For one, Planet Earth is hot.    Europe had more heat deaths last year on record .   The tally was  61,000 deaths .  Will it be worse this year? A high-pressure system from north Africa called Cerberus could bring temperatures exceeding  113 F degrees  this weekend, particularly in the the Mediterranean region.  Sicily and Sardinia could reach the highest ever recorded here,  118.5 F !!! On July 9 Death Valley National Park's Furnace Creek Visitor Center hit  130 F (54.4 C),  beating the previous high set here in 2020.   In comparison, medium-rare steak has an internal temperature of 130-135 F. The hottest temperature ever, however, is contentious, for the 136.4 F (58 C) reading from Al Azizia in 1923 was officially decertified. Thus the current official world record is 134 F (56.7 C) set on July 10, 1913 in Death Valley. Yet, experts today insist that those early records are 100% bogus, and there seems to be some reluctance by authorities to initiate a re-look of the Furnace Cre

The continuing saga of the Russian mini-revolt is well-explained by  Leonid Bershidsky,  a former columnist of  Bloomberg Europ e.   He is a 51-year old Russian journalist now based in Berlin, having moved there in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea.  Has previously worked at  Newsweek  and  The Moscow Times .  He has written several books.   But to the topic of the day, is this that impactful summer that will finally convince decision-makers to take global warming seriously?  Possible, but unlikely, for a key reason to be provided. The  New York Times  yesterday said: Today, New Orleans will reach 113 degrees in the heat index. Houston will reach 111. Mobile, Ala., and Jackson, Miss., will also surpass 110. And those are only a few of the places that will experience dangerous heat this week. Summer technically just began, and parts of the U.S. are already seeing the unusual heat that   experts warned about   and that is becoming more common as a result of climate change. About 45 millio

  From the   New York Times   this morning: There is a political angle to these trends, of course. The places with the lowest vaccination rates tend to be heavily Republican. In an average U.S. county that voted for Donald Trump, only 34 percent of people are fully vaccinated, according to New York Times data. In an average country that voted for Joe Biden, the share is 45 percent (and the share that has received at least one shot is higher) . Remember  Polar Vortex , a term that was tossed about when it got abnormally cold?  Well, there is a new one for today:  Heat Dome.  Or, better yet,  Millennium Heat Dome , for what is happening in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia is ten times worse than a 100-year storm, a designation applied when something really bad occurs from Mother Nature. It was terrible this weekend, and could get worse today.  Yesterday,  Lytton BC reached 116 F .   Canada today might become the hottest spot on Planet Earth.  When has that ever occurred?  Then

From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):          DAY     USA     WORLD     Brazil       India    South Africa June     9    1093     4732         1185       246       82 July    22     1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12     1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9     1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21     1225      6849         571        703       85 Nov    25      2304    12025        620        518     118 Dec     30      3880    14748       1224       299     465 Jan      14       4142     15512        1151         189     712                  Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107     398           25       2414    10578         1582        119     144 Mar     2        1989    9490         1726        110     194           31         1115   12301          3950       458      58 April   6         906   11787           4211         631      37 May    4         853   13667          3025      3786