It was either the summer of 1978 or 1979 that we experienced one of the worst heat waves I can remember from my northeast Iowa youth. I know I was in high school when it happened, because I remember I spent much of the summer when I wasn't working (yes, high school kids worked back then) barnstorming around Allamakee and Winneshiek counties in a non-air-conditioned 1966 Ford, kicking up dust and just generally having a good time.
But boy, howdy, was it hot that year. I remember highs in triple digits for at least two weeks. My friends and I dealt with it. When we had to work outdoors, and almost all of us did to some degree or another, we just had to cowboy up. We took a two-hour break at the hottest part of the day, and while haying or walking beans, we kept a speaking-wet bandanna tied around our heads or necks. In our free time, we spent a lot of time in the water, frequently inner-tubing in the Upper Iowa or Yellow rivers.
It was summer. It got hot. We accepted it. But now, National Public Radio is using hot summer weather to - predictably - panic monger about climate change troubling kids on their summer breaks. There's just one problem with their arguments: They are pure bull cookies.
National Public Radio’s (NPR) recent article, “Climate change is now threatening a pillar of childhood: summer break,” tells readers that climate change is making outdoor play increasingly dangerous through heat, wildfire smoke, floods, and storms. The story features interviews with children disappointed by canceled camp activities and interrupted pool days, then presents those experiences as evidence that today’s youngsters are growing up in a fundamentally different and more hazardous world.
The premise is false, ridiculous even.
Rather than citing data or explaining the meteorological definitions of weather and climate, NPR quotes a child from Pennsylvania in the article, the daughter of Lauren Smith, who describes climate change as “the areas around you are just, like, changing all around you all the time.” Maybe she is conflating seasonal weather with climate because irresponsible adults told her that climate change is the same as weather?
Weather changes. Who knew? As of this writing, we're under a heat advisory here in south-central Alaska, with the high expected to hit 79. Imagine!
All kidding aside, though, yes, it's always gotten warm in the summer. And yes, sometimes there are wildfires. But NPR is doing nothing but panic-mongering here.
The outdoors has always involved risk. Long before anyone falsely blamed rising atmospheric carbon dioxide for the weather, children have been taught to avoid lightning storms, stay hydrated on extremely hot days, steer clear of swollen rivers, and respect the hazards of forests, lakes, and mountains. Summer has never been risk-free, nor should anyone expect it to be.
NPR relies almost entirely on anecdotes rather than evidence. Readers meet campers whose outdoor activities were canceled because of wildfire smoke and children whose soccer practices were shortened during hot weather. Those experiences are real, but they do not demonstrate that climate change has fundamentally altered childhood.
Here's NPR's piece on the matter. And, yes, their arguments are based on anecdotes, and as anyone with even the most elementary background in science will tell you, the plural of anecdote is not data.
For example:
This summer has brought no shortage of extreme weather and wildfires across the country. In northern Minnesota and Canada, fires devastated communities and caused dangerous smoke to blanket large swaths of the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. Deadly floods prompted disaster declarations in parts of Texas. And an extreme heat wave in July was dubbed the "new normal" for July Fourth celebrations.
So, because a hot July was dubbed (by whom?) the "new normal," we should all panic?
There have always been heat waves, and the hottest summers the United States has ever experienced were in the 1930s; my father related vivid memories of how hot the summers of 1932 and 1933 were, and how they dealt with them in the pre-air-conditioning era. There have always been floods. In the Allamakee County home of my youth, in 1976 there was a thousand-year flood, in which Bear Creek overflowed its bank and piled a bunch of dead trees up against the house's limestone foundation. We were cleaning that mess up for most of the summer. That's what you do. The weather throws things at you, and it's not something to panic over. These things have always happened, and always will. But NPR and the climate scolds would have us dial back our comfortable, energy-hungry modern lifestyles because of this - and what about our kids? Should they stay indoors, out of the heat, glued so a screen?
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No. Summer is for the outdoors. It's for adventure, for making memories that last a lifetime, for spending time with friends, for roaming, for getting in tight spots and figuring a way out of them again. Summers are a time to be a kid, even when it's hot outside.
Oh, and as for that long, hot summer back in the day?
We had a treehouse in a huge box-elder tree that overhung Bear Creek. This wasn't a kid's treehouse; it was a big affair, with a double bed, screened in, and even electricity. I slept out there a lot in the summer, because being over the cool water of the creek gave one an overnight break from the heat. But one night, I woke to the sound of distant thunder. I got up, and watched as the big thunderheads rolled over, muttering thunder, followed by a long, drenching, cool rain.
That heat wave was over. It ended, as they always do. And, as we always did, we went about our business. That's how you deal with summer heat. No panic; just patience.
