Baby, It's Cold Outside!

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was a song written by Frank Lesser in 1944 and popularized five years later in the movie, Neptune’s Daughter. Since its release, there have been more than 400 different recordings including those by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan (1949), Sammy Davis, Jr. and Carmen McRae (1957), and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme (1960).

Even high-profile county music couples have made it their own from Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood to Amy Grant and Vince Gill. So have pop stars such as Michael Buble, Ray Charles, Kelly Clarkson, Natalie Cole, Lady Gaga, Tom Jones, John Legend, Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, Olivia Newton-John, Lou Rawls, Darius Rucker, and James Taylor… just to name a few.

Dolly Parton? Yep, in 2004 with Rod Stewart. Even Mr. Margaritaville himself, Jimmy Buffet, gave it a twirl in 2016.

Willie Nelson has recorded the song twice with two different partners, Norah Jones (2009) and Lee Ann Womack (2016), the latter of whom also recorded a 2002 version with Harry Connick, Jr.. However, for my money’s worth, Dean Martin’s recording is the quintessential version.

Although vocalists as wholesome as Doris Day and Dinah Shore recorded the song, its lyrics became controversial during the height of the MeToo Movement, with a number of radio stations refusing to play it on air until alternate wording was written. Meanwhile, rap songs with overt sexual references and vulgar lyrics that degrade women continue to fill the airwaves.

Oh well, that’s a commentary for another day.

For today, let’s concentrate on Baby, It’s Cold Outside because… well, it is! After all, I am writing this article on January 9th to be published on January 11th and guess what? There is a cold front passing through Florida tonight into tomorrow and then again next week, when nighttime lows are projected to fall into the high 30s and low 40s. For this transplanted New Jerseyan who relocated to the Sunshine State to get warm… that’s frigid!

I guess I shouldn’t complain however, because I just saw that the daytime high in Chicago next Monday will be 1 degree F and the same on Tuesday. Nighttime temps will range from -8 F to a balmy -1 F. Brrr… and no, thank you!

The point I want to make today is that it gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Duh! And yes, some summers are hotter than others and some winters are colder than others, too. The bottom line is that the weather is cyclical, and it’s always been that way.

I am too young to remember the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when hot and dry conditions scorched the Plains States. Here is how the National Weather Service, an agency of the U.S. government, described it…

“The ‘Dust Bowl’ years of 1930-36 brought some of the hottest summers on record to the United States, especially across the Plains, Upper Midwest and Great Lakes States. For the Upper Mississippi River Valley, the first few weeks of July 1936 provided the hottest temperatures of that period, including many all-time highs.”

Oops, did the National Weather Service just admit that global warming peaked in the mid-30s, at least is some parts of the country? Wait, there’s more!

“In La Crosse, WI, there were 14 consecutive days (July 5th-18th) where the high temperature was 90 degrees or greater, and 9 days that were at or above 100 degrees F. Six record July temperatures set during this time still stand, including the hottest day on record with 108 degrees F on the 14th. The average high temperature for La Crosse during this stretch of extreme heat was 101 degrees F, and the mean temperature for the month finished at 79.5 degrees F – [the] 2nd highest on record.”

Not to be outdone by La Crosse, 17 cities in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin set all-time highs that summer that still stand today, with Decorah, IA topping the list at an egg-frying-on-the-sidewalk 111 degrees F.

Gulp! You talk about your “inconvenient truth!” Where’s Al Gore when you need him?

I am also too young to recall the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted approximately 300 years from 950 A.D. to 1250 A.D. During the MWP, temperatures soared around the world, especially in Western Europe, Greenland, and Iceland. That means that for three centuries, the polar icecaps were shrinking, and icebergs were both dislodging and diminishing in size.

Hmmm… didn’t the Industrial Revolution start around 1760 A.D.? It’s hard to blame cars and coal-fired factories for temperatures that occurred 500-700 years before they were invented.

Thankfully, the MWP was succeeded by the Little Ice Age (LIA) which lasted about 550 years from 1300 A.D. to 1850 A.D., rather inconveniently overlapping the first 100 years of the Industrial Revolution. Sorry to burst your bubble, John Kerry.

Guess what happened after that? The earth started warming up again! What a surprise!

I’m guessing that God knew that yours truly couldn’t possibly survive in even a Little Ice Age, so he turned up the thermostat a few degrees to keep me warm and toasty. I can’t prove it, but I’m crunching the numbers as we speak to try to prove my theory.

Folks, please stop listening to the jetsetters who fly around the world from climate conference to climate conference, crying wolf as they go. (My apologies to Leonardo DiCaprio, who prefers to charter billionaire entrepreneur Ernesto Bertarelli’s $190 million yacht to travel to such environmentally-sensitive venues, using a gas-powered helicopter for his shore excursions.)

Which begs the question: who has a smaller carbon footprint? Moi (Leo loves it when I speak French), who lives in a 34-feet long trailer heated and cooled by electricity and propane or Mr. DiCaprio and his 318-feet long yacht? I’m also willing to bet that Leo the Lying owns more than one gas-guzzling car as opposed to my single 2020 Chevy Equinox that averages 30 mph.

The same goes for the other climate fraudsters and flim-flam artists like Bill Gates and Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg, arguable the most nauseating post-pubescent woman in the world. Thunberg has made a name – and very possibly a fortune – for herself by being angry 24/7, while Blowhard Bill continues to buy up American ranches and farmland at a record pace. The Microsoft founder and Jeffrey Epstein confidant currently owns an estimated 270,000 acres spread across 18 different states, making him the largest private landowner in the U.S.

Makes you wonder what ol’ Billy Boy has in mind, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, other climate alarmists such as Barack Obama continue to purchase oceanfront properties like they are going out of style. And here I thought the sea levels were rising at an alarming rate? Truth be told, the water in the Vineyard Sound rises a whopping 2-3 millimeters per year, so Barack and Michelle should be high and dry for the foreseeable future.

That sure takes a load off my mind… how about you?