Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
There’s no such thing…
Inside my cool house I can see through my window that another day of sunshine is well on its way. The day unfolding into a pale blue cloudless sky seems peaceful enough. But one step outside with Mollie Dog confirmed that it will be a hot one. The sun is not even all the way up and the air is warm and heavy and a little hard to breathe. Weather experts are proclaiming a heat index today of 105 degrees. It comes on the heels of yesterday’s reported index of 102 in some areas of Saint Louis.
Rose tells me from Ireland that the temperature was 70 the other night and people were complaining about the heat. It’s all relative. Seventy degrees sounds lovely to me. My weather app says the temperature will be in the high 90’s today, over ten degrees hotter than the average June day. And the humidity will be 73%. Saint Louis may be the new Florida with these kinds of numbers.
Around 15% of people in the United States don’t believe that climate change is real. That’s nearly one in every five people. A lot of those people are Republicans, many basing their beliefs on 45’s statement that climate change is a hoax. Recently he held a town meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, where the record breaking temperature climbed to 113 degrees. At least 10 people had to be treated for heat exhaustion even while 45 was ranting about wind turbines and electric vehicles – both intended to cut down on the use of fossil fuels. Apparently he has asked the CEO’s of companies producing fossil fuels to contribute one billion dollars to his campaign. When he gets in office, he says, he will roll back regulations that protect the environment and will promote drilling for oil and gas.
The United Nations issued a report on global warming that is lengthy and informative. “Many people think climate change mainly means warmer temperatures. But temperature rise is only the beginning of the story. Because the earth is a system where everything is connected, changes in one area can influence changes in all others.
The consequences of climate change now include, among others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity.”
I am near the end of my time here, but I have grandsons who will be living with the effects of increasing heat. In my mind, I have been thinking of water as the new gold, and believing that there will be wars over water rights. In the microcosm of one human body, about 55% to 60% of us is water. If our own water levels fall, there is an area in our brain that sounds an alarm called thirst. The whole point of this is to maintain homeostasis – a system that maintains internal stability. I remember my days as a hospice nurse when families would agonize over their person not wanting to eat. I would assure them that the body can go a long time without food, so that is not a good predictor of impending death. Hydration is a different issue, and when people refuse liquids the body can only go a few days without them.
In New Mexico, an entire community was nearly consumed by a raging fire. Ruidoso is a beautiful town where two fires started in Mid-May. Since then about 1,400 structures have been damaged or destroyed. There are 29 residents unaccounted for and two confirmed deaths. There may not be evidence to support that fires are a direct result of global warming. Fires are the result of lightning strikes or careless human behaviors in areas that are dry, perhaps from a drought – that is related to global warming.
I have learned that global warming is just one part of the phenomenon of climate change, which refers to the increasing differences in climate over an extended period of time. These are precipitation, temperature and wind patterns. These changes are likely to threaten the safety and well-being of living communities. That sounds pretty serious to me. I am a believer.