Minnesota warmist Lee Frelich: Over thousands of years, the boreal forest has moved from Hudson's Bay to Tennessee and back a dozen times; "northern Minnesota has been under a mile of ice much more often than it's had boreal forest"

North Shore is site of tree experiment - TwinCities.com

While it may be hard to picture a BWCA that looks like southern Minnesota, such changes are part of nature, said Lee Frelich, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Forest Ecology. He said that over thousands of years, the boreal forest has moved from Hudson's Bay to Tennessee and back a dozen times.

"It resides in Minnesota for a few thousand years each way as it migrates north and south, and we take that to be normal," he said. "But actually northern Minnesota has been under a mile of ice much more often than it's had boreal forest. It's also had prairie. So this has happened before and it will happen again."

But now, the speed of the changes and the frequency of extreme weather events are causing concern. Frelich said cutting carbon emissions will help reduce the degree of climate change.