This morning on Fox News, they talked of the deadly heat wave that looks as if it will mostly end tomorrow. Then this morning, Fox called it a deadly heat wave with nationwide deaths already up to six attributed to the heat. The public is repeatedly told how to keep cool because we have no idea. How did previous generations know?

For the last several days, the U.S. has experienced a heat wave, and the media are acting as if it is the worst we have ever seen.

They talk about the whole thing as though it were something new.

In the first Democrat debate, one of the candidates said one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, said global warming or climate change caused by humans is an existential threat, and this is the first generation that has had to deal with climate change and the last one that will be able to fix it. Neither the moderators nor anyone else challenged him.

It appears that the media and other Democrats need a history lesson on climate change.

The following is a small sample of articles on how climate has always changed throughout history, going from warming to cooling to warming to cooling. Clearly, it has always changed naturally. The articles also show that many more people die from cold than heat.

The Roman Warm Period, or Roman Climatic Optimum, is a proposed period of unusually warm weather in Europe and the North Atlantic that ran from approximately 250 BC to AD 400.

...and...

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) also known as the Medieval Climate Optimum, or Medieval Climatic Anomaly was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region that may have been related to other warming events in other regions during that time, including China and other areas, lasting from c. 950 to c. 1250

...and...

...and...

The 1911 Eastern North America heat wave was an 11-day severe heat wave that killed at least 380 people though estimates have put the death toll as high as 2,000 people. The heat wave began on July 4, 1911 and didn't end until July 15. In Nashua, New Hampshire, the temperature peaked at 106 °F (41 °C). In New York City alone, 158 people and 600 horses died.

...and...

2016 This week’s heat wave in New York, which brought the city five consecutive days of 90 degree+ temperatures from July 21-25, may have felt like it would never end.In fact, it didn’t even make the city’s top 30 longest heat waves. It fell a full week short of the record 12-day heat wave in 1953, and several days short of a string of record heat waves the city has suffered in its history.

...and...

The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent the aeolian processes (wind erosion) caused the phenomenon.[1][2] The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the high plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years.

...and...

The temperatures soared to record highs in July with the hottest weather occurring from July 12 to July 16. The high of 106 °F (41 °C) on July 13 was the second warmest July temperature (warmest being 110 °F (43 °C) set on July 23, 1934) since records began at Chicago Midway International Airport in 1928. Nighttime low temperatures were unusually high — in the upper 70s and lower 80s °F (about 26 °C).

Now for some perspective:

The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.

On a personal note, the warmest day in Springfield, Illinois was in July of 1954, when I was one year old and wearing a diaper. The temperature hit 112 degrees, and in nearby East St. Louis, it went as high as 117 degrees. This year, we may have had one day that hit 100. In 1954, the best most of us had to cool us down was a box fan, and somehow we survived. It should also be noted that the heat index was not developed until 1978. Think how much cooler we would think it is if the heat index wasn't plastered all over the weather map.

Thank goodness for fossil fuels that have helped improve the quality of life and length of life for all who have used them the last 150 years. Isn't it great that the media can be so helpful in the winter and summer for telling us to stay inside with central air and central heat? Why haven't the people who have been pushing to get rid of fossil fuels been asked how wind and solar would handle heat waves and extreme cold? Wind turbines won't turn in extreme cold.

People are nuts if they believe that politicians and bureaucrats who couldn't even keep their word that we could keep our doctors and our plans and premiums would go down can control temperatures, sea levels, and storm activity forever if we just let them confiscate trillions more of our hard-earned dollars.

Image credit: NASA.gov, public domain.