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If you think a place called Furnace Creek would be hot in the summer, you're right. The town in California's Death Valley is expected to hit 128 degrees Saturday.

And the heat will stay on full blast through Tuesday, at least. At night, the mercury will drop to a refreshingly cool 96 degrees.

Fun aside, the heat wave scorching the Southwest is dangerous, as 170 concert goers found out Friday evening in Las Vegas, according to the fire department.

Ambulances plucked them out of 110 degree heat in an open air musical venue and drove them to a shady spot, where they could sit down and drink water.

An additional 30 people were treated for heat ailments in local hospitals.

Many of the excessive heat warnings issued by the National Weather Service extend through Tuesday night, with advisories from northern California, including Sacramento, all the way to southern Arizona. Forecasters say temperatures through the weekend could rival a 2005 heat wave that killed 17 people in the Las Vegas area.

The culprit is a high pressure dome that's blocking cooler air coming down from the Pacific Northwest, CNN meteorologist Indra Petersons said. That system won't begin to break up until early next week, she said. http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/29/us/southwest-heat/index.html?hpt=hp_t1]

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Tigers at the Phoenix Zoo are getting frozen fish snacks. Temporary cooling stations are popping up to welcome the homeless and elderly. And airlines are monitoring the soaring temperatures to make sure it’s safe to fly as the western U.S. falls into the grip of a dangerous heat wave.

A strong high-pressure system settling over the region Friday and through the weekend will bring extreme temperatures to the already blazing Southwest. Notoriously hot Death Valley in California is forecast to reach 129 degrees, not far off the world-record high of 134 logged there exactly one century ago.

The National Weather Service predicts Phoenix could reach a high of 118 on Friday, while Las Vegas could see the same temperature over the weekend.

Temperatures are expected to soar across Utah and into parts of Wyoming and Idaho, where forecasters are calling for triple-digit heat in the Boise area through the weekend.

Cities in Washington state better known for cool, rainy weather should break the 90s early next week, while northern Utah — marketed as having “the greatest snow on Earth” — is expected to hit triple digits. In Albuquerque, N.M., the mercury hit 105 on Thursday afternoon, the hottest it has been in the state’s most populous city in 19 years.

“This is the hottest time of the year but the temperatures that we’ll be looking at for Friday through Sunday, they’ll be toward the top. We’ll be at or above record levels in the Phoenix area and throughout a lot of the southwestern United States,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Mark O’Malley. “It’s going to be baking hot across much of the entire West.”

Scientists say that the jet stream, the river of air that dictates weather patterns, has been more erratic in the past few years. It’s responsible for weather systems getting stuck, like the current heat wave.

In June 1990, when Phoenix hit 122 degrees, several airlines, including America West, which later merged with US Airways, were forced to cease flights for several hours because the planes didn’t have the data needed to know how they would fly in temperatures above 120 degrees. http://nation.time.com/2013/06/28/weekend-heat-wave-to-bake-western-u-
s-2/#ixzz2XbpVB6oc]

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A new study provides evidence that climate change may be affecting the northern hemisphere jet stream. As a result of climate change, Arctic autumn temperatures have warmed by as much as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees F), reducing the temperature gradient between the Arctic and temperate latitudes. In response the jet stream appears to be moving northward and its wind speed slowing. In turn, this may be slowing the westward progression of waves in the jet stream, which cause weather variation along their westward path as they fluctuate north and south.

The slowing of the jet stream, therefore, could cause weather patterns to remain in place for longer, resulting in prolonged heat waves or cold snaps. This study indicates that the jet stream is increasingly likely to stay where it is. If so, we really could be in for a hot one. http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/03/07/climate-change-may-be-affectin
g-the-jet-stream/]

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We said it was going to be a wet weekend in California and the forecast has lived up to expectations.

In downtown San Francisco, 1.07 inches fell. Oakland received an incredible 1.45 inches of rain while San Jose and Monterey picked up 0.78 and 0.83 inches respectively.

This type of rainfall in June is quite rare. How rare? Let's just say the atmosphere in California needs to check the calendar. While systems like this are common in Northern and Central California from late fall through the winter and into early spring, they are very unusual this time of year.

Only paltry amounts of rain are expected in the summer months and June averages just over a tenth of an inch. Interestingly enough, San Francisco has already seen more rain in the first two days of the month than the entire month average....since 1849 only four times has rainfall exceeded an inch during the month of June! http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/rare-june-ca
lifornia-storm_2011-06-03]

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A rare late June rainstorm brought widespread precipitation to Northern and Central California this past Sunday- Tuesday. Precipitation totals were impressive in the Sierra Nevada and northern mountain ranges where up to 9” of rain fell. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian

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The next issue of Psychological Science includes a piece ( http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/03/25/0956797612457686.abstr
act) on new research ( http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/Lskyet
alPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf) which finds how the disbelief of climate change is found among the same people who also believe other conspiracy theories. The fact that climate change is backed by thousands of peer-reviewed research papers with gigabytes upon gigabytes of data to back it up means nothing to them. They put it with conspiracies that have no credible evidence, many times with only some blogger or YouTube video proclaiming it as true.

Their adherence to laissez-faire markets is also telling. The historically proven failures of the laissez-faire system, with its regular cycle of booms and busts, are lost on these people. They believe with all of their hearts the fantasy that the invisible hand of the market will resolve all problems. This of course flies in the fact of history, which demonstrates that those with power will abuse it.

The paper reveals that people who reject climate change are doing it not out of any scientific basis, or even out of skepticism. They are rejecting it based on ideological principle only. As a result, arguing with them using only logic, or facts, will never work.

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A blazing heat wave expected to send the mercury soaring to nearly 120 degrees in Phoenix and Las Vegas settled over the West on Friday, threatening to ground airliners and raising fears that people and pets will get burned on the scalding pavement.

Meteorologist Jeff Berardelli of CBS station WFOR-TV told "CBS This Morning" that the extreme heat "is going to be about as extreme as it gets. In fact, a once-in-a-century-type heat wave in the deep Southwest."

The heat was so punishing that rangers took up positions at trailheads at Lake Mead in Nevada to persuade people not to hike. The mercury in Death Valley was expected to reach nearly 130 on Friday — just short of the 134-degree reading from a century ago that stands as the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

Temperatures are also expected to soar across Utah and into Wyoming and Idaho, with triple-digit heat forecast for the Boise area.

Cities in Washington state that are better known for cool, rainy weather should break the 90s next week, while northern Utah — marketed as having "the greatest snow on Earth" — is expected to hit triple digits.

Alexander Gershunov, who studies climate change at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said western heat waves are changing, CBS News reported. "The new type of heat waves that are becoming increasingly frequent are humid heat waves," he said, "and with high humidity, we actually have much hotter nighttime temperatures."

Health officials warned people to be extremely careful when venturing outdoors. The risks include not only dehydration and heat stroke but burns from the concrete and asphalt.

Cooling stations were set up to shelter the homeless as well as elderly people who can't afford to run their air conditioners. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57591484/heat-wave-bears-down-on-w
estern-u.s-making-for-brutal-weekend/

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A persistent argument designed to discredit the field of climate science is that scientists predicted an ice age in the 1970s. So popular in fact that it ranks an impressive #7 in the most cited skeptic arguments. The logic goes that climate scientists got it completely wrong predicting global cooling in the 1970s (it started warming instead). Hence climate science can't be trusted about current global warming predictions. Setting aside the logical flaws of such an ad hominem argument, was there any consensus among 70s climate scientists predicting global cooling?

The evidence for global cooling consensus

Most cited is a 1975 Newsweek article The Cooling World that suggested cooling "may portend a drastic decline for food production":

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"Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend… But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century."

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A 1974 Times Magazine article Another Ice Age? painted a similarly bleak picture:

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"When meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe, they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

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However, these are media articles, not peer reviewed scientific papers. Does a consensus on global cooling emerge from the scientific literature?

Skeptical quote mining of 1970s scientific literature

Most mentioned is Rasool 1971 which projected that if aerosol levels increased 6 to 8 fold, it may trigger an ice age. While Rasool underestimated climate sensitivity to CO2, its basic assertion that the climate would cool with a dramatic increase of aerosols was correct. However, aerosol levels dropped rather than increased. More on Rasool...

A 2003 Washington Post op-ed by James Schlesinger, Climate Change: The Science Isn't Settled, quoted a 1972 National Science Board report as follows:

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"Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end . . . leading into the next glacial age."

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The full quote from the report is as follows:

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"Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end, to be followed by a long period of considerably colder temperatures leading to the next glacial age some 20,000 years from now. However, it is possible, or even likely, that human interference has already altered the environment so much that the climatic pattern of the near future will follow a different path.

For instance, widespread deforestation in recent centuries, especially in Europe and North America, together with increased atmospheric opacity due to man-made dust storms and industrial wastes, should have increased the Earth’s reflectivity. At the same time increasing concentration of industrial carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should lead to a temperature increase by absorption of infrared radiation from the Earth’s surface.

When these human factors are added to such other natural factors as volcanic eruptions, changes in solar activity, and resonances within the hydro-atmosphere, their effect can only be estimated in terms of direction, not of amount"

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Schlesinger's op-ed has been quoted widely including James Inhofe's Senate testimony. Skeptic citing of the scientific literature have taken conclusions out of context, overlooking qualifications and stated uncertainties. What does a broader look at the scientific literature reveal?

A new paper exposing the myth of 70s global cooling

Over time, William Connelly has been steadily documenting 70s research predicting global cooling. It's a rich resource but as he admits, could be more accessible. Now he has collaborated with Thomas Peterson and John Fleck to publish "The Myth of the 1970's Global Cooling Scientific Consensus" ( http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf), due to be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The paper surveys climate studies from 1965 to 1979 (and in a refreshing change to other similar surveys, lists all the papers). They find very few papers (7 in total) predict global cooling. This isn't surprising. What surprises is that even in the 1970s, on the back of 3 decades of cooling, more papers (42 in total) predict global warming due to CO2 than cooling.


Figure 1: Number of papers classified as predicting future global cooling (blue) or warming (red). In no year were there more global cooling papers than global warming papers.

So in fact, the large majority of climate research in the 1970s predicted the Earth would warm as a consequence of CO2. Rather than climate science predicting cooling, the opposite is the case. Most interesting about Peterson's paper is not the debunking of an already well debunked skeptic argument but a succinct history of climate science over the 20th century, describing how scientists from different fields gradually pieced together their diverse findings into a more unified picture of how climate operates. http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-1970s-science-said-about-global-c
ooling.html

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"extreme heat will continue across the Western states, especially the Southwest," the weather service said.

Cities in California, Nevada and Arizona have already suffered through heat topping 120 degrees in the past few days.

The heat was so torrid in Idaho that Boise residents could bake cookies without an oven.

CNN affiliate KTVB placed a pan of chocolate chip cookie dough on the dashboard of a car. Within a few hours, the cookies were fully baked -- and even overcooked. http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/03/us/extreme-weather/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1

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