I don’t mean to pile on with info that’ll make you hotter under the collar, but are you now or have you ever been a climate change denier? You can’t deny that the planet has experienced its hottest, most humid days since Noah said, “It looks like rain”. We seem to be at the beginning of a current warming trend. There have been warming and cooling trends throughout Earth’s history but up to now they have not occurred as quickly as Elon Musk can tank twitter.
We have endured the most sweltering, blistering, scorching summer heat on record with an average temperature of ‘OH MY GOD ITS SO HOT’ here. In south Florida where we’re inured of humidity that makes our hair curl like Medusa with an Einstein wig, we can’t even stand for one minute at la ventanita for our cortadito. That’s too much! Has your air conditioner pleaded for a rest? In the second you walk out your door, do your linen pants scream “Enough! Take me back inside!” as they wrinkle like a contortionist trying to bend into something resembling a mature antler’s horn.
Furnace Creek, in the hottest place on Earth, in Death Valley National Park, California recorded a temp of 130 degrees unofficially. Officially it was only 128. The desert breeze was air fryer hot, and we felt like scalding pizza cheese had clung to our upper palate like super glue.
How hot is it? We spotted a couple of larger iguanas, one of them toting a box of Lemon Zinger tea bags slung over its shoulder, walking nonchalantly to the pool and sticking its toe in the water. Satisfied that the temperature was perfect, it looked up, surprised to see us but then maliciously ripped open the box and started dipping the tea bags in as it watched the water turn blueish to brownish. The second iguana started cutting up lemons and arranging a small area for a tea party for a friendly raccoon or some local frogs. Has the world turned upside down or gotten so hot that disparate animals banded together for common protection against the elements? We were shocked that only a few Lemon Zinger tea bags could turn 15,000 gallons into a tea party.
Despite much provoking, the dog, who normally abhors the cat, decided that instead of running in the hot sun, decided to text a mischievous note. Have we learned to adapt to our environment as well as the animals? At this point would the termites decide the wood was too hot to chew? No such luck!
Thank goodness for Tree City where, due to solar radiation, it feels 10-15 degrees warmer under our trees than the actual temperature. If only the dog would walk herself.
The melting pot that is South Florida can be described as ‘we get dunked in hot cheese and come up covered in something that looks edible’.
We have now experienced the worse heat surge since Nero fiddled in Rome.If we can only stop people from ‘going’ in the ocean and raising the water temperature which melts the ice caps raising the ocean levels, which causes fish we’d rather not eat to swim in our streets during high tide, then we’ve accomplished the very least we are capable of doing; to stem the ever-widening gap between us and total annihilation as a planet. Is anyone doing what they can to stop this insidious water incursion impacting our inalienable right to add plastic to the ocean? On that pleasant note, remember that it hasn’t taken us that long to screw the world up to the point of diminishing returns of fresh air, sunshine and overwhelming seas, so deal with it while you look for a good deal on a flat bottom boat with a sun-shade.
