Back when I lived in Florida and explained to residents there how awful summers back in Texas could be, some would downplay it by saying “but in Texas, it’s a dry heat.” Maybe, but when the mercury goes over the triple digit mark it doesn’t really matter how dry it is. Humid or arid, that kind of heat can kill. With climate change we’re seeing more and more record heat, and therefore more danger, more heat exhaustion, and more deadly heat stroke.
So naturally, in the midst of the summer’s first heat wave, one particular conservative dumbass who should know better strutted his ignorant stuff in front of the media:
Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Monday denied that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are the primary cause of climate change. Asked in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” whether he believed that carbon dioxide was “the primary control knob for the temperature of the Earth and for climate,” Perry said that “No, most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.”
Maybe Rick felt left out in the recent senior cabinet brown-nosing session and this is his way of sneaking in a tender kiss to Trump’s nasty backside? Anyway, back in the real world and among those with dignity and decency:
Deadly heat waves like the one now broiling the American West are bigger killers than previously thought and they are going to grow more frequent, according to a new comprehensive study of fatal heat conditions. Still, those stretches may be less lethal in the future, as people become accustomed to them. A team of researchers examined 1,949 deadly heat waves from around the world since 1980 to look for trends, define when heat is so severe it kills and forecast the future. They found that nearly one in three people now experience 20 days a year when the heat reaches deadly levels. But the study predicts that up to three in four people worldwide will endure that kind of heat by the end of the century ...