Climate craziness

We are seeing daily highs here that usually don't show until April.  It reached 50 degrees on the NCR (that's the North Country Riviera for those who don't follow this rant on a regular basis) yesterday and we start above freezing this morning.  When I moved to this area 10 years ago, it rarely rose above 32 from mid December until late March, with some weeks barely above 0.  The experts say the position of the polar jet stream is what is causing this winter that wasn't, but I think the whole picture shows a gradual warming trend that has picked up in recent years.  As a gardener, I start earlier each year and go later into the fall.  Perhaps it is all a brief climate glitch, as the deniers would have it.  But I think we are closer to the edge of the cliff than many think.  In a column in the NYT today, Joe Nocera, looking from a strictly economic perspective says the Keystone XL pipeline is an unmitigated boon which America is tossing away at its peril.  China will be happy to take the tar sands oil the environmental movement sees as another attempt to keep us on the fossil fuel train for another 50 years.  That maybe so, but if no one sounds the alarm and pushes an alternative vision, I think I will be planting coconut palms in the backyard before I am planted, and that does not bode well for my children's children.