I was just checking on the temperature in New Delhi.
It’s coming up on midnight in the Indian capital as I write this. The temperature is 45 degrees.
News reports say that temperatures in northern India hovered near the 53 degree mark this week. Fifty three degrees! Can you imagine?
Fifty three degrees! Can you imagine?
My knee jerk response to any temperature measurement is to look at both scales, Celsius as well as Fahrenheit. I don’t convert distances but I still like to consider the old scale of measurement when it comes to temperature. When it comes to measuring weight, well, I don’t ever look at those numbers. A little mystery in life is a good thing, right?
But back to “Just how hot is it?”
Forty five degrees Celsius is equal to 113 degrees Fahrenheit.
Fifty two degrees Celsius is equal to 125 degrees Fahrenheit.
Hot.
Dangerously hot.
The Arizona Department of Health Services has a graph to help residents navigate temperature issues in their famously sizzling state. The graph only shows three temperatures higher than 125. It stops at an alarming 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The warning that accompanies 125 degrees Fahrenheit is dire: it says that heat stroke is possible and sunstroke, heat cramps and heat exhaustion are likely. Stay in doors. In air-conditioning. Drink “ten gulps every 20 minutes”.
Here’s an understatement for you: people don’t do well in excessive heat. We don’t do well individually, nor collectively. Emerging science is starting to correlate not just geopolitical conflicts to climate change, but crime spikes and emerging health issues, as well.
… but crime spikes and emerging health issues, as well.
Clayton Page Aldern was a neuroscientist at Oxford’s Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour when he became aware of a 2015 Pentagon report that examined the national security implications of a changing climate. The Department of Defense was teasing out the causations behind the Syrian drought and what ignited the civil war. Their findings revealed direct correlations between the challenges to agriculture and society and the resulting conflict. The Defense Department also acknowledged that in deploying 24,000 troops to deal with the effects of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, they were already in the business of dealing with the effects of a changing climate. The report wasn’t interested in rising sea levels or rainfall patterns specifically, but it was interested in the global climate’s capacity to aggravate existing social problems.
Aldern was fascinated by this. He started sifting through various findings and began to see patterns of behaviour affected directly by climate change. His book, The Weight of Nature, How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains, is a fascinating – albeit startling – read. In it, he reveals that we are not at our best when we’re too hot. Umpires miss calls. Students perform less well on exams. Drivers honk more and longer on hot days. Immigration judges are more likely to rule unfavourably on asylum applications. And sometimes we are murderously provoked by heat. The Gun Violence Archive shows that 86 percent of the 324 mass shootings that took place in the US in 2022 took place between May and September. Aldern also extrapolates data that indicate that neurodegenerative diseases will affect 14 million more people annually by 2050 as a consequence of rising temperatures.
… temperature is a dangerous agent provocateur.
Aldern’s posits that temperature is a dangerous agent provocateur. His excellent book pivots on a single thought:
“It wasn’t that a warmer world would hurt us outright, but that a warmer world would make us hurt one another”.
This week’s question for readers:
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE?
Leave your Comments below!
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Submissions to last week’s question:
WHAT’S YOUR EXOTIC FOOD PLEASURE AND WHEN WERE YOU INTRODUCED?
Coming from Europe, I’m familiar with Steak Tartare and love it. It’s raw minced beef with herbs and spices and topped with a raw egg yolk. It’s on the menu of better restaurants but a bit pricey. A cheaper version is Mett. It’s raw minced pork with onions, salt, and pepper on a bun and available at pubs and delis. A slowly drawn beer with a creamy head of foam and an open Mett bun is almost a gift of the gods.
By the way, humans are the only creatures that drink other species’ milk.
H. J. Ruger
I went for dinner with my dad to the Vancouver Club when I was quite young, perhaps six or seven years old. I had a mussel salad and have been hooked on mussels ever since. When you’ve grown up in Vancouver and seen them attached to the oily, creosoted dock piles, I couldn’t understand how people could eat them. Thank goodness today they’re raised safely, and bagged and tagged properly. Going to Vancouver’s Chinatown when young and experiencing the exotic foods
like dim sum was memorable. In Jamaica in the 70’s we could pick ripe mangoes off the trees where we lived. What a delight! Then there was the time in the ‘80’s, when I was camping in Andorra with my late husband. I actually ate a whole 10×10″ plate of tiny grilled escargots. Always liked them but these were amazing!
Margaret Dutilloy
I always count fresh raw oysters on the half-shell as my most recently acquired taste. I have loved oysters with a passion for about 25 years now, but that wasn’t always the case. My siblings and I have memories of our mum walking along Long Beach (Tofino), prying oysters off the rocks, and shucking and slurping them right then and there. As children we were quite grossed-out by this and never gave them a second thought as food. Flash forward to the early 2000’s on a business trip to Australia, or a company dinner at Joe Fortes where oysters on the half-shell were on offer. They were fresh, cold, and absolutely delicious. There is no other food that shouts out the flavor of the sea quite like oysters do.
John Leahy
I moved with my parents from Vancouver Island to the San Francisco area in 1968. My new elementary school had a cafeteria where students could buy lunch – a new experience for me. One day the menu listed Tacos (a mysterious dish my mom pronounced tackos) and I gave them a try. Disgusting! I told my mom I’d need to take my lunch on “Tacko” days from then on. Once I became a true “California Girl”, I grew to love tacos and still do to this day!
Chris Walton
Cheesecake! I remember learning about cheesecake and being entirely put off by the name. As a kid, my experience with cheese was pretty much limited to cheddar. I couldn’t imagine who would want a cake made out of cheddar. I resisted cheesecake for years and then, one fateful day, I tried it. I was instantly hooked! Cheesecake of any description is still my go-to when I’m looking for a treat. My waistline, however, would have benefited if I’d kept my wary distance of the oddity known as cheesecake!
S. Armstrong
Funny how the smell of something can turn your stomach but you end up loving the taste! My dad had kippered herrings for breakfast on the weekend and the smell of it made me sick. Years later, much to my surprise,I learned to love kippered herring.
Andrew McDonald
Fermented tofu! Hated it when I was a kid and love it now … but my kids think it’s gross.
F. Wong
One day, a neighbourhood pal offered me part of his grilled cheese sandwich. I was about six years old and had never tasted cheese; it just wasn’t a staple in our Chinese household food inventory. I remember taking a quick whiff and thought the drippy orangey,yellow goo smelled like poop.
After repeated coaxing, I held my breath, took a chomp and almost gagged. I couldn’t spit the stuff out fast enough. With more encouragement from his older brothers, I eventually developed a taste for cheddar cheese … I just had to convince mom to buy it. Besides cheese, these neighbours also taught me and my kid brother other important skills required to be true, red blooded Canadian kids: how to take a slapshot, throw a punch, spit for distance and, of course – much to dad’s displeasure – how to drop the classic “F-bomb”.
Wes Fung