Lots of people make the mistake of thinking that global warming should be consistent, with the irregular surface of the earth somehow all warming at the same time and at the same rate. I’m sure you don’t have to think about that for more than a few minutes to realize how foolish that is. Try heating just your dinner on the stove consistently, and try to think how unlikely it would be for a system as complex as the earth. Global warming doesn’t just mean things get hotter. In some places, it will even makes things colder. But mostly, it makes things more erratic.

I used to live in a 5a; now, we’re in a 6a. That certainly seems consistent with the changes I’ve observed. Like you, the chill was our usual concern, but now we’re seeing problems on the other end, of things getting too hot for some of our plants. So no, it doesn’t make sense to rate hardiness zones solely from the coldest they get, because the other extreme will impact your garden, too. Not only have the hardiness zones marched north, they’ve also gotten wider.

Is the ADF’s update a complete one? Of course not, they’re a private organization, not the USDA. But it puts the pressure on the USDA to do a full update, and that’s a very good thing. Personally, we’ve been planting as a zone 6, and I’m glad we have, because otherwise our whole garden would have been wiped out.

According to the Arbor day hardiness zone I am located in zone 6 or 7 (I guess they don’t know which), when I am actually in zone 5b. This past spring we had a late freeze in April (coldest on record) and killed plants that were even predictated to be hardy to zone 5. If I went by Arbor Day map I would have lost my entire garden!!

My point is that even if global warming is a given; the reclassifaction of USDA hardiness maps needs to be done in relation to the ‘low’ end of temps and surely on a scale that enables the entire green industry to be in sync.

Please get real ADF. gt

I still think we’re on the isle of Barra, you going 6 miles that way and me 8 miles in that direction.
When peak oil kicks in(ie “they ” turn off the tap-leave it man,let it slide!) and global warming fucks the climate up so much that the gulf stream stops and we enter a new ice age(resist man, be strong!!)-we’ll both be at the same point and the more we are prepared the better.
Actually I’m boring of conspiracy a bit , although I like to keep tabs on it-it’s like I know it was “them” and anything associated with them is then obviously highly suspect(like peak-global stuff)(let it go man, I know you can!!!)
Maybe this has something to do with it all :-

http://www.awakeninthedream.com/html/

That’s maybe more up/down your street and if so why I thought you mind find the treeincarnation stuff interesting.

But really I want to talk about disconnecting-leaving your job(ie. civilisation) and doing it for real-starting the tribe and going “wild in the country” “where snakes in the grass, are absolutely free!”

Later man

The evidence for global warming and peak oil are both overwhelming—so overwhelming that those who continue to try to deny them are simply being willfully ignorant. Your sources are bona fide crackpots, Scot, and I’ve decided that the issues we face are far too serious to waste time on such insanity. To even compose a full rebuttal provides them with far more dignity than they deserve; it suggests that they’ve made a logical or valid point to be refuted, when they haven’t done anything like that at all.

If I’m going to comment further on this at all, I may write an article on why conspiracy theories are given such weight by primitivists, why so many primitivists are so paranoid, and what role it is that such stories fulfill that makes us so willing to believe them in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.