Guest essay by David Archibald
There is now consensus that the Sun has now entered a quiet period. The first paper from the solar physics community predicting the current quiet period was Schatten and Tobiska’s 2003 paper “Solar Activity Heading for a Maunder Minimum?”. To date, Solar Cycle 24 has shown similar maximum SSN amplitudes to that of Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum:
Figure 1: Solar Cycle 24 relative to the Dalton Minimum
But what comes beyond that? Predicting the amplitude of Solar Cycle 24 was big business in the solar physics community with a total of 75 forecasts. There is only one forecast of the amplitude of Solar Cycle 25 to date. That forecast is Livingstone and Penn’s prediction of a maximum amplitude of seven. The first forecast, by Libby and Pandolfi, of the current quiet period is now over 40 years old. The fact that Libby and Pandolfi’s prediction got the detail of temperature changes to date right gives great credibility to it. Written in 1979, they forecast a warming trend for the rest of the 20th century followed by a cold snap that might well last throughout the first half of the 21st century. Specifically, Dr Libby is quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying,
“we see a warming trend (by about a quarter of 1 degree Fahrenheit) globally to around the year 2000. And then it will get really cold – if we believe our projections. This has to be tested.” How cold? “Easily one or two degrees,” she replied, “and maybe even three or four degrees.”
The Libby and Pandolfi forecast was based on isotope ratios in tree rings and dates from a time before the corruption of tree ring science.
One commercial consequence of lower solar activity is that satellites will last longer in their orbits. Another is that agricultural production in the mid-latitudes will be affected. One of the most productive agricultural regions on the planet is the Corn Belt of the United States. Modern corn hybrids are tuned around maximizing the yield from the growing conditions experienced in the Corn Belt over the last 30 years with Growing Degree Days (GDD) to maturity ranging from 2200 to 2700. GDD is calculated from the day of planting by adding the maximum and minimum daily temperature in Fahrenheit, dividing by two and then subtracting 50 to produce the result. If the overnight minimum is less than 50°F, 50°F is used. The maximum is capped at 86°F as corn plants don’t grow any faster above that temperature. Daily temperature records for the Corn Belt start about 1900. The following graph shows the accumulation of GDDs for the periods 1901 – 1910 and 2001 – 2010 for Whitestown just northeast of Indianapolis in the southeast end of the Corn Belt:
Figure 2: Cumulative GDD for Whitestown, Indiana 1901 – 1910 and 2001 – 2010
The graph assumes a common planting date of 27th April. The blue lines are the years 1901 – 1910 and the red lines are the years 2001 – 2010. They all stop on the date of first frost. Most of the growing seasons last decade had plenty of heat to get to maturity with up to 1,000 GDD in excess of the requirement at 2,500 GDD. A century before, the margin of safety was far less. Normal first frost for Whitestown is 10th October. A century ago the earliest frost was five weeks before that on 3rd September, 1908. Similarly, in the latter period the earliest date to get to 2,500 GDD was 15th August. In the earlier period the last date to get to 2,500 GDD was almost six weeks later at 28th September.
Farmers can adjust the type of crop they grow to suit their climatic expectations. Yield is directly proportional to GDD though as shown by the following graphic of corn and soybeans:
Figure 3: Yield relative to GDD (CHU) for Corn and Soybeans Source: Andy Bootsma, 2002: Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Eastern Canada
If a farmer plants a 2,200 GDD corn crop in the expectation of a cool or short season and the season turns out to have been capable of growing a 2,500 GDD, then he has foregone about 12% of the value of the later maturing variety. If he plants a 2,500 GDD variety and the season falls short though, most of the value of the crop will be lost. Wheat and barley require about 1,600 GDD and 1,400 GDD respectively. The highest wheat yield in Indiana in 2012 was 74 bushels/acre whereas the highest corn yield was 159 bushels/acre. Another factor in predicting grain output is the ability to switch to winter wheat in which a crop is planted in early September, germinates and then lies dormant under the snow blanket until the following spring.
A study in the 1980s of the effect of lower temperatures on Canadian wheat production found that a 1°C decrease would reduce the frost-free period by 15 days and that a 2°C decrease would not allow the crop to ripen before the first frost. Canadian wheat farmers have assured me though that they could switch to winter wheat and have a higher yield. In Manitoba, for example, the yield might be 71 bushels per acre for winter wheat compared to 51 bushels per acre for spring wheat. Growing winter wheat is riskier than spring wheat in that a hard frost before the first snow could kill the crop.
A further complication in trying to determine what the coming decline in temperature will do to grain production is that the area of the Corn Belt approximates to the region that was scraped flat by the Laurentide ice sheet. After the Wisconsin Glacier receded, the glaciated soils of the Midwest that are primarily north of Interstate 70 were covered with several feet of wind-blown loess deposits that came from the Great Plains that lie east of the Rockies. In Northern Illinois for example, in an area north of I-80, six to eight feet of loess deposits overlie glacier till. These soils are all primarily silt loam, silty clay loam, clay loam and clay. The water holding capacity of these soils are about 2 inches per foot. The counties in the Corn Belt with the highest productivity have deep fertile soils. Most of these soils were covered with prairie grass that over time raised the organic matter levels to between 2% and 5%. The resulting biological activity that developed in these soils made them very productive. These counties are also watered by natural rainfall that results from the Gulf of Mexico Pump. As the weather fronts move from west to east across the Rockies, we have the Great Plains that are mostly arid, but by the time the fronts reach eastern Nebraska, the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico is sucked north by the counter-clockwise flow of air that rotates around the low pressure fronts and drops the rain on the Midwest when it hits the cooler air from the north. Therefore the Corn Belt has the optimum combination of soil type, temperature and moisture. As growing conditions shift south, the soil types won’t be as good.
Friis-Christianson and Lassen theory enables us to predict temperature for a solar cycle if we know the length of the solar cycle preceding it. Thus Solheim et al have been able to predict that the average global temperature over Solar Cycle 24 will be 0.9°C lower than it was over Solar Cycle 23. Polar amplification also plays a part such that Svalbard, for example, in winter will experience a 6°C decline in temperature. Work on temperature records in the northeast United States suggest that the temperature decline in prospect for the Corn Belt is 2.0°C for Solar Cycle 24.
We can cross-check this expectation against modelled historic Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) data. Lean et al produced a reconstruction of TSI back to 1610. That is shown in Figure 4 following. Also shown is Livingstone and Penn’s prediction for Solar Cycle 25 amplitude converted to TSI by scaling against the Maunder Minimum. Shaviv in 2008 found empirically that a 1 watt/m2 change in TSI was associated with (as opposed to cause directly) in a 0.6°C change in global average temperature. A fall in solar activity to levels reached in the Dalton Minimum, as per Lean’s data, would result in a decline of global temperature of 1.2°C, a little more than what Solheim’s group is projecting. Solar Cycle 4, the cycle preceding the Dalton Minimum, was 13.6 years long, about a year longer than Solar Cycle 23. Libby and Pandolfi’s prediction of a temperature decline of up to 4°F translates to 2.2°C. Through TSI, this would require a fall of 3.7 watts/m2 which is greater than the range in Lean’s modelled data for the period since 1610. This may mean that Libby and Pandolfi are correct and Lean’s model needs adjusting.
Figure 4: Projecting the decline in Total Solar Irradiance
Working through the effect on GDDs, a return to TSI conditions of the Dalton Minimum can be expected to reduce US corn production by perhaps 20% to 25%. This equates to the increase in corn production over the last ten years from mandated ethanol. US grain and soybean production of about 500 million tonnes per annum is sufficient to feed 1.2 billion vegetarians. The amine profile of wheat can be approximated by a diet of 70% corn and 30% soybeans, otherwise those things are fed to animals at about a 25% protein conversion efficiency. Corn and soybeans would be the diet of involuntary vegetarianism. The rest of the world does not have the luxury of US agriculture’s latent productivity.
Figure 5: US Corn and Wheat Prices 1784 to 2013
Figure 5 shows the effect of the low temperatures of the Dalton Minimum on corn and wheat prices in the United States. The absolute peak was associated with the eruption of Mt Tambora. Also evident is the period of high and volatile prices associated with the cold temperatures of the mid-19th century.
Figure 6: Major wheat exporting countries
A return to the climatic conditions of the Dalton Minimum is likely to take Russia, Kazakhstan and the European Union out of the export market. The other countries will have some reduction in wheat available for export. Colder is also drier and thus a number of major grain producers such as India and China, currently largely self-sufficient, will experience shortfalls from their requirements.
Figure 6: Imports and exports of grain by continent
Figure 6 above shows net exports of grain by continent with the Arab countries as a separate region. Those countries are the biggest grain importing block on the planet. Soybeans are not included in this graphic. China has become the major soybean importer at 60 million tonnes per annum. In terms of protein content, that equates to about 180 million tonnes of wheat per annum. The Chinese convert those soybeans to animal protein in the form of pig meat.
Countries in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region have been in the news recently. Further detail on their import dependency is shown in Figure 6 following.
Figure 6: MENA region domestic and imported grain by country
In Figure 6, the population size of each country is shown by the size of the bar. The blue component of the bar shows how much of each country’s grain requirement is grown domestically and the red component denotes the imported share. Countries are shown from west to east as per the map. A proportion of the Egyptian population already suffers from malnutrition. A current wheat prices, it costs about $1 per day to keep someone fed in terms of bulk grain. The oil exporting countries in the graphic can afford to feed their populations, with some countries feeding others as well. Saudi Arabia has been keeping Yemen above water and more recently took on Egypt too.
Figure 7: An animal model of population growth and collapse
All the countries of the MENA region have seen their populations grow to well in excess of their inherent carrying capacity. A combination of deteriorating climate and ongoing world population growth can be reasonably expected to cause a spike in grain prices to levels last seen in the 19th century. It is also possible that sufficient grain may not be available at any price in some regions. Populations models from the animal kingdom provide some guidance as to how events might unfold. A good example is the snowshoe hare and lynx of North America. The snowshoe hare population collapses to less than 10% of its peak on a roughly ten year cycle, followed by the lynx. Taking the example of Egypt, the current population is twice the level that can be supported by its grain production. If the food supply to that country falls below the minimum required to maintain public order, then the distribution system for diesel and fertiliser will break down and domestic grain production would also be affected.
The starving populations of Egyptian cities will fan out into the countryside and consume whatever they can chew which will include the seed grain. That will ensure that domestic grain production will collapse. The population of Egypt might fall to 10% of its carrying capacity which would be 5% of its current level. Any starvation in the MENA region is likely to trigger panic buying by other governments in the region and beyond with consequent effects on established trade patterns.
UPDATE:
The Excel spreadsheet for the Whitestown data used in this essay is here Whitestown-all-years (.xlsx file)
Willis Eschenbach says: @ur momisugly September 9, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Willis, I am very careful to provide links for what I write. If you look at what I posted at in this comment I list the history of the ‘Capture’ of seed selling. At one point the EU even had a link up about the ‘OFFICAL LIST’
December 2006 – “In the EU, there is now a list of ‘official’ vegetable varieties. Seed that is not on the list cannot be ‘sold’ to the ‘public’ To keep something on the list costs thousands of pounds each year…Hundreds of thousands of old heirloom varieties (the results of about eleven thousand years of plant breeding by our ancestors) are being lost forever.” http://www.defra.gov.uk/planth/pvs/pbr/app-procedure.htm & http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html & http://www.euroseeds.org/pdf/ESA_03.0050.1.pdf”
In seed saving circles there was a big hoopla about this. It included a Agri-Business ‘Spy’ becoming a officer in a seed saving club and ‘Stealing’ the genetics. Seed Savers Exchange: The (New) Real Story Including Intrigue, Deception & the Doomsday Vault- Excerpt of A Letter from It’s Founder
The Git may not have given references to support his statements but I certainly did as I always do.
Willis Eschenbach said @ur momisugly September 9, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Adressing the last part of your response Willis
I’m not really all that interested in trying to recreate old varieties; it’s a rather tedious process entailing growing at least a dozen of each of two varieties you want to cross and ensuring that they are isolated from being pollinated by insects from outside the crop. The insects that do the pollinating are usually flies from a piece of flyblown meat in the enclosure. What I want are savoys that cut in the winter here in southern Tasmania and those varieties are increasingly difficult to obtain. I have kept my seed catalogues from the early 80s and the only crop to maintain variety is tomatoes.
milodonharlani says: @ur momisugly September 9, 2013 at 1:39 pm
Yes and it was Cargill that was exporting US wheat to the USSR. Cargill is a privately owned corporation so was ‘invisible’
Cargill wasn’t the only US based grain dealer selling to the Soviet Union.
Worth a read on this topic of grain production in the 60s and 70s is Hubert Lamb’s The Impact of Climate on History, in particular pp 275-290 in the edition I have (2nd Ed. Routledge 1995). Interestingly he credits the FAO as the data source from which he draws a different conclusion to Willis. So it goes…
Willis Eschenbach @ur momisugly September 9, 2013 at 12:33 pm
….Do you guys really think no one is paying attention, and you can just make it up?
Look, loss of seed varieties is important. It is an issue that is definitely worth discussing. Monoculture has a lot of problems, and loss of genetic variety is certainly one of them.
But trying to establish that with bullshit numbers doesn’t help anyone…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I support what I write. You did not bother to read the rest of what I wrote which shows the history of seed saving regulation. The EU even went so far as to BAN “UNOFFICIAL VARIETIES”
December 2006 – “In the EU, there is now a list of ‘official’ vegetable varieties. Seed that is not on the list cannot be ‘sold’ to the ‘public’ To keep something on the list costs thousands of pounds each year…Hundreds of thousands of old heirloom varieties (the results of about eleven thousand years of plant breeding by our ancestors) are being lost forever.” http://www.defra.gov.uk/planth/pvs/pbr/app-procedure.htm & http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html & http://www.euroseeds.org/pdf/ESA_03.0050.1.pdf”
Unfortunately these are old links.
The Ag Cartel even inserted a ‘Spy’ in a seed club to steal the genetic so they could patent them. Seed Savers Exchange: The (New) Real Story Including Intrigue, Deception & the Doomsday Vault- Excerpt of A Letter from It’s Founder
Mexico, cradle of corn, finds its noble grain under assault So corn too is losing its genetic diversity.
rgbatduke says:
September 9, 2013 at 8:01 am
Yes, the timing of the fall in temperature under Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory is a subject of ongoing interest. Let’s see what the warmers say:http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/08/13/when-will-it-start-cooling/
On the bigger picture, you have the capacity to weight the evidence and determine where truth lies. Science has been corrupted and your nation is under attack from green zealots. Be aware of what Dante said: The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/sep/09/physicists-claim-further-evidence-of-link-between-cosmic-rays-and-cloud-formation
george e. smith says:
September 8, 2013 at 4:34 pm
“Henry, Nothing you wrote has anything to do with the fact that the annual cycle in TSI, due simply to the variation in the sun earth distance, should have an amplitude that is proportional to the mean TSI value, which is only 0.1% different between the 1850-1910 period, and the modern warm period, yet the graph shows much more amplitude difference than that; maybe 50 times as much amplitude difference.”
There is no annual cycle of Earth’s orbit around the sun depicted on a plot on this scale.
Archibald’s figure 4 is plotting a period of a bit more than 400 years. The entire plot, including text labels on the right, is 641 pixels wide. A year on the plot would correspond to around 1 pixel width. That’s like or less than the width of a single tiny dot on your computer screen, like the period after this: .
You can’t and should not expect to visibly see annual cycles within the width of | or . on a screen or plot.
In other words, no annual cycle is depicted in the plot. In fact, it quite likely may be using annual-average data as in plotting each year as a single datapoint. (For a graph like this on the scale of plotting several hundred years, annual average data would be about suitable, since variation down to the second, minute, day, or month would be practically irrelevant in context except as a component of a larger average).
“the graph shows much more amplitude difference than that; maybe 50 times as much amplitude difference”
If you’re saying 50 times as much as 0.1% amplitude difference, you would be saying 5% amplitude difference, which would be like ranging from 1366 W/m^2 to 1298 W/m^2, which is way, way, way beyond the scale of the plot and not what it depicts.
If you’re referring to temperature, as an example, a degree Celsius variation in Earth’s temperature is about a 0.3% variation in average terrestrial temperature relative to absolute zero, where 0 degrees Celsius is 273 K (or, more precisely, 273.15 K), while 15 degrees Celsius is 288 K, and so on.
You are in denial of the climatic response to the last two prolonged solar minimum periods,(Maunder Minimum /Dalton Minimum) and do not accept the concept of thresholds, which require a certain degree of magnitude change and duration of time change in the state of solar activity in order for it to exert an influence on the climate.
The period from 1844-2005 should have shown weak to no solar/climate correlations due to the fact solar activity through out that time was in a steady regular 11 year strong sunspot cycle with peaks and lulls which would masked any potential solar/climate correlations.
Not at all. I just don’t consider correlation to be adequate proof of causality, and don’t think we know enough to be able to predict the climate cycle. I especially doubt that the climate is a one-trick pony, slaved to solar magnetic activity to the exclusion of all else, any more than I think it is a one-trick pony slaved to CO_2.
As I said, if the sun does enter a prolonged period of comparative inactivity with extended, weak solar cycles, then no matter what the climate does it will be very useful data for those seeking not to assert certain knowledge that they do not, in fact, possess but to determine what the correct theory is by building constructive, physics-based theories that explain the data as the climate moves through something more than a monotonic behavior of irregular warming, which is pretty much all that has persisted for the last 30 to 40 years (as it did for the similar length period at the beginning of the 20th century from roughly 1910 to 1950).
As far as I know, there is no convincing evidence that the climate over the last 2000 years was modulated by solar magnetic activity, and we lack direct observational evidence in the form of sunspot counts to extend the Maunder Minimum assertion back to earlier periods of cooling. The Little Ice Age was unique in the Holocene, the coldest stretch in 12000 years (post Younger Dryas) but the temperature OF the Holocene has been gradually diminishing post the Holocene Optimum and the current interglacial has already lasted as long as many of the last few interglacials. Remember, human civilization advanced from the hunter-gatherer state with no permanent cities all the way through to the modern present within the confines of the Holocene interglacial. There is no convincing evidence I’m aware of that solar magnetic activity had anything to do with the Younger Dryas itself, or the preceding Wisconsin glacial era, or the general pattern of temperature in the Pliestocene.
As far as the climate is concerned, we’re trying to extrapolate the shape of an elephant by carefully examining the tiny patch of skin we can see with remarkably good instrumentation, one perhaps a centimeter square. We see a zit and conclude that it is major feature on the elephant’s skin. With our dim, short-sighted eyes, we can make out a big, grey blur that could be the elephant’s ass or the back of its neck equally easily off in the distance. We cannot view the entire elephant in detail, not ever — most of it is completely invisible to us and will remain so forever, and we cannot explain its shape because other elephants, and other animals of similar sorts (e.g. other planets) are very distant indeed and don’t look much like our very own elephant. We can only wait for the one centimeter to become two, three, four as the flea of time on whose back we ride moves relentlessly along.
So sure, feel free to predict with any degree of certainty you wish to assert that CO_2 will have no effect, only beneficial effects, horrifically catastrophic effects, or will actually reduce temperatures beneficially or disastrously. I’ve heard it all asserted before on WUWT and other climate blogs. Climate science, for all of its complexity is without a doubt the most settled science in the world, for in no other discipline are there so many who are so certain of how the discipline’s science works where everybody disagrees as to just how it all works and where the best models of how it is SUPPOSED to work — suck.
I will cheerfully wait and see. It is quite plausible that SS24 and an even weaker SS25 will cause a reduction in average temperature, a resumption of glaciation (or a suspension of deglaciation), and a general cooling that could be mild or could be profound. It is quite plausible that EVEN with SS24 and 25 being unusually weak, the temperature might just remain roughly constant, resume warming, or even resume warming aggressively. We don’t, actually, have sufficient data or a reliable enough theory to make a prediction either way, and those who assert otherwise are indulging in a legal but somewhat unethical form of gambling. I’d be perfectly thrilled if my pockets are not picked EITHER by chicken little warmists who are CERTAIN that the sky is falling and sea level rising by meters or more OR by chicken little neo-coolists who are CERTAIN that the sky is falling and temperatures will soon follow, all the way to famine and disaster and drought. Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof, once the future itself makes that evil apparent not by prophecy, but by the mere passage of time.
Of course, where is the fun in that? There are huge payoffs for a prophet who lucks out and gets it right. And the great thing about climate prophecy is that it is all safely out there in the future, usually far enough off that falsification won’t occur in the lifetime of the prophet(s) themselves, and in the meantime one can ALWAYS cherrypick enough incidents to convince the credulous that your prophecy is correct. For example, we are about to have what may or may not turn out to be the latest first hurricane on record in what looks to be an entirely boring hurricane year. That hurricane is so far predicted to do “nothing interesting” out in the middle of the Atlantic before spinning out over cooler water, although there is always a chance for an unlikely track that might bring it near land eventually. We might literally have never noticed it and recorded it as a hurricane or tropical storm in the pre-satellite era. We are currently racking up the days in the longest stretch ever — eight years, this October — without a major atlantic hurricane making landfall in the US, and are getting out there where it is not entirely implausible that no hurricane at all will make landfall in the US this year, although there is still plenty of energy in the ocean and we haven’t completely flipped to fall cooling so anything is still possible.
But if a hurricane hits, major or not, you can be quite certain that it is in fulfillment of the CACC prophecy, and if a large one hits — as sooner or later, this year or another year one is bound to do eventually — the record setting drought of hurricanes will be instantly forgotten in the rush to blame the disaster not on the fact that hurricanes happen, but on human sin and gluttony.
rgb
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:59 pm
“The corn yield in Canada is 83,611 Hg/Ha, and that of the US is 77,442 Hg/Ha (source FAO).”
Canada produces a grand total of a bit less than 4% as much corn tonnage per year as the U.S., despite how Canada has slightly greater total land area than the U.S.
Corn is only grown at all in Canada presently in relatively exceptional locations, such as around the Great Lakes. The top 4% of corn growing locations in the U.S. would be way higher yield.
As a hectogram is 0.1 kg, a 77442 Hg/Ha figure for average U.S. corn yield would be saying it was only 7.74 metric tons per hectare. Some employee at the U.N. FAO may have put such down. However, that contrasts to how other sources show an U.S. average of 8.93 metric tons per hectare in 2003/2004 (and higher than Canada as shown at http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/agr_yie_cor-agriculture-yield-corn ), reaching 9.59 metric tons per hectare in 2010 ( http://www.ncga.com/upload/files/documents/pdf/2011_woc_metric.pdf ).
(Total production figures, for how Canada is a bit less than 4% as much as the U.S., are for 2013, from http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=ca&commodity=corn&graph=production and http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=us&commodity=corn&graph=production respectively).
The Archibald article’s Egypt prediction is inappropriately throwing out an unjustified number (and “carrying capacity” for dumb beasts doesn’t apply to humans in general, an environmentalist mindset fallacy — like rabbits can’t have nuclear-powered desalination plants irrigating deserts), but the overall aspect of colder weather and shorter growing seasons before frost meaning more trouble for the world’s agriculture on average (aside from additional technology/infrastructure advance or usage) is true.
Canada could probably, in the present climate, produce more than their current <=~ 4% of U.S. corn production if they heavily tried. But the cold does indeed not help them.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:59 pm
“The wheat yield in the US is 31,140 Hg/Ha, and that of Ireland is 63,061 Hg/Ha.”
For a little perspective, here are figures for the example of California, a place where, somewhat like the tiny region of Ireland, land is relatively expensive so efficiency may be focused on:
“Average wheat yields for the state (2009-2012) were 2.5 tons/acre (~83 bushels) for common wheat and 3.2 tons/acre (106 bushels) for Durum wheat, according to USDA statistics. Yields of 4-5 tons/acre are not uncommon.”
(http://www.californiawheat.org/about/california-wheat/)
Note, for example, 3.2 tons an acre is a wheat yield of 7.9 tons per hectare. (If in doubt, just google: hectare acre conversion).
That would be 7900 kg/ha or, in hectogram terms, 79000 Hg/Ha.
Although, for example, Ireland examples can be more than countered by California ones as illustrated, total production is really more relevant than cherry-picking yields of small locales. There is always a huge range in farms, like the 6.3 tons/ha for within a small region of Ireland is blown away by an even smaller subset of a record 15.6 tons/ha yield farm in warm New Zealand.
In general, little of the world’s wheat today is produced by countries colder than China. For example, while Russia has 27 times the land area and multiple times the population of France, its total tonnage of wheat production in recent years has ranged from sometimes tens of percent more to sometimes even less ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_wheat_production_statistics ). Even within Russia, one would find less wheat production towards the coldest parts than where less far north.
Ireland doesn’t produce enough total tonnage of wheat to be even listed among the dozens of countries in the preceding table link, but basically they are next to nothing in total production compared to the U.S. 60 million tons/year, the Indian 90 million tons/year, and so on.
Gail Combs says:
September 9, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Many wheat ranchers believe that the USDA colludes with Cargill, et al to rip off farmers. My dad refused to provide the USDA surveys with any information, a practice I continued. When prices zoomed in the drought year of 1977, most farmers sold far too early & didn’t benefit.
On the bigger picture, you have the capacity to weight the evidence and determine where truth lies. Science has been corrupted and your nation is under attack from green zealots. Be aware of what Dante said: The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
Oh, please. Nobody has the capacity to determine where “truth lies” in climate science. I agree that the science has been corrupted, but that doesn’t mean that we know what is going to happen with regard to the climate. Even pretending that the science is UNcorrupted, the whole point of doing science is to figure out the truth, eventually. Not right this very instant, in the absence of anything like adequate data.
All we need is to replace religious zealotry on one side with equally religious zealotry on the other. Yeah, that’s a sure fire recipe for a rational society. Oh, and I really appreciate the implication that if I don’t agree with you or am unafraid to state that I don’t know what will happen — where I would assert that as a physicist who has studied this issue now for a fairly long time albeit as a hobby of sorts rather than a profession I expect that my guess would be better than your guess as a general rule — that I deserved to be cast into not only hell but the hottest place in hell. Wow. Talk about over the top polemic crap.
The truly sad thing is that one doesn’t need to prophecy a moderately implausible chilling future — down 0.9C by the end of SS24, really? — to be able to point out disaster from climate policy. That kind of thing only gets you laughed at because it is so far out there that even a serious skeptic such as myself has a hard time giving it — as you say — much weight in a sober appraisal of probable futures. Our current energy policies are killing people right now — no need to wait for a sudden drop into a little ice age or the next era of glaciation. Killing a rather lot of people, by perpetuating energy poverty.
You like global conspiracy theories, it is quite clear. I do too. I suspect that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is a “theory” that is pushed every bit as much by the energy companies as it is by the greens, and that if anything the poor green saps are playing right into the hands of the energy companies. Energy companies make a fixed margin on revenue, period. They simply set prices (and in effect, define the value of money as they do so). How, exactly, do higher prices and a completely artificial scarcity hurt them?
Oh, wait. They don’t. Energy companies have never been more profitable, with no end in sight. In the first world, we don’t care. We simply absorb the added cost with a bit of inflation, and continue living more or less the way we did before. In the third world, an artificial doubling of the cost of energy is — as you say — to truly be damned to the hottest part of hell, the only one that exists, hell on this earth trapped in an endless cycle of 18th century levels of poverty. So before damning me to hell, perhaps you might look at the hell that we are already in, the one that doesn’t actually rely much on the “certainty” of your predictions — I mean “prophecies” — of instant freeze (starting any year now, really, how can there be any honest doubt and if one disagrees, well, up against the wall with them come the revolution…).
rgb
rgb your post earlier sep .08 10:24 am was quite good, I should have not addressed my commentary to you, but made it in general.
Your post was balanced , I should have read it closer the first time.
Ah, well then, disregard my post in response to your post responding to my post that you didn’t really mean because you hadn’t really read my post. Or something like that;-)
As I said, it is quite plausible that there may be some cooling associated with multiple solar minima, especially Maunder type minima. It is also possible that there won’t be, because there is at the very least doubt as to whether even the Maunder minimum was truly a state of low solar magnetic activity, if I understand the evidence Leif fairly regularly presents. Also, correlation is not causality, and the causal link is still (IMO) hypothetical and plausible but not proven. The best that can be said is that it isn’t DISproven, either, and the best way to prove it (or not) is for the sun to ENTER a period of very low magnetic activity and see what happens to the climate and then try to understand it and see if — WITHOUT the confirmation bias, cherrypicking crap that attends climate science because everybody’s got a political agenda — it makes sense in terms of e.g. Svensmark’s physics based model. Or any of several other models that assert some sort of connection between magnetic field and atmospheric chemistry.
This is difficult stuff, and we just don’t have the data yet to resolve many of the questions. If it weren’t for a bunch of carefully organized political theater two plus decades ago that exploited a local run of twenty years of aggressive warming, plus the usual targeted funding bloat that occurs every few decades in science when something comes up that looks like there is money attached, I honestly don’t think that there would be much question of that. A lot of the climate scientists I’ve communicated with are a lot more “skeptical” than they let on in public because — as Climategate clearly exposed — there is a serious not-quite-conspiracy to suppress dissent and punish the dissenter, hardly a recipe for good science but a good way to ensure that the doubts of climate scientists never surface in the public eye. Climategate exposed that, too. There’s a lot more cynicism and doubt in its communications than you’ll find in AR3 or AR4, for example. And surprisingly little chatter actually DEFENDING THE SCIENCE. I was surprised, at least.
In the meantime, hands on pockets, and avoid precipitous and expensive decisions (especially ones that will have almost zero real impact) until the science has resolved somewhat. Which might take a decade, might take a century. I think we’ll know a lot more in twenty or thirty years, where sadly I will probably not get to see how it comes out (or else, not much care when it does). Unless, of course, the global average temperature drops 0.9 C by 2020. Or even 0.2 C (a lot more plausible). In that case I’m guessing there will be pitchforks and torches galore, even for people that don’t really deserve it.
And, of course, for a few that do.
rgb
There are a number of issues at play and I only disagree with the ‘degree’ of the issue in a couple aspects. Colder is drier for average precipitation in the Northern Prairies but in the recent cooling the net effect of more moisture storage at the agricultural belt immediately South of the Boreal Forest is a more productive biosphere and that doesn’t include elevated levels of CO2 as a fertilizer (I don’t subscribe to its model based properties). It has been absolutely explosive where I live with the recent cooling … I need a better chain saw and don’t fret about amphibians as much mowing the lawn. The agricultural zones in Canada are highly varied and within a couple of years varieties and acreage of different cereal, oil and other newer cultivated crops will adjust quicker than people think. There are also techniques like chemically ripening a crop now to facilitate more efficient harvesting strategies. The other issue is soot from China and the effect this has on snow cover and the change in seasons. Additionally, with the reduced Solar Activity coming, there is the Cosmic Ray cloud formation mechanism. So if you combine all these changes from experiences in previous ‘cold periods’, I think there will be a muted impact during this 30 years of misery coming to warmists, at least in Canada where ‘cold’, as in frozen, is just a fact of life and nothing we haven’t experienced before.
I plant my garden 2 weeks later than I did 20 years ago because the old practices once again have merit, but I have more to show for playing in the dirt.
@ur momisugly Henry Clark
Your 15.6 tons/ha should be tonnes, rather than tons. That was a phenomenal crop and due at least in part to a nice hazy sky providing the diffuse sunlight that optimises photosynthesis.
In looking at these raw tonnages, it’s worth bearing in mind that there are two sorts of wheat: durum, or hard wheat that is used in bread and pasta, and soft, or feed wheat. The latter yields much higher.
At the time I wrote my little book back in the 90s, the high-yield wheat varieties were unavailable here in the land of Under. It kept the price of feed wheat excessively high.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 9, 2013 at 1:02 pm
“So the mere fact that the sun is the source of the heat for the Earth, just as the furnace is the source of the heat for the house, does NOT mean that we can blithely assume that the Earth’s temperature will vary in step with the temperature of the sun when it goes up and down … any more than the house’s temperature varies in step with the furnace when it goes on and off.”
I don’t have to assume; I can look at actual data in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif to see there (references given and in text form too if requested) that the rate of change of sea level, humidity at appropriate altitude, cloud cover, glacial extent, and temperature varies largely in step with solar-GCR forcing, when viewed on a timescale mostly averaging out the ENSO oscillation, aside from some contribution from other factors (including some lag not averaged out, the 60-year ocean oscillation, etc).
Like the furnace heating a house, there is a partial lag effect. Some temperature rise occurs after X time; some more after Y time. (You saw that and more, in a different context, with a volcano article you published a while ago ago). Turning a furnace to max certainly doesn’t result in a house’s temperature instantly going to max. And it doesn’t with ocean waters 10 meters down, let alone 1000+ meters down, either. But what can be seen, despite all that, is major in context.
Usually the strategy used in trying to claim solar variation lacks effect is to try to restrict the discussion to a tiny slice of data, such as CAGW-movement fudged data rather than that in the previous link. As an analogy, using approximately the same method, someone could argue quite effectively, to a hypothetical person with no background knowledge, even as high an absurdity as that the Allies were worse than the Axis side in WWII, by the simple exercise of focusing on the actions of a couple cherry-picked squads of soldiers while ignoring all the other historical data. Yet even the preceding link, although one image (enlarging on further click), contains enough to break down that strategy, and no anti-sun arguing poster here has ever shown any evidence of clicking on it.
rgbatduke says:
September 9, 2013 at 8:08 pm
My apologies. The correct quote would say “the darkest recesses of hell”, not “the hottest recesses”. So it is the darkest recesses that you are off to.
The Pompous Git:
True. I wrote “metric ton” early in the post, then stopped repeating it each time later. While my comparisons are meant to be more general than dependent on the exactness of that distinction anyway (of a 907 kg ton versus a 1000 kg metric ton or tonne), indeed I think that figure probably was reported in tonnes.
Archibald, even as someone with major points of partial agreement, your last post is rather too rude (and counterproductive for convincing). Not that I’m a mod.
My apologies. The correct quote would say “the darkest recesses of hell”, not “the hottest recesses”. So it is the darkest recesses that you are off to.
Well, at least you have a sense of humor, that’s something.
rgb
Hoisting (blowing up) the Alarmists by their own petard (satchel charge). What fun!
Archibald, even as someone with major points of partial agreement, your last post is rather too rude (and counterproductive for convincing). Not that I’m a mod.
Aw, I don’t mind. He’s all passionate and everything, full of self-righteous indignation in the way only somebody who is certain they are correct can be.
Sadly, I fail to achieve that degree of certainty very often. Well, maybe in my degree of belief in gravity, stuff like that. But sure as hell not in the unholy mess of post hoc ergo propter hoc and ceteris paribus and other latin words meaning “logical nonsense” that is modern climate science. I do admire a man who can just look at some data and intuitively solve a pair of globe spanning, coupled Navier-Stokes equations on the spinning non-inertial reference upon which we reside, while careening around a 6000 K hot object a million and a half kilometers across in an elliptical orbit sufficiently eccentric that it causes TOA insolation to vary by 92 Watts/m^2 from apogee to perigee, with a highly variable and poorly understood system of heat transport and variable albedo, for decades into the future! Wow! Good job! You go, guy! Who needs supercomputers, or a physical model — you’ve got Friis-Christensen and Lassen!
And now, it is time to slink of to my dark hel– I mean “bed”, so I can suffer from the simultaneous nightmares of burning in CAGW hell and freezing in CSGC (catastrophic solar global cooling) at the same time!
Frost had it wrong — the end of the world isn’t about fire vs ice. Self-righteous certainty, cognitive dissonance, religious belief — those will do the job nicely even if the climate remains perfectly comfortable for most people for the rest of the century either way.
rgb
Henry Clark says:
September 9, 2013 at 8:59 pm
The Allies were worse than the Germans, soldier for soldier, unit for unit & formation for formation in WWII ground combat effectiveness, in both attack & defense, line & elite troops. Early in the war, the Japanese were also better, but that changed quite rapidly (Guadalcanal). The Italians, not so much, except for some elite units. The US & British Commonwealth fared better against the Wehrmacht than did the Russians, even after Stalingrad & Kursk, when their performance greatly improved.
However the best Allied defensive operation was probably Kursk, aided by western Allies’ landing on Sicily, & offensive Operation Bagration, the Soviet advance into Belarus & eastern Poland, timed to follow D-Day in the West & beefed up by Lend Lease equipment & supplies, critically US trucks.
The Allies won by weight of numbers of men & tons of materiel on land, plus larger & eventually better navies & air forces (to include atomic bombers). The West was also aided by British intel ops & radar, German strategic blunders, many Hitler’s, & by out-dated Japanese tactics which worked in China but not against the ANZACs, USMC or Army from late 1942 onwards.
Not that any of these bears on your main point.
Milodonharlani:
I meant in terms of the moral/ethical aspect. I suppose my post wasn’t explicit there, although I just assumed that would be how it was interpreted.
For example, nobody tends to describe Blitzkrieg and the Wehrmacht as terrible in military tactics. Rather, superb or extremely competent would be a far more common descriptor (even though WWII Germany had some military mistakes, especially at the strategic level and especially later in the war, including, as you and countless historians have implied, how they got involved fighting the U.S.+USSR combo possessing far above Germany’s own industrial capabilities).
Meanwhile, many would describe the morality of the Holocaust, Einsatzgruppen, or far too much of what the IJA did as terrible.
That the Axis side was morally worse in actions and policies overall than the Allied side is something rarely disputed today (even though at the same time there are available examples of Allied actions far from saintly, like killings by the NKVD).
Of course, this is off-topic for the thread. Just I’m clarifying the earlier comment.
(And, if it is not clear, that is one topic where the majority opinion is the same one which I share).