It's Seriously Hot (and I'm Losing My Cool)

Think cool thoughts, people.  (Photo via Thinkstock)

The temperature has soared to 90 degrees and higher in Boston the past four days. The temperature is expected to hit reach 95 (or maybe even top 100) later this afternoon. I can already feel beads of sweat beginning to roll down my back as I walk to work — and it’s not even 9 a.m.

It’s the dog days of summer, and in recent weeks it seems like the dogs have only gotten bigger, uglier, and more slobbery. We’re had temperatures consistently above the 82-degree average high for Boston in July and four days in the 90s so far this month. Today will be the fifth. In June, we had five days with temperatures in the 90s – far exceeding the average monthly high of 76 degrees.

Is this global warming at work? Deductive reasoning says yes. Scientific evidence also indicates the affirmative. The first six months of 2012 were the hottest ever recorded nationwide. It’s the warmest 12-month period experienced in the United States since recordkeeping began in 1895, according to information from the National Climactic Data Center.

In Boston, it’s 4.3 degrees warmer so far in 2012 than the yearly average from the past two decades, and summer’s not even halfway over.

But cold, hard facts won’t convince everyone, apparently. There are still the conservative naysayers out there who dismiss the mounting evidence for global climate change as liberal propaganda, disseminated to advance the Far Left’s SUV-hating, polar-bear-hugging agenda. WSJ.com’s James Taranto wrote off the deadly wildfires, oppressive heat waves, freak storms, and widespread drought of late as “overheated rhetoric and fallacious arguments” while merrily typing away at his computer from inside his “pleasantly air-conditioned apartment” last week.

I appreciate this disclosure of location. It finally answers the question, “What planet do these crackpots live on?” Turns out we live on the same planet – they just don’t go outside.

Lately, I’ve realized my tolerance for willful denial of scientific evidence is inversely proportional to the temperature outside. In January, I’m unfazed by the poorly supported arguments against global climate change, based on information likely provided by the same whackos who deny dinosaurs existed. But the same crap in the heat of the summer makes my blood boil.

Better stay indoors on a day like today, James, and keep sipping your nicely chilled conservative Kool-Aid. A step outside could prove a fatal dose of reality to your thought process.