But it looks to me as if corn doesn’t care. Check out U.S. corn yield. Corn seems to be doing well. I used corn yield because in the Stanford Press Release, they refer to corn yields. Some of the gains seen below are likely the result of improved seed lines.
Now have a look at US temperature for the same period:
What global warming? The last two years of annual mean temperature for the USA (2009, 2010) is about the same as it was in 1980 and 1981, and lower than many years since.This graph is from the National Climatic Data Center. You can plot it yourself here with the default base period, no trend line, and years 1980-2010.
===========================================================
From Stanford University via Eurekalert
US farmers dodge the impacts of global warming — at least for now
Global warming is likely already taking a toll on world wheat and corn production, according to a new study led by Stanford University researchers. But the United States, Canada and northern Mexico have largely escaped the trend.
“It appears as if farmers in North America got a pass on the first round of global warming,” said David Lobell, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University. “That was surprising, given how fast we see weather has been changing in agricultural areas around the world as a whole.”
Lobell and his colleagues examined temperature and precipitation records since 1980 for major crop-growing countries in the places and times of year when crops are grown. They then used crop models to estimate what worldwide crop yields would have been had temperature and precipitation had typical fluctuations around 1980 levels.
The researchers found that global wheat production was 5.5 percent lower than it would have been had the climate remained stable, and global corn production was lower by almost 4 percent. Global rice and soybean production were not significantly affected.
The United States, which is the world’s largest producer of soybeans and corn, accounting for roughly 40 percent of global production, experienced a very slight cooling trend and no significant production impacts.
Outside of North America, most major producing countries were found to have experienced some decline in wheat and corn (or maize) yields related to the rise in global temperature. “Yields in most countries are still going up, but not as fast as we estimate they would be without climate trends,” Lobell said.
Lobell is the lead author of a paper about the research to be published May 5 online in Science Express.
Russia, India and France suffered the greatest drops in wheat production relative to what might have been with no global warming. The largest comparative losses in corn production were seen in China and Brazil.
Total worldwide relative losses of the two crops equal the annual production of corn in Mexico and wheat in France. Together, the four crops in the study constitute approximately 75 percent of the calories that humans worldwide consume, directly or indirectly through livestock, according to research cited in the study.
“Given the relatively small temperature trends in the U.S. Corn Belt, it shouldn’t be surprising if complacency or even skepticism about global warming has set in, but this study suggests that would be misguided,” Lobell said.
Since 1950, the average global temperature has increased at a rate of roughly 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade. But over the next two to three decades average global temperature is expected to rise approximately 50 percent faster than that, according to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. With that rate of temperature change, it is unlikely that the crop-growing regions of the United States will continue to escape the rising temperatures, Lobell said.
“The climate science is still unclear about why summers in the Corn Belt haven’t been warming. But most explanations suggest that warming in the future is just as likely there as elsewhere in the world,” Lobell said.
“In other words, farmers in the Corn Belt seem to have been lucky so far.”
This is the first study to come up with a global estimate for the past 30 years of what has been happening, Lobell said.
To develop their estimates, the researchers used publicly available global data sets from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and from the University of Delaware, University of Wisconsin, and McGill University.
The researchers also estimated the economic effects of the changes in crop yield using models of commodity markets.
“We found that since 1980, the effects of climate change on crop yields have caused an increase of approximately 20 percent in global market prices,” said Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at Columbia University and a coauthor of the paper in Science.
He said if the beneficial effects of higher carbon dioxide levels on crop growth are factored into the calculation, the increase drops down to 5 percent.
“Five percent sounds small until you realize that at current prices world production of these four crops are together worth nearly $1 trillion per year,” Schlenker said. “So a price increase of 5 percent implies roughly $50 billion per year more spent on food.”
Rising commodity prices have so far benefited American farmers, Lobell and Schlenker said, because they haven’t suffered the relative declines in crop yield that the rest of the world has been experiencing.
“It will be interesting to see what happens over the next decade in North America,” Lobell said. “But to me the key message is not necessarily the specifics of each country. I think the real take-home message is that climate change is not just about the future, but that it is affecting agriculture now. Accordingly, efforts to adapt agriculture such as by developing more heat- and drought-tolerant crops will have big payoffs, even today. ”
Justin Costa-Roberts, an undergraduate student at Stanford, is also a coauthor of the Science paper. David Lobell is a researcher in Stanford’s Program on Food Security and the Environment, a joint program of Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Schlenker is an assistant professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and at the Department of Economics at Columbia.
IMAGE: A combine harvester reaps, threshes and winnows its way through a field of corn at harvest time. Yields in the US, Canada and northern Mexico have yet to feel the…
There’s the M-word again. Let’s model it, and we can show anything, even if somehow we escaped the thing we are showing. ARRRNK! Wrong answer!
“Given the relatively small temperature trends in the U.S. Corn Belt, it shouldn’t be surprising if complacency or even skepticism about global warming has set in, but this study suggests that would be misguided,” Lobell said.
You WISH, Lobell. You show your true colours. No true scientist would claim that scepticism is misguided. Only a self-interested crook would make such a ludicrous anti-scientific statement. To be against scepticism is to be against freedom of thought. You must be very disappointed by the lack of famine, disasters, general catastrophe – and the lack of warming – in the USA.
Stanford University:
They then used crop models to estimate what worldwide crop yields would have been had temperature and precipitation had typical fluctuations around 1980 levels.
The researchers found that global wheat production was 5.5 percent lower than it would have been had the climate remained stable, and global corn production was lower by almost 4 percent.
JK: OK, I get it:
Models predict crop yield.
Prediction does not match reality.
Therefore climate change has reduced the yeild!
Psst! Psst! Over here->->->(Look at the model’s credibility)
Stanford University:
“The climate science is still unclear about why summers in the Corn Belt haven’t been warming.
JK: Err, how about because most warming is at night, and in the cities?
Thanks
JK
“Yields in most countries are still going up, but not as fast as we estimate they would be without climate trends,” Lobell said.
Yields increasing, and this is bad news?
“We found that since 1980, the effects of climate change on crop yields have caused an increase of approximately 20 percent in global market prices,” said Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at Columbia University and a coauthor of the paper in Science.
Is it not more likely that global warming (hysteria) has led to food being diverted to ethanol and biodeisel production leading to increased prices?
“In other words, farmers in the Corn Belt seem to have been lucky so far.”
Or is it possible that the hypothesis is wrong?
Much of the corn produced in Brazil came to be planted after soybean harvest and therefore have lower productivity. No relation to AGW.
“The climate science is still unclear about why summers in the Corn Belt haven’t been warming. But most explanations suggest that warming in the future is just as likely there as elsewhere in the world,” Lobell said.
Perceptive chap. The critical word being “likely”.
…just as likely there as elsewhere…
Quite.
As far as I tell from a quick search on the interweb, there is a whole lot more than temperature that affects wheat production. Just like there is a whole lot more than a trace gas that affects the climate, I guess.
Common Tiger, we know you can spend your money better than this…
Ummm… “Yields in most countries are still going up, but not as fast as we estimate they would be without climate trends.” That is, had the climate remained stable. This estimation is based on what, exactly?
Oh, I see… They used crop models to estimate what worldwide crop yields would have been had temperature and precipitation had typical fluctuations around 1980 levels.
There’s that word again – models. Counter-factual virtual “reality” that is as about as real-world as “Reality” TV. And their ideal situation is also utterly unreal. Typical fluctuations around 1980 levels? Have they not even bothered to check the global temperature readings for the last century-and-a-half to see how often temperature and precipitation have hovered around any level for thirty years?
Sounds to me, as someone who has farmed, sold machinery, dealt in livestock and more, like research from people that have not had cropping experience.
Lobell included: according to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This immediately tells me that he doesn’t really know and has to rely on the IPCC activists.
Colder temps are more likely to reduce crop yields, as is reduced moisture availability.
In Western Australia’s ‘wheat belt’ for instance, early rainfall while still warm in the autumn, brings much larger yields than if this rain starts later during early winter, when minimum temps are often at freezing point or lower, even if there is more rainfall.
Higher temperatures during spring and summer are also preferred to boost yields and encouraging ripening. This area consistently has summer maximum temperatures in excess of 40C.
Higher temperatures are preferred, so bring the warming on, I say. It is a pity that it is not happening.
At first glance this study appears to be the inverse of the governments claims on jobs “saved or created” in the midst of rising unemployment. The more important issue however is, are there lessons being lost by trying to tie every change in yield to a weak global temperature trend when regional factors are really all that matter. Did they account fo how technology like GM crops affect yields or provides resistance to vagaries in the weather? Getting distracted and missing the real keys to success in improving yields does not move the ball forward.
It’s Friday I’m thinking about beer :-
“Yields in most countries are still going up, but not as fast as we estimate they would be without climate trends,” – Whats a climate trend? my guess some sort of model output?
“It appears as if farmers in North America got a pass on the first round of global warming,” said David Lobell, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University. “That was surprising, given how fast we see weather has been changing in agricultural areas around the world as a whole.” – Rounds of global warming? well if there getting the rounds in mines a tall cold one and what is the scale they are using to justify how fast is fast?
It’s kind of like the sea level rate of increase, someday GW may have an effect. Unfortunately for those playing this game, fudged numbers don’t affect reality. Vegetation is up on the planet some 6% allegedly due to increased CO2. These folks are saying the increased temperatures globally have reduced crop yields. So the increase of a fantasy-fraction of a degree outweighs the measurable effects of CO2 on plant life.
Here’s 180 years of Illinois corn vs. CO2. http://i52.tinypic.com/1zv51td.jpg
Isn’t is convenient to their framing that the good “luck” of North America includes the best kept and most continuous temperature records in the world. Meanwhile, for the areas they claim to be lagging in production increase the most, have among the worst?
Maybe it isn’t luck~
“They then used crop models to estimate what worldwide crop yields would have been had temperature and precipitation had typical fluctuations around 1980 levels.”
No point in reading any further.
“We found that since 1980, the effects of climate change on crop yields have caused an increase of approximately 20 percent in global market prices,” said Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at Columbia University and a coauthor of the paper in Science.
I assume the increase in oil proces, in part fuelled by CAGW propaganda, has been factored into these price increases?
Also, is it really useful to compare actual crop yields with models of what yields might have been had the weather not changed at all? Seems very much like a piece of ill advised spin applied to an utter non-story. Far more accurate would have been a report detailing how crop yields had increased since 1980, but that kind of misses the required narrative.
Apparently Europe is the world and European trends are global trends.
North America is not on the world.
If that’s really the case, North America should be exempted from all agreements on “global” warming. We obviously can’t have any effect on the globe.
View from the Solent says:
May 6, 2011 at 4:43 am
“They then used crop models to estimate what worldwide crop yields would have been had temperature and precipitation had typical fluctuations around 1980 levels.”
No point in reading any further.
—
My thoughts exactly! Perhaps these “researchers” should get their butts on a tractor for a couple of seasons and find out what farming is really all about before they write scaremongering reports like this one…
More post-normal nonsense. It reminds me of our liar politicians. They’ll spend $2 billion more than the previous but will tell you they cut $.4 billion in spending when all they really did was reduce what they ‘expected’ to spend, say from $4 billion to $3.6 billion. So what is actully a $1.6 billion increase in spending is spun by the liar politicians as a spending cut of $.4 billion. Now we have scientists “divining” what they think reality should have been (from models) and any variance is a man made fingerprint. Post-normal science at its finest.
Seems to me the biggest effect that climate change has had on the corn crop is that some people have been persuaded that we should divert corn to biofuels and away from food, to protect ourselves from climate change, and that is why the food prices are going up. I’ll bet a smart researcher can make that link without resort to a model, and in no more than 2 or 3 verifiable steps. Now there is a project for you!
“Crop yields fall as temperatures rise ”
“Yields went up, but they didn’t go up as much as they might have,”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20449-crop-yields-fall-as-temperatures-rise.html
The main problem in the world today is not global-warming-or-whatever-you-want-to-call-it but negative thinking.
How does one model crop yeilds when we are developing new super-hybrid breakthroughs on almost a yearly basis?
Here in the heart of the corn belt (Central Illinois) we had a hard frost on May 3rd (about the latest I can ever remember) and are still struggling with an extremely cold, wet and late spring. There’s 3 weeks left in the corn planting season and our local farmers are way behind and praying for a little global warming.
Come on Anthony, you can give us tougher ones than this. When I do crossword puzzles, I always pick hard ones for the challenge. Even a sixth grade science class could pick this paper apart.
Another Goebel Warming
fairy talepaper, ready for the dung pile of countless others. If only they could be spread over crop fields adding nutrients to the soil, thus raising crop production. But no, they would only poison the ground in the same way they poison minds of those still willing to Believe the nonsense they espouse.Doesn’t look like they took into consideration what the crops/yield was used for.
There’s a big spike in yield when corn was converted to ethanol, and a bigger spike when tax credits were given for that corn/ethanol.
Corn that is grown for ethanol is not as regulated as food corn, and farmers can use more/different/cheaper insecticides, fertilizer, water, etc. That increases their yield a whole lot…………………
I’ve known lots of farmers who might say say they had one lucky year, but most will tell you luck has nothing to do with farming. What a bunch of baloney this report is-just like most of the recent ones posted here. Alas.
“What global warming? The last two years of annual mean temperature for the USA (2009, 2010) is about the same as it was in 1980 and 1981, and lower than many years since.This graph is from the National Climatic Data Center. You can plot it yourself here with the default base period, no trend line, and years 1980-2010.”
Cherry picking at its finest. Why didn’t you include the trend line? That is the default option on the NOAA page where you made the graph.
Huth says:
May 6, 2011 at 5:18 am
The main problem in the world today is not global-warming-or-whatever-you-want-to-call-it but negative thinking.
Yeah, let’s all just tell a few jokes to the alarmists, get them to think more positively. We could even slip Prozac into their coffee while they’re not looking. Or we could tell them AGAIN that their whole hypothesis is built on a steaming pile of bullshit and that there is really nothing to worry about. That will cure the “main problem” of negative thinking. Wake up already, Huth.
Stable climate . . . why didn’t I think of such contradictory logic. It seems the diploma mills aren’t what they used to be. I remember a time when they had standards, when one had to pay to get a diploma of choice, three for the price of two. And now a days they’re giving ’em away for free, to just about anyone, like they’re worthless. :-()
Are they taking into account satellite temperature, of thermometers I wonder?
They’re trying to get on the bandwagon I assume, and for years now you couldn’t do that without mentioning “global warming”, a bit like than film Miss Congeniality where the contestants in the beauty contest all add “and World Peace” to their statements of what they would want if they were crowned queen. I fear they may be a wee bit late, it looks from the rumblings we’re seeing from George Monbiot that the penny is beginning to drop. Gorgeous George seems to have realized that the “renewable energy” we’re all supposed to be getting in a decade or so is just BS, and isn’t coming either from serious energy producers or engineers, but from the Greenies, who know SFA about energy production.
Great. Just what we need in Wallowa County. Heat and drought resistent crops. Wrong. What we have needed for the last three seasons are cold resistant crops.
Do these people ever do field research anymore? And who the hell is funding these research grants? If the government has a hand in this, we need to continue to look at those in the Senate and House. As much as I detest the last mistake I made in my choice of President, he can’t appropriate funds. We should be turning our attention to those that hold the purse strings.
[snip . . those who find this offensive will not be less offended by $ signs . . kb]
This is similar to those who say that the cooling is masking the warming trend.
“David Lobell is a researcher in Stanford’s Program on Food Security and the Environment, a joint program of Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. ”
Climate papers from POLITICAL SCIENTISTS?! are now being taken seriously?
Mmmmmmm! I don’t suppose corn turned into biofuels has anything to do with it?
Meanwhile, in the real world, the biosphere as well as the Sahel is greening. C02 is a killer, Satanic gas.
@Mike says:
May 6, 2011 at 5:45 am
The NOAA web page is great, try a plot for 1998-2011, January and July, you get some interesting cherries. What cherries did you want us to see ??
Mike says: May 6, 2011 at 5:45 am
“What global warming? The last two years of annual mean temperature for the USA (2009, 2010) is about the same as it was in 1980 and 1981, and lower than many years since.This graph is from the National Climatic Data Center. You can plot it yourself here with the default base period, no trend line, and years 1980-2010.”
Cherry picking at its finest. Why didn’t you include the trend line? That is the default option on the NOAA page where you made the graph.
Oooo… scarey trend line, 0.67°C per century! That changes everything, not. Why we might get a whole degree with the doubling of CO2.
Scottish Nationlists Win Outright Majority
We’ve just learnt that the Scottish Nationalists have gained their 65th member of the Scottish Parliament. Whilst this is not a direct vote for independence, it is a vote for a Scottish referendum on independence and so it is possible that Scotland will be an independent country within 5 years.
Unfortunately, all the Scottish parties are numpties on Global Warming. However, as the only mention of global warming in this election I know about was the strong campaign against wind power in Shetland which nearly unseated the Liberal Democrat leader in Scotland (Liberal Democrats share power in the UK), it is highly unlikely the politicians got any kind of public support for their previous eco-zealot like stance pro-global warming.
One fly in the ointment is that the Greens are said to be heading toward another MSP. Fortunately, an outright majority by the SNP largely makes the Greens redundant in this parliament, and as before they will no doubt huff and puff but have no real effect.
Furthermore, the other traditionally highly pro-warmist party (the Liberal Democrats) have suffered a staggering defeat loosing almost all their MSPs.
Toronto’s Globe and Mail has a slightly different take on this story: while climate has warmed in the US and Canada, it is within the range of natural variabliity – the summary in SCIENCE notes a “startling exception” to global warming – the US isn’t getting any warmer. Schlenger is quoted “There’s always been variablity, so its really hard to attribute one single event to climate change”. Environment Canada’s David Phillips comments that people tend to explain every change in weather as climate change. “We just seem to gravitate toward the climate change as an explanation for everthing that happens.”
I hope someone can access the entire study and comment on it
Following up on Mike’s comment above: the temperature plot shown here and the “caption” below it are incredibly inconsistent with each other. You don’t need to be a climate scientist to see the positive trend in this time-series. Once more, go to the NOAA page and generate the plot INCLUDING THE TREND LINE. Of course, if you are so skeptic as to want to hide the trend by any means, you can just not plot it and then deny its existence. However, if you opt for being objective, plot it and you will see a clear 0.40 degF/decade trend. What really bothers me is that except for Mike, the rest of the people here seem to have simply believed that there is no trend in this plot, just because Anthony Watts says so.
Second, you say
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but global warming does not mean that every year will be warmer than the previous, or even than the previous several years! Variability in different time scales can be much larger than the linear trend.
So, there is a positive trend in mean temperature in the US in the previous 30 years according to this data set. Another issue is if this has an impact on corn yields. That is of course a much more complicated question, which probably has no concluding answer yet, but is worth investigating.
heh – one gets what one pays his taxes for.
it sure must be fun, the way people keep doing it.
Oh, the climate is changing and we won’t/can’t see anything to blame but CO2.
Oh, crop yields are variable around the world but we won’t / can’t see anything to blame but climate change.
Man that CO2 is one powerful little bugger. Or maybe when you are a hammer every problem looks just like a nail.
Palookas.
I wonder why the starting point of reference was the 80’s….
Is it because the temperatures were exceptionally low (“Ice age is coming”)?
Nahhh, couldn’t be.
It makes me sad, very sad to see how bad science has become. Shoot the arrow first and then paint the target around it.
Well, first off let me say that a scientific community which can tell what climate was a thousands years ago by looking at tree rings ought to be able to explain stuff happening this year when they have all that climate data. That they cannot match growth to mean temperature, why…it’s no less than…a travesty!
Secondly, is there actually a documented case anywhere in the inhabited world where there is an actual change of climate outside of previous standards and natural variability which cannot be accounted for by land-use changes? Not just a shift in ‘average temps’ but an actual demonstrable robust change in climate, early sping, late frosts, snowlines, anything?
Thanks Mike for that. Dropped in 2000-2011 and still laughing. Funny that now the lights are being left on in the AGW Temple of Doom, there’s oh so little to see.
That’s a splendid steady upward slope in Reuters’ “Average Yield” plot at the top. You could almost imagine it correlating rather well with, say, % CO2.
I am surprised no one has commented on the obvious error in the temperature graph. Here it is corrected:
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/cag3/hr-display3.pl
Well that didn’t work. In any case the average line is in error.
Not only does the BBC jump on this modeling exercise:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13297004
But they also give the climategate offenders a free pass:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13300058
It all makes one wonder, if the efforts, of skeptics, is having any real effect, on the environmentalist, and AGW machinery. All of its gears and cogs are broken, but the choo choo, keeps on going. Perpetual motion machines, seem to indeed, exist! GK
@Daniel says:
May 6, 2011 at 7:11 am
If CO2 is the major driver of climate change than temperatures must rise year over year with rising CO2 levels. If you use the NOAA web site to plot a graph from 1995-2011 you get a negative trend (or no trend depending on the month selected), that’s 15 years. This means for 15 years natural climate variability has overpowered any CO2 forcing; natural climate change is the null hypothesis to CAGW.
To those who have been in the seat of a John Deere and not the rollaway chair in the
top of a computerized Ivory tower. Like Pamela Gray said Our Third cold spring in NE
Oregon is underway. I grew up on a wheat and Cattle operation North of La Grande.
This spring is like the cold years of the early 50’s and 60’s and-70’s. Hmm. noticed that is 30 years. We are cold not warm. My cousin’s a Potato grower. Trouble getting to the field all “spring” snow cold and wet. I’m looking for the old “Oregon Farmer” paper that my Pop kept with the Article (about 1955) that had noted “Canadian Prairie Condtions” for growing grain in NE Oregon. There were, eventually more cold tolerant varieties used. But. now we have at Oregon State, a Warmist policy that may end up screwing the Farmer as they look at something that doesn’t exist in the real world.Though, there are realists out there in academia- you have to watch how you frame the argument. “The warm/cold is cold/warm today blessed be the Profit”….
“The climate science is still unclear about why summers in the Corn Belt haven’t been warming. But most explanations suggest that warming in the future is just as likely there as elsewhere in the world,” Lobell said.
“The climate isn’t doing what we expected it would, but we just know we’re right anyways.”
Cheers Mike.
Very sweet cherry at the quarter-century scale ’86 to 2011.
“We can safely ignore the data that contradicts our conclusion because those data points were just ‘lucky'”.
WOW!
“We found that since 1980, the effects of climate change on crop yields have caused an increase of approximately 20 percent in global market prices,” said Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at Columbia University and a coauthor of the paper in Science.”
I’m sure the increase in demand from a growing population (4.5 million in 1980 to 6.8 million today) has nothing at all to do with prices.
it looks more like a plan than research
I bet those models can’t predict crop yields five years from now.
These morons have everything bass ackwards.
First, the U.S. farmer is, as he’s always done, kicking the behinds of everyone else.
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/cornyld.asp
http://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/soyyld.asp
It doesn’t have anything to do with global warming, but techniques and technology. The price increases don’t have anything to do with yields, but rather employing different uses to the crops.
We used to consider most crops as food, now much of it is fuel.
Total global crop production…..
For years 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010
Wheat Production (1000 MT) World 435,867 588,801 583,105 647,181
Corn Production (1000 MT) World 408,734 481,963 591,361 814,941
Meal, Soybean Prod. (1000 MT)World 43,940 69,229 116,075 177,816
Oilseed, Soybean Prod. (1000 MT)World62,226 104,290 175,759 260,972
Rice, Milled Prod. (1000 MT)World 269,908 351,370 399,396 450,681
(Sorry if the formatting doesn’t hold) Oh, I could and should go on, but time doesn’t permit. The point is, global crop production is sharply increasing. Not just in the U.S. but worldwide. These morons are trying to say it would be up more if it weren’t for global warming? BS total crop production is doubled in many cases compared to 1980.
You can play along at home, too! Go here…. http://www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/psdQuery.aspx
Did they not think someone could just look it up?
Everyone has “dodged the impact of global warming” because it is insignificant.
I would be curious to see what their US corn yield graph would look like had they started it in 1930……
You think the dust bowl had any effect?
If a drought and heat wave that lasted over a decade, happened naturally 80 years ago…
…they would be absolutely suicidal if it happened today
Sun Spot says:
May 6, 2011 at 6:28 am
@Mike says:
May 6, 2011 at 5:45 am
The NOAA web page is great, try a plot for 1998-2011, January and July, you get some interesting cherries. What cherries did you want us to see ??
———————
Ha, ha. Very good. How about 1895 o 2010 annual mean temp.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
Co2 has been a benefit to plant growth. Corn , wheat and soy all grow about 12% more bio mass with the observed increase in CO2. This real study shows this effect in natural vegetation. Science climate is simply not science.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2011/03/23/global-greening-continues-did-we-cause-it/
What a load of malarkey. I think every official who writes a report, should spend six months living on a farm, where they would a) get a clue about what they are talking about and b) get some common sense knocked into them. Those of us who live in farm country, laugh at statements like this. Corn and soybean farmers in the Midwest want warm days and warm nights with a long growing season to get their crops in the bin. You will have neither food nor ethanol if the crop can’t ripen. Wheat farmers on the Great Plains of the US and Canada want good spring rains with warm summer days and no hail, to get their crops in. Two years ago, in our area, wet fall conditions moved in, and the millet crop never made it into the combine. Last fall we had a freeze on Labor Day night- a full month ahead of our normal frost day of October 10. That put a dent in home gardens and crops in the fields.
Yields continue to increase due to advances in corn genetics. But long growing seasons are needed for those advances to make any difference. Perhaps the title of the article should read:”U.S. Farmers Continue To Maintain High Yields In Spite Of Global Cooling”. Because we have dodged a bullet- that of falling yields when it is too cold and wet in the Midwest or too dry on the Plains to even have a crop.
On the Reuters graph, the legend “US corn yield growth rate slows in recent years” is falsified by the graph itself; the yield growth rate, shown in blue, is a fairly stable 2% pa over the whole period shown (1980-2010). The occasional bursts of ~4% come after dips to ~0%. If anything, the growth rate has been even more consistently reliable in recent years!
@Mike says:
May 6, 2011 at 8:45 am
I like the last 15 years 1996-2011 (annual), no trend no increase. If CO2 is the main climate forcing factor we shouldn’t see all that inconvenient natural temperature fluctuation and no trend for 15 years while CO2 exhibits a linear increase as per Mauna Loa ?
Half the comments seem to be about picking out the temperature trend from the tea leaves and entrials of questionable surface readings.
Prof. Lobell comments: “. . . given how fast we see weather has been changing in agricultural areas around the world. . .”
An amazing statement! If it were true there should not be any problem in showing this and there would not be any argument about it. The comments on this post disprove the statement. The ground station data for air temperature seems to be infused with “hot air” so I usually look at this:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
For Pamela and Douglas DC:
My local area isn’t looking too good either:
April was cool in the USA-PNW. May is starting the same.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/climate/temp_graphs.php?stn=KYKM&submit=Change+Station&wfo=pdt
@ Daniel says:
May 6, 2011 at 7:11 am
===============================
Groan, yes, we all mindlessly let Anthony discern truth for us……
Son, most of the readers here could give you a class in decadal trends. Most of us are very aware of the U.S. trends and Global. Of course, this does blow up the argument of these pinheaded researchers.
While we are on the subject of temp trends, I’m wondering if you’re aware of the temp trends globally? No, not the last couple of years, but the LAST 14 YEARS!!! http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997.5/trendThe globe hasn’t warmed in almost 15 years. Oh, you don’t like that one? http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997.5/plot/rss/from:1997.5/trend
Ok, the globe has cooled in the last 14 years.
Of course, being true to the skeptic tradition, I checked this out myself……. Go here.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/rss-going-negative/
The reason why most chose not to comment on the lack of a linear trend line is because it wasn’t necessary to debunk this tripe passed off as research. Again, if one would include the trend line, it would further illustrate how FOS Lobell and his colleagues are.
Thanks for playing the global warming game.
@Mike says:
May 6, 2011 at 8:45 am
1895-2010 = 0.10 degF / Decade (annual) trend
1895-1935 = 0.20 degF / Decade (annual) trend, was CO2 the big climate driver during this era ??
@Sun Spot
If you want to determine a trend in a time-series, you must have a “sufficiently long” series. Otherwise, you will find any trend you wish, as many people here just discovered. What they haven’t seen yet, is that such a trend may be useless. It’s simple: as you shorten the length of the series, the trend you obtain becomes less and less meaningful. Go to the extreme: take only two consecutive years. You can choose your two favorite ones, and you get any possible trend you want. But such a trend tells you nothing in terms of climate change. When you talk about climate, with a 30-year time series you are still on the short side, but it’s already better than just taking any 10-year period, which would just barely show you a decadal trend. The reason is simple: natural variability of yearly, interannual, decadal, etc., time scales is larger than the expected trend due to CO2 increase. Notice that from year to year you can have jumps of 2 degF. Compare now that to a trend of 0.4 degF per decade (0.04 degF per year!). You will never detect such a trend unless you take a long-enough time series.
I hope this clarifies why every year does not have to be warmer than the previous one under a global warming scenario. What you actually see is a slow increase, but with a LARGE super-imposed variability.
“We found that since 1980, the effects of climate change on crop yields have caused an increase of approximately 20 percent in global market prices,” said Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at Columbia University and a coauthor of the paper in Science.
++++++
So….40% of the US maize crop is being diverted to make ethanol, and prices have gone up 20%. Any connection there?? How did the article manage to avoid this rather obvious, critical component of the farming sector?
Next, the production in Mexico has been hammered hard by the dumping of subsidised maize from the US, make no mistake. Most small farmers have stopped producing altogether, and even then the articles says production is not down. Huh. Well many thousands of Mexican farmers are out of business because of the business practises of USA Inc wrecking their livelihoods.
Production of maize would be much higher if the real price dominated the market value. Africa can produce huges amounts of maize but they can’t afford to subsidise it into the global market. And why should they? It is cheaper to buy dumped over-production from the US and EU.
The claimed reduction in production in the ROW (rest of world) is far more likely to be the result of patently unfair US and EU dumping, driving farmers out of business, than changes in temperature.
The impact of cold temperatures last year was the cause of the partial failure of the wheat crops in China, India, Canada and Russia. One heat Moscow wave is not ‘global warming’. Food fails to grow when it is cold, ladies and gents.
Next: if the world actually warms, argiculture will simply shift further north into the vast unused mega-spaces in Russia and Canada.
Daniel said:
“However, if you opt for being objective, plot it and you will see a clear 0.40 degF/decade trend. What really bothers me is that except for Mike, the rest of the people here seem to have simply believed that there is no trend in this plot, just because Anthony Watts says so.”
Um the past decade has had exactly no statistically significant rise in gloabl temp (Dr. Jones) while CO2 went up 5%. In fact the troposphere is cooling, the oceans are cooling and the past three winters have been record cold winters. It is amazing what one can see when they actually look out the window. For example the tulips are just coming out now a full two months late, the leaves on the trees are just coming out now, a full two months late. Seems nature ain’t buyin the AGW BS and sorry we ain’t buyin the crap anymore either.
Here is the way I see this spin. We, as in skeptics, know real climate models do not match real world observations, temps. flatlined and decreasing, at least not warming outside historic increases. The U.S. seems to have the most temperature recorders compared to other areas of the world, though numbers fast decreasing, making it hard for Stanford to refute the data in the U.S. But the majority of the world poorer records, making it easy to say the U.S. may not be warming to any great degree, but the rest of the world is.
As a native Iowan (The Corn State), my gut feeling is the authors have never grown corn, much less even talked to a farmer who does. If they had, they’d know farming techniques and technology are continuously changing and improving. Even if the climate has changed since the ’80s, farmers weren’t “lucky” to avoid the impact -they used science and technology to do things better. People used to think no till/low till methods would never catch on because they would decrease yield too much…
Seriously, if they think a degree or two increase will devastate production, they have no clue as the the major changes that have already occurred in food production in the last few decades.
NA farmers have, for the past 15 years, enthusiastically adopted the deployment of genetically modified crops. Principally, CORN, soybeans, cotton, and canola. Now that the frivolous lawsuits have been swept away, will soon add alfalfa and sugar beets to the list. Conversely, Europe has a near total ban on genetically modified crops.
Hmmmmmm…
On this side of the Cascades, our gardens are at least a month behind, due to COLD, wet “spring.”
Pamela Gray says:
Do these people ever do field research anymore?
I’m pretty sure they don’t.
Yes, VERY impressive 0.12/degree rise per decade. /sarc off
Live by the trend line, die by the trend line.
What does “likey” mean in this case? Either AGW IS already taking a toll or it IS NOT. If some locales have lower production and others higher, this sounds like natural variation due to many possible causes [two of which might be warming …or cooling].
This is just another mealy mouthed, scare story “study” based on unproven models and supplemented with the usual trite conjectures in order to get more government grants.
Ludicrous academic drivel.
Can Stanford sue Lobbell for wrecking the reputation of his employer? 😉
Daniel says:
May 6, 2011 at 9:31 am
“I hope this clarifies why every year does not have to be warmer than the previous one under a global warming scenario. What you actually see is a slow increase, but with a LARGE super-imposed variability.”
And the funniest part is that this trend started long before mankind emitted big amounts of CO2, so CO2 can be ruled out as the major cause. Doesn’t correlate well with the temperatures anyway.
There are so many ‘fails’ going on here I can’t get my head round it all..
1. Tree Rings.
OK, so corn and wheat are not varieties of tree, but why do trees grow better(and hence a reliable guide to prehistoric temps) in the warm and corn/wheat do not…
2. If CAGW is apparently so obvious and happemning, does not the rise in corn yields mean that it is a good thing….
3. If yields are rising in spite of the CAGW theory/model that says they shouldn’t, is the theory/model not wrong…….
4. I’ve looked up the figures for wheat in the UK – yields have gone from an average of 6.3 tonnes per hectare in 1983 to 8.4 tonnes per hectare in 2009.
Were UK farmers ‘lucky’ like their US counterparts growing corn….
5. Why is it that when ‘The Model’ is at variance with ‘The Real World’, its the Real World that is at fault (or lucky) and is headed for doom and disaster…..
6. Would Diazepam help these people….
Science Magazine claims that global warming has already reduced global yields of corn, wheat, soybeans and rice.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/05/climate-change-already-hurting.html?ref=hp
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/05/04/science.1204531
Logic has taken a hit along with general dumbing down of science:
“Yields in most countries are still going up, but not as fast as we estimate they would be without climate trends,” Lobell said.
Yields are increasing BECAUSE OF CLIMATE TRENDS.
“We found that since 1980, the effects of climate change on crop yields have caused an increase of approximately 20 percent in global market prices,” said Wolfram Schlenker,
20% up in 30 years? or up more than it WOULD BE? How much did burning corn fuel contribute?
“He said if the BENEFICIAL EFFECTS of higher carbon dioxide levels on crop growth are factored into the calculation, the increase drops down to 5 percent.”
Is he saying that with no increase in CO2 (a proxy for temps) and therefore without their benefits, yields would have been what?
This tells us that whatever the results of a study show it can be spun into CAGW disaster. Now, along with ‘warming is cooling’ we have ‘benefits are disbenefits’. Com’on Doc, admit it was a travesty that things got better and you were unhappy aboout it. Maybe by 2100, the benefits will be so huge that we will be unable to turn them back for a 1000 years.
Sorry, Science Now rather than Science Magazine.
The report is from Stanford.
Well, the data show pretty clearly that CO2 is not the cause of any measurable warming. But CO2 is the cause of much of the increased agricultural production.
Conclusion: CO2 is good. More is better.
Imagine the PDO (and even lower frequency oscillations) as slightly rounded off square waves input to a network with large input capacitance. Then look at the actual temperature trace. On that note:
===================================================
COOLER THAN NORMAL TEMPERATURES AND PARTLY CLOUDY SKIES ARE EXPECTED TO PREVAIL THROUGH THE WEEKEND AND INTO THE BEGINNING OF NEXT WEEK AS AN UNSEASONABLY DEEP UPPER LEVEL LOW MOVES SOUTHEASTWARD FROM THE GULF OF ALASKA INTO THE GREAT BASIN. LATEST MODEL OUTPUT CONTINUES TO INDICATE ASSOCIATED MOISTURE AND INSTABILITY WILL REMAIN LARGELY EAST OF OUR AREA…THOUGH NOT BY MUCH IN THE LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON TO MONDAY TIME FRAME AND SO CAN`T COMPLETELY RULE OUT THE POSSIBILITY OF A FEW SHOWERS THEN…ESPECIALLY TOWARDS OUR EASTERN BORDER. THE APPROACH OF THIS SYSTEM WILL HOWEVER RAMP UP THE COASTAL MARINE LAYER…POTENTIALLY TO A DEGREE SUFFICIENT TO RESULT IN SOME COASTAL DRIZZLE TONIGHT AND SATURDAY MORNING. 850 MB TEMPS ARE PROJECTED TO COOL FROM THEIR CURRENT 14C TO 17C RANGE TO NOT MUCH ABOVE 0C BY SUNDAY AFTERNOON. AS A RESULT…EXPECT AFTERNOON HIGHS TO LARGELY BE CONFINED TO THE 70S INLAND SATURDAY AND JUST THE 60S ON SUNDAY AND MONDAY.
IN THE EXTENDED…MODELS PROJECT THE UPPER LEVEL LOW WILL WEAKEN AND MOVE EASTWARD INTO THE DESERT SOUTHWEST AND ROCKY MTNS MONDAY NIGHT AND TUESDAY…WITH A WEAK SHORT WAVE UPPER LEVEL RIDGE THEN BUILDING INTO THE WEST COAST. THIS SHOULD RESULT IN A MODEST WARMING TREND FOR US…THOUGH EVEN THEN TEMPERATURES LOOK TO REMAIN BELOW SEASONAL NORMS. TOWARDS THE LATTER PART OF NEXT WEEK…LONGER RANGE MODEL OUTPUT INDICATES RENEWED UNSEASONABLY COOL UPPER LEVEL TROUGH DEVELOPMENT OVER THE EASTERN PACIFIC AND ANOTHER COOLING TREND FOR US.
=================================================
During the latter third of the 20th century (e.g. most of my window of credible personal observation capabilities) a “normal” spring would feature lots of warmth and no rain after about mid April, in this CWA. Last year was an almost non existent spring with only a few truly warm days thrown in. This year has been the same, thus far. Only question at this point is, will it be another year without summer (which it was last year on much of the West Coast). While the ENSO is moving toward zero and is likely to be either neutral or into Nino territory by summer, it will be interesting to see if the overarching negative phase PDO counteracts that and dominates. And the $64,000 question – is there yet an even longer period oscillation than the PDO, which has “gone negative.” Perhaps the longest one.
Pete in Cumbria UK says:
May 6, 2011 at 11:15 am
“6. Would Diazepam help these people….”
=======================================
I think its gone too far for that to be effective maybe some Amisulpride…… perhaps Lithium.
“Yields in most countries are still going up, but not as fast as we estimate they would be without climate trends,”
So again, there is a model which says how much the yield could have been increasing. Compared to that model, the increase is less. Thus there is deduced a negative effect on yield from climate, compared to the model.
Basically a comparison is done of real outcome compared to theory A. This is used to state that theory B is correct. Nowhere any evidence that theory A is valid.
— Mats —
OK Mike – I will bite again.
January 1895 – 1998 Trend = 0.00 degF / Decade
January 1998 – 2011 Trend = -3.07 degF / Decade
Now I am scared.
before you trash crop yield models it might be wise to do some due diligence.
or just jump to conclusions.
start here
http://www.jstor.org/pss/4492790
2kevin says:
May 6, 2011 at 11:25 am
Science Magazine claims that global warming has already reduced global yields of corn, wheat, soybeans and rice.
Kevin, over 500 hundred studies disagree with this nonsense.
I wonder if they controlled for such factors as political upheaval, government mandates, local economic conditions, drought due to long term climate variability, thermometer error due to local development, loss of farm land to development, over-farming, cost of fuel, etc. etc. Farming is subject all kinds of issues other than weather.
No change for North American? No surprise as PDO was positive the length of their study.
France, Brazil, Russia, India? AMO was strongly negative at the beginning of their study and switched in the middle of the study to strongly positive. India may sound far off from the atlantic but a quick google I found that AMO impact monsoon season.
“They then used crop models to estimate what worldwide crop yields would have been…”
Shouldn’t this sentence have read : They then used crap models to estimate what worldwide crop yields would have been
@Daniel says:
May 6, 2011 at 9:31 am
@D. J. Hawkins says:
May 6, 2011 at 9:57 am
“DirkH says: May 6, 2011 at 11:11 am” and “RobW says: May 6, 2011 at 9:42 am” , these two gentlemen see the LACK of CO2 causality, Dan and D.J. why are you blind to the lack of CO2-ClimateChange correlation ??
That the temperature has been rising since the end of the LIA is natural (hint: 1859 was the end of a little ice age).
@Daniel
The problem with any straight line trend: no matter which way it’s trending, it’s doom. Postive trend, and the Earth melts, negative trend and the Earth freezes.
It would be interesting to cross-plot the data, corn yield vs. annual temperature, and see what the pattern was. Good chance it would be a blob with no correlation.
Rather interesting that 1998 was the warmest temperature on the graph, and also the highest corn yield on the graph.
smokey, looks like C02 does lead to an increase in the number of cherries you pick.
1. the effect of c02 on temperature is not immediate. you cannot simply compare ppm of c02 during one time period with the temp of that time period.
2. you cannot use PPM as a your units. the effect of c02 is log. you consistently make this mistake. turn the PPM of c02 into WATTs of forcing and then you’ll be on the right track.
3. C02 forcing is but ONE forcing. There are others that you have to factor out BEFORE you look for the relationship. The most important is INTERNAL FORCING, or internal variability. to factor this out and see the RESIDUAL warming ( thats the warming your looking for) you have look at time scales where the internal variability ( for example, oceanic cycles) integrates to zero. That is at least 30 years and could be as much as 60 years. we know that there are unforced cycles, ups and down of short duration and high amplitude. Those dedacal cycles are large enough to swamp the c02 signal on SHORT time scales. That’s why short time scales are meaningless. Its BECAUSE there are factors other than C02 that drive decadal rates that you need to look at several decades.
For example. one would not look at the time series after a volcano and assume that the rapid cooling there implied the sun didnt cause warming.. would you.
Finding the C02 signal involves: getting the units right. which your chart doesnt.
Accounting for the log response which your chart doesnt. and factoring out short term fluctuations that we know are non c02 related.
starzmom :
Seems to me the biggest effect that climate change has had on the corn crop is that some people have been persuaded that we should divert corn to biofuels and away from food, to protect ourselves from climate change, and that is why the food prices are going up.
Bingo! Check this out from over three years ago:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
And this from the same period:
http://www.enn.com/energy/article/30981
Neither media source is antagonistic of AGW theory to put it lightly. In fact, this very story out of Stanford is the lead story on the latter media outlet as can be seen here:
http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/42662
I don’t know if i’m being thick or what but I have just downloaded the minimum monthly temperature data for England from the met office site and they have data for the whole of 2011 included in the list ???????
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/datasets/
Stanford is one of the smartest dozen universities in the country–which only means they have the brains to come up with whatever results they want.
Theyhave even managed to show that increasing CO2 slows down the growth of plants.
Money, money, money. Check out grants from the US gov sometime.
Forget that. I am being thick. The column headings had jumped when I downloaded the data.
@Steve M. from TN
why is it the people continue to assume a straight line trends in everything ?, when it is pretty obvious that most climate variability is cyclic. Even something that looks like a longish term linear trend could just as easily be the ‘up’ or ‘down’ part of an even longer cycle.
eg the rise out of the LIA looks linear, but is almost certainly just part of a much longer cycle, and the very short term linear rise in ‘adjusted’ global temperature (yeah that’s a good statistic….not) between 1976 and 1996 could just as easily come from the coincidence of 2 or 3 upward sections of different cycles, plus unbanisation effects, plus some mannipulation etc etc.
So this “oh , there’s a vague and slight linear trend, so lets extrapolate out to ‘n’ years, and pretend “!!
continued…. really is an extremely bad use of statistics.
Missed the “/sarc off” switch there, eh sunshine?
“The largest comparative losses in corn production were seen in China and Brazil.”
http://www.thebioenergysite.com/articles/contents/10-11-11Bio2.gif
http://www.pecad.fas.usda.gov/highlights/2008/04/Brazil/images/usbrazilcornyields.gif
@Steve Shadlov
“is there yet an even longer period oscillation than the PDO, which has “gone negative.” Perhaps the longest one.”
or perhaps a medium term one?
I see climate as having many drivers, most of which have a natural, somewhat chaotic, cyclical nature. We know what some of these drivers are, and can partly guess what others might be. Problem is that the ‘noise’ in the system precludes any way of even determining which drivers have which effect and at what period of time. At the moment we can see some the the really strong drivers, such as the PDO, solar cycles etc, but ANYONE who thinks climate science is in any way “settled” probably needs to wait maybe another few generations before we have enough accurate data (NOT tree ring proxies 😉 to actually pick up some of the other more subtle cycles that may be driving the system.
“why are you blind to the lack of CO2-ClimateChange correlation ”
yes , there was a correlation between CO2 levels and the mannipulated temperature data during the period 1976ish – 1995ish. There has not been any correlation (except perhaps a negative one) since the mid 1990’s. Ya see, there is only so much data mannipulation you can do before it become blatant to even blind Goreans
‘What global warming?’
Certainly didn’t see any in my neck of the woods.
Warm ran off in the middle of the trend.
“You met another and pfffttt… you were gone”
and if you want forcing data for Ar5
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~mmalte/rcps/20c3m.htm
solar is kinda interesting
http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/met/ag/strat/forschung/SOLARIS/Input_data/CMIP5_solar_irradiance.html
all the forcings in excel
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~mmalte/rcps/index.htm#Download
see 20c3m
steven mosher says:
“[snark snipped]
1. the effect of c02 on temperature is not immediate. you cannot simply compare ppm of c02 during one time period with the temp of that time period.
2. you cannot use PPM as a your units. the effect of c02 is log. you consistently make this mistake. turn the PPM of c02 into WATTs of forcing and then you’ll be on the right track.
3. C02 forcing is but ONE forcing…” & etc.
# # #
OK, by the numbers:
“… the effect of c02 on temperature is not
immediatemeasurable because it is too insignificant…”There, fixed it for you. You’re a model guy, I am an empiricist. I’ll take raw data and measurements over computer projections any time. As Prof Freeman Dyson puts it:
Next:
“you cannot use PPM as a your units.”
Sure I can. The IPCC does, and so does just about everyone else. Parts per million per volume is raw data, and that makes it evidence – unlike computer models. And being “on the right track” means accepting a couple of inconvenient truths: the planet has been flat to cooling over the past decade even though [harmless] CO2 continues to rise, and CO2 appears to be a function of temperature: it rises after the temperature rises, on timescales from months to millennia.
And finally, it is true that CO2 is “but one forcing.” But that is actually immaterial in the runaway global warming discussion, because the entire debate revolves around “carbon” – “carbon footprint,” “carbon credits,” taxing “carbon” through Cap & Tax, etc. The planet is making fools of the CAGW believers and their routinely debunked predictions, but that doesn’t matter, because this debate isn’t about science. It is all about taxing the air we breathe, and handing over our national sovereignty to UN kleptocrats.
Once you accept and understand that fact, everything else falls into place.
Of course, nothing but climate changed in Russia since 1980.
Update:
=====================================
THE 216-HR FORECAST FROM TODAY`S 12Z DETERMINISTIC RUN OF THE ECMWF…FOR 12Z SUNDAY MAY 15…HAS THE 540 DM 500 MB HEIGHT CONTOUR GOING THROUGH SAN FRANCISCO…ALONG WITH 500 AND 850 MB TEMPS OF -31C AND -2C RESPECTIVELY. THIS WOULD BE EXTRAORDINARY FOR THE MIDDLE OF MAY…NOT MUCH MORE THAN A MONTH SHY OF THE SUMMER SOLSTICE…AND THIS WILL LIKELY PROVE TO BE AN EXTREME SOLUTION. NONETHELESS…GENERAL CONSISTENCY IN THE BASIC IDEA OF THE LONGER RANGE MODEL OUTPUT SUGGESTS ABOVE SEASONAL NORM CHANCES OF COOL AND WET WEATHER IN THAT TIME FRAME.
=============================
On top of that, a Winter Weather Advisory has been put up for the high country.
Another year without a summer, here we come?
There is a decent chance that at least some of the “seasonal” snow pack in the high country may actually make it through to next season.
Having been in the business of designing plant “growth” chambers, CO2 is deliberately added to the chamber atmosphere. This is in addition to controlling temperature & humidity. The whole idea is to accelerate plant maturity.
Get a copy of the Sunset Garden Book.
Look at the growth season for different zones. (They have a much more detailed zone design that USGS). Look especially at Phoenix. Notice that Phoenix is one of the very few (only?) places to have a NEGATIVE growth zone in the summer. However it has growth all the rest of the year, including the dead of winter.
The bottom line is that plants want warmth. Plants NEED warmth to germinate and to grow. There is NOTHING to fear from added heat until you are HOTTER THAN PHOENIX ARIZONA. As even in Phoenix, they grow crops in the dead of winter instead of the middle of summer. Phoenix is a major grower of fruits and vegetable crops.
How hot is it in Phoenix in the Summer? Hottest I’ve personally experienced is 126F degrees.
So, until you are having summer temperatures OVER 126 F, you are net gaining productivity from any added heat. At that point, any gains in the winter have reached a limit and added heat causes summer losses without an offsetting gain in winter.
So, you gotta ask yourself, is that 126 F or 125 F? Me? I’ve plum forgotten… Well, is it punk? (With profound appologies to Dirty Harry 😉
As darned near nowhere on the planet is hotter than Phoenix, we have nothing to lose from added heat. All that will change is the timing on the crops.
Any claim to the contrary is bogus.
Flooding and more severe weather to hit next week in the US, with cold plunges and more rains. No doubt the MSM will ask “is this climate change” while the Kool Aid is spilled in effigy. The wheat crop does not look good this year, and the corn is delayed from the majority of planting. If this is another Year Without a Summer, we’ll be looking at Mackerel (poor man’s tuna).
Where’s the warmest ever now?
I spent many youthful hours on the seats of both a “Popping Johnny” and John Deere GP, about 1936 models, during the years 1940 to 1948.
Carbon Dioxide is without doubt that trace gas which, with H2O and sunlight, provides all the food we eat, and all the oxygen we breathe. And yes, the soil has to get warm before seed will germinate.
The real trend has been in far less actual science being taught in our school systems, resulting in close to terminal ignorance.
It would be terminal mass human suicide to lessen the amount of CO2 in either the atmosphere or dissoved in water. World famine would ensue.
Don’t know if anyone posted this yet….sorry if a repeat, but just noticed this now.
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Climate+change+hardly+visible+North+America/4736609/story.html
The average yield per hectare of grains increased by 62% between 1980 and 2010.
This research is ridiculous (it should have increased 67% ???)
http://www.earth-policy.org/datacenter/pdf/book_wote_crops.pdf
Lobell co-authored another study last year where they broke the increasing production down into various factors like fertilizer usage etc. Maybe this is where the game started.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2900707/
Did they consider economics?
When prices are high more intensive farming, including going further into awkward corners and edges, is more viable. More fertilizer becomes worthwhile (including ammonia to put nitrogen into the soil), and might substitute somewhat for crop rotation to get nitrogen back *, as does more intensive weed control (whether mechanical or chemical).
Does their data accurately track crop rotation (in prime corn growing country of IA it is common to rotate corn and the legume called “soybean” to replenish nitrogen in the soil).
I don’t think there’s any global warming, but I distrust statistics for things like crops because there are so many variables.
* Especially if soybean prices are down, as they were after Brazilian production came on strong, some years after idiots in the US government restricted exports. (I speculate Japanese money went into improving land and developing growing methods in Brazil. It can take years to figure out how to grow a crop well in another location.)