The winter's not over and already the Boston Glob is finding unnamed "scientists" in the woodwork predicting happy tulips and woodpeckers amidst larger tick populations and floating coastal homes. This story is apparently the Glob's editorial staff prediction that a "lesser-noted ledger of global warming" is upon us. Just one question, with an above average warm winter of 2011-12, has the Glob weather counting staff forgotten the rather chilly and snowy winter of 2010-11? Seems like the Glob has hired yet more staff with no local history memories or current local knowledge. Not unusual for the Morrissey Booulevardians. Where are Bill Coughlin and Bucko Smith and others of the Globe greats?

Wow, a story in the Globe on the good of warm winter. Are you abandoning the danger of global warming to all of us? By the way, I read a report that the glaciers in the Himalayas had not shrunk in 10 years and some had actually increase in size. Wait, didn't Al Gore and the UN stated in a report that all glaciers will be gone in the Himalaya by 2035 due to global warming.

NO. No evidence!

2010-11 wasn't exceptionally cold, though it was snowy. In fact, my apple and peach trees ended up blooming early (late and mid April, respectively) last year as all the snow came to an abrupt end pretty early in March. (new paragraph) If I were writing this article, I wouldn't have focused so much on snow, but on average temperatures, which are indeed coming way up. I haven't paid much attention to exact temp. measurements, but I can see the effect in plants I've known over my 50 years of life, especially spring flowering plants. Forsythia, apples, daffodils and whatnot all used to bloom about 2 weeks later than they do now, excepting this year, when most of them bloomed about 3 1/2 weeks earlier. (New paragraph) I own a small farm in northern Aroostook County, Maine, outside of Houlton, and I've been planting hundreds of seedlings to replace a lot of what the previous owner cut in the wood lot. He had taken most of the maple, spruces, and white pines and left the aspen/poplars. I've been doing some replanting so that the woods doesn't remain all poplar, which is a fairly lousy wood. I've taken to introducing lots more white pine, which, though it is already in Aroostook, tends to favor more southern locations. I am also introducing red oak, which definitely, up until now, hasn't done well in extreme northern New England. I bet the oak is going to thrive in the warm weather over the next generation or to (quite literally, as I'm leaving the farm to my family.)

It was encouraging to see mention of dire consequences of climate change on the front page of the Globe. But the bulk of the story was about the possible good effects on rabbits etc. While it is true that there may be some temporary advantages for rabbits in the short run from global warming, in not too many years they will be baked or starved along with us humans if we don't do something to minimize it by seriously cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. The ticks will probably do OK as long as some of their hosts survive.

The deep-thinking Globe haters seem incapable of nuanced thinking on this issue. Global warming is a phenomenon with increasingly persuasive documentation. This article merely observes, rather neutrally, one aspect of a gradually changing climate. But apparently it is too threatening to some people who have closed off their minds and march to the conservative drumbeat. They are told what to think. It's a sad commentary that even Republican candidates for President can't discuss even the possibility that it is occurring because of human action because it would automatically disqualify them for the nomination.

Georgina is completely adorable!