It's Just A Heatwave

Boy it's hot. The global warming set isn't making too much of it -- after all, they blame blizzards, hurricanes, earthquakes and everything else on global warming -- but you're likely to hear some airhead relate the recent heat to us bad, bad humans. If so, just remember there's nothing to it, as Denver's Rocky Mountain Post points out:

Don't be fooled by the heat wave and Wednesday's record-tying high: Denver summers are not getting hotter, State Climatologist Roger Pielke Sr. said. Wednesday's high temperature of 105 degrees tied the all-time Denver record set Aug. 8, 1878.

"Denver is not getting hotter in the summer, and one measure of that is the number of consecutive days above 90 degrees," Pielke said. "There were longer stretches of days above 90 degrees back in the early part of the 20th century and the end of the 19th century," he said. "So we are in a heat wave right now, but we're not in an unprecedented heat wave." A 12-day stretch of 90-or-above highs ended Sunday, when the mercury in Denver peaked at 86.

The city's longest streak of 90-or-higher days is 18, which has happened twice: in July 1874 and July 1901.

As Greenie Watch put it, "Marvellous the difference that a bit of history makes."