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Jaime Jessop's avatar

Credit to Steve Goreham at Real Clear Energy but the 'science-based news' link is a bit thin on the science. Steve links to other news items which attempt to blame the early heatwave on climate change. It's their pseudoscientific and hand-waving explanations as to the reasons why which should be under scrutiny from journalists:

"As our climate warms, we are likely to experience heat domes more often. “Heat domes are a common weather phenomena that we've seen for a long time, but we are seeing now, with the warming of the climate, that the number of heat domes is probably slightly increasing, but [also] the intensity of them, the heat in itself within them, is increasing,” says Gordon McBean, professor emeritus at Western University.

There are two reasons for that. Greenhouse gases are warming the planet by trapping heat in the atmosphere—which contributes to the areas of high pressure that make up heat domes. Secondly, Arctic regions are warming faster than the areas closer to the equator. This difference is weakening the jet stream that helps influence temperatures we feel on the ground—slowing it down and leading to more lingering, high pressure systems, and high temperatures. “We believe [belief is for religious followers that when the jet stream is weaker, it's more likely to take this roller coaster-like pattern across the planet,” says Gallus. (The changing jet stream is also impacting our winters, setting the stage for severe weather storms and polar vortexes.)"

Gobbledygook. Yes, average surface temperatures throughout all seasons have increased slightly since the 1960s (which climastrologists blame CO2 for causing), so when a high pressure 'heat dome' settles over a region, the maximum temperature recorded inside the dome is going to be slightly higher than it would have been decades ago. But the main cause of the heatwave is meteorological conditions (atmospheric dynamics) and there is NO hard evidence to suggest that generalised warming or accelerated warming of the Arctic (allegedly caused by your car and gas boiler) is altering the northern hemisphere polar or sub tropical jet streams to make heat domes more intense and/or more likely, plenty of accumulating evidence to suggest that the changes are natural and cyclical.

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