climate change

If your answer is "no" then you don't have to read any further this week in the Kudzu Telegraph. This column may not appeal to you. You could be one of those discerning readers who at the mention of Al Gore begins composing a well-practiced tirade against the author, former vice president, almost successful presidential candidate, climate change activist, Oscar winner, and last week, recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize shared with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It's OK. I could list a few public figures I feel the same way about.

I'm a sucker for "end of the earth" stories like the Bible's "Revelations," Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds," Walker Percy's LOVE IN THE RUINS, and Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD, but here's a new one with a twist: THE WORLD WITHOUT US by Alan Weisman.

Last week it was 100 degrees for four days in a row, the first time since the upstate started keeping records in 1918. One day about 4 p.m. the mercury officially topped out at 105. People were suffering in the abnormal heat, so we were among the lucky ones. Our air conditioning (thank goodness for human ingenuity) was humming along, but a few times a day I wandered outside into the world so I could feel it in my face, on my body-historic heat.

Last January, U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis went to Antarctica and beamed photos back of calving glaciers and National Science Foundation-funded research stations to Spartanburg High School students via a phone conference.