Global Warming? It's Already Here

.
Those who pooh-pooh that global warming is a certainty in our future, take note.

It's already here.

In the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota. The land of tall pines. A blowdown in 1999 took out huge swaths of those pines. And instead of growing back, trees like red maples are springing up.

The new north woods growing up to replace the millions of blown down trees isn't really a north woods at all but something more akin to the grassland savannahs farther south. Indeed, over the last decade or so, the blowdown has become a giant laboratory for measuring the ecological effects of a warming climate and the role humans are playing in accelerating the change.

Look around your own hometown. I'll bet you'll find changes there, already, too. Or keep your head in the sand and listen to Rush. Yeah, that'll work.
.
crossposted at firedoglake's Seminal