More from the “weather is not climate department”.
Flurries hit southeast Australia as towns record their first-ever summer snowfalls
CANBERRA, Australia – Australia is following its second-hottest year on record with extraordinary snow flurries in its southeastern alpine region, where some towns have recorded their first-ever summer snowfalls.
Australia’s temperatures during the summer months of December through February can be uncomfortably hot even on its highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, which stands a modest 7,310 feet (2,228 metres) above sea level.
Snow fell to 3,000 feet (900 metres) above sea level Monday in parts of New South Wales and Victoria states, Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Jane Golding said.
“Any time of year, it’s unusual to have snow down that far,” she said.
…
The town of Bombala in New South Wales, east of Kosciuszko, recorded its first summer snow since the bureau began keeping records there in 1965, Golding said.
The town of Cooma, also in New South Wales but north of Kosciuszko, recorded its first summer snow since records were first kept in 1973.
Cooma resident Krystal Pernitsch said the wind chill factor made Monday’s high temperature of 59 degrees (15 degrees Celsius) feel like 48 degrees (9 Celsius).
Peter of Sydney (12:48:09) :
I find it hilarious to see people panicking about global warming and hotter than usual days in Australia when it’s normal to have hot days in summer (oh yeah – who would have thought of that?) Yet, when we have colder than usual days in summer, and now snow nobody appears to be concerned. The media of course focus on reporting the hotter days but not the colder days. It’s like the revelation that NASA is removing the thermometer readings from mostly the colder areas but keeping the hotter ones and the ones located at airports. We should have an alternative global mean temperature “authority”. One that discards readings at airports and other urbanized areas and keep those in more natural environments. It would be interesting to compare the two charts.
REPLY:
Peter you can find the data here:
Listed here are a set of historical temperature graphs from a large selection of mostly non-urban weather stations in both hemispheres….. from John Daly’s site
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm
Richard Sharpe (15:59:18) :
Wayne Findley (15:37:27) said:
And from what I hear, yields are down almost everywhere……
Hmmm, the USDA is expecting record corn and soy yields in the US … although some are skeptical.
REPLY:
It is more complicated than that. As you noted some are skeptical.
November 13, 2009 **USDA Declares Half Of Midwest As Agricultural Disaster Area***
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/11/usda-declares-half-of-midwest-as.html
Here are the articles on the coming food crisis: http://www.marketskeptics.com/search/label/Food_Crisis?max-results=100
“Farmers across America and in many other parts of the world are calling 2009 the worst harvest they’ve ever seen in their lives, owing largely to extended bouts of bad weather. At the same time the U.S. Department of Agriculture is officially forecasting bumper crops, while close to three-fourths of the country’s farmland is in areas declared eligible for federal disaster assistance due to failed crops.
A popular farmers’ Web site is chock full of stories of entire crops of soybeans rejected for moisture damage, long delays in harvesting corn only to find out the corn is moldy, damaged or too light to be used as animal feed or even ethanol, and farmers unsure if they’ll even have a farm for another year due to the losses they’ve taken.” http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2010/01/07/spring-food-crisis-may-trigger-economic-collapse/
However there is also this: (note poor quality of grain due to weather)
2009 corn, soybean crops break records
“This morning the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its final production numbers revealing U.S. farmers produced record corn and soybean crops….
Because of this year’s overall poorer corn quality and lower corn test weight, it may require more corn to meet domestic needs, added Jerry Gidel, president of North America Risk Management Services. For instance ethanol may need an additional 50 to 150 million bushels over current estimates and feedability of the corn will be watched.” So actually from a farmers point of view it was a “poor harvest” with many problems. Record crops yields are worthless if those crops are full of mold and they are undesirable for biofuel production because the mold and bacteria interfere with the fermentation process. The left overs from ethanol production, distillers grains, is a livestock feed additive so again moldy grain, that would poison livestock, would not be used in ethanol production. That combined with water shortages to farms in California and freezes in Florida puts a different twist on the USDA’s “record harvest”
In 2007 the target price for a bushel of corn in 2007 was $2.63 (Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002). In 2008 a bushel fetched $6.42 on the commodity futures market. At the feed store the price of grain doubled or tripled.
SMS (16:58:37) :
I would think that corn production is up due to demand for ethanol, not due to climate as a driver of crop yields.
Where/when does the “Precautionary Principle” come into play?
It goes both ways, doesn’t it?
REPLY:
Corn production is up because the price paid for corn tripled thanks to bio-fuel quotas mandated by Congress. Congress also did a big foot on tobacco a few years ago, mandating new and expensive drying sheds, so a lot of farmers got out of tobacco. My neighbors used to plant cotton and tobacco now they plant corn instead. From a maximum of 16,717,000 acres in 1995 the amount of cotton planted has fallen to 8,989,000 acres in 2009. Similar data on corn and tobacco is not readily available from the USDA at least at first glance.
Cotton data: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/ers/89004/Table04.xls
Vegetables Annual Summary
” This file contains data on fresh market vegetables, including seasonal acreage for harvest, planted acres, yield, production, intentions to plant processing vegetables; marketing year average price, value and utilization.”
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1183
Human causes global warming because most of their daily activities involve the use of oil and fuel which are widely known as a primary source of pollution and contaminants that trigger global warming.