Hi everyone. I was wondering if any of you consider the effects of the ozone depletion when considering where you will live? I am open to moving different areas when considering purchasing my future homestead. But I can't help but wondering about the future. I realize that I often worry about things that I shouldn't, but do you all think about the changes the ozone are causing. I understand that the southern states will be more prone to drought then they are now. I also heard that the middle and northern states will have a tendency to have more southern like weather. I really don't care about these things for myself. But I would like to pass my future homestead down to my children and I want them to be able to farm and irrigate without worrying about lack of water, etc. What do you all know about these things? I know I'm a little green about these things, so try not to laugh to hard. :-}

-- Carolyn (sweetbabydill@aol.com), July 17, 2001

Answers

Weather patterns change for many reasons. I suggest you take on a more manageable challenge, like achieveing lasting peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, rather than determining what weather will be like in a certain area 50 years from now.

-- paul (primrose@centex.net), July 17, 2001.

Paul, I can see that I made a mistake posting my question. Okay, so make me feel like an idiot. The only reason I posted it anyways,is because they have been plastering specials about this on PBS, discovery, etc. Next time I'll think twice before asking a stupid question.

-- Carolyn (sweetbabydill@aol.com), July 17, 2001.

Not a stupid question, sweetbaby! Don't be sensitive.

I can't tell you what the future holds, insofar as trying to prognosticate on where the best climate and water supplies will be. Wish I could.

Do you have kids you are planning to pass on your property to? If not, I suggest you consider limiting your family size to one or two, and adopting the rest. This will help, to a degree, to prevent all the terrible things we expect to occur due to global warming, excessive demands on our planet's finite resources, and ozone depletion.

Thanks for considering your kids' future environment! You're a good person.

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), July 17, 2001.

Carolyn, I haven't been posting here very long, so I'm just now starting to feel that I know a few people here a little, what their personalities are I mean, and Paul seems to jump in with humorous replies but just for fun--no malice. I think his response was just meant to be funny and not to poke fun at you. I thought it was funny but it didn't make me laugh at you at all. I think you are very wise and also you're being very respectful of your children to try to think ahead. I am pretty ignorant about ozone problems (as in where to live and which areas to avoid) but I am having to live with what I consider was a poor choice of my husbands great grandparents. Well, I guess I'd better not elaborate on that;o) Please noone be offended if you love the Texas climate--I'm just a cold weather person. Anyway, please don't think anyone's laughing at you personally, and I hope you get some serious responses:o)

-- Elizabeth in E TX (kimprice@peoplescom.net), July 17, 2001.

Carolyn,

I agree with Elizabeth. Don't take this too seriously. I'm sure it wasn't intended to harm.

The only thing I'll add here is that I have an incredible amount of faith in the earth and our planet's ability to take care of itself. Now all the environmentalist talk is about global warming and the disappearance of the ozone layer, etc. With apologies to all of those well intentioned environmentalists here, I remember the very first 'Earth Day' here. Anyone care to guess what the big scare tactic was then? Global cooling! We were supposedly going to pollute so much the sun would be blocked out of the sky, the polar ice caps would expand until they met and we all froze as earth became a huge ice ball. There were figures and statistics and all sorts of supposedly irrefutable proof that this was inevitable unless huge, sweeping changes were made. Well, they weren't and I'm still typing and you're still reading. The only difference I see is we're reading about global warming instead of global cooling now. The planet is still doing fine. ;o)

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), July 17, 2001.

P.S. Elizabeth, please don't tell anyone, but I refer to Texas in summer as the third ring of hell. Shhhh! ;o)

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), July 17, 2001.

Hi, Carolyn. I don't think you can guess what the climate is going to be 50 years from now, so why don't you find a place that you really like yourself and settle there? And not to be negative on your dreams for your kids (and it's a NICE dream!), I don't think there's any sense in trying to do things for them this far in advance. Most kids are going to grow up to do their own thing, anyway, and it might not include homesteading/farming. But if you pick a spot that you prefer and come to love, your kids will appreciate it for that reason alone, no matter what the weather turns out to be. Good luck!

Jennifer L.

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@imcnet.net), July 17, 2001.

"The only question that is a stupid question is the one you don't ask." This was the response from my favorite teacher of all time who I had for fourth grade. So . . . please don't think you should not post here again. Sometimes we just don't understand another persons humor, but that's ok to, we all think differently.

I must agree about your concern, things are "achanging" here on earth, however, I'm not sure we can protect ourselves from the future. Just make good choices now based on what you know and enjoy! Your children will have to do the same someday . . . hopefully we'll all wake up and realize that we're spoiling things for future generations SOON - but I think that will take a major world life changing event.

I'm in Michigan, and your right, summers seem to be getting hotter and dryer. Winters seem pretty much the same for the last 20 years, some changes but not much. Not near the snow as when I was a kid however. The farmers around here are irrigating much more than when my dad farmed . . but they also are not putting manure on the land to provide humus to hold the moisture that is there. The great lakes are lower than ever I guess so that tells us there is less water available . . due to weather or due to the fact folks think it's always going to be there so we can overuse it how we want? (multiple showers, rinsing dishes before the dishwasher, car washes, etc., etc., can you tell this is one of my pet peeves)

I received my coop newsletter this week, with a letter from the president talking about an article she had seen in the July issue of the National Geographic that explains that an ecological footprint is the "productive area of the Earth required to support the lifestyle of one individual in a given population". It sounds like an interesting web site to visit www.rprogress.org and I would like to post her whole article on a thread as soon as I get her permission. You might check it out and see what it says, not that it would answer your question however, I think, I haven't checked it out myself yet.

Good luck in your search for your homestead . . . just do it and enjoy, we really have little choice in how some things will happen in the future, frankly I think there are much greater more immediate threats on the horizon for us so we'll have to try to do the best we can for now.

-- Betsy (betsyk@pathwaynet.com), July 17, 2001.

Hi Carolyn, a good way to hedge your bet about the availability of adequete water for future use, is to move to an area that has more than enough natural rainfall per year to sustain a variety of crops, WITHOUT ever having to irrigate. An area that requires irrigation NOW, is going to be even more dry as the climate changes, not more wet, that's for sure!!!

There are areas especially in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, like where we are, that the vast majority of the time have more than enough rainfall a year for crops and enough to use for livestock and collection for use in the home, rembember, the ground water should not be counted on to be there in the future, or it might be too contaminated to use, but the rain will continue to fall SOMEWHERE !!!

In the meantime, practice all the conservation methods you know, and learn new ones as you can, and, like JOJ says, good conservation methods include intelligent and responsible procreation to tread lightly on Mother Earth!!!

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), July 17, 2001.

Gary, not to be contentious, but regardless of whether the pundits were right or wrong in their prognostications years ago does not indicate that things are "fine" with mother earth.

I don't know where you live, but Mother Earth is FAR from '"fine".

Ok, I must admit that things in my neighborhood are "fine" as frog hair, but overall the earth is running out of reserves on many fronts. Don't put your head in the sand, by "wishing" that everything will be ok. It won't, until we start facing the issues and dealing with them!

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), July 17, 2001.

Carolyn, I thought you introduced a very interesting question and I can remember when I first came to the forum I got a response something like Paul's about something and took it really personal. Today I can enjoy his attempt at humor and I hope that you will be able to also.

Being of an increasingly "ancient" generation I have to disagree about the Great Lakes. I can remember when they were WAY lower than they are now and also remember not too long ago when our TAX DOLLARS were going to construct SEA-WALLS because they were way too high and the "poor" people who lived in what I have always thought should be the "green belt" around the ever changing lakes were losing their million dollar homes.

I sure have way more questions than answers for what we as humans are doing here on this earth, but I appreciate it that people are at least "thinking" about what affect we have on it. IMHO we can as a species work together and solve the problems or the earth will, and when the earth does it is not a pretty picture.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), July 17, 2001.

Carolyn, sorry if I offended. Whether you live in Texas, are trying to homestead, or have an an addiction, the Serenity Prayer is pretty go philosophy. Life is short, find a place ( and hopefully a person) that you love and works for you and give and take as much as you can. That should be a good legacy for your children.

-- paul (primrose@centex.net), July 17, 2001.

One of my favorite quotes :

"I don't know what the future holds, but I do know Who holds the future."

-- Dave (peasedj@sparc.isl.net), July 17, 2001.

Say Gary,

That's fascinating information! I've never heard that about the first Earth Day before; would you be so kind as to direct me to where you read about this, so that I can learn about it too? Thanks for your time.

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), July 17, 2001.

There are two more-or-less separate issues - global warming, and ozone depletion. The only common thread is that they MAY both be due to human activity. Ozone depletion is, but with global warming they still haven't proved it - there's a strong theory, but they don't really KNOW.

Yes, I can still remember the days when concern was being voiced about "the coming ice-age". Heck, some mornings it feels like I can nearly remember the concern about the one before that. There's a lot of medium-term variation in climate though - you try dragging cannons across a frozen river the way one of your heroes did (Washington? - don't know - not my history). Hans Brincker's silver skates wouldn't work these days either - the Dutch polders (I think they're called) don't get that cold these days either. But a few centuries earlier it was much warmer - Greenland was easily habitable for farming communities of the day - had to be abandoned as the climate turned colder again.

So - the advice you've had here is good. Probably don't head to Alaska or Peru or Norway if you've got a fair complexion (near the poles ozone depletion=more ultra-violet=more cancer). Choose a climate that's got a little more rain than you really need for subsistence farming. I'm comfortable with 23" per year - that's what I grew up with, and you can manage OK with 18". Anything less than that is bad when normal annual variation goes low. So if you picked an area that had at least 50% more than that you ought to be safe - say 36" per year. Also - looking at other recent posts - pick an area you can be comfortable with today - not too humid. That was YOU as in you personally - you are the one hoping to spend the rest of your life there, and you can't count on things progressing any particular way.

I've also heard "The only stupid question is the one you didn't ask". Another one is "There are no stupid questions - only stupid answers" - implying that an answer should illuminate the person who was looking for information. Hope we've helped.

-- Don Armstrong (from Australia) (darmst@yahoo.com.au), July 17, 2001.

There is hardly any reason to believe that oscillations in upper atmosphere ozone is related to human activities. No one knows the base line and natural swings are tremendous. Most people will expose ththemselves willfully to hundreds of times more mutagenic than would rresult from a foreseeable lessening in atmospheric ozone. A day a beach, for instance.

-- charles (clb@watervalley.net), July 17, 2001.

No offense taken Paul.

-- Carolyn (sweetbabydill@aol.com), July 17, 2001.

Call me an enviromental whacko or anything you want, but if the ozone problem is frivolous, why the huge increase in skin cancer and why the problems in places like Australia where people are warned not to go outside at certain times of the day. I would avoid the geographical areas most prone to ozone depletion problems.

-- fred (fred@mddc.com), July 17, 2001.

Don, I love this!:

" an answer should illuminate the person who was looking for information"

That is so beautiful........hope you dont mind if I use it in future!

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), July 18, 2001.

Hmmmm where did the post go that was about the environment or something to that effect? It was a little deep, but worth reading. I can't find it, but it was similair to yours. Oh... and paul is really a sweetie at heart, just a little different sense of humor *grin*

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), July 18, 2001.

Earth Crash Earth Spirit is an excellent site as far as the environment goes. It's basically one person's effort to link to articles about both the good and the bad.

-- Bethany (farewell@tropicalstorm.com), July 19, 2001.

Fred, for most of Australia, it's different. Except for Tasmania, we aren't (yet) enormously affected by the "ozone holes" centred on the poles (used to to able to say "over the poles", but they have spread). The skin cancer/melanoma problem we have is a combination of climatic (climate is HOT - we need to dress lightly), and cultural (it has now become culturally acceptable to dress lightly, and in fact we have developed a "beach culture"). Also an element of the fact that we now know what's causing it, whereas we didn't 25 years ago, so of course you hear about it.

Closer to the poles, this doesn't apply. Closer to the poles, you should be careful, and I'd do a lot of reading on where the ozone holes are going to go in the next 50-100 years. Maybe this applies for the future further from the poles too.

Earthmama, you're welcome. We can talk about royalties off-forum .

And Paul's sense of humour VEERS a little - that's OK - so do I, and I don't limit that to sense of humour altogether.

-- Don Armstrong (from Australia) (darmst@yahoo.com.au), July 20, 2001.

Anyone know what effects the residents of Peru/Bolivia may have suffered from the ozone holes? I was down there about eight years ago, and was a bit alarmed at the indigenous population's skin. Even though virtually everyone wore hats with brims of varying widths, most adults had these strange brown patches on their faces; mostly in the area of their cheekbones. Considering that the indigenous folks are very dark skinned naturally, we were surprised, to say the least.

Was it the ultraviolet light?

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@ecoweb.net), July 20, 2001.