It is like a sauna in here

Another hot day.

One of Johnny Carson's routines was for him to exclaim in his monologue that it was a hot day in Burbank, when his sidekick, Ed McMahon would serve up a volley with "how hot was it?" for Carson to then deliver the punchline.

So, how hot was it here in Chennai?  The punchline was anything but funny--the tiles in the kitchen spontaneously exploded!

If not for mother's cooking, and the parents' delight at having me here, I would have fled town ;)

In a Polyannaish way, I can state that thanks to the free WiFi at home (free for me when parents pay!) I can all the more indulge in reading, tweeting, and blogging.  A hot thinking machine I have become.  And when overheated, I cool myself down with freshly made mango juice.  Father buys mangoes, mother makes the juice, and I drink it.  Not bad, eh!

With thoughts of the high temperature always on my mind, it should be no surprise that I tweeted about the global hot streak:

For 351 months in a row, or more than 29 years, global temperatures have been warmer than average http://t.co/cwI4lBigZC #ClimateChange
— sriram khe (@congoboy) June 23, 2014

Apparently that tweet ticked somebody off:

@congoboy seek the truth: http://t.co/gIKCs21Eht
— Conservative Ranting (@iGotSmarts) June 24, 2014

A ranting for sure!

That tweeting "Conservative" perhaps does not know that there are Conservatives, and influential ones at that, who know better.  Like former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chief Henry Paulson, who teamed up with others in order to get climate change the attention it deserves, though his worry is merely from an economic standpoint:

Mr. Paulson said the goal is to depoliticize the climate-change debate and instead focus on how it poses an economic risk to U.S. businesses.

"Risky Business" is the title of the report.  Among the business folks who have immediately appreciated this:

The Risky Business effort was applauded by the president of the Reinsurance Association of America, Frank Nutter, who said: "It is crucial that industry factor into account the science of climate change, and changes to national and global weather patterns in risk assessment and pricing."

The insurance folks who are in the business of betting apparently know better than to argue that there is no climate change to worry about.  I wonder what the likes of the Ranting Conservative will have to say about the insurance folks who have to put their money where their mouth is.

Apparently "Risky Business" is more than mere economics; the friend sent a link to this news item:

"As temperatures rise, toward the end of the century, less than an hour of activity outdoors in the shade could cause a moderately fit individual to suffer heat stroke," said climatologist Robert Kopp of Rutgers University, lead scientific author of the report. "That's something that doesn't exist anywhere in the world today."

Again, being Polyannaish, I guess I should be glad I am not dead, yet, and that I won't be alive to experience the terrible conditions.

But, seriously, there can be conditions worse than what I am experiencing now?