"martin" wrote in message
...
On 15 Jan 2004 21:06:53 GMT, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:

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.

Worse, much worse, the Telegraph is read by the people who do 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.

In any context, spring is defined as starting on the day of the vernal
equinox. That puts it early in the third week of March.
The fact that nature wakes up earlier and earlier in the year is not because
spring arrives earlier, but a consquence of overall global warming.

Franz