Climate Change and My Snow Boots

It's "Blog Action Day" sponsored by http://www.blogactionday.org. In this article, I'm not going to quote very many facts or data, or quote a lot of research on the fact that the world's climate is changing. I've read enough to know that climate change is "real" and it's here; here and now. I'm just going to share a story.

Winters were fierce. There was no sidewalk on my street and, in fact, my street was a dirt road that the city snow plows never noticed. I grew up in Salt Lake City in the 50's and early 60's. I remember struggling home from the school bus stop through 3-4 ft. snow drifts, and when I got home one of my favorite things to experience was to have my mother take off my cold, frozen snow boots and place my feet in a bucket of warm water. She put the snow boots on a special towel placed by the front door, for use the next school day. It was the kind of motherly attention that warmed my heart, as much as my feet.

Fast forward to winter in the 2000 decade. Where are the snow drifts? I have asked a few "old" friends from the northern part of the United States what the winter weather was like in their childhood days, and their experiences were the same..lots of snow in the winter. They also wonder where the snow went? Now it only snows a foot or two and then melts, generally.

Yes, there are studies about vegetation that blooms earlier now, or not at all. Crops know these things. Crops know that climate change is here, do human beings?

Of course I don't wish children of today to have to struggle home through snow drifts. In fact, today's Salt Lake City teenagers will sometimes go without a coat in the cold winter, just to be "cool", much less wear "uncool" rubber snow boots! (If they wear snow boots at all, it's usually expensive brand-name boots used to make a fashion statement.) I guess children's regular rubber snow boot sales have dropped off since the 60's, eh?