[#] I'd like some butter on my toast

Somehow I wound up here, and I read this bit of "journalism":
I know what you are saying: "Hey, we have always had heat waves." Yes, that’s true. But what we haven't had is summer nights as hot as summer days, and that is what contributes to turning normal heat waves into deadly heat waves (Two dozen deaths in Arizona have already been blamed on the heat). The human body does not have the relief of recalibrating itself. No cooling off period. Spain and Portugal are suffering the worst droughts since they began keeping records. The Swiss are desperately trying to wrap blankets around glaciers so that they will stop melting. (Good luck.) And a dead hiker from twenty years ago was just discovered because all the snow covering him has finally melted.
The emphasis is added. If you click through to this piece, you'll find the words "worst droughts" linked to this UK report on said droughts.

It's sounds pretty serious, yes? "The worst droughts since they began keeping records"? I wonder -- how long have they been keeping records? Any guesses?

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Here's what that UK article says:
For some, it already is the worst. Spain and Portugal are suffering their worst droughts since records began in the 1940s, and in western France water levels are at their lowest since the drought of 1976.
That is to say, the worst drought in 60 years. In France, it's the worst drought since Jimmy carter was President. That's hardly a geological time scale -- it's barely a historical time scale. What if we find out that weather patterns on Earth occur in 120-year periodic cycles?

Sure: those of us who might argue for a 6000-year-old Earth might get panicked over a "worse case" that occured inside 1% of all historical time, but for the old-Earth Evolutionist, 60 years isn't even a valid sample -- it's not even two generations of time past.

If that's their definition of "toast", I'll have the butter and the jelly, please.

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