How will changing climate effect your lifestyle?

Here on the edge of the Great Plains, climate change can happen in 15 minutes or so. Frequently changing weather is a fact of life. In my lifetime of about 50 years, I have seen it reach 112 degrees F above and 23 below, a 135-degree spread. We are in the Missouri River valley so occasional flooding comes with the territory. But the soil is of such good quality it would be ridiculous to leave the area to go wild instead of just sacrificing a crop to flooding every few years. Native plants and animals here are already adapted to extremes of weather. If the climate were to become a lot drier, not as many crops could be grown, but this land would still be productive as grassland or some alternative crops that are not as thirsty as soybeans and corn.

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It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with the simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

I live in Northern NYS and I do see change. When I was a kid (I'm 56), every winter we had a straight week in January with 25 below zero temperatures. We don't get that anymore and haven't for years. My low for the last twenty years has probably been more like fifteen below, and I don't see that every year and it's not long stretches of cold, it's for a few days, not a week straight. Lake Ontario doesn't freeze several miles out in front of my house anymore, it stays open or freezes out a quarter mile or less and even that ice will break up in the winter with a heavy wind. I've had a few years where 5 to 7 below zero was the low. When I was younger that NEVER happened, and it's only started happening the last 6-8 years. Considering that I used to take a snowmobile out to the islands four miles out, that's a major change. That's a whole zone change on the gardening chart, almost two zones. That's not small stuff going on.

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-Northern NYS

I dunno how much climate change is actually occurring,after all we have pnly been records fairly accurately for about 150 years or so but Michigans record high was 112 degrees in 1936 and minus 51 in 1934 (UP?) and I am a firm believer in weather cycles but I can't prove or disprove any of it so it's only my opinion but as far as changing my lifestyle?,I'll make due,the human race has been adapting to change since it's beginning.

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Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau

There are ice cores, tree cores and ground samples that give scientists data on ancient climate conditions, sea levels, etc.

You have my sympathies. Back in the 1950's & early '60's when we were living just slightly north of the 54th latitude and nestled in a valley 100 miles inland from the coastline it used to be the norm for us to get 7 to 8 months of snow and ice every year. A large double glassed greenhouse with a woodstove in it was a refuge and solace to the spirit in the depths of winter. It was a good place to work inside there on messy hobbies and small woodworking projects and for growing mushrooms in the darkest months and also often served as a winter nursery/recovery for animals.

We grew all our own food so in early March it served for starting up tables and tables of seedlings that would have a good head start for putting outside in readied ground when the snowmelt floods were over and it was warmer. If spring floods were really late or if it was still too cold outside when the seedlings needed to go into the ground, we transplanted them in bigger pots that were partially sunk into readied raised beds inside the greenhouse. Then when all threat of late floods and cold was over they got lifted out of the pots and transplanted directly into the ground outside. So, every year we always had bountiful crops and never worried about whether or not we'd be able to plant a garden that would be ready for harvest come autumn time. If you don't have a big liveable greenhouse now then I highly recommend one for future Minnesota winters. A big greenhouse is bright and cheery and so useful for so many other things during the winter besides just starting or growing plants in.

Sure there are, and what did it tell them? That earth has an ever changing climate...periods of cold and periods of warm weather. I don't think they ever found any samples that are constant. Right now the earth is going through a warming trend...how long will it las? Who knows! When the air gets saturated with moisture (or a large volcano erupts), then the trend will reverse and we will be going through a cooling period. As you have read the history of this planet, a few thousand years ago there were glaciers covering half of this continent, after that there were great tempered forests all around the Hudson Bay (Greenland was much warmer than today). In medieval times, we went through a small ice age and the population of the world was stressed due to lack of arable land...and so on! One thing is certain, the human race faired better when the earth was and is warmer...it has always been the case throughout history and is so stated by historians. If you live in Texas, the warmer pattern might negatively affect your area, but large tracts of Canadian land become productive...maybe Sahara will be the new Amazon (as it was in the past) and the Amazon might become Sahara. The point is that parts of the world will be affected negatively, while others will be affected positively, but overall it will be a positive trend (the warmer the weather the more moisture in the air). Now what we DO have to worry about is pollution, as some have stated before!

You are right. Global Warming is just a hype lie. Yearly changes do happen, and some are irritating, but it's not the end of the world.

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Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Good advice.

In this case, I'm not too worried about "climate change" exactly, because that's really big, and long-term, and anything I do is going to be relatively small, and short term--a couple of years of crazy "normal" weather is just as much of a concern as a big shift, really.

So, I'm thinking the "answer" is the same old same old ... variety, and poop.

Factory-farm monocultures produce a lot, but they are also susceptible to catastrophic failure, and depend on numerous inputs. They might be good business, and might keep food cheap, but it is a house of cards.

Planting a variety of crops (or varieties of one crop), using IPM, and raising animals as well (producing your own fertilizer), has kept agriculture going for centuries. I suspect that a return to such methods (at least for us small-scale folks) will keep things going for a few centuries more, whether the climate changes or not.

And we still seem to not be communicating.

What I said was that climate change is always happening, both on the large scale and the small scale. We deal with it all the time. Perhaps in very stable climates this is not at issue but in many places the climate changes greatly from day to day, month to month around the year and it also is unstable year to year and completely not predictable. Thus the skills are already there. One hays when the sun shines, builds up out of the flood prone planes, insulates against winter, plants around the frosts, cans, basic homesteading skills are climate change skills.

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

Not to be a grouchy old arguing fella, but I think this past year has shown just the opposite - the farming practices in the USA has kept food on the table here in the USA through one of the worst several crop years in history. We feed ourselves, grow some energy for ourselves, put land into wildlife reserves, and export feed/ food.

All during one of the worst weather years in history for growing crops.

This shows modern agriculture is resilient, dynamic, and up to the challenge.

Certainly the small homesteader can use the methods you suggest, and likely are the best option for such an operation. What they do, when their ways fail, is buy food at the store or farmers market, and buy feed at the farm supply store.

Doesn't seem that is somehow 'better' than modern farming? Or less prone to failure?

There is plenty of room for both ways, we don't need to put down one or the other.

Let us celebrate that we live in a country where we have the choices, the resources, and the practices that allow us to prosper and create an oversupply of food with the good systems we have. Modern large scale farming appears to work well, if you look at the past 2 years.....

I don't understand the constant need to bad mouth the very thing that makes this country great.

Paul

That's why I mentioned Brian Fagan's book, The Little Ice Age. Climate changes. The trouble is that the warming trend has been kicked up with man-made greenhouse gasses - and isn't that called pollution? How we adapt is the point of this thread.

Our records only go back a couple of centuries but the Japanese and Chinese have much more accurate and long ranging weather records.

As well as millions of years of records through palaeoclimatology. Ice cores, sea bed cores, permafrost studies etc.

You are right. We will adapt. However whenever the subject of climate change comes up people get very divided in their opinions. Some "believe" some "don't believe". This is absolutely not a question of belief. It is science. As to how much man is influencing or speeding up change that is still up for discussion - but we are doing somethings that we can definitely fix for the next generations. As my Dad always said - you don't pee in your own pool.

sigh. Global Warming is just part of Climate Change. Global Warming has to do with the heating up of the oceans. This causes the weather changes. And the oceans are heating up.

It's also a fungus that is spreading with the pine beetles.

When lightening fires up those millions of acres of tinder dry pine forests we'll be able to see the orange glow and smell the smoke for a thousand miles. Several years ago 20,000,000 acres of pines had already been killed in B.C. and the beetle and fungus were poised to leap over the continental divide and start devastating the pines between the Divide and the Atlantic Ocean.

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

The pH of the oceans are also dropping and that means the death of the coral reefs which produce so much of our seafood and form the base of the food chain that touches all of us.

We are dismantling the life support system of this planet. Our children are going to be in tough shape.

Meanwhile congress wrestles each other like kids in a sandbox.

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

In 2011, there was widespread flooding and many millions of acres of crops were lost to flooding. Here is a beautiful corn field in our area that was turned into a "corn paddy" by flooding. The corn laid over and died shortly after this photo was taken. This scene was repeated all along the Missouri River system and the Mississippi.


2012, we had the worst drought since the Dust Bowl days. Over 60% of the nation was in drought. Again, many millions of acres of crops were lost.

Do you see empty shelves in your grocery store? Anybody you know starve to death lately? I didn't think so.

Many people here are soooo eager to throw the modern farmers under the bus, but thank goodness, they just keep right on reliably feeding the masses. All the while advancing their technology and methods as new learning takes place. The terms "factory farm" and "monoculture", those are both bogus, just meant to be insulting.

No farming practice, no matter how "green" or "sustainable" is going to produce crops in the face of flooding like that. Ditto for the drought, no moisture = no harvest. Agriculture in general is a house of cards, not a sure thing. Every year, we all "bet the farm", no matter what methods are used. Because the big guys are such good reliable producers, we don't go hungry in this country.

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It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with the simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

What is your solution?

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"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun" - President Obama June 14, 2008

Reduce the amount of CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere by reducing our consumption of fossil fuels.

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

Yes, that number of acres of trees killed has more than doubled now. It now stands at 45 million acres in BC alone and in the summer of 2009 they (and the fungus they carry with them) crossed the Rockies and the continental divide. There were great clouds of them observed that blacked out the sky as their mass exodus flew over the Rockies.

The picture below shows their range now (green) and the directions they're going in - lodgepole pine (green) is where they are now in Canada and USA, and where they are headed east for is the orange sections (jack pine) and red striped (eastern white pine), both of which have none of the natural resistance that the lodgepole pines used to have but no longer has.

This all because of an average annual temperature increase of a mere 1.5 degrees. It was at first estimated that it would be by 2040 that they reached the eastern regions en masse but that estimate has now been changed to 2020 (only another 7 years away) because of the speed at which they are progressing in their annual exodus flights east. Prior to 2009 nobody had realized that pine beetles were capable of exodus flights. The prospect of this much eventual loss and resulting change of habitat across the continent and the effect on the forestry industries and the economies of both nations ..... boggles the mind .

That's sobering. Firestorms are a phenomenon modern man has experienced only on a small scale. Here's an interesting web site: http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/f/firestorm.htm