Listening to My Tomatoes and Turnips

I have a garden in back of our house and I love it. It’s just a small 10x20 plot, but I still get a lot out of it. Right now I’m harvesting radishes, beets, and lettuce. Latter this spring I’ll plant corn, squash, peppers and, the pride of every gardener, tomatoes.

            Gardening is a hobby I picked up from my father, who was probably the most enthusiastic gardener you’d want to meet. We lived on what had been 76 acres of a farm that had at one time been the home of chickens, hogs, and at least a half dozen head of cattle. My father tilled a large plot behind the cattle barn that his father had built. Choosing among several varieties, he planted at least 40 tomato plants every year. Forty plants. And that was just the tomatoes. We also planted several rows of early corn, sweet corn, and late corn. My mother would be busy for days pickling the cucumbers from our garden, and I remember the dozens of quart jars of the preserves being stored away in our basement.

            I helped my father with the planting, hoeing, and harvesting of the garden’s fruits and vegetables. Besides the smell of manure and pounding tomato stakes into the ground, one thing I remember was how attuned my father was to the time of the season and the weather. Week by week he knew when the chance of frost had abated and when to harvest the potatoes. He was also mindful of the variations each year presented, whether the growing season was cooler, warmer, or wetter than average. He also noticed if pests were growing more or less abundant.

            This gardener’s mojo isn’t unique to my father. Most gardeners get some sense of it; serious gardeners live by it. Gardeners understand the weather trends and have an understanding of what it means for their beans, strawberries, and potatoes. That’s why the map below, the Plant Hardiness Zone Map, the map planters use to determine the best times to plant their vegetables, is no surprise to folks like my father.

 The map has changed since the USDA published the last version of this map in 1990, and it shows a great warming trend across the U.S. What is a bit surprising is the extent of the warming indicated by this map. Divided into 13 zones by their lowest average annual temperature, each region, on average, advanced about half a zone since 1990. This is equal to a five-degree increase in the average minimum temperature. Some regions have changed to show a ten-degree increase. The USDA cautions that some of the changes in the map are because of better data collection, but it is still indisputable that spring thaws are earlier and those first frosts are happening later and later in the fall.

            The Farmer’s Almanac, which has been published since 1792, also confirms this trend. Janice Stillman, the almanac’s editor, says, “A lot of folks who garden have noticed over several years that certain plants are blooming earlier in the season. People are noticing there’s a change in the weather.”

            So what do people think of this? Can folks read about temperature increases of five to ten degrees all across the country and dismiss global warming? And for those who acknowledge that the world is warming but it’s not enough to worry about, five to ten degrees is a big shift on a thermostat. Now that global warming has gone from the work of researchers measuring CO2 on Hawaiian mountaintops to something that I and thousands of other gardeners who try to time when to plant the lettuce and rutabagas, it’s time to stop the discussions and start doing something.

ref: Jason Koebler Gardening Map Changes For Global Warming US News and World Report 1/26/2012 http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/01/26/gardening-map-changes-for-global-warming

Big Business, They Know Better Now

Speaking at a charity event in London, Sir David Attenborough said that there is no way to stop our ever-increasing population from ever increasing. The world has lots and lots of people and will have lots and lots more, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

            Because there are going to be more and more people, more of the world will be paved over. And so Attenborough urged action to preserve great expanses of nature—bogs, tropical forests mangrove swamps, and great mountains—that are at risk unless something is done to protect them soon.

            Attenborough appealed to big business to take the lead in securing and protecting these lands. He said, “It’s not a mystery. Wealth empowers. And businesses have by no means been slow in helping.” He went on to say that he and other conservationists have appealed to multinational corporations for help many times before.

Now I have a lot of respect for Attenborough, and I don’t think he is entirely wrong. There are people in business who are working to improve the world. Bill Gates might be the best example of a man of big business doing good with his riches.

It is curious that Attenborough did not call on governments, at least in part, to work on large-scale environmental preservation. Is it that governments, even when they do the right thing, are slow to act? Does he see the example set by the U.S., one in which an entrenched two-party system gives us a government so frozen that an ocean of WD-40 could not loosen the cogs of the legislative and administrative wheels of this country?

Attenborough seems to indicate that the bad environmental track record of big business is in the past and exonerates large companies of their bad environmental track record when he said that these companies usually committed environmentally degrading practices out of ignorance. “They didn’t know any better,” he said.

Has David Attenborough seen a mountaintop removal mine? The people who run those mines know about the destruction they cause. They know better but continue to flatten Kentucky and West Virginia. Did Attenborough have the radio or television on while an underwater cam showed the world millions of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico? This spill may not have happened had BP and Halliburton not cut corners to try to save money. They knew better but risked men’s lives and the health of the waters in the gulf anyway.

Mountaintop removal in Appalachia, something that David Attenborough should see. Photo by Vivian Stockman. From the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition http://www.ohvec.org/

Big business also performs industrial harvesting of the world’s fisheries, depleting resources and scouring the ocean bottom until it is practically as lifeless as Death Valley. We know how harmful this kind of fishing is, but it continues. Big business hires PR firms and funds organizations like the Heritage Foundation to give the lie that the science of global warming is inconclusive. Big oil and big coal know the science, they know better, but they still fund the global warming denial industry.

As I said before, Attenborough is not entirely wrong. Conservationists need to work with big business, and I hope that I’m wonderfully surprised with the environmental successes sponsored by multinational corporations. He might also be right in saying that it was ignorance that led to some environmental problems that were caused by large companies. But just as there are more and more people, there is less and less ignorance about the harm large companies continue to inflict on our earth. And Attenborough should acknowledge this fact.

ref: David Attenborough urges business to protect nature from population boom Lewis Smith, The Guardian 1/18/2012  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/18/david-attenborough-big-business-population?intcmp=122

Big Crazy

I’ve been trying to remain uninformed as to the goings on of the relentless GOP debates that have been sucking up time on the TV and radio and consuming space on websites and newspapers. It is noteworthy, however, that this weekend John Huntsman dropped out of the race.

            The candidates are not stupid individuals. Ron Paul was a physician before entering politics and Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. Yet it has been only Huntsman to be the sole GOP candidate who is not denying the science, the reality, of global warming. Gingrich, in the past, has talked about global warming and acknowledging not only the reality of the phenomenon but the need to address the crisis. He even famously made this commercial with Nancy Pelosi about global warming.

Paul’s website equivocates on the issue but suggests that the best way to solve this “nonproblem” is to reduce regulation.

            I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Huntsman was the only candidate to acknowledge that global warming is happening and that he is one of the first GOP candidates to drop out of the race.

I have a term “big crazy.” It’s when a lot of people who should know better or could be better informed choose to believe things that are obviously loony. Belief in UFOs is big crazy. Big crazy also describes conspiracy theories. Big crazy has been around for a long time in politics. Legal segregation was big crazy. McCarthyism and the Red scare were big crazy, too.

There was a time, perhaps as little as15 or 20 years ago, when a reasonable person could have some reasonable doubts about man-made climate change. But that is no longer. With Huntsman dropping out, we now have the guarantee that the Grand Old Party’s nominee for 2012 will deny the existence of global warming. Despite the thinning ice sheets and all the science, that is the way it’s going to be. This is big crazy, and the GOP is guaranteed to give us a big crazy candidate.

The Next Climate Change Battle

For decades now, because of their interpretation of the bible, Protestant fundamentalist have tried to stop the teaching of evolution, or they have tried to distract from it being taught in schools by having “creation science” taught along with evolution.

            In response the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) was created in the early 1980s to keep the teaching of biology and evolution free of these influences. Checking their website, it’s a little surprising how busy they are. From California, through the Midwest, into New England there always seems to be news of a school board watering down their science curricula or a state legislature passing a law that requires biology teachers to teach “both sides” of evolution and creation science.

            The NCSE or possibly another organization may wind up getting busy defending the teaching of science, this time the teachers who teach about climate change. The National Earth Science Teachers Association has released an executive summary of the findings of its online survey of K through 12 educators who teach about climate change. Over one third of the respondents said that they had been “influenced in some way” to teach “both sides” of climate change. About 25 to 30 percent said that parents, administrators, and members of their communities have disputed with them over whether or not climate change is happening or whether or not it is a phenomenon caused by humans.

            A similar survey conducted last year by the National Science Teachers Association found similar results. Teachers said that students expressed a great deal of skepticism about climate change and that 26 percent of science teachers said that their administrators had expressed skepticism about climate change. Both of these surveys were informal. Though their results are not conclusive, they are nonetheless troubling.

            The anti-evolution crusaders have churches and other organizations to push for their cause. My question is, right now, are there organizations that are trying to keep climate science out of the classroom? Are there Koch funded folks like the Heritage Foundation working to ensure that the next generation is as ignorant and destructive as we are?

Ref: National Center for Science Education ncse.com