Thursday, August 4, 2011

It’s hot. It’s hot everywhere and getting hotter each year. No, not Sophia Vigera the weather. The government needs to step in and do something about it. Instead, Congress makes sure they don’t get any pay cuts and they go on vacation. After all, what is most important? Emissions from gas guzzling cars and whatever else has obviously harmed the ozone layer and each summer proves it with rising temperatures that are more than the previous year.
We tolerated the warnings but now it is really effecting this country. The entire middle states are experiencing dried up rivers and lakes, livestock is dying from lack of grazing grass from lack of water or rain, tornadoes and hurricanes are out of control reaching northern states that never had them before and even if it does rain, it is not for long and is not cooling.
We spend billions on the military but we hardly ever see them stepping in our country to save our forests ravaged by fires. We see them sending purifying machines to Haiti and other countries that do not have clean water but none are being used in this country to purify sea water so we can water our crops for food and livestock. Yet, pipe lines are erected instantly to transport oil all over Alaska.
I even thought we had the knowledge and capacity to move clouds to create rain. I am not insane, I read it somewhere. The shortage of cows in America has made beef prices rise rapidly. Steak is a luxury now and most of the American people can’t afford to purchase chopped meat in the supermarket for hamburgers. An expensive hamburger is almost un-American in this country.
We should at least know more about our weather. Yes, the weather explanation was a science lesson we slept through in school. How many times have you heard , ‘It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity?” Well, it is true. Humidity is a balancing act, too little and we are dried out, too much and we are miserable like most of the country is experiencing now. It costs more in electricity for all the air-conditioners to cool our any place we want to be and for all those cloths dryers we use instead of cloths lines. Remember them? No, I see them in old movies sometimes.
Humidity. It is gross. It is the condition in the air that makes mold and mildew grow faster. Yeah, the stuff that makes the loaf of bread you just bought turn fuzzy and green. We shouldn’t eat fuzzy green bread. It is also the stuff that makes you sick in your house and rots wood.
Most of us can’t afford to have leaky plumbing in our homes or mold and mildew growing on the wood in our homes due to neglect of making simple repairs to avoid the problems. Although, Ty Pettington might yell at you through a megaphone and say that he will build you a wonderful house for free, pay your mortgage, kids college and buy you a new car. “ Honey, leave the faucet on and flood everything you might have. Maybe the guys from Extreme Home Edition will stop by. “ Fat chance!
Mold and mildew also makes metal things rust faster. Yes, our iron gates and lawn furniture rust keeps the Rustoleum paint company in business. It also makes our government waste billions on infrastructure repairs to our bridges and overpasses. Painting bridges is an endless task. Once you paint and scrape the rust off, it needs to be done again immediately. Our government has created budgets to pay for new overpasses on our nation’s roads but has little or no budget for maintenances or repairs. So, chances are that the rusted steel will be replaced before it is painted. Lots of bucks for that!
Humidity also cranks up our allergies. Bad! It makes us more than sweat, the water in the air can also make your car get better gas mileage. Good Thing! And thanks to humidity, some plants never need to touch the ground to get water. Plants like the Epiphyte can actually live on the water they get from rain and the humid air.
How much water is in the air? On a humid day, if you can capture all the water in the air just above your house, picture a column of air rising into the sky, it would add up to more than 1200 gallons of water floating by. And, that is just over one house. Multiply that by every house in your town or city, humidity turns our skies into virtual oceans. How can we bottle this stuff?
We all hope that a good rain can break the heat on a summer day. It is actually the other way around. Less heat brings on more rain because hot air holds more moisture. So, when a cool front moves in, the air can’t hold that water anymore and has no where to go but down. Rain. Humidity will be a problem even after a heat wave ends. That’s because the average global humidity has been increasing as a result of climate change.
All those tiny molecules of water floating in the air are trapping more of the son’s heat raising temperatures even more. So, what might be effecting us more is the humidity not the heat. Now that I have given you a bedtime story like in school, hopefully you have passed out in a cool place.
 

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