I’m sorry, folks, but this has, for many reasons, been a summer to forget for most of us who enjoy the outdoors. The primary culprits have been the incessant rains and abnormally low high temperatures throughout June and July. It seemed for many of us that much of our free time has been spent mowing grass that continually grew at a rate that is more associated with early spring, when mowing is necessary every three or four days.
From the too-much-of-a-good-thing department, vegetable gardeners struggled (mostly unsuccessfully) to save their tomato plants from the blight brought on by too much rain and too few warm sunny days. Farmers had to harvest what has been a bumper hay crop by hurrying to do it in between those overly abundant rainy days. This year it seems that those modest April showers brought more than May flowers …they started a wet, cool cycle that has continued for months. In fact, we had more typical summer day conditions in late April, but few after that. And this year it seemed as though April and May switched places, weather-wise.
With the exception of stream anglers, fishermen who prefer the local rivers had a tough time finding days when the Chenango and Unadilla rivers weren’t unseasonably high and roiled. Lake and pond anglers had it a bit better, even though venturing out on most days meant carting along rain gear, just in case. Hikers, joggers and bikers had to watch the forecast before venturing out, and even then might chance getting wet. Campers were lucky if they squeezed in more than a couple days without rain visiting their campsites.
And now, just when we’re beginning to see warmer temperatures arriving, the clash between repetitive cold fronts and that warmer air is triggering thunder storms and more rain, reminiscent of Florida summertime weather more so than ours. And possibly due to the unseasonably mild early spring we had, some trees are showing dying leaves while other fauna is withering far earlier than normal. Let’s hope it’s not an indicator of an early fall followed by an early winter.
It seems that a day can’t pass without reading or hearing something about global warming or climate change. It seems anyone with a shot at a study grant and funding has gotten into the act. Personally, I’m very skeptical of a lot of the claims as I’m old enough to know better than to second-guess this planet’s weather patterns -- that can readily change from year to year, decade to decade …mere blinks in the earth’s history. I recall our winters were longer and more severe when I was a youth in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. By the 1980s and ‘90s, they became milder for a while. Back then, I never attributed it to anything but the often unforecastable and changeable weather dynamics of this planet.
Even the experts can’t fully agree. One group promotes manmade causes through carbon dioxide emissions. Another contingent points to the past archeological climatic history of the planet, which has seen extensive global warm-ups as well as ice ages. Not being an “expert,” who should I believe? Maybe, to some extent, both sides are right.
Stephen H. Schneider, recognized as one of the world’s experts on climate change, wrote: “In general, temperature rises are projected to be greatest in the subpolar regions, and to affect the winter more dramatically than the summer. The scenario in which climate change brings longer growing seasons to the rich northern countries and more intense droughts and floods to the poor tropical nations …” And Danish expert Bjorn Lomborg writes: “Those of us who have spent decades grappling with the numbing uncertainties involved in environmental protection would never claim to know the real state of the world, let alone pretend that selective citation to fuzzy historical data would tell us.” Further, physicist Phillip Chapman notes” "My guess is that the odds are now at least 50:50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades,"
Geologists tell us our planet has spent most of its time in the throes of ice ages that last for a hundred thousand years each; and that interglacial periods where the world is relatively free of ice are short by comparison. According to this cycle, that has been going on for millions of years. Species come and go with the climate changes. Archeological fossil finds seem to bear this out.
From an outdoorsman’s layman’s perspective, I tend to wonder if the gloom and doom projections by some of the general media have more to do with ratings and money than validity as it applies to us. After all, it’s doubtful if any of us will live long enough to see what exactly our host planet has in store for us in the long term.
The battle to slow carbon dioxide emissions will be neither inexpensive nor pleasant for the majority of us living in industrialized countries. And the jury is still out on whether it will have a sufficient cooling effect on the global environment to offset the huge cost and radical changes in demographic lifestyles. Of course rapidly developing industrial countries such as China could throw the proverbial monkey wrench into the chances for any emission-lowering plan to work worldwide. In the end, perhaps that old saying, “everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it,” comes close to summing up what we’re about to face in the centuries ahead.
In the meantime, don’t sell your snowblower and don’t expect to see palm trees growing in your backyard.