So, with farmers planting early, that will mean an abundance, so prices should drop, technically. But they won't.

In other news.... this same weather pattern happened in 1987.

ha! where'd that winter go eh? Al Gore is laughing his ass off, especially at the jerk just above me. Get ready to start roasting you turkeys.

blah, blah, blah... actually a normal spring in the north... blah, blah, blah...

Snowing here in Nova Scotia!

I knew if I came to this thread,i would not have to read any of the article! for you global warming nuts! Don't throw away your jacket yet,it snowed 6 inches in Portland,OR two days ago!It you are to warm,move north!If your not,stay put.The earth is very dinamic environment that has undergone numerous temperature fluctuations in the past and will under go more but not necessary to our detriment!Stand tall and quit worrying about every warm spring day!

We just got a light dusting of snow. Not too warm here! It's amazing according to liberals when temps are low it's weather not climate, yet when temps are high it's climate not weather. Just a little consistency please.

I am LOVING this global warming here in Chicago

Snow tommorrow.

I'm 65 years old, and this kind of weather would have been considered a sign of the end of the world when I was a kid. Unthinkable. And any moron who says billions of humans burning fossil fuels is not responsible is full of @!$%#.

ok define normal - thats the new phrase of the right - how about this "typical" typically as long as i have been around i have never seen weather like this , it is not typical to what i/we are used to ,so it is changing and changing fast ...and guess what i do not need a scientist with all his high falootin numbers and graphs - can see it with my own eyes - seeing is believin right guys , na not with this group , they believe in magic gardens with talking snakes and people coming back from the dead ..........that they swallow whole , this climate stuff they are actually living thru ..........not happening .....priceless

This puts nearly every fruit tree crop at risk (apples, peach, pear, plum etc.) as well as grape vineyards.

This lasting week, caused early flower without pollination, or fruits forming too early, and at risk of frost.

Gone for this winter is snow cover to buffer late winter and spring storms, nothing works better than snow and ice to kill a warm spring storm.

The lack of snow cover, damages northern winter cover crops, and leaves no water to soak in for the summer dryness.

The absence of rain this early in the season, means less rain to last the summer, this makes a good growing season likely.

Survive the Weather Today, See the Climate tomorrow.

Comments: for Composting.

• If just one weather cycle that kills you it is relevant the next million are not.
• Right wing funds ignorance, not only to make you ignorant is also makes stupid permanent.
• Drunken horses would be a lot smaller.
• No ground hogs, just gophers, in Washington?
• George W Bush proved the presidency an empty shirt, while most of the rest of us lost theirs.
• One of the consequences of global warming is the loss of tillable land.
• Good heavens, why do intelligent people have to put up with these fools and knaves?
• A solar flare is about equal to 40 minutes of normal solar wind, or less than 6 minutes of solar fusion.
• What concerns me is what effect this early warming trend might have on potential severe weather.
• 23% or so of the Suns energy hitting the Earth has rejected to space by weather to keep the climate cool.
• Yeah, I agree. The early onset of massive tornadoes -- and the extended area they covered -- is worrying.
• The amount of energy rejected into space is equal to 60 hurricanes /year, or one every 6 days.
• Ronald Reagan was awarded two Nobel prizes one for Botany and the other for Economics.
• I don't care about what might happen somewhere down the road or what happens to your bastard grandchildren.
• One hurricane has enough energy to melt 16 feet of ice over all of Green land.

If its cold and snowy proof of global warming, if its warm and sunny proof of global warming if its chilly and rainy proof of global warming. learn it, know it, live it.

GOD is in control of the climate... WHY WORRY!!!??? I am not..

Climategate is an unholy mix of junk science, green hype, corporate greed and political opportunism that led to the biggest and most expensive hoax in history.

Anyone remember about a year ago. A Earth Quake in Japan and Tsunami that followed. At that time they said it was the most powerful ever. Earth Quake was so powerful it knocked the earth off it axis is what was reported at that time on the news. Maybe not global warming after all. But the New Future. Now all we need in Illinois is more access to the oceans. And an Honest Governor. Oh well 2 out 3 but still holding out for Honest Politicians.

the article said.."one bar was destroyed and six horses were killed !"my question is why were the horses at the bar drinking in the first place !!a horse walked into a bar and the bartender says "why the long face?"

Love the weather here in Iowa, looks like I will have firewood to carry over to next season.. Just hope that this doesn't mean a long hot hot summer.

This isn't 'early'! Back in the 90's it used to be warmer than it is now! How I know this? Because my grandmother would have me in my dress on Easter and we would be outside sweating and taking photos. Looking at those photos now make me see how easily people forget.

Time to get the swimming pool ready.

The world is like an old fashioned ice box. Where the avg temps stay nearly the same until the polar ice caps i mean the block of ice at the bottom is completely melted. After that, temps will soar completely out of control just like in an old ice box. With the polar ice melting, for every spot that's hotter there should be a spot that's colder.

But when mr grover, the gop, & the rushbo tell you that things will be better with global warming. They need to think about the animals, plants, & sea life. And how sooo many are dying off. Google 'climate change plants' and read thru the 110M hits. Is an acid sea of help.

Yes, yes, yes. We are crappy stewards of this planet. We have all caused this despite the cyclical nature of Mother Earth. Our infestation is growing. Don't worry though. All will come right. Have a bit of faith. It's really all we have left. Take care all.

If only The Mr. President, THE Barack Obama was around, we could he have stopped the Ice Age??? If only I could remember my 2nd grade science teacher's name, I could direct all of The (great) United States of America in her direction so she could very politely remind our great fellow Countrymen, THAT THE WORLD HAS BEEN HEATING AND COOLING ITSELF SINCE THE BEGINNING OF I'TS EXISTENCE. I'm thinking so with a lot of "logic" being thrown around out there. When will this conversation stop, and people realize that not ONE recognized scientist has SCIENTIFICALLY proven that any of our emissions or any gasses, etc, etc, etc are directly responsbile for what is happening to our atmosphere/weather, etc....... you theorize, test, prove/disprove......the most we've done is come up with a bunch of theories and a lot of conversation.

I'm not sure what's a bigger BS media topic to give some folks job security whose sole job it is to speak daily regarding these topics. "global warming" or "football is too rough, we should find a way to play where nobody ever gets hurt". hhmmmmmmmm Happy st. pattys day all

I accept the science of humans changing the atmospheric chemical composition through globalized industrialization. Much to my frustration and concern for future generations, the political reality is that there are so many ignorant Americans (some by choice, some by circumstance) it will take many years of violent spring weather, unusually hot summers, drought, and increasingly acidic oceans before today's ignorant are dead and more informed voters decide to take action. The problem is that so much more pollution will have been added to the atmosphere by then that the train of climate change will have already left the station. What I don't understand is that we buy insurance for our lives, homes, autos, and other valuables but we don't place a value on our planet by paying for insurance just in case the science is correct.

For those of us who don’t like to be ignorant about the science of altering the atmosphere's chemistry, I suggest the following books with a brief quote from each:

1. A Green History of the World, Clive Ponting, 1991 – “The net result of these human activities is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by a third in the last two hundred years – from about 270 parts per million in 1750 to 350 parts per million in the late 1980s. About half of this increase has occurred since the 1950s – carbon dioxide emissions rose from 1.6 billion tons a year in 1950 to 5.4 billion tons in the mid-1980s. Global use of fossil fuels is rising at about 4 per cent a year (which means a doubling every sixteen years) and carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere at about .5 per cent a year. Carbon dioxide has provided by far the greatest volume of greenhouse gas emissions and contributed about two-thirds of the total warming effect so far.” [page 388]
2. The Little Ice Age, Brian Fagan, 2000 – “The Little Ice Age reminds us that climate change is inevitable, unpredictable, and sometimes vicious. The future promises exactly the same kinds of violent change on a local and global scale. If the present, unusually prolonged high mode of the North Atlantic Oscillation is indeed due to anthropogenic forcing, then we must also assume that global warming will accentuate the natural cycles of global climate on the largest and smallest scales. Some of these potential cycles of change are frightening to contemplate in an overpopulated and heavily industrialized world.” [page 214] “Over a century ago, Victorian biologist Thomas Huxley urged us to be ‘humble before the facts’. The facts stare us in the face, yet we do not display sufficient humility. The vicissitudes of the Little Ice Age remind us of our vulnerability again and again. In a new climatic era, we would be wise to learn from the climatic lessons of history.” [page 217]
3. The Long Summer, Brian Fagan, 2004 – “Short-term climatic events like droughts do not often leave a clear footprint. But the droughts of the Medieval Warm Period (or Medieval Climatic Anomaly, as it is often called) left giant tracks across the American west, wrought in deep-sea cores, pollen samples, tree rings, and ice cores from high in the Andes. From the California coast to the Maya lowlands to Lake Titicaca, five centuries of sudden aridity wrought havoc on human societies already living close to the environmental edge.” [pages 214-215]
4. The Weather Makers, Timothy Flannery, 2005 – “The concentration of C02 in the atmosphere in times past can be measured from bubbles of air preserved in ice. By drilling about two miles into the Antarctic ice cap, scientists have drawn out an ice core that spans almost a million years of Earth history. This unique record demonstrates that during cold times CO2 levels have dropped to around 160 parts per million, and until recently they never exceeded 280 parts per million. The Industrial Revolution changed that, albeit slowly, for even by 1958, when Keeling began his measurements of CO2 atop Mauna Loa, it was up to only 315 parts per million.” [page 29] “Today the figures are 380 parts per million….” [page 28]
5. Collapse, Jared Diamond, 2005 – “…the atmosphere really has been undergoing an unusually rapid rise in temperature recently and that human activities are the or a major cause. The remaining uncertainties mainly concern the future expected magnitude of the effect: e.g., whether average global temperatures will increase by ‘just’ 1.5 degrees Centigrade or by 5 degrees Centigrade over the next century. Those numbers may not sound like a big deal, until one reflects that average global temperatures were ‘only’ 5 degrees cooler at the height of the last Ice Age.” [page 493]
6. The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock, 2006 – “Predictions of climate change do not depend only on theoretical models in the form of computer simulations of the Earth. There is now a vast array of monitoring activities sustained globally. Air and sea temperatures are continuously measured, as are the gases of the atmosphere, the cloud cover, the floating ice and the glaciers and the health of the ecosystems in the ocean and on the land. The truth of the models is therefore continuously tested against the observations coming in from the real world.” [page 57]
7. Dead Pool, James Lawrence Powell, 2008 – “The question is not whether the earth has warmed, but why? The scientific consensus is that the cause is the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which absorb heat and trap it near the earth. In one of the most prescient predictions in science, in 1896 … Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius predicted the very rise that we now observe. Based on the knowledge that carbon dioxide molecules trap heat, Arrhenius calculated that if atmospheric carbon dioxide level were to double, global temperatures would rise between 7 and 11 degrees F. More than a century later with vastly more information, IPCC forecasts that by 2100, temperatures will rise between 2.5 and 10.5 degrees F, overlapping the range the Swedish chemist forecast long ago. Arrhenius thought it might take three thousand years for carbon dioxide levels to double, but sadly that is one forecast that he got wrong.” [pages 171-2]

I make these suggestions to help frame the science behind the issues associated with human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Many people seem ignorant of the science behind climate analysis and content to put their heads deeply into the sand. The defining characteristic of humanity, complex intelligence, is enhanced by a broad liberal education. Thomas Jefferson had this to say about higher education including science: “the university [of Virginia] would be ‘now qualified to raise its youth to an order of science unequalled in any other state; and this superiority will be greater from the free range of mind encouraged there, and the restraint imposed at other seminaries by the shackles of a domineering hierarchy and a bigoted adhesion to ancient habits.’” [from Thomas Jefferson, Willard Sterne Randall, 1993, page 588]

Did AlGore go back down the hole with Punxsutawney Phil?