On April 18, 2007, we hit a sizzling high of 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Just last week we were digging ourselves out of snow. During all of this, I still hear the debate on global warming and can’t help but laugh a little.

I’m not here to say that I don’t think something is wrong. Obviously, something is wrong if I have to shovel snow on Easter, not to mention we had one of the greenest Christmases I can remember this year. It seems too hard to label the recent weather abnormalities as global warming, but the strange weather has been even harder to put up with.

Spring is really only a few things to me: showers, flowers and a new baseball season. It’s a time of renewal, not just for nature, but for our spirits. I despise rising on uniformly grey winter mornings just as much as anyone else. Waking up in a warm sunbeam is clearly the way to go. So being able to spend time comfortably outside over the weekend was a refreshing change of scenery. But I’d say it’s too little too late.

Around this time of year being outside helps most students relax. With all the final papers, exams, quizzes and the stress of finding a summer job going on, relaxation is a relatively simple request. Instead, we were cooped up again for weeks, suffering from a winter overtime period.

What is just as bad, especially for me as the Sports Editor, has been waiting through the late snows and the cancellations the weather has wrought on Albion sports. It’s really hard to cover track, baseball and softball when their games get cancelled so often. But it’s worse on the athletes.

There’s a lot of mental preparation for each game or competition. It’s really hard to be forced to shut athletic concentration on and off during the course of freak snow showers and unexpected low temperatures, so the effort and concentration might not be the same during the make-ups.

And now that we’ve finally gotten a break from the snow, all heck has broken loose on the field. The teams are forced to play more games with less rest— which, I might add, is potentially dangerous for the athletes.

Even pro athletes have been stuck in the snow lately. Let’s go back to opening day, April 2. While many fans skipped class or work to watch the Detroit Tigers opening day game, it was hard for fans to recognize their Tiger. Every player was layered up like Ralphie’s kid brother in "A Christmas Story." By the end of that week, Albion had snow, but the weather wasn’t nearly as bad as it was in Cleveland.

While Cleveland Indian fans prepared for their home opener, a heavy dose of lake effect snow made that impossible. Jacobs Field looked more like a snow globe than a ballpark, and the Indians were forced to play "home games" in Milwaukee.

Scenes like this prompt a simple response: where is global warming when we need it? It’s tough to think of the world warming when we see snow in spring.

I’ll level here; this probably isn’t the worst spring ever. According to weather.org, we hit an all time low in 1897 with 19 degrees Fahrenheit. Not a lot of people were worried about global warming in the 1890s. So, you have to ask: is all the weird, sometimes wild weather that we’ve seen lately natural? Or are the politicians and scientists really on to something with global warming?

I don’t think there’s any doubt that we’ve had an impact on our world. We’ve killed off species before we’ve discovered them. We’ve recklessly burned through natural resources. But how long have we really been paying attention to the climate?

Historically speaking, we’re relatively new to the planet. The world was turning millions of years before we showed up. In such a relatively short span of time, it seems hard to say how large our impact has been. There are a lot of clips showing melting ice caps and starving polar bears. Who is to say if man had the same technology that we wouldn’t have seen the same outcry about the melting ice and starving mammoths and saber-tooth tigers? Perhaps everything that we are seeing now is really no different than what has been happening since the beginning of time. Maybe the only difference is that now we can see it and record it.

There is something out of whack with the planet and the blame probably rests on our activities speeding up natural cycles. People argue on both sides, yet little seems to be done about global warming. Global warming probably won’t be acted on in our lifetime, though global warming is and should most definitely be a major concern and point of emphasis.

As annoying as missed baseball games and lost time in the sun are, these events should, at the least, inspire us to action so that we can ensure pleasant days in the sun for future generations to enjoy.