Guest post by David Archibald
I will be giving a lecture in Washington in early June on my way through to the Bahamas. Following are the slides that pertain to the agricultural impact of the current de Vries cycle event – the Eddy Minimum.
The stippled line is the current Canadian wheat-growing area. The heavy black line is what that would shrink to if temperature fell by one degree Celsius. Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory applied to the temperature records of the northeastern US derive a temperature decline of 2.0 degrees Celsius to the latitude of the US-Canadian border. It therefore follows that Canadian agriculture will be back to trapping beavers by the end of this decade, as it was in the 17th century.
Many years ago, in the time before global warming corrupted most branches of science, researchers looked at the consequences of warming and cooling. Newman in 1980 was such a researcher. This is a figure he provided of where the US Corn Belt would shift to with one degree of warming, the dashed line, and one degree of cooling, the solid line. The current corn growing area is shaded. His calculation of 144 km per degree C is in line with my estimate of a 300 km shift southward in growing conditions.
And corn is a big business in the United States:
The large amount of ethanol production is a good thing in that it provides a buffer of capacity in the climatic event under way. The mandated ethanol requirement has brought the future forward.
Archeological records tell it that it has happened before. The map in the following graphic shows how Indian maize growing moved south in response to the onset of the Little Ice Age (Reiley 1979).
But it can get worse than the standard de Vries cycle climate response. That can be overprinted by a major volcanic eruption:
Mt Pinatubo erupted in 1991 and 1992 averaged 0.5 degrees C cooler as a consequence. The Dalton Minimum’s major volcanic eruption was Mt Tambora:
My generation has known a warm, giving Sun, but the next will suffer a Sun that is less giving, and the Earth will be less fruitful.
The Australian Prime Minister spoke recently of the benefits of reading Bible stories. The Bible story that all governments should be paying particular attention to is the one in Genesis about the seven years of fat followed by the seven years of lean. Otherwise another Biblical character will make his appearance – the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse, Famine.
References
Newman, J. E. (1980). Climate change impacts on the growing season of the North American Corn Belt. Biometeorology, 7 (2), 128-142.
Riley, T. J., and Friemuth, G. (1979). Field systems and frost drainage in the prehistoric agriculture of the Upper Great Lakes. American Antiquity, 44 (2), 271-285.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Florida, and Georgia have half a billion acres of corn, each? Really? 🙂
I gotta remember that.
I think maybe you threw in a few extra zeros, there. 🙂
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/cold-blast-has-wide-reaching-effect/17347 very cold eastern australia have a look at weatherzone
Thx, interesting post. Just to note, it looks like most of Canada’s wheat is grown within the darker black line currently.
http://www.fas.usda.gov/remote/Canada/can_wha.htm
Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory applied to the temperature records of the northeastern US derive a temperature decline of 2.0 degrees Celsius to the latitude of the US-Canadian border.
There is little doubt that a 2 degree decline would have significant consequences, but there is also little doubt that the FCL-theory is junk.
It looks like Florida, and Georgia, together, might scrape up a half a million acres, on a good year.
http://southeastfarmpress.com/corn-acreage-down-soybeans
It’s long forgotten now, but in the 19th century there was a extensive June freeze right in what we now call the Corn Belt. It did make the history books.
June 4-5, 1859:
http://books.google.com/books?id=b6wXh7vmWDMC&pg=PA199#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=cBMVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA193#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=QxgWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA81#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=34RKv9fMFo4C&pg=PT91#v=onepage&q&f=false
This last of this list has a lot of nice explanations of how frost works.
http://books.google.com/books?id=gR5FAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA470#v=onepage&q&f=false
“But higher CO2 does make most plants grow faster so you don’t need as long of a grow season.”
There is probably a survey of what plants respond in that manner and which do not but I know many do not as their growth cycles are timed by temperature and/or number of hours day/night.
We did quite a bit of work in southern Manitoba for Manitoba Hydro a few years ago. It amazing the amount of agricultural land that has already been abandoned and allowed to return to forest. It doesn’t take much to push these marginal boundary regions out of production. The Eddy Minimum will drive the grain belt south.
How marginal is the climate in Ukraine? They have really turned into a breadbasket since the USSR dissolved. Do they occupy a boundary region?
Well stated and presented, David.
A G Foster says:
May 12, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Any comments on why the citrus belt is headed south? –AGF
====================================================
AG, read this, you’ll get a kick out of it.
Documents how citrus has moved south from South Carolina…….
http://citrus.forumup.org/about4961-citrus.html
Not much wheat grown outside the solid black line in Canada right now Anthony. Northern Ontario is pretty much exposed bedrock (Canadian Shield) with small areas of aerable land (west of New Liskard for instance). Manatoba and Saskatchewan may grow some wheat north of the black line but northern Alberta grows not much more than dollar bills for workers in the oil sands, profits for oil companies and royalties to pay for health care in Canada.
REPLY: Note the author
William Abbott says:
May 12, 2011 at 3:55 pm
We did quite a bit of work in southern Manitoba for Manitoba Hydro a few years ago. It amazing the amount of agricultural land that has already been abandoned and allowed to return to forest.
Manitoba is run by a socialist NDP Government. That, the Canadian Wheat Board and factory farming probably do more more to cause abandonded farms then the weather. Except for the yearly flooding of the red River.
“The large amount of ethanol production is a good thing in that it provides a buffer of capacity in the climatic event under way.”
This is an ingenuous statement which ignores the human and economic impact on the poor of the world. This is not a buffer, just a profligate and ill-advised waste of perfectly good food and agricultural effort and land. It only serves as a buffer in that the idiotic pursuit could be canceled totally and not affect anything if at the same time the cropland available decreased – in which case it would be a disaster for the poor.
vboring says: “…higher CO2 does make most plants grow faster so you don’t need as long of a grow season.”
Ha, I guess we’ll have to pump CO2 like mad, now. Much more fun.
REPLY: Note the author
OOOPS! My bad.
Several have mentioned this or that would be a good area for further research. It should be clear that any and all research conducted on the government dime should be suspended until such time as the government is solvent again.
Greenhouses may be coming to North America as a counter to colder weather.
One of the videos of the Japanese tsunami had a wall of water inundating field after field of greenhouses. They are used extensively in Japan and Korea due to the cold climate – mostly plastic covering some sort of framework. Won’t survive real well in stormy weather, but are a solution not available in the early 19th century US. Greenhouses are a growing fad among the more serious gardeners up here in Alaska, as they allow the starts to get going pretty well while winter drags on and on and on. We are about 1-2 weeks late this year.
The other thing you can do with a greenhouse is to juice the atmosphere with CO2 to speed plant growth. The bigger the plants get, the more survivable they are to the last frost. Over 1000 ppm is not uncommon.
They are relatively cheap and go up quickly – at least in the Far East. Cheers –
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 12, 2011 at 3:41 pm
There is little doubt that a 2 degree decline would have significant consequences, but there is also little doubt that the FCL-theory is junk.
That world-renowned “science” organization, the IPCC would certainly agree, as would others with their own particular axes to grind.
Others, not so much.
Global net primary productivity has increased along with increasing temperature and CO2.
For contingency planning, it appears global cooling is far more hazardous than global warming.
What would be the OPTIMUM CO2 concentration under greenhouse conditions with 2C lower?
It is difficult to make any sense of this post. Agricultural patterns on the Canadian prairies have been well studied and the dominant influences are drought, not temperature. The influences of solar cycles have been thoroughly debunked by the scientific community and the predictions conclude that warming will move the growing area north, not south. Ministries of Agriculture in the Prairie Provinces are preparing for this eventuality now and farmers are altering their practices to conserve moisture and prevent soil erosion. All of this can be observed or understood better with a google search: Dr David Sauchyn, for example, but there are hundreds of other studies on the paleoclimate of the Canadian West. I don’t think the writer of this article has done his homework.
Kum Dollison says:
May 12, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Florida, and Georgia have half a billion acres of corn, each? Really? 🙂
===================================================
woops, that’s pounds not acres
http://www.ipmcenters.org/cropprofiles/docs/flsweetcorn.html
I prefer the “Gore Minimum”.
Hunger to come to Egypt
By Spengler
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ME10Ak01.html
Our ethanol mandated policies are devastating.
So is the subsidized promotion of bio gas plants.
These plants take out large swats of land that was formerly used to grow food crops.
In Germany food crop farmers renting the land for about 450 Euro per hectare now have (extremely dishonest) competition from bio plant farmers who pay over 1.000 Euro per hectare. I am quite sure similar practices now occur all over the place.
In Europe and the USA.
All drive up prices.
“northern Alberta grows not much more than dollar bills for workers in the oil sands.” This may be true for Northeastern Alberta but not for Northwestern Alberta where a great deal of wheat and other grains is grown. In addition the Canadian map suggests no wheat farming in deep southern Alberta which would come as a great surprise to my uncle whose farm has had wheat grown on it for close to a century. The biggest factor in this area is water or lack thereof, which is the reason for the extensive irrigation systems.
MattN
re Eddy minimum vs Gore minimum.
Lets give honor where honor is due – ie to Eddy.