and so i think that magic saying you can live your life if you do something, that's an important message and that's a message that we need to spread in our community. >> ifill: the title of the documentary tonight is "end game." do you see an end game in sight? >> i absolutely do. you know me. i'm an optimist. but i do see an end game. we have new tools that are at our delivery. i already talked about the diagnostic tools. we have new surveillance tools. we know for example if someone like me who's h.i.v.-positive, if we go on treatment we're able

to suppress our viral load, we can actually reduce the ability to transmit the virus by 96%. that's huge! that's a game changer. but we're not going to get there if people don't get informed about the disease, if people don't get tested, if people don't seek treatment and if we don't create an environment where we are not stigmatizing people. we have to do those things and if we do those things i think we will see the end game. >> pelley: phill wilson, as always, a pleasure talking to you at the black aids institute in los angeles, thank you so much. >> thank you, gwen. >> ifill: on our web site, we look at how the h.i.v./aids rate in washington d.c. compares to nations in sub-saharan africa. that's part of a partnership with global post. frontline's "endgame: aids in black america" airs tonight on most pbs stations. >> woodruff: now, a look at the

connection between the tea party and evangelicals. that's the subject of a new book, "the teavangelicals: the inside story of how the evangelicals and the tea party are taking back america," written by david brody, chief political news correspondent for the christian broadcasting network. i sat down with him recently to discuss his work and mitt romney's relationship with evangelical leaders. david brody, welcome to the program. >> thanks, judy, for having me, appreciate it. >> woodruff: we've heard of the tea party, we've heard of evangelicals, who are the team 5 investigates? >> well, it's a hybrid. these conservative christians who are breaking bread with tea party libertarians. a lot of folks hear the tea party movement and they say it's just a bunch of libertarians that want constitutionly limited government. i went to these tea party rallies and found out that there were many conservative christians in the ranks and so came up with this word. i figured i could call them tea party christians or christian tea partiers, i thought that was a little too radical so i went

with teavangelicals and they're breaking bread with tea party libertarians because they believe the fiscal issues are extremely important in this country and it's not just about the marriage issues and life issues. there's no chance of them co-opting this movement at all. >> woodruff: so this idea that they're two separate groups, you're saying there's more overlap than we thought. not that they all overlap, just more overlap. >> that's right. because really most social conservatives are fiscal conservatives and that's one of the points i make in the book. and i just make sure that people understand that once again there is no chance hear that the evangelicals, these teavangelicals want to co-opt the movement and make it about the life issue and the marriage issue. that's just not true. >> woodruff: how big a force are they in american politics? >> they're huge. they're the worker bees. right now raffle