Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

Okay, so this morning I pick up the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel at the front door where I am staying right now and am greeted with this blazing headline: 2007 may be hottest yet.  Given the record warm years of recent decades, that’s saying something.

The prediction is a result of research by British climate scientists.  Global warming, combined with the El Nino effect that began forming several months ago and will last at least until May, will bring record warmth to the planet resulting in an increase in extreme weather events this year.

It is not hard to convince people around the northern midwest where the ground is bare and temperatures today here in Milwaukee hovered around 50.  The normal high is 29. 

John Young, director of the Wisconsin State Climatology Office, said of the forecast from the Brits:

I think this is a very clear statement of what many of us believe.

Also, Young notes that:

…the upward trend in greenhouse gas emissions — combined with natural weather cycles — has nudged up temperatures in Wisconsin for the past three decades.

Well, we Wisconsinites know this.  We know that we have lost our long cold snowy winters, and not just because of one El Nino cycle.

This report is not saying that global warming is the sole cause of this year’s predicted record warmth, but that it exaggerates the impact of the El Nino.

Even a moderate [El Nino] warming event is enough to push the global temperatures over the top.

Now, I just listened to the NBC Nightly News reporting on the winter’s crazy weather where someone from the NOAA swears this is all about El Nino and not at all about global warming.  That’s reassuring, but contradicts this British report.  Check out how the BBC reports this story, which is a lot like that on the front page of the Milwaukee newspaper.   Even more interesting, when I checked the Nightly News web page just now, I couldn’t find Williams story, but I did find this — an AP story that says that record heat will be due to El Nino — and — global warming.

Would it be too scary to tell people the whole story, for instance, to also report what the British climate scientists are predicting?  It’s not that El Nino is not in play, but there is more to this story, a lot more.

An important part of that story is represented in the graph that you will find at the bottom of the BBC story.

I don’t want to be lulled to sleepy complacency.  I want my alarm bell to be loud enough and early enough to rouse me from slumber and get me out of bed in time…

It would be nice to see what’s in our newspapers all around the country today (even USA Today) reported on the TV news, no?

Should be a good year for the ice-making industry…