Heard Around the West
THE WEST
“Hot enough for you?” That’s the traditional summer greeting for Westerners meeting at the grocery store or in front of the post office. But from Portland to Phoenix these days, as the thermometer consistently ratchets above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the response might just come with an expletive. Now a new study of human-caused climate change’s effects on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem tells us that what’s going on might be even worse, the study found that the Yellowstone region’s average temperature is not only the highest it’s been in the last 20,000 years, “it’s likely as warm now as it has been in ” In addition, “The mean annual temperature has increased by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950, and could jump by another 5-10 degrees by 2100.” For farmers and gardeners in the area bordering Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, there’s a silver lining: The growing season has increased by about two weeks. Unfortunately, that only helps if there’s irrigation water, and we’re already too worried about climate change to even think about that.
