It’s a natural reaction when an outsider tells the world about it Where you live is becoming uninhabitableas the national reporter was saying about Phoenix and Arizona during this heat wave.

Saying things like State Senator Justin Wadsak said is another. said on Twitter this weekwhich means “This weather is normal.”

Tucson Republican Wadsak was among a series of conservative Arizona critics of last week’s heatwave coverage. They tried to push back the idea that Arizona’s heat is abnormal, reflects global warming, and requires action.

Rep. Justin Heap, a Republican from Mesa, write to twitter: “Apparently the national media has decided it’s time to paint the normal summer heat as an apocalypse because we’re all not afraid enough about climate change.”

alarm, he continuedthey are “trying to blackmail us into taking control of our economy in the name of curbing carbon emissions.”

The problem is they are wrong. This weather is unusual. Phoenix broke the record for the highest temperature on four of the six days from July 15th to July 20th. The city also recorded record high temperatures. Ten days in a row exceeded 90 degrees Celsius, which is above the seven-day annual average temperature in Phoenix.

Tucson set record highs for the day Sunday through Thursday. This is not normal, especially if it is also occurring around the northern hemisphere.

When I pointed out the many records that Heap has broken, he replied, “It’s normal for records to be broken. Weather records are broken every day somewhere.”

Yeah, but there’s a lot of broken stuff here. As my colleague Tony Davis reports today, the signs from a warming climate are clear. It’s a matter of whether we listen to them.

Of course, you can also ignore Arizona’s hot weather because summers in Arizona are usually hot.

When I went out about 12 days ago to talk to people who live in mobile homes and work outdoors, I was convinced that summer in Tucson is like this, even if it’s hotter than usual.

At that time, the humidity would gradually rise, clouds would form, and the heat wave could break before it really kicked in, but that didn’t happen. On Monday, July 17th, the highest temperature of 111 degrees Fahrenheit tied the record, even on a day of heavy rain in Tucson.

The presence of hot anticyclonic ridges, or “heat domes”, over Arizona before the onset of the monsoon is normal, but what we are experiencing is an anomaly and part of a global pattern. Christopher Castro, Professor of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, University of California said to me.

“These big high-pressure domes, these thermal domes, are getting bigger and stronger,” Castro said. “This is the pattern of intensifying heat waves that we are seeing around the world.”

This month, a series of them gathered around the northern hemisphere and set records at similar latitudes around the world, not only on land but also in the world. hot north atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

“If you’re under a strong anticyclonic ridge, you’re going to get a heat wave, but if you’re on either end of that ridge, you’re going to get rain, and that rainfall will be more extreme,” he said.

As heat spreads, especially near the poles, circulation patterns may change due to ice melting and ocean warming.

“The more undulating the jet stream, the more it tends toward these blocking patterns, a condition in which the jet stream stays in a constant configuration.”

What’s even scarier is that this is just the beginning. We have no idea how much change will occur before the climate stabilizes again, and how damaging it will be.

But even though we are experiencing the actual beginnings of climate change, the great chorus of gaslighters is trying to stop us from even recognizing it, let alone doing anything about it.

About Fox Business Climate Change Denier Marc Morano put it like this: “They are trying to weaponize hot summers, heat waves, and turn them into some kind of climate change countermeasure.”

What has actually happened over the years is just the opposite. Tackling disinformation by the fossil fuel industry Deliberately causing confusion about climate science. Partly as a result, Public opinion is polarized over climate change As with nearly every other issue in American society.

House Oversight Committee revealed the findings The paper showed that the fossil fuel industry was discussing oil and natural gas as “bridge fuels” to a renewable future, while at the same time planning to maintain production for years to remain profitable.

Now, thanks in part to these industry efforts, when evidence of the climate emergency emerges, there is an instinctive instinct for the political right to deny or justify its existence. This is unfortunate because we can’t address a problem without first acknowledging that it exists.

For the sake of Arizona’s economy, let alone plants and animals, public officials need to stop their unwarranted denial and take action.

Tucson Democrat, Senator Mark Kelly, tweeted an innocuous remark on Friday about that issue.

“Arizona people are used to hot weather, but this heatwave has been particularly brutal, so we are working hard to fight the climate crisis by investing in innovative solutions and building a clean energy economy for the future.”

Kari Lake’s campaign account (still active for months after her loss) answered:

“Mark, you’re from Texas, so you don’t really know what the weather is like here. But we live in the desert. It gets hot.”

Separately, Wadsak said on Twitter, “If you can’t stand the Arizona heat, you can leave.”

Wadsak works as a realtor. Can you imagine her industry, and our economy, would be a disaster if the heat increased and people started going out in droves?

Denying the problem will only hurt yourself in the long run.