It’s November but you would never know it here in Central Florida. The temperature is supposed to hit 90 degrees in the Tampa Bay area today. How on earth am I going to survive out on the golf course?
It was 92 yesterday – a record of course. I know Florida is the Sunshine State, but this is too sunny, even for a Jamaican-born sun lover like me.
And this is not dry heat. It’s humid. I’ll have to remember to pack a lot of water when I venture out on the golf course this afternoon.
Forecasters blame “a strong area of high pressure in the upper atmosphere.” But you and I know what is really causing the heat wave.
Climate change. They used to call it global warming but the Republicans scoffed every time a winter day blew some frigid air their way, so whoever decides these things switched to “climate change.”
Meanwhile, coal burning power plants are spewing carbon dioxide and other bad stuff into the air across America. The climate change deniers – who are actually mouthpieces for the fossil fuel industry – warn that it would cost electricity users a bundle to curb the pollution. But our bills from Lakeland Electric are going down because the local power plant is using natural gas.
And, anyway, don’t the climate change deniers realize how urgent the situation is?
Haven’t they heard that sea levels are rising and the Arctic snow cap is melting? That California is becoming a vast dust bowl as an endless drought dries up the nation’s biggest source of food?
That Texas just got flooded out?
And what about the hurricane that hit Mexico recently – the most powerful storm ever in our hemisphere?
If that’s not climate change, I don’t know what to call it.
How about “global warming”?
(Click on climate change picture to enlarge it.)
