Weather cools; climate still hot
If I was able to hear every conversation taking place this weekend in North Texas, I am certain I would hear something like this: Boy, this cooler weather is sure putting the kibosh on the nonsense being conveyed about climate change and how the planet is getting hotter.
Well, you know where I am going with this. Weather and climate are different critters. Weather is what's happening in the here and now; climate requires the wider angle. Earth's climate has changed. It has nothing to do with the weather of the moment. The only argument worth discussing, and that argument is fading away, is the effect human activity has had in changing the planet's climate. Those who argue that human beings have had an impact on the climate have all but won that argument.
Arguably the most insipid public display of ignorance on the climate change discussion occurred in the U.S. Senate some years ago. D.C. was in the midst of a serious cold snap one winter, so in walked Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., a climate change denier who was carrying a snow ball he brought in from outdoors. He displayed his laughable ignorance by suggesting that the existence of snow meant that the climate wasn't changing, that it was actually getting cooler. He was wrong.
We're likely getting a taste of that ignorance in the past week as North Texas has basked in weather that doesn't match up to the customary sweat-box character so familiar at this stage of the summer season.
The high temperature today was supposed to hit 85. Tomorrow will be about the same. Then it will heat up to more seasonable temps in the low to mid-90s. Hey, I never have quite welcomed the heat and humidity of North Texas. I just have learned to expect it.
However, the break from the heat has been a welcome respite.