Just as one can rarely blame smoking for one *particular* smoker's lung cancer, any one day's warm weather in a single location can hardly be called evidence of global warming. I spent many a childhood Christmas in Kentucky without a flake of white on the ground, and a white Christmas is more of a novelty there than a department-store Santa Claus.
All the same, as snow covered runways and roads from Portland OR to Chicago to Boston, I couldn't help feeling that Kentucky alone was bearing the evidence this holiday season of how winter precipitation goes wrong with temperatures just a few degrees warmer. Hazel looks happy enough, to be sure, and I know my sister-in-law and her family were glad that the southern half of their impromptu drive from Chicago to Louisville was ice-free. I'm glad to make the most of any weather, and 220 floating golf balls, harvested from nooks and crannies around my in-laws' 5 acre garden/playground, were evidence of a good time had by 4 cousins and 8 muddy boots.
One of the predicted hallmarks of global warming is more striking extremes of weather in any location. Next summer, if the last several years are any evidence, the area pictured will be cracked and dry, the gardens given I.V. irrigation to survive. I hope that all of these cousins, throughout their lives, will continue to be able to make the most of what the weather brings, with good shelter and family for company, and the imagination necessary to make appropriate use of golf balls or any other flotsam and jetsam they find.
1 comment:
Ha ha! I like your smoking analogy. In a similar vein, developing countries that don't produce a large volume of greenhouse gases, but nevertheless suffer agricultural and ecological as suffering from second hand smoke!
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