Climate denialism in the empire of stupidity
By 
Europe is suffering from what historically speaking is an extreme heat wave, but is rapidly becoming simply “summer.” The continent is being hit particularly hard by climate change, both because the climate is warming a good deal faster there than the global average, and because the infrastructure isn’t designed to deal with extreme heat, and is very expensive — and in many cases impossible — to retrofit:
As Europe broiled under record-shattering temperatures that are testing the continent’s ability to adapt to extreme weather, Spain on Thursday warned of a possible spike in heat-related deaths.
The stifling heat wave — the second in two months — has disrupted education, transportation and other aspects of daily life for millions of people, with officials warning that older people or those who work outdoors, like on construction sites, are most vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat.
The heat has also proved deadly.
In Spain, where temperatures soared past 38 degrees Celsius, or 100 Fahrenheit, over several days, a monitoring institute linked to the country’s health ministry said an estimated 212 deaths could be attributed to the heat wave.
The institute cautioned that the figures were statistical estimates of excess mortality attributable to heat. Still, officials and experts say there is a clear correlation between extreme temperatures and serious health issues.
In France, at least 40 people have drowned since the latest heat wave began in the middle of last week, many of them teenagers swimming in unsupervised areas.
More than a dozen countries were under high-level heat warnings on Thursday, including Austria, Belgium, Britain, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia and Sweden. Temperatures were forecast to remain around 10 degrees Celsius, or 18 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, ranging from high 30s to low 40s Celsius.
Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common and severe because of climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels, experts say. And Europe is warming faster than any other continent.
Since France began tracking heat waves in 1947, half of them occurred after 2010. Wednesday was the hottest day ever recorded in France since records began, with the average daytime and nighttime temperature across all its weather stations reaching 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), Météo-France, the country’s national weather service, said.
Average temperatures are rising the fastest in European countries, which are also some of the least accustomed to extreme heat. In Britain and France, for instance, many buildings don’t just lack air conditioning — they are also designed to retain heat.
As always it’s important to remember in this context that the government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation is also the only government in what we will generously call the developed world that embraces climate denialism quite explicitly: Donald Trump says he believes climate change is a “hoax,” and the official Republican party platform does not even mention climate change at all.
All of which is to say that the Republican party is an extremely dangerous neo-reactionary force for evil in the world, which would be much better off without its existence. This is important to remember when dealing with the very real frustration elicited by the Democrats’ terribly inadequate, in the abstract, response to climate change. Yes it is terribly inadequate, and it is also a thousand times better than the GOP’s denialsm.
That’s the political reality in this country, about basically everything.