Okay, I stole the title from Minnesotans for Global Warming, which is a fairly clueless bunch of climate change deniers. Then again, props to anyone on any side of this mess that still has a sense of humor.
All the models say that that Northeastern North America will get warmer and wetter. We don’t actually need the wet, we’ve got plenty already, but we got our first snow on December first this year. Twenty years ago we had a white Hallowe’en as often as not. We’re probably now Zone 5 not 4. That is a major difference. Look in any nursery catalog: Zone 4 to zone 5 is the cutoff from ‘cold’ to ‘temperate’. We can actually hope to raise peaches and sweet cherries. The same applies to our livestock: thirty below is life threatening, fifteen below means cuddle up and chow down.
The only crop likely to be harmed is maple, and I’m not sure how badly. They’re still making syrup in Ohio so we must have some margin.
I’m not sure we (anyone) could make a living on this land in zone 4. Since I built the house in 1989 we’ve added three weeks to the growing season, and 10 degrees F to the winter’s coldest night. If that happens again in the next twenty years, we’ll be leaving a nice farm to whoever comes next.
Yankees for global warming.