Why do so many people seem to dislike winter and love summer? We so often hear the complaints of people in the colder climes, and especially the typically warmer parts of the country, bemoaning the cold or snowy weather. First, cold happens. Its been happening since way before we humans sullied the climate here with our spewing of the greenhouse gasses which have led to global warming, which actually leads to colder periods and more extreme weather events down here in the lower 48. Thats a whole other discussion though. I guess what I was alluding to is the fact that when the temperature is 25 degrees in Jacksonville, Florida in the middle of November, we can thank, at least in part, our ceaseless over consumption of fossil fuels to power our homes and gadgets and fill up our Escalades. Just a reminder that before we whine about either the cold or the heat, we should take responsibility for our part in the weather extremes that we are more and more frequently subjected to. Around October, we start hearing the grumblings of the local meteorologists, already priming us to whine and fret about the inevitable winter and its cold weather. They love to throw around sensational phrases like, bitterly cold, and bonechilling and dangerous windchills. Lets get real! A wind chill is only dangerous if you find yourself in a pair of shorts and a t shirt trying to sail your Sunfish on Lake Superior in January. Otherwise, put on a coat. You will live. That brings me to the point of this piece. Unlike hot weather, during periods of cold weather, one can very easily negate the physiological effects of exposure to cold by doing what I suggested earlier, which is to put on a damn coat! I propose to you the following logic. Even if the temperature is zero, we can be perfectly safe and comfortable by dressing in layers. When it is 100 degrees in the shade with the a heat index of 115, youre screwed. Even if one were to strip down naked to beat the heat, (which would ensure a quick ride to jail,) there is simply no way to be comfortable in those conditions. Getting back to the danger part, although more people do fall ill each year from the effects of cold on the body than do from the heat, the numbers are negligibly different. So, both heat and cold do have deleterious effects on our maintaining homeostasis but again, we are much more able to negate the effects of extreme cold when compared to extreme heat. Im certainly not suggesting that we all jump for joy while digging out from a snowstorm, which, by the way, will make you sweat no matter how cold it is, but I am saying that we know winter is cold so lets put on our big person long johns and suck it up! The next time you hear someone complaining about the cold, and that someone may be you, I say, put on a coat. Just another one of those things that we learned in kindergarten, which is as we all know, the place where we learned everything we need to know! ~ Jason Parrish
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:33:59 +0000