Marseille, France – Southern Europeans braced Saturday for their first heat wave of the northern hemisphere summer, as climate change pushes thermometers on the world’s fastest-warming continent increasingly into the red.Scientists have long warned that humanity’s burning of fossil fuels is heating up the world with disastrous consequences for the environment. Europe’s ever-hotter and increasingly common blistering summer heatwaves are a direct result of that warming, they argue.In Italy, 17 cities — from Milan in the north to Palermo in the south — were put on red alert for high temperatures, with peaks recorded of 39 degrees Celsius (12 Fahrenheit).