All I know is that when the Canada geese are over my head in Colorado, south-bound now, they are talking. And I presume it's not my head they talk about.
They could be discussing strange doings in our climate. Enough weirdness is happening in it to dominate a conversation across time zones - not that you'd think so if you listened to conversations on the ground. By the silence, one would believe the human species to be oblivious.
We are completing one of the most scorching summers ever, on the tailwinds of a year - 2010 - that tied with 2005 as the warmest on record. This despite a colder-than-normal winter in many parts of the country.
Where I live, I expect another extenuated autumn. It was beyond spectacular last year - the colors exploding like an end-time fireworks display. That was caused, however, by something unsettling and not healthy: the fact that winter did not want to come. That's just what pine beetles like to hear.
Climate change is helping turn the Rockies brown as the pine beetles eat with vigor. Only extreme and prolonged cold snaps in the high country, the norm generations ago, will stop them. Not now. Read the full report here.
Source: John Young, Statesman.com.
