Early Spring For Springfield - Let's Hope Not

Image: Springfield Illinois Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Tree

Dave at The11thhour recently posted an article relating how warm this winter of 2006 has been. One of the warmest on record! This unusually warm winter seems to be having an impact upon our local trees. As you can see in the photographs below several varieties of trees are already budding in the first week of February. This may seem like an innocent enough sign of an early Spring, but it also leaves trees vunerable to diseases, and damage.

It seems to suggest something is not quite right with mother nature.

Why has it been so warm lately?

I spoke to a gentleman who abides in southern Texas just last week, and he expressed concern over the high temperatures effecting his locale this early in the year.

Few of us here in the Midwest want to endure a long cold winter, and we sure hate to pay to heat our homes during the winter, but despite this desire to somehow escape winter we also must recognize that if temperatures continue to rise that agricultural production in the Midwest may suffer.

My guess is that the common cause must be global warming.

Thank goodness I don't work as a climate scientist under the Bush administration, I'd probably be unemployed already. The corrupt Bush administration, made up of oilmen, and on the take from oil interest, are currently running a campaign of intimidation of scientist at NOAA, and NASA - attempting to keep the word quite on global warming!

Try telling that to the trees!


Photo: Horace Mann Plaza - Trees Budding In February 2006

Trees are amazing things really. Here in the Middle West people tend to take them for granted I had the opportunity recently to speak to a young gentleman from Mainland China. He expressed how concerned he was at the lack of trees in Beijing (his home town is the Capital city of China). He told me of how dusty his city has become, and that no matter how much dusting he would do before he'd leave for the day, that by the end of the day everything would be covered in dust. He felt that despite the incredible economic growth of his city in the last decade that more trees were needed to make his city a place worth living in. He very much appreciated how Springfield, Illinois has trees lining each street.


Photo: Horace Mann Plaza Springfield IL Signs of Global Warming?

Trees provide shade, create oxygen, reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, clean air of pollution, and slow winds that would otherwise turn our towns, and cities into dustbowls. They also look nice, and create a more survivable place to live. We need to pay attention to nature simply because we can't afford not to. It seems obvious that something just isn't right when trees start to bud in late January, and early February here in the Midwest.

Something doesn't seem quite right with our weather, and we all must wake up to this fact.