I care!

In his post, Phoenix Broiling: Apocalypse Now or Later?, Jon Talton has some good memories of growing up in the Valley many years ago. It was a much more enjoyable and tolerable place to spend a summer.

"The Republic devoted a magisterial nine sentences today to the fact that Phoenix is on track to meet or exceed last year's record 32 days of 110 degrees or above.
Not that anybody living there now cares, but as late as the 1960s, the Salt River Valley had hard frosts in the winter (thus, far fewer mosquitoes, no West Nile virus). We went back to school in September, in un-air conditioned classrooms, because it was cooling down enough to open the windows. Night-time cooling in summer was significant, and the summers were not as hot, nor did they last as long, as now. The idea of more than a month of 110-and-above would have seemed frighteningly absurd.
Contrary to the mantra of "it's a desert, shut up about the heat!," these man-made changes in the Phoenix weather are a Big Deal. So far, they are mostly a local event, caused by the massive loss of agriculture and gargantuan increase in paved sprawl. Global warming's consequences haven't really started to kick in.
What happens then?"

Read his post at Rogue Columnist.
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