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
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”.