Florida, the state of denial, needs to eliminate 'heat index' for climate change relief

It is time for Florida to ban the words “heat index.”

It’s the next logical step to take for Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed a new law that removes references to “climate change” in state statutes.

Human-made pollution that helps to warm the planet and create stronger hurricanes and coastal flooding in parts of South Florida will have to be labeled something other than climate change in the state. 

Suggestion for DeSantis: “Freedom flooding.” 

The law eliminates the priority of addressing climate change – oops, I said it – by promoting energy sources other than fossil fuels. 

It goes into effect in July, which by the way, ought to be given a more Fahrenheit-friendly, tourist-beckoning name in Florida, such as “Chillember.”

Florida bans cities from protecting workers from the heat

In other legislative efforts, the state has also prohibited county and local governments from protecting their outdoor workers from the deadly heat during the summer months. 

Last summer’s death of a farmworker Efrain Lopez Garcia, 29, who was overcome by heat illness after picking crops in Homestead for more than 37 consecutive days with the heat index over 100 degrees, prompted Miami-Dade County lawmakers to consider a local ordinance to protect outdoor workers against lethal excessive heat.

If passed, the ordinance would have required employers to give their outdoor workers 10-minute water breaks after every two hours of outdoor work and to provide the workers a shaded area to help them cool down. 

But there’s no chance of that now, because state lawmakers and DeSantis preempted those efforts by outlawing any local or county measure that protects outdoor workers from the heat. 

Should I shower every day?Skipping daily showers in hot South Florida? Experts say yes. I say absolutely not.

It’s a stark contrast to what happened after a high school football player Zachary Martin died of heat illness after an outdoor practice seven summers ago. 

After that happened, the Florida Legislature passed the Zachary Martin Act to prevent future heat-related deaths during outdoor games and practices during periods of sweltering heat. That law requires Florida schools to protect their athletes with water immersion tubs, cooling zones, electrolyte guidelines and automated external defibrillators at each practice or game with a school employee trained to use them.

That was done before the state’s current phase, which might best be described as an era of “willful ignorance,” or maybe it’s “casual malevolence” or “codified malice.”

Whatever you call it, DeSantis seems poised to take the next step. If we’re going to deny climate change and prevent local measures to address it, we need a law to ban the words “heat index.”

Because it's the heat index that's the real culprit here.

What is the heat index?

The heat index is what the temperature feels like. It’s not the actual reading on a thermometer. It’s a calculation that adjusts that temperature by noting the relative humidity. When the relative humidity is high, the actual temperature feels hotter to the human body. 

Here’s an example from the National Weather Service heat index chart. An air temperature of 90 degrees with a relative humidity of 40% feels like 91 degrees. But if that same temperature is occurring when the relative humidity is 80%, it feels like 113 degrees, and the likeliness of a heat disorder has gone from “extreme caution” to “danger.”

Florida is already shattering heat records this year. Key West recorded a 115 degree heat index recently, the highest on record there at any time of year. 

And heat indexes throughout South Florida have been over 100 degrees lately.

So, it’s time for action, the kind of action we’ve come to expect from DeSantis and his enablers. 

“Don’t Say Heat Index” could be the next bold Florida initiative. 

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Florida, the 'Don't Sweat on Me!' state

Rather than bend a knee to the Soros-backed globalists at the big-government National Weather Service, DeSantis could move forward with a new front on his go-it-alone posturing, saying that Florida's weather is a state's right issue. And no Washington coastal elite can tell Florida what to think about its weather.

Should we start printing the "Don't Sweat on Me!" bumper stickers?

“We reject the woke ideology of the heat index,” DeSantis could say. “We here in Florida stand for people doing their own research about how hot it feels outside."

“We take a family-based approach to weather, and we reject being indoctrinated by unelected Washington weather bureaucrats and their hot-weather hoax,” he could announce.

As part of this, DeSantis could sign a new law that requires all reporting on outdoor temperatures in Florida to first be cleared by a state oversight board, whose members will be made up of term-limited lawmakers and large campaign donors appointed by DeSantis and paid six-figure salaries.

The weather will be subject to nondisclosure agreements under the governor’s executive privilege. And Florida will soon be the envy of Texans by leading the way in disparaging the concept of a "heat index."

Which, come to think of it, will probably be renamed “critical mercury theory.”

Frank Cerabino is a columnist with The Palm Beach Post, where this piece first appeared.