The Earth revolves around the sun once a year. And it rotates on its axis once a day. I’ve always had a problem with people who never can remember the difference between a “revolution” and a “rotation”. But that’s the subject for a different day.
The Earth’s axis is tilted at a 23.439281 degree angle. And therein lies my problem for today.
I live almost exactly half-way between the Equator and the North Pole. Around 40 degrees north latitude.
That means that here in the Kansas City area we have four seasons. Go a couple hundred miles north and they only have two. Go a couple hundred miles south and they only have one. But we have four.
And since it’s the first part of October, that means we’re coming up to the saddest season of all. It’s fall. Or autumn. It’s miserable enough that they thought it deserved two different names.
In my mind, “crisp” is just a euphemism for “cold”. There’s nothing “crisp” about this air. I like my crackers “crisp”. I like my air breathable.
It’s not that I don’t like autumn (or fall, whatever). I just think it’s sad. Summer is the time to get everything done. The yard gets mowed. The house gets painted. They play baseball. We go on vacation. Stuff happens. I like it.
Fall (or autumn, whatever) comes around and ruins everything. Suddenly I’m painfully aware of everything I didn’t get done over the summer. It’s a weird combination of a mad dash to get everything done and a sinking realization that it’s not going to happen.
The sun used to stay up until 8:30. I know it did. That’s about the time I have to flip on the headlights on my lawn tractor in July. And I still had a good hour of mowing time left. Now I can’t even get started mowing when I get home from work.
And don’t even get me started on the fact that we revert from Daylight Saving Time around this time of year. You lose a couple of minutes of daylight each day and then suddenly — BAM — a whole hour gets wiped out in one weekend. Depressing.
Holidays? Nope, just Halloween, that dreaded, stupid excuse for making your kids look ugly and cute at the same time so they can mooch candy from their neighbors. Each year I turn off my porch light and hang around the wholesale club until it’s all over. Pushing around a shopping cart full of five-gallon tubs of corn flakes was never so much fun. (Actually, there’s nothing as amusing as those institutional-size jars of mayonnaise.)
The only good thing about autumn (or fall, whatever) is that it’s only two seasons away from spring. Wake me up in time for Christmas. Then I’ll hibernate some more until March.
Showing posts with label summer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label summer. Show all posts
Friday, October 05, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Mr. Baldwin’s Winter
It’s been one of the warmest winters on record in New York. For the first time since 1877, no snow was recorded in New York City for the entire month of December.
Actor Alec Baldwin used the occasion to advance his personal liberal agenda. Writing in the Huffington Post blog, he said “All around us are signs of global climate change. And this Administration’s response is to send in more troops. If you don’t think there is a link between the weather and Iraq, you are wrong.”
Two weeks later, New York state was digging out of a record 100-inch snowfall.
Wow, I didn’t know George Bush was empowered to increase the world temperature by two degrees in a century, which somehow raised the temperature in New York to thirty degrees above the average, which in turn crystallized all the water in Lake Huron and dumped it on the Adirondacks.
Liberals and other global warming Chicken Littles fail to understand one basic concept of global climate science: the Earth’s temperature is not nearly as stable as they’d like it to be. And it never has been.
But their hatred of George Bush and anything capitalistic and entrepreneuristic blinds their better judgment into believing that a war on the other side of the world causes hurricanes on this side. (They literally salivated at the prospect of another Katrina last year and were publicly disappointed when the Atlantic went an entire season without depositing one significant tropical depression on our shores.)
The 10th through 14th centuries were warmer than “average”, which gave rise to the term “Medieval Warm Period”. That was followed in the 16th to 19th centuries by a period of cooler than “average” temperatures, now known as the “Little Ice Age”. What comes next? Yep, warmer temperatures. Duh.
This is in spite of the scare that we all endured in the 1970s of the threat of “Global Cooling”. Remember the Nuclear Winter that we were all going to face because of the carbon emissions of the time? Now those same carbon emissions are being blamed for a warming trend.
Guys, the main source of the heat of the Earth is the sun. The sun gets warmer, the temperature goes up. The sun gets cooler, the temperature goes down. It’s a big, big sun. Really, big. That means that it has a rhythm, but it’s a very, very slow rhythm. It takes it a long time to get a few degrees warmer and then a few degrees cooler.
Accurate temperature records measured with mercury thermometers were virtually non-existent before 1880. If a weather station moves across town (as it has in recent years in Los Angeles and Kansas City) the “average” temperature can fluctuate by ten degrees or more. You can plant a tree near a thermometer and lower its temperature reading. Or you can build a sidewalk near it and raise it. But none of those events have global impact.
You can count all the tree rings you want to, but nobody could have measured the temperature five hundred years ago with the accuracy of today.
And what of Mr. Baldwin’s snowless New York? Well, it’s the warmest winter in New York since 1877. Oh gee, Alec, I guess that means it was warmer 130 years ago than it is today. Are you going to blame that winter on George Bush, too?
Actor Alec Baldwin used the occasion to advance his personal liberal agenda. Writing in the Huffington Post blog, he said “All around us are signs of global climate change. And this Administration’s response is to send in more troops. If you don’t think there is a link between the weather and Iraq, you are wrong.”
Two weeks later, New York state was digging out of a record 100-inch snowfall.
Wow, I didn’t know George Bush was empowered to increase the world temperature by two degrees in a century, which somehow raised the temperature in New York to thirty degrees above the average, which in turn crystallized all the water in Lake Huron and dumped it on the Adirondacks.
Liberals and other global warming Chicken Littles fail to understand one basic concept of global climate science: the Earth’s temperature is not nearly as stable as they’d like it to be. And it never has been.
But their hatred of George Bush and anything capitalistic and entrepreneuristic blinds their better judgment into believing that a war on the other side of the world causes hurricanes on this side. (They literally salivated at the prospect of another Katrina last year and were publicly disappointed when the Atlantic went an entire season without depositing one significant tropical depression on our shores.)
The 10th through 14th centuries were warmer than “average”, which gave rise to the term “Medieval Warm Period”. That was followed in the 16th to 19th centuries by a period of cooler than “average” temperatures, now known as the “Little Ice Age”. What comes next? Yep, warmer temperatures. Duh.
This is in spite of the scare that we all endured in the 1970s of the threat of “Global Cooling”. Remember the Nuclear Winter that we were all going to face because of the carbon emissions of the time? Now those same carbon emissions are being blamed for a warming trend.
Guys, the main source of the heat of the Earth is the sun. The sun gets warmer, the temperature goes up. The sun gets cooler, the temperature goes down. It’s a big, big sun. Really, big. That means that it has a rhythm, but it’s a very, very slow rhythm. It takes it a long time to get a few degrees warmer and then a few degrees cooler.
Accurate temperature records measured with mercury thermometers were virtually non-existent before 1880. If a weather station moves across town (as it has in recent years in Los Angeles and Kansas City) the “average” temperature can fluctuate by ten degrees or more. You can plant a tree near a thermometer and lower its temperature reading. Or you can build a sidewalk near it and raise it. But none of those events have global impact.
You can count all the tree rings you want to, but nobody could have measured the temperature five hundred years ago with the accuracy of today.
And what of Mr. Baldwin’s snowless New York? Well, it’s the warmest winter in New York since 1877. Oh gee, Alec, I guess that means it was warmer 130 years ago than it is today. Are you going to blame that winter on George Bush, too?
Friday, July 07, 2006
The Pool Ain’t Cool
We’re coming up to the hottest part of the year. And once again I hear the same insane comments from people. No, I’m not talking about the stupid it’s-not-the-heat-it’s-the-humidity comments. Those are bad enough. I’m talking about people that think the best way to beat the heat is to go swimming.
“It’s so hot today. All I want to do is get in the pool.”
Excuse me. The last thing I want to do when it’s hot is to be in the sun. Outside.
I know where these people got their idea. It’s from the Depression. Back then, everybody was poor and nobody had air conditioning. The movie theatres put blocks of ice in front of electric fans to cool the audience. Yeah, I bet that was a treat. But that’s all they had.
Combine that with the drought, dust-bowl conditions, and record-breaking heat of the early 1930s and you can see that people were looking for whatever they could to stay cool.
So they slept on their porches. They slept on their roofs. They slept in the city parks.
And during the day, they cast off their inhibitions and went to the pool. After all, it was the coolest act in town.
Not any more. The most comfortable place in town right now is my living room. 72 degrees. Or whatever I want it to be. It doesn’t get any better than that.
When I drive by a swimming pool on the hottest day of the year, I see a lot of people having a lot of fun. Nothing wrong with that. They’re laughing and playing and splashing and generally having a good time. Good for them.
They’re also sweating, but they probably don’t know it because they’re too wet from being in the pool.
One thing they’re not doing, however, is keeping cool. They’re hot, they’re just having too much fun to realize it. They’re playing in the sun, for crying out loud. Nobody is keeping cool by staying in the pool. They’re just keeping their mind off how hot it is.
So if you want to go to the pool on the hottest day of the year to have fun, go for it. God bless you; if that’s the kind of exercise you believe is fun, who am I to stop you? Just don’t tell me that you’re going there to “cool off”.
Next January, when it’s ten degrees below zero, I think I’ll suggest that we all go to an outdoor community campfire so we can stay warm. That makes as much sense as going swimming to stay cool.
“It’s so hot today. All I want to do is get in the pool.”
Excuse me. The last thing I want to do when it’s hot is to be in the sun. Outside.
I know where these people got their idea. It’s from the Depression. Back then, everybody was poor and nobody had air conditioning. The movie theatres put blocks of ice in front of electric fans to cool the audience. Yeah, I bet that was a treat. But that’s all they had.
Combine that with the drought, dust-bowl conditions, and record-breaking heat of the early 1930s and you can see that people were looking for whatever they could to stay cool.
So they slept on their porches. They slept on their roofs. They slept in the city parks.
And during the day, they cast off their inhibitions and went to the pool. After all, it was the coolest act in town.
Not any more. The most comfortable place in town right now is my living room. 72 degrees. Or whatever I want it to be. It doesn’t get any better than that.
When I drive by a swimming pool on the hottest day of the year, I see a lot of people having a lot of fun. Nothing wrong with that. They’re laughing and playing and splashing and generally having a good time. Good for them.
They’re also sweating, but they probably don’t know it because they’re too wet from being in the pool.
One thing they’re not doing, however, is keeping cool. They’re hot, they’re just having too much fun to realize it. They’re playing in the sun, for crying out loud. Nobody is keeping cool by staying in the pool. They’re just keeping their mind off how hot it is.
So if you want to go to the pool on the hottest day of the year to have fun, go for it. God bless you; if that’s the kind of exercise you believe is fun, who am I to stop you? Just don’t tell me that you’re going there to “cool off”.
Next January, when it’s ten degrees below zero, I think I’ll suggest that we all go to an outdoor community campfire so we can stay warm. That makes as much sense as going swimming to stay cool.
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