The first six months of 2012 were the hottest ever in the contiguous 48 states, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Monday. The last 12 months also were the warmest since modern record-keeping began in 1895. "It's hard to pinpoint climate change as the driving factor, but it appears that it is playing a role," Jake Crouch, a scientist at the National Climatic Data Center, told Reuters. "What's going on for 2012 is exactly what we would expect from climate change." To Sen. Bernie Sanders, a member of the environment and energy committees, "global warming is real."