Environment

On Saturday, news reports claim that rain fell "at the summit of Greenland," two miles above sea level, for the first time. 

Let me just isolate that descriptive phrase: for the first time.

A similar weather event had never been recorded. When moisture comes to Greenland's icy mountains, it comes as snow. Always. For as long as anyone can remember. Don't believe me about the rain? Read it here.  

This morning, in its "Best of the Post" series, the Washington Post is reprinting an article they ran a year ago, a comprehensive summary of weather disasters and their most obvious link to climate change. That article's reappearance is meant to convince people that something, well, different, is happening in our environment, something which requires significant attention and organized response. Read it here. 

Last week, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body created by the United Nations, released a 4000-page report on the issue at hand. The news isn't good. It's bad. It's worse than bad. They also released a 42-page summary. Read it here. 

Last weekend, The Twelve ran a comprehensive essay by Debra Rienstra, who similarly looked at the environment around her and around us, and tried to make sense of it, then recommended some steps we can all take, not just to observe but to act. Read it here. 

Yeah, you say, but all those sources. . .you know, they're all liberals, lefties, they're not rock solid, they're bringing our country down. They don't love America. You know what Sean says, and Tucker's all over that stuff. Just listen to him.

Tell you what. As your local scientist. If you live out here in the northwest corner of the state of Iowa, actual, diploma-carrying scientists are plentiful. They teach in Christian colleges. They know what they're talking about, and they see Creation as God's handiwork. Ask them. Ask any of them.

How can we explain an 80% turnout for Donald Trump in the last Presidential election? Here at least, that level of support could be attributable to abortion. Trump replaced three Supreme Court judges with nominees whose previous rulings made people believe they might just overturn Roe v. Wade.

My fear is that people in my neighborhood have simply begun to believe Fox News, believe, as in "put complete faith in." What happened is that Trump's whole agenda smeared itself into the region's anti-abortion sentiment, an agenda that includes a denial of our (which is to say human) role in climate change. The Trump Agenda includes detesting critical race theory (CRT), not because it's wrong but because it's upsetting. It includes "the big lie." Around here, people hook, line, and sinkered the whole Trump mess.

People who might well have been thoughtful and reasonable about things, like masks, for instance, or vaccinations, or climate change, lose their ability to be reasonably thoughtful. They oppose CRT, not because it might be a way to look at American history, but for reasons that have a base in racism--we don't want them taking over because right now and ever since 1776, we've been in charge. Good Christian white people.

You're right if you think that I'm not an authority on climate change. I'm no scientist, and I'm not as well-informed as I could or should be. I'm not a radical, not on fire. I don't rant and scream.

But Saturday it rained on Greenland's icy mountains, rained like never before. Not once, in a couple of hundred years.

And I know this too. We've got thistles out back that are seeding now. I've been pulling them for the last month or so, but I didn't get them all--does anyone? Yesterday and the day before, it was so hot, I told myself I wasn't going out there to do Adam's work; it'll have to get cooler before I try to sweep up the prairie. Besides, for most of the summer, the sky been pale with smoke from mega-fires a half continent away.

I don't need some guy in a lab coat or some woman flicking a cursor over a wall full of data to tell me that the July just concluded, was, without question, the hottest July on record. I know it was. Out back, the dirt is salty from my sweat.

Don't take my word for it. Ask around. You know what is right.