From ScienceNordic:
Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing … But many farmers – at least Swedish ones – have experienced mild winters and shifting weather before and are hesitant about trusting the scientists.
The researcher who discovered the degree of scepticism among farmers was surprised by her findings. Therese Asplund, who led the study, was initially looking into how agricultural magazines covered climate change, but got a lesson in reality from swedish famers.
Asplund found after studying ten years of issues of the two agricultural sector periodicals ATL and Land Lantbruk that they present climate change as scientifically confirmed, a real problem. But her research took an unexpected direction when she started interviewing farmers in focus groups about climate issues.
Asplund had prepared a long list of questions about how the farmers live with the threat of climate change and what they plan to do to cope with the subsequent climate challenges. The conversations took a different course: “They explained that they didn’t quite believe in climate changes,” she says. “Or at least that these are not triggered by human activities.”
The paper:
Climate change frames and frame formation: An analysis of climate change communication in the Swedish agricultural sector
While previous research into understandings of climate change has usuallyexamined general public perceptions and mainstream media representations, this thesis offers an audience-specific departure point by analysing climate change frames and frame formation in Swedish agriculture. The empirical material consists of Swedish farm magazines’ reporting on climate change, as well as eight focus group discussions among Swedish farmers on the topic of climate change and climate change information.
The analysis demonstrates that while Swedish farm magazines frame climate change in terms of conflict, scientific uncertainty,and economic burden, farmers in the focus groups tended to concentrate on whether climate change was a natural or human-induced phenomenon, and viewed climate change communication as an issue of credibility. It was found that farm magazines use metaphorical representations of war and games to form the overall frames of climate change. In contrast, the farmers’ frames of natural versus human-induced climate change were formed primarily using experience-based and non-experience based arguments, both supported with analogies, distinctions,keywords, metaphors, and prototypical examples. Furthermore, discussions of what constitutes credible climate information centred on conflict versus consensus-oriented frames of climate change communication along with different views of the extent to which knowledge of climate change is and should be practically or analytically based.
This analysis of climate change communication in the Swedish agricultural sector proposes that the sense making processes of climate change are complex, involving associative thinking and experience- based knowledge
So the hypothesis that the farmers are right didn’t make it into the study?
God Forbid we listen to people with decades and generations of experience dealing with weather and climate professionally.
Well, “not even peasants” is stupid enough to believe the 97% consensus or further the belief of AGW. Not to talk about CAGW. Suddenly I am a little proud to be swedish.
Peasants in Sweden is more like any business leader today and not so gullible as you might think. They will need a harder type of brainwashing.
Consensus is (or should be) irrelevant in Science. In Politics it is everything.
the farmer better watch out or they’ll get a visit from Al Gore:
1 July: News Ltd: Network Writers: Al Gore tells Tony Abbott: ‘Change or get out of the way’
AL GORE has warned Tony Abbott to “change or get out of the way” of sensible environmental policy, labelling the Prime Minister a “straight-out climate denier”.
Speaking to Vice after forging an unlikely alliance with Clive Palmer, the former US vice-president said “silly” initiatives like the government’s direct action plan had “never worked anywhere.”…
(ON POLITICIAN & MINING MAGNATE CLIVE PALMER) “But I think that whatever unusual features to his style there may be, deep down there’s absolutely no question in my mind that he has a sense of social justice, he has a keen sense of right and wrong. … He wants to make the world a better place.”…
“I think we’re not far from a point where people will look back on climate denialists as extremely odd, self destructive,” he said.
Mr Gore’s message to the PM: “Please, either change or get out of the way. Because Australia wants to have the kind of sensible policies that the rest of the world is moving toward.
“It’s coming. We’ve won this. The only question is how much time it’s going to take and how much damage is going to be programmed into the climate system in the meantime.”
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/al-gore-tells-tony-abbott-change-or-get-out-of-the-way/story-fnjwvztl-1226973023400
1 July: News Ltd: Clive Palmer faces arrest unless he can explain in court how he spent $12 million
CLIVE Palmer could face arrest unless he fronts a secret arbitration hearing with chequebook stubs that show how he spent $12m that a Chinese company has accused him of taking during last year’s election campaign.
Sino Iron yesterday swamped the Queensland Supreme Court with 15 applications, including a personal subpoena for the federal politician, demanding he produce butts for two cheques numbered 2046 and 2073…
Sino has also subpoenaed Media Circus Pty Ltd, from Brisbane, which ran advertising and produced campaign material for the Palmer United Party in 2013…
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/clive-palmer-faces-arrest-unless-he-can-explain-in-court-how-he-spent-12-million/story-fnda1bsz-1226972900379
It was found that farm magazines use metaphorical representations of war and games to form the overall frames of climate change. In contrast, the farmers’ frames of natural versus human-induced climate change were formed primarily using experience-based and non-experience based arguments, both supported with analogies, distinctions,keywords, metaphors, and prototypical examples.
Was Terry Oldberg a co-author? lol
Who do you believe, a farmer who is out in the weather every day 12hours a day, or some clown
Sitting in an air conditioned cube playing with his computer trying to get grant money?
No doubt they are itching to seize control of all the farms and make them climate compliant.
It is for exactly this situation that Jonathan Swift wrote his story about Laputa.
Farmers just might know the truth, after all they live by the weather!!
We have what is called “Century Farms” in Oregon. These are farms that have been running as a productive farm for at least 100 years. In that time, the wisdom is acculumative, passed down from one generation to the next.
“Global warming” versus “the climate is always changing” is not an issue with farmers. What is an issue is what do we plant next based on what the jetstream/ENSO/AO is doing. What they need are heads up warning regarding the knees of oscillations. The rest of it they get.
Never, ever underestimate a farmer in his/her ability to put food on your table year after year, decade after decade, century after century.
The recent Dr.Tim Ball thread reminded me of fun with http://drtimball.com/2013/wrong-prediction-wrong-science-unless-its-government-climate-science/
http://weather.gc.ca/saisons/ver_e.html
Svensk bonde saka skit
… Saga skir
What I got out of reading the abstract was: nothing!
It is written in academic gibberish, and conveys no comprehensible information at all.
So what do the farmers believe? What do the say? What are they doing? What do they think is happening, and why do they think that? On what basis do they adjust their behaviour?
Huh?
Pamela Gray says:
June 30, 2014 at 7:31 pm
To qualify as a Century Farm, it has to have belonged to the same family for that period.
The relationship between big oil and Swedish farmers is well-documented. Ask Mann. He knows.
Hmmm…. That paper was all about how to convince farmers to ‘believe’ in ClimateChange.
The analysis should have been on what the farmers said, not how they framed it or how many times listeners agreed with the speaker by mumbling “M mmm.” Probably worse, it appeared interpretation of the farmer’s words was done in academic vernacular, not farmer vernacular. In one case, the paper mentions analysis of a farmer statement that he had seen lots of changes in the climate in the nearly half century he had been farming so didn’t believe the climate is changing. That was claimed in the paper as demonstrating faulty logic. The farmers in the room did not object to his statement because they understood what he meant: The climate has always changed from year to year and decade to decade so this is nothing new.
Of course, the real take away message is that the farmers deal with reality, not academic pronouncements.
Aussie farmers have about the same ambivalence toward Mann Made climate change.
swedish farmers don’t get interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on CNN!
29 June: CNN: Fmr. U.S. Treasury Secy. Rubin on climate change: “The risk here is catastrophic”
CNN’s FAREED ZAKARIA GPS features an interview with the former U.S. Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush, Henry Paulson, and the former U.S. Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin…
FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: According to an important, dramatic new report, the future could be bleak for most Americans. By mid-century, it says, 23 billion dollars of property will likely be underwater (literally) in Florida alone. Crop yields in the Midwest will probably be down 50 to 70 percent. Americans will likely experience 2 to 3 times as many days with temperatures above 95 degrees as they do today. All this, the report’s authors say, if we don’t do something about climate change now. And the report has serious pedigree…
PAULSON: Well, Fareed, I think there are a lot of fellow Republicans, my fellow Republicans, business leaders and political leaders, that are ready for a serious discussion about the science and the risks that come out of the science…
PAULSON: Yes. What I’ve said about a carbon tax is some people that oppose it are opposing it because they don’t like the government playing a big role. And, you know, the perverse aspect of that is, frankly, those that are resisting taking action now are guaranteeing that the government will be playing a bigger role, because we’re seeing now and we’re going to see an increasing number of natural disasters, Mother Nature acts. We have forest fires, we have floods, we have big storms and storm surges, we have killer tornadoes…
RUBIN: I wouldn’t frame the issue the way you just did, Fareed. If you – if you have the view, which Hank and I both have, that the risk here is catastrophic and catastrophic to life on Earth as we know it – then that’s a risk we cannot take. And once you start with the recognition that this could be catastrophic, then it seems to me, you do a full court press on all fronts…
ZAKARIA: … The Chinese and Indians, by some measures, build one new coal-fired power plant each week. And that’s going to change the climate no matter what happens in the United States. What do you say?
RUBIN: Fareed, I think the answer to that is not complicated. This is a transnational issue that’s going to affect all of our countries. It is of enormous importance to all of us, I think, as I said, a catastrophic risk. And I think that the way the United States can best contribute is, A, get our own house in order. And by getting our own house in order, put ourselves in a much better position to then work with the Chinese and others around the world so that everybody does what they need to do…
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/29/fmr-u-s-treasury-secy-rubin-on-climate-change-the-risk-here-is-catastrophic/
Even in our air conditioned John Deeres, we actually do have to ‘know wearher’. Early planting, or late planting? And on and on. The only reasonable meme is to become extremely conservative.
Something about the principal of doing … Gets up pretty close and personal. Regards from a farm that produces almost 2m pounds of milk/ year, plus carryover veal, beef, and forage. And, we really love selling GMO corn to get back distillers grain feed for our cattle, that China just banned. And darned if we did NOT get a wind turbine on our pastures. They are all down on the ridge east of Dodgeville. Missed out on all that filthy lucure. Must be a Sears/subsidy thing?? Never mind Google. Go local with real farmers if you want the straight scoop.
NASA seems to be pretty sure of its climate dogma. Although, it would be amusing if the new satellite (Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2), scheduled to launch tomorrow, wound up disproving much of that dogma.
I am sure that the re-education camps are ready for the Swedish farmers. They will whistle a different tune after that.
Obviously, I don’t expect a NASA science miracle with OCO2. And if they did collect contrary data, they would simply massage it into compliance.
GaryW says: “the paper mentions analysis of a farmer statement that he had seen lots of changes in the climate in the nearly half century he had been farming so didn’t believe the climate is changing. That was claimed in the paper as demonstrating faulty logic.”
Or in other words, the second differential (the rate of change of the changes, or changes in the rate of changes) is flat, the opposite of “unprecedented”.
Or something like that.
God Bless the Farmers, every one!
From an old Wisconsin plow boy, bale chucker, and …. manure shoveler,
Mac
Beware Central Planning
Swedish farmers show very good pragmatic judgment and wise skepticism.
The greatest famine in history was caused by central planning.
Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” resulted in some 60 million fewer than normal (= deaths plus fewer births) – by demanding industrialization that prevented farmers from growing crops.
So keep a healthy skepticism.
Require proof of policies.
Focus on adaptation not mitigation.
Swedish farmers should replace the Swedish Academy of Sciences who gave the Nobel to Al Gore. The farmers are smarter. Though the Nobel was for peace, not science. I wonder how Gore contributed to world peace. Alfred must turning in his grave.
Farmers around the World are practical people. Their livelihood depends on their having a knowledge of weather that is rather lengthy and rather detailed and which is passed on over the generations. Who would you rather believe on the Climate, a farmer who spends much of his day out in the weather or a government paid scientist who spends his day hunched over his computer, submitting applications for CAGW Grants?
Don’t listen to the farming-industrial complex, they have a vested interest in getting a major fertilizer for free. Besides, they are involved in feeding terrorists, without them those bastards would surely starve to death. On top of that they are inclined to recycle manure instead of sequestering it safely in abandoned coal mines.
Nothing shows their evil ways more clearly, than their utter failure to grow carbon free crops ever.
It would seem that the intrepid researcher found no State-funded incentives to tempt Swedish farmers. No pay-offs for a bad crop year when inclement weather sets in? How iniquitous of Sweden’s government to neglected to give farmers the same incentives for “believing” as it shovels out to young PhD candidates in their research.
The full opening sentence is: “Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing because of the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide humankind pumps into our fragile atmosphere.”
This claim lives on and on as if alarm too is agreed upon and as if mainstream skepticism denies the textbook greenhouse effect. Alas, just enough do in fact loudly deny it to allow this slander to continue. Gee thanks, Tim Ball, a regular writer here, coauthor of the Sky Dragon book. Thankfully Mark Steyn has taken Ball’s ball and run with it with a counter suit against Mann, minus the maverick background. Sure, perhaps the greenhouse effect is lesser than assumed, but it’s self-defeating to promote that idea out of the blue in the face of clear evidence of scientific fraud coupled to highly speculstive amplification of that assumed greenhouse effect. A focus on fraud is now dearly needed, and you can’t cry fraud unless you also utterly and fully distance yourself from mavericks, because it won’t otherwise work, since no layperson will believe you when Al Gore can sincerely point to your association with greenhouse effect denial.
The argument is silly. Climate changing is a given. Otherwise the word climate would have been defined as “homeostasis until the advent of industry.” The real deniers are CAGW believers.
It sounds as though the farmers are basing their ideas on experience (empirical observation) rather than computer models. I hope they will be dealt with severely. We cannot allow this sort thing to spread.
Weather and the phenomenon of heat waves, tornadoes, floods and whatever are just that…weather, not climate change.
What do Farmers and Meteorologists know about climate?
From a UK farming perspective ….. and someone who has been outside in all weathers since the 1950s ,,,, there is nothing special about current climate – it changes as it has always done. Is the growing season earlier ? Earlier than when ? It changes from year to year and decade to decade and I see nothing out of the ordinary in the last 60 years. My grandparents who farmed through the between-war period and afterwards never noted any change – and the last of them died in 2006 aged 99.
‘Climate change’ feathers an awful lot of nests – but it is no different in the real world apart from that.
Here’s a gedankenexperiment for you:
You have been a mountaineer and rock climber for several years. You have spent about 30 – 40 weekends in the mountains in each of those years. Each of those weekends you have decisions to take about where to go, based on weather forecasts, what to do out in the weather you experience and whether to recalibrate your belief in the Establishment’s position on weather as a result of those experiences.
Here are the lessons I learned from that scenario:
1. The ‘Establishment’s understanding of climate as regards to ski seasons was completely wrong in the 1980s and 1990s. They either didn’t have the datasets on ski seasons going back long enough to understand natural cycles, didn’t know how to analyse data sets that they did have or were too lazy to open up the files to do the analysis.
2. The BBC weather service often used to big up good weather for the following weekend on around the Tuesday, only to see it change rapidly to a bad forecast by the Thursday. I am sure that this had absolutely nothing to do with trying to coax weekenders to book up hotels, guest houses etc etc with an irrationally exuberant forecast. We always used to delay our choice of itinerary until at least Thursday as a result, as we were either camping or staying in free open buildings left for the use of mountaineers in wild areas.
3. You learn from hoteliers in Switzerland who had been in the same resort for generations that one winter in the 1930s saw no snow throughout a whole season. This fact came out in the season I spent in that resort when no ski-ing of note was possible until 10th February due to unseasonal rain up to 3000m+ just before Christmas washing away the Novermber snow, followed by 6 weeks of HIgh Pressure with the odd Foehn storm to relieve it. This little fact about a snowless winter 60 years previous has miraculously never come out in the British ski-ing press. I wonder why not??
4. You remember, as a child, a run of snowless winters in London running from January 1st 1971 until December 1979, with the exception of one freak snowstorm in May in around 1975. So, when you read that Britain has suddenly become a ‘snow free zone’ after a few mild winters in the Noughties, you are minded to say: ‘what about the snowless 1970s’?? No journalist ever asked that question, did they?? And they’ve all kept jolly quiet on the subject in general since we’ve had 3 very snowy winters in recent years.
Note that my weekly experience came into conflict with the sanitised versions of history.
Is it surprising that I trust the evidence before my face or the story telling of the Press??
So lets look at farmers. Their primary responsibility is to bring in harvests and the weather is an important factor in determining whether they do at all, a bit, a reasonable amount, a lot or in a veritable glut. So the weather and climate is seriously important to farmers. This isn’t a matter of a spoilt little trust fund baby snivelling about a spot of rain interrupting their beach holiday, this is serious: get it wrong and they might be begging for food next winter. So I kind of respect farmers when it comes to climate judgements. They are intimately on the front line, you see.
I also respect the fact that many farmers have kept detailed harvest records for decades if not centuries. You go to Bordeaux and they have records of all things grape going back centuries. I’m sure they can correlate specific weather events with poor harvests, so they will have a pretty good idea of what they don’t want to see and what they do want to see weather-wise. They will have data on grape volume, grape quality and weather like no-one else. So if I were serious about ‘climate change’, I’d go do some basic research down in Bordeaux and ask the wine head honchos if I could work with them to see what gave weather wise. Maybe they have friends across Europe who have similar records, I don’t know. But it’s very hard to forge data about wine vintages. Too many people know the truth, you see. So it’s a good chance you will have data which hasn’t been tampered with. I guess you need to ask whether the French Government would bung them to tamper with it, whether anyone else would, but at least I’d start from the thought that their data is more likely to be honest than most.
When it comes to other farmers, they will be very sensitive to frost dates, extended deluges, periods of drought, very mild winters causing pest infestations and heavy rainfall during harvest. It’s in their economic interests to pay attention to these things. They would really value forecasts which say: ‘plant later this year, there’s going to be abnormallly late frosts’. They’d welcome the advice: ‘mulch heavily this autumn, because it’s going to rain a lot this winter but be a drought in the summer’. They’d welcome the advice: ‘get the harvest in right now because there won’t be another window until it’s too late’. They’d welcome all that because it’s in their economic interests.
However, if your forecasts are wrong, they trust you and you screw up their economic return, they have every right to be skeptical about your future pronouncments. They are the ones who got screwed, after all.
All the silly billies in media studios don’t really get affected by climate change you know. They just get sent to one place rather than another.
Farmers either feed us or don’t feed us. Earn an economic rent on their labours or struggle to survive.
Who do you think you should trust more: shrill media shills on the make and on the take, or farmers whose very livelihood is dependent on climate??
I know who I trust the most………
What you tried to say, makes no sense in swedish.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee decides who gets the Nobel Peace Prize.
Brute @ June 30, 2014 at 8:07 pm,
If you are the same Brute who wanted to sell air-conditioners to Eskimos, have you heard the sad news that Max Anacker (Manacker) has died at 82? Visit ‘Harmless Sky’ for more.
huge market for american farmers in developing countries!
30 June: WaPo: Wonkblog: Roberto A. Ferdman: How much your meat addiction is hurting the planet
The environment doesn’t appreciate our meat obsession.
The average meat-eater in the U.S. is responsible for almost twice as much global warming as the average vegetarian, and close to three times that of the average vegan, according to a study (pdf) published this month in the journal Climatic Change.
The study, which was carried out at Oxford University, surveyed the diets of some 60,000 individuals (more than 2,000 vegans, 15,000 vegetarians, 8,000 fish-eaters, and nearly 30,000 meat-eaters)…
The good news is that while Americans might still eat more meat than mother nature would prefer, they are scaling back, and especially so with the most environmentally unfriendly kind—per capita beef consumption has fallen by 36 percent since its peak in 1976, according to data from the USDA. The bad news is that the rest of the world appears to be headed in the opposite direction. Global demand for meat is expected to grow by more than 70 percent by 2050, largely driven by burgeoning middle classes in the developing world…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/30/how-much-your-meat-addiction-is-hurting-the-planet/
30 June: Fox News: Zev Chafets: Climate change: The moment I became a climate skeptic
I got my first lesson on the subject of climate change more than 10 years ago. My tutor was an internationally famous climate scientist at a major Ivy League university…
In May 2001, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its third report, which got a lot of media attention. I looked through it and realized immediately that I had no chance of understanding the science…
One item got my attention. It said: “Projections based on the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios suggest warming over the 21st Century at a more rapid rate than that experienced for at least the last 10,000 years.”
I called the professor, one of the authors of the report, for a clarification (he remains nameless because we were off the record). “If global warming is caused by man-made emissions,” I asked, “what accounts for the world warming to this same level 10,000 years ago?”
There was a long silence. Then the professor said, “Are you serious?”
I admitted that I was.
The professor loudly informed me that my question was stupid. The panel’s conclusion was indisputable science, arrived at after years of research by a conclave of the world’s leading climate scholars. Who was I to dispute it?
I told him I wasn’t disputing it, just trying to understand how, you know, the world could have been this hot before without the help of human agency.
Maybe this is just a natural climate change like ice ages that once connected continents and warming periods that caused them to drift apart or …
At which point I heard a click. The professor hung up on me. At that exact moment I became a climate skeptic. I may not know anything about science, but I have learned over a long career that when an expert hangs up in the middle of a question, it means that he doesn’t know the answer…
I was reminded of this encounter the other day while reading a Time Magazine cover story titled, “Eat Butter: Scientists labeled fat the enemy. Why they were wrong.” …
According to Time, this was “so embedded in modern medicine and nutrition that it became nearly impossible to challenge the consensus.” Scientific journals refused to publish data challenging this orthodoxy. People who did, like Dr. Robert Atkins, were derided as quacks.
Now that consensus has flipped (Time Magazine doesn’t publish articles outside any current consensus). It may flip again someday as we learn even more about nutrition and health. But for now, the danger of eating fat – once an unshakable tenet of settled science – is out of intellectual fashion.
People who have virtuously deprived themselves of t-bones, ice cream and cheesecake are now left with egg on their faces…
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/06/30/climate-change-moment-became-climate-skeptic/
“this thesis offers an audience-specific departure point by analysing climate change frames and frame formation in Swedish agriculture”??
It’s language, Jim, but not as we know it.
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee decides who gets the Nobel Peace Prize.”
That explains how Al Gore won. At least the other Nobel Prizes are still reputable.
@Dr. Strangelove
“Swedish farmers should replace the Swedish Academy of Sciences who gave the Nobel to Al Gore.”
For the record, the peace prize is selected by the _Norwegian_ Nobel Committee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize
I have farmed for thirty years here in Victoria, Australia and have no faith in any forecast that is over five days in length. Our BOM gives seasonal outlooks that are little better than educated guesses and there is no way I could plan or manage my farm based on their forecast.
Modelling for decades using the same techniques must be a form of ironic humour from our weather experts.
As far as I can tell the weather is rhythmical chaos.
“The analysis demonstrates that while Swedish farm magazines frame climate change in terms of conflict, scientific uncertainty,and economic burden…”
“The researcher who discovered the degree of scepticism among farmers was surprised by her findings.”
I’m surprised at her surprise!
SteveB says:
June 30, 2014 at 8:24 pm
&
Farmer Gez says:
July 1, 2014 at 12:58 am
As a 76 year old now retired SE Australian farmer and a follower and commenter on the whole CAGW scam for a decade now, you guys have summed up the attitude towards all the claims of CAGW / Climate change /???? what ever tomorrow of just about every farmer I know and thats a damn lot.
I have watched the changes in the climate and puzzled over those long duration changes both as a farmer for since my mid teens and as a glider pilot of some 50 years now.
About all I have learnt from climate science that would have been of any benefit to my farming pursuit would have been the great swings in the PDO which I can now look back across the decades and very clearly see the changes in the seasonal patterns and rainfall patterns all of them closely paralleling the great swings and different phases of the PDO
Of course even to give credit to climate science for the discovery of the PDO in the 1990’s is badly misplaced as the PDO was actually discovered / unravelled by fishery researchers , not highly paid climate scientists.
From an Australian farming point of view the climate science as promulgated by the climate science cultists is worse than a dead loss as it severely mislead a lot of farmers who had previously and justifiably up until the late 2000’s had trusted scientists implicitly for decades past,
The climate scientists have repeatedly and repeatedly made what are totally spurious, wrong, misleading, corrupted and fanciful and very seriously bad climate predictions which has in the past created a great deal of stress and fear for the future prior to Climate Gate. amongst Australian dryland and irrigation farmers.
A presentation by a couple of CSIRO climate scientists [ ??? ] in the late 2000’s promised us, some couple of hundred farmers at a mid year farming Expo that the whole of eastern Australia was going to become a perpetual drought area, that agriculture would fail in eastern Australia and the rivers would no longer support any irrigation.
It was one of the most depressing and fear for the future inducing presentations by a couple of so called and badly misnamed [ CSIRO ] climate “scientists” I have ever witnessed, presented as accomplished fact for the future with no if’s, but’s, or maybe’s at all.
Followed a year or so later later by the heaviest rainfall recorded over most of eastern Australia since white man’s First Fleet at Sydney Cove in January 1788.
And since nobody in rural areas can tell the slightest difference between what has always been when it comes to the immense variability in weather and the long run of seasons and I after 76 years as rural resident and fifty years of flying using natures own creations to glide tens or hundreds of kilometres in flights most certainly see nothing at all different to what has always been, the total unpredictability of weather and seasons from year to year and decade to decade.
Climate warming scientists in this part of the world are now increasingly looked upon with contempt by nearly all of today’s rural dwellers as just plain incompetent and worse, as deliberate distorters and corrupters and falsfiers of the real truth about the climate.
As many a farmer will quietly tell you in private, when it comes to climate scientists. now spilling over into including most scientists, don’t believe what they say, just follow the money.
Worse for climate science nowadays, we just ignore them as irrelevant, up themselves big time and bigoted against anybody who has the temerity to dare to question their claims and their expertise.
They are now ignored by nearly the entire Australian farming community as they have nothing to offer at all except fear, stress and a deadly hopelessness for the future.
SteveB says:
June 30, 2014 at 8:24 pm
Aussie farmers have about the same ambivalence toward Mann Made climate change.
================
well..the ones who are NOT on the take for carbon takeovers of their treed areas etc are,
the ABC keep finding the odd one willing to toe the agw line on air with tales of woe.
they fail to mention how much they get bribed for locking up huge areas of vegetation for 100 years
and
when they go to sell their farm, the buyers dont get anything but a LOSS of area they own on paper but cannot farm or touch, graze or grow on for the remainder of the lockup period.
going to be a lot of UNsaleable farms.
One local blokes bragging they paid him more than the entire property is worth for rights over a reserve bush area. when I qyuerid how thats going to tie things up for his kids to inherit/sell
he iad he didnt give a damn, their problem.
Farmer Gez says:
July 1, 2014 at 12:58 am
I have farmed for thirty years here in Victoria, Australia and have no faith in any forecast that is over five days in length. Our BOM gives seasonal outlooks that are little better than educated guesses and there is no way I could plan or manage my farm based on their forecast.
Modelling for decades using the same techniques must be a form of ironic humour from our weather experts.
As far as I can tell the weather is rhythmical chaos.
===========
Ive only been here 7 years
in that time I have experience late Feb to be so cold I was unable to feel my fingers and had fires going for 2 weeks
to raging bushfires followed in days by extreme rain n floods nearby.
the old records have the area as unsuitable for sheep due to footrot etc
and not croppable due to flooded fields rut etc
cattle were the best iption
now with some dry years, a hell of a lot of newbies bought farms for cropping
when the weather reverts as it will
a lot of people stand to lose their farm.
Mario Lento says:
June 30, 2014 at 10:57 pm
The argument is silly. Climate changing is a given. Otherwise the word climate would have been defined as “homeostasis until the advent of industry.” The real deniers are CAGW believers.
The ONLY thing that doesn’t change is the Human ability to invent scare stories & manipulate & control other Human beings for profit & power! After all, what kind of person wants to frighten others? IMHO, that is. 😉
As a Swede although living in Norway I can attest to that Scandinavia is a massive warmist/UN-IPCC/climate change/global warming stronghold. Nowhere in the public space and in the MSM are dissenting voices allowed, except in the comment fields and on blogs.
Some recent examples:
Recently The Norwegian labor party got a new leader. In his inauguration speech the main point of his policy would be to use the wealthy Norwegian Pension-Oil fund as a tool to save the climate.
No reporting on the hullabaloo about the bullying of Lennart Bengtsson has appeared in the Scandinavian MSM except a small article in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
From page 58, the analogy used for natural change by Swedish farmers:
Analogy: Between experiences of weather and agricultural practices since 1950 compared to today’s experience.
It’s far more interesting than it first appears.
They are saying that the effect of changes in agricultural practices dwarf the effect of climate change
That isn’t saying that climate change isn’t happening.
It’s saying that it isn’t important.
Hoser says:
June 30, 2014 at 8:38 pm
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When will the raw data start coming in?
And how long will it before they have to adjust/recallibrate the data (like they did with ARGO) because the initial raw data is not showiing what they expect to see?
Per Strandberg (@LittleIceAge) says:
July 1, 2014 at 3:51 am
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It is amazing the slant that is put on things. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/pre-viking-tunic-found-glacier-climate-change_n_2932431.html
The receding glaciers in Norway confirm that it was far warmer in Norway about 1700 to 2000 years ago than it is today. The receding glaciers in Greenland show that it was far warmer in Greenland at the time of the Viking settlement some 800 to 1200 years ago.
The take home from this is that there is hard evidence in the region that climate naturally changes, and that today;s warm temperatures are far from unprecended. We have a long way to go before we see again the warmth in the Northern Hemisphere that these previous generations enjoyed. It is no coincidence that the pinacle of advancement of Northern Hemisphere civilisation took place in warm periods. .
A group here in Kansa was studying the same thing–or at least the sociologist in the group was studying farmers’ attitudes. The goal was to figure out how to persuade farmers to alter their crop selection to plant crops for ethanol production. She was quite unhappy that farmers did not accept the academic line of global warming, and based crop selection decisions on known weather patterns, prices, crop rotation schedules, and the like; in other words, experience and planning needs, Their attitudes towards climate could be summed up as “God or nature will do what they will do and we will live with it.” I don’t think any papers came out of the study.
A few days back the barn of a nearby farm caught fire and burned to the ground. According to the owner he heard a crackling sound after walking outside to see why the dogs wouldn’t stop barking. He walked toward the barn with goose bumps on his arms. Seeing fire he ran to free the cows and pull the tractor and propane from an adjacent building. A family driving by saw the fire and pulled into the driveway to help out. The fire department was there in minutes. It took over 12 hours to put the fire out. The farm family lost some family heirlooms including 100 year old barn boards of sentimental value as they were from the original barn built by the farmer’s grandfather when he first settled the land. There were no injuries. The following morning a lady drove up to the farm with coffee and homemade muffins. She had seen the blaze on television and suspected the family hadn’t had breakfast. She was of course correct.
Farmers face real problems every day. No wonder they are skeptical of climate change. And the world is full of wonderful people, ready to help out or make homemade muffins.
Re: ROM says:
July 1, 2014 at 2:37 am
“They are now ignored by nearly the entire Australian farming community as they have nothing to offer at all except fear, stress and a deadly hopelessness for the future.”
Well said. City slickers would have drawn the same conclusion if they hadn’t stayed inside and depended on the news media to tell them what was going on outside. You’d think their occasional visit to the seashore of their youth would raise questions.
I remember hearing from my father and my great uncle Bob that the weather would usually fluctuate between harsh and mild winters every 10 or 11 years, give or take. Guess what? My dad knew absolutely nothing about sun cycles. Neither did uncle Bob. But both men grew up depending on personal agriculture. Though they were not super-sized farmers, they had massive gardens, pigs, goats, maybe a few cows on occasion, fruit trees, berry patches, etc. They also depended upon hunting and fishing and wild produce such as persimmons, poke, mushrooms, paw paws, etc. I grew up with a large garden(s) and canning, hunting, fishing, etc. It was a sacred part of my hillbilly culture. I still eat wild strawberries every spring, poke in the early summer and paw paws in the late, persimmons in the fall. Then I hunt in the winter (you can fish anytime). My family has always been close to the earth and to the weather. I can predict rain better than any meteorologist, at least in my little town, in my little place, as long as I’ve been outdoors for a goodly spell. I grew up watching the stars, watching the clouds, listening to the birds and such. Trust me. Climate changes. Always has. Always will. I also know that people can and do adjust to their given climate – or they migrate to someplace else. I just hope it never turns towards the brutal cold.
Farmers are no fools. Nor do they suffer fools easily. It is very difficult to pull the wool over their eyes. People would be wise to listen carefully to what they have to say. Honest people working in what probably is the ONLY completely legitimate and noble profession… feeding the world. GK
“Insights into how climate change is framed in various contexts are essential for
the study of how climate change is perceived and responded to.”
Yes, when putting lipstick on a pig, the brand and color of the lipstick are of the utmost importance.
“I’m from the Government and here to help” climatized version:
“I’m a Academic Climate Scientist and I’m here to explain our modelled version of reality to you.”
Check out original Swedish and Norwegian temperature data from meteorological year books:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/original-temperatures-sweden-and-norway-280.php
Especially checkout temperature data made public (red) vs. full original datasets (blue):
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/AORIT/Sweden/8a.gif
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/AORIT/Sweden/8b.gif
Perhaps farmers are a bit more in contact with the real world.
K.R. Frank Lansner
The words and actions of politicians and bureaucrats contribute nothing. They are experts at it.
Farmers are the best at identifying bulls**t.
Do people know that the Church of AGW set up a website with fonts, formatting, etc. similar to this one, presumably to trick people into buying their faith-based pseudoscience? I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise at the tactics they’re willing to use to achieve their goals.
Another paper talking about talking about.
Alan the Brit says:
July 1, 2014 at 3:49 am
Mario Lento says:
June 30, 2014 at 10:57 pm
The argument is silly. Climate changing is a given. Otherwise the word climate would have been defined as “homeostasis until the advent of industry.” The real deniers are CAGW believers.
The ONLY thing that doesn’t change is the Human ability to invent scare stories & manipulate & control other Human beings for profit & power! After all, what kind of person wants to frighten others? IMHO, that is. 😉
++++++++++
Alan: As you and I agree… this then turns into a circular argument. People want to frighten people into action – which is manipulative. 🙂
Asplund had prepared a long list of questions about how the farmers live with the threat of climate change and what they plan to do to cope with the subsequent climate challenges.
————
What was she doing gathering realworld data? She should be modeling what farmers think about global warming!
Dr. Strangelove on June 30, 2014 at 9:58 pm
Correct peninsula, wrong country -> wrong academy …
Ok, everybody, its important to understand this paper is NOT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE! This is a communications thesis about framing techniques and efficiencies in message delivery. The author determined that, on the topic of climate change, message framing topologies did not work in getting a climate change/mitigation message across in a specific focus group, that the framing topologies chosen by many in messaging climate change were adverse to the focus group, whose own benchmarks did not provide credibility to the message regimes…. The validity of the climate change meme was not empirically being tested, only the message delivery. It’s immaterial to the study wqhether climate change is real or not. The author’s surprise appears to stem from the fact that the more or less universal message delivery model did not work in a select focus group, and that the focus group had their own points of reference to validate the message, something that many non-agrucultural groups apparently lack.
“Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing”
Wait can someone clear this up. Where exactly HAS climate truly changed in the last 200 years? If I were to pick up some very old books on the regions of Europe and the climate there, would I experience a different climate if I were to go there than what is described in those books? The Arctic is still tundra, taiga, and ice sheets right? A global increase in average temperature does not constitute as climate change; does anyone have any actual examples of regions that have experienced a shift in climate in the past 200 years?
How many times do we have to see “surprised”? These people live in a cocoon world of their own making and stuck in group think. They think everyone is naive enough to fall for their conjob. Thus, they keep getting surprised!
Heh, this researcher makes it sound like Swedish farmers speak in gobbledegook. Somehow, I doubt it.
===================
She chose the career-conserving path, a logical step in a climate of pre-ordained outcomes and with room for more self identification by limited descriptive studies in many fields of “research.” The alternate path of open mindedness is not safe in this climate.
WSJ did an excellent piece, totally debunking the claim of a 97% consensus. There never was such a thing. Just a typical leftist strategy to coerce the rest of us into accepting their latest scheme to grab power and tax money from the people using AGW as an excuse.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303480304579578462813553136
The physical world rejects the 97% consensus.
@Robert of Ottawa your [Swedish] is not correct did you mean “Svensk bonde snackar skit” but that dont sound right it should be plural “Svenska bönder snackar skit” but I personally doubt that Swedish farmers talk crap.
sedish should be Swedish
I keep posting this comment in the ScienceNordic writing my comment:
”
Check out original Swedish and Norwegian temperature data from meteorological year books:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/original-temperatures-sweden-and-norway-280.php
Especially checkout temperature data made public (red) vs. full original datasets (blue):
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/AORIT/Sweden/8a.gif
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/AORIT/Sweden/8b.gif
Perhaps farmers are a bit more in contact with the real world.
K.R. Frank Lansner
”
And then after few minutes they delete it…
The climate is hokey dokey.
Robert W Turner says:
July 1, 2014 at 8:52 am
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The Climate has not changed. Whether it will or not is a different matter.
A warming of a few tenths of a degree C, is not a change of climate.
The impression that the climate has changed. is one of the biggest deceptions.
Another big deception is the discussion of global climate. Apart from being either in a glacial period or an ineter glacia periodl, there is no such thing as global climate. Climate is regional, not global.
Finally, the other big deception is global warming. Again there is no such thing as global warming. It is all regional. Some parts of the globe are warming, some are cooling, and some are experiencing no significant change in temperatures..
Of course, this is all part of the political spin. We are all in it together, and we must all act together. When in reality there will be winners and losers should the globe significantly warm. If each country were to evaluate what ‘climate change’ really meant for them, there would be no prospect of global governance via the UN. If countries were guided by self interest, it would quickly all apart, and hence the need for ‘consensus’ that has perverted this ‘science’.
I have in front of me a copy of “Australian Agriculture” The complete reference on Rural Industry first published in 1987 by Morscope Pty Ltd Camberwell, Victoria ISSN 0818 -4771 it covers in great detail the Livestock, Cropping Industry, Fishing, Forestry, Chemical, Fertiliser, Tractor, World agriculture, Industries and has comprehensive guides on Farm Taxation, Finance, Education, Rural media, servicing of farmers needs, Government policy and Farm organisation. Inevitably in each section climatic conditions and old fashioned weather considerations are discussed plus it has many reference maps on land use, value of land use, sown pastures and fodder crops, livestock ratios, grazing density, native pastures, Median Annual rainfall among other detailed information from many sources including a whole section provided by the then Bureau of Meteorology for the information of Farmers on a subject that is very close to their heart the tradition of farming in Australia.
At Page 67 the Bureau presents “Climate of Australia” the section on climate runs through to page 83, it is interesting to read the introduction that sets the scene for Australia’s climate Summer to Winter documented extremes, the causes and effects of our weather that impact on Australian farming. After extensive reading of this and other chapters in this book one comes to the conclusion there is the stark contrast with later writing and publication issued by our present Bureau of Meteorology.
The content of this chapter is absolutely free of anthropogenic climate change, weather weirding, future escalation of warming, grave fears of catastrophic weather changes due to carbon or C02. Todays constant BOM and CSIRO anthropogenic catastrophic climate change propaganda, carbon and C02 hysteria are absent, the facts and history of our climate are presented just as farmers know it, and need it. It’s the weather and the BOM of that day seeking to serve the needs and aspirations of the farmer to deal with natural weather events and produce the best they can in the circumstances.
The whole reference book is a pleasure to read as it was clearly written before clever corruption and political propaganda changed the agenda of the BOM and CSIRO. Even the section on Government policy is an easy read, and also free of any reference to climate alarmism, C02, or carbon pollution.
So for me it is simple, the weather and climate is a key element that farmers deal with all their lives they know and live on the vagaries of our weather, they understand what they are dealing with, and that issue never really changes. It is the political agenda and propaganda that changes, farmers are used to dealing with bullsh*t and know it for what it is. Bullsh*t generated by city slickers who don’t understand farming.
When you read the BOM official history “The Weather Watchers” you can sense the corrupting influences as meme and agenda took hold of the Bureau that was also involved in a turf war with an aggressive CSIRO who wanted a slice of the climate pie . It is probably time to interview many of the retired meteorologists who resisted this insidious change from practical weather to meme promotion. They hate what happened as it has sullied an institution they served with pride as the Bureau worked for the people of Australia and the farmers in those days.
Hardly surprising that farmers here and in Sweden resist or distrust propaganda. Farmers are attuned to dealing with natural variability of weather and environments, it is more than just an agenda to them.
They also make beer and moonshine so they are pretty much independent, except subsidies from the government 🙂
Both Al Gore and Tony Abbott have said what they believed.
Al Gore believed he was going to be President of the US.
Al believed the North Pole was going to melt by 2010.
Tony Abbott believed Tim Flannery would keep giving us his climate opinions without the Government having to pay a penny.
Abbott is the only one whose climate-related beliefs have come true.
Pat says:” I told him I wasn’t disputing it, just trying to understand how, you know, the world could have been this hot before without the help of human agency.
Maybe this is just a natural climate change like ice ages that once connected continents and warming periods that caused them to drift apart or …
At which point I heard a click. The professor hung up on me. At that exact moment I became a climate skeptic. ”
Well Pat, after you said that the continents drifted apart during warming periods I would have hung up on you too.
Context indicates that he didn’t literally mean that warmth caused the continents to move apart, but that they became separated by rising seas. He (not Pat but Zev ___, whom he quoted: