There once was a day when the Credentialed Media kept things responsible, left the Crazy for the supermarket tabloids, but, today is no longer that day
Column: Climate change’s heat is baking us to death. We must act.
America celebrated its 250th year of independence under a historic heat dome that shattered more than 148 records for daily high temperature across the Eastern United States.
The nation’s capital recorded the hottest Fourth of July on record at 103 degrees. Philadelphia, where our Declaration of Independence was written, recorded three days in a row above 101 degrees for the first time. The heat was so severe that parades and events across the country were canceled, including the flagship Independence Day Parade planned in Washington. The heat index in Chicago exceeded 100 degrees on July 1, putting the power grid under strain.
It isn’t just the United States. Heat waves have rocked Europe three times already this summer, with record temperatures hitting the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Portugal in late May, late June and again in July. The June heat wave caused more than 1,300 excess deaths. With less snow on the ground each year to deflect the sun, and the warming Arctic nearby, where rapidly melting sea ice leaves more ocean to absorb the sun’s energy, Europe is warming faster than any other region on earth.
Everywhere is warming faster, you know, but, really, this happens during a Holocene warm period, especially during a big El Nino.
All of this is threatening to collapse the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, a critical ocean current system that pulls water from warm areas of the ocean up north where it cools and sinks and cycles back south. The Gulf Stream, which brings warm water from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic Ocean and shapes the climate in the United States as well as Western Europe, is part of that system.
Once thought to be a low-risk possibility for some future generation, new estimates suggest AMOC could collapse within decades and that it’s already too late to turn back the clock.
There is much cult in you, Champ.
Ironically, the very things that help Americans avoid the realities of climate change are speeding it up: our car-based lifestyle, our plentiful air conditioning, our economy based largely on industries that happen inside away from the elements. I lived and worked in Africa for years and never met an African skeptical of climate change.
Well, Elizabeth Shackleford, they also tend to live like it’s a couple hundred years ago with a bit of modern technology around. They’re 3rd world. And they like all the sweet, sweet, climate cash with not strings attached from 1st World nations.
We Americans can choose to put our heads in the sand, but it’s hot down there now, too.
Wildly, few 1st World Warmists actually practice what they preach. How many have even given up their own use of fossil fueled vehicles?
Also, from the editorial..
“Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law a year ago, increased fossil fuel subsidies by $4 billion to reach nearly $35 billion a year, which coincidentally is roughly equal to the cost of renewable energy projects that were canceled due to Trump administration policy changes. The administration has even paid $2.5 billion of taxpayer money to get companies to shut down existing wind energy projects.”
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In fact, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July 2025, provides an estimated $3.5 to $4 billion in new annual subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, alongside approximately $31 billion in preexisting annual tax breaks and incentives. This sweeping energy and tax reconciliation legislation was designed to bolster U.S. oil, gas, and coal production while simultaneously rolling back or phasing out many of the green energy incentives initially passed in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Of course, those Americans with a financial stake in the oil, gas and coal industries (e.g., automotive sales) deny global warming or argue that it’s just like those other Holocene warm periods.
Fossil Fuel Industry Donors See Major Returns in Trump’s Policies – Trump asked oil and gas executives in 2024 to raise $1 billion for his campaign and told them he’d grant their policy wish list if he won. The investment, he said, would be a “deal” given the taxes and regulation they would avoid under his presidency. He also offered to help fast-track fossil fuel industry mergers and acquisitions if he won. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/fossil-fuel-industry-donors-see-major-returns-trumps-policies
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
? Upton Sinclair, 1934
TL;DNR
Learn to edit. Learn to code.
MAGA47 Motherfucker!
Numbers rather than opinions.
The average number of days per year in the U.S. reaching 95°F was ~18% lower during the 60-year period 1961 to 2020 compared to 1901 to 1960.
The number of days reaching 100°F and 105°F have also declined since 1895.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HNiM3ocWYAALMnj?format=jpg&name=900×900