What is your favorite season? Various people would have different answers, naturally, but I have heard “fall” to be a common answer. The rationale behind this answer usually has something to do with the temperature being just right (as opposed to summer’s heat or winter’s chill) and the fact that the colors of this season are astounding.
Yet if some people are to be believed, fall this year is not the same as before. According to Dave Gram, who wrote a feature article on this topic, people are noticing changes in the colors of the trees and their leaves. The consensus is that the colors are less vivid, duller.
What is the culprit? Many people think that is the climate change that we are experiencing worldwide.
“It’s nothing like it used to be,” said University of Vermont plant biologist Tom Vogelmann, a Vermont native who’s among those who believes warming weather may be to blame for lackluster foliage.
He says autumn has become too warm to elicit New England’s richest colors.
According to the National Weather Service, temperatures in Burlington have run above the 30-year average in every September and October for the past four years, save for October 2004, when they were 0.2 degrees below average.
I am sure that just like me, you will find this information sad – and alarming. I see this as a wake up call, a clear reminder that we should change our ways and hope that it is not too late to save the environment. If we don’t, then what would be left for us to see and visit?