The Heat Is On

Stop me if you have heard this one before. A hurricane walks into a bar, a nice little place overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. And then she rips the living crap out of it.

Déjà vu, anyone?

Yes, here we go again. Another major hurricane, another devastated coastline. They say we are suffering through more of these monsters than years past because certain waters are slightly, but definitively, getting warmer—and strengthening these cyclones to near biblical proportions.

If you are like me—and, if so, please tell me how to silence the voices in my head ordering me to do bad, bad things to squirrels—you are wondering WHY the oceans are heating up. Who is behind this warming and the resulting devastation?

I have my ideas.

1. Jim Cantore. Who is getting more airtime these days than our fearless hurricane hunter?

Weather Channel ratings are hot—is that merely a coincidence?

2. Aliens. (As in extraterrestrials, not border-crossers.) We saw War of the Worlds, so we are prepared for them to come at us from the ground. We saw ET, so we are prepared for them to come at us from our stuffed animal-filled closets.

But who among us anticipated that the little green men from outer space would slowly warm our oceans with undetectable laser rays, creating these killer storms that are devastating our coastal cities and paving the way for a direct invasion?

3. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY). For months he has been itching for a Judiciary Committee fight over a Supreme Court nominee; the man was reportedly seen giggling like a schoolgirl earlier this year when high bench justices were overheard sneezing. But John Roberts turned out to be a smart, capable, and likeable nominee—depriving New York’s senior senator a primo grandstanding opportunity and leaving him a steaming heap of infuriated anger.

My theory: A hot-under-the-collar Schumer dipped his feet in the Atlantic Ocean and, well … the rest is history. Our lesson? Beware hotheads in the US Senate!