Climate Change and Gardening. . . What the !@#$@!@#?

by Eli Lehrer on August 13, 2007 · 1 comment

in Global Warming

This weekend many smaller newspapers likely carried this AP story about climate change and gardening as a prominent Sunday feature. One little problem: despite all the hype, even the most extreme alarmists with a shred of honesty will admit that the consequences of climate change to date are decidedly minor. Some models–alarmist ones–do show real consequences that would impact growing seasons sometime in the future. But, to my knowledge, nobody who has given climate change a serious look–even alarmists–believes that it has already impacted conventional gardening in temperate climates.

{ 1 comment }

Wallace Inman August 14, 2007 at 5:10 am

It is flat misleading and deceptive. The article states the following:

'More like climate changed, said Page Spencer, chief of natural resources at Lake Clark National Park & Preserve in Southwest Alaska.

"This is a visible and conscious thing in my lifetime," Spencer said. "We're growing apples in Anchorage now and we've never been able to do that before.".

This is flat out wrong. Note the Washington Post article below from 1926:

"Alaska-Grown Apples Shipped to Market

The Washington Post

Date: Oct 24, 1926

Start Page: F10, 1 pgs

Section: AMUSEMENTS FEATURES

Document Types: article

Text Word Count: 291

Anchorage, Alaska, Oct., 23 (By A.P.) — The first commercial shipment of Alaska-grown apples has been made. Boxes of a variety known as yellow transparents were sent from Hope, on Turnagain Arm southeast of here, to Anchorage. The trees on which the apples were grown have been bearing for five years…"

It appears that the "chief of natural resources at Lake Clark National Park & Preserve in Southwest Alaska." has no clue about Alaska'a natural resources history since Alaska has been producing apples commercially for 81 years and growing them for at least 86 years. FYI Turnagain Arm is an inlet that runs right past Anchorage's south side.

But that doesn't stop CNN from editorializing with misleading and factually inaccurate material, much less (God forbid!) checking their sources.

Irony 101: the source for the CNN story and the Washington Post story are both the AP. I guess the AP doesn't check facts or sources either!

Anybody surprised? I think not.

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