In the South and Southwest, and most intensely from Southern California to South Florida, a dangerous heat wave has gripped the nation, with 104 million Americans under a heat warning advisory. Records are being broken right and left: The first full week of July was recorded as the Earth’s hottest on record, and it followed the hottest June on record. Texas has been hit especially hard, with cities recording high temperatures of 110 degrees or more. This is not some minor inconvenience, but a dangerous and deadly circumstance, with hundreds of people sick and a dozen dying in the Lone Star State from heat-related causes this summer. On Thursday, the Maryland Department of Health also reported its first heat-related casualty of the summer: a 52-year-old man in Cecil County.
Scientists point to any number of factors behind the scorching temperatures, including the El Nino effect, in which above-average Pacific Ocean temperatures spread and influence global weather patterns, including those heat domes where a high-pressure “lid” is created by atmospheric air currents trapping heat. But reinforcing all of this is the one underlying cause: Greenhouse gas emissions, most the result of burning fossil fuels and related human-made activities, are making the planet hotter.
This is known as climate change, and while some in the far-right of the political spectrum — or perhaps those who make their living in the oil and gas industry — would like to deny its existence, let the summer of 2023 be an official (albeit only the latest) wake-up call from Mother Nature: Things are going to get worse.
