The southern hemisphere is faring no better, with ice wine in Brazil and plentiful snow (earliest ski openings on record) in New Zealand and Australia:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10579643

Skiing is ongoing in Europe as well:
http://www.planetski.eu/news/528

Things won’t be getting any better, either. I think we could use a piece about Mount Sarychev in the Kuril islands:
It’s eruption is here

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/38000/38985/ISS020-E-09048_lrg.jpg

And the cooling sulphur plume coming to a continent near you (click on “daily OMI images” and then choose (say) Kamchatka:
http://so2.umbc.edu/omi/

I don’t normally post a bunch of links like this, but a quick scan suggests to me that they haven’t been posted yet, and I thought some of you might find them interesting, especially the last two.

thanks, I enjoyed it :).

I, too, have seen “news articles” about this in India. I could see it happening on a small scale; but have not fist hand evidence. Google it up and decide for yourself.

So the weather is going to be cold, and there will be crop challenges, and farmers will respond with faster growing and changed plantings. There will be a rocky year or three while it happens. It’s not going to be particularly easy times. ( I don’t expect disaster, but just “hard times” like were in the world before the Modern Optimum warm period). My advice:

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/food-storage-systems/

And have at least a little garden of your own with seeds you can save. GM is not part of the solution for what is to come, it is part of the problems that will come. There is a wonderful book on edible landscaping:

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Edible-Landscaping-Resource-Saving/dp/0871562782

And these folks have a nice reading list:

http://www.bellaonline.com/subjects/6322.asp

if you want a garden that doesn’t look like a vegetable garden ;-)

Am I wrong that the GM crop is sterile and cannot be used to produce next year’s crop? How can that be healthy?

Generally GM can’t be used either because it is not licensed for such use or because the seeds, after crossing out, are not suitable (i.e. they are not a stable cross – like hybrids). There was work being done on a ‘terminator gene’ but I don’t know if it going in to production. Some are stable and can be used, if you pay the penalty fees and get permission.

The big issue is that if you plant GM near non-GM you get genetic pollution of the non-GM types. This is not a hypothetical. The rice shortage a year or two ago (blamed on Global Warming) was largely because a GM test field (gown by Bayer) down near Louisiana polluted the “foundation stock” for some of the most widely grown rice varieties from other seed companies and rendered it useless (as no license to use GM existed AND the strain was now wrong…)

The foundation stock is what you grow out to make the seeds you will sell, so this caused a massive problem. Lots of farmers also quit growing rice until it all got cleaned up. Something about destroying your crops that bothered them… It was a few years before it was caught, so there was very little clean seed to start from to regenerate a new foundation seed stock.

A farmer in Canada had spent years developing his own strain of Canola. Monsanto GM crossed into it from outside his farm AND SO MONSANTO SUED HIM. A decade or so later (and AFTER his years of labor were destroyed along with his crop) the suit settled in his favor, sort of… his seeds are toast, but he doesn’t have to pay Monsanto for their polluting his crop…

There are now multiple herbicide resistant Rape / Canola WEEDS growing all over the place, including Japan (thanks to Canadian seeds falling off trucks on the way to processing). Oh, and there have been several cases now of such genes jumping to related species. The Cruciferous group being particularly untidy with their genes (cabages, kales, canola, rape, radishes, mustards ….) along with there being a weed (that around here is commonly called “milkweed” but isn’t) that will cross with lettuce (normally only a problem in giving you bitter lettuce, but going the other way once RR lettuce is around will result in unstoppable weeds…) At least one wild weed was found with a “quad stack” of herbicide resistance genes from several vendors…

Personally I do not like pesticides with my food, and would prefer natural pest control or even living with pests as people have for maybe million of years. To incorporated them in the genes is terrible, imho. I have read some articles that the bee devestation in the US is due to these genetic pesticides.

Oh yes, the OTHER big problem…

But first: The first few years I had a garden, I had significant pest problems. I gave up for 2 years and just let the bugs eat my chard et. al. Then the spider and wasp population built up. Now I use no pesticides and enjoy watching my army of wasps working over the crop on warm days.. and have little to no pest problems (other than the tweety birds that peck my bean and pea leaves…. but they are so cute!) Oh, and I’ve got some kind of finch like thing and some hummers that keep the bugs down too. All because I stopped putting chemicals out. Completely unplanned, just an act of frustration.

Back to the GM problems:

You can not wash off the BT protein inside ever cell of GM product, it is IN the food. You CAN wash off BT spray applied externally. To those who will say “it is harmless”: A food allergy can develop to any non-self protein. The more you are exposed, the more likely it will develop.

It is also now only a bit of time until BT no longer works as bugs develop resistance. It was one of the very few “pesticides” classed as “natural” (being a bacteria when used in organic gardening, not a chemical). Some folks have suggested that the decision to focus on BT was at least partially motivated by the desire to kill off the best “last resort” option organic gardeners had.

Further, if you EVER develop an allergy to the BT protein, exactly what will you be able to eat? Since I have 3 food allergies already, I’m particularly bothered by this potential. There is evidence for cross reaction between soy, peanut, and lupin beans. Some kids with peanut allergies have died after eating lupini beans in Europe (not common in US food). It is speculated that increased soy consumption may be part of the reason we have an epidemic of peanut allergies. So what happens when even MORE genes and proteins are shared? How does a person with an allergy know what species they are eating when the species all have non-specific genes in them?

Per bees: A German researcher was testing the BT toxin on bees (that it is supposed to not kill) and it didn’t kill them. THEN they got an accidental infection with another illness (a fungus?) that normally didn’t kill them, just made them a bit sick. The whole hive died. They are now redoing the testing a few more times to prove it. In the mean time we have BT laden corn pollen blowing over the entire midwest killing off who knows what… (it can blow for miles). Endangered insect species anyone? Believed to be part of the drop in butterfly numbers recently as they feed on things, like real milkweed, but it has a layer of corn pollen on it and no more butterfly… The interactions and cross reactions of RR, BT, etc. are completely unknown, untested, and not being looked at much or at all. “The Science Is Settled”… so why look?

This is out of topic, but monoculture, controlled by a few corporations with patents on genes is a suicidal way for humanity to go, particularly if a little ice age is in the making. It is diversity that helps survival.

That is why there are folks like me, who save seeds. Heirloom open pollinated seeds. Put them in glass jars in the freezer and they keep for decades. I have a dedicated (small) freezer for this purpose ( 8 cu ft?).

http://www.seedsavers.org/

One of my food allergies is to corn (which arrived about the same time GM corn took off, but is unlikely to be related; maybe). I have an ark of seeds so that WHEN some fool puts a corn gene where it doesn’t belong, I can still eat…

There was a fish gene being put into some other plants. Anyone with seafood allergies? How do you handle “kosher” when your beans may be part crab?

Oh, and there are two other small problems:

1) The gene is “shutgunned” in with a Locked on master regulator gene to assure it is expressed. This tends to “lock on” some other random genes in whatever chromosome it enters. For this reason, many of the “sample” die. Those that don’t die are used to breed up a product. But what non-lethal genes are locked on, doing what? Nobody knows. One GM potato was withdrawn when they found it was a toxin (probably solanine that makes potato leaves and green skins poisonous) and was making folks sick; but it was more pest resistant…

2) The genes are shot in using a virus that its particularly good at putting random chunks of genetic material into the nucleus (sometimes including it’s own genes). Bacteria fed on GM products have, in some cases, been shown to pick up some or all of the gene package. Nobody knows what this brew of pesticide genes, locked on master genes, virus genes, et. al. does in your intestinal tract when mixed with lots of microbes soaking up some of the genes. There is anecdotal evidence of some not-so-good things going on (that I’ll leave out due to the lack of published work).

Oh, and they put a Marker Gene to make it easy to spot GM plants. It is an antibiotic resistance gene. Just what we need being given to every person and farm animal on the planet for incorporation into their gut bacteria. (Bacteria frequently pick up bits of genes from their environment…)

One last minor point: GM plants often have significant “issues” that causes lower yields (especially in the first few rounds of breeding) due to this “shotgun and lock on random chunks of DNA and break some other bits” process. GM is about CONVENIENCE to the farmer, not yield or quality for you. In looking at GM, the model was “one gene, one protein”. This has been shown to be wrong, it’s more of “one holographic gene, several sometimes unrelated proteins”. When you whack that around, you have no idea what you get and what you break. None. All you have is “hope”.

But the science is settled…

IMHO, GM is just not ready for prime time, no matter how much you like The Genetic Shiny Thing. Too many loose ends and unresolved issues. The major “advantage” seems to be that Monsanto (and Bayer and Syngenta and) can get a patent on the genes and force you into serfdom indentured to them for life and sell boat loads of RoundUp for soaking the entire midwest.

BTW, GM corn genes have already been found in the “land race” primitive corns of Mexico — where new genes come from for developing our hybrids. Genetic pollution of the land races in the centers of origin (as pointed out by Adolfo) is a major issue. The idea that the GM packages stay where they are put is seriously broken.

If Syngenta finds a great cold tolerance gene in a “wild” corn in Mexico, but it has a Monsanto RR gene in it already: Who owns the genes? I can say it will be tied up in court so long that nobody will benefit from it in time…

Depends on the variety. Winegrapes are grown in Northern Africa where it’s d*mn hot. In fact, Neolithic winepresses (treading basins) are found Egypt, Iran, and in the Jordan Rift Valley where it’s even hotter. Muscatel may have originated in Greece, or in Muscat on the southern Arabian Peninsula as the name implies. Only the ancient Phoenicians know. The northern varieties are new cultivars. The Imperial Valley produces winegrapes as well as table and raisin grapes. Etc.

It’s also the equivalent of protectionism.

“Dump?! Sir, I do not dump. I . . . sell abroad at a loss . . . in defense of the national interest.”

I only have to got back to WUWT in February to prove you wrong, in part with your own words: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/14/code-blue-107-centimeter-solar-radio-flux-is-flatlining/

Extrapolation to zero of plots of the 10.7cm flux against other activity indices such as plage area or total photospheric magnetic flux in active regions suggest a quiet sun flux density of about 64 s.f.u.

And your words: “I have updated the graph in the document to show the flat-lining of F10.7.”

What’s been going on in your weather?
Frost, fog, rain, dry, hot & cold?

At about 1000 feet above MSL, in the upper 30s north latitude, within 10 miles of the Pacific.

It’s rewarding to now see so much support for the idea that the end of observed warming was most probably due to a solar/ocean combination and a natural weather system thermostat.

It follows that the 20th Century warming phases (such as they were after stripping out UHI effects) were products of the same phenomena.

When I started banging on about such matters on various blogs over 2 years ago I met with disbelief and hostility but the real world has provided credibilty and similar ideas with useful variants are now coming to the fore from others.

It was the unusual (at the time) nature of my posts that led to an invitation to submit original material to the new climate sceptic site climaterealists.com (then known as CO2sceptics.com).

It has been an enjoyable ride despite the stress and work involved and I look forward to future developments.

Sites like this and the intelligence of the contributors are clearly a new way of progressing scientific endeavour and fortunately they have come to the fore just as the worldwide scientific establishments congealed into grant slaves of the political elites.

Now, lets find some way of measuring and monitoring the average net jet stream positions so that we can see how closely and quickly (or not) they react to net changes in the Earth’s energy budget and/or changes in ocean SSTs.

We need some proper observational science done as a replacement for the Playstation computer methods of recent years.

I see that as the key to the whole climate debate.

Stephen,

You make a very good point here and I agree.

But we also need honest government.
We are now ruled by spin doctors who lie and cheet us into poverty.
Proper science and monitoring won’t change that.
This is a political and educational problem.

I was talking about papers in scientific journals, not blog posts.

“Or were you simply having trouble staying with the thread of the discussion point you raised?”

I have no trouble. I’m perfectly fine with the notion of temperature-limited plant cycle lengths, and thereby limited crop yield. I’m simply saying there could be other reasons explaining the increase in american crop yields over recent decades (after 1990). I’m ready to believe that positive trends in t° could be one of the main reasons why crop yields increased in northern USA (Minnesota, for instance). I doubt it is the only one, and i doubt it is the case everywhere (Georgia, Mississipi, etc.). And BTW, what about the increase before 1990 ? and what about the increase in yields in Europe ? in other parts of the world ? T°-driven everywhere ?
Just like you i could say “more CO2 is good for crops. Any plant physiologist can explain that to you. Atmospheric CO2 has increased. Consequently, the increase in yields must result from the increase in CO2″. This is not proving anything.
Your point about yield forecast is irrelevant. Weather conditions can perfectly drive interannual variability in yields, in terms of anomalies, without driving the underlying positive trend.
As I said, sorting out the factors explaining that trend (technology, climate, environment…)is not straightforward. Any agroclimatologist could explain that to you.

As for the first point, i would appreciate it if you could provide me with some references about the established links between North Am. (regional) temperatures and solar cycle length.

That hypothesis is discussed on multiple threads here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Including this one.

As for the second point, there are an awful lot of other factors that can affect trends in agricultural productivity …
however i find it hard to believe that temperatures are THE major driver of this recent increase in crop yields ….

Many factors affect agricultural yield. However, your original point only addressed one: “that temperatures (actually, minimum temperatures) are driving agricultural productivity, (or at least two third of it…).”

Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. A growing season shortened due to prolonged winter conditions early in the year, and early onset of winter condition later in the year, will result in lower yields. Any farmer from the last 10,000 years could explain that to you. That is the reason current agricultural forecasts for the entire Northern Hemisphere are dismal – as in 15% to 25% lower than normal.

Or were you simply having trouble staying with the thread of the discussion point you raised?