It's official — hottest month ever in US

Despite much of the Pacific, especially the Northwest, not being that hot, July shattered the old record, held by July 1934 in the height of the Dust Bowl, as the hottest month in US history. And, the drought expanded to 63 percent of the country.

Now, it's arguable how much of this is directly attributable to global warming, as is how much more likely global warming made something like this.

But, to claim that global warming had zero effect on either the actual temperatures or the likelihood? That simply doesn't fly.

Not even if you're Jim Inhofe, and you claim that humans can't be causing this, because it's in god's control.

Not even if you make ludicrous claims about this all being out our hands. And, the the hardest-core religious right among them, if you don't want to blame your part in AGW, don't blame the "sins" of gays or whatever. First, there's plenty of gays (albeit worriedly anonymous) in rural Oklohoma. Second, as the divorce rate is higher in the Bible Belt than elsewhere, you've got other sins to worry about, including what often causes divorce, and that's especially when you drive a county away from your dry county for the nearest liquor store.

Don't know if he's a booze hypocrite or not, but Inhofe is one of those religious righters, otherwise. From that same top link:

While promoting his book in March, Inhofe denied the possibility of human-induced climate change, saying on a Christian radio program, "The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what [God] is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

OK, by this same illogic:

1. It was arrogant to build atomic bombs and nuclear power plants to change what God was doing in the atom.

2. In his own state, it's arrogant to look for oil using modern geological techniques, and arrogant to pump for oil, because of what God did to the dinosaurs. (They, too, were surely killed for their sins. Insert picture of gay T. Rex here.) 
3. It's arrogant to use that oil to make plastics because ...  God will melt them, if they're plastic streetlamp shades, in the heat! (Maybe he's punishing you for buying Made in China plastics, too.)

So, red state Oklahomans? Don't ask for federal disaster aid from the drought. Ditto for Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska and other red states with shriveling corn. It would be arrogant to ask humans to bail you out from what God caused. Not if you believe like Inhofe.

Jokes aside, we need to stop federal disaster aid until we tie it to a carbon tax-and-tariff bill. Carbon taxes on domestic CO2 coupled with tariffs on the CO2 of imports. Clean up the US, and force China to do so, to itself.