Hardiness Rootstock <-> Variety

[SerenaSYH]

Elemire, I think it's really crucial to reread Britta and Flordel's comments even if you disagree with mine. Pollution, all the waste being dumped into the ocean is having a terrible effect...... Over-irrigation, mining, erosion, then you add countries which are huge consumers and throw-away societies like the U.S. with their cartons of fast-food plastics and mountainsides of disposable waste we discard on a daily basis, and countries like China which has almost zero concern for the environment. It is a hidden secret that many non-Chinese Americans will not! buy food made from China...and many Asians secretly accuse China of mislabeling their products as "made in Thailand, made in Korea", etc. just because they know a lot of Asians will not!! buy food exported from China so the Chinese slap on a fake label....

Also Elemire, NYC has top anthropology and Natural History museums and I'm sure in Britain especially there's outstanding museums as well. National Geographic, NOVA, Scientific American are contributed from scientists from Harvard, Cornell, CalTech, MIT, and all over the world, some of the top institutions. All the museums and these institutions are very consistent in their theories and studies of the earth and geology and talk in depth about theories that Britta has already tried to explain to you.

By the way, ask Flordel how long that snow lasted as well. I am thinking the overall season was far shorter than previous years. Remember snow is a very complex issue. Hope Britta will cover the concepts behind snow and how melting glaciers can actually send down a few brief spells of seemingly intense snow precipitation...Also you can have as hot of a weather as 32 degrees F and still have snow. For example the one time in 8 years we had deep snow (in 2010) it went as high as 5' of softly falling snow!! but! the snow vanished within 2-1/2 days, lol! This type of Freak snow does not count. The rest of the year we had zilch except for one 6" snow that again lasted less than a day, lol! Not exactly the raging blizzards we used to get when I was a kid.... As for the logging--pine and evergreen hardwoods! The historic photos of Perm 36 were covered with evergreens. Evergreens are superior woods in those altitudes because they are harder, tougher. than the typical deciduous softwoods. Look at the historical photos of that region...Evergreen hardwoods....

Photos to me on the Himalayas are of the same elevation if you study the mounding of the foreground in relation to the mountains toward the rear...There were no trees there back in 1922. Also 1922 versus 2012 that's NINETY YEARS, Elemire, plenty of time for a tree to grow and take over a new region when global warming hits. And you still didn't address the significant change from Mt. Everest at May 1922 versus April 2012 and what a huge difference the snow was....And people who live in the Himalayas are! very concerned about their climate changes too. They are the ones living there and talking about it! You are ignoring the ones who are suffering.... They've lived in their tightly knit societies for centuries unlike us who move from place to place and experience different climates and are not tied to the land....Also you may note that the real farmers in the U.S., those actually working the land have a lot of environmental concerns. The American Border Collie folks who have real sheepdogs are "leftist" they are very concerned about conservation and preserving the land....It's the conglomerates who don't care a whit and are busy pumping their animals full of unnatural hormones invented by the corporation scientist that sold out (which my Dad refers to), as opposed to spending time to research the long-term health effects. Also remember every corporation hires its own pseudo-scientist to get certain legislation revoked and to bring more lobbying power. Getting back to roses, there's the Giant Corporation Bayer which produces not only pesticides, fungicides but also pharmaceuticals, billions of dollars in profits-- they are also the most popular American insecticide and fungicide company especially with regard to rose gardeners. Well, Bayer shut down any environmental group from petitioning EPA to stop producing Sevin, which has been already outlawed in Europe, Australia and Canada....EPA handed down the final approval edict, and told the rest of us to sit down and shut up when we warned how damaging Sevin was to the honeybee population....To this day, rows upon rows of Sevin line the shelves of our gardening stores....Now they are developing a lawn coverage which uses Sevin too! I am so angry I get ulcers just thinking about it.

P.S. there is an interesting article from a Swiss scientist on the alps that covers 50 years up to the year 1996....Very! objective, clear and detailed...But if you wait next week I'll do some more digging up of more quality readings...or perhaps Britta can chip in and send in these scientific research and the methodology used. Science is this way, it gradually builds and builds until finally they realize yes, there is really something dramatic going on and that we need to take note....

http://www.unige.ch/climate/Publicat...ston/CC97B.pdf

My links and others show the lack of snow was the entire autumn up through December 1st for sure, and I think! not until Flordel's time was there a break in the dearth and afterwards some places in Europe were able to normalize a bit better....
Here is the video from Reutgers...
http://travel.usatoday.com/destinati...ing/52275090/1
For U.S. we were far unluckier...Many of states never did get snow...Some were Finally! able to get snow after the 1st week of January but it's just a scattering of sections. The fact that there was such a drastic change still says something isn't right....
http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/01/15...e-to-look.html

[elemire]

Hows the baby roses Serena? Hope you managed to plant them in between.

I fear my ability of discussing world climate will be a bit impaired after the weekend... by the zombies... or rather, a Diablo III release. We have some commercial plans for that one with a team, so I am likely to be a bit busy with a different kind of research. Oh well, someone has to pay for all the plants.

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

Pollution, all the waste being dumped into the ocean is having a terrible effect...... Over-irrigation, mining, erosion, then you add countries which are huge consumers and throw-away societies like the U.S. with their cartons of fast-food plastics and mountainsides of disposable waste we discard on a daily basis, and countries like China which has almost zero concern for the environment.

But those are the different issues than man-made climate change. I also think that there are two sub-issues here, one is the actual pollution (for example radioactive waste), and another is people living filthy, like for example a local park being littered by the trash. First one is the government level issue, while the second one is the peoples issue. If the community does not want to tidy up, and need someone to force or do it for them, it is something wrong with the community to begin with.

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

Also Elemire, NYC has top anthropology and Natural History museums and I'm sure in Britain especially there's outstanding museums as well. National Geographic, NOVA, Scientific American are contributed from scientists from Harvard, Cornell, CalTech, MIT, and all over the world, some of the top institutions.

There are two issues with that. For one, there is a huge commercialization of the universities going on, and some universities already refer to their students not as to students, but to "our clients". On the scientific level, there also are the subjects that they pic for the shows for example. Remember after Da Vinci Code there was a series of the "anthropological" movies about Dead Sea scrolls, claiming there were more gospels than there is in the Bible? Well, sure, but what they never told the public was that those were gnostic gospels, created in early middle ages, and have nothing to do really with the actual Bible, not to mention that they are incomplete and some known only from late middle ages texts. That's not a science, that's a popular culture, based on far fetched hypothesis, that cannot be proved. National Geographic produced plenty of that kind of movies when the nature is concerned as well, all the why dinos went extinct, the meteor hitting the earth, etc. - those are merely hypothesis.

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

By the way, ask Flordel how long that snow lasted as well. I am thinking the overall season was far shorter than previous years.

That depends on the location actually, but looking at skying photos and videos from April, it lasted a while on higher altitude at least. There is some talk as far as the European climate is concerned, that the autumn comes a bit later, and a spring comes also later, than it used to do a couple of hundred years back (that you can see from the folklore related to the calendar customs, but that is not a process of last 3 decades). It is unknown if it is related to the climate change, or something else.

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

Not exactly the raging blizzards we used to get when I was a kid....

You talk about the winters around 1960-1980 right? That's the colder than normal period I was talking about, which was even called mini ice age by the media of the time. It was colder than normal, so you should be getting warmer weather normally - not the 2 month early probably, but not what you got as a child either. It is very dangerous to take a personal experience as a point of reference, if you want to have an objective view about what is happening.

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

As for the logging--pine and evergreen hardwoods! The historic photos of Perm 36 were covered with evergreens. Evergreens are superior woods in those altitudes because they are harder, tougher. than the typical deciduous softwoods. Look at the historical photos of that region...Evergreen hardwoods....

No. First, it is latitude, not altitude, that plays a role there. Taiga is dominated by the hardwood, but it has mixed in some small-leaved deciduous trees like birch, alder, willow or poplar. Birch in particular is a popular decorative tree in the Russian towns and villages, so around the buildings, you mostly will see birches planted as a tree. Besides that, at that point in history, rows of birches were planted along side the roads, to provide some shelter during the heat and in the winter, so the road gets less snow of it. Birch also is particularly easy tree to seed in the difficult soils - you can see them growing even on unused railways. They also grow in the swamps and pretty much everywhere else, even in the roof gutters (!). Only in the most Northernmost corners you have pure hardwood, mostly larix, but apart of larix, moss and some heather nothing else grows there to begin with.

Perm however is not that far North, it is on the South West edge of the taiga. Grass is also pretty normal thing where there is enough sun, as well as wild raspberries - which are particularly good in those places by the way, as well as blueberries (which grow mostly in the forest).

Here are a few picture from the 1910 in Perm (which is close to the lagers as the names suggest):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...%281910%29.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...%281910%29.jpg

Plenty of the softwood and grass growing there.

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

There were no trees there back in 1922. Also 1922 versus 2012 that's NINETY YEARS, Elemire, plenty of time for a tree to grow and take over a new region when global warming hits.

Global warming we speak about in last 20- 30 years. So the soil had to warm up first, then the tree line had to slowly creep upwards, following the warming up soil. That's not a process that happens over 30 years, nor even over the 90 years. Tree cannot grow itself there and wait for the global warming, the global warming has to be happening for 100-200 years for a tree line to make any significant advance upwards. In the very high altitudes the soil has to thaw a few meters to begin with for a tree to be able to grow, and those in the picture are not some drunken spruces, those are well established old trees.

Also there is another clue, if you look closely at the inscription of the older photo, it says "A High Camp in the Himalayas at 18.000 ft, Bellow Kangchenjunga". 18.000 ft is about 5500 meters, when a tree line normally ends somewhere at around 4000-4500 meters in Himalaya. That's a kilometer and a half difference, so it is definitely not possible.

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

And people who live in the Himalayas are! very concerned about their climate changes too. They are the ones living there and talking about it! You are ignoring the ones who are suffering.... They've lived in their tightly knit societies for centuries unlike us who move from place to place and experience different climates and are not tied to the land....

The most problems in Himalayan societies is not the climate change, but the lifestyle change enforce by the respective governments. In fact part of them suffer from a different effect, that the woods were hewn out in the higher altitudes, which make the cold weather streams to move downhill unopposed, and freeze everything in the valleys. Then you get landslides, floods and all sorts of other issues related to the cut first think later issue. Even Chinesse government admitted that it was a bad idea to deforest the mountain areas, but it is not as easy to replant them, and it takes years for the forests to get reestablished.

Besides that, the majority of the common folks in those areas are illiterate and uneducated, which also adds to the problems and poverty.

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

Well, Bayer shut down any environmental group from petitioning EPA to stop producing Sevin, which has been already outlawed in Europe, Australia and Canada....EPA handed down the final approval edict, and told the rest of us to sit down and shut up when we warned how damaging Sevin was to the honeybee population....To this day, rows upon rows of Sevin line the shelves of our gardening stores....Now they are developing a lawn coverage which uses Sevin too! I am so angry I get ulcers just thinking about it.

That's again a different issue than the climate change. It is not a secret that in the average American household people have a small chemistry plant under the sink, I suppose we will see a China outlawing some of those materials before the US does. But I think it is not that much an issue with the one corporation, but the cultural issue, because a habit to use all that chemistry developed over the years, in pre-corporation era.

P.S. I do not have a time to read the Swis article at the moment, so about that later.

[admin]

Interesting discussions here, good to read people thinking about the issues even if people don't agree with each other.

[Lulu-amongst-the-blooms]

Originally Posted by admin

Interesting discussions here, good to read people thinking about the issues even if people don't agree with each other.

So long as it stays courteous!

A few things have interested me. One is the anthropology side track, dh read arch and anth and have to say that we agreed last night talking about us it would be concerning were applicants being informed rather than intrigued by tv shows of what ever calibre, these things might be the spark that ignites a passion for actual learning...not learning themselves. Although neither of us work in academia anymore, one side of the family does, so we are fairly in touch both with academia and the academics of the type who research and front some science shows. Science can be simplified yet true, but interpreted poorly.


My take on all enviro concerns is that i do not know for sure and neither do the experts: there is still disagreement though most concurr with global warming and associated devastation. Thus, it seems prudent to not pollute, even if its 'too late' or 'not contributory enough' its not justification for me to not make things worse. One cannot live a totally eco sensitive life in a modern society without significant sacrifice. For us, we are eco impacting in many ways...we have more land and house than is ecologically fair, for example, and more pets. We buy things from overseas, and commute for work and travel. But we aim to make the wreck carbon neutral, a big undertaking with an old property, and make other concessions. We produce far lass rubbish than the average household, dh rents a room near work to cut down on commuting etc etc. we do not have children sadly, but had decided that if we did we would only have one, for population reasons. we own only one car, unusual in a rural community like ours. There is no need to risk making a problem significantly worse than we have to.

[elemire]

Continuation from the previous post, as it said it was too long essay. :P

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

Re:Here is photo of Mount Everest in 1922 near the lower base of the mountain…PLEASE NOTE: This photo is of the famous explorer George Finch and the EXACT DATE is May 23, 1922. After the photo was taken a couple miles up they were forced to retreat. Remember, explorers try to scale when they will most likely succeed…

Here is Mount Everest in April 29, 2012 with a young college student who will scale its summit for geological studies. Note how much bare ground is exposed all around.

The mount Everest usually is attempted only in May, because of the wind patterns before the monsoon season. It can also be attempted after the monsoon, but that is much more rare.

In the first picture according to the description is 8326 meter high, which is close to the summit. The second picture however is on the trek to Everest Base Camp in Nepal, which is at 5380 m. That's a 3 kilometer difference! The student expedition of 2012 did not even reach further than Camp IV afaik, which is at 7920 m, so it can't even be the same place at all. Besides that, 1922 expedition used a Northern route via Tibet, when the 2012 one is using Southern route via Nepal.

Also if you compare the Base camp picture of 1922 (or close to it) http://static.7summits.ru/media/middle/4/20216.jpg or http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...tion-a-008.jpg it also is pretty bare. Or the whole view of the base camp in Tibet in 1922: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lv...0lqqo1_500.jpg It is of course not the Nepal one, but it is around the same altitude, so can serve for a general comparison.

Originally Posted by SerenaSYH

P.S. there is an interesting article from a Swiss scientist on the alps that covers 50 years up to the year 1996....Very! objective, clear and detailed...But if you wait next week I'll do some more digging up of more quality readings...or perhaps Britta can chip in and send in these scientific research and the methodology used. Science is this way, it gradually builds and builds until finally they realize yes, there is really something dramatic going on and that we need to take note....

http://www.unige.ch/climate/Publicat...ston/CC97B.pdf

Yes, it is an interesting article, but first we need to establish that it does not talk about the all Alps, but only about the Swis Alps, which are a rather tiny region. It may correspond to the other findings, it might not, but it talks about Swis Alps, and data is taken from 3 weather stations as far as the years before 1980 are concerned.

In summary, it also says, that the climate shift is observed only in the lower altitudes, and stops being significant at the altitudes higher than ~1500 m. (which is understandable, as there the atmosphere is much cooler and different than closer to the surface). It also says that most of it is related to the behavior of Atlantic ocean, which influences the most of the European weather - and the activity of the Atlantic mostly means the milder winters.

However what I found more interesting in the article, were these few extracts:

While the latter part of the 1980s received much media and public attention because of the economic consequences of the lack of snow during those winters, the data presented here show that there have been periods in the record where snow depth or duration were as low as during the 1980s. Records prior to 1945, not illustrated here, indicate that many mountain stations experienced sparse snow conditions in the 1930s (e.g., Beniston et al., 1994). These events went relatively unnoticed because at that time the ski industry was only a minor income earner for mountain communities. In the 1960s, however, ski resorts were investing heavily
in infrastructure at a time when snow was relatively abundant, so that changes relative to the 1960s baseline are the ones which have generated most of the economic adversity for these resorts and raised public concern as to a possible sign of global warming (Rebetez, 1996).

and this one:

The marked decrease in snow duration from 1988–1990 is a particularly striking, although not unique, feature of the record; the late 1940s had significantly less snow and the trend towards durations exceeding
50% were not encountered until the late 1950s. Even the 1988–1992 episode did not see snow duration for the 50-cm threshold go below 50% of maximumpossible duration; compared to the years prior to this, where duration reached close to 90%, the decrease was perceived more accutely than the more systematic low snow amounts in the 1940s and 1950s, because of the economic significance snow had gained in the meantime.

Which is general says, that in 30-ties and 40-ties snow was even less than it was in the end of 90-ties, at the time when the article was published. The article does not explain in detail the missing of snow at the beginning of the century, although it seems that the similar cycles of weather patterns have happened before. So what is to blame for the 30-ties, since the global warming wasn't at play then? Natural cycles? Are those natural cycles at play in the 90-ties? What % of the influence we can attribute to the natural cycle and what to the global warming? And that's where the global warming theory is at its weakest, because nobody knows the answer so far.

What they can say so far is that something has happened, but not that something will happen - for example, at this point the hurricane season should start soonish, but they cannot tell how many and how strong storms there will be. I am sure, that if there will be strong storms, it will be global warming, if there isn't, it will be "just wait for the next year". But that's the point, it is very little known about the natural cycles of Atlantic. When you cannot create a model, which would generate more or less accurate prediction of the future weather patterns, the reversed reasoning has a big chance to be flawed, because you use the same measurements that did not allow you to predict the phenomena in the first place.

[Stefanie]

Originally Posted by Lulu-amongst-the-blooms

So long as it stays courteous!

Absolutely! at some point I had fear's of this thread being de-trolled again

A few things have interested me. One is the anthropology side track, dh read arch and anth and have to say that we agreed last night talking about us it would be concerning were applicants being informed rather than intrigued by tv shows of what ever calibre, these things might be the spark that ignites a passion for actual learning...not learning themselves. Although neither of us work in academia anymore, one side of the family does, so we are fairly in touch both with academia and the academics of the type who research and front some science shows. Science can be simplified yet true, but interpreted poorly.

My better half is a scientist so I get a lot of the 'heavy stuff'. Although it moves mainly around subtropical forests and savannah it does touches the global warming theory in one way or another. But even scientists don’t always agree on the same topic. If and when that happens each side tries to prove their point by research and data. Subsequently data can be interpreted both ways....

Now if one believes in the global warming theory or not or even has a different point of view. Fact is that we all should try to minimize our ecological footprint as much as possible - which means I personally should look into my rose spray concept again

[Lulu-amongst-the-blooms]

Originally Posted by Stefanie

Absolutely! at some point I had fear's of this thread being de-trolled again



My better half is a scientist so I get a lot of the 'heavy stuff'. Although it moves mainly around subtropical forests and savannah it does touches the global warming theory in one way or another. But even scientists don’t always agree on the same topic. If and when that happens each side tries to prove their point by research and data. Subsequently data can be interpreted both ways....

Now if one believes in the global warming theory or not or even has a different point of view. Fact is that we all should try to minimize our ecological footprint as much as possible - which means I personally should look into my rose spray concept again

Thank you, just what i meant on both points!

[elemire]

Originally Posted by Lulu-amongst-the-blooms

So long as it stays courteous!

People these days... It is even amazing in a way, that in the good 20 years of Internet use, people lost an ability to discuss some subjects, like religion, politics, and social issues to some extend. Apart of the few exceptions, it is practically impossible to talk about those issues online, because things will go wrong more or less on page 2 of the discussion, and around page 3 the loosing side will run to the moderators for the reinforcements. Considering that human society is based on communication, that is a significant issue.

Originally Posted by Lulu-amongst-the-blooms

A few things have interested me. One is the anthropology side track, dh read arch and anth and have to say that we agreed last night talking about us it would be concerning were applicants being informed rather than intrigued by tv shows of what ever calibre, these things might be the spark that ignites a passion for actual learning...not learning themselves. Although neither of us work in academia anymore, one side of the family does, so we are fairly in touch both with academia and the academics of the type who research and front some science shows. Science can be simplified yet true, but interpreted poorly.

I quite agree with this, the interpretation can be a huge problem. People often take things they see on TV or read about in fiction (sic!) books, as 100% true. That, and increasing inability of people to read a wall of text, creates a problem, that a more serious scientific literature becomes largely inaccessible for the broader audience. Not every scientist is also a good writer, and contemporary audience demands more of a science show than an actual science - a show that they can consume that evening and forget in the morning. It shapes not only what is broadcasted on the science channels, but also on many other levels, for example how the scientist is supposed to read a lecture. It also gives a birth to the generic theories, that sound good on telly, but are not based on the actual findings, but on very loosely interpreted data. For example, now we have a few populist theories raging in the field of Migration Period, and Jordanes "Getica", which became quite popular among the masses, but which by a large part are based on the highly questionable interpretations of linguistic and archeological data.

I also think it is a part of the problem with the global warming theory, that it is very generic theory, based mostly on the temperature measurements and correlations with the greenhouse gas measurements, but with a pretense to explain ALL weather patterns in the world (and a couple of other unrelated things occasionally). That's a lot of conclusions based on very little data actually, considering the complexity of the climate.

Originally Posted by Stefanie

Now if one believes in the global warming theory or not or even has a different point of view. Fact is that we all should try to minimize our ecological footprint as much as possible - which means I personally should look into my rose spray concept again

Well yes and no. The problem is that some species adapted to a human neighborhood, and a part of human activity is necessary to support the ecosystem. In the early conservation efforts they usually were forbidding all of the human activity in certain areas, but at times it was actually giving opposite results, because it harms the species that are adapted to the agricultural surroundings, etc. Even things like forest fires can be beneficial for some species, which are adapted for that kind of environment, and rely on high levels of ash to thrive.

[SerenaSYH]

Lol, huge rush deadlines kept me swamped so no time yet to update the debate. Also Eluane's birthday was this week and I wanted to be sure to post her new birthday photos on my intro thread! She had such a fabulous time at the local nursery. Hahaha, Elemire, baby roses were definitely screaming bloody murder. I realize some were in tiny narrow disposable pots for over 3 weeks. They are all planted now, and resuscitated with the miracle Gardenville fertilizer. Roses go crazy over this stuff and they actually grew some more overnight, lol! One of the reasons why it took me so long was because I couldn't decide how to color-coordinate everything and kept changing my mind. Rabbits have also been circling my lawn like a bunch of fuzz-ball sharks, haha! So Eluane is busy warning them off. I sure hope they won't "jump over" and into my mesh enclosure, lol! But I loooove the plastic mesh. It is the coolest, most practical invention EVER! Well, when my deadlines are finished, I'll do some more researching, hehe!Gotta go sleep now....

[campanula]

I am sure this thread has stayed courteous and polite because I have not contributed anything. Global warming is a bit of a misnomer since it is my understanding that weather changes are going to include much wider fluctuations from the norm. Climate change is probably a less misleading term than GW and I think it is undeniable that climatic patterns are seriously perturbed. Yes, there have been cooling and warming periods in the past but with a significantly increased population, global finances, mass movement of people and technological changes, I have considerable concern for future generations. On a more mundane note, pigeons have eviscerated my entire cherry crop, I am battling peach leaf curl (and losing) and bloody leaf-curling plum aphid has mangled my young plums. Oh yeah, Zephirine Drouhin, the largest plant in my garden, is a complete disaster zone - chlorotic, plastered with ravenous aphids, poorly foliaged - makes me mortified by both the sight of such a pitiful plant and the slap to my reputation as mistress of the plant universe, a horticultural legend (at least in my own head).