This is, of course, my opinion and I’m stating it as such because I don’t want anyone going nuts on me.
Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and you could still buy Country Club ponies at, ironically, the country club in a vending machine in the men’s locker room here in Hooterville for fifty cents (true story), I used to work with battered women.
It was one of the most difficult yet satisfying jobs I’ve ever done. Now, with that said, let me tell you what would happen when it got hot outside.
The heat pisses some people off. And although I don’t know if there is any documentation to back this up, I know our numbers went up. When I lived in Nashville and also here when I was the coordinator of a domestic violence program, we would brace ourselves for the backlash of Mother Nature. This is completely unscientific, mind you, but my staff and I would psych ourselves up for the police calls we knew we would get. And, although my opinion is still unscientific, it did appear our calls would indeed increase and we would even have staff meetings about it in preparation for the heat making abusers into Neanderthals. (My apologies to all Neanderthals reading this post.)
Wait, let me see if I can find something. Got get a cup of coffee, I’ll be right back.
Okay, I’m back.
There is this study but it’s about eight years old.
I don’t know why I’m bringing this up but I do believe that the climate does impact human behavior. I’ve said more than once that just because a person is drunk is NOT an excuse to be abusive to their partner/wife/lover. Alcohol just makes people more uninhibited to do what is lurking in the back of their brains. And the heat isn’t an excuse either and this is just my thoughts on what I experienced.
There is no point to this. It’s just something I was pondering this morning because its wicked hot outside and it doesn’t look like its going to get any better. We are looking at a nice brisk 100 degrees outside today. I’m sure Rachel probably could find some official data on all of this that would be more “bonafide” but I do know what us folks in the trenches back in the day were talking about, and dealing with.
And that is what I’m thinking about this morning.
It is a clearly identifiable fact that when the temperatures go up, so do murders. Heat definitely affects people’s abilities to cope. Every last person in our house is cranky in a way that I have never seen before. Maybe we would be a more functional society if we had free fans for everyone.
I think free fans is an excellent idea!
Heat is yucky but now I have those new-fangled, surgery induced hot flashes. I feel like I’m being microwaved.
‘Coma, I may poke around a bit. I know there has been some research on seasonal/temperature effects on different things. It can be hard to tease things out – for example, if murders go up in the summer, is that because of the “heat,” or because people are out of their homes more, engaged in more activities, less occupied by work/school, etc.? One famous example is that ice cream consumption is high at the same time the murder rate peaks. Does ice cream cause murder? No, it’s just hot out there. Trauma admissions go up in the summer, but it’s generally thought that it’s because the warm weather encourages people to do things like ride motorcycles, kids are out of school doing dumb kid things, etc. That said, oppressive heat and humidity makes me extraordinarily cranky.