The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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This spring I built a greenhouse with about 14 old tempered glass door panels I had salvaged long long ago. Treated lumber framing and cedar siding, but mostly glass. Even had stained glass in the front door and two next to that plus another two in the back. Put a 55 gallon black barrel and concrete pavers to radiate heat at night.

The first spring day that hit 70 degrees, the greenhouse hit 90. What, I wondered, would happen when we hit 80 or more? I’m growing tomatoes and a few exotics in there, probably loved that 90 degree heat but I was betting they wouldn’t like Saudi Arabia temperatures. So I cut two large windows in the back opposite the front door to let heat out both ends. This week we hit the mid 80’s outside and the greenhouse hit 105.

Course, I panicked and bought sunblocking screens for the glass roof and got that attached. Next day we hit 89 outside and the hothouse was 107. Not exactly sure at what temperature green tomatoes roast on the vine, I ordered a solar powered exhaust fan. If that doesn’t work, I’ll order a second one.

Inside the greenhouse my tomatoes are 5 feet tall while the ones I planted outside from the same seed are spindly still, just beginning to realize summer is definitely here, but cold at night. The difference between the two is astounding. I recommend a small greenhouse to anyone who still pooh-poohs climate change, still thinks we ought to drive large SUV’s and wants to drill baby drill for more oil and gas. Death Valley broke its all time heat record this week and cities from Las Vegas to Miami are burning hot while the summer’s just begun.

I may or may not solve my greenhouse overheating problem. Bad planning on my part. There won’t be any exhaust fans for Mother Earth when us tomatoes begin to fry on our vines. No sun blocking shrouds, no good fixes. Just bad gardeners, when all is said and done.

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Scientists ( you remember those guyz, the folks we used to trust before we stopped using Reason) announced today that this July was the hottest month on record. At the same time the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, came out with its recommendations to deregulate the EPA, the Department of the Interior and any other agency that wants to use its power to tackle global warming. A spokesperson said they weren’t denying climate change, just wanted to make sure we don’t over-reach on putting the brakes on fossil fuel usage, might hurt the economy. In Texas, in the midst of a month of hundred plus degree days, their legislature wants to halt further wind and solar alternatives for energy production, arguing that these were unreliable. No doubt the sun stops shining in the Lone Star state during those hot summer months and only fossil fuel power plants can deliver air conditioning electricity.

If fossil fuel is the answer, give the Earth a few million years and these Republican science deniers can have their remains mined and used to power the grids of whoever is left on this planet. Phoenix set a record for over a month of 110 plus degree days recently and is now working on the next month’s. One Republican legislator scoffed at the notion that science could even know if we’re the hottest we’ve ever been in the last 100,000 years. Who was there to record the temperature back then, he wanted to know. Right. Couldn’t use anything but direct observation. Must be bullshit. Although … well over half of us believe in angels.

This might be mildly amusing … except that we’re talking about an existential threat to humanity that seems to be coming on faster even than our scientists projected. The Heritage Foundation has a plan, thank god. Course, their plan is to slow down doing anything about trying to mitigate climate change. What’s the hurry, their spokeswoman said, she who was EPA head under Trump. The fires are burning unchecked in Canada, floods are more severe on the east coast, heat waves are sweltering Europe and India and China, glaciers are melting and sea ice is going away.

Maybe the Heritage Foundation and their Republican clients are right, just turn the thermostat up for the air conditioning to cool us down. My advice to you kids out there: move north as far as you can. While you still can.

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Yesterday on the South End the thermometer hit 100 plus degrees. I know this is the banana belt, but even so, this is scary stuff. And today the meteorologists are running around with their hair on fire, yelling Excessive Heat Warning to any and all of us who think 80 degrees is hot as a Hell in a propane truck explosion. Today, they predict, we’ll hit 105 and Seattle and Gomorrah will peak at 111, melting freeways and turning bridges to goo.

Now, God forbid anyone politicize this any more than critical race relations, no global warming talk here, just a small blip on the meteorological record book, a mere 10 plus degrees warmer than ANY TEMPERATURE RECORDED ANY TIME OF THE YEAR EVER! Well, since the dinosaurs…. Just in the history of homo sapiens. I’m going to run down to the garden and plant watermelons and pineapples, fifty fifty I get a harvest. Next year I’ll plant papayas and banana palms, all kinds of exotic tropical flowers and wait for the anteaters and monkeys to migrate north, new garden vermin.

Triple digit temperatures on the South End, in case you live in Tucson or Yuma, aren’t exactly normal here, about as likely as rain that is half frogs and toads. I’m not one of those people who see climate change in every unusual rainstorm, hurricane, heat wave or cold snap. And no way am I going to argue with my neighbor with the historic TRUMP 2020 sign on his tree that will no doubt stay there til it rots or he can replace it with the TRUMP 2028 banner, but … geez, it’s hard to watch the world heating up every year this past decade or two without acknowledging that maybe, just maybe, even probably, all right, definitely, this greenhouse we call Earth is growing hotter. More hurricanes, more hundred year floods, more historic droughts, and yeah, triple digit heat waves on even the South End.

I get that one party is beholden to the gas and oil and coal industry. So I understand they’ll fight tooth and nail to keep digging and drilling and burning hydrocarbons and deny the remotest possibility of any of that being responsible for our heat wave this week. I get that. Doesn’t say much for profiles in courage but after the past few years I think we know that courage left D.C. on a fast coal burning belching train long long ago. Me, I don’t have kids, don’t have to worry about a future much beyond a couple more decades at best. But the folks with a stake in the future? You tell me. That stake seems more like one to the heart. In a couple of days the temperatures should return to the old normal. But not mine. History will not be kind. Course, we just won’t teach it, I guess.

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A man can only take so much of this summer heat. Naw, not the actual temperature outside. The constant coverage by the news media giving advice about not locking your kid in the car when you go in for your liquor purchase, wearing sunblock, drinking fluids, staying indoors, taking cold baths. I can’t take it anymore. Even Trump gets backpage coverage behind the weather. I mean, c’mon, it’s not an oven out there, it’s a hot summer day. Take a swim, take a shower, take a break, man.

Which is what I’m going to do. We’re driving over the mountains and into some REAL heat, triple digits with air quality alerts from the fires burning in British Columbia and Montana and our own state’s conflagrations. Beats listening to the caterwauling from the hyperventilating meteorologists, that’s for certain.

Anyway, if you’re not passed out already from heat prostration, let me offer my own advice. Go right now to the refrigerator and grab yourself a cold one. Sit back down and scroll thru some back posts with frequents trips to the refrigerator or, if necessary, to the nearest air conditioned grocery store with beer coolers. And don’t leave the pooch or the kid in the car while you run in. Do keep drinking fluids. And go easy on these sketches, maybe a couple per adult beverage. I’ll be back when the temperature comes down. Or my own beer supply runs out. God help us all.

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