Nature runs riot after Europe's warmest winter

[Herman Munster]

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070316124440.qp04a6gw&show_article=1

Wheat harvested a month early, markets bursting with prematurely ripened produce, animals migrating too soon or not at all -- Europe's warmest winter on record has made nature run amok, experts across the continent have reported.
With average temperatures in the three winter months of December through February more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in most European countries, the environment's biological clock has been thrown off kilter, they say.

In Italy, emerging from the mildest winter in more than two centuries according to Bologna's Institute for Atmospheric Science and Climate, vegetables not normally seen until later in the season -- green beans, asparagus, peas, artichokes -- are already so abundant that merchants can't sell them.

In The Netherlands, where winter wheat has been harvested a month earlier than normal, scientists worry that unseasonably high temperatures will increase the risk of grain plant viruses caused by aphids.

In neighbouring Germany, half of barley crops in some regions have been hit with a weather-related blight of yellow dwarf disease, carried by fleas that do not normally survive the winter.

The Dutch nature observatory Natuurkalender has reported the "chaotic" disruption of normal butterfly lifecycles, with many species emerging from the cocoon far too early.

[JetCityLiberal]

1. I am listening to "Inconvenient Truth" right now

it is on cable and it is scaring the hell out of me.

Thank you for this link.

[ananda]

2. yep, fuck with nature and..

.. nature will fuck you back bigtime!

[LiberalFighter]

3. I wonder if Monsanto and others using gene modification will cause problems

with food production.

Could crops have adapted to changing climate enough?

Will modified seeds be harmful to the ecology? Cause diseases to become widespread?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Are you saying GM causes climate change?

[LiberalFighter]

5. No... I saying that maybe our food supply may be at risk if modified seeds

do not adapt as well as naturally produced seeds.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Wouldn't we also be at risk...

if the natural seeds don't adapt as well as the GM seeds?

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. I find it hard to believe winter wheat has been harvested already

That wouldn't be one month early; more like 4 months early. I suspect it should say "winter wheat sprouting" or something.