My expertise in meteorology and weather patterns in general is probably as extensive as those of the average person who posts comments on social media and Fox News sites. So I can unequivocally state that global warming and climate change are caused by people is real. Well, I at least can state that with as much certainty as the aforementioned experts.
After all, it doesn’t take a genius to observe — IT’S HOT! And while I’ve yet to see my 50th birthday I know that lately it’s been hotter longer than I can remember.
Of course there are cycles in nature and global warming/climate change naysayers will argue that the current earthly broil is a by-product of one of those cycles. Fair enough, maybe there’s something to that. But personal experience tells me that answer may be too simple.
Take, for example, a long ride in an elevator. Ascending alone — or even with one other passenger — in a moderately cool elevator might not cause either one of the passengers to break a sweat. But fill that car to capacity with warm bodies and the temperature rises enough to make an otherwise mundane ride feel like a passage to hell.
Or remember the good old days when smoking was allowed in bars. When consenting adults gathered in watering holes and were allowed to light up a cigarette to enjoy with their tonic and gin. One smoker, maybe even two, in a confined space might not be enough to significantly alienate or harm the non-smokers among them. But fill that room with the constant pollution of wafting chemicals and soon enough even the mightiest lungs would be wheezing.
Of course these scenarios and comparisons are too simplistic but lying awake on the cool linoleum of the kitchen floor at 2 a.m. in front of an open refrigerator doesn’t lend itself to thorough scientific analysis.
When your brain is melting and the thought of suffocating from the heavy air in the house seems like a welcome relief from oppressive heat, clear thinking isn’t a strong suit.
Nor is concentration, as scanning the Internet for the answer to the question: “Why is it so @#! hot?” yields few comprehensible answers.
I suppose in the long term the root cause of higher temperatures for longer periods is important to understand. If, as the majority of scientists and experts whose life work is to study the climate and weather and the Earth, it’s true people are responsible for the frying pan that we’re in then people can be responsible for finding the remedy.
But in the short term I’d be happy to know what’s the answer to cooling off when you don’t have air conditioning and sleeping in the bathtub leaves you with a terrible backache.
I’m counting the days until winter, when El Niño’s torrential storms wash us and all this heat away.
