Climatic

I went to the hardware store today and bought a new thermometer. It felt unusually warm walking home, and my home thermometer, in the shady indoors, marked 30°. On a whim, I took my new t. outside to the garage roof. I expected to reach maybe 34°. I was astounded five minutes later to see a reading of 48° Celsius. That's 118° Fahrenheit.

I guess this is what the advocates of solar energy are talking about: there is a great deal of energy from the sun which, harnessed and somehow stored, could be doing useful work for us.
It is also the situation of seeing girls sun in bikinis, while others sky around them, in pictures of Innsbruck and the like. I intend to check again over the year to see what my garage readings are.

Following Gustav, and reading up on hurricanes, has given me a new respect for meteorological phenomena. A cyclone is a heat dissipating machine, that builds up in a positive feed-back loop once its activation conditions are met. It will keep going so long as there is excess heat.
It would be vain - and as a Canadian, I have to admit to the dream - to imagine we could build up heat in the summer to carry us through milder winters. It all dissipates as violent weather. We need to keep it cool in the summer, and make our winters warmer. And I mean outdoors. Needs work!