The Heat Dome Wants a Word With Climate-Change Deniers

Weather isn’t climate, and a heat wave isn’t proof of human-induced global warming any more than a snowball disproves it. At the same time, nothing quite focuses the mind on the causes and effects of a hotter planet than Mother Nature covering half of the United States with a giant pot lid, turning up the burner and letting it boil for a while.

Thanks to a massive heat dome squatting on North America for most of the week, nearly 150 million Americans in 28 states were under some level of heat advisory from the National Weather Service as of Monday morning. More than 91 million people from Iowa to New York City face the highest level of alert, “extreme heat,” with heat indexes in the triple digits, through at least Wednesday.