Climate and Food – Evidence Free Posturing

The US department of agriculture publishes a report on historical crop production annually at http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/htrcp/htrcp-04-14-2016.pdf
The records include almost any crop grown in the US and some date back to the 1800’s. Virtually all of them show big increases in yields since 1950.

Here’s a related funny one. CO2 is making us fat.
Or so said a study in 2012. “An initial investigation of six people in a climate controlled room showed that people tended to eat more when the air in the room contained more CO2”; (which of course sounds like a psychology study where all the data is just completely made-up).
A reporter decided to follow up with the scientists four years later. More made-up stuff was provided as a response but they were unable to get any “funding” for further research and promptly dropped the topic.
http://sciencenordic.com/four-years-later-co2-making-us-fat

This is one of the key striking points of climate change that they need to stick. The critical “effects” they need to make stick are : 1) Rising sea levels imperiling island and coastal places. 2) Food production decreases producing more death 3) More frequent and powerful storms. 4) Spread of diseases from tropical regions and 5) Mass extinction.
The situation is that 3 has been pretty definitively disproved. There is no increase in storm intensity or frequency. In fact, if anything there seems to be a negative correlation. 4 is hard to believe it will have a material impact. 1 (sea level) is one they consistently exaggerate. It is not widely known that more than half of islands are gaining surface area NOT decreasing and overall coastal areas have increased by 30,000 km in the last 30 years due to a number of unexpected effects such as increasing aquifers from more rain lifting the land, silt from runoff of mountains and glaciers increasing coastal, man building more coastline, reduced weight of glaciers allowing the land to rise. All this has meant that anyone who really looks into it finds that the arguments that sea level will be a problem are extremely exaggerated if not outright lies. Some have pointed out that even with the higher temperatures there is no evidence that sea levels are accelerating. So, there goes #1. #5 is hard to believe without significant temperature change and so far temperature change has been under 1C and will remain under 1C through 2100 from 1945 (which is the point at which we started pouring co2 in quantity into the atmosphere.).
This leaves #2. This is perhaps the most ridiculous of them all. 1) Agricultural productivity is on a tear and has been for 50-100 years. We have TRIPLED food productivity in the last 50 years. 2) Part of this is certainly the increased fertilization and reduced exposure to drought that enhanced levels of CO2 in the atmosphere produce on agriculture. A recent study showed that these effects on plants productivity totally eliminate any negative consequence of temperature meaning the problem doesn’t exist from this point alone. However, as everyone knows agriculture is something that strides are made everyday in numerous ways. The idea that whatever heat related effect on food will override our productivity increases is highly suspect. 3) The population growth of the world is slowing down and it is likely with increasing food productivity we will actually be in surplus condition by the time any deleterious effects might materialize. 4) Food production is only 2% of the GDP of the developed world. We spend a lot on going out to dinner. A lot more than the cost of food in the first place. Half of all food is wasted either in restaurants or homes (sometimes just becoming stale) which is something that can be mitigated easily if there were any economic incentive to do it which there isn’t because it is sooooo cheap.
As you see looking at these 5 effects they are easily dismissed as going in the wrong direction or miniscule concerns or simply not problems. They depend that these “consequences” of global warming be there. They first have to prove that temperatures will go up significantly, then they have to show that these temperatures going up is unmitigateable and that the consequences are severe. There is doubt that temperatures are going to go up all that much anymore, there is evidence that many of the effects can be mitigated and that over time we will naturally produce less CO2 and that the effect of CO2 has been way overestimated in models. But lastly whatever heat that emerges has to be associated with negative consequences and that is the weakest part of the argument in my opinion.
One way to look at this is that for the history of man higher temperatures has been associated with higher living standards and longer lives. Numerous studies show that people die more as it gets colder and die less as it gets warmer. To suggest that from this point on the curve is opposite and that things get worse is to say that we live at the “Perfect temperature” and that any movement from this perfect temperature is bad.
As a person trained in mathematics any argument like that “we are the perfect position” is extremely improbable. It would take a lot of evidence to convince me we are at the perfect temperature that any increase is bad. In fact the IPCC admits this and says temps will produce positive effects and then after 1C will start producing negative effects. Calculating this perfect temperature is unbelievably hard and it is simply not proved with any surety that we are at or will be in 1C higher temperatures at perfection. We know for instance that for most of the last 200 + million years the earth was 6 – 10 C warmer than today. That’s right. CO2 for much of this period was above 2000ppm. Plants produce maximum productivity at somewhere around 1400ppm we think. Most life on Earth has evolved during much higher temperatures. It is unlikely such temperatures as 1C warmer is either the optimal temperature or some kind of mass extinction temperature.