We are ~ 25 days past the mean day for last frost…probably (just a guess) we are ten days past one standard deviation from the mean date.

Talked to a farmer today. Some of their canola has been frozen..not sure how widespread the damage has been. It ain’t good.

Al Gore can kiss my frozen ______. ☺ (snip?? ☺)

Since that single day the temperature has never returned to near 100. In fact, this is the coolest June I can remember since perhaps 1986-7. That year we got nearly 16 inches of rainfall, double our normal 8 inches. This year has been more unusual since it hasn’t featured that much precipitation, just cooler than normal temperatures.

Allan M R MacRae wrote, “”Should we also be doing more work on frost-resistent crops? Not a subject I know much about – would appreciate comments from knowledgeable people.”

Clive wrote:
“BTW … forty years ago this week (June 11, 12 and 13) it lightly froze at various sites across southern Alberta. It caused a lot of crop loss. But that was back when we were being warned of a new ice age. Do you think? ☺”

________________

Thank you Clive, a most helpful and informative post.

2009 minus 40 = 1969, towards the end of the cooling period from ~1945-1975, ~six years before the famous ~1975 cover articles on global cooling in Time and Newsweek.

This was the last major negative PDO cycle and it lasted ~30 years. The recent positive PDO cycle lasted ~27 years until ~2002.

Will we now get a 30-year negative PDO? Hard to tell for certain. My guess, for what it is worth, is we will, but the most serious cooling will happen later, by 2020-2030. Today’s chill is just a little taste of the future.

Despite the general global warming fear, everybody I know (even those who believe in AGW) is hoping for a nice warm summer.

I’m 3/4 Swedish and have a lot of outdoors work to do this summer. I’d be happy if it stayed below 80F in central New Hampshire, though I do like tomatoes and corn. How about hot weeks and cool weekends?

Allan M R MacRae (19:43:02) :

Here is the quote:
“According to Long Range Expert Joe Bastardi, areas from the northern Plains into the Northeast will have a “year without a summer.”

Dang, is my critique of the silly “The Day after Tomorrow,” 2016: The [Next] Year without a Summer, a blown forecast?

“The timing of the seasons are not changing astronomically – believe me: astrophysicists understand these things.”

What about the precession of the equinoxes?

The seasons aren’t changing much beyond the nearly 6 hour shift each year, the Gregorian calendar makes the year be 365.2425 days long, pretty close to the 365.2422 length it should be. (I think Russia has a calendar where they get closer, but the first deviation from the Gregorian calendar is a few centuries away.)

Precession is a 26,000 year cycle and affects the timing of Earth’s apohelion and perihelion. Those shift one day every 71 years, so it shouldn’t have much impact. over a few lifetimes.

We can actually see the change in that, though official dates are affected significantly by the position of the moon.

Is Phoenix too hot?

I don’t know from algae farms and don’t know the light requirements of algae farms and the economics. But I know you can’t shade light intensive crops and expect economical production. (It can be done with lights…it can’t be done economically.) Artificial lighting is counter intuitive and has never been shown to be economically feasible for large-scale food production … just too expensive and CA growth chambers (that’s what you’d end up with) are rife with production problems … always will be.

The simple answer is greenhouse crops can’t be grown economically in multi-storied structures unless you want to pay $30 a pound for tomatoes … obviously just a guess. We are talking about feeding the world, not a few wealthy people. Even if we could do it, the other question is why would you want to? What benefit? Certainly not in structural costs or energy savings. (Sort of boils down to heating vs. lighting.)

GHs are for producing luxury foods, not feeding the masses in an economical manner. They are big business in the Western World because we like our tomatoes and peppers for more than 2 or 4 months each year.

The exposed surface area of a multi-story GH is indeed < than that of a single-story structure, but given the lighting costs and structural issues this won't ever fly economically compared to other methods including transporting food long distances (in winter) and storage of more mundane crops like cabbage and carrots (say).

Energy conservation in single-story GHs is well in hand and they are somewhat energy efficient given the limitations on structure re: light penetration. Cost/sq. m. of single-layer GHs are quite low and land is inexpensive.

As I said multi-story GHs will indeed work. They were not economically feasible 30 years ago when I was involved … and won't fly today.

Cheers!

Clive

And last weekend it was snowing again and the pass had to be closed. Mr. Gore said, that would not happen??

Regards from Switzerland, Freddie

Somebody tell George Soros.