Limbaugh: Heat Wave A Government Conspiracy

by Stuart Shapiro

Usually I try to ignore Rush Limbaugh because I’m not even sure how much he believes what he says (Rush is all about the ratings — he may even be rooting for an Obama re-election since it will help him).  But I post so often about climate change, I couldn’t let this one go by.

Rush said this [is] just normal weather, “Drudge is just linking to other people reporting this. He’s not saying it. I don’t want to misunderstand, but he’s linking to stories which say 116 in Washington. No. It’s what 100, 97, 99? It’s going to top out at 102, 103. It does this every year. We have this. There’s a heat dome over half the country. Midwest it’s moving East, and it happens every summer. It happens every summer.”

…According to Limbaugh, the heat wave is all part of giant government conspiracy to make people think that it is hotter than what it is in order to get them to believe that climate change is real. Limbaugh thinks this kind of heat wave happens every year, but it doesn’t. According to the National Weather Service 1,000 heat records have been broken across the United States in the past month. . . As far as the heat index is concerned, it has been around since 1979. It is not some new tool to convince people that climate change is real.

Of course the conspiracy could have started back in 1979.  And of course, since the National Weather Service is a government agency, they could be in on it.  Or, maybe there is a simpler explanation, like climate change?

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.