In article ,
Emrys Davies wrote:
This weeks email from the Gardening Telegraph is particularly
interesting as it deals at length with climatic change. I have copied
part of their email below to give a flavour of their weekly
contribution.

Well, it tells you something about the intelligence of the average
Telegraph reader, I suppose.

" What to do in your garden this weekend 17 - 18 January

Ignore the rain - officially it's spring

The Telegraph is read by the people who think that they run the
country.

No, it's not your imagination: spring is actually arriving
earlier almost every year. Climate change in the past 50 years has
brought forward the season by about three weeks, from April to March.

It may be news to the Telegraph hacks, but there is a whole month
(called February) that occurs between January and March. Strange,
but true.

Dr Tim Sparks of the centre for ecology and hydrology in
Cambridge, said no spring had arrived sooner than the season of 2002,
when the first frog-spawn appeared on Dec 10, 2001, and the first
primroses in October. Only a few reports have been received so far, but
spring 2004 is on course to beat 2003, which was also earlier than
average, and could overtake 2002.

It might help to know how spring is defined in this context.

Frog-spawn was found in Penzance on Dec 19 and primroses
have been seen in 24 places as far north as Northumberland. Both usually
appear in March. Snowdrops, which typically begin to bloom in February,
have been sighted in 15 parts of the country.

Aw, gee. My 25 year old copy of Clapham, Tutin and Warberg says that
primroses flower from December to May, and snowdrops from January to
March. I can witness this, from the time I lived in the West Country
and the times I have walked in late spring in the colder parts of
the north.

"We are in a period where records are broken constantly," Dr
Sparks said. "The 1990s was the warmest decade on record and plants and
animals have responded. It is undoubted that we have entered a phase of
climate change." Dr Sparks was speaking after the launch last week of
Spring into Science, a campaign run by the British Association for the
Advancement of Science and the Woodland Trust to encourage more people
to report seasonal indicators. In spring these include the first
ladybirds, tree leaves, swallows and bees. The information will help
phenologists studying patterns of the seasons.

That may well be true, but is not shown by the dumbed-down examples
used in that article.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.