If you live in flyover states, do not mention global warming; you will be laughed right out of the conversation. After experiencing two weeks of frigid, well below zero temperatures, Midwesterners won’t give an inch on climate change.
It’s not because they don’t believe in climate change. Heck, most of these people are fifth and sixth generation farmers from families that have mapped weather for over a century. They did it not to be trendy, but because livelihoods depend on it. And nine times out of 10, your average farmer makes the likes of Weather Channel’s Al Roker seem like a charlatan when it comes to forecasting. Even city-dwelling, urbanite Smart Car driving liberals buy the Farmer’s Almanac—although they may think it’s just a campy, primitive, bookshelf decoration.
But I won’t ask that you take my word for it; we are going to the original sources to talk about climate: farmers.
Jim Maxwell, owner and operator of a modest 1,000-acre Iowa farm, remembers tracking weather with his grandfather, year-round, to determine planting and field rotations.
“We’ve been sweet corn, popcorn and soybean growers since my forebears arrived in the early 1800s. My granddad, and his granddad before him kept daily journals of weather conditions and he knew to the day when the ground was ready for planting. “
When asked if he viewed climate change as real, his response was tinged with incredulousness.
“Of course it is real. The globe has been warming up since the ice age. But Middle America is not the problem; overpopulation and the indifference of the big city slickers is the problem.”
Turning to the Hoosier state, and the Jensen Brothers cattle farmers, it was time to toss the latest term floating around in weather circles, Bomb Cyclone, at the boys in charge.
“Is that what they are calling this latest weather pattern?” Jack Jensen elbowed his brother Lucas, who just shook his head. Apparently, Lucas had been yammering on and on about the Bomb Cyclone, having heard a summary of it from an Illinois climate expert on a local radio weather report:
“The storm was a “textbook” example of a winter cyclone, Jeff Frame, an atmospheric scientist at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said. In satellite photos, you can even see the system pulling up warmer air from the tropics, as well as the system circulating colder air coming down from the arctic. Storms like this, he says, serve an important function as they help redistribute pockets of heat and cold more evenly around the globe.”
“That sounds like Mother Nature knows just what she is doing.”
Midwesterners are very much Earth first people. More than any other constituency, they value and consider themselves stewards of the land – a land that feeds the nation and the world. They also realize, unlike our current president’s detractors, that most of Trump’s blustering over climate change is not because he doesn’t believe. Let’s face it, he isn’t a flat-earther. It’s because he is demonstratively attempting to deliver on his campaign promise of reversing most policies pushed through in the eight years of Obama. For example, National Geographic, who is keeping a list, points out this variation:
“Despite Trump’s change in emphasis, it’s possible that U.S. government research on climate change will continue—under an assumed name. Since Trump’s inauguration, U.S. government websites seeking to scrub “climate change” from their records have opted to swap out the phrase for the word “resilience.”
Hmm. Semantics designed to infuriate the left? Maybe. Nevertheless, if you engage in the discussion of climate change with a citizen of a Flyover state, be prepared to have your argument dissected and perhaps debunked by the real caretakers of Mother Earth.
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