Global warming deniers have graduated from denying climate change to denying the weather, Jess Zimmerman reports on GristList:

Rush Limbaugh says “almost no temperature records were broken” during the recent heat wave, and Newsbusters writer Noel Sheppard says there were “only 34 new all-time daily temperature records set.” Only 34? Why, that’s barely a record-breaking heat wave at all! Except for the fact that a) 34 records is nothing to sneeze at and b) by “34,” Sheppard means “somewhere between 70 and 7,612.”

“All-time daily record” is not a thing, but there are daily records and all-time records. Daily records compare the max and min temperatures that day to the same date in previous years. All-time records compare the max and min temperatures that day to every day in every year ever. And July set 70 all-time maximum and 175 all-time minimum records (which are maybe more important). That’s leaving out the daily and monthly records completely; when you add those in, it’s over 7,000. Sheppard’s number isn’t even in the ballpark.

Denying the weather takes some serious chutzpah. Climate is the average of weather patterns over the long term. It’s an abstraction. A determined denier can easily obfuscate by shifting the terms of debate.  The weather is what’s happening right now. We’re experiencing it. Meteorologists are measuring it with great precision and keeping meticulous records. The fact that the U.S. summer of 2011 is a scorcher is not up for debate.

As Zimmerman notes, one bout of extreme weather doesn’t necessarily indicate climate change. Since the climate is the average, one blistering heatwave could just be a blip on the curve of a generally stable climate. However, as Limbaugh remarked, these daily max and daily min records are shattered every year. Indeed many are. If, year after year, each day tends to be warmer than that same day last year, that’s what we’d call a warming trend.