Earlier this month, a group of climate-change deniers gathered at the Hotel Washington in the US capital to celebrate their takeover of the government. Their conference’s theme was “Climate Realism Rising.”
About a mile away, circling the Tidal Basin next to the National Mall, were thousands of Yoshino cherry trees in declining bloom. The genus to which they belong offers a far different, and far more realistic, version of climate realism.
The Washington cherry blossoms peaked on March 26 this year, not long after the start of the National Cherry Blossom Festival. It was the seventh consecutive year in which the trees flowered earlier than their 20-year average. And that average has fallen by about eight days since the 1940s. When the US entered World War II, peak blossom happened around April 6. Now, it happens around March 29.
