Rustle of the Prey, 42nd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor):  Deneb, Day of Destruction, 31st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E., or as you probably call it, August 1, 2026, was the warmest day ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. And the El Nino is just getting started. 

A former co-worker of mine, an arch-conservative and climate-change denier, adamantly insisted there was no credible evidence that carbon dioxide affected atmospheric temperature. He would insist that I read some pot-boiler fiction by Michael Crichton, and when pressed on the issue, would hold up  a set of cassette tape lectures he owned titled Water, Not Carbon, Determines the Climate, or some such other drivel. I reminded him that the Eocene had the highest temperatures in the geologic record and the highest levels of carbon dioxide, but he just took that as evidence that nature, not man, controls CO₂ levels, but ignored the correlation between temperature and carbon.  

As for water controlling the climate, I reminded him that Venus can reach an average temperature of 850° F, and if it ever had any oceans, they dried up long ago. However, it is covered by a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and clouds made of sulfuric acid, which, together, trap heat and warm the planet. He insisted that it's self-evident that the only reason Venus is hotter than Earth is that it's closer to the Sun.

I pointed out that the Moon is just as far from the Sun as the Earth,  and can reach temperatures of 250° F in the sunlight. At night, temperatures on the moon drop to below -200° F because it lacks an atmosphere to trap heat after the sun goes down. "Trivia," he sniffed, and walked off with his comforting copy of Water, Not Carbon. 

To be fair, he wasn't a particularly bright man. He also lived in the far exurbs and relied on his cars (he owned several) to get around, get to work, shop, worship, and socialize. His existence was dependent on gasoline-powered internal combustion engines. He took any discussion of climate change as a prelude to limiting CO₂ emissions, and any limitation of CO₂ emissions as an existential threat to his way of life. 

Anyway, tl/dr: it's hot out.