Texas peaches take a hit

A severe freeze on April 7 has ruined about 80 percent of the Fredericksburg/Hill Country area peach crop, says Rebecca Rather, owner of Rather Sweet Café and Bakery in Fredericksburg, who uses the peaches at her cafe. Any fruit that survives will be more expensive, and supplies will be limited, she says.

Roger Crenwelge, who's been growing peaches at two orchards in Gillespie County for 40 years, says "if there are any peaches, it will be very, very few. We don't have any ourselves."

As he explains it, "it just takes a few hours of cold to take care of a crop. It's not like you can get a second crop off them."

BC - Growers forced to face cold realities

“In late December we had a cold spell and it dipped down below - 25 C, and at that temperature, it kills the buds on the vines. Now at this time of year you can see where we had problems because there is no growth,” explained Mounsey from his Oliver-based business, Osprey Vineyard and Orchard.

U.S. climate change bill, radically bad law: John Kemp

Even with all these concessions, this is still a very bad bill. It creates an opaque, complex and unpredictable system that picks arbitrary winners and losers. The real costs have been carefully obscured beneath layers of confusing detail. I doubt even its supporters any longer understand the measure.

UCF, Nature Conservancy Study Could Help U.S. Develop Cap-and-Trade [Farce] Model (Video)

The University of Central Florida and The Nature Conservancy will study how much carbon the 12,000-acre Disney Wilderness Preserve stores and releases. The results could help to form the foundation for calculating carbon credits related to a cap-and-trade program.

UCF biologist and professor Ross Hinkle and scientists from The Nature Conservancy are looking for the best locations within the Kissimmee preserve to locate highly sensitive monitoring equipment that will collect meteorological, water, energy and carbon dioxide data.