Bad news for the environment in other locales can be good news for San Diego.
Today, two offerings by the media - one on how hot and dry the City of Phoenix is getting due to climate change, and the second about the loss of Monarch butterflies in Mexico - is good news for us.
In an Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, entitled "Phoenix Too Hot Future", we learn:
In Phoenix, the convergence of heat, drought and violent winds is creating an ever-more-worrisome situation. ... [High] temperatures, however, are child's play in Phoenix, where readings commonly exceed 100 degrees for more than 100 days a year. In 2011, the city set a record for days over 110. There were 33 of them. ... It goes without saying that Phoenix's desert setting is hot by nature, but humans have made it hotter. The city is a masonry world, with asphalt and concrete everywhere. The hard, heavy materials absorb daytime heat more efficiently than the naked land, and then give it back more slowly after the sun goes down, preventing the cool of the desert night from providing much relief.