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| António Guterres |
Calls it like it is. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres drove home the existential threat facing the world, declaring that the global warming era is now over.
“The era of global boiling has arrived,” he said on July 27. Hats off.
Global warming was always a lousy term to describe the heating of the atmosphere.
It has a sense of calmness, or even serenity. People living in Siberia or Canada’s far north might even welcome a bit of global warming.
But nobody wants to experience global boiling, which brings tragedies such as “children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, and workers collapsing in scorching heat,” said Guterres.
The world has just experienced the hottest July on record. Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Earth hasn’t been this hot in 120K years.
The Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida clocked in at a record 101 degrees. Phoenix suffered 31 straight days of temperatures of more than 110 degrees, shattering the previous 18-day record in 1974.
Yet morons such as Alabama's Senator Tommy Tuberville revel in their ignorance. The Republican said there's too much whining about the heat. "There is a very scientific word for this: it's called summer," he told the Huffington Post. "It's no hotter right now than it's ever been. I've been in this heat all my life in July and August as a football coach. The world's not heating up, come on." Tommy's brain must have melted down during those football practices.
Guterres believes there is still a little time left “to stop the worst” if leaders “turn a year of burning heat into a year of burning action.”
The UN will kick off its Climate Ambition Summit at its New York headquarters on Sept. 20, while the COP28 session is slated in November at Dubai.
PR firms can do their part in fighting global boiling.
They can heed Guterres’ call: “No more greenwashing. No more deception. And no more abusive distortions of antitrust laws to sabotage net zero alliances.”
Faith and begorrah. The US State Dept. has issued a “security awareness alert” after three teenaged thugs brutally attacked a 57-year-old American tourist in Dublin.
“The US Embassy Dublin encourages all citizens to be aware of their surroundings, especially when traveling in unfamiliar places, crowded locations, empty streets, or at night,” says the alert.
The Embassy advises against wearing expensive watches or jewelry and carrying a lot of cash. Keep a low profile, it says.
More than 1.7M Americans visited Ireland in 2019, prior to the pandemic. They spent $1.5B, up 71 percent since 2014.
They have to realize that Ireland is more of a country with a robust culture, history of rebellion, magnificent landscapes, rugged coast, shamrocks, fairies, and great craic. People live there.
The capital city of Dublin suffers the same petty crimes as NYC or any major city in the US.
The best advice for Americans when visiting Dublin comes from Sergeant Phil Esterhaus of the 1980s "Hill Street Blues" cop show: "Let's be careful out there."
More Pushaw. Less DeSantis. The political world won’t miss Ron DeSantis when he finally decides to shut down his campaign to nowhere. It will miss his rapid response director, Christina Pushaw.
Here’s what she tweeted after news broke that political action committees of the former grifter-in-chief have shelled out $40M to pay for his legal bill.
‘MAGA grandmas were scammed—based on false promises from Trump campaign officials who admitted under oath, on video, that they knew the election couldn't be overturned—out of their social security checks, in order to pay a billionaire's legal bills?” Touché.
To that, Steven Cheung, Trump spokesman replied that Pushaw and others working for the DeSantis campaign were akin to "desperate idiots and un-American morons.” Sad.
Pushaw easily wins the face-off with Cheung. Hope she ditches dullard DeSantis.
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