Global warming kills spaghetti crop
Sigh, “The End of Pasta?” reads more like “The end of journalism”
Some days, there appears such blatant stupidity in the MSM, you wonder if there isn’t some sort of award than can be handed out for it. I think Mark Hertsgaard is deserving of such an award for this moronically mendacious missive where he manages to work the two poster children for ridiculous climate alarmism into one paragraph:
Hurricane Sandy’s recent devastation of New York and neighboring states reminded Americans of what Hurricane Katrina demonstrated in 2005: global warming makes weather more extreme, and extreme weather can be extremely dangerous. But flooding coastlines aren’t our only worry. Climate change is also imperiling the very foundation of human existence: our ability to feed ourselves.
This colossal disconnect (name a hurricane that hit the wheat belt) makes me want to call him up and scream at him. His premise is this:
But if humans want to keep eating pasta, we will have to take much more aggressive action against global warming. Pasta is made from wheat, and a large, growing body of scientific studies and real-world observations suggest that wheat will be hit especially hard as temperatures rise and storms and drought intensify in the years ahead.
Now the important thing to note here is that his piece is being advertised as “science” yet I fail to find any science in it, only unsubstantiated opinion and talking points. Here’s some science; if only Hertsgaard had bothered to check some data like I did. The data plot shows US Department of Agriculture data for corn (in case his next story claims children of the future won’t know what Doritos are) and wheat yields in bushels per acre:
You can get all the source data right here at USDA, available to most anyone with the ability to open a web browser and do a search.
So looking at the graph above, it seems there’s no obvious worry about wheat or corn disappearing any time soon. Sure, there is a downspike in 2011, due to a summer heatwave and drought in the USA. There were other downspikes of similar magnitude in the last 100 years also, so the 2011 downspike isn’t particularly unique. Despite those downspikes in yield, the trend remains upwards.
The basis of the claim for “end of pasta” by Hertsgaard is this statement:
Frank Manthey, a professor at North Dakota State University who advises the North Dakota Wheat Commission. Already, a mere 1 degree Fahrenheit of global temperature rise over the past 50 years has caused a 5.5 percent decline in wheat production.
Well, I plotted the data, both for USA temperature (using the alarmist’s favorite temperature data, Jim Hansen’s GISS data) and USA wheat production from USDA, and I call bullshit on the claim:
Data sources:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.D.txt
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/wheat-data.aspx
Clearly, US wheat production is healthy, increasing, and shows no sign of the 5.5% decrease, and if anything it seems to indicate there is a positive effect from temperature on wheat yield. Improved farming practices and improved wheat seed stocks have helped too. If I really wanted to embarrass these two guys I could add the Keeling curve for CO2 also, and point out that crop yields increase with increases in CO2 as well.
How do people like this get a broad voice to such opinions that don’t stand up under the simplest of tests? I don’t know, but you can write them here to ask them:
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/plantsciences/people/faculty/manthey
Frank.Manthey@ndsu.edu
David Lobell
dlobell@stanford.edu
There is no contact info for Hertsgaard, so you have to complain to the editors for this dreck:
editorial@thedailybeast.com
The professor may answer, but Hertsgaard is probably a lost cause to mental mendacity, as he also believes (according to some obscure activist group)that Climate Change is killing 1000 children a day.
If that were true, don’t you think the rest of the MSM would have daily headlines about it? So far, not a peep. Apparently, fact checking is not a journalism skill Hertsgaard possesses.
UPDATE – Commenter Richard III writes:
A quick look at the this page will show how just how dangerous a little knowledge can be. There’s a lot more than a 1 degree temperature difference between south Texas and Northern Montana. It used to be that a college professor would know that. http://www.smallgrains.org/whfacts/growreg.htm
UPDATE2— I trust Anthony won’t mind me adding a little historical perspective to this. The best source for this kind of crop production and yield information is the FAO. Here is their history of wheat production and wheat yield.
![globalwheatproductionandyield[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/globalwheatproductionandyield1.jpg?quality=83)
Note that to put it mildly, Mark Hertsgaard’s pasta claims are true only in some alternate reality. In the larger sense, yield and total production are still rising. – Willis Eschenbach.
UPDATE3 – here is the source of the 5.5% claim by David Lobell of Stanford.
http://foodsecurity.stanford.edu/publications/climate_trends_and_global_crop_production_since_1980
Climate Trends and Global Crop Production Since 1980
Journal ArticleAuthors
David Lobell – Stanford University
Wolfram Schlenker – Assistant Professor in Economics at Columbia University
Justin Costa-Roberts – Stanford University
Published by
Science, May 2011
Efforts to anticipate how climate change will affect future food availability can benefit from understanding the impacts of changes to date. Here we show that in the cropping regions and growing seasons of most countries, with the important exception of the United States, temperature trends for 1980-2008 exceeded one standard deviation of historic year-to-year variability. Models that link yields of the four largest commodity crops to weather indicate that global maize and wheat production declined by 3.8% and 5.5%, respectively, compared to a counter-factual without climate trends. For soybeans and rice, winners and losers largely balanced out. Climate trends were large enough in some countries to offset a significant portion of the increases in average yields 16 that arose from technology, CO2 fertilization, and other factors.
Keep the reassurances coming, everyone. Here in Italy, someone read the scare piece and now, as I write, mobs frantic with panic are running from one end of Via della Repubblica to the other.
Or, maybe it is because their football team are losing…
In light of the pasta issue, and with reference to these journalists killing themselves with this stuff, I think we should call it the Darwini award (pronounced dar-WEENIE). (It is farfalle from the truth. HA!)
This is typical of the Alarmist actibity now in all fields. They are now alarmed because it is worse than they thought. They refer to the level of CO2 which is up and not to the temperature which has been flat for 16 years. They never refer to the proof of connection to a rise in CO2 and temperature as it is demonstrably non-existent. They now rely on people’s ignorance of the facts to drive their chariot on a bed of lies.
Not only would the wheat belt move north with global warming but warmer temperature crops would take over the former wheat growing areas. As for the tropics they are doomed………………or maybe not.
But then Warmists accuse me of denying the science or climate or whatever. Heh, heh.
Well i am wheat intolerant – wheat products give me uncontrollable flatulance, a vomit reaction and an insane and wanton lust to laugh. A real “billy both ends” reaction with added hysteria.
A bit like my reaction to Hertsgaard’s article
‘The End of Pasta’
=============================================
I’m confused. Is he claiming that CO2 was the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire? 😎
The wonderful thing about Climate Alarmism is that you can make up anything at all that sounds scary. Possibilities are boundless.
Yes but this is a sad and desperate effort to manufacture a problem in paradise. The lower protein content arises from dilution. Essentially in a high CO2 environment the seeds are plump and healthy and contain more energy stored in the form of carbohydrates and sugars. In a low CO2 environment the seeds are thin containing less carbohydrates and sugars. Remember that the job of a seed is to store carbohydrates and sugars to power the early growth of a germinating plant. The small amount of protein in the seed is mostly in the germ itself. Wheat isn’t a crop grown for protein. If protein is what you are after feed it to cows.
I feel this complaint is rather analogous to complaining that well fed people have a lower overall bone density and speculating about the possible dangers of osteoporosis which might arise from giving people food. Starving people do indeed have a much higher percentage of bone.
For Buzzed:
Keep in mind that the ASSUMPTION is that more CO2 means more heat. This is not necessarily so. Even the IPCC concedes that the response of the atmosphere to more CO2 is exponential, and not linear. CO2 is a fertilizer for plants; it is not a pollutant.
Others have already said, but it cannot be said too much: climate always has, and always will change. There is nothing unusual or extreme about the current state of climate change. Should you doubt this, then look up the Veizer paleotemperature record. It has been cited so often in the published literature that it is now considered the standard of paleoclimatology.
Best regards,
Mark H.
No pasta? At least there will still be chocolate. Oh fudge, no there won’t. Damn, pancakes are out due to no maple syrup. I suppose there will be plenty of broccoli, though. I like broccoli, but I do like it with a habanero cheese sauce (which teams up with the broccoli’s cancer-fighting properties it seems, which is great). But cheese is out because cows produce lots of planet-killing methane. ^#%^&?)(!!!)#.
This is a secular version of superstitious drivel.
Perfekt says:
December 12, 2012 at 10:49 am
“It doesn´t happen often, but sometimes these morons are actually close to being right about something.
There are a number of studies suggesting that that the protein content in wheat grown under higher carbon dioxide levels might decrease.”
Given that there has been a very questionable study that intended to demonstrate a loss of yield in cassava under increased CO2, I would first like to have a look at the “studies” you mention without providing a link before I would believe any of it.
There is a very strong vested interest in all branches of science to get as much funding as they can from the CO2AGW scare. Accordingly the proportion of rubbish science explodes all over the place. (And the taxpayer is fleeced for nothing)
Don’t worry. Even if all of the cows have to be euthanized in the fight against global warming, Velveeta is indestructible. We will always have Velveeta … 😉
TomE, of course there is no coverage in the press of severe winter weather in Europe and Asia. That space is devoted by the New York Times to telling us that skiing is no longer going to be a thing due to global warming. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/us/climate-change-threatens-ski-industrys-livelihood.html
It was inevitable: Peak Pasta!
Zeke says:
December 12, 2012 at 10:08 am
WUWT says: “So looking at the graph above, it seems there’s no obvious worry about wheat or corn disappearing any time soon.”
There is no “obvious worry” about wheat or corn yields declining dramatically soon from global warming, this is true. However, there is a less “obvious worry” about human caused destruction of our agricultural output, and that is the agreements that China has agressively been seeking from both the EU and the United States….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
What idiocy!
I thought the World Trade Organization and the UN “Good Agricultural Practices” were bad enough!
So now we have COMMUNIST China dictating our farming. GRRRRrrrrr
This is not science it is not even remotely related to the scientific method. It is dogma and not well thought through dogma at that. I doubt that MH would even know science if it bit him in the ass. I think what burns my butt the most is he gets paid for this misrepresentation. If however, I ever chance to meet the man I will gladly do the biting.
Bill Illis says:
December 12, 2012 at 10:46 am
Also Wheat and Durum are C3 plants which means they will grow much better with higher CO2 content in the atmosphere, particularly when it is dryer.
_______________________________
Actually corn is C4 and Wheat is C3 but both do better with higher CO2
TomE says:
December 12, 2012 at 10:57 am
….Another website on my list is Iceagenow.info. Has anyone else been following the real winter weather, road closures, and snow crisis’s occurring in Europe and Asia? Certainly nothing in the US news about it.
___________________________________-
Yes it is amazing that these major snow storms all across the Norther Hemisphere have not made it into the news.
Listing HERE
“Heavy snow blocks Iraq-Iran path”
“up to 70 cm (27½ inches) of snow has fallen”
This is not normal.
Since wheat and corn products are probably among the worst in terms of healthiness a person can eat I wouldn’t be sad to see this misguided alarmist be correct. Unfortunately these crops are here to stay… no matter what climate change occurs.
JJ says:
December 12, 2012 at 11:24 am
The bridge isn’t out. There isn’t even a bridge in sight. There probably isn’t a bridge, and if there is we will cross it if and when we get to it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And if the bridge is out then IF we are not hamstrung by idiots we just go ahead and build the bridge.
Here in Kansas, a significant determining factor on what is planted in any given year appears to be price and water availability. The high price of corn for biofuel has resulted in more (irrigated) land planted for corn, and less (unirrigated) land planted for wheat. Good land planted in wheat can be double cropped with soybeans, but corn and wheat are not very compatible for double cropping. Water is becoming more and more of an issue with the continuing drought in the plains. One has only to drive cross country to see that both wheat and corn thrive at a variety of temperatures, but corn likes more water.
Graeme W says:
December 12, 2012 at 11:26 am
Playing Devil’s Advocate, I have to point out that the graphs are showing bushells per acre, not total crop yield….
Having said that, the main reason for any reduction in total yield will probably be because the land is being put to a different use…
____________________________
The main threat to out food supply is the USDA, WTO and UN (FAO & OIE) link
Oh, and the bankers
What does the scatter plot of temp v wheat production look like?
yes, I know, I’m lazy. I really don’t want to go out and get the data myself. I figure you’ve already got it in a spread sheet ….. 🙂
Les, have you ever heard of desert durum. It is grown in California. American Italian Past Co. bought it by the train load.
As for KS and corn, KS could lead the country in corn production except for the hot dry winds that blow in June and July. They have a name but I can’t recall it.
As for wheat, the wheat in KS is Hard Red Winter imported from Turkey, Iraq and the central asia.
It is great for making bread and needs cools nights and warm days for the starch and proteins to be placed into the growing kernel at the right proportion for making – bread flour. The protein to starch ratio is important. Berry’s too plump with starch leads to lower protein levels since there is ‘more’ starch and the starch to protein ratio goes down.
Hard spring wheat grown in northern Nebraska and the Dakota’s is a higher protein and makes a hard roll and is better for pizza dough and other hard crusted breads.
The real question is what will happen to barley production since good malting barley needs high starch levels and low proteins.