News

Global warming vs. Carnival lovers

 

LAURA BILLINGS

Pioneer Press, MN

January 29th, 2006

 

My warmest thanks to the many readers who, in response to a recent column on drowning polar bears and global warming, forwarded reports of the record cold temperatures in Russia this month. My inbox has been full of wire service accounts of the Siberian cold wave and mounting deaths from exposure, as well as human interest features about the monkeys at a zoo in Lipetsk, who were given a dram of wine three times a day, just to guard against the cold.

 

Typical of these was an e-mail from a reader featuring an Associated Press photo of a wind-chapped Muscovite, with snot frozen to his face.

 

"As this photo makes clear," wrote the reader, "global warming does not exist."

 

Would that it were so, guys, but I'm really not making this stuff up.

 

In fact, just the other day, at a symposium honoring the 35th anniversary of the Environmental Protection Agency, six of its former heads — five of them actual Republicans — blasted the Bush administration for ignoring the threat of global warming.

And not even the president is still arguing over whether global warming exists. Last July, before the G8 summit, Bush said he recognized "that the surface of the Earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases is contributing to the problem."

What might be confusing some of you who wrote to me is that he also has no intention of doing anything about this problem.

Since one season's highs and lows do not prove or refute a climate trend that must be measured over years, I will refrain from pointing out how all of the ice sculptures in Rice Park are melting faster than the Wicked Witch. I will warn, however, that if current trends continue, there may be no place to hide the Winter Carnival medallion. Worse still, a global trend of temperate weather of the sort we've had this season threatens to undermine the whole meaning of St. Paul's Winter Carnival.

 

Those of you familiar with the history of the Winter Carnival — with its epic battle between Boreas and Vulcanus Rex acted out annually by Rotarians and real estate agents — will remember that it started back in 1885 when a reporter from New York allegedly called St. Paul "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation."

 

Although this was not far from the truth, the unnecessarily insulting phrasing has forced civic leaders out in full force for more than 100 years to insist that it's actually fun to have parades in weather that makes your nostrils freeze shut. Not only does enduring such hardships with a happy face prove that that long dead reporter was wrong, but it also serves to indoctrinate our children into believing that their parents made a wise choice by staying here and not moving to California or the Carolinas, as some of the second cousins did.

 

The hope is that by imprinting the glory of the Ice Palace and the merriment of the Vulcan Krewe on their little brains, our offspring will be wired to stay on the ancestral homeland in spite of the obstacles, much like those little Emperor penguins we've heard all about.

 

Yet, climate change puts this whole tradition at risk. In fact, if the poles keep melting (Fun fact: 2005 turned out to be the warmest year since modern record keeping started in 1890), more may be lost than just the ice fishing contest that had to be canceled this year.

 

Recently, in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, some climatologists forecast what would happen if carbon dioxide readings doubled over the next 100 years, as they could if we do nothing. According to a computer model, that would make the coldest days of the year in our part of the country warmer by up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit than they are now. During the last days of January, which Winter Carnival founders picked precisely because it was so snowy and cold, we'd have nothing to celebrate but a few puddles.

 

And you know what that sounds like, don't you?

 

The Minneapolis Aquatennial.

 

If that doesn't encourage you global-warming deniers to get on board those hybrid cars, nothing will. Just the thought of such a future for St. Paul's best party should make us all shiver.

 

Laura Billings can be reached at lbillings@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5584.

 

The hope is that by imprinting the glory of the Ice Palace and the merriment of the Vulcan Krewe … our offspring will be wired to stay on the ancestral homeland in spite of the obstacles, much like those little Emperor penguins.