117 Degrees in Phoenix

In the parking lot of my local supermarket, I overheard a woman talking on her cellphone, saying, “It was 117 degrees when we left Phoenix!” (It was, by the way, around 75 here in Custer County where we were, and she was talking about how they had headed to the mountains to get away from the heat.) I mentioned this to another friend at a party last night, and she said she’d been in Phoenix when it was 120. That’s downright freaky. How hot is too hot? The Big Economic Fall has distracted us from global warming, as has the BP Oil Spill and Mel Gibson’s rants and Sarah Palin’s braindead megaphone and assorted short-term distractions. Here’s a good piece about the state of global warming in the Scientific American:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=average-global-temperature-rise-creates-new-normal