It was an ordinary day. Just got back from the grocery store and finished putting the groceries away. Told my wife, Carol, that I was going to head across the drive to check and see if we got any mail before I began helping run the vacuum in our villa. Returned as fast as I could since it was so hot that the grass is beginning to break off when I walk on it. That, plus the bottom of my sneakers are beginning to get so soft from the driveway that I swear they are about to melt while on my feet. We don't have an outdoor thermometer, but I bet the temperature outside is close to 100 degrees and the temperature of the blacktop I was walking on has to be close to 120 degrees. And...that's with a layer of puffy white clouds in the sky. I guess the story I just read in my morning newspaper must be true! The morning headline by the Associated Press Science Writer, Seth Borenstein, read "Scientists calculate July will be the hottest month on record!" I can remember my dad telling me when I was a young boy how hot it was when he was a child during the summer months. Well...I can now tell my children that the summer months are the hottest that it has ever been. And, I have an article from the newspaper to prove my claim! A bit of information from the newspaper article read that July has been so hot thus far that scientists calculate that his month will be the hottest globally on record and likely the warmest human civilization has ever seen, even though there are several days left to sweat through. And, to top that off, the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service on Thursday proclaimed July's heat is beyond record smashing. They said Earth's temperature has been temporarily passing over a key warming threshold: the Internationally accepted goal of limiting global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures are 2.7 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times for a record 16 days this month, but the Paris climate accord aims to keep the 20- or 30-year global temperature average to 2.7 degrees. A few days of temporarily beating that threshold have happened before, but never in July. July has been so off-the-charts hot without waves blistering three continents - North America, Europe and Asia - that researchers said a record was inevitable. The U.S. Southwest's all-month heat wave is showing no signs of stopping while also pushing into most of the Midwest and East with more than 128 million Americans under some kind of heat advisory this past Thursday. It is almost certain that we will break the record for the warmest month on record. Scientist say that such shattering of heat records is a harbinger for future climate-altering changes as the planet warms. Those changes go beyond just prolonged heat waves and include more flooding, longer-burning wildfires and extreme weather events that put many people at risk. Climate Change is here. It is terrifying. And, it is just the beginning! The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived! The reason that setting new temperature records is such a big deal is that we are now being challenged to find ways to survive through temperatures hotter than any of us have ever experienced before. Soaring temperatures place ever increasing strains not just on power grids and infrastructure, but on human bodies that are not equipped to survive some of the extreme heat we are already experiencing. It's no accident that the hottest July on record has brought deadly heat waves to the U.S., Mexico, China and Southern Europe; smoke-causing wildfires and heavy floods world-wide, said Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto. Pay attention everyone!!! OR..... IT MAY BE THE END OF BOTH YOU AND I!!! And, in that case...it really doesn't matter where you heard it first!! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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