Tech | July 23, 2011 | 83 comments

It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Stupidity: Limbaugh Calls Heat Index a Liberal Government Conspiracy

source: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/07/20/274664/limbaugh-calls-heat-index-a-liberal-governme...

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It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Stupidity: Limbaugh Calls Heat Index a Liberal Government Conspiracy

By Joe Romm on Jul 20, 2011 at 6:47 pm

Wikipedia: “The heat index … combines air temperature and relative humidity in an attempt to determine the human-perceived equivalent temperature — how hot it feels…. The heat index was developed in 1978 … and was adopted by the National Weather Service a year later.”

Rush Limbaugh: "They’re playing games with us on this heat wave, again. Even Drudge, drudge getting sucked in here. Gonna be a 116 in Washington. No, it’s not. It’s going to be a 100, maybe 99. The heat index, manufactured by the government, they tell you what it feels like when you add the humidity in there. 116 - When’s the last time the heat index was reported as an actual temperature?"

It hasn’t been. But it looks like they’re trying to get away with doing that now.

Yes, the black helicopters are after Limbaugh and the whole country now. Well, actually if there were UN helicopters, I’m sure they’d be white, since the black ones would just get too damn hot in this weather!

In the real world, the heat index adds to the actual temperature the effect of humidity, which interferes with the body’s ability to perspire and carry away heat: “When the relative humidity is high, the evaporation rate is reduced, so heat is removed from the body at a lower rate causing it to retain more heat than it would in dry air.”

Now it just so happens we’ve had record rainfall and flooding in the spring — precisely what you would expect from human-caused global warming (see “Two seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the environment“). That helps boost the heat index, as one meteorologist explained today:

"We are into a very dangerous heat wave this week that will last until the weekend. Millions of people are affected, and with heat indices forecast above 100 degrees for dozens of states, the warnings are dire. Here’s a list of the peak heat index numbers for Tuesday. One of the reasons we’re seeing such high values is because of the record flooding that we saw this spring across the Midwest and Mississippi Valley. There is plenty of available moisture that is evaporating and combined with the soaring temperatures, this is causing a “sauna effect” for dozens of states."

That is Janice Dean, a Fox News Channel meteorologist! I guess she would be part of the conspiracy Limbaugh is warning us about.

(continued at link)
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