A very dear friend of mine (and I’m not talking Facebook), author and retired history professor Thomas Reeves and I have a somewhat running dispute about the weather.

He can’t stand the heat. One of his social media comments during a very hot summer day was that he was praying for February.

I despise winter. My preferences are shorts, sandals, and Aloha shirts.

The above photo was posted on my friend’s Facebook page on January 2, 2023. My friend captioned it “Pure beauty.” Maybe. But I don’t find much beauty in traffic jams or deadly car accidents or people keeling over dead as they try to shovel.

Today’s read is from Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Deaths from cold, even if many people don’t realize it, are far more numerous than deaths from heat.

Deaths caused by blizzards and cold snaps generally draw less attention because they are less sudden, suggests the Danish scholar Bjorn Lomborg, who notes that too much heat is apt to kill within a few days, whereas cold is more likely to kill over weeks.

Read the entire column here.