Last night four authors talked about the Climate Crisis. All had written books on the subject. When people have a shared language and knowledge base, the conversation can go much deeper. It was the smartest conversation yet on the climate crisis that I've heard.
Listening to the conversation felt theraputic, healing, affirming, because it made me feel not alone in my head with these terrifying visions of climate apocalpyse. I think about the climate crisis a lot and I sometimes wonder if I'm not just getting myself hot and bothered. (It would be pleasant to become a Climate Denier and hit the snooze button and shake of the nightmares.) So it felt good to know that smart people who write books are also freaked out, that I'm not the only one shuddering with visions of the death of the Biosphere, that the basic contours of my understanding of the climate crisis are correct.
The Northshire Bookstore brought together Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert and two others. Someday soon I will post a link to the audio of the event.
I want to be having a conversation on this subject, with people this smart, four nights a week. Can some TV producer please manifest a Climate Crisis Roundtable?
Monday, June 7, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Sociopathic Oil Companies and Runaway GMO algea
What do the BP oil spill and the recent announcement of a scientist creating a living cell have in common?
A dangerous threat to the Commons, our shared life here on earth.
Just as BP throws up it hands and says, 'we don't know how to fix it', someday the GMO algea may get loose in the ocean and out compete normal algea, creating a disrupted oceanic ecosystem.
A scientist is pulling the most productive algea components out the algea DNA, and creating a super algea that would be useful in producing fuel. Now, I'm not a super scientist or anything, but it doesn't take alot to see where this one would go into the dickey weeds. It gets loose, it out-competes, disrupts the ecosystem, spreads a mad red tide across the planet, and so on...
our Commons, our shared earth, is a shared valueable treasure, and individuals and corporations don't have the right to disrupt it just for their own greed or desire for scientific fame.
Corporations aren't people, they don't die or feel empathetic pain of others, and one of humanity's great challenges is figuring out how to put humans in the driver's seat instead of faceless corporations. The other great challenge is to learn to handle our super scientific powers and place them in the context of a breakable ecology and a useful morality.
A dangerous threat to the Commons, our shared life here on earth.
Just as BP throws up it hands and says, 'we don't know how to fix it', someday the GMO algea may get loose in the ocean and out compete normal algea, creating a disrupted oceanic ecosystem.
A scientist is pulling the most productive algea components out the algea DNA, and creating a super algea that would be useful in producing fuel. Now, I'm not a super scientist or anything, but it doesn't take alot to see where this one would go into the dickey weeds. It gets loose, it out-competes, disrupts the ecosystem, spreads a mad red tide across the planet, and so on...
our Commons, our shared earth, is a shared valueable treasure, and individuals and corporations don't have the right to disrupt it just for their own greed or desire for scientific fame.
Corporations aren't people, they don't die or feel empathetic pain of others, and one of humanity's great challenges is figuring out how to put humans in the driver's seat instead of faceless corporations. The other great challenge is to learn to handle our super scientific powers and place them in the context of a breakable ecology and a useful morality.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Apple Crops in Northeast Sabotaged by Big Oil’s Changing the Climate
Saratoga Apple’s Nate Darrow says his apple crop will be 1/4 of normal this year because of the weird Climate Changed weather this spring. A long hot spell in the spring tricked the trees into blossoming ten days to two weeks early. Then came a fairly normal cold patch that froze the forming fruit.
Looking over his boxes of Delicious, Galas, and Sun Crisp apples at the Dorset Farmers Market, Nate said, “This time next year we won’t have all these apples still in stock.” He estimates that his harvest will be 20-25% of normal, maybe as low as 10%. “It depends on how well the trees do at the top of the orchard, the trees that are above the pocket of cold air that settles in the valley.”
A few weeks ago, I freaked out when I saw snow covered blossoms arriving before the bees were out. Yet my pear trees seem to be setting some fruit. Perhaps my fruit survived because it wasn’t too cold. Nate said that the young fruit won’t handle 29 degrees or under. A little snow on the blossoms is OK. Some growers will actually spray water on orchards because the conversion of water to ice actually releases some heat that will keep the temperature above 29. Minor temperature changes at certain periods mean the difference between a successful or difficult year.
This is the Climate Crisis. A hardworking fruit grower has his livelihood made unpredictable by an ecosystem swinging out of rhythm. (Perhaps he should sue BP for lost income.) This is just another data point allowing us to ‘”solve for pattern” that says we are already living on an Earth experiencing a Climate Crisis.
Bill McKibben said on Democracy Now recently, “The planet that we live on now is different, and in fundamental ways, from the one we were born onto. The atmosphere holds about five percent more water vapor that it did forty years ago. That’s an incredible change in one of the basic physical parameters of the planet, and it explains all those deluges and downpours. The ocean is 30 percent more acidic, as it absorbs all that carbon from the atmosphere. NASA said yesterday that we’ve just come through the warmest January, February, March on record, that 2010 is going to be the warmest year that we’ve ever scene.”
The “debate” about “Is Climate Change happening?” should be over. McKibben’s new book Eaarth gives dozens of examples of how our world is already experiencing a Climate Catastrophe. He says that we live on an Earth so changed we might as well call it a new name, like Eaarth. But the debate isn’t over because it’s not a debate. “The Debate” is a well-documented public relations stalling tactic by fossil fuel companies to confuse the public while grubbing every last fossil fuel dollar. Wall Street will be under water before Exxon Mobil stops funding “The Debate.” Mother Jones magazine reports that Exxon Mobil spent 55 million dollars to fund think tanks to contradict mainstream science. The Debate Stalling Tactic has worked because the sky looks so big, the science is complicated, and consequences seem far off.
I guess it’s Human Nature “to need to see it to believe it.” Seeing this out-of-phase spring unfolding was my wake-up call. Now I’m sure that the Climate Crisis is actually happening and I’m a little freaked out because that means humanity is in a very dire situation indeed.
Skies are air oceans, limited, able to be polluted, changeable in their make-up. Carbon may invisibly disappear out of our tailpipes but it doesn’t drop out of the atmospheric mash-up for a thousand years! Carbon in the atmosphere takes a long time to be sequestered, or gathered back by plants. Carbon is more like a cathedral than a fart. Every flippant car trip causes pollution that will be in the atmosphere for 1000 years. As in, “Oh my god, do you really have to drive to return that movie?”
So we need to leave the coal in the hole and leave the oil in the ground. We need to stop burning stuff. We need to make burning oil and coal ILLEGAL! We need electric cars powered by an electrical grid that’s charged by solar and wind. We would already have these technologies if those selfish oil companies hadn’t been blocking and stalling and ‘debating’ for 40 years.
The BP Gulf Coast Oil Catastrophe is our national wake up call. We need to get off the oil. Oil companies are sociopathic non-human entities that don’t care who lives or dies. The oil companies are forcing humanity onto a Trail of Tears towards runaway climate change and Planet Death. We must stop them, stop burning oil, and protect the ecosystem stability that allow us to grow apples.
Looking over his boxes of Delicious, Galas, and Sun Crisp apples at the Dorset Farmers Market, Nate said, “This time next year we won’t have all these apples still in stock.” He estimates that his harvest will be 20-25% of normal, maybe as low as 10%. “It depends on how well the trees do at the top of the orchard, the trees that are above the pocket of cold air that settles in the valley.”
A few weeks ago, I freaked out when I saw snow covered blossoms arriving before the bees were out. Yet my pear trees seem to be setting some fruit. Perhaps my fruit survived because it wasn’t too cold. Nate said that the young fruit won’t handle 29 degrees or under. A little snow on the blossoms is OK. Some growers will actually spray water on orchards because the conversion of water to ice actually releases some heat that will keep the temperature above 29. Minor temperature changes at certain periods mean the difference between a successful or difficult year.
This is the Climate Crisis. A hardworking fruit grower has his livelihood made unpredictable by an ecosystem swinging out of rhythm. (Perhaps he should sue BP for lost income.) This is just another data point allowing us to ‘”solve for pattern” that says we are already living on an Earth experiencing a Climate Crisis.
Bill McKibben said on Democracy Now recently, “The planet that we live on now is different, and in fundamental ways, from the one we were born onto. The atmosphere holds about five percent more water vapor that it did forty years ago. That’s an incredible change in one of the basic physical parameters of the planet, and it explains all those deluges and downpours. The ocean is 30 percent more acidic, as it absorbs all that carbon from the atmosphere. NASA said yesterday that we’ve just come through the warmest January, February, March on record, that 2010 is going to be the warmest year that we’ve ever scene.”
The “debate” about “Is Climate Change happening?” should be over. McKibben’s new book Eaarth gives dozens of examples of how our world is already experiencing a Climate Catastrophe. He says that we live on an Earth so changed we might as well call it a new name, like Eaarth. But the debate isn’t over because it’s not a debate. “The Debate” is a well-documented public relations stalling tactic by fossil fuel companies to confuse the public while grubbing every last fossil fuel dollar. Wall Street will be under water before Exxon Mobil stops funding “The Debate.” Mother Jones magazine reports that Exxon Mobil spent 55 million dollars to fund think tanks to contradict mainstream science. The Debate Stalling Tactic has worked because the sky looks so big, the science is complicated, and consequences seem far off.
I guess it’s Human Nature “to need to see it to believe it.” Seeing this out-of-phase spring unfolding was my wake-up call. Now I’m sure that the Climate Crisis is actually happening and I’m a little freaked out because that means humanity is in a very dire situation indeed.
Skies are air oceans, limited, able to be polluted, changeable in their make-up. Carbon may invisibly disappear out of our tailpipes but it doesn’t drop out of the atmospheric mash-up for a thousand years! Carbon in the atmosphere takes a long time to be sequestered, or gathered back by plants. Carbon is more like a cathedral than a fart. Every flippant car trip causes pollution that will be in the atmosphere for 1000 years. As in, “Oh my god, do you really have to drive to return that movie?”
So we need to leave the coal in the hole and leave the oil in the ground. We need to stop burning stuff. We need to make burning oil and coal ILLEGAL! We need electric cars powered by an electrical grid that’s charged by solar and wind. We would already have these technologies if those selfish oil companies hadn’t been blocking and stalling and ‘debating’ for 40 years.
The BP Gulf Coast Oil Catastrophe is our national wake up call. We need to get off the oil. Oil companies are sociopathic non-human entities that don’t care who lives or dies. The oil companies are forcing humanity onto a Trail of Tears towards runaway climate change and Planet Death. We must stop them, stop burning oil, and protect the ecosystem stability that allow us to grow apples.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Take Bush out of post-abuse Memory Hole
George W. Bush has disappeared from the national stage and national mind because neither the Left or the Right wants to think about him. Republicans want to disappear Bush to remove scarlet letter W from around their mid-term election necks. Democrats are so sick of this guy that mentioning his name makes the room unhappy and reaching for the Paxil. But we must remember George W. Bush because voters are blaming Obama for Bush-caused problems.
Americans are like people healing from abuse by blocking bad memories. The mention of the Bush name calls forth dozens of unpleasant memories and association, from war, lies, deceit, and to simply incompetant coasting aristocratic governence. So nobody speaks of him. He is down the memory hole.
In George Orwell's book 1984, in a big bureocratic government building, workers had nicknamed the garbage shoots placed throughout the building "memory holes'. Scraps of paper were shoved there to disappear. The state felt free to re-write history, and old propaganda that countered the new propaganda was put down the memory hole.
So it is with Bush. He goes down the memory hole and the Republicans re-brand as libertarian populists.
We live in the United States of Amnesia, as writer Gore Vidal put it. Like a spiritual teacher with an obssessive focus on "The Now", our nation is disconnected to the flow of events that brought us here. Other countries aren't always this way. Some of the South American countries maintain a fierce historical narrative that puts American in the colonialist villian role. Democrats could use a little bit of that radical historical memory to remember who the villians in this story are.
President Obama has been doing a good job with a bad situation. The Bush Team handed him an exploding situation and he defused it. But elections aren't about the truth, they are about national mood, about the strange tidal flows of shaped opinion. With a mid-term coming up that could hand Congress to the Republicans, it's a tight time for Obama.
Somehow, the Right has gelled around being anti-Obama, and the Left has lost the sense that Obama is 'our guy'.
Obama has been governing with a sort of post-partisan elite bureocratic pragmatism, not as a Democrat particularly. And so the Democratic Base is confused, like "'do we have a dog in this fight?"
Luckily, we still remember that we dislike Bush. When we remember...
Americans are like people healing from abuse by blocking bad memories. The mention of the Bush name calls forth dozens of unpleasant memories and association, from war, lies, deceit, and to simply incompetant coasting aristocratic governence. So nobody speaks of him. He is down the memory hole.
In George Orwell's book 1984, in a big bureocratic government building, workers had nicknamed the garbage shoots placed throughout the building "memory holes'. Scraps of paper were shoved there to disappear. The state felt free to re-write history, and old propaganda that countered the new propaganda was put down the memory hole.
So it is with Bush. He goes down the memory hole and the Republicans re-brand as libertarian populists.
We live in the United States of Amnesia, as writer Gore Vidal put it. Like a spiritual teacher with an obssessive focus on "The Now", our nation is disconnected to the flow of events that brought us here. Other countries aren't always this way. Some of the South American countries maintain a fierce historical narrative that puts American in the colonialist villian role. Democrats could use a little bit of that radical historical memory to remember who the villians in this story are.
President Obama has been doing a good job with a bad situation. The Bush Team handed him an exploding situation and he defused it. But elections aren't about the truth, they are about national mood, about the strange tidal flows of shaped opinion. With a mid-term coming up that could hand Congress to the Republicans, it's a tight time for Obama.
Somehow, the Right has gelled around being anti-Obama, and the Left has lost the sense that Obama is 'our guy'.
Obama has been governing with a sort of post-partisan elite bureocratic pragmatism, not as a Democrat particularly. And so the Democratic Base is confused, like "'do we have a dog in this fight?"
Luckily, we still remember that we dislike Bush. When we remember...
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Climate Leadership Goes South
The South American nations have now taken leadership role in the Climate Crisis.
From siding with good science to democracy in format, the recent Cochabamba people's summit was a startling revelation in the possibility of a people-centered process to address Our Biggest Problem.
For somebody freaked out about climate change, I'm really psyched to hear a president talk about making 1% temperature increase as the lowest possible goal. Bolivia's Evo Morales is way way out ahead of the herd, like Al Gore in being one of the few global leaders to get it. Al Gore has a great new article, by the way, in The New Republic connecting the dots on the oil spill and the oil industry everyday screw-the-planet. Sure the oil spill sucks, but so does another day of L.A. freeways.
It seems there is a near complete American media silence on the recent events in Bolivia. Goggle: World People's Conference on Climate Crisis and Rights for Mother Earth, and sign up for their e-mail list and you'll suddenly be privy to a social movement with the snap and attitude to be worthy of addressing the Climate Crisis.
From siding with good science to democracy in format, the recent Cochabamba people's summit was a startling revelation in the possibility of a people-centered process to address Our Biggest Problem.
For somebody freaked out about climate change, I'm really psyched to hear a president talk about making 1% temperature increase as the lowest possible goal. Bolivia's Evo Morales is way way out ahead of the herd, like Al Gore in being one of the few global leaders to get it. Al Gore has a great new article, by the way, in The New Republic connecting the dots on the oil spill and the oil industry everyday screw-the-planet. Sure the oil spill sucks, but so does another day of L.A. freeways.
It seems there is a near complete American media silence on the recent events in Bolivia. Goggle: World People's Conference on Climate Crisis and Rights for Mother Earth, and sign up for their e-mail list and you'll suddenly be privy to a social movement with the snap and attitude to be worthy of addressing the Climate Crisis.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Snowy Apple Blossoms? Evidence at the Climate Justice Tribunal
Today snow gathers in the apple blossoms. This means no apples in the fall. The apples bloomed two weeks early, and the bees didn’t get to chance to pollinate them. Now the snow ends the blossom’s fertility. This is Climate Change spoiling Vermont’s apple harvest.
Abnormally warm weather made the plants wake up too soon. The season is two weeks ahead. A month of abnormally warm weather tricked almost every plant into blooming early. Now it has snowed for a day, in typical late-April fashion. The fruit tree blossoms didn’t get pollinated because the honeybees weren’t out yet. So this fall there will be less fruit.
The apple harvest is always variable. If we get a wet patch when the trees bloom, much less fruit in the fall. If the weather is sunny and the bees can work, a big crop. Bees navigate by the sun.
But this spring has been weird. It started with a banging weekend of 80 degree weather and then it was warm for a month. Most plants begin spring growth based on temperature, though some a daylight/day-length sensitive. So most of the ecosystem is going for it. And today, snow. Many of the flowers will decay quickly after today’s rough weather.
I watched the early blossoms without seeing any honeybee pollinators and so I asked a beekeeper about it. Author of The Natural Beekeeper Ross Conrad wrote, “I suspect that you are not seeing the bees you expect because the mild winter and unusually warm weather during the past couple months has fooled the plants into blossoming much sooner than usual (everything seems to be about 2 weeks ahead of schedule). Now that the temperatures have returned to what is considered seasonably "normal" it is often too cold for the bees to fly.”
The snow on the apple blossoms is proof of the Climate Crisis. For too long, action on the Climate Crisis has been stagnated by this idiotic debate “does climate change exist?” In a well-documented plot, the Fossil Fuel industry has conspired to obscure the overwhelming scientific evidence. These dark conspiratorial propagandists should be put on trial at the upcoming International Climate Justice Tribunal.
Today’s ruined apple blossoms are just a mild beginning of a world wobbling off it’s axis. Imagine the major cities of Bolivia not having drinking water because glaciers have melted. Imagine runaway Climate Change turning our planet into Mars. This is really where we are headed, and unfortunately, most people don’t have the imaginative fortitude to bear witness to science-based projections of our shared future.
The Climate Crisis isn’t a mild disruption of our Earth, but rather an Apocalyptic Trail-of-Tears Death March into a Science Fiction-ish unraveled Ecosystem Planet Death. Mild ecosystem disruptions like today’s apple trees are just the tip of the melting iceberg.
We need a revolution against planet death, for a living healthy future. We need a citizen’s movement to push a government movement to solve the Climate Crisis.
Fortunately, there is indeed an emerging world citizen’s movement for Climate Justice. Last week in Cochabamba, Bolivia, there was the People’s World Summit on Climate Crisis and the Rights of Mother Earth. Democracy Now had exciting coverage last week. Naomi Klein writes, “When Morales invited “social movements and Mother Earth’s defenders... scientists, academics, lawyers and governments” to come to Cochabamba for a new kind of climate summit, it was a revolt against this experience of helplessness, an attempt to build a base of power behind the right to survive.”
The wisdom of Indigenous people’s entered the global discussion with passage of a Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth. In 2011, on the next Earth Day, there will be a Global Referendum on the Climate Crisis. Who knows what any of that will mean for saving the planet from fossil fuels, but it’s thrilling language that calls us in the right direction.
We have a right to survive on an Earth where the bees buzz in the apple blossoms at the right time to make fruit. And Mother Earth has the right for Her Spring Song to be in rhythm.
Abnormally warm weather made the plants wake up too soon. The season is two weeks ahead. A month of abnormally warm weather tricked almost every plant into blooming early. Now it has snowed for a day, in typical late-April fashion. The fruit tree blossoms didn’t get pollinated because the honeybees weren’t out yet. So this fall there will be less fruit.
The apple harvest is always variable. If we get a wet patch when the trees bloom, much less fruit in the fall. If the weather is sunny and the bees can work, a big crop. Bees navigate by the sun.
But this spring has been weird. It started with a banging weekend of 80 degree weather and then it was warm for a month. Most plants begin spring growth based on temperature, though some a daylight/day-length sensitive. So most of the ecosystem is going for it. And today, snow. Many of the flowers will decay quickly after today’s rough weather.
I watched the early blossoms without seeing any honeybee pollinators and so I asked a beekeeper about it. Author of The Natural Beekeeper Ross Conrad wrote, “I suspect that you are not seeing the bees you expect because the mild winter and unusually warm weather during the past couple months has fooled the plants into blossoming much sooner than usual (everything seems to be about 2 weeks ahead of schedule). Now that the temperatures have returned to what is considered seasonably "normal" it is often too cold for the bees to fly.”
The snow on the apple blossoms is proof of the Climate Crisis. For too long, action on the Climate Crisis has been stagnated by this idiotic debate “does climate change exist?” In a well-documented plot, the Fossil Fuel industry has conspired to obscure the overwhelming scientific evidence. These dark conspiratorial propagandists should be put on trial at the upcoming International Climate Justice Tribunal.
Today’s ruined apple blossoms are just a mild beginning of a world wobbling off it’s axis. Imagine the major cities of Bolivia not having drinking water because glaciers have melted. Imagine runaway Climate Change turning our planet into Mars. This is really where we are headed, and unfortunately, most people don’t have the imaginative fortitude to bear witness to science-based projections of our shared future.
The Climate Crisis isn’t a mild disruption of our Earth, but rather an Apocalyptic Trail-of-Tears Death March into a Science Fiction-ish unraveled Ecosystem Planet Death. Mild ecosystem disruptions like today’s apple trees are just the tip of the melting iceberg.
We need a revolution against planet death, for a living healthy future. We need a citizen’s movement to push a government movement to solve the Climate Crisis.
Fortunately, there is indeed an emerging world citizen’s movement for Climate Justice. Last week in Cochabamba, Bolivia, there was the People’s World Summit on Climate Crisis and the Rights of Mother Earth. Democracy Now had exciting coverage last week. Naomi Klein writes, “When Morales invited “social movements and Mother Earth’s defenders... scientists, academics, lawyers and governments” to come to Cochabamba for a new kind of climate summit, it was a revolt against this experience of helplessness, an attempt to build a base of power behind the right to survive.”
The wisdom of Indigenous people’s entered the global discussion with passage of a Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth. In 2011, on the next Earth Day, there will be a Global Referendum on the Climate Crisis. Who knows what any of that will mean for saving the planet from fossil fuels, but it’s thrilling language that calls us in the right direction.
We have a right to survive on an Earth where the bees buzz in the apple blossoms at the right time to make fruit. And Mother Earth has the right for Her Spring Song to be in rhythm.
Bee Author Comments On Blossoms without Bees
To beekeeper and author of the book "The Natural Beekeeper", Ross Conrad, I asked “Are bees light sensitive in their emergence behavoir, and thus missing the right time to wake up? I thought they were warmth sensitive, and woke up based on hive temperatures. If so, why are the blossums here but not the bees?
Conrad said “Bees require both adequate light and warmth in order to forage. It is widely held that they utilize the sun for navigational purposes, and they require warmth in order to maintain a high enough body temperature so that their flight muscles will work and not become immobilized. When temperatures fall to around 57 degrees F, the bees will tend to cluster around the brood and queen in order to keep them warm, and this will restrict the colonies flight activity (the exact temperature varies among bee hives depending on race, genetics, etc.) I suspect that you are not seeing the bees you expect because the mild winter and unusually warm weather during the past couple months has fooled the plants into blossoming muchsooner than usual (everything seems to be about 2 weeks ahead of schedule). Now that the temperatures have returned to what is considered seasonably "normal" it is often too cold for the bees to fly. This especially true for hives that are kept in shaded areas and do not get a lot of direct sunlight inhibiting their ability to warm up enough to send out a lot of foragers during the day. Other factors come into play as well...as the plants have to have the right soil, light, and moisture conditions (among others) to be able to produce the nectar they need to bribe the pollinators into visiting their blossoms. It does not matter how big and beautiful a flower is, if there is no reward for a visiting bee, the bee will go elsewhere.
Of course in your particular area, it may be that the bees have simply died off during the winter and that is why you are not seeing them. Given the critical role that pollinators have come to play in maintaining the biosphere which supports all life on Earth, and the fact that pollinators across the board are in serious decline world-wide, your concern is certainly understandable and warranted.
One note: We would not usually refer to the bees as "waking up" in spring since they don't actually sleep through the winter, but cluster and become dormant or inactive for a brief period during the winter season when the queen stops laying eggs. This is different from hibernation in which the organism's metabolism drops significantly and they go into what is described as a deep sleep. Healthy bees maintain their metabolism throughout the year and keep the temperature within the hive's cluster well above freezing during the entire winter.
Conrad said “Bees require both adequate light and warmth in order to forage. It is widely held that they utilize the sun for navigational purposes, and they require warmth in order to maintain a high enough body temperature so that their flight muscles will work and not become immobilized. When temperatures fall to around 57 degrees F, the bees will tend to cluster around the brood and queen in order to keep them warm, and this will restrict the colonies flight activity (the exact temperature varies among bee hives depending on race, genetics, etc.) I suspect that you are not seeing the bees you expect because the mild winter and unusually warm weather during the past couple months has fooled the plants into blossoming muchsooner than usual (everything seems to be about 2 weeks ahead of schedule). Now that the temperatures have returned to what is considered seasonably "normal" it is often too cold for the bees to fly. This especially true for hives that are kept in shaded areas and do not get a lot of direct sunlight inhibiting their ability to warm up enough to send out a lot of foragers during the day. Other factors come into play as well...as the plants have to have the right soil, light, and moisture conditions (among others) to be able to produce the nectar they need to bribe the pollinators into visiting their blossoms. It does not matter how big and beautiful a flower is, if there is no reward for a visiting bee, the bee will go elsewhere.
Of course in your particular area, it may be that the bees have simply died off during the winter and that is why you are not seeing them. Given the critical role that pollinators have come to play in maintaining the biosphere which supports all life on Earth, and the fact that pollinators across the board are in serious decline world-wide, your concern is certainly understandable and warranted.
One note: We would not usually refer to the bees as "waking up" in spring since they don't actually sleep through the winter, but cluster and become dormant or inactive for a brief period during the winter season when the queen stops laying eggs. This is different from hibernation in which the organism's metabolism drops significantly and they go into what is described as a deep sleep. Healthy bees maintain their metabolism throughout the year and keep the temperature within the hive's cluster well above freezing during the entire winter.
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