Finally, the debate over global warming is over.

Man, it’s hot out there.

No more of this scientific bickering about climate change. Forget doubting e-mails, past ice ages and that time reptiles fooled around in Siberia.

This time for sure!

It was 98 yesterday here in the Nation’s Capital. Maybe hotter where you are. That does not include the several million metric tons of hot air emitted by Congress.

Yesterday’s column asked the standard hot-enough-for-you? summer time question and asked readers if anybody remembered the old Misery Index. It was used to determine if was hot/humid enough to permit sagging civil servants to go home.

A number of readers, who survived the heat, responded. And here’s what they report:

• I’m a long-time (39 years) Fed who worked in a shop environment back in the ’70s for DOD. I remember the numbers quite vividly: a minimum temperature of 95 combined with a humidity reading of 55% would give your managers the ability to release you from work. Just to clarify what normally happened was we kept working. One day someone from the environmental folks downtown sent an engineer out to White Oak, Md. where our lab was located. He found temps of 105 and humidity of 58. As he stood there in his Bermuda shorts and tank-top he told the boss he didn’t think it was too uncomfortable to work. After we were told what he said he made a quick exit from our shop before things got hotter! Mick McDonald
• I’ll bet if you could canvas your readers to look in a still existing copy of the ‘old’ Federal Personnel Manual (FPM) that the temperature limits would be in there … everything else certainly was. I know that some ‘old timers’ like me and those I used to work for did not destroy the FPM when the Clinton/Gore regime was “reinventing” government. Really enjoy your articles and encourage my staff to subscribe to your column. Thanks for still doing such a great job on a daily basis. Sandy at VA
• Prior to the advent of air conditioning, the Diplomatic Services of many countries considered Washington, D.C. a hardship post. Heinrich E
• I’ve enjoyed and learned from your columns. I’m sure you are overrun with information but for a chuckle, I’ve included OPM’s June 1981 letter to Department Heads on Hot or Cold Working Conditions which updates the 1948 policy since “air conditioning, as well as proper heating, is commonplace.”, your July 1983 article on “Federal Policy on Hot Air Obscured by Haze”, GSA’s December 1983 GSA Order on “Hot Weather Dismissals”, and your March 1990 article on “A Beef About Roasting. Some things never change. Eileen V.
• Nothing exact, but I worked in an office one summer where it was ninety and you could not move or you would start sweating. Literally, you could not move. In the winter, it got down to 55. Great office. Dave A.
• When I was a new IRS employee, an old timer mentioned one day that Jimmy Carter’s tax act that year was his best. I asked the senior Revenue Agent how that could be because we didn’t have a major tax act that year. The old Revenue Agent said, “I know”. Shutting down the government for heat, cold, snow, or flood may be the government’s most efficient days each year. Doug in Denver
• Growing up in Norfolk and living in Richmond humidity was considered moderate unless you could take a knife, cut a cube out of the air and wring it into a glass. Stan F.

Nearly Useless Factoid
by Suzanne Kubota

According a paper commissioned by the American Mustache Institute and Quicken, as surveyed in the first six months of 2009 “mustached Americans earned 8.2 percent more than those with beards and 4.3 percent more than the clean-shaven.”

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