THIS IS WHAT THE RIGHT WING, STUPID TEA PARTY VOTERS, AND GOP ARE DOING TO THE PLANET

GLOBAL WARMING HOAX, ANYONE? As this year's record-shattering heat wave with temperatures soaring past the 100 livable degrees mark literally IGNITE the raging infernos in the American West, right wing Luddites from the GOP and a broad plurality of IGNORANT, STUPID, TEABAGGING and UNEDUCATED Americans who support them with their votes are strangely silent about their perennial, seasonal howls against SCIENCE. (Those stories usually emerge during the winter months when HUGE SNOW DUMPS due to increased atmospheric-captured moisture [due to GLOBAL WARMING] are mistaken for planetary cooling by Book of Mormon/Bible-thumping pseudo science experts.)

Meanwhile a plurality of the populace, legal and illegal drug-addled citizens, don't give enough of a flying fuck about the planet they squat on to drag their FAT ASSES to the voting booth. Such is the alarming state of anti-consciousness/enlightenment politics in the most consequential nation to the survival of the planet and the human race. Scientists are warning FOR THE NTH TIME that the world is fast approaching a "tipping point that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming."

"As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests.

"This is the critical decade. If we don't get the curves turned around this decade we will cross those lines," said Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University's climate change institute, speaking at a conference in London."

This stunning surface temperatures map from NASA's Terra satellite tells the alarming story of fast-rising temperatures in the American continent for more than a decade, from 2000-2011 compared to 2012:

NASA Maps Heat Wave Fueling Wildfires in the Rockies

On June 28, 2012, wildfires raged across the western United States. The Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado attracted the most attention after spreading into Colorado Springs and charring hundreds of homes, but large wildfires also burned throughout Utah, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, and Arizona.

A lack of winter snow cover and ongoing drought primed vegetation in these states for ignition. But in recent weeks, another ingredient for extreme wildfire emerged: heat. High temperatures dry out vegetation and decrease the relative humidity, making it easier for fires to ignite and spread.

The intensity and scope of the heat wave in the western United States is visible in this map of land surface temperature anomalies for June 17–24, 2012. Based on data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, the map depicts temperatures compared to the 2000–2011 average for the same eight day period in June.

Areas with warmer than average temperatures are shown in red; near-normal temperatures are white; and areas that were cooler than the 2000-2011 base period are blue. Colorado experienced the brunt of the heat wave and had eight large wildfires burning on June 28, 2012. Wyoming and Utah—other states that have seen unusually hot weather—together had nine wildfires burning.

Land surface temperatures (LST) are distinct from the air temperatures that meteorological stations typically measure. LSTs indicate how hot the surface of the Earth would feel to the touch. From a satellite vantage point, the “surface” includes a number of materials that capture and retain heat, such as desert sand, the dark roof of a building, or the pavement of a road. As a result, daytime land surface temperatures are usually higher than air temperatures.

This heat wave, like all extreme weather events, has its direct cause in a complex set of atmospheric conditions that produce short-term weather. However, weather occurs within the broader context of the climate, and there’s a high level of agreement among scientists that global warming has made it more likely that heat waves of this magnitude will occur. (Emphasis mine.)

NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using MODIS data provided by Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LPDAAC). Caption by Adam Voiland