If you doubted climate change is real, the past two winters are enough proof to me that it is.   The past two winters are the two warmest winters on record (for this region, anyway), and I have never seen anything like this:

Yes, those are cherry blossoms on those trees.  Other trees are blooming too.  The grass in my yard is ready to be mowed and flowers are starting to bloom everywhere.  The temperatures in the daytime have been in the 70s.

This is in the mountains of North Carolina, not northern Florida.   In normal years, our highland climate isn’t very different than that of southern New Jersey or the Mid-Atlantic states.  Winters here tend to be of fairly short duration, but they are normally quite cold and we do get some snow.

I love spring (it’s my favorite season), but this isn’t normal. These trees should not be blooming for another month.

The weather in other places has been very strange too.   Freezing cold temperatures in the Pacific Northwest (where it’s usually fairly mild in the winter), and days of flooding rains and tropical storm force winds in coastal California.

What a perfect time for the president to silence and attempt to shut down the EPA.

I’m attending a March for Science here in my city on Earth day — April 22nd.   It will be my first protest activity against this administration (besides my incessant rants in this blog and on Facebook and Twitter).  I’m fed up with the science deniers who act like global warming isn’t real, and now we have a woman under Trump (Betsy DeVos) who has plans to remove the teaching of science in schools (and defund the public schools while she’s at it).

If you want to help save science education, there are Marches for Science in many US cities.   Their website is here, and by scrolling to the bottom, you can find out where there will be one near you:

https://www.marchforscience.com/