The recent climate shifts may change as quickly as they arrived. I remember strawberry beds getting frost 50 years ago and then there were no row covers or newer technologies to correct The adverse effects. I'm just one that doesn't mind not having to spend nights shoveling snow.

Yeah, I try to look at the positive too. I noticed the climate change last year in northern NY, where they hardly ever get time for a decent tomato crop, except last year, when they had a long warm summer, and were flush with tomatoes. The way I look at it, we can grow more stuff :-)

Well, you folks are waaaay more optimistic than I am about climate change. All scientists seem to agree that we are rapidly moving to a point where the planet will be virtually uninhabitable except for some very small mammals and insects. Imagine daytime temps in excess of what Death Valley experiences.

While in the short term warmer climate seems nice for those up north, drought, torrential storms, more tornadoes, rising sea levels will increase forcing millions out of where they live. This, of course, ENORMOUSLY increases political pressures within and between countries. For some years now, the American military has been trying to develop techniques for the inevitable internal movement of refugees. It's not some distant future, folks. We're already seeing the start. I'm 72 and expect to see the start of the worst. Those of you much younger than me......well, God help you. I weep for my grandchildren.

YOU'RE 72! And to think that I imagined you as being 29.

It'll be interesting to see how people who own beachfront properties will adapt in the next few decades. Maybe they'll evolve with gills.

Lucille, huh? So all the scientists trying to warn the politicians are Chicken Little? So no one should do anything to change? Just keep on fiddlin' while Rome burns? Aren't we supposed to be stewards of the Earth? I don't understand your attitude at all, and I guess you don't understand mine. And I think this is the end of my participation in this thread.

Sounds like this is becoming a political post... maybe this discussion should be moved to Hot Topics, where it belongs.

"moved to Hot Topics, where it belongs."

Exactly. Since there are already numerous discussions of all this on that forum to begin with.

Dave

We had 4 years of drought and this year we are at 200% of normal...........when we finally decided to sell our house! Flooded driveway, mud galore, ponding! Nancy

NE will get more bugs wreaking havoc, extended droughts, extended rainfall, temp swings destroying crops/fruit more often, etc. Nothing good will come from climate change.

My garlic is enjoying the nice weather by sending up new growth earlier than I have ever seen. I think I may start a few plants a week or 2 earlier than normal this year as an experiment. I will still start what I need at the normal time in case ma nature pulls the rug out from under me and we get a late freeze.

I have had a few cold nights...the coldest -2°F. Uh, I don't like cold weather.

We won't have a choice to call climate change as anything but the new "normal weather." Winter is going to become that once in a decade event for most areas now similar to hurricanes. Denial will cause massive amounts of damage from unpreparedness.

A not so "subtlety" I've noticed with the weird weather this "winter," is that my honeybees have been foraging most of it!! "Normally," winter comes, they kind of shut down and stay in the hives except for cleansing flights (bathroom). Not doing a lot of flying/foraging, the resources they have to take them until spring are adequate. This year, hives that had very adequate resources based on weight of the honey in the hive are getting significantly depleted. I started supplemental feeding late last month. "Typically," when bees forage, they bring back nectar, pollen and water to add to hive resources. In winter on warm days they forage aggressively but find nothing, but return to the hive very hungry and use up needed resources. I'm very afraid that we'll have some real winter toward the end leaving unfed hives to starve or, at best, have inadequate resources and populatrions to build up for the spring nectar flow. Bees were having enough problems without this.

Not denying climate change, but similar wild weather happened in much of the 1800s and also in the '50s...

Climate Change may make it worse, but it has happened before.

And when you take the averages, the actual and predicted temps are going to keep climbing beyond anything the earth has seen for a while.