Global What?

I found this in the Tuesday letters to the editor in the Dallas Morning News: Global warming isn't new; we called it weather

Glory to the Lord, I saw rain Sunday! Nose pressed to the window, I was transfixed. It took me back to October 1957, the time of Sputnik and the torrential rainfall that sent the new Lake Arlington over its spillway in three weeks, as opposed to the predicted two years. That was long before "global warming" and followed six years of record heat and extended drought. The Dallas Morning News recently printed some charts showing the number of 100-degree days per year for our region. Viewed chronologically, we find that the early 1950s averaged about 41 such days per year. In 1954, our 4-year-old son had his leg caught up to the hip in a "lawn" crack. Watering restrictions were so severe that we paid tanker trucks to spray Red River water on our lawns; we even drank – er, choked down – that salty stuff. Like Collin County today, there were insufficient lakes or reservoirs to carry us through the drought. Ask any "Okie" from the mid-'30s if he or she heard of global warming back then. Or ask about 1980, Dallas' year of hell that followed the "global cooling" scare. "Global warming" comes and goes. No one really knows why. Ed Matza, Plano