Madness Factor

My folks live in Vermont, and I just received a disturbing e-mail from my mother regarding the weather there. An excerpt: Today, the temps are over 60, grass is still green, and some birds and flowers are confused. Maple sugarers are tapping trees, ski resorts are going downhill, and golf courses are open! … We actually miss the snow.

Having grown weary of the two seasons Seattle usually experiences — cold and wet, hot and dry — I have long taken comfort in the notion that we will one day return to Vermont and its glorious seasonal variety. It sounds like we should get on that. Real soon.

More after the jump.

While I know the temperatures in the Northeast are expected to drop dramatically in the next few days, this spring-in-winter phenomenon is only going to get worse as time goes on and the effects of global warming (or “climate change,” as the Bush administration so affectionately refers to it) continue to take hold of our planet. My Vermont winters may be in the throes of death by the time we go back.

I don’t normally watch the news (I prefer to get my news on the “internets”), but tonight I caught a report on ABC News that actually acknowledged — via scientist sources — the unseasonably warm temperatures in the Northeast can indeed be attributed to global warming. Hallelujah, the mainstream media are catching on! Too bad it’s like 20 or 30 years too late. Text version of the story here.

And here is an article in The Burlington Free Press about the warm weather in Vermont.

Incidentally, if you want to see a good documentary about why the mainstream media have had their heads in the sand for so long, check out a CBC News program called The Denial Machine (part of the fifth estate series — Canada’s answer to Frontline). Here is a link to the Denial Machine web page, where you will find a video of the documentary in its entirety. (A warning: the video pops up in Windows Media Player, and on my Mac, the window was very small and I couldn’t figure out how to increase the size — YMMV.)