geoffism.com

My car tells me its 109 degrees. But its a “dry heat” they tell me. Does dry heat mean its the equivalent of trying to inhale sand? Or is dry like an oxymoron, for say…sweating your ass off? I now strangely know what it feels like to be a side of beef in a Ron Popeel rotisserie oven.

I’ve been in Atlanta for a couple years now, and I don’t recall it being this hot in the past summers. Newscasters down here like to talk about how hot it is. I have a couple new rules I’d like to pass along to those local weathermen: 1) when its above 95 degrees, just tell me its hot. If it is going to drop below 95 or maybe some liquid relief within the next week, let me know. If not, go back to the sports anchor or the news anchors for some other story. 2) Refrain from telling me that its 75 degrees somewhere else. Don’t make me wish I was there. I don’t care that it is 80 and comfortable in Boise, ID. 3) Cut the jokes and the smiling face. We are all miserable. I’m sure you have the studio chilled like a meat locker and probably send some intern to valet your car and get the AC running (If I could, I would too). We all know that predicting weather is an “exact science” (wink wink) Mr. Meteorologist. Its even better and adds tons of credibility to your skills when I can hear the weather channel in the background of your report (yes, it really happened and I really wish I TiVO’ed that).

It got me thinking. Is there another reason as to why we are all baking like cookies on a daily basis? We need something more than man is destroying the environment. So, this brings me to my new theory of Global Warming. Overall, temperatures are getting higher and weather is getting a little more extreme… I think we are getting closer to the sun. Has anyone explored that theory? Is there anyway to explore that theory? We don’t have any history to compare ourselves and other planets are too far away to even study, let alone give us some sort of expectations. Maybe the gravitational pull of the sun is gradual and Mercury will get swallowed up in a millennium or two. The way I look at it, we are third in line. Simple facts - the average temperature has been increasing every year, ice caps are melting, and hurricanes are becoming more frequent and more violent (seen a hurricane alert lately?). In 1965, the avg annual temp in Atlanta was 59 degrees, and in 2005, it was 65 degrees - an increase of 1.5 degrees per decade. If the average temperature rises at that rate, we are seeing a rise of 15 degrees per century. Do the math. Its gonna get hotter. It will make waiting for the NYC F Train at 2nd Ave during the summer seem like a “cool zone”. Gone will be the stories of walking 5 miles, uphill in the snow, both ways…Is it wrong for me to assume that we can’t totally blame the weather shift on the marvelous 80’s decade of aerosol usage (hello NJ claw!) and commuters? I’ll agree that there are more cars on the road, but aren’t emission standards tougher and fuel cleaner? Everyone likes to say that man is destroying the earth in a matter of years…I’d like to disagree. Maybe this is the life of our planet. Maybe this is how it is supposed to happen. Somebody give me a grant. Attention, Nobel committee, Geoff is spelled with a “G”.