This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1392285
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1392285
I was discussing this with my wife this morning. Tree’s are still green, they used to be completely red by this time of year. But it’s OK, lets add another 2 million big ass trucks, so the @$$holes don’t feel inadequate.
2 Likes
Climate change is going to do us in, but in the meantime, the colors seem even more vibrant here in the Pacific Northwest. I wonder why that would be different from what people are seeing on the east coast.
3 Likes
Last winter in Albuquerque, in a gruesome end to a gruesome year, there was a three day series of hard freezes in early autumn which literally killed the green leaves on many trees so that they never “turned.” The grey-green dead leaves hung on the trees throughout the winter.
This year, leaves are turning normally. At least, so far.
4 Likes
Arkansas is almost a month behind on peak Fall colors. October is almost over and we haven’t even had our first frost. Not good.
2 Likes
Think about all the mass consumption Americans engage in at Christmas. We’re more worried about not being to buy everything we want than what we’re doing to the planet. Cargo ships unable to deliver their Christmas goodies due to Covid? Oh, the humanity! We must consume this Christmas!
7 Likes
Here in northern VT, we just had our first frost on Sunday (usually mid Sept.) Trees start to turn in late August from vibrant green to a dull olive. Then in mid to late September, they start to go to yellow, orange and red, peaking in early October. Usually, a hard frost is the trigger that turns the bright colors on, sometimes in just a few days. With no frost this year, the trees stayed in their dull olive state until just the last few weeks, and then, instead of bright colors, many of the leaves are just turning brown and falling off; most of the rest are shades of yellow with only a little red here and there. Living in the Champlain Valley, our leaves are usually the last to turn and fall and they are now doing that. At this point, one good rain and some wind will take most of the rest of the leaves off the trees.
6 Likes
From my valley view point this year has been the year of the vines: vinca vine, grape vine, trumpet vine, and a couple of other vines with thorns.
As for trees changes this year my black walnut tree produced a bumper crop of nuts. But it hasn’t been just the number of fruit, its the thickness of the husks. This year I had much less what I call pre-nuts. The tree produces these 4-6 weeks prior to the full nuts. This black walnut is the last to leaf out, but the first to drop its leaves.
Last year this tree dropped the pre-nuts, but hardly any full nuts, which is unusual. And this year it took so long to leaf out that I thought that maybe it had died.
Lastly my white pine dropped so many needles last year that my meadow looked like it was growing needles rather than grass.
ETA: Here is a grape vine with another vine using the first.
This is some vine on vine action, right here.
3 Likes
Carbon Capture and Storage is a non existent technology. Just like “Clean Coal”. There’s no such thing. Our ONLY choice is to quit emitting CO2 and CH4. I don’t think we’re ever going to do that because it requires a collective political will on a Global scale. We’re too addicted to Consumerism and FF.
3 Likes
[quote=“21zna9, post:6, topic:213376”]
. Cargo ships unable to deliver their Christmas goodies due to Covid? Oh, the humanity! We must consume this Christmas!
[/uote] and most of the stuff on those crago ships is junk!
2 Likes
Those vines are nuts! Leaf it alone.
(I couldn’t resist the temptation)
3 Likes
I dunno…the Smokies are STELLAR this year!
2 Likes
They have huge numbers of tulip poplars and sourwood trees, both of which are generally gorgeous in the Fall.
5 Likes
This is what happens when you don’t rake your forests.
h/t Smokey The Trump.
6 Likes
I’ve noticed that in the PNW also. Seems to be an exceptionally colorful fall. Mom blames the June heatwave and dry summer.
This is what I picture when I think of fall in Vermont:
I was last there in the mid 70s. Drove to Barre, Vermont from the Canadian border. Leaves were just starting to turn.
I’m planting silver maple trees now instead of autumn blaze seedlings. I get them free from the two I have growing in my backyard. Just about 100% germination on the damn things.
the U.S. Forest Service’s Center for Urban Forest Research, which in recent years has been at the forefront of efforts to determine which species are the true champions of carbon capture and storage. Researchers at the Davis, California, facility calculate that a silver maple traps almost 25,000 pounds of CO2 after 55 years—25 times more than cherry and plum trees, which ranked last.
Just planted 17 two year old silver maple seedlings on a 55 acre piece of land the city owns with some scattered scrub trees on it. (had permission)
I planted over 30 seedlings last fall, but they were only about 18 inches high and didn’t survive the drought this spring and summer. That was a lot of work for nothing.
4 Likes
Not that its relevant in any way, but I notice that the author has a Jewish sounding name. I spent a long career in conservation and management of natural areas; in my experience the number of Jewish foresters or other conservation professionals was very small. In my big northeast state, there were only two or three. So two of us, borrowing from the long-standing League of Catholic Foresters, which ultimately became a vehicle for graft payments to Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, formed the League of Jewish Foresters. I was the President!
Interestingly, one of the few Jewish foresters who I’ve ever met was the daughter of one of the founders of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts mega investment firm. The world is a bit of a strange place for Jewish nature lovers.
3 Likes
In northern Virginia most of the trees are still green - and it’s nearly November! There are hardly any leaves on the ground yet. A few trees have changed, so there are spots of red and yellow here and there, but, by and large, it doesn’t look much like fall in this area. We’re still getting daytime temperatures in the high 60s-low70s, and overnight temps are in the 40s. The long and short of it is that it’s still too warm for most of the trees to change. Twenty years ago the trees would have been a riot of color in early-mid October and the leaves would have been falling heavily now. The leaves will likely fall in November, and it will have more to do with wind and rain than temperatures. The once-fabulous fall colors will be muted this year, and we’re unlikely to see much more in the way of colorful leaves. Maybe we’ll get 3-4 days of decent color. Or maybe not.
3 Likes
Ditto in northern Virginia.
1 Like
This year has been crazy! We own twelve acres of forest about 70 miles north of NYC. Huge amounts of rain and it looks like we won’t have the first freeze until mid or late November.
The muted fall colors are a small worry. The forest is being hit very hard by invasive pests. We have a lot of beech trees near a rushing stream. We had long term problems with beech bark disease (caused by invasive pests) which felled a 150 year old tree last winter, and just this year we found widespread beech leaf disease, which is known to kill all infected trees in 1 to 5 years (with seedlings getting hit first). The disease is spending all over the country. If not stopped, beach leaf disease will likely kill off (just about) all American beech trees within a decade.
We lost a number of beautiful ash trees last year to the emerald ash borer, and other trees (other species) were hit hard by woodpeckers, which means serious infestation. In any case, even here in the northeast, forests are under attack. I wish I knew better ways to defend them, but I don’t.
We will do what we can! In the future, if this keeps up, our forests may be without quite a few tree species. Far more resources are needed for research and a serious effort to slow and reverse global warming. But human caused changes are happening at a frightening pace.
5 Likes