Year 3, Month 2, Day 1: Time For Our Three Minutes Dumb

The Tribune-Chronicle (Warren, OH) responds to the new USDA map of hardiness zones with a marvelous piece of stupid:

Whether or not you believe global warming is caused by human activities or if you think it’s a natural effect of climate change, there is no doubt things are changing.

So much so that for the first time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has updated the growing regions in its Plant Hardiness Zone Map. This is the guide that gardeners, growers and just about everyone in the plant industry uses to determine which plants will survive the coldest temperatures in various regions of the country.

The map was upgraded in 2003, but rather than a zone change, it was a more detailed map that narrowed down the previous existing zones into sub-categories.

This time, however, the map has changed to reflect changes in climate and it tells the story that here in northeast Ohio, we are getting warmer.

Dingleberries. Sent January 26:

In a fine example of the the kind of journalistically, logically, and scientifically sloppy reportage that has kept Americans from fully understanding the magnitude of the climate crisis, Kathleen Evanoff’s January 26 article on the revised USDA Map of hardiness zones begins, “Whether or not you believe global warming is caused by human activities or if you think it’s a natural effect of climate change….”

Global warming isn’t a “natural effect of climate change,” but the other way around. The climate’s transformation in new and inhospitable directions is exacerbated by the rising atmospheric temperatures brought by the greenhouse effect, a phenomenon first discovered almost two hundred years ago and experimentally confirmed multiple times since then. And there is not one iota of controversy in the scientific community about the causes of the greenhouse effect: us.

The phrase “climate change” was originally proposed to the Bush Administration by the Republican pollster and political strategist Frank Luntz, as a way of neutralizing public response to the phrase “global warming.” The substitute term offered by the mastermind of Orwellian conservative NewSpeak was actually a more accurate description.

The USDA Map offers yet more evidence to add to the pile, but until science and environmental journalists learn to do their jobs, the public discussion will remain confused, and precious time will have been squandered in delay.

Warren Senders