I blame you. Yes, you
Could climate change steal Connecticut’s Christmas tree industry? Experts are racing to stop it
If you ask Lisa Angevine-Bergs, she’ll tell you that Richard Cowles and his team are “going to save Christmas.”
Why would I?
They are both Christmas tree farmers. And Cowles, who is also a plant pathologist and entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, is at the forefront of the race to help the Christmas tree industry adapt to a rapidly changing climate.
They can’t survive a 1.7F increase in global temps since 1850? They survived the previous Holocene warm periods, rights?
Cowles and his colleagues have planted thousands of trees in Connecticut, including rare varieties from overseas, looking for the right attributes. They want trees that look appropriate for Christmas but are capable of withstanding climate extremes that would kill other, more popular tree species.
Cult fearmongering.
For a plant that can take a decade to mature, a Christmas tree is surprisingly susceptible to yearly and even seasonal climate shifts. As those shifts become ever more extreme, with heavy rain followed by extended periods of drought, icy cold winters and too-early springs, Connecticut Christmas tree farmers can find it difficult to keep their crops healthy.
Yup, cult. And I guess they are going to be starting early with their Christmas insanity.
What Connecticut Christmas tree farmers cannot survive is the competition from foreign tree producers and the high cost of living in Connecticut, including the high cost of property taxes on a parcel large enough to grow Christmas trees commercially. They only get one harvest after ten years of effort. The entire market can change between planting and harvesting. But what they really have trouble with are invasive species of bugs, mostly from Asia. I have seen forests all over North America ravaged by various kinds of bugs. And we know with certainty that Chinese agents intentionally import various species in order to harm American agriculture.
The good news for Connecticut tree growers is that thanks to Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, the cost of artificial trees is high enough to shift part of the consumer market back to real trees. Despite warming, tree growers should have a pretty good year.
I do think most Christmas tree growers get exempt from regular property tax (AG rates are far less). But it is still hard to do business there. Most tree farms have a staggered rotation so there are always trees ready for that year’s market, but you still have to water in the summer and care for those trees all year long.
All true, but lower taxes is not “free of taxes”. At some point those greedy developers and greedy bureaucrats get together with greedy politicians and force greedy land owners to change their minds about land use. Or they die and their kids sell it off to a developer for a big bag of money instead of working for a living the rest of their lives.
I’ve seen a lot of old people sacrifice their whole lives to keep the family farm (of tree farm) going only for it to be sold by their kids the first chance they got. Too many farm kids have no interest in doing back breaking labor all their lives.
Sometimes that is driven by estate taxes (if the estate is big enough) or just the kids wanting to sell out.
No respect for the legacy of the parents. Sad.
Sweet baby Jesus, they plant and grow Christmas trees in Georgia and South Carolina. Trees survive just fine in Conneticut, but what is killing the Christmas tree industry there is the cost of growing those trees. With insane land prices, the cost benefit of tree farming makes no sense.
EPIC!!! President Trump at Opening Ceremony Army/Navy Game – Video
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2025/12/epic-president-trump-at-opening.html
William mocks “experts”, you know, those people who grow and harvest the trees in Connecticut. Those interviewed included Richard Cowles, a tree farmer AND a plant pathologist and entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. So yes, “experts”.
But yes, cult leaders like William hate experts and expertise, what with their interfering with right-wing lying and mythology, and all.
The tree farmers in CT, you know, the actual experts, didn’t whine about taxes or gubmint regulations but DID point out the changes they’ve seen in rains and droughts and temp swings, you know, those things related to global warming.
William slurs these hard working farmers as being in a cult. Knock it off.
“kids today just don’t want to go back breaking labor”
Lol not if they had a chance to be able to choose it to.
Would you ?
Taxes ? Put it under a farm easement prohibiting any use but a farm.of course that severely limits the actual cash value of what you are leaving your children.
Teach as I have said many times before, although factually accurate using the temp gained since 1850 is terribly misleading. The current temp gain is as high as .3c per decade. The Arctic is warming faster than the average with reduced radiance being reflected as ice coverage decreases. That eSrming and resulting higher air pressure forces the polar vortex south.
Believing an expert like Trump on climate change puts YOU into his cult
,
Yes, Johnny, and as said before the same phenomenon was blamed on global cooling in the 70s. “Forcing the polar vortex south”. Yes, and this has happened before throughout our climate history. Nothing new.
Jilly,
In the 1970s, a short-term cooling trend in the Northern Hemisphere, driven partly by aerosols and severe winters (like 1972, 1973, 1977), led to public and some scientific discussion about a potential new ice age, but this was a misconception; the vast majority of peer-reviewed science actually pointed towards warming from greenhouse gases, a fact highlighted by later, more complete data showing global warming trends.
Not really-This quote is from Tom Karl, then head of NOAA in 1989. “Analysis of warming since 1881 shows most of the increase in global temperature happened before 1919 before the more recent sharp rise in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. While the global climate warmed overall since 1881, it actually cooled from 1921 to 1979”.
This was from the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting of Dec 7, 1989. This highly inconvenient quote was quickly memory-holed by the climate regime..
LOL. It would be more impressive if true! Warming “paused” from the 40s to the 70s. Most warming did NOT occur before 1919, but since the 70s.
And if this quote was buried in the memory hole, how did you find it?
That quote reflects an older interpretation, notably from Thomas Karl at NOAA, highlighting early warming (pre-1920) driven by natural factors, followed by a cooling/stagnation (1920-1979), before the significant warming of the late 20th/early 21st century linked to human CO2. While early warming happened, modern data (like NOAA’s 2015 analysis Karl led) confirms warming has been continuous, with the most rapid rise in recent decades due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases, debunking the “pause” idea and showing the planet’s overall trajectory is a dramatic, human-driven rise, not a natural cycle.
You can plot the temp data and see for yourself… And see what Dr Karl sees.
https://skepticalscience.com/trend.php
And how is this quote related to the “polar vortex” discussion?
Why did Karl say the globe cooled from 1921 to 1979? Because that’s what the data showed. Quote is from Santa Cruz Sentinel, Volume 133, number 294, 7 Dec, 1989. What does that have to do with polar vortex? Well, “the globe cooled from 1921 to 1979”. Simple
Thanks for the source.
Did you plot the temp data yourself?
Also, check Karl et al 2015
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaa5632
Thanks for the non-rebuttal. Care to prove that Karl never said that? I thought so. The issue of course is why the earth cooled for 58 years while CO2 went up.
Karl 2015 has nothing to do with the 1921 to 1979 cooling, anyway
Keep on denyin’!!
Dr Karl did say that! So?
He later said the Earth agreed the Earth was warming. See his 2005 paper.
BTW, from 1900 to 1940 the Earth warmed at 0.064 ±0.044 °C/decade. The Earth warmed abruptly ever more during WW2. But from 1950 to 1985 the rate dropped from the war peak but was still warming at 0.081 ±0.049 °C/decade. In fact from 1944 to 1950 the Earth COOLED 0.4 °C!!! Since 1985 the Earth is warming at 0.204 ±0.042 °C/decade.
Are you really saying that what Dr Karl said 35 years ago should be taken as gospel?
Did you plot the data from GistempV4, Berkeley, HadCRUT4krig v2? Or do you deny that the databases are reliable – if you don’t believe the data how do you “know” that the Earth is warming?
BTW, weren’t you one of the “pause” guys? You know, “since the CO2 is increasing yearly, why isn’t the temperature?” We covered this many times, but short answer is that CO2 is NOT the only SHORT TERM impact on yearly temp measures. La Ninas, El Ninos, ocean currents, volcanic eruptions, snow/ice cover, cloud cover, aerosols, land use changes etc. But the inexorable (for now) impact of CO2 drives the long term increase.
So you can’t deny it was said. And of course graphs now don’t show it because it was “adjusted” away. By the way, yes he said the earth was warming but he also said it cooled from 1921 to 1979, opposite to what it should have been doing. “Are you really saying what he said 35 yrs ago as gospel”. Feel free to refute the quote. “There’s no record of him ever saying “gee, you know what I said on Dec 6th, 1989? I didn’t really mean it”.
As far as Karl 2015, that was refuted by 2 subsequent papers, by Fyfe et al, 2016 and Huang et al, 2017. Karl 2015 faced controversy right away over procedural issues. Not one of his supervisors checked or validated his paper, which was protocol. The supervisors stated that the buoy system was new and needed several years of rigorous analysis before it could be considered robust and reliable enough to be used in climate studies. He was formally reprimanded for attaching NOAA’s name to the paper. Karl did not contest Fyfe’s criticisms. His “pause busting” paper was based on his views that the relatively new buoyancy system was reading too cool.
“CO2 drives the long term increase”. You know, if you keep repeating that enough times still won’t make it so. “Allegedly drives the increase”. Fixed it
Denier said: “And of course graphs now don’t show it because it was “adjusted” away.”
So the data are fraudulent. Got it. You claim the Earth is warming… based on what if not the temperature record?
Keep trying. We referenced Karl’s 2005 paper, not 2015. How could his 2005 paper be on the “Great Pause”?
Can you reference the papers that trashed Dr Karl’s 2015 paper? Or are they all Watts and other climabloggers?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277779273_CLIMATE_CHANGE_Possible_artifacts_of_data_biases_in_the_recent_global_surface_warming_hiatus