Let the Easterners Freeze in the Dark!

Another weekend; another dump of snow in Eastern Canada. With cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa all closing in seasonal records for snowfall it looks like global warming has headed south for the winter.

What's funny is remembering the "Cold is Cool" banners that the environmentalists were waving when the international climate change conference was being held in Montreal in 2005. Apparently the conference delegates got together afterwards in closed door meetings with everybody exclaiming "Who the hell picked to have a climate change conference in Montreal in December". Apparently conference organizers, under the threat of water boarding were able to pacify the crowd by saying "We'll make it up to you guys by holding the next conference in Bali!"


What I can't understand, is why anybody in Canada would be against global warming.

As surprising as it seems, if a person goes back 18,000 thousand years or so, the climate of every major city in Canada was exactly the same; minus 2 and under thousands of feet of ice. Since then climate change has not progressed evenly across all areas of Canada. The southern tip of Vancouver Island has warmed much faster than any other location in the dominion.

By using the plant hardiness zone (PHZ) designations as criteria for differential warming, we can evaluate the geneses of climate change across Canada. The PHZ's were developed by Agriculture Canada to quantify which crops could grow where. The PHZ's range from 0 to 9 with zone 0 designating the the harshest climate and zone 9 the mildest. Winter temperatures in zone 0 can dip below -45 while zone 9 climates rarely dip below freezing. Generally speaking, the colder the climate the less variety of plants and trees will be able to survive. Up here at the ranch we are zone 2 and can grow about 100 different trees and shrubs, in Victoria, which is a zone 8 they can grow over 1800.

Vancouver was rated as the best to live in Canada based solely on its more favorable climate. Coincidentally David Suzuki who already has a house in Vancouver is dead set against anyone else in Canada from enjoying the same warm weather as he does

The fruit producing regions of Canada including B.C.'s Okanogan Valley, the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario, and The Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia all have PHZ's of 5/6. As the global warming continues, the PHZ's will all move northwards approximately 120 kilometers for every 1 degree increase in temperature, and voila in a few short centuries, every province will have its very own fruit producing region, and what is so wrong with that.