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Why aren't more people going to the beach?

This NYT article attributes the phenomenon to the reverse-global warming we're having. Nah, just kidding. It's a cool summer, and that's the reason given for the low beach attendance, but, of course, there's the predictable denial of the denial of global warming:

William D. Solecki, a geography professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York and co-chairman of a mayoral panel on climate change, warned that this summer?s unusually mild temperatures should not buoy global warming skeptics.

?Ask them to visit Seattle,? he said, where a record temperature of 103 was recorded on Wednesday.

?On average, going back decades, we would only have a few days above 90 in any given summer,? he said, ?and while we haven?t hit that mark yet, there?s still a lot of summer left.?

I love that we are "warned" not to feel optimistic. How twisted we've become! It's like people are rooting for disaster. I also love the way we're instructed not to take any cool weather as evidence of what the climate is becoming, but any hot weather will be used to "buoy" our belief that disaster looms ahead. (You're going to need a buoy when those oceans rise up.)

But I want to raise the question whether it's the low temperatures that are keeping so many people away from the beach. There are plenty of other reasons not to go to the beach: it's a hassle, we've got air conditioning, we love indoor activities like movies and computer games, we're concerned about skin cancer, we've gotten fat and don't want to be seen in a bathing suit, etc. etc. It's really quite silly to think that ? in the modern world ? going to the beach is the natural and automatic response to hot weather. Most of us can get some cool at home, and if we can't, it's much simpler to go to the movies or a restaurant.

As the generation that grew up without air conditioning ages and dies off, maybe beach-going will become an old-fashioned, occasional activity, not the main idea of summertime.

Full post as published by Althouse on August 01, 2009 (boomark / email).