Hello friends,
Just before writing this my phone lit up with texts from my brother and nephew describing just how hot this summer is for people. Per the Washington post,
El Paso has logged a record 27 days in a row at or above 100 degrees. Phoenix is destined for a 15th consecutive day at or above 110, closing in on the record of 18 days. And Miami has tallied a record 33 days in a row with heat indexes — a measure of how hot it feels factoring in humidity — of at least 100. Nearly 115 million people in our country are under heat alerts–this figure is likely to grow over the weekend.1
Heat is affecting our waters as well. SST [sea surface temperatures] conditions in the Gulf of Maine for 2022 retain the region’s distinction as being one of the fastest-warming ocean regions on the planet; with the 2022 data showing that the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 97% of the world’s ocean surface.2 And the Washington Post again, Florida’s coastal waters are experiencing,” … temperatures of 92 to 96 degrees in the Florida Keys, meteorologist and journalist Bob Henson said Sunday in a tweet.”3
A less myopic take shows severe heat affecting much of Europe as well with the frighteningly named Cerberus Heat Wave.4 And the “China Energy Investment Corporation, one of the world’s largest generators of coal-fired power, says the volume of electricity it produced on Monday had hit a daily record.”5 Mongolia, Pakistan, India, and Canada are also cooking.
At Skidompha we are looking at ways to reduce our carbon footprint. At this moment you may notice it is a little brighter in certain areas of the library as we change our lights over to LED bulbs. We are also reviewing a number of projects that would add efficiency and help reduce our usage of fossil fuels. These include solar panels, installing high-efficiency condenser units, retrofitting our current boiler to a high efficiency unit, and adding variable speed drives and humidity control to our air handling units. With luck, I hope to report further on this initiative in the future.
In the meantime, we are lucky that at this moment we are not going through such weather, but please remember that Skidompha is a lovely place to be when the weather gets too hot or too cold. We are climate controlled here, and are happy to have you stay the whole day or as long as you like.
Be well,
Matthew Graff
Executive Director
Skidompha Public Library