Silent Spring Dawns Hot, Dry and Merciless

[Ladyhawke1]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/21-0

 

[ducks4you]

While we have had record high temperatures, the West Coast has had much more snow and a longer winter than usual.
I highly recommend reading, "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations".
http://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Civilizations-David-R-Montgomery/dp/0520248708
The author does a much better job at describing human agricultural behavior than your article, and has usuable suggestions. No offence.
We used to have 5 breadbaskets, but now we have 3: North America (US & Canada), Eastern Europe and China. China has abused their topsoil so severely that, IMO, they intend to cash in OUR debt for food, in the very near future. Their food is grown with slavery, who are the poorest of caretakers. The Yangze River is a translation of "Yellow River" bc it has run yellow with topsoil so LONG that nobody remembers it running clear.

BTW, at MY house the temps are way too warm, BUT the frogs are singing, the birds are singing and fighting for mates and nesting materials, my horses have shed their (paltry, this year) winter coats, and my fruit trees are in bloom. It looks and sounds like mid-April, but it ISN'T a silent spring.
Everybody likes to panic when the weather seems odd. If you pay attention, you can discover silver linings. I was watching a garden program out of Clemson U, SC. They were at a swamp discussing, among other things, invasive plants and how they control them. As an aside they talked about how the local cedar, which had low numbers, has come back. During the southern drought a few years ago, the low water enabled the cedar to seed and grow many seedlings, which are flourishing. During the drought there was so much talk about how we had ruined the planet, too.
Many of my local friends are afraid of a high population of unwanted insects. But, if the squash bugs and nemotodes and cutworms didn't die off this winter, it's also true that the ladybugs and praying mantis and other insect predators didn't die off, either. I just saw a huge, healthy bumblebee attracted by my groundcover's flowers last evening.
I don't use insectidies or herbicides. DH is gonna try harvesting dandelions this year partly bc of this. I am not worried about a silent spring in 2012.
Still forum friends?

 

[The Mama Chicken]

It's not even a quiet spring around here, much less silent. The songbirds wake me up early every morning and the frogs at the creek sing me to sleep every night. When I walk around our property there are so many bees and butterflies that I know pollination won't be a problem in the garden. We don't use any chemicals on our property and 8 of our 10 acres are blooming with hundreds of thousands of wildflowers which draw beneficial insects. We have had so much rain that, in 3 months, we are out of the worst drought in Texas history. In fact lake levels rose 5 feet in one day yesterday, putting them a foot over average.
Weather goes through cycles and, while I think we could all take steps to take better care of our planet, it's amazingly presumptious to think that humans have so much power that we've changed that cycle. A single volcanic eruption produces more greenhouse gasses than all of humanity combined, ever. I don't buy into Al Gore's propaganda about man made global warming, and neither do all scientists, no matter what you see on the news. Enviromentally speaking, I'm more worried about petrochemical pesticides and herbicides, deforestation, the privitization of water supplies, GMOs, overpopulation, and plastics than carbon emissions. My "carbon footprint" is pretty small anyway. I drive maybe 30 miles a week, have't been in an airplane in 6 years, recycle and compost everything I can, don't eat very much red meat, raise my own chickens and goats for eggs, milk, and meat, etc.
Here's a link to an interesting movie I recently watched.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/doomsday-called-off/

 

[sparkles2307]

The birds have been ainging for a week now, and the geese and swans are coming back in full volume 24/7

 

[897tgigvib]

When my generator is off...

I wonder if it's 500 or 5,000 frogs near the lake within earshot. There is a Bald Eagle and a Raven who hang out together everywhere this year. An Eagle took a whole family of Grey Squirrels, so sad. Animals of all sorts make sounds at night. Some animal nobody can figure what, sounds like it could be recorded for a Tarzan movie. I can hear Ducks talking on the lake. Moorehens, kind of sound like people in the distance. This year a few Wood Ducks are here. One almost seems to want to be a semi pet. I hear the rain again. Sometimes after it rains, a wind blows and it rains from the trees.

 

[897tgigvib]

Will the weather patterns be changing because of human presence on our planet?

 

[The Mama Chicken]

Will the weather patterns be changing because of human presence on our planet?

Well, cities do cause "heat islands" because of all of the concrete and asphalt. I know that the temperature drops by a couple of degrees when I leave town headed home. On a global level, I don't think so. I agree that global warming seems to be occuring, but there have been times when average temperatures were much higher than they are now. Like I said above, these things are cyclical. I know that many (most?) people disagree with me on this, but that's okay. As long as we can have civil conversations and listen to each others opinions...like we do here on this forum.

Does that mean that I think we should pollute and contaminate and otherwise trash the planet? Absolutely not! We should do everything in our power to leave this world a better place for future generations.

 

[897tgigvib]

I was looking at a couple different versions of those graphs that show the geologic periods, you know, with periods of time called names like Oligocene and Eocene. This Holocene period we are in. I'm kind of amazed how new it is. Those periods mostly lasted 10 million or 5 million years. That Pleistocene didn't last very long compared to the others. Suddenly it turned into the Holocene.

This Holocene has a character description about it that none of the others had. Another unusual thing.

All deserts are expanding. Began as a general worldwide warming trend, with the world's icecaps shrinking to the geographic arctic zone, and an increase in the temperate zone.

This Holocene period is a gift it looks like. That Miocene was warm, but all humid and swampy. I just hope us humans don't screw this Holocene period up.

I looked at Google map, satellite image view. A lot of some deserts have round green patches near the edges of them. That's where humans are irrigating large areas and growing things like Melons.

That's so cool!~