Recently, on our way to the Watershed Nature Preserve for an early Sunday morning walk, my wife and I drove past a dead animal in the middle of a residential street in Edwardsville. At first assuming it was an opossum, a not uncommon road kill in this part of the country, I did an exaggerated double-take as we drove by, and exclaimed "I think that's an armadillo!" And so it was, another one of numerous indications that the climate is warming and critters are extending their ranges northward. My mammal field guide, published in 1996, shows the northernmost range of the armadillo to be the extreme southeastern portion of Kansas and the southwestern corner of Missouri. So in 27 years they have moved over a hundred miles further north and east. Extreme weather events, fires, temperature records, the ranges plants and animals, including pathogens carried by animals - all are testaments to the accuracy of scientific predictions dating back to the mid-10th Century that carbon dioxide emissions are accumulating in the atmosphere, adding to the earth's thermal blanket.
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