• To the retort that this is merely part of a nature cycle of climate change is this virtually unassailable fact: Ice-core readings going back 800,000 years show that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere never exceeded 300 parts per million during that time — until the 20th century, when industrialization was in full global swing. By 2014, the rates hit 400 parts per million.

Carbon dioxide, produced by the burning of fossil fuels, is a top cause of the “greenhouse effect” that traps the sun’s heat in the atmosphere.

• The erosion of glaciers and sea ice during this same period have been so dramatic that arctic sea lanes have opened that humanity has never before seen. Concurrent rises in sea levels have nearly doubled in the past 30 years, according to NASA.

• Weather anomalies of the past two decades — out-of-season tornadoes and hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and floods — have become so common that they almost don’t qualify as anomalies anymore.

None of this is even debatable. To believe human-caused global warming isn’t happening requires believing that the temperature spikes of the past two decades, the ice loss, the rising sea levels, the weather anomalies and the concurrent massive increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as fossil-fuel burning technologies have spiked … is all coincidence.

How much of this has anything to do with St. Louis’ current heat wave is unknowable. What we do know is that more frequent heat waves are an inevitable aspect of global climate change.

None of which changes the advice for this week: Get out of the heat as much as possible, drink plenty of fluids, check on elderly neighbors. And don’t let the politics of it all get overheated.

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