Sunday, July 8, 2012

We're Having a Heat Wave

   Hope everyone enjoyed the 4th of July.  Our family got together for a cookout, and we video chatted with  the kids out of state.  The fireworks displays were beautiful, although the Boston Pops celebration was interrupted with a downpour accompanied with thunder and lightning.
   It's back to work for many of us tomorrow, but anyone on vacation will be treated to a fabulous week.  Our New England temperatures have not been as extreme as much of the country.  Record high temps continue to sizzle the south and mid west, and new records are set every day.  I'm beginning to take this climate change stuff seriously.  I heard a fire victim from Colorado talk about the state becoming a tinderbox, because of the lack of snow this past winter.  Many of my relatives are talking about the unusual and extreme storms we've seen during the past few years.  Tornado's in Massachusetts last spring, a blizzard in New Hampshire in late October, then one of the mildest winters on record in New England.
    I heard a discussion about climate change and it's validity.  The best argument compared this to the debate about cigarettes causing cancer, and how difficult is was to convince people of the connection.  My mom died of lung cancer in 1983.  She was 54 years old and had smoked for more than forty years.  We all believed that smoking caused her untimely death,  but in 1996 there were still ads stating that Joe Camel was not the problem.  Camels were a popular brand of cigarettes, and their mascot was a cigarette smoking camel named Joe.  The tobacco industry set up a nonthreatening symbol to dispute the warnings from the surgeon general.  In the end, I believe that too many of us had sat in hospitals with loved ones dying from diseases caused from smoking.  TV commercials and ad campaigns could not get Americans to change our minds about the dangers of cigarette smoking.  I think the same thing will happen with regard to climate change as more and more Americans live through devastating storms.  We will believe what our eyes and ears tell us more than what any paid spokesperson has been paid to sell us .
    As soon as the citizens of the country are ready, I'm sure we will be able to tap into alternatives and solutions.  I'd love to have a solar powered home and car, as long as it is reliable.  The baby boomers may live to see a whole new world,  made possible by our children and grandchildren......and the beat goes on....the beat goes on......

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