News Summary

The Miami Valley isn't home to shrinking polar ice caps or rising sea levels, but observers of nature are documenting what may be subtle signs of local climate change.

Reports of global warming recently piqued Bill Felker's curiosity. The 68-year-old Yellow Springs man, who publishes "Poor Will's Almanack," checked the blooming times of local plants, records he has logged yearly since the early 1980s.

He found forsythia more likely to bloom before March 25 than in the 1980s, while redbuds were more prone to flower before April 13. Most striking, he said, were mock orange bushes, which recently have an average blooming date of May 8 — 10 days earlier than the mid-1980s average.

Still, Felker is skeptical of claims that spring comes much earlier in some parts of the world than it once did, noting the onset of the seasons vacillates from year to year.

"I think the jury is out as to whether (climate change) is really going to affect us in our lifetimes," he said. "I haven't seen the kind of effect I read about in the newspapers."

Brother Don Geiger, a retired University of Dayton biology professor who founded the Marianist Environmental Education Center in Beavercreek, expects more weather extremes like one in April 2007, when temperatures dipped into the teens, damaging fruit crops after an unusual warm spell in late March spurred early plant growth.

A danger of only subtle climate change, he said, is complacency.

"You don't get the sense of urgency when it isn't blatantly obvious that something's going on," Geiger said.