Dangerous Heat Smothers Third of U.S., Suspected in Deaths

[Hissyspit]

Source: Reuters

Dangerous heat smothers third of U.S., Suspected in deaths

By Tim Ghianni
NASHVILLE, Tennessee | Fri Jun 29, 2012 7:04pm EDT
(Reuters) - Temperatures in the triple digits were causing misery in the eastern and southern United States on Friday, with both Columbia, South Carolina and Nashville, Tennessee reaching all-time records of 109 degrees Fahrenheit.

The heat is suspected in the deaths of three young children.

Marked in pink on a Weather Underground map of the United States, a heat advisory spread like a rash over a third of the country, from Nebraska east to New York and south to Florida.

- snip -

As of mid-afternoon, the mercury had hit 105 F (41 Celsius) in Baltimore, Maryland and 108 F (42 C) in Petersburg, Virginia, according to Accuweather.com senior meteorologist John Dlugoenski.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/29/us-usa-weather-heat-idUSBRE85S1HH20120629

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. 3 dead here this week

One of them was a baby.

[Tigress DEM]

6. : (

That's sad and it's so awful. People should be able to afford to stay alive.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

2. Yeaup,...that global warming is a crock,....eh, Zeek?

.....................Zeek?

[agent46]

3. Didn't you hear the news?

Shell finally admitted that climate change is real and now we're just going to have to learn to deal with it.

We've had forty years to get ready for this.

A crime has been commited against humanity.

[XemaSab]

4. 109 in South Carolina?

My God.

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. I remember when 109 was a heat "index", not the real temperature.

and excited news reporters would announce Death Valley had reached 110 degrees...

We had a "heat index" of 114 today.

[mercuryblues]

30. My thermometer read 111 today.

edited because I apparently can't spell when it is hot.

[XemaSab]

32. You got the ol' mercury blues then?

[mercuryblues]

39. Yes, yes I do.

[Javaman]

5. So, is Heat Smothers one of the long lost Smothers Brothers? nt

[Grassy Knoll]

10. Yes, Some Say He Was The Fall Guy.......

for their 60's drug abuse.

[Javaman]

14. Ahh that explains everything!

Thanks!

[TwilightGardener]

7. Weird, it's been super-hot in the great plains and front range for about two weeks, off and on...

100+ just about every day. Seems like it's only a real NEWS story when it affects the east and south. Weather Channel ignored us until after Debby and we caught on fire. Edit to add: I only heard about Duluth from DU. Some parts of the country matter less.

[NickB79]

19. When the bitching starts this fall about skyrocketing food prices from dead corn, then you'll matter

Until then, we're still considered fly-over states.

[emilyg]

8. 101 in ga. at 9:30pm

[JesterCS]

11. got to 101 today in SW ohio

expecting 106 tomorrow

[Deep13]

12. the new normal nt

[sybster1000]

13. I live in Nashville and it is HOT and DRY here..bad for our farmers

We have a lot of organic farmers and livestock breeders here. It is SO dry, everything that isn't watered is dying. My little organic garden has to be watered everyday. Maybe the rest of the state (Repubs) will wake up. For the first time in ages, the State Congress is primarily Republican and they are wrecking havoc here.

[lonestarnot]

15. 112 Phoenix today but only 17% humidity dew point 38 degrees.

[Odin2005]

16. No Global Warming my ass!

[BanTheGOP]

17. The republican Party is 100% responsible for the MURDER of these people

The GOP is a heartless, arrogant, destructive bunch of crackheads that create the global conditions that result in such death. We should be looking at banning the GOP through means, using these geohomicide victims as proof at its criminal activity.

Ban the GOP, NOW!!

[NickB79]

20. That's a real stretch

These heatwaves are being driven by global warming, and we've been actively adding carbon to the atmosphere for the past couple of centuries since the Industrial Revolution. The warming we're seeing today was essentially locked in decades ago, due to the lag time between carbon emissions and global temperatures.

While the GOP has been stupidly stonewalling on any action to address global warming in recent years, we passed the tipping point years and years ago to stop this. Ironically, we were already probably too far gone before Al Gore even began to address the problem in the mid-1990's. The blame for this falls on human industry and it's use of fossil fuels, of which we all share some blame.

[BanTheGOP]

21. And you are disagreeing with me HOW??

I have not been saying that the GOP is responsible for the start of global warming. I AM saying that the GOP is 100% responsible for the acceleration and continuation, indeed, the encouragement, of global warming to occur. Fossil fuels and human industry = destructive, republican-Party sponsored geo-terrorism, and until we ban the GOP, we will NOT STOP this soon to be irreversible process.

Had Theresa LaPore rejected the butterfly ballot instead of the more common straight ballot in 2000, we wouldn't even be having this discussion because the temperatures would have been controlled by now from a Gore/Obama presidency reign.

[NickB79]

22. The GOP isn't a global phenomenon, is it?

Would banning the GOP stop China from pumping out more CO2 per year than the US? Much of the growth in fossil fuel consumption in the past decade has come from developing worlds that are rapidly industrializing with cheap, dirty coal as their primary energy source.

I'm not trying to defend the GOP, and you make many valid points, but there's more to addressing global warming than just US contributions to it. Global warming must be addressed globally, or nothing we do matters in the long run.

[Spider Jerusalem]

23. It's not just the Republicans anyway

the US accounts for 18.1% of world total CO2 emissions per year; China accounts for 23.2%. But the US per capita share of CO2 emissions is over three times higher than China's (17.5 tonnes of CO2 per person per year vs 5.3, on most recent data). Although when one of the major political parties in one of the world's leading polluters questions the science behind climate change and acts as a barrier to any international agreement or treaty that would have serious effect...then yes, American Republicans have a global impact in this area (since any treaty on climate change agreed by the US would need ratification by the Senate).

[BanTheGOP]

25. And how did Chinese capitalism start? Not from Russia or the US Democratic Party

The Chinese have essentially taken a very republican idea and have metamorphosed it to become a huge, giant geo-terroristic threat. Make no mistake, the exportation of republican/corporate greed has become the norm in China today, and hopefully a more socialist government can pull in the reins. We should remind everyone about how China is a vast expanse of planetary wonderment, and should remain so by eliminating republican-capitalist tendencies, hopefully through democratic socialist edict.

[NickB79]

29. The US Democratic party has always been pro-capitalism

There hasn't been a single serious Democratic politician I can remember who seriously suggested moving the US away from capitalism (despite the overwhelming evidence we need to do so). The Chinese economic boom started under the Clinton administration, and Clinton's economic initiatives with the Chinese played a large part in allowing them to get into the US market in such a huge way.

[Spider Jerusalem]

31. It would have happened without the US trade deals with China, though

China is a country of more than a billion people with vast and largely unexploited natural resources of coal and other raw materials which was not industrialised until relatively recently; in the 1960's over 60% of Chinese labour was employed in agriculture. The combination of vast population and vast resources with rapid industrialisation and modernisation would have had the same result; if US trade deals with China had any effect whatever it was only to accelerate the timetable slightly.

[dipsydoodle]

26. Aside from which

the other two contributory factors, La Nina and jet stream blocking. , have been around since the year dot.

[BanTheGOP]

24. The GOP essentially controls the US capitalist society, which dictates to the world

The GOP normally wouldn't be the world's problem, but in fact there is no comparable destructive regime in world history, and its tentacles reach well beyond the borders affecting how other countries dictate to their own citizens. Without a doubt, if the GOP were not a factor, the rest of the world would be on a more earth-friendly track, and definitely one in which it can be reasonably ascertained the stoppage and reversal of global warming.

[NickB79]

28. The boom in China's economy can be traced to Clinton's economic initiatives

Before which, they were small players on the global scene.

And while the GOP has been horrible, the Democrats haven't been much better. For example: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/29/508585/blm-auctions-720-million-ton-north-porcupine-coal-tract-to-single-bidder-for-110-a-ton/

The Obama administration’s Bureau of Land Management auctioned a major tract of Wyoming coal to Peabody Energy at a bargain-basement price of $1.10 per ton yesterday.

The North Porcupine coal tract in the Powder River Basin went to the single bidder, Peabody subsidiary BPU Western Resources, for $793,270,310.80 for 721 million tons, BLM representative Beverly Gorny stated in a telephone interview.

This sale, made under the provisions of the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, represents a massive fossil-fuel subsidy based on the assumption that the use of coal benefits the American public. However, it is likely this coal is intended for the Asian market, where sub-bituminous coal fetches a much higher price. The non-competitive leasing program is under federal investigation.

And then there's this: http://grist.org/coal/fighting-coal-export-terminals-it-matters/

Sure enough, there are six new coal ports (PDF) proposed for the West Coast: Coos Bay, the Port of Morrow (near Boardman), and Port Westward in Oregon; Longview, Bellingham, and Grays Harbor in Washington. If they are all built, the Pacific Northwest will export over 150 million short tons of coal a year, making it one of the world’s largest coal export regions.

The GOP didn't invent capitalism; they just took it to the extreme. Even the most liberal Democrats only propose a kinder, gentler form of capitalism that still places the need for unlimited economic growth above the planet's biosphere. Even without the GOP, we'd be fucked by global warming, though maybe not quite as badly as we are now. Like I said, we're ALL to blame in this.

[bongbong]

34. Overton window

It IS the repig's fault, since they drag the Overton Window to the right, and also refuse to even consider policies that aren't something that Hitler could love.

[PavePusher]

36. No, what you actually said was....

The republican Party is 100% responsible for the MURDER of these people

and then this:

the temperatures would have been controlled by now from a Gore/Obama presidency reign.

...is pretty much delusional. No political party can control weather temps in the here and now. We may be able to have an effect on the temps 50 and 100+ years from now....

There are plenty of things to blame on Republicans without actually looking so foolish as to make shit up in defiance of reality and science. That's their job.

[4th law of robotics]

35. It's true. All non-republicans are organic vegans

that make their own compost, live off the grid, and don't have any sort of a carbon impact. Like say by owning a computer or using electricity to post on the internet.

So it's entirely republican's fault.

Also no foreigners produce carbon at all.

[tawadi]

18. 'The boys, aged 3 and 5, had been playing outside'

Where was the adult?

[otherone]

27. Hudson Valley isn't too hot..

[bongbong]

33. Interesting fact

This was in another thread on DU...

Some scientist (or other "edumacated elitist librul&quot said that if you were born after 1985, you'll never experience a "normal" climate.

The repig anti-life assholes will blame global warming on "evil libruls", mark my words.

[PavePusher]

37. Since the world has been both much warmer and much colder in the past.....

please cite the conditions/time periods that comprise "normal".

[wordpix]

38. so hot in DC that the wild storm last night left rain that evaporated in the garden mid-day

Completely dry in the garden after the storm but the veggies are still going strong.