Unless you've been living under an air-conditioned rock for the past week, you’ll probably be aware an extreme heatwave has been sweeping across the US, with large parts of the country experiencing miserably hot temperatures. This week, temperatures are expected to soar above 32.2°C (90°F) in the Southeast, Mid-South, and central/southern Plains, possibly surpassing 37.8°C (100°F) in some parts. At present, more than 57 million people are under active National Weather Service (NWS) extreme heat advisories, watches, and warnings. And, according to experts, the sizzling temperatures seem set to last."It likely means we'll be seeing periodic periods of excessive heat across a decent part of the country into July," NWS meteorologist Marc Chenard told Reuters. "Not continuous at any one spot, but the overall pattern will continue to favor these above normal temperatures."What is a heat dome?Behind this heatwave is a weather phenomenon known as a heat dome. This involves a high-pressure system that's become parked over the US, ensnaring very warm air and stopping any cool marine air from entering, like a bubbling saucepan with a lid on. The high pressure also pushes warm air downwards towards the ground and heats it further by compressing it.What causes a heat dome?According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), heat domes are most likely to form in North America during La Niña years — 2024 is expected to see the return of La Niña, possibly as early as July — when waters are cool in the eastern Pacific and warm in the western Pacific during the preceding winter. This temperature difference creates winds that push hot air eastward towards North America. Eventually, the warm air gets trapped in the jet stream, a current of air going counterclockwise around Earth, and becomes pushed over land in the Pacific Northwest. It's known that heatwaves like this are becoming hotter, longer, larger, and more frequent as a result of human-driven global warming. It's also clear that extreme weather events will only become more common as the climate crisis continues to deepen."The science is clear on how human-caused climate change is already affecting heat waves: Global warming has caused them to be hotter, larger, longer and more frequent. What were once very rare events are becoming more common," Dr Michael E Mann, a leading climate scientist, and Susan Joy Hassol, director of the nonprofit organization Climate Communication, wrote in an opinion article for the New York Times in 2021.What parts of the US will be affected?Last week, much of the Midwest, Great Lakes, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic were facing scorching temperatures. This week, according to the NWS, "an upper-level trough moves over the northeastern U.S., bringing relief from the heat over the weekend, [and] a broad upper-level ridge will build over the central/western U.S., shifting the focus for the ongoing heat wave to the Southeast, Mid-South, and central/southern Plains early this week."An earlier version of this article was published in June 2021.

Derweze (also known as Darvaza) is a village in Turkmenistan of about 350 inhabitants, located in the middle of the Karakum Desert, about 260 km north from Ashgabat. Darvaza inhabitants are mostly Turkmen of the Teke tribe, preserving a semi-nomadic lifestyle. In 2004 the village was disbanded following the order of the President of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, because “it was an unpleasant sight for tourists.” More than four decades ago, a gaping, fiery crater opened up in the desert of northern Turkmenistan, likely the result of a drilling mishap. In 1971 in the Karakum desert, not far from the Darvaza village, Soviet geologists started to drill at the site where they tapped into a cavern filled with natural gas. During the drilling an accident happened, equipment and transport fell down in a big hole. The largest of these craters measures about 230-feet across and 65-feet deep. No one was injured, but there was gas coming out of the hole. Fearing that the hole would lead to the release of poisonous gases, the team decided to burn it off. It was hoped that the fire would use all the fuel within few days, but weeks, months and years passed, and it is still burning today. In 2004 Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov issued an order for the Darvaza village to be moved to another place for safety reasons. No one knows how long it will still be burning, whether the gas supplies will run out or will the hole will be closed in the end as gas is a valuable resource and it is not burning idle for a few decades. Nevertheless, this natural gas fire remains one of the most enigmatic sights of Turkmenistan attracting numerous tourists every year. Natural gas is composed mostly of methane, which, though not toxic, does displace oxygen, making it difficult to breathe. This wasn’t so much an issue for the scientists, but for the animals that call the Karakum Desert home—shortly after the collapse, animals roaming the area began to die. The escaping methane also posed dangers due to its flammability—there needs to be just five percent methane in the air for an explosion to potentially take place. So the scientists decided to light the crater on fire, hoping that all the dangerous natural gas would burn away in a few weeks’ time. It’s not as outlandish as it sounds—in oil and natural gas drilling operations, this happens all the time to natural gas that can’t be captured. Unlike oil, which can be stored in tanks indefinitely after drilling, natural gas needs to be immediately processed—if there’s an excess of natural gas that can’t be piped to a processing facility, drillers often burn the natural gas to get rid of it. It’s a process called “flaring,” and it wastes almost a million dollars of worth of natural gas each day in North Dakota alone. One visitor has gone one step further than just standing on the edge. Canadian explorer, George Kourounis, actually entered the hell hole in a heat reflective suit. Describing it as a “coliseum of fire”, Kourounis found bacteria living in a micro-system at the crater’s base. And it’s a truly alien landscape down there. This mad exploration was supported by the National Geographic, in the hope that evidence of life in these conditions would mean that on other planets with similar environments life could be found. This man-made crater of molten lava and brutal heat is unique in the world. No-one quite knows when all the methane gas will be burnt up and the Door to Hell is shut forever. The post The Manmade Door To Hell in Derweze, Turkmenistan appeared first on Anomalien.com.

First came Brexit, then came Trump — and now it’s happening again. In June 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union. This month, Brexit’s mastermind, Nigel Farage, returned to the fore of British politics. He’s running in next month’s U.K. general election, but Farage’s real aim isn’t to get a seat in Parliament; it’s to replace the Conservative Party with a new populist force of his own. The worse Conservatives do on July 4, the fateful election day chosen by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the more power Farage accrues. That’s true regardless of whether Farage prevails in his own race. It’s even true if his party, Reform U.K., wins no seats at all. What Farage wants to prove is simply that Conservatives can’t win without his issues. Donald Trump is a ballot-box success in a way Farage isn’t. But Farage is a brilliant long-term planner, and what he’s doing in the U.K. has implications for the Republican Party here. He gives us a peek into what the GOP’s post-Trump future looks like — because Farage proves that a right-leaning party that isn’t also a populist party is doomed in the 21st century. Before Farage decided to run, Sunak’s parliamentary majority was already facing extinction. Polls showed Labour winning a huge, historic victory. But the Conservatives had reason to think the agony Farage and Brexit had imposed was behind them at long last. From the 1990s until Brexit’s eventual implementation under Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Conservatives were bitterly split over the E.U. Farage’s earlier vehicle, the U.K. Independence Party, was designed to force Conservatives to the right on Europe by threatening to divide their electoral coalition. The strategy worked — to keep his party together, David Cameron, a Conservative prime minister who favored remaining in the E.U., had to schedule a popular referendum on Brexit, which he lost. For three more years, the Conservatives struggled to find a leader who’d follow through on Brexit. When Johnson promised to do so, the party’s Farage problem went away, and the Conservatives won a smashing victory in the 2019 general election. Yet COVID controversies ended Johnson’s tenure prematurely. The Conservatives then tried to go back to the future, picking the closest thing they still had to a free-market Margaret Thatcher, Liz Truss, as the next leader and prime minister. Truss’s premiership lasted barely a month; she simply couldn’t garner enough support from her own party’s members of Parliament to remain in office. That’s how the Conservatives wound up with Sunak, a man characterized not by a vision that inspires colleagues or voters but by the absence of overtly divisive qualities. Because Sunak stands for little, his fall wouldn’t mean much, either — in the absence of Farage. But now that Farage is back, there’s again a divisive issue Conservatives can’t ignore: immigration. Brexit was only the beginning; Farage and Reform U.K. are set to use the same playbook to push British politics to the right on immigration. A startling YouGov poll last week found Reform U.K. beating the Conservatives 19% to 18%, with Labour far in the lead at 37%. Experts don’t expect Reform to perform so well in the election, but again it doesn’t have to: Farage only needs to make his issue indispensable to any right-wing party that hopes to win. He might never become prime minister or even a member of Parliament. But if he keeps up the pressure, Farage will drive the Conservatives to adopt leaders who resemble him — the only kind who can attract his voters. Old-guard Republicans are as eager to get past Trump and Trumpism as the Conservatives were to get beyond Farage and Brexit. But immigration is the defining issue of our time on both sides of the Atlantic, not only in America and Britain but on the European continent, too, as demonstrated by last week’s E.U. elections. Immigration restriction has a popular constituency throughout the Western world, and one that’s impatient with older center-right parties reluctant to take up the cause. Trump and Farage both perceived that, and while nobody else can be Donald Trump, Farage’s strategy is one other politicians, including Republicans after Trump, can employ. Here the Farage strategy doesn’t require a new party; the same pressure can be applied to the Republican establishment through primaries. Whether or not populist Republicans win a general election, simply by making it impossible for other Republicans to win without them, they gain leverage the way Farage has. The flipside also applies — populists might not win without immigration-loving, business-oriented Republican or Conservative voters — but populists ultimately care more about the issue. What London financier wants to jeopardize lower taxes for the sake of higher immigration? Brexit and Trump’s election were eight years ago, but 2016 is still the present and future of the political right. Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com

It’s still self-evident that Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election “in a landslide” as he claimed, so that was obvious terrain for a “fact checker.” But the pro-Biden media can’t stop imagining that Trump's going to lose in 2024, and they’re accusing the right-wingers of mangling facts in advance. On Thursday’s PBS News Hour, co-host Geoff Bennett led off the show promoting a segment on “how Republican disinformation is sowing doubts about the legitimacy of the 2024 election.” Later, Bennett introduced a segment from Laura Barron-Lopez: “It's been more than three years since baseless claims about a rigged 2020 election inspired an attack on the U.S. Capitol, but the lies have not stopped.” She played a clip of Trump: “The radical left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020, and we're not going to let them rig the presidential election in 2024.” Where is the “lie” in that? It’s one thing to say Trump “won,” and it is another to say it was “rigged.” The media certainly did their best to “rig” it by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop, and blaming every Covid death on Trump, and claiming in their “fact checks” that Trump was wrong to say a vaccine was almost ready. Then she added Fox News: “Much like last time, the former president has help from right-wing media.” A clip of The Five from June 13 followed. Greg Gutfeld said: “What is up the Dems' sleeve to drag that body back into the White House?” Since Trump is considered likely to win at this point, “then what do you do after you win? How do you convince anyone that's real? Have they even thought of that? Like, even the Dems behind the scenes better hope he doesn't win, because no one's going to believe it.” She left out the part where Gutfeld called Biden a "feeble ghost." They could fact-check the "ghost" part. To "fact check" this, PBS brought on David Becker of the "nonpartisan" Center for Election Innovation and Research. Becker worked for the leftist group People for The American Way. He always insists the 2020 election was the most wonderful, un-rigged election of all time. In addition, he co-wrote a book called The Big Truth with CBS reporter Major Garrett which imagined the outbreak of civil war in 2023. So let's put aside the "nonpartisan" thing...and the "fact check" thing.  Barron-Lopez asked him to "debunk" Gutfeld, saying he warned of "shenanigans." That came on June 14: "if you somehow pull this out with some kind of shenanigans, I hate to use that word so lightly, but shenanigans, you're going to deal with the public who doesn't buy the election." Becker unloaded his spiel about how the 2024 election will be super-fair. He wasn't asked about the "civil war in 2023" thing. LBL then underlined how the right-wingers are historically awful: "That spreading of disinformation by Republican politicians, Americans across social media, and right-wing media, is it worse this election cycle than previous cycles?" Of course he said yes. She also suggested "There's another big election conspiracy theory being spread by Republicans right now." That's the claim that non-citizens are being registered to vote. Again, she cited a Fox News report that 49 states are providing voter registration forms to migrants at government offices without requiring proof of citizenship. Becker "debunked" this by claiming "We know that very, very few, if any noncitizens ever actually vote."

Sean O'Brien, Teamsters union president, will be speaking at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee at the invitation of the Republican nominee. The invitation follows a slow but steady courtship between the two camps, which included the former president meeting with Teamster leaders at their D.C. headquarters in January. The union gave $45,000 each to both the Democrat and Republican conventions this year — the first time it's given to both in 24 years. This is big news. While union rank and file came out for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, leadership has been slow to embrace the pro-tariff, global-trade skeptic at the head of the GOP. It was safe to assume a shift from decades of Democrat support would take a change in union leadership, but Democrats’ illegal immigration and green policies alike have placed organized labor in a bind. Teamsters have historically been the most conservative American union. The mostly male, blue-collar union opposed the Kennedy’s Democrat dynasty, endorsed President Richard Nixon, and defected from President Jimmy Carter's re-elect to endorse Gov. Ronald Reagan's challenge in 1980. Republican politics have largely been anti-union labor for decades, and this remains true in Washington despite the efforts of senators like J.D. Vance (Ohio) and Josh Hawley (Mo.). Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin (Okla.) even challenged O'Brien to a fight during a congressional hearing in November, following a back-and-forth on X. While the Teamsters were unable to dissuade the Democrat Party from supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s, the GOP made little effort to gain the union's support until 2016, when Trump and other "Realignment" conservatives worked to shift Republican politics toward a more nationalist labor and industrial policy. Though Teamster voters had already shifted Republican, potential union support could unlock millions in spending for Republicans (and drain it from Democrat coffers). The union has yet to endorse, and O’Brien has said that will come after the summer’s conventions.Sign up for Bedford’s newsletterSign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford's newsletter.

The Maryland Democratic Party has scrubbed its webpage and social media histories of all traces of its LGBTQ+ Diversity Leadership Council chairman Michael Knaapen following his fateful encounter with Predator Poachers in Montgomery County. Democrats are apparently desperate to hide their previous celebrations of Knaapen as a Marylander "making a difference" because of his apparent admissions Thursday that he allegedly sent depraved sexual messages and videos to an individual named "Luke" whom he figured for a 14-year-old boy. That boy turned out to be the invention of Predator Poachers, whose leader Alex Rosen confronted Knaapen Thursday with all of the receipts. Predator Poachers has been active since 2019 and has helped send multiple pedophiles to prison. Rosen, who apparently also goes by the alias Gordon Flowers, indicated at the outset of the confrontation, which was caught on video, that the Democrat was in no physical danger and that he was free to leave at any time. Knaapen, who visited with White House staff last year as well as attended two White House events, requested that the cameras be shut off, but the Predator Poachers would not oblige him and kept rolling. In the nearly one-hour video of the encounter, Knaapen indicated he thought it was "very thrilling to have a conversation" with the fictional boy whom he knew was underage but claimed he "never intended to actually make it personal." The Democrat did, however, later appear to confirm that he had given the fictional boy his address and invited him over on at least two occasions. At one point in the confrontation, the Democrat, who has since deleted his social media pages, had to assure his boyfriend off-screen that everything was okay and would be explained in the fullness of time. One of the things Knaapen might have to explain is why he allegedly sent an image of his genitals as well as a masturbation video to the fictional boy. Referencing Knaapen's text history with the fictional boy, Rosen said, "Some of this stuff said here, like, you know, 'I want to rape you,' 'I want to see how much of a faggot you are.'" Another member of the Predator Poachers team interjected, noting to Knaapen, "You said, 'I hope you try to get away once I start f***ing you. You need a good raping.'" "I like the fantasy," said the Democrat. "And he seemed to enjoy it. And I didn't know this person. And I never intended to do it." When pressed about his apparent interest in underage rape fantasies, Knaapen said, "I thought it was sexy and fun, and I don't picture the kid." According to the text messages shared online by Rosen, Knaapen allegedly asked the fictional boy, "So if you did have sex, you might want an older guy to call you boy or son, and you would call him Daddy?" then said, "I always have my boys call me Daddy." Text messages shared to X by the Predator Poachers also appear to show Knaapen noted that Luke was "the handsomest boy I've ever seen" when trying to set up a hookup. Rosen asked Knaapen about the troubling presence of underage boys on various gay dating applications and sites. The Democrat confirmed they are there but suggested that upon discovery, he and others ignore them. Knaapen later suggested, however, that he has received "a few" nudes from underage boys in the past during similar conversational circumstances. Rosen alleged online that his team notified police about Knaapen and the messages in November, but "they didn't want to do anything with it." 'Absolutely crazy the amount of people still pedo defending.' Part of the inaction on the part of law enforcement, suggested Rosen, was that despite Knaapen's admission of sending nudes, state law requires that the recipient be a police officer or a child to qualify as a chargeable offense. "We are still going to turn all of this over to the cops, but calling them to the scene would have done nothing," added Rosen. The "Meet Your DLC" section on the Maryland Democrats LGBTQ+ Diversity Leadership Council page is now empty, despite just days ago listing Knaapen with his details as the chair. Rosen noted that in the wake of the sting, the MarylandPolitics subreddit has similarly deleted damning posts pertaining to Knaapen. "I truly think Democrats would allow pedophilia if it meant winning elections," Rosen tweeted amid the apparent censorship efforts on Reddit and efforts to downplay the story elsewhere. "You can tell just based off how they're acting about this one dip**** getting caught." "When we bust someone with conservative, maga, whatever ideology, we're not sitting there contemplating if we should maybe not confront them… or go easy on them… or not post their video — No. We want to nail them to a cross, just like every other pedo we confront," continued Rosen. "Absolutely crazy the amount of people still pedo defending. Like why? ... The rainbow cult owns so many of your minds." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Climate activists love to demonstrate their fidelity by vandalizing the environments they claim to love. Brilliant strategy, said no one ever. Last Wednesday, “Just Stop Oil,” a climate activism group notorious for disruptive protests, decided the best way “to demand that the UK government commits to signing the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty and ... stop burning fossil fuels by 2030” was to spray orange paint all over Stonehenge the day before the solstice. But don’t worry, the paint was made of cornflower and therefore completely harmless. Or was it? Climate Terrorist VANDALIZE Stonehenge! youtu.be The brain behind the operation, 21-year old Oxford student Niamh Lynch, justified the demonstration in a video, in which she said, “These stones have stood here for 5,000 years. What will the world look like in 5,000 year’s time? What will our legacy be? ... We end the fossil fuel era or the fossil fuel era ends us.” “Well, I can tell you that your legacy will be ... that everyone will hate your movement because you're so insufferable,” Sara Gonzales fires back. In response to the vandalism, @StonehengeU.K tweeted: Looks like Just Stop Oil might’ve actually contributed to the damage they’re supposedly trying to prevent. “Let’s cause destruction under the auspice of doing good. Let’s burn America down and say it’s peaceful,” mocks Jaco Booyens, BlazeTV contributor and host of “The Bottom Line.” “[Lynch is] a completely indoctrinated human being that is not capable of making any logical sense whatsoever,” he adds. Sara, however, speculates that this level of climate absurdity may be more complicated than we realize. “I read this awesome conspiracy theory that I totally am bought into that ... the climate activists are actually a psyop that was put on by Big Oil to get people to hate the climate change activists,” she says. To hear the rest of the theory, watch the clip above. Want more from Sara Gonzales?To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred take to news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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