From Purdue University: WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Crop producers and scientists hold deeply different views on climate change and its possible causes, a study by Purdue and Iowa State universities shows.
Associate professor of natural resource social science Linda Prokopy and fellow researchers surveyed 6,795 people in the agricultural sector in 2011-2012 to determine their beliefs about climate change and whether variation in the climate is triggered by human activities, natural causes or an equal combination of both.
More than 90 percent of the scientists and climatologists surveyed said they believed climate change was occurring, with more than 50 percent attributing climate change primarily to human activities.
In contrast, 66 percent of corn producers surveyed said they believed climate change was occurring, with 8 percent pinpointing human activities as the main cause. A quarter of producers said they believed climate change was caused mostly by natural shifts in the environment, and 31 percent said there was not enough evidence to determine whether climate change was happening or not.
The survey results highlight the division between scientists and farmers over climate change and the challenges in communicating climate data and trends in non-polarizing ways, Prokopy said.
“Whenever climate change gets introduced, the conversation tends to turn political,” she said. “Scientists and climatologists are saying climate change is happening, and agricultural commodity groups and farmers are saying they don’t believe that. Our research suggests that this disparity in beliefs may cause agricultural stakeholders to respond to climate information very differently.”
Climate change presents both potential gains and threats to U.S. agriculture. Warmer temperatures could extend the growing season in northern latitudes, and an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide could improve the water use efficiency of some crops. But increases in weather variability and extreme weather events could lower crop yields.
Growers can manage the potential risks linked to extreme rain events and soil degradation by using adaptive strategies such as planting cover crops, using no-till techniques, increasing the biodiversity of grasses and forage and extending crop rotations, Prokopy said. These strategies contribute to soil health and water quality and also help capture carbon dioxide, reducing the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by agricultural systems.
Currently, agriculture accounts for 10-12 percent of the total human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally.
Focusing on the causes of climate change, however, is likely to polarize the agricultural community and lead to inaction, said study co-author Lois Wright Morton, professor of sociology at Iowa State University. To foster productive dialogue, she said, scientists and climatologists need to “start from the farmer’s perspective.”
“Farmers are problem solvers,” she said. “A majority of farmers view excess water on their land and variable weather as problems and are willing to adapt their practices to protect their farm operation. Initiating conversations about adaptive management is more effective than talking about the causes of climate change.”
The gap in views on climate change is caused in part by how individuals combine scientific facts with their own personal values, Morton said.
“Differences in beliefs are related to a variety of factors, such as personal experiences, cultural and social influences, and perceptions of risk and vulnerability,” she said.
Prokopy advises scientists to “recognize that their worldviews may be different than those of farmers. Moderating communication of climate information based on that realization is key.”
Climate science could also be better communicated by using intermediaries such as Extension educators and agricultural advisers to translate data in ways that are most relevant to growers, she said.
“Farmers are by necessity very focused on short-term weather, in-season decisions and managing immediate risks,” she said. “They’re thinking about when they can get in their field to do what they need to do, rather than looking 20 to 30 years down the road.”
A table of the complete survey results is available at https://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2014/prokopy-climatetable.pdf
The study was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and is available at http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00172.1.
The surveys were conducted as part of two large-scale projects, Useful to Usable and the Corn-based Cropping Systems Coordinated Agricultural Project, which aim to help farmers in the Midwest adapt to climate change. The projects were funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Purdue University, Iowa State University and the Iowa Natural Resource Conservation Service also provided funding for the research.
Writer: Natalie van Hoose, 765-496-2050, nvanhoos@purdue.edu
Sources: Linda Prokopy, 765-496-2221, lprokopy@purdue.edu
Lois Wright Morton, 515-294-2843, lwmorton@iastate.edu
Related website:
Purdue University Department of Forestry and Natural Resources: https://ag.purdue.edu/fnr/Pages/default.aspx
ABSTRACT
Agricultural stakeholder views on climate change: Implications for conducting research and outreach
Linda Stalker Prokopy 1; Lois Wright Morton 2; J. Gordon Arbuckle Jr. 2; Amber Saylor Mase 1; Adam Wilke 2
1 Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
2 Department of Sociology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
“In contrast, 66 percent of corn producers surveyed said they believed climate change was occurring, with 8 percent pinpointing human activities as the main cause”
LOL. The spin masters must have winced when they wrote that one. These people have no shame. Complete propaganda.
“More than 90 percent of the scientists and climatologists surveyed said they believed climate change was occurring, with more than 50 percent attributing climate change primarily to human activities.”
————————————————————-
She and her team must be using really bad science and math.
Didn’t the team already settle this obvious problem?
Didn’t the President of the United States say 97% of scientists believe in CAGW?
What’s this denying bimbo doing messing with settled science and the 97%?
Lew the loon, Johnny Cook-book, Mikey the Mann, Philly FOIA Jones and the rest of the team need to find this charlatan and get her fired, her university privileges revoked, stop her from publishing and fire the editor…ASAP.
Let’s nip this in the bud!
90% of what number? 10?
Brilliant point: some 46% of scientists believe post-1950 temperature rise is mainly due to human activity.
The 97% never was the above, just the spin.
The real “hoax” is that most technical people believe man is responsible for a present and increasing, dangerous rise of temperature globally.
“8 percent pinpointing human activities as the main cause”
So only 8% of farmers accept AGW.
Farmers have to understand the current climate and the future climate to keep their farms operating. While climate scientists have to blame cliamte change for everything to keep the research funding flowing.
Farmers spend every day out in the fields experiencing the weather and seeing how storms and drought have changed over time. Climate scientists sit in front of computers putting numbers into incomplete and failed models, then calling the results facts.
Most farmers come form families that have been farmers for decades if not centuries and have heard the history passed down from the ancestors. Climate science has only existed for maybe 50 years.
Which group do you think has a better grasp of reality and climate change?
I will side with farmers… the dopes in the lab never see the climate much less real climate.. they like to play with broken models.. 🙂
Not only Farmers but, Fishermen, Wild land firefighters, Truck Drivers, Pilots, etc.
anyone who deals with weather on a daily basis.
I’d like to ask a Minnesota Corn grower about “Climate Change”-today..
Here is what the Farmers publication sees. Climate change as always.
http://www.almanac.com/sites/new.almanac.com/files/1895_cvr1_0.png
” the dopes in the lab never see the climate much less real climate.. they like to play with broken models.. :)”
That’s not true, just last year a bunch went on a boat in open water around Antarctic. And this year they will go north to see the newly opened ice free Arctic ocean. With nary a polar bear or ice floe to be seen. I wonder if that boat is still stuck? Must have been a fluke or the Al Gore effect.
Jimbo, the Farmers graphic you show is misleading in context of the discussion here. While there have certainly been local and regional cold snaps (the eastern US is in one now!), recent years have all been near the warmest on record, with 2014 likely to be the all-time warmest. I agree, though, that farmers care about local and regional climate, so perhaps in context of that publication, the graphic is not really misleading.
Hi Barry,
I do not intend to mislead. The graphic is from Farmers Almanac and concerns a pattern of climate change alarm. The almanac for farmers shows realism as do the farmers being surveyed. I just thought the 3 tied in nicely: Farmers, farmers and climate change. The graphic is basically a great big yawn from the publication.
Not only that but you get generational farms where the grandkids running it today still talk to grandpa & grandma about how things were in their day and how they dealt with it.
I had several talks about AGW with my grandpa before he died about 10 years ago (at a time I was not nearly as sceptical). He said that he hadn’t seen anything that he hadn’t seen before. A family farming in one area since about 1910 has a good record of climate changes (not just weather) in that area.
In Sask where I live we have clearly experienced several climate shifts in my lifetime (42 years). We were wet with cool summers and winters in the 70’s, 80’s were a warmer and drier. 90’s were dry and warm. 00’s had warm winters still but the heat was down a bit in summers. 10’s has seen a clear shift to cooler winters and much cooler summers, with much heavier precipitation. My father and grandpa have always said that the snowiest we had was in the 50’s, which would be a decade or so after the heatwaves broke in the late 30’s to early 40’s, and our current trend seems to be following a similar trend of increased precipitation starting about a decade after the heat peaked approx. 1998ish.
It is sad we are losing the older population that experienced the past weather and now rely only on historical data that is adjusted until it doesn’t actually resemble the historical data anymore. Talks with my grandparents about past temps more closely resemble the raw data than the adjusted data for my area. Coincidence?
In fact, if they were like some of my relative and in-laws, they actually kept written records of the weather for much of their lives. The information wasn’t enormously useful year to year, but pretty much guided “when to prepare” actions, “we need to the hay in by the end of this month” and “better talk to the bank” type decisions were based on that long term information. West coast salmon fishermen were also well aware of long-term patterns in salmon capture that were ultimately shown to correlate to PDO oscillations.
Exactly:
Climate scientists must believe the models are useful or lose their livelihood.
Farmers must believe the climate is manageable or lose their livelihood.
So the disparity is obvious. Climate scientists don’t need to know about the climate and farmers don’t need to know about the models.
Very insightful statement you have: “Farmers must believe the climate is manageable or lose their livelihood.”
M Courtney
A minor correction:
Climate scientists must make the gullible and goofy believe their models are useful or lose their livelihood.
And that, boys and girls, is 95% of what today’s climate science is all about.
I would say that farmers rely on not “that climate is manageable”, but instead rely on the fact that climate is always changing. If we believed in AGW in the 90’s during some of the drier years, we would have quit farming, but that would have led to us missing some of the wettest years on record (and highest crop yields as well) since then. Farmers, more than anyone, understand that climate is always changing. Every decade is different than the one before, and rarely in the way the “experts” predicted. But of course the experts always just predict the current trend will continue forever, then spend 10 celebrating they were right, then 10 years attacking anyone who points out it doesn’t seem to be true, then a short pause and a new round latch onto the newest trend and extend it out to infinity.
Peter Miller
November 12, 2014 at 10:31 am
Surely that should be: –
“And that, boys and girls, is – ummmmmm 97% – of what today’s climate science is all about.”
Sorry – the science is settled – we don’t know exactly what causes climate change – but we have a host of possible-to-probable contributory causes.
Auto
Indeed.
Of the two groups, which actually LIVES in the climate they’re considering?
It isn’t the “perfessers”.
Very well-written! My thoughts exactly.
My folks had a restaurant in town ( 3,038 population… yeah, small farm town). Even the farmers without Grampa on the farm would come to the restaurant and talk about the weather. The oldest farmers and family in town were available to talk with the youngest, even if not the same family. Same thing happened in Church and at the County Fair. The “Old Folks” mingled.
One of my earliest memories was talking to an ’80 something’ local about the weather. It was the ’60s and we had some heat from the ’50s then a cold turn. I commented on it… He said “Well… back in the ’30s it was darned hot. Much hotter than now. Then again, back in the late 1800s it was darned cold too. Colder than anything you’ve seen.” (We had had snow in town for the first time in decades – the valley floor of Central Valley California is usually hot and almost never gets snow. So commenting on the ‘once in a lifetime snow’ vs prior heat was a reasonable thing for me to do.)
My ‘take away’ from that was that weather had cycles longer than my (then) short life, and that it helped to be 80 or so to see the whole thing.
“They’re thinking about when they can get in their field to do what they need to do, rather than looking 20 to 30 years down the road.”
That is just bull pucky! When you plant a peach orchard, that is a very long time horizon decision. It takes 1/2 a decade just to get to first harvest worth mention. All the farmers I knew were well aware of decade long decision cycles (often trying to figure out when they could replace a 30 year old bit of equipment). IMHO is is slander to assert those folks were only able to see the present year. We won’t even talk about the time horizon it takes to think about and develop a new breed of cattle, horses, pigs, or corn breeding….
Oh, and do realize that the local rice farmers had to decide what variety to plant (including heat issues where more is typically better… rice doesn’t like cold). Now a variety you plant today, for harvest 1/2 year from now, is seed that was made last year. That seed came from a grow out of a stock of seed that was harvested the year before that. That seed came from Founders Stock seeds grown a year or more before THAT. Which variety might have spent a decade or three in development. So you think maybe, just maybe, those seedsmen have a time horizon longer than ‘this year’ and the farmers they talk to (asking things like ‘will you buy a cold tolerant seed or a pest resistant one?’ might be looking at probable climate issues a decade out?
The Rice Development Station was about 20 miles from my home. There was frequent discussion around the counter in our restaurant about what kind of rice to develop, and why. They were not short time horizon discussions. Calrose rice was developed there, about that time. I have links in my list to that rice development station even now. They continue to work on more cold tolerant varieties and shorter season types.
http://www.norcalwater.org/2012/09/10/100-years-for-a-moment-california-rice-experiment-station/
http://www.carrb.com/96rpt/Breeding.htm
Note that these are Ph.D. Farmers and they are selecting for Cold Tolerance. Even in in 1996 (that link). Well into the Global Warming Scare Story.
What about now? Well, seems they have the annual reports on line for decades… including the most recent.
http://www.carrb.com/AnnualRpts.html has back to 1969. Here’s the one for 2013:
http://www.carrb.com/13rpt/Breeding.html
Now I make that to be at least a 45 year focus on cold tolerance development in Rice. Do note that California is not exactly a cold place… Were there really any reason to worry about warming, these folks would be aware of it.
Oh, and I bolded the bits about cold.
Rant time.
The “environmental” movements as a whole (but not everyone), have continually portrayed farmers as ignorant yokels who are too stupid to understand even basic science. This probably has a lot to do with their getting most of the knowledge from tv sitcoms instead of actually knowing any farmers. They think farmers are simpletons who are just being led around blindly by big corporations and don’t know any better.
Well farming is not a simple operation and farmers, on a whole, are the most ingenuous and clever people you will ever meet. They have to be the “renaissance man” jack of all trades. I farm with my father (I also run an architectural consulting business), but here is a list of things I and my farming family can do:
– build houses, shops, shelters, general construction.
– wire the electrical of entire houses, specialty equipment.
– plumbing for entire houses including sewer infrastructure.
– heavy and small equipment mechanic.
– machining and parts fabrication.
– welder.
– computer equipment building, repair, infrastructure.
– architectural and engineering design and drawings.
– heavy equipment operator, including backhoes, dozers, grader, loader, crane, etc…
– large animal vet services, only calling actual vets in extreme cases.
– multiple university degrees in science, teaching, engineering.
– working with chemicals, selection, mixing and application.
– banking of large scale businesses (some current farmers run huge $10 million plus businesses)
– commodities marketing.
– inventing, engineering and fabrication of one off machines.
– peer reviewed biological research.
– full spectrum of agronomy services.
– firearms and hunting, but not big into hunting.
and this is a small abbreviated list of the top of my head in 3 minutes, there is so much more. And our family is not an exception, this is the norm.
So how can these people think that a group, so adept at understanding their environment and so many other subjects, don’t have a clue about what is happening around them? In the end the farmer needs to do what works, and ideology won’t make up for planting the wrong seeds or using the wrong sprays. But not a day goes by I don’t read a activists opinion that “if only the farmers could see what I see” (based on reading a few blogs on the internet). It annoys me to no end. If people really want to understand the environment, they would do well to also consult (and take seriously) the people who spend more time in and around the natural world than anybody and who have a greater a range of knowledge than most.
Rant off
@Brandon C – Good rant.
I definitely agree with your overall point, but not necessarily about cold-tolerant rice. I can think of lots of reasons apart from global climate trends to focus on cold tolerant varieties.
@E.M. – re: Snow – rarer still on the coast. But I was not around in the 40s. But we did get snow in San Diego in 68. Did not stick around, but it shocked most of us.
Brandon C
“In the end the farmer needs to do what works, . . . ”
Absolutely.
Farming-aye-right!
Same as seafarers – slightly different skill set – no veterinary, but certainly meteorology; avoiding 50 foot/15 meter waves – even in modern hi-tech ships, believe me – is a life-saver [it’s a ship-saver, so it’s a life-saver].
The sea doesn’t do hi-tech. It does waves. Mostly small, but a few – you could call them ship-killers – can be high and short.
I was on a ship in the North Sea [between the UK and Scandinavia/Holland. Ish] in 1984 when my ship fell into a hole in the sea. Trough to crest – certainly 75 feet/23 metres.
No injuries, but some setting in of plating on a ship that ‘will ride the 100-year wave’; it was about four years old.
There were three wave trains – from storms to the north, north-east and north-west, and we fell into a combines trough – and hit a combined wave. I was on the Bridge, at least 75 feet above the waterline, and we had a big green wall of water break over the Bridge. Buoyancy brought us back up – but there had been damage [and one minor injury – dislocated shoulder if I remember right.. Hey – thirty years . . . . .
I am seeking to get the ships my company manages to become Voluntary Observing Ships.
That works!
Auto
One of the reasons, among others, for pursuing cold tolerant plants is to improve the plants ability to be planted at an earlier date in the season, thus surviving that one or two day cold snap.
“While climate scientists have to blame cliamte change for everything…”
——————–
that some undetermined catastrophe could, perhaps, maybe, perchance, might, possibly happen at some uncertain point in the earth’s distant future while farmers wake up everyday having to earn a living.
See the difference?
Indeed, if farmers are wrong, we don’t eat. If scientists are wrong, they don’t eat.
But the paper makes a dishonest claim anyway. Most scientists (by far) have nothing to do with climate.
exactly!
those ON the land out in the weather proper sure dont support the warmist views round my way either.
Farmers have to live in the real world. Climate scientists have developed a little world of their own where the sun never sets and a mythical force heats the planet up from the -18C the same sun produces at the surface.
I believe the farmers.
You will note they try and ‘type farmers as short-sighted, just concerned with next year’s crop. Klueless Kalumny, I calls it.
Farmers should be scared of CO2 emissions.
Yearly bumper crops may drop food prices too much!
How condescending can you get. ‘We have to save these primitive farmers from their beliefs by taking care in the way we communicate the message’. Reminiscent of missionaries in Africa in the nineteenth century. They were selling snake oil too.
Still, it’s nice to see that the ‘concensus’ has dropped from 97% to ‘over 50%’.
What is it about atheists and their inability to keep themselves from flinging their poo where ever they go?
They need that as a common reference point with the farmers
Because there is no such thing as atheist. Karen Armstrong makes a compelling argument that humans are hard wired for religion. She points to the fact that every culture in every part of the world through out all of history has developed religion.
People who claim to be atheists are simply unaware of their deeply rooted religious beliefs. As a result, many of them are attracted to the religion of post-normal science. The behaviors we see from the post-normalists (a desired to kill the non-believes, a belief are sinners and that we are all going to hell if we don’t repent, a belief that their priests have divine knowledge, an insistence that only they know the true way etc).all are characteristics of un-evolved, primitive religions.
MarkW on November 12, 2014 at 6:11 am
“What is it about atheists and their inability to keep themselves from flinging their poo where ever they go?”
I’m a lifelong atheist and always tend to scepticism unless there is real evidence. We (atheists) are not a group or movement and there are as many different viewpoints as there are atheists. It is simply that most of us are not credulous though cynicism is common. I find that the ability to believe something without evidence is very dangerous.
So please don’t tar us all with the same brush.
you know, you dont have to be an atheist to dislike what missionaries do…just saying. For example, I don’t think evangelical christians like that islamic people recruit in our prisons…likewise muslims don’t take too well to evangelicals trying to convert islamic people to christianity.
everyone else’s religion is snake oil, so to speak…
MarkW “What is it about atheists…”
The word seems to mean two very different things: (1) anti-theist and (2) non-theist. Non-theists are harmless and simply don’t care about religion. They make no claim one way or another.
Anti-theists are a different story, they care a lot that you conform to their way of thinking and assert the non-existence of a supreme being, except of course for their own supreme being, the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This kind has dogma, groups, websites, takes donations, has preachers and evangelists (Dawkins, for instance) and is to religion what antimatter is to matter. This kind has Supreme Court blessing that atheism is a religion for First Amendment protections. It is a *belief*, not merely a non-belief.
Since nearly all humans need to believe *something* I have a feeling that the warmists that are trembling in fear the most have simply substituted the object of their belief. It is indeed the case that atheists are considerably more likely to be Warmists:
http://www.pewforum.org/2009/04/16/religious-groups-views-on-global-warming/
“Global warming is a new religion and blasphemy against that religion is not a laughing matter,” Lord Lawson has said, adding that “there is a great gap in Europe with the decline of any real belief in Marxism and any real belief in Christianity. This has filled the vacuum.”
http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2013/11/global-warming-and-religion
Keep in mind that “religion” has several distinct and nearly unrelated meanings. At the simplest, it is your beliefs, things you believe that are not proven to you (but also not usually disproven, for that would be something else, cognitive dissonance).
My comment at the start of this thread was because the message in both examples that I cited was ‘if you don’t believe us and change your ignorant ways, you are all going to hell in a hand cart’.
As for atheism, I am approaching eighty and since my teens have been agnostic over the existence of a supreme being. A couple of years ago I decided the probability of a supreme being existing is so low, and diminishing by the year as we learn more about the multiverse in which we live, I might as well get off the agnostic fence and get on with the remainder of my life. Becoming a born again atheist has been the most liberating experience of my life. I recommend it.
Please note that I have not spelt atheist with a capital. I haven’t joined another religion, just gained my freedom from a life time of unconsciously looking over my shoulder just in case I’m being judged by some supernatural being. I will still strive to live my life in a generous spirit, as I have always done. I really don’t need a Faith to do that.
Did this comment thread go off the rails? *Looks* Yep, thought so.
Knew that was gonna happen the moment I saw the part about missionaries.
Old ‘un,
Then what started it all? [Please don’t say ‘a random flutuation in nothingness’, or some such.]
Anyway, if you’re right, it’s been a big joke on billions of people who expect something, as they draw their terminal breath…
One thing must be said for Western religions: they have been a civilizing influence, and despite their faults, they are good for society. Yes, there were religious wars, and there are religious hypocrites. I don’t mean that. I mean that I would rather have a religious person for a neighbor than someone else. Western religions instill a conscience, and teaching children the Ten Commandments, while warning them about the seven deadly sins is a net benefit to mankind.
Most farmers I know are atheists or at least agnostic, very few are strongly religious. Be careful to not let your own beliefs cloud your perceptions of other groups. The idea that rural areas are full of good christians is nothing but a false stereotype.
Since I studied for the ministry in a fundamentalist religion, I know a little about religion and since I am now an Objectivist, I know a little bit about atheism. You cannot lump all atheists. I firmly believe that the family is the foundation of a civil society, that rational self-interest is the only morality which comports with human nature (and is our survival mechanism) that governments should be formed ONLY to prevent the use of force or fraud between men, that government is best when limited by the Constitution (nearly the perfect document – except there should have been a separation between economics and state); and that man MAY NOT use force or fraud against his fellow man except in self-defense, that ALL human interactions should be voluntary and to mutual benefit. This is the only way to make progress spiritually and economically (the “spiritual” advancement is the most important aspect of the two). That man is “hard wired” to want answers and has the capacity to be rational so as to discover the answers; that religion was necessary to explain things when man was ignorant, but is a poor substitute for actual knowledge. In a civil society you may believe what you wish, but cannot force others to think, that if you wish to convert others to your point of view you must persuade with rational argument, not compel. I have nothing but disgust for the leftists who seek to destroy religious liberty and shut down public discourse, even though I do not believe in an all powerful, all knowing god. The morality that religion teaches is contradictory and irrational, even though there is a fundamental morality, it does not comport with a rational morality: for instance, “Thou shalt not kill” does not work in regards to your right to self-defense. I have to get back to work, but read Ayn Rand’s “The Virtue of Selfishness” to see a rational morality.
Virtues: Independence, Rationality, Integrity, Honesty, Productiveness, Pride (I may have left some out). ALL VIRTUES WHICH NO ONE SHOULD HAVE ARGUMENT AGAINST. And she ties each to the dictates of reality and reason. It puts the ten commandments and the golden rule to shame!
Take the pledge: “I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never be a slave to another man, nor allow another man to be a slave to me”.
“what started it all?”
Does the belief in a magical all powerful being creating everything out of nothing, sound less silly than the nature of a “big bang” exploding out of singularity?
How about this. Since time is not linear in a quantum world, In the end, the quantum sensing nature of our brain (quantum state says observing something forces it to take a state) allows the universe to keep expanding and changing based on what we see. And since time doesn’t flow back to foreward in quantum theory, we are solidifying the past as we invent ways to try and observe it through proxy. Yes this is just a fanciful concept, but no more outrageous than the all powerful magic being idea.
Now I am an atheist who says let people believe what they want about spirituality. But it I do get defensive in the face of “your silly to believe in the big bang” comments posted by magical being enthusiast.
Now can we get this site off of a theological conversation, that will accomplish nothing since God cannot be proven or disproved?
Where did the singularity come from?
Brandon C
November 12, 2014 at 11:30 am
I am qualified to comment on rural atheists, having been born & raised in & still living in a farming community.
Oregon is the least religious state in the Union, yet still the majority of farmers & ranchers here in its agricultural NE are religious. Some deeply so. My dad was unusual in being an atheist, but he was born in Portland to an engineer. My mother, a devout Baptist, like her father & grandmother, was born here. Her Down East grandfather however was possibly agnostic, or at least a Unitarian, like many other Yankees (ie, New Englander). Her other grandfather was a Presbyterian Scottish immigrant, married to a Presbyterian Scots-Irish refugee from the devastation of post-Civil War Tennessee. However my best friend recently retired from ranching, logging, construction and war, is an atheist.
Based upon my experience of other agricultural areas of the US, I’d say that most farmers are religious.
milodonharlani
Having also been born and raised, and still living in a rural farming community, I feel as qualified to comment on rural religious beliefs. I have also travelled through texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, north and south Dakota, and Montana doing custom harvesting I cannot say I ever saw really high degree of religious fervor in the rural areas (indeed we didn’t find any sunday shutdowns during harvest). In Canada it is even lower.
That is not to say nobody goes to church, but I didn’t claim that either. And there are areas with higher and lower religious beliefs. But the idea that everything in all rural areas is tied to church does not hold up in my experiences. And there is no shortage of atheist and agnostic farmers.
Brandon,
According to my experience & the 2014 Gallup poll of religiosity, the Great Plains states in which you custom harvest are among the most religious outside of Utah & the South, & all score above the national average, as rated by Gallup:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/125066/State-States.aspx
mpaul,
Of course there are atheists, always have been (and who cares about proclamations from Karen Armstrong – who has also said that Muhammed is a prophet for our times?). For example, check out Dante; he reserved a special place in hell for unbelievers, who clearly rankled him.
Reminiscent of ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber calling the American voter stupid: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/12/another-tape-surfaces-obamacare-architect-calling-american-people-stupid/
People who read tea leaves vs. people who grow tea leaves.
My money is on the growers.
Nice one.
+1 for sure.
Back those who are out in the weather [which becomes climate . . . . . . ]
Auto
Put another way, would you rather depend for your sustenance on a farmer or a climate scientist?
IF farmers had listened to the climate scientists they would have spent billions preparing for the promised us warmer winters (IPCC et al). UK councils listened to the climastrologists at the Met Office and prepared for warmer winters. Many ran out of grit and a few people died unfortunately.
DON’T LISTEN TO THE CLIMSTROLOGISTS. They are no good. They have a funding interest and not your interests. Keep on farming the way you ‘feel’ and use your instincts. It’s no worse than the failed models or a chimp throwing darts.
“More than 90 percent of the scientists and climatologists surveyed said they believed climate change was occurring, with more than 50 percent attributing climate change primarily to human activities.”
..’more than 50%’ would indicate 50-52% by my book. So that ‘97% consensus’ gets a fail.
Nice catch.
That’s an excellent catch indeed. No one (even skeptics) denies that the climate is evolving over time, as it always has and always will. For only 50% to claim that global warming is “caused” by humans means that we, on the skeptic side, have made significant progress with the mainstream science community.
I deny it. Name me one climate on earth that has changed in the last 100 years.
I don’t think it’s so much that we’ve made progress as it is that Cook’s ‘study’ was a crock of BS from the get-go.
Gamecock
“I deny it. Name me one climate on earth that has changed in the last 100 years.”
I’ve brought this up before. I don’t deny that the Earth has warmed on average since the Maunder Minimum, but no one can provide a single example of actual climate change. There has been no change as significant as the plethora of examples of actual changing ecosystems due to climate change in the past.
The Sahara changed from a desert into a grassland within just a few hundred years and then back again into a desert in just a few hundred years. The high plains of central North America were near desert conditions with migrating dunes just 500 years ago and then like flipping a switch the climate became much wetter and they became the grasslands we see today. Are we observing any of this today? I certainly cannot come up with any examples. Todays catastrophic climate change is only noticeable in graphs of speculative data which show temperature change in tenths of a degree.
Good catch indeed. Does anyone know what the “more than 50 percent attributing climate change primarily to human activities” is exactly??
The consensus was always a fabrication.
According to the chart it was 53% of 19 climatologists. 37% responded it was a combination of natural and human influences.
I am convinced mankind’s activities have changed the local and regional environment and climate, principally by land-use changes. The question that needs to be asked is “do you think the climate is changing due to additional CO2?” If they answer yes, the next question. becomes, “For better or worse?”
Hmm, different worldviews.
Our biggest farmer, biggest commitment, is also our last year around commercial fisherman. He fishes while the ice is light enough for his boat to get around. Indeed, we have a traditional technology of ice-creepers that can pull the nets from one ice hole to the next, allowing nets to be set and retrieved through too thick ice.
I imagine that work ethic and commitment will carry over from harvesting fish to harvesting corn and wheat. And his Burbot is called poorman’s lobster for good reason.
http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/Home/Topics/sustainablefish/Details.aspx?PostID=1794&FishType=44
the irony is lobster used to be a poor man’s food. go figure.
In Chile, avocado is poor mans’s butter…..
The rich found out it tasted good! As a kid, we use to steam a bushel of crabs on Friday (Catholics). And sit on the porch and pick them most of the night. Why? They were dirt cheap.
Want to price a bushel today?
While the farmer is out harvesting a bumper crop the climate scientist would be back in the computer lab kicking the machine that promised him crop failure from drought and flooding simultaneously.
I am amazed by the condescending tone of this statement “Farmers are by necessity very focused on short-term weather, in-season decisions and managing immediate risks,” she said. “They’re thinking about when they can get in their field to do what they need to do, rather than looking 20 to 30 years down the road.” They may be focused on next year, but they remember the climate for as long as they have been farming. So they know that the current temperature and weather is nothing new.
More than that. Why would anyone care about the climate if it wasn’t for the weather?
If you can predict the climate but not the weather that you actually get then maybe you ought to consider the value of your definition of climate.
The guy has obviously not had to deal with paying for land over 15-30 years after having shelled out >$7000/acre. The next crop is important, but you’ve got to make it over the long-haul too.
Farmers are just simpletons who can’t see past the end of their noses, said the brilliant climastrologist.
Elitists, always with the insults. They literally just speak in ad homs.
A farmer is much more interested in yearly and monthly variations which easily hide 0.1°C / decade change in worldwide average even if it happened to happen several decades a row. A farmer’s career might last 40 years in a good case, which means they have little to no possibility to see statistically significant changes attributable to global climate change. If about half of the 0.1°C is man-made, then it is natural that it is not a concern by itself.
Farmers have a problem with weather and they worry about variability, but what is the AGW to do with it? Not provable IMO.
At least in the US, it’s common for farmers to work the same land as their ancestors, and to have grown up on it. Therefore, they are familiar not only with the weather during their own 70 to 90 years of life, but at least anecdotally, & often with records, too, during the prior 100, 200, 300 or 400 years.
My family has farmed the same land in Oregon & Washington since the 1850s, in Ohio since the 1810s, in Maine since the 1780s, in Massachusetts since the 1630s & in Virginia & Maryland since the early 1600s.
And when farmers have to deal with October 1st one year at +20 C and beautiful and next year at -20 C and a foot of snow, small trend changes of .5 to .7 C over a hundred years is irrelevant. The swing into extreme weather is nothing but and attempt to turn an irrelevant statistic abstract into something relevant, but people aren’t buying it. We all have family histories that include tons of extreme weather events and changing climate. Nobody who went through the dirty 30’s thought the 90’s or 00’s was extreme.
Another point is that farmers are observing the weather , day in, day out, for many many years. They pay close attention to it as their livelihood depends on it. Clearly, in their minds, they have not seen any changes which cause them to think there is a problem – ie any variability they have observed is all “statistically normal”, based on their experience.
Maybe the climate scientists could learn a thing or two from the scientists , instead of vice versa. That’s my conclusion from this article. Of course, that wouldn’t keep the grant money flowing.
I had a similar thought, but along the lines of the tenure of the average farmer versus that of the average climate scientist.
My thoughts exactly. Years are not brethren as they say here, they are different, as days. The pressing talk about averages is weird, since farming is much about handling variability.
Sure farmers pay attention to short term forecast, although none of them seem to think anything more than a few days should be taken seriously. But they also notice general trends as well. It is not lost on them if springs are coming sooner in general, even if some years are not in line with the overall trend. Just like our area there has now been a trend recently in later springs and earlier winters. We also noted earlier springs and later winters in the 90’s, but they lost the farmers confidence when they kept claiming we are getting warmer and drier, when every single farmer could see that was no longer the case for a while. It is ignorant to think only a climate science can spot a trend longer than a few months.
If you open the link to ‘Table of complete survey results’, you can have some fun with the numbers.
It states that: 4,778 farmers were contacted, but only 26% responded. This means that 3,536 farmers (74%), when invited to take part in a ‘Climate Change Survey’, replied “I am so sorry, but I’m afraid I am far too busy to take part” (or words to that effect). So this leaves just 1,242 farmers who agreed to take part.
It gets worse . . . .
Of the 1,242 farmers who did take part, only 8% of them (that’s 99 farmers) agreed to the statement “Climate Change is occurring and it is caused mostly by human activities.”
By careful deduction, this means that, of the 1,242 farmers who did take part, the remaining 92% of them (that’s 1,143 farmers) said “It’s a load of old tosh”.
Conclusion: Total farmers contacted = 4,778. Those who agree with AGW = just 99 of them (2%). Cue Josh.
Josh should DEFINITELY do something with that. This is just waaaaay too good of an opportunity.
Yeah but,
when you homogenize those 99 farmers across the 4778 farmers, you get an overwhelming consensus.
Definitely. More study is needed to determine the best climate communication strategy for farmers to use to educate the obstinate ivory tower eggheads about the existence of climate data and trends that aren’t fabricates by models.
JJ
I love your conclusions to this study. Farmers are some of the most helpful people out there.
If you think about it, farmers spend their entire lives predicting and dealing with weather/climate change because their business depends on it. They can’t afford to be wrong. Climate scientists, on the other hand…
However, for the scientists who think they are better than the farmers, here’s a challenge. Predict next year’s climate from spring to fall and tell the farmers when they should plant, if/when they will need to irrigate more/less, when to harvest etc. Since the scientists possess sophisticated computer models of the climate, this should be an easy challenge, particularly since they would only have to integrate their models over one year of real time (versus the decades in most climate simulations). Numerical errors would be much smaller also due to the shorter simulation time periodic. Easy! Let’s see if the scientists will take the challenge…
+1
Just so. It is called skin-in-the-game that farmers have. They survive or die, economically in any case, based on their foresight. N. N. Taleb warns us away from witch doctors and prognosticators without doxastic commitment.
Im liberaleese, skin-in-the-game means: You give your hard-earned money to them by force of necessary, so they can fairly distribute it to someone more deserving of your money then you, after taking their cut off the top of course.
The study scientists miss the point.
When a farmer encounters an late spring or early fall, it is a major upheaval to their plans to get a crop in and harvested. It is not only a different number on a spreadsheet, it is a major event in their lives, and they remember it quite well the next year and year after.
Farmers in my area are all talking about ways to get in the field in the spring as early as possible, made worse by cooler and wetter springs than we had a decade ago, because they can no longer count on long warm and dry falls for harvest like we had 10 years ago. Climate scientists insist our area is getting hotter, longer growing seasons and drier.
Now according to these guys, farmers are so concentrated on each years harvest, they can’t possibly see a long term trend like that. Of course in our real world if we had listened to the climate scientists we would be losing more and more crop every year. But it is still just that they are not communicating their wrong predictions properly and the farmers are too dumb to see the climate they see outside isn’t real.
It is a good thing the cool, wet fall didn’t happen. The farmers will be thrilled to hear the loss of money they experienced from having the crops rotting in the wet fields, didn’t happen. After all, when they homogenize and adjust the data, they can prove we were quite warm and dry. It is just selfish for farmers to not believe them.
Here in the West Country of England theres an old rustic saying…..Red sky at night, farmers delight…red sky in the morning,,,the Met Office supercomputer is on fire…
SomersetSteve, up here in Lincolnshire, ancient farmer’s sayings include:
“If March is cast as windy, with April showers forming, if May is mild and barmy, it could be global warming”.
and . . . .
“Whence thrice or more years harvest has yielded no charm, turn all your fields into a huge wind farm”.
I am sure Adge would have been able to come up with an appropriate song, possibly involving combine harvesters meeting ‘scientists’… 🙂
Between that event and if LLNL would just slide off suddenly into Pacific Ocean, those two events could save humanity from a lemming-like demise.
Could you grab me some popcorn and a beer.
Humans have been farming for 10000 years, more or less. So-called climate scientists have been at it for what, 20-30 years. One group’s livelihood depends on an accurate assessment of weather and climate; the other suckles at the taxpayer teat regardless of result. I think I know who to believe.
Farmers have been living by the “climate” for thousands of years. Scientists have only been studying it for a few.
Farmers are closely related to engineers, modern scientists to priests.
Eh… I’d put the alarmist subset of scientists on par with priests, for sure. But I’d put anyone else who feels the call to spread the CAGW gospel in that category, too.
I know… it’s just that you only ever hear the ones who make the most noise.
Surely, priests are closely related to engineers, modern scientists to theologians?
No, not “modern” scientists, “climate” scientists. There are many good modern scientists. There is a quote I saw the other day that I think is appropriate here, but don’t know who to attribute it to.
Very good Phil
me too, Phil
Bingo! You got it.
So… they’re saying that belief in CAGW has the same roots as one’s choice of any other religion?
Apparently, farmers are not being paid to believe in false computer models.
Anyone having the site load ?
I have been having issues as well. Appears to be hanging on loading an ad.
Ditto, The Telegraph’s the same – uses same ‘pubads’ advertising steam as WUWT
If you set up your own DNS server (or set your windows box to filter out blacklisted DNS lookup sites) you can block all sorts of ads, and their delays… https://duckduckgo.com/?q=DNS+blacklist+setup
The first line of this article is very misleading. To be much more accurate, it should read:
“People who work for themselves for a living, and people who depend on Government grants for every aspect of the professional lives, hold deeply different views on climate change and its possible causes, a study by Purdue and Iowa State universities shows.
I’ll go with the Farmers… they are up close and personal with weather and climate and need a keen sense of it.
As a kid I grew up in a farm town. Every August there was a 2 week window for ‘possible rain’. (California is almost entirely dry all summer long). Mostly the town grew peaches and rice. For peaches, that two weeks was critical. No rain was fine (irrigated land). Light rain was OK (evaporated before brown rot could start on the almost ripe peaches). Heavy rain was OK (cool enough and wet but not humid that brown rot was mild or missing). But Moderate rain followed by overcast and warm was Rot City. Every summer there was a giant August crap shoot…
Guess wrong, you could lose an entire year of crop.
You better bet the talk was all about the weather. With old timers talking about how it was last like this year some decades back…
The other bit? There were limited crop dusting facilities. You had to sign up somewhat early to be assured they could dust sulphur for the rot… Too late they would already be booked up. But dusting would take a large part of your profit… especially if the rain didn’t come…
Oddly, folks were surprisingly good at guessing right. (Often the ‘losers’ would get help from neighbors with sprayers that could be towed through the fields… plus some teasing…)
I started watching very good weather reports out of Chico California ( my town was 30 miles south) and that was the start of my education (at about 8 years old…) on the jet stream, frontal systems, et. al. The Weather was a prime feature on Farm Country news and the Weatherman was often more important than the “anchor” (who I barely remember…) They went into some depth about the hows and whys of weather systems.
So given a choice of folks with a lifetime of skywatching and a large need to get it right, vs some Climate Computer Toy Makers… I’ll go with the weathermen and farmers. No doubt about it.
Oldie but a goodie; farmers:
‘Said Hanrahan’
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.
The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.
“It’s looking crook,” said Daniel Croke;
“Bedad, it’s cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad.”
“It’s dry, all right,” said young O’Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.
And so around the chorus ran
“It’s keepin’ dry, no doubt.”
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
“The crops are done; ye’ll have your work
To save one bag of grain;
From here way out to Back-o’-Bourke
They’re singin’ out for rain.
“They’re singin’ out for rain,” he said,
“And all the tanks are dry.”
The congregation scratched its head,
And gazed around the sky.
“There won’t be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
There’s not a blade on Casey’s place
As I came down to Mass.”
“If rain don’t come this month,” said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak –
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week.”
A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed a piece of bark.
“We want an inch of rain, we do,”
O’Neil observed at last;
But Croke “maintained” we wanted two
To put the danger past.
“If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.
And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.
It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o’-Bourke.
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”
And stop it did, in God’s good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.
And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o’er the fence.
And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey’s place
Went riding down to Mass.
While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.
“There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
Their sons grew up to be climate scientists.
Now we’ll all be rooned.
1. Farmers respond to what happens in their fields – they don’t respond to computer programmes.
2. Farmers are not driven by raising Government grant money – they are motivated by selling their produce at market.
3. Farmers may not know the exact temperature data, but they have a pretty good idea of what crops grew where the past 300 years in America. For them, minor changes in temperature are less important than significant shifts in last spring frost date or first fall frost date.
4. Most climate scientists work indoors in University buildings – they might have different views if they worked for 30 years in the great outdoors.
5. Farmers know that the hydrology cycle has far more variables than rainfall and temperature: it has water storage capacity of topsoil, wind-based evaporation from topsoil etc etc.
6. Farmers mostly work in rural areas, whereas most temperature records are found in relatively urbanised environments.
It would be most interesting if there were a 100 year documentation of appropriate climate indicators from those regions where farmers work. This would indicate whether they were right to disagree with climate scientists or not.
I wonder whether the world’s farmers will unite to collect data on rural farms globally, to produce a rural data set capable of challenging the airport data set so over-relied upon to date?
“Climate science could also be better communicated by using intermediaries such as Extension educators and agricultural advisers to translate data in ways that are most relevant to growers, she said.”
No matter what they say, how is it that it always sounds so Orwellian??? What on Earth is an “Extension” educator when he or she is at home? I’m off to Room 101!
From Wiki, they sound like a good thing.
It is the sort of activity that led to that good green revolution that fed the 3rd world.
Of course, if they are sharing latest research into seed varieties they are doing more good than worrying about the weather in 50 years time. But don’t bash them all for this reference.
Extensions (usually Agricultural Extensions) are like field offices for many agricultural colleges/universities. They are in the trenches for collecting data and running field trials/experiments in the real world on real farms with real farmers. A person doing this is often titled “Agricultural Extension Agent”, or Ag Agent. Every county in the Midwest has an Ag Agent. In Texas they are part of the Texas A&M system. They probably don’t have time to do computer modeling…..
Ag extension is a service on the local level of state land-grant universities. The field station down the road from me is an example. It tests seed varieties developed at Oregon State & Washington State. But there are also agents who spread the word about new developments to farmers, many of whom are graduates of college ag, ag econ or business programs.
I’ll bet most if not all of the 8% of farmers who attribute change to humans are in various ways anomalous to the rest of the farmers.
New to farming, misrepresenting themselves as farmers, technically farmers but not really, blatant infiltrators, lousy farmers, own a small parcel of farmland but don’t run a farm on it, etc.
How’s that for being cynically skeptical?
IMO the level of dishonesty throughout the AGW movement demands that I assume the worst.
I wouldn’t say that.
But I bet their farms are organic.
“I’ll bet most if not all of the 8% of farmers who attribute change to humans are in various ways anomalous to the rest of the farmers.”
Or maybe they thought they could cash in on the AGW prize too?
A little Fed dough would be nice to help offset all of those horrific effects of warming, no?
Subsidy farmers (wind mills and solar?_
Some time back I asked on this site whether the term
‘climate change’ was intended to describe a Cause or an
Effect. No illumination was forthcoming. And yet until
this point is settled much of the discussion about ‘climate
change’ will be so much hot air.
As misused among the CACA ranks, “climate change” is short hand for “catastrophic anthropogenic climate alarmism”. So I guess alarmists regard man-made “climate change” as an effect of human activity, with dire consequences for people or the planet, or something. They have to engage in subterfuge because there is no scientific basis for their scare-mongering.
Rex,
You have asked a question that can not have an answer. So don’t be surpised if you get none.
“Climate Change” will have a dozen meanings to a dozen different folks. For me, it means a description of a geological artifact of millions of years depth. An ‘effect’ (sort of… really just description). For folks like Hansen and Mann it is a mantra, to be chanted until bliss (and the next grant or “Nobel” prize) arrives. For some it is a “cause” in that they think people burning fuel “cause” CO2 that “causes” shifts of climate. For most folks here, as skeptics, it is a propaganda tool of the True Believers, neither causal nor all that descriptive (though there are frequent statements that it was descriptive in the past as ‘climate always changes’).
So asking for ONE meaning to a heavily propagandized term is just not going to be productive for you.
Yeah, the TrooBs Tribe. Raiders of the public purse. They are going to be so surprised when they run out of OPM (Other People’s Money). And farmers.
The definition of “Climate Change” is simple:
1. Global Warming is obviously not happening. Even the climastrologists know that.
2. They needed a better chatch phrase, so they went with “Climate Change due to Global Warming”.
3. The “Due To” is completely obfuscated, but it is the underlying reference.
4. The reworded boogeyman “Climate Change” is then used to refer to anything and everything and is therefore pervasive, powerful and intentionally undefined.
5. Ta-Da! Failed CAGW becomes: cold-hot, wet-dry, cloudy-clear skies, windy-no wind, snow-no snow, etc. EVERYTHING, LITERALLY EVERYTHING is due to “Climate Change”. Did you shave this monring? Yep, due to “Climate Change”.
Eric
Actually Rex, it’s REALLY simple.
* Climate Change is the effect.
* YOU are the cause.
Any questions??? (Now, PAY YOU CLIMATE TAX!) /sarc
First, understand that the AGWers don’t WANT it settled.
Rex,
I realize I’m late to this post but you still might see this so here it is:
In the following quote, note the bold text (mine):
http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization_history.shtml
“Today the IPCC’s role is as defined in Principles Governing IPCC Work, “…to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, . . .”
The word “induced” answers your question. The UN and anyone associated with it is, by wording of the Principles Governing IPCC Work, honor-bound to present climate change as caused by humans. Others that do not get paid by the UN, a supporting government, NGO, and so on, may tag along. These folks have a “cause.” [Seeding the sky with silver iodide or the oceans with iron, or other such things, are not part of the equation.]
Others that are interested in Earth’s systems, say the oceans and the atmosphere, that do not accept the Principles Governing IPCC Work go by other names that, if used, will send this comment to the slammer.
As usual, this study seeks to draw broad conclusions from a very narrow base, like polls preceeding the November US elections, with equally dubious results.
A broader measurement of farmer sentiment on climate would be to survey seed providers on what varieties are selling. Farmers anticipating a longer, warmer growing season would favor maximum yield but risk a crop that fails to mature before it can be harvested. Those expecting a shorter, cooler season would choose lower-yield but faster maturing varieties to avoid frost losses. Recent WUWT articles on the impact of early snow on grain harvests in Ukraine and the Urals illustrate this dilemma.
Grain producers “bet the farm” on every harvest, so their experience and intuition is far more reliable than any climate model.
Where I live, only a few new varieties of soft white wheat tested at the local field experiment station yield best, regardless of expected weather conditions. We’ve never had a crop failure, but winter kill could definitely be a problem this year, with generally delayed planting from late rains, followed by the present severe cold snap without snow cover. If need be, we’ll plant barley in the spring & take the financial hit.
“More than 90 percent of the scientists and climatologists surveyed said they believed climate change was occurring, with more than 50 percent attributing climate change primarily to human activities.”
Am I the only one here who is sick and tired of these climatologist dim bulbs treating a changing climate like something that isn’t supposed to be happening? Are they actually dim enough to think that the farmers and the general public don’t believe that a changing climate is normal?
The deceitfulness and scientific illiteracy underlying this issue keeps rearing its ugly head time and time again whenever this question gets asked. I have been following this propaganda for some time now and understand full well that the issue is really one of how sensitive the climatic system is to the GGE of CO2 and how much CO2 in the atmosphere was contributed by human activities.
Yes, it is truly condescending to ask these farmers if climate change is happening as if the definition of the phrase or the dynamic nature of the climate itself has somehow supposed to have changed. The arrogance of these dim bulb climatologists is enough to leave me tearing out what little hair I have left on my head.
They should hope that they never get around to asking me that question because they will get a earful if they do.
Unfortunately, the livelihood of climate scientists does not depend on being correct.
Farmers however simply cannot afford to be wrong, hence their pragmatic and skeptical approach.
This article pretty much underlines that difference, I know who I’d side with 😉
The conversation SHOULD TURN POLITICAL whenever climate change is brought up. THE MANMADE CLIMATE CHANGE MEME IS A POLITICAL AGENDA, as a trace gas at any concentration in the atmosphere cannot drive the climate. Their greenhouse model, which has CO2 and water vapor warming the climate, is junk science, with not a shred of defensible evidence to defend this huge fraud.
Their model has CO2 and water vapor in the upper tropical troposphere emitting IR radiation toward Earth’s surface and warming it. With the upper troposphere at -17 deg C and the surface (always warmer) at 15 deg C, there is no way that this cold region can warm a hot region. It is thermodynamically impossible.
CO2 and water vapor are actually radiative gases that are saturated during daylight with IR, both emitting and absorbing equally. At night, with no incoming radiation, these gases serve to convert heat energy in the atmosphere to IR radiation, which is then lost to space. This explains quite nicely why the air cools so rapidly after sundown and why breezes pick up so quickly in the moving shadowed areas.
“But increases in weather variability and extreme weather events could lower crop yields.”. Where is the proof that increases in CO2 will lead to increases in weather variability and extreme weather events?
Yeah, you wanna see someone do a fast shuffle and change of subject, say you hope for GW because when the poles warm, the planet is more homogenous and there is blander, nicer, calmer weather everywhere.
Breaking news, China and US strike a deal.
Obama quote: “As the world’s two largest economies, energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gases, we have a special responsibility to lead the global effort against climate change,”
Good luck with that President Obama, stopping the climate from changing you may find to be your biggest challenge next to exerting massivle political influence over the behaviour of oceans.
Ok I’ll read the article on farmers now.
This is all blur, waffle and drivel.
Climate change has NEVER STOPPED! What game are these people playing at. Furthermore, scientists and farmers beliefs don’t matter much. As for “50 percent attributing climate change primarily to human activities” is a bit much now. If humans never existed climate change WOULD CERTAINLY be happening now. Maybe it’s because global warming stopped and they’re getting desperate.
Is this what happens when you don’t ‘believe’?
26 November 2013
World agricultural output continues to rise, despite dire predictions of decline
23 October 2014
Newsbytes: World food production at record levels
7 November 2014
“Warmest Year” Brings Record Harvests For UK
What about ‘climate change’ caused by PDO, AMO, ENSO, etc.? This is so silly.
Maybe it’s because they observe the ever changing climate and seasons over many decades and they read good old FARMERS ALMANAC and they can see the climate scare episodes of the past.
http://www.almanac.com/sites/new.almanac.com/files/1895_cvr1_0.png
Ok…once again, back to reality. Take corn, for example.
The “growth range limits” regarding temperature are 41degF to 95degF.
Optimal growth ranges for daytime temps are 77-91degF, and optimal nighttime temps are 62-74degF.
Obviously, if you’re growing corn commercially, you likely live in an area that provides those ranges of temps, or close to it.
So if, and that’s a GIANT IF, the alarmists are right, and temps were to increase 2deg in say the next 50yrs…
So what. The corn just doesn’t care, period. Especially given that some years will be warmer, and some years will be cooler, just as they’ve always been.
Amazing…
In fact, you can grow corn pretty well outside those ranges – you just have to breed hybrids which are adapted to those conditions.
http://www.cornhillnursery.com/zonemap.html
Oh, that’s already being done – what a surprise!
“66 percent of corn producers surveyed said they believed climate change was occurring, with 8 percent pinpointing human activities as the main cause.”
“Scientists and climatologists are saying climate change is happening, and agricultural commodity groups and farmers are saying they don’t believe that.”
Okay, which is it? Or is this just Orwellian doublespeak?
I saw that too but decided not to be so cruel today.
“66 percent of corn producers WHO RESPONDED…”
There…fixed it.
I think she missed one factor. It’s called funding for Climastrology. It’s enough to make anyone believe in unicorns and fairy tales. 😉
This is the real cause of extreme weather trends caused by CC which has failed to materialize. It’s the cause of global warming which has not occurred in over 18 years. It’s the cause of rising sea levels which have been generally rising for well over 12,000 years. It’s the cause of colder NH winters (and warmer too, why not). And so on…………………………..
To tackle ‘climate change’ simply stop funding Climastrology and close down the IPCC.
I resent the direct implication that farmers are not scientists – I have rarely met a modern farmer in North America, Europe or Australia that didn’t have at least a BSc and more commonly a Masters.
Margaret Smith wrote “So please don’t tar us all with the same brush”
So long as you are a group called “us” its members can indeed be tarred with the same brush.
Michael 2 on November 12, 2014 at 8:23 am
Margaret Smith wrote “So please don’t tar us all with the same brush”
“So long as you are a group called “us” its members can indeed be tarred with the same brush.”
That’s too silly to deserve an answer.
Tonight, on TV the WWF have a begging ad on describing the plight of polar bears AND penguins due to huge ice loss. A mother bear huddles with her cubs and penguins adrift on a floating pics of ice.
ROB SEZ I resent the direct implication that farmers are not scientists
Well, I resent the assymetry between “scientists” on the one side and “corn producers” on the other. One very specific kind of “farmer” and a general catch-all lable for academics which may or may not include psychologists, sociologists, political “scientists”, economists, ecologists, construction engineers…
Not worth the electrons to put on my screen
Good point – probably sexed up for the press release after being extrapolated to death by the social scientists doing the survey in the first place. But hey, it sells newspapers….
Also note that “Corn Farmers” are focused on Corn. It has a specific failure to grow well at high temperatures at a critical part of the development cycle. Other plants not so much… (Never met a tomato that was unhappy with more heat… nor beans (especially tepary beans that grow wild in the desert south west) nor…)
http://www.thecropsite.com/news/8827/isu-developing-high-yielding-heatresistant-corn-variety
So find a plant with a particular sensitivity, then focus on it… Kind of like making ‘dry land rice’ (that exists) or working on cool climate watermellon…
Rice farmers are still working on better cold tolerance…. Barley grows very well in quite cold places. Tepary beans love the desert. Maybe we ought to have a paper look at better ‘cold and wet’ tolerance for beans…
http://shop.nativeseeds.org/collections/tepary-beans
Now it took me close to 3 years to get these to grow well for me. Finally figured out that I needed to plant them in crap sandy soil, with no added water (California..) in the hottest part of my space AND LEAVE THEM ALONE with only hand weeding. I was “killing them with love” and way too much water and ‘soil tilt’…
So think at Tepary Bean might show the need for a LOT more Global Warming and Drought as the desired outcome? Compare and contrast with corn… likes it warm, but not TOO warm…. and doesn’t do well with drought. (though there is a nice Indian type with a tap root that does handle drought… it’s very hard to find.)
At any rate, the use of “corn farmers” is a cherry pick for a crop with a particular temperature profile and a need for a specific ‘slightly lower than present peak’ temperature profile in some states.
Rice will grow anywhere. However, it is easier to grow in wet climates because flooding the fields kills weeds, but not the rice plant.
Those aren’t scientists, they’re Post Modern Scientists. PMS models don’t actually have to work, and they don’t. In the language of science, their models, which were conjectures about the time of AR1, have failed to fit the paleo data, and global temperature data has fallen below the lower bound of their predictions for a climate sensitivity to manmade CO2. The data invalidates their models, rendering them off the scale of science.
The problem is not farmers, the media, and politicians – the troglodytes — vs. science. Its the elementary wisdom to learn from experience vs. PMS “scientists”– the Popperites, the self-proclaimed scientists – who only score falsifications but never successes.
So there’s yet another CAGW propaganda piece:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/wobbling-on-climate-change.html?_r=0
Where Piers J. Sellers claims that “..if you have no faith in the predictive capability of climate models, you should also discard your faith in weather forecasts…”
But isn’t that just the point? That if climate models were accurate they could make at least rough weather forecasts more than 5-10 days out. But they can’t. If climate prognosticators could make reliable seasonal forecasts that were of value to farmers, they will have won their argument as far as farmers are concerned. But they can’t.
“The survey results highlight the division between scientists and farmers over climate change and the challenges in communicating climate data and trends in non-polarizing ways, Prokopy said.”
Seems to me the farmers have the tough job getting the “experts” away from their Play Stations and out of their ivory towers to have a look at the real world and listen to the real experts.
How did “extreme weather” get to be part of the package, along with “ocean acidification”, now that “global warming” isn’t playing so well?
Not only farmers but most people over 50 know that the WX is not getting more “extreme” than in past decades. Even real climatologists don’t see the weather getting more extreme or variable due to whatever warming has been observed since 1977. Less extreme between the tropics & the poles makes for less severe & frequent storms, not more.
milodonharlani, Climastrologists know this. They are concerned about their funding drying up so they make up stories about short-term extreme weather without taking it through peer review. Then they have to show it’s man who caused it. Not easy at all as we only need to go back into time to see a correlation breakdown. Droughts west of the Mississippi, floods, etc.
So in sum the isolated lab rat model runners have “real” knowledge while the reality based reality experiencing farmers are a bunch of short sighted dumb asses who are blinded by their “values” and personal politics.
Hilarious. Words fail. Unbelievable.
Reading this really made me cringe. The scientists had a prime opportunity to learn from people who have to depend on the Climate for their livelihoods. But from how this was written it’s obvious they were to busy preaching the faith to unbelievers to listen.
There is a reason farmers are some of the folks least likely to listen to all this Climate Crisis nonsense. Most farms here in Indiana have been in the same family for generations. They know what the Climate has done in the past. And their not impressed by predictions of doom a hundred years from now by people who can’t get it right for 10 years later.
Fabulous! At the end of the article:
Can’t get better than that!
“Farmers are by necessity very focused on short-term weather, in-season decisions and managing immediate risks,” she said. “They’re thinking about when they can get in their field to do what they need to do, rather than looking 20 to 30 years down the road.”
Huh? I can’t speak for every farmer, but in timber, the time horizon is measured in decades, not years. I suspect other family farms are run using similar long-sighted forecasts meant to protect wealth two generations hence.
You want a difficult-to-predict short-term challenge requiring short-term planning to avoid long-term losses? Try the infection rate and distribution path for Ebola.
If you use the results from this table in the study –
https://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2014/prokopy-climatetable.pdf
You can create a weighted average of the the survey responses to show a most remarkable result:
46% SCIENTISTS AND CLIMATOLOGISTS SURVEYED DO NOT BELIEVE CLIMATE CHANGE IS “CAUSED MOSTLY BY HUMAN ACTIVITIES”.
That is the “money shot”.
Unfortunately, science has taken a decided turn to democratic conventions. The majority have voted for catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. Perhaps the administration and agenda will change with the next election.
I like the way the authors separate “Climatologist” from “Scientist”. LOL.
The authors also could have reported 97% of ag workers believe climate change is occurring. That’s what the results say, but the authors chose to frame the results in terms of the illuminati vs the ignorant.
It’s hard to convince the general population to allow the EPA to act outside the law when 97% of people agree climate change is real, but only half of the scientists say man is the main cause.
The results would have been even less supportive of the authors’s CAGW viewpoint, if they replaced “human activities” with “man-made CO2”.
Scientists and farmers who operate in the scientific domain acknowledge climate change during indefinite, but noticeably shorter than “official” time frames. And are skeptical about definitive statements that claim knowledge of quality and quantity of human influence on the global environment.
The oracles have been wrong before, repeatedly, periodically. The scientific method was supposed to limited their departures to universal and extra-universal domains. Unfortunately, the incentives to resort to inductive reasoning and offer forecasts, and even predictions, based on estimates of estimates of estimates, for purposes other than to support rational risk management, are simply too lucrative to ignore.
It is possible to be intelligent, well educated and still be naïve.
Farmers are not naïve because we have been humbled by our
experience. Intelligent well educated depends on the individual.
We farmers struggle daily to originate wealth from the earth.
We may or may not generate a margin in the processes.
If the scientific community wants to help how about a highly
accurate 15 day forecast, then a 30 and 60 day. Such a thing
would have major implications for commodity markets.
It usually gets back to competition and money doesn’t it?
Another study on how to make the AGW message and propaganda more palatable to a group that ain’t drinking the KoolAid.
Here is today’s op ed from Inhofe on the EPA water rules.
http://newsok.com/sen.-jim-inhofe-epa-should-withdraw-proposed-water-rule/article/5365826
The idiot politico’s have messed with electric power generation, and now it looks like they want to mess with the growing of food (that is my take away from the article – they are sizing up the human obstacles). Hubris of the ivory tower collegiate utopians.
Insightful comments by EM Smith. I’ve worked outside in the wilds of northern Canada for 25 years in both forestry and oil and gas and have observed that people who live and work outside have learned a thing or two about how nature really is, not how they imagine it to be. The number of scientists and environmentalists I listen to that appear to be cluless about the natural world truly surprises me. I would have thought that an environmentalist would at least educate themselves about this thing they supposedly love and fight for. And the scientist that models and studies nature’s minutiae without understanding its most fundamental attributes is equally bothersome.
If this study tells me anything it’s that the outside people have over time been humbled by nature while the inside people are burdened by their own sense of importance. Just my crass generalization.
I live in rural Illinois – “Hooterville” if you wish, and the people around me are very hard to trick. We want to see proof of any claim made and keep emotional rants out of it. We are largely traditional conservatives who feel that the neocons and liberals have ended up screwing up the country. Many of my neighbors believe that warmists are asking us to stop believing that God has dominion over the climate, and accept that man must fend for himself, trusting in their “immense scientific knowledge” instead. I personally think that a universe created by such an intelligent designer (rather than random events), needs no intervention from the beings that were created in that design to stay running it’s intended course, and our feeble attempts to do so are only generating social chaos.
Back in the metropolitan area of 100K population that I moved away from, folks tended to be more arrogant and agnostic, though their thought was much less critical. My media guided suburban neighbors (that actually talked to me) were hypnotized by the emotional rhetoric and accepted the propaganda without questioning it’s validity. After all, NASA said this stuff! They also made statements like: “You are what you drive!” so they lacked credibility in my eyes
Out here people watch much less TV and when we do it’s usually RFDTV, to learn about what we can do to maximize our rural life.
What is significant in my opinion, is that though the conservatively skeptic view is geographically widespread around here, the population is sparse in comparison to urban centers. That makes it the minority view.
It’s harder to convince folks who commune more with nature than mankind that man has any influence on the future of climate, be it bad or good. Folks who form their dogma from the media instead of experience and their elders are much more susceptible to the ‘call from authority’ and the ‘consensus’.
Why is it that not 100% of farmers and scientists believe that climate change is occurring? After all, climate change is occurring every minute of every day. People should know better than to conflate Global warming and climate change.
I think it’s all in what you qualify as ‘climate change’. My 90-year-old father just sees recent changes as the repeat of a cycle of weather that he’s already witnessed. He feels the climate in general has remained pretty much the same in his (Midwestern US) lifetime. Other people might claim that 5 warm years in a row means the climate has changed and several cool years after that constitutes another climate change, when they averaged out only a slight difference from the previous century. Like the difference in perspective when looking at the stock market over months as opposed to decades.
Why is it that all these studies are conducted by sociologists who haven’t a clue what changes climate. I would be inclined to believe an Inuit over a scientist on the number of polar bears and seals there are and I would definitely believe a farmer over a sociologist what is happening in climate. It tees me off to no end when I hear the 100% confidence that these me-too fund snaggers have that we are heading for thermageddon. How dare they talk about greater swings in weather and climate disaster when even climatologists have come around to the idea that these things are not increasing. Their stuff is all gruel from the ante-pause period. The more CAGW climatologists shut up, dumbstruck by the pause, the more these broken disciplines speak up.
The phrase used in their survey, “climate change is occurring” is positively Orwellian in its dishonesty and disingenuousness. Without a clear definition of climate change, it is totally meaningless. They may as well state that “the earth is turning”, or “the sun warms the earth”.
Real scientists just landed a vehicle on a comet, which I think is impressive.
“I don’t think there’s any question that the brightest minds went into physics, math, chemistry…”
(<a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100257206/climate-science-is-for-second-raters-says-worlds-greatest-atmospheric-physicist/"Richard Lindzen, Jan 2014)
Perhaps it is because farmers know from their grandaddies that it was much hotter in the 1930’s
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/iowa-much-hotter-in-1936/
My apologies if someone addressed it above but the “Climatologists 2012, (n=19)” I am very suspect of this sample and whether or not any statistically conclusion can be drawn. Viewing it as “human caused vs rest” the standard deviation would be: 11.5% or a 95 % confidence interval of (30%-76%) which is useless.
Not sure if one should consider lumping 1/2 or more into one category but that would look better for them. In addition, with n=19 and a 100% response rate I wonder exactly why so few and why such a high response rate. Would want to see the methodology for the Simple Random Sample.
Many commenters are scathing of this report. I think it is very interesting and wonder if any of the authors have a farming background or connection. THey had enough “nous” to ask the question of farmers and compare the results to scientists / climatologists. Further, as pointed out by several above, they demonstrate that the 97% figure is farm manure. I think a high five is in order.
And the climate obsessed *still* won’t question their assumptions.
Those farmers, what do they know …
The message from the article seemed to be that the scientistics had to better communicate the AGW story to the farmers. Actually it’s the farmers ( and every other intelligent being) that needs to better communicate to the scientists. If the believing scientists has come down from 97% to 50% maybe the message is starting to get through. In the unreal world of climate science I cannot believe how dumb and gullible academically smart people are.
Just give me a big grant and I’ll chant the popular mantra for you..I’ll show my brains if you show me the money… When the money has disappeared we might be surprised at the change of consensus.
So whatever happened to that 97% consensus? Even the scientists and climatologists surveyed gave “most of the climate warming is human caused” a measly 53%. Is that going to be the new slogan for AGW – “53% of scientists agree!”
53% sounds too much like election results.
“Our research suggests that this disparity in beliefs may cause agricultural stakeholders to respond to climate information very differently.” Uh oh, I guess farmers are funded by big oil as well! Wait, anyone…at all….who questions the Agenda 21 crisis of opportunity, aka, global warming, climate change, etc., is a (insert ad hominem attack)!
Perhaps Joni Ernest, the newly elected senator from the state of Iowa, will now ask the participating researchers from Iowa State University, to explain the basis for their condescending comments about American farmers.
Well, she cannot offer them her Hog services. They do not have any to remove.
Having worked at agricultural weather forecasting for many years, same story here in Australia
Farmers observe the weather, get on with their farming business and do not believe that humans
cause any global warming. Most think it is natural variation anyway!
Associate professor of natural resource social science? I didn’t know that natural resources were a society that could be studied, much less proclaimed to be a science. As a Purdue alumnus, I’m embarrassed.
A title like that screams “Teaching Assistant” for a blow-off general elective in the College of Liberal Arts. But was necessitated by the need for a Climate Change grant.
Title should read: “Taxi drivers and scientists divided over climate change”
Better yet: “People and government-funded pseudo-scientists divided over climate change”.
What about: Farmers and pig troughing witchdoctors divided over the amount of feed.
What struck me was, in the study they had farmers in one group and scientists and climatologists in the other. Does that mean that they believe that climatologists are not scientists? If that is the case, I agree. Additionally, how many real scientists were among the scientists and climatologists?
“Farmers are by necessity very focused on short-term weather, in-season decisions and managing immediate risks,” she said. “They’re thinking about when they can get in their field to do what they need to do, rather than looking 20 to 30 years down the road.”
It is hard for me to find farmers who are so focused upon their immediate crop that they disregard the future of their land. As a matter of fact, I find that farmers continually update their farming practices to achieve, not only a high yield with the present crop, but to address future crops: witness, crop rotation.
The only farmers who relentlessly degrade land by their farming practices seem to be farm land “renters” and tenant farmers. Not a high percentage of farmers over all.
It seems to me that the authors need to get out of their offices, put on some knee-high boots, and walk the farm land they are constantly referring to. The accompanying farmer will tell the academic what is going on. These authors are….well…not informed.
Quoted from the headline post;
“Prokopy advises scientists to “recognize that their worldviews may be different than those of farmers. Moderating communication of climate information based on that realization is key.”
Climate science could also be better communicated by using intermediaries such as Extension educators and agricultural advisers to translate data in ways that are most relevant to growers, she said”
__________________________
Nothing but a grossly condescending comment that assumes that farmers are both ignorant and wrong and that climate scientists know it all.
A slighting of farmers for not listening to and believing all the crap pronouncements and invariably overblown and utterly wrong predictions that is so much a characteristic feature of climate science today.
At 76 years old I have lived my farming life in the SE corner of Australia. An area where the weather and the climate are constantly changing as the weather systems come out of the Great Southern Ocean and the tropics feed their moisture down into those often fast moving weather systems..
It is an area where we have often experienced seasonally long droughts and / or flooding rains.
This year our rainfall here in the western Victorian town of Horsham is 231 mms in a rainfall zone which is listed as 400 mms long term 100 or so year average.
We are in a quite decent drought where many local farmers will harvest little if anything this season and therefore have little or nothing in the way of income for this year but will still have to find the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to plant next years crop before harvesting that at the end of 2015.
I was also lucky enough to be interested in flying having got my power license in late 1959 in the WW2 open cockpit trainers DH Tiger Moths where one swung the prop to start it,
In 1963 our gliding club started and over the next 50 years until recently as my age now limits me to dual flying and time is running out in my life my first love has ben gliding and the personal and intellectual challenges it involves,
Through my farming and the unchallengable need to make a living for my family from taking on Nature at her own game as a farmer, I saw not only the great seasonal long swings and changes in the weather, the day to day immense variations in weather conditions, the decade long changes as we moved from the wet and cool 1950’s, 60’s and very wet early 1970’s to the dry and then drier 1980’s and 1990’s with the cumulation of a decade long run of drought and dry seasons very similar to those my mother and father told us about in the 1930’s and what I experienced as small boy in the early drought stricken 1940’s.
And then onto a decade long run of very dry to drought seasons from the mid 1990’s to the late 2000 noughties.
That was the macro weather and climate I saw.
The micro weather and climate effects I have seen as a glider pilot are completely outside of the entire knowledge base of the entire climate science establishment and also mostly of the farming community.
Micro weather and climate are something which for all their bombastic confidence the climate scientists are utterly ignorant off both as in modelling, in analysing of climatic effects and particularly their personal experience.
Most of them wouldn’t have a clue about micro weather and climate.
Some of them haven’t got a clue about weather and climate in anycase as being firmly esconced in nice academically designated energy consuming heated / A/C buildings, their only real contact with weather and climate is when they walk from their place of work to their A/C vehicles to drive to and from their A/C / heated homes.
Yet there were large changes not just in weather on a day to day basis but in the way in which as an example how the thermals structures varied year to year and decade to decade over the five decades I have flown gliders.
Thermals of course are very heavily involved in cloud formation, in lifting dust, carbon particles and aerosols and insects thousands of feet into the air from where those [ cloud droplet initiating ] aerosols might drift hundreds of kilometres.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s as a general rule, thermals of course being a weather related and weather creating phenomena varying greatly on a day by day basis, were regularly going to heights of 8000 feet or more locally and often to 12,000 feet.
They were smooth and wide and easy to thermal in with fast 800 to 1200 feet per minute rates of climb and sometimes a lot more than this .
They were often marked by large cumulous clouds at the high 10-12,000 foot inversion levels.
[ For any glider pilots reading this It was in thermals like this that in 1968 that I got the fourth Australian diamond badge [ FIA 994 ] and the second where all three diamonds were earn’t entirely in Australia.
All earn’t in the Australian designed and built, all wood “Boomerang” glider from Horsham.]
Then something changed in the late 1970’s and the thermals over the next couple of decades rarely reached heights above about 8000 feet and often just faded out by about 6000 feet.
They were rough to thermal in, narrow to turn in , broken and turbulent. The rates of climb were only two thirds of the thermals of the first part of my 1960’s and 70’s gliding.
The thermals were far more blue sky thermals with no clouds marking them . The thermal height limiting inversion levels were lower at 6000 to 9000 feet.
There was far less cloud during the period from the early 1980’s through to the mid 2000 noughties.
Now it has started to change again.
It is not a steady process but jumps about as it starts the return to previous conditions [ ? ] or develops into another modified, possibly a couple of decades long, version of the local climate perhaps not dissimiliar to that past micro climate conditions of the 1950’s 60’s and early 70’s.
There seems to be more cloud marked thermals. and at greater heights.
The week long heat waves of the 1990’s and early 2000’s seem to be becoming much shorter in duration.
The thermals are going to greater heights ie; the local inversion levels are increasing.
The climate here is changing all over again. subtly but steadily and mankind’s role in any of this despite the utter bigoted bombast and now blatantly displayed ignorance of the climate catastrophists in climate science is sweet FA.
It’s climate.!
It always has been “climate” and it will remain “climate”, an ever changing unpredictable “Climate” long, long after all this anthropogenic climate stupidity has been buried along with the promoters of this ethically and morally corrupt and bankrupt non science called “climate science”.
It isn’t a proper agriculture thread without ROM.
I have never thought about the glider side of the story.
I enjoyed reading this! It absolutely puts all the nonsense about fractional temperature changes into perspective, and, importantly, it’s written by a man who’s experienced it over the years.
What concerns me is the nonsense being pumped out in schools. A young relative was asked to ‘create a low carbon breakfast’ as homework. As you may guess the headmistress got a strong letter from me about the stupidity of such a request. It’ll get to the stage where any summer storm is portrayed as ‘climate change’ (if it’s not already the case).
The battle for sanity to prevail isn’t over yet, is it?
This is big news, isn’t it? If you click through to the survey results, only 50.4% of scientists (or “more than 50%” as they put it) believe that “climate change is occurring, and it is caused mostly by human activities”. I thought 99% of scientists believed that. That’s what John Oliver told me on his show, anyway.
10.7% of scientists believed that climate change is caused “mostly by natural changes in the environment” and 8.3% said there is not enough evidence.
Surprisingly, even among climatologists, only 66.7% believed it was caused mostly by human activities. I thought all of them would have drunk the kool-aid.
The survey results highlight the division between scientists and farmers over climate change and the challenges in communicating climate data and trends in non-polarizing ways, Prokopy said.
Here’s how you communicate climate data and trends in a non-polarizing way:
“The science is settled, you mouth-breathing, Koch brothers shill.”
See how easy?
I have read the Farmers Almanac has been correct 80% of time for many years. How did that happen without computer modeling ?
Let me make this perfectly clear; Even my sister says there is no correlation between CO2 and temperatures (climate change).
“The gap in views on climate change is caused in part by how individuals combine scientific facts with their own personal values”. Maybe this explains how climate scientists think? They combine their personal values with scientific “facts”.
Well, I happen to be a farmer and any warming we get will be much appreciated.
Then find a good state climatologist that can provide you with decent information. We have one in Oregon. Love this man:
http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/programs/NaturalResources/Documents/Weather/dlongrange.pdf
Unfortunately the surveys are from America- a country not exactly noted for cleverness amongst the general members of its population.
Based on Nov 4 results, the rest of America is at least smarter than the democrat-socialist-environ-academic-government mutual funding group, right?
Ya well, at least we answer the phone.
My family goes back to the Oregon Trail and one NE Oregon destination. That equates to a long enough time to cover not one but a few Pacific Decadal Oscillations. The farmer versus scientist study is hogwash and deserves to be plastered onto the bottom of some bird cage.
Before that, my family goes back to the American Revolution. That equates to a long enough time to cover not one but a few very cold, and very hot periods. The farmer versus scientist study is devoid of any insight on the scientist side of things and would not even make good outhouse paper.
Before that, my family goes back to the Irish north country. That equates to a long enough time to cover the last mini-ice age. The farmer versus scientist study is nothing but crap warmed over and polished. Still smells like sh*t.
You would think that 100% would agree that climate change is occurring. It always has, always does, always will. Now when it stops changing, that’s when something is broken. A ickle bit of short term surface temperature rise less than previous fluctuations even in the past 500 years? Get over it, and yourselves. Climate scientists are about as credible to Earth sciences as career politicians are to economics. You want to know how the land or businesses work, ask the folks who have done it for generations. Text books and modelled projections will always be trumped by history and first hand knowledge of adaptation to circumstances.
“Climate change presents both potential gains and threats to U.S. agriculture. Warmer temperatures could extend the growing season in northern latitudes, and an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide could improve the water use efficiency of some crops. But increases in weather variability and extreme weather events could lower crop yields.”
Warmer temperatures…increased CO2…Increased weather variability….increased extreme weather events
Which of these are documented as actually happening? Only increased CO2 – which they concede results in increased water use efficiency of some crops. Where is the problem?
SR
Milodonharlani, 11/12/14 @ pm contributed this to a continuing palaver,
According to my experience & the 2014 Gallup poll of religiosity, the Great Plains states in which you custom harvest are among the most religious outside of Utah & the South, & all score above the national average, as rated by Gallup:
Only at first blush does this chat seem to pollute Watts Up With That?; The world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change. But Gallup estimated The percentage of state residents who say religion is [is not] important in their lives and say they [(do), do not] attend church weekly or nearly weekly.
And Wikipedia says, Church is a religious institution, place of worship, or group of worshipers. Plus A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence.
Religion is the collection of shared belief systems. It’s the set of people who believe in Gallup polls. Or believe in Wikipedia. Or, on point, believe in AGW.
P.S. Science is the objective branch of knowledge, marked by the absence of belief systems, I believe.
First of all, I have to admit I do not understand the importance of this type of scientific study. It is a clash between people who try to predict something that will happen during the next one hundred years and people who deal with the weather on a daily basis. I do believe in global warming, which will produce increased temperatures in the next one hundred years. I’m probably biased because I live in Vancouver, which is potentially endangered by the climate change more than other places. The number of degrees it will raise remains unknown. But doing studies like this and contributing to a political agenda does not make any sense from my point of view.
Judging by my grandparents and other farmers I have known, farmers are always and necessarily concerned about the weather not being right. It would be natural for them to be fearful of AGW, but they apparently aren’t. Even when it benefits them financially to believe so. (Biofuels) But they would also be keenly aware that it has always been variably hot, dry, cold , wet, windy and calm and there have been no discernible changes to that.