Yesterday (Saturday, July 7) the official high melted previous marks: 106 degrees in the shade.
Even the doubters and deniers couldn't hide from the second consecutive summer of all-time high temperatures, the hottest since weather records were first kept in 1871. They, too, have felt the wound in the ozone layer. They might even believe now that something is going on. Climate change is real.
I like how Dim Coumou (real name), a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, summed up the evidence. Using a "loaded dice" analogy popular with climatologists, Coumou said one roll of double sixes doesn't prove the dice are fixed. Ten in a row? Much more likely. And that is, in essence, the kind of repeat performance in extreme weather events that researchers are now observing. One hot summer in one location doesn't prove much. Tens of heat waves over the past 15 years in multiple locations -- Russia, Europe, the US, Africa -- cannot be ignored. Humankind has poured pollutants into the atmosphere that are affecting the climate.
All of that provides little comfort for the hundreds of thousands of households across West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia who lost power from torrential winds and rains that toppled trees and cut power lines last Thursday. Many of them have sweltered without air conditioning since then. We have heard several tales from acquaintances about packing up and seeking a hotel room for the duration, just to beat the heat.
People, animals, and plants have all suffered. Thirteen deaths have been blamed on the extreme temperatures or rainstorms. We picked a good week to be out of town on summer vacation, and so have had to endure only the last four days of 100 degree plus temperatures. Our poodle, Charlie, stayed with a sitter, who was forced to spend several days with her sister's family when their power went out. His walks since we returned have been short and efficient. A few quick squirts on the nearest bush, a sniff over the first patch of grass we encounter to locate a suitable outdoor latrine, then a plaintive look that says, "Get me back inside where it's cool."
Before we left on vacation I brought inside almost all of my pots of plants on the patio. Our dog sitter friend came over and watered everything several times while we were gone, and miraculously they survived except the lettuce (fried) and a large, laden tomato vine in a pot too large to haul into the kitchen, which looks now like it was hosed by jet exhaust.
One local power company is getting hate mail. All of the cost cutting measures they employed over the last year (so that shareholders could rake in a higher dividend) resulted in fewer trees being trimmed around power lines. So when Thursday's wind and rain -- an extreme weather event clearly linked to human-aggravated global climate change -- tore through the area, it was time to pay the piper. My bike ride on the Mt. Vernon trail a couple of days ago felt like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, as I dodged fallen branches, limbs, and one entire tree trunk obstructing the trail -- all still waiting to be cleared a week after the storm. It's not like crews were shirking their duty. The grinding whir of wood chippers and chain saws serenaded me the whole section of the trail I covered. Judging from the amount of downed limbs still remaining, an army of beavers could not have hauled off all the debris in a week's time.
I'm too limp from the heat to pontificate about what all this portends, other than the fact that we need to face up to the weather patterns we are creating with our cars and factories and farting herds of cattle.
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