The Sun reports that in London, some supermarkets are rationing purchases of vegetables like lettuce, which is in short supply due to Southern European crop failures.
SALAD SHORTAGE What is the 2017 vegetable shortage, which supermarkets are rationing broccoli and lettuce and what’s the cause of the crisis?
Tesco and Sainsbury’s are rationing iceburg lettuces and broccoli as cold weather in the Med causes a vegetable shortage.
BY ELLIE FLYNN 4th February 2017, 2:29 pm
THESE are dark times times for British vegetable lovers.
A veggie shortage plaguing UK supermarkets has worsened – with Tesco and Sainsbury’s now forced to ration iceburg lettuces and broccoli.
Customers will only be allowed a maximum of three lettuces per visit after poor growing conditions in Europe caused a shortage.
Why is there a vegetable shortage?
Poor growing conditions in Europe – mostly Italy and Spain – has meant there is a lack of vegetable stock.
This comes from a combination of flooding, cold weather and poor light levels.
In winter months Spain’s Murcia region supplies 80 per cent of Europe’s fresh produce.
But the area has suffered its heaviest rainfall in 30 years – meaning 70 per cent of the growing fields are unuseable.
Italy has also suffered a cold snap – meaning the region is having to import vegetables they usually export at this time of year.
The effects of shortages are particularly notable in Britain, which imports an estimated 50 per cent of its vegetables and 90 per cent of its fruit.
…
Why do I describe this as a possible early taste of Maunder Minimum like conditions? As WUWT has reported, solar activity has been unusually low this cycle, and appears to be trending downwards, leading to predictions we are entering a new solar grand minimum.
While the connection between solar activity and weather is controversial, in Europe, Solar Grand Minima appear to be associated with cold, rainy weather, and growing season difficulties.
Consider this description of the Little Ice Age, one of the most brutal periods of which coincided with the Maunder Minimum (1645 – 1715). The description is from Hubert Lamb, founded of the Climatic Research Unit.
Hubert Lamb said that in many years, “snowfall was much heavier than recorded before or since, and the snow lay on the ground for many months longer than it does today.” In Lisbon, Portugal, snowstorms were much more frequent than today; one winter in the 17th century produced eight snowstorms. Many springs and summers were cold and wet but with great variability between years and groups of years. Crop practices throughout Europe had to be altered to adapt to the shortened, less reliable growing season, and there were many years of dearth and famine (such as the Great Famine of 1315–1317, but that may have been before the Little Ice Age).
Read More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Obviously in today’s connected world high speed transport will soon solve the shortage in England. It is possible to fly or ship vast quantities of food from other regions to make up for any lack.
However this unexpected food shortage should be a wakeup call to Europe and the world, that there are potential climate problems other than global warming which should occupy some of their attention.
If current conditions worsen, and crop losses in Europe and other Northern growing regions become the norm, at the very least poor people will begin to suffer from the impact of rising prices.
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I would hardly call a week of increased vegetable prices in a single country as evidence or a new Maunder Minimum. Better look at sun spot data over years. Sort of like saying it snowed today and a new ice age, or warm today so a AGW. Despite, looks like current solar cycle will be low in comparison to last two.
I agree, but it does demonstrate that cold is often a worse problem than warmth. Especially when the warmth appears to consist of nighttime temperatures holding up a little, ie., not getting so cold at night, and winter temperatures a little milder. The evidence points to no significant difference in daytime summer highs, and most high temperature records were set long ago.
i don’t like reading anything into short term events, and with climate 30 years is too short a period.
You would be amazed at the state of market gardens is now, that first to market will reap large financial advantages. People will start sweet corn in peat pots in a greenhouse well before the ground temps hit the 50°F point, transplant through black fabric mulch, then place hoop tunnel greenhouses over the crop rows to protect from frost. People are getting 10 month growing seasons even n zone 6.
Salad shortage = New Maunder Minimum.
ROFL.
Brain shortage = McClod
See all that purple and blue
That is below zero
Small warm patch over Kara sea.. MASSIVE cold over Alaska,, Canada, Russia, Northern Europe
You know… where people have to actually try to live!
Post the same map showing the anomalies Andy.
Why?…. are you incapable?
I have it in front of me
“less cold” over Kara Sea and Greenland ( still -30C ), where very few people live
More FREEZING over Eastern Europe and Russia, where MILLIONS of people live
But what do you CARE if people freeze to death…. from energy poverty.
Just make your point about a localised WEATHER event over the Kara Sea..
That will make you FEEEEEEL GOOOOD.
You are an evil, anti-human, AGW troll, McClod.
Post the same map showing the anomalies Andy – show us that the N Pole is 50 degrees F above ‘normal’.
That it is above freezing there, that it has been 4 degrees C in Svalbard last week.
Tell me McClod, do you live on a dairy farm?
Because you seem to have your foot in your mouth an awful lot of the time.
Must be the flavour of your own BS you enjoy so much.
“4 degrees C in Svalbard last week”
Off you go. griff.. out of your granny’s heated basement in your latte sipping ghetto..
Have a nice hols in Svalbard. 🙂
tony and Griff:
Anomalies compared to which “normal”? The Eemian? Or 53 million years ago when the Arctic Ocean was a swamp?
It’s a shame that when AndyG55 is given evidence he doesn’t like, he resorts to name calling. If a warmist did that, they’d be off to moderation land.
Meh. I’ve been insulted by experts, Andy’s childishness rarely warrants a response.
Griff,
Average T at Svalbard for past 30 days was -9 degrees C. That’s above normal, but still freezing.
https://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Svalbard/Longyearbyen/statistics.html
They did have a warm spell this week, with highs above zero, but lows still well below freezing.
Isn’t it cute how the trolls feel the need to tell each other how wonderful they are.
tony mcleod February 8, 2017 at 4:49 am
Have I insulted you? I think not. I am no expert.
You have not answered my question. Anomalies from what reference? The Eemian? Or from perhaps 53 million years ago when the Arctic Ocean was a swamp?
This colour map illustrates why I am strongly suspicious of reports of record low Arctic sea ice. It’s been wicked cold in the North this winter.
myNym
Anomalies compared to which “normal”? The Eemian? Or 53 million years ago when the Arctic Ocean was a swamp?
No, something meaningful like a 30 year or a 100 year average.
Yes, I know, “normal” is a problem for you. But, like, get over it. In the history of planet Earth it’s not “normal” to have any mammals either.
Gloateus Maximus
Average T at Svalbard for past 30 days was -9 degrees C. That’s above normal, but still freezing.
“Still freezing” is not enough when it comes to ice volume. You need prolonged deep freezing for rapid ice formation to build up ice thickness to withstand the melting otherwise you have a net annual deficit.
tony mcleod February 8, 2017 at 2:14 pm
“No, something meaningful like a 30 year or a 100 year average.
Yes, I know, “normal” is a problem for you.”
No, I don’t have a problem with “normal”. (Was that supposed to be an insult? If so, try harder. I’m sure you can do better.)
I just wish that we clearly identify what it is that we should measure “anomalies” against.
So, you want to ignore the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warming Period, the Roman Warming Period, the Minoan Warming Period, and the twin peaks of the Holocene Optimum.
That’s called cherry-picking. You want to choose a “normal” which supports your position, which you are desperately trying to sell.
Key word is desperately. Trump is going to turn off the money-spigot supporting all the fake science in the US. It’s over. Find another windmill to tilt, another ox to gore, another dead horse to whip. This parrot is dead. It is no longer among the living.
No, I don’t have a problem with “normal”.
Fair enough – “normal” is hardly a perfect standard to comparing anything with, I agree. And no, I’m not setting out to ignore LIAs or Minoan warm periods or cherry-pick anything. I am just looking at the evidence of a rapidly de-icing Arctic and the disruptive effects that is already having on the QBO, the Polar Jet, temperatures in temperate NH: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/unprecedented-disruption-atmospheres-pacemaker-foretells-wet-winter-europe …
with the expectation that this trend is very unlikely to reverse any time soon.
The current rate of change in CO2 concentration is an outlier. The rate of sea-ice loss is an outlier. If we ceased all carbon emissions tomorrow it ill take 1000 years for level to return to where it was. None of that is “normal”.
It’s great for those in Ontario to say a little warmer would be nice. But where I live it is hot and getting hotter: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/aus/2016/data/map-tmin-decile-year.gif
For large parts of the world if the trend continues life will get harder. To talk about a new Maunder Minimum is frankly ludicrous.
“I’m not setting out to ignore LIAs or Minoan warm periods or cherry-pick anything.”
But if you focus on only the last 100 years, you are.
“I am just looking at the evidence of a rapidly de-icing Arctic…”
The same concerns were raised in the 1930s. During the 1970s the concerns being raised was that the Earth was cooling.
“The current rate of change in CO2 concentration is an outlier.”
CO2 is not the cause of either recent warming nor recent cooling. With CO2 continuing to rise, global temperatures have been flat for the last 18 years.
“The rate of sea-ice loss is an outlier.”
No such thing. Including the Antarctic, sea-ice has dramatically set new records during the (very brief) satellite record.
There is no evidence going back 2.6 million years that we are going to lose a significant portion of our sea ice.
It really is sad how you alarmists are so bad at basic logic.
It’s yet another example. Not proof in and of itself.
myNym
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?height=300&width=400
“global temperatures have been flat for the last 18 years”
Right so 100 years isn’t long enough but 18 is? Lets go 19.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_January_2017_v6.jpg
“There is no evidence going back 2.6 million years that we are going to lose a significant portion of our sea ice.”
Hmm, way off on that one.
If you want to focus on the short term, from 1910 to the late 1930s there was warming. From the late 1930s to 1970s there was cooling. From the late 1970s to the late 1990s there was warming. From the late 1990s to now the Glow Bull temps have been basically flat. All this, while CO2 was going up. If this isn’t a clear demonstration of lack of cause and effect…
In the short term we should see ice melting. We are in an inter-glacial. During inter-glacial periods, ice tends to melt. Going back 2.6 million years, we have had many inter-glacials, followed by glaciations. There is no evidence that anything happening today is not completely natural.
The Antarctic ice sheet has hit all time (brief, satellite era) highs. The Antarctic ice sheet dwarfs the Arctic. We should be seeing ice melting, since we are in an inter-glacial. But we are seeing the Antarctic ice sheet grow.
I see zero evidence that CO2 is causing Glow Bull runaway warming. But then, my income doesn’t depend on such a meme. Does yours?
‘Locally sourced, sustainably farmed fruits and vegetables’, until the temperature drops below freezing…….
Lettuce pray for warmer weather…
Forrest Gardener February 7, 2017 at 7:59 pm
1. The Total Solar Irradiation is every kind of solar energy from extreme ultraviolet to far infrared, and all of them warm the earth.
2. Overall, it varies by less than 1% over the ~11-year sunspot cycle.
3. There is no evidence of the less than 1% variation of the 11-year sunspot cycle having any effect on the weather down here at the surface, despite numerous claims to the contrary.
Cue the people with other ideas in 3 … 2 … 1 …
w.
I have followed this site and learned a lot. But when the warmist’s side used the “extreme droughts”, the “extreme tornado” events etc. and tie them to, first ” Global Warming” and then ” Climate Change” many of you said. hey slow down “It’s weather”. But now some of you seem to think ( as this article does) that one poor year of crop production brought on by, to me any way, very similar one time “weather events” is a start of a new Maunder Minimum and a start of a “little Ice Age” all over again?
Sorry to me? Not a good idea. Slow down folks!
As many specialty crop growers realize ( I grew peaches, grapes and cherries), they are just one weather event away from a TOTAL crop year failure,( the too many eggs in one basket syndrome).
Frankly, I do not like this article ,
To me it is leaning ( after these past few days of breaking news re NOAA etc.) to close to “gloating’.
And btw Willis , thanks, I love your articles especially your memory lane short stories about you past on your new blog.
asybot
Yep its weather people, chill!
asybot – I agree, this is closer to propaganda than to science. But why can’t we have a little fun?
Not other ideas, but additional facts.
The variation in high energy UV is much more.
TSI changes slowly on decadal and longer timescales. The variation during solar cycle 21 (June 1976 to September 1986) was about 0.1% (peak-to-peak). In contrast to older reconstructions, most recent TSI reconstructions point to an increase of only about 0.05% to 0.1% between the Maunder Minimum and the present. By contrast, ultraviolet irradiance (EUV) varies by approximately 1.5 percent from solar maxima to minima, for 200 to 300 nm wavelengths. However, a proxy study estimated that UV has increased by 3.0% since the Maunder Minimum.
http://www.mps.mpg.de/dokumente/publikationen/solanki/j111.pdf
Willis, that would only be true if TSI is the only means by which the sun influences climate.
More UV means more ozone and ozone is a greenhouse gas.
MarkW February 8, 2017 at 8:17 am
Mark, I fear I have no idea what the “that” in your sentence refers to. I ask everyone to quote the exact words that they object to for this reason.
Regards,
w.
Gloateus Maximus February 8, 2017 at 7:50 am
As a percentage it is more, but in part that is because it is so tiny. On an absolute basis the amount is minuscule.
The changes in TSI are far too small to be visible in the surface climate datasets.
True.
Perhaps … perhaps not. Your link doesn’t work for me. I’m not overly fond of proxies, their accuracy is generally overestimated and their uncertainty underestimated …
Regards,
w.
Willis, when Goddard says something other than anthropogenic CO2 has a possible effect on climatic temperature, I normally expect they would under-estimate rather than over-estimate. If my memory serves me correctly, about a decade ago the warmist were claiming the anthropogenic forcing to be in the neighborhood of \latex$1.5W/m^{2}$ now with a TSI variance of \latex$1.3W/m^{2}$, the dog and pony show is about aerosols negative forcing because the energy imbalance id reported to be in the neighborhood of \latex$ 0.58W/m^{2}$
Willis,
Sorry about the pdf link. In any case, UV varies a lot more than the rest of the solar spectrum.
True that UV is a small portion of TSI, even when at its peak share of the total. However, that doesn’t matter. What signifies is that high-energy radiation can do things with climatic effects which visible and IR light can’t.
As noted, one such thing is its effect on ozone. Another is the markedly different absorption spectra of different wavelengths in water:
http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_vibrational_spectrum.html
Thus, a small part of TSI can have an outsized effect on climatic phenomena.
That’s quite apart from the effects of other solar parameters, such as magnetic flux.
To summarize, it doesn’t matter that UV is a small share of TSI, as Dr. S so often points out. What signifies is that its climatic effects are qualitatively different from visible and IR light, regardless of quantity.
Gloateus Maximus February 8, 2017 at 3:53 pm
w.
What sort of solar energy warms Earth? [Question slightly re-phrased]. Answer: Blue light and a bit of green, and it varies quite a lot when clouds come and go. If AW posts my just-submitted article, you will see why!
We have a apple shortage here in New Zealand.
New Zealand has an apple shortage.
Supermarkets nationwide have been struggling to fill their shelves with the popular and normally available year-round fruit due to a slow start to summer.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/all-apples-supermarkets-struggling-fill-their-shelves?gclid=CJung5Dn_9ECFdMDKgodTjIByg
Let’s not be alarmists in the other direction. It is premature to call one bad growing season in Spain as evidence of a little ice age, just as it was premature to call a drought in California as evidence of global warming. If a pattern emerges over a number of years, then maybe there is something worth discussing. Until then, scepticism should be the watchword of this site.
+ many, let us not fall into the same meme the warmists have been throwing at us for years ( actually throwing at the world)
I am with Willis and ADS1972 on this. It is not climate, it is just weather.
It is not even a bad growing season in Spain. It is just a bad strorm that hit one region in Spain that happens to produce about 15% of all lettuces consumed in Europe. To put things in perspective, here is a map of Spain with the region of Murcia highlighted in green:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JzP-Q4MrLKc/TPVYZJxt7SI/AAAAAAAAAAU/zC_pEDTLufA/S760/spain-murcia.gif
(I hope the link works)
The lettuces did not freeze. they drowned. A big storm poured up to 240 liters per square meter and many of the fields flooded. 50 % of the production is lost.
On the plus side, the aquifers are replenished. This is not new, it happens from time to time. It hardly rains in the region, but when it does, it pours.
You can read more about the storm here, It is in spanish, so you will have to let google translate it for you if you cannot read spanish.
http://www.laopiniondemurcia.es/comunidad/2016/12/20/exportadores-calculan-han-perdido-mitad/791976.html
BTW, the spanish region that produces the largest amount of vegetables is not Murcia, it is El Ejido. Here it is a satellite picture of El Ejido taken by Nasa.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/images/largesize/PIA14146_hires.jpg
The white rectagles are greenhouses. a sea of greenhouses, stretching for tens of kilometers.
If you are interested: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia14146
See my post above on conditions in Southern Spain. I am in the Costa Blanca North region, about 70 miles away from the place you highlight..
2016 was a cold year, My swimming pool being some 3 to 4 degC cooler than average.
The weather has been very bad since November. It is not just one storm, but bad weather for weeks on end.
I suspect, but I am not certain, that the satellite image shows nets, not greenhouses. Nets over fields is very common in the growing areas of Spain.
Finally we get the truth. Thank you.
umm… Richard, As I said in my post, the last picture is not Murcia, is El Ejido (Almeria), located more to the south, close to Africa. Those are greenhouses and the village surrounded by them is El Ejido.
The BBC produced a documentary about El Ejido and its greenhouses. Worth watching.
Perhaps this is the problem:
Where are all the greenies pushing the ‘100 mile/kilometer’ food wagon (where most of your food is locally sourced within that boundary)?
England always shows as a verdant land where all manner of food could be grown. Maybe they are not allowed to grow anything between the wind towers?
I thank my parents for moving us from that place to Australia in 1960
UK used to eat seasonal veg – now we want summer veg in January. That’s the difference. No shortage of potatoes or cabbage!
Because there are things you can grow that aren’t vegetables or fruit?
This ‘grand solar minimum’ [which could be a misnomer] cooling arrives because the heat has left from the previous high solar activity heat accumulation from the 1935-2004 solar modern maximum, and because solar activity has slowed down & is now low, after the SC24 solar max.
‘Global’ warming, our nice 20th century warmup, extended all the way to last year via the confluence and timing of the OHC build-up from the solar modern maximum and the most recent solar TSI max, which peaked two years ago Feb 6 (daily TSI) this month (in monthly TSI) in 2015.
Higher TSI during the modern maximum increased OHC as did the SC24 TSI peak, keeping temps up. The OHC maintained SSTs in combination with declining incoming TSI until March 2016, when daily TSI became too low, ie, insufficient energy for further warming, and cooling then began, when falling SORCE TSI crossed below my pre-determined threshold of 1361.25 W/m^2 in mid-March and has remained below that level and has overall declined for all but a few days since, now at 2010 levels.
Cooling after mid-March 2016 (image dated Feb4 2017):
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/weeklyenso_clim_81-10/wkteq2_anm_55m.gif
This TSI value is statistically equivalent to 120 sfu in F10.7cm solar radio flux, the threshold value for long-term warming and cooling I established in 2014 from HadSST3. Since 2014 I’ve recorded F10.7cm flux and computed the long-term average every day. In 2014, using the spaceweather prediction SSN & F10.7 forecast, it looked as though this long-term average would reach 120.0 in late 2018.
Lower solar activity than the SWPC forecasted has brought this about over a year ahead of time, and I can report that yesterday, Feb 7 2017, my long-term F10.7cm flux threshold for SST warming/cooling of 120.00 determined in 2014 was reached, now at 119.99 sfu.
This average was at 120.5 in March of 2016 when temps went negative. So the actual F10.7cm threshold value could be ~120.5 sfu, meaning at <120 now we are definitely in the beginning stage of solar cooling.
SSTs at this solar cycle minimum should be at a lower temperature than in 2008, because the projected long-term average of F10.7cm flux at the minimum will be about 105 sfu/day, making this a “cooling” cycle.
By comparison, SC23 averaged 119.8 sfu/day, ~ a “breakeven” amount, and the ending SST in 2008 was just about exactly the same as the cycle starting temp.
http://climate4you.com/images/SunspotsMonthlySIDC%20and%20HadSST3%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1960%20WithSunspotPeriodNumber.gif
It won’t be much of a ‘grand solar minimum’ if solar activity returns to higher levels and stays there!
It takes many solar cycles either at high levels to cause warming or vice versa. Things could go either way.
But until the SC25 uptick in solar activity fires-up the next warming trend, it’ll cool, until 2020-22-ish, with a minor ENSO in between, like in 2006.
Food production and prices will be severely impacted & energy use will be higher from this low solar activity.
Full report coming.
Not sure I’d put too much reliance on anything coming out of Hadley CRU !!
In all things manufacturing and farming is built around guessing. Successful manufacturing and farming works best with good guesses. Just now we don’t know if the problem was bad guessing about planted acreage or if yield was the problem. Nobody knows more than I do about what happened with this crop season. I suggest people don’t presume overmuch about the imbalance in product availability. I don’t know very much.
That shortage must be politically organised, or something. Because here in Madrid, we have all the iceberg lettuce and the broccoli we can want, and more.
UK has long been called “Treasure Island” by importers because of the higher prices chargeable here.
Here in Australia the seasonal fruit has been poor. From unripe straight through to rotten!
Not where I am, we’ve been gorging on mangos, lychees, amazing stone fruit, etc. There have been some hot dry conditions on the east coast so some vegies haven’t done so well, but otherwise — just like the UK and every other part of the rich west — it’s continued feast. Unlike some parts of the world who do actually have food shortages.
Read the article . Heavy rain made the land unusable. I am a little ashamed of the ‘sceptics’ on this site, some of them. They sound as bad as the warmists. Gloating and absolutely no scepticism.
You are spot on it is embarrassing.
Yes very embarrassing that some don’t read that cold in Italy is also putting strains on supply.
But that’s ok, Alex, if you don’t read the articles.
Andy
You win this one. If you didn’t, you would throw a tanty and have a cry.
Nappy change time for Alex. 🙂
Call mommy !!
Sorry Alex.. would you prefer we get uncle Bwuce. ?
????????
Standard AndyG55 debating style, throw out insults until the adults in the room walk away. He reminds me of the Black Knight in Monty Python…….
Chris
It takes all kinds. I wouldn’t mind a witty comeback. Low-class obscure comments leave me flat.
As the old saying goes “if you get into an argument with an idiot , then you have two idiots arguing”
Alex said:
“Read the article . Heavy rain made the land unusable. I am a little ashamed of the ‘sceptics’ on this site, some of them. They sound as bad as the warmists. Gloating and absolutely no scepticism.”
Unfortunately when you become involved in anything that has even the slightest political implications, you find that 80% of the people who show up are there for ideological reasons, rather than any care for the technical details.
I have some experience in this issue, having a friend who is giving his daughter CBD oil to help reduce her seizures. Much debate over the whole marijuana issue, and people who dismiss the whole thing because it’s the devil’s weed, and a bunch of hippes who are happy to sell the “marijuana for whatever ails you” bullshit. But very little real focus on what really works and what doesn’t, and how do we know the difference.
Really! A cold event in Spain does not mean there’s an ice age coming… or even cooling.
What is does show is that changes in the arctic air circulation patterns can dump very cold air into areas further south…
Here’s the NSIDC January summation:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
“January air temperatures at the 925 hPa level (approximately 2,500 feet above sea level) were above average over nearly all of the Arctic Ocean, continuing the pattern that started last autumn (Figure 2b). Air temperatures were more than 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1981 to 2010 average over the northern Barents Sea and as much as 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in the northern Chukchi and East Siberian Seas. It was also unusually warm over northwestern Canada. Cooler than average conditions (up to 3 degrees Celsius, or 5 degrees Fahrenheit below average) prevailed over the northwest part of Russia and the northeast coast of Greenland.
Atmospheric circulation over the Arctic during the first three weeks of January was characterized by a broad area of below average sea level pressure extending over almost the entire Arctic Ocean. Higher-than-average sea level pressure dominated over the Gulf of Alaska and the North Atlantic Ocean south of Iceland. This set up warm southerly winds from both the northern North Atlantic and the Bering Strait areas, helping to explain the high January air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean. According to the analysis of NASA scientist Richard Cullather, the winter of 2015 to 2016 was the warmest ever recorded in the Arctic in the satellite data record. Whether the winter of 2016 to 2017 will end up warmer remains to be seen; conditions are typically highly variable”
That’s not what happens when an ice age is coming.
“Really! A cold event in Spain does not mean there’s an ice age coming”
Really griff, a weather related event in the Kara sea doesn’t mean there is any AGW.. except by scam.
What is does show is that changes in the arctic air circulation patterns can dump very warm air into areas further north… like the Kara Sea
yes!
(Though it isn’t just the Kara)
And why are we having those changes? Decrease in sea ice and a warming arctic… caused by ???
Griff,
Arctic sea ice is normal everywhere except the southern Bering Sea and the Kara Sea. The Bering is because of the super El Nino and the Kara because of the Atlantic Drift anomaly and possibly warmer air, which is still freezing.
Those two areas’ lower than usual ice cover has nothing whatsoever to do with CO2. If it did, the whole ice pack would be below normal, which it isn;t.
No surprise, the Finnish ice service report on the Gulf of Bothnia and Baltic Sea looks different from the satellite map:
http://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/ice-conditions
The St. Lawrence of course isn’t in the Arctic.
Gloateus Maximus
What can’t you see the Death Spiral in your picture? Griff sure can! and as we all know once something dies it never comes back so Griff is scared! Oh wait even if his stupid Death Spiral was there it won’t be the first time or even all that unusual and all without CO2 induced warming.
Bob,
True.
Arctic sea ice is still well above its Holocene average. Humanity flourished during the periods of low ice, namely the Holocene Optimum, Egyptian, Minoan, Roman, Medieval and Modern Warm Periods, and suffered during the intervening cold periods, such as the Greek Dark Ages, Dark Ages and LIA.
Less sea ice is a good thing.
Griff,
If sea ice be low in the Gulf of Bothnia (which it isn’t), it could not be because of air temperature:
http://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/weather/Oulu
Recent weather observation Oulu Vihreäsaari harbour Wed 8.2. 14:20
Temperature -17.9 °C
Humidity 83%
Dew point -20.2 °C
Wind speed 2 m/s
Wind direction north-west wind (300°)
Wind gust 3 m/s
Pressure 1047.0 hPa
It’s also well below freezing on the Kara Sea:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Belushya+Guba+weather&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab&gfe_rd=cr&ei=rxGbWLr3OoaVwQSi9oiADw
‘That’s not what happens when an ice age is coming.’
The Little Ice Age began roughly around 1250 AD in Europe with increasing iceberg rafting in the North Atlantic, huge sea floods and wild winds.
Meteorologically I imagine the North Atlantic Oscillation was very negative, which produced cool wet summers and food scarcity.
The pattern is always the same and in a micro sense its back to the 1950s and 1960s, or perhaps something a little stronger like a centenary Gleissberg.
This isn’t trending back to the 1950s or 1960s, is it?
Griff climate change is a cyclic phenomenon, what goes around comes around.
Not so micro! Here in Western Canada we are having a cold , snowy winter which to me is reminiscent of winters in the 60’s when I was a kid. That is half a world away from Europe and nearly a million square miles of ice box.
My question is, if the world is warming, doesn’t this excess heat have to stick around? It isn’t! This magic, CO2 ratchet doesn’t work!
‘My question is, if the world is warming, doesn’t this excess heat have to stick around?’
From my understanding the excess heat goes into outer space.
What doesn’t happen is that the artic gets warm and the sea ice retreats, surely?
This article is pointing at a cooling trend (which doesn’t exist) as a cause of Spain’s current weather.
Glacial advances start when CO2 is at its height, due to the warmth of the preceding interglacial.
The previous interglacial was warmer and longer than now, with CO2 in the 300s ppm, yet it was followed by one of the biggest ice sheet advances, known as the Wisconsin in the US, and Wuerm and Wchselian in Europe.
Then the Holocene (as with other interglacials) started with CO2 at a minimum, following the bitterly frigid Last Glacial Maximum.
Forrest,
The WX that matters at interglacial to glacial transitions occurs at high latitudes in the NH, where summers become too cool to melt winter snows. A feedback effect kicks in, due to increased albedo from all that whiteness.
Oh dear Griff, but a hots summer does mean that global warming us happening RIGHT NOW doesn’t it?
Doublethink par excellence…
Prior to the current El Nino, arctic ice had been increasing for 3 years. That was just weather according to Griffie.
MarkW: Nope
.
This from the guy who’s spent the last 3 months crowing about how the current low ice levels in the arctic are proof that CO2 is going to kill us?
Forrest,
I suppose that your suspicions as to the answer proved well founded.
In Griffies world, any warming event is permanent. Melting ice can never, ever return. (Even though it’s done so countless times before.)
Any warming is proof that we are all going to die.
Griff February 8, 2017 at 3:43 am
“What doesn’t happen is that the artic gets warm and the sea ice retreats, surely?”
So…when the earth warms, as per global warming “rules”, it doesn’t warm all over, at the same time, at the same rate. We’re told this by activists because someone always points out that there is still cold somewhere. Its science.
But you expect that an ice age would cool the earth all over, at the same time, at the same rate. There can’t be pockets of warm…because why again?
We live in the North East of England. There is NO shortage of seasonal UK produced vegetables. This is alarmist media reporting.
The only shortage is of some non-seasonal, imported salad varieties.
If people ate appropriate vegetables for the season there would be few, if any, problems.
We have grown our own vegetables for over a decade and the biggest lesson we have learnt is to grow a wide variety of crops suitable for our colder northern climate and even grow a variety of breeds of the same vegetable.This helps avoid the entire loss of all our crops even in extreme weather conditions.
The current cold snap has produced the most wonderfully sweet parsnips 🙂
This is all basic common sense which sadly seems lacking in todays society.
Of course the EU has not helped by reducing the number of approved varieties, often favouring tasteless junk that give good yields in warm conditions rather than tasty Victorian varieties that cope well in cooler northern conditions.
If people in the North of England ate “appropriate” vegetables, then people would suffer from all the various diseases of malnutrition they used to suffer from in the winter. And since the weather could destroy a crop or two – as has happened in Spain – they would then face food shortages, just as they used to,
What nonsense!
There are hundreds of varieties of winter vegetables that grow well in UK. All of them far more nutritional than an imported spanish lettuce!!
We very rarely eat salad in winter and our family are in perfect health. Malnutrition caused by poverty has nothing to do with a shortage of tasteless imported lettuce or eating a healthy balanced diet of seasonal local produce.
As for low yield and crop losses due to weather, that is a problem for any crop in any country at any time regardless of whether the planet is warming or cooling and is largely overcome by planning, growing multiple varieties, advances in resistant types, alternate sourcing and better long term storage solutions.
Alex, This has been going on for quite a while actually and began with all the snowfall in Spain. The problem now is waterlogging that is preventing harvesting the remnants of the crops. Maybe it is a good idea to see the whole issue and not wait until you can find one little thing to try and turn the truth on its head.
A few events doesn’t mean we are doomed.
I hear that argument on the other side all the time and just roll my eyes and say it’s weather and not climate. We’ve had a mild winter in the north of China and my wife says it’s global warming and it’s really hot in Australia. Complete and utter nonsense.
We have an advantage that our ancestors didn’t have. We can grow vegetables indoors. link, link There’s no reason for anyone to go without their veggies because of poor growing conditions.
100%! Greenhouses and tunnel farming mean more, cheaper and better food can be available even in difficult growing years.
Tunnel farming – That one sneaked up on me. A quick google finds tunnel farming all over the world. The technologies used are pretty old. It appears that folks are finding optimum ways to put the various technologies together to get something that is highly effective, and economical, and suited to local conditions. link
Today in Melbourne, it was 10 degrees C hotter than yesterday. Given that this daily rate of change is 233,333 times faster than 1.5C per century, I expect that this is my last post…..
You will need several cold beers to restore the balance.
There has been no real winter here in Iceland this time. Weather has been more like autumn or early spring with very little snow, and temperature more or less above zero °C. We grow much of the vegetables in greenhouses heated with geothermal water and with artificial light during the winter months, so there is no shortage. Of course CO2 (from geothermal wells) is used as a fertilizer in the greenhouses. It may be different in the Europe mainland where the real winter weather is. By the way, thousands of Icelanders travel to Germany, Austria, France and Italy for skiing because of lack of snow here 🙂
Agust you are at the pointy end of global cooling, a wayward jet stream and blocking highs will do it every time.
The Great Salad Crunch.
As the warmists like to say: “this is consistent with a coming ice age”
Its all just so crazy..
1. Nobody *eats* lettuce – its just put on plates to look pretty then thrown out
2. A lot of people, who previously eaten a lot of plant material, will have chronic hypertension and be in considerable danger from heart disease and stroke. If diagnosed, they will be on a blood thinning medication like Warfarin. Thus, they really don’t want to be eating any significant amount of broccoli (or avocados) because of all the Vitamin K in such things – Vit. K being the antidote to blood thinning medications.
3. What effectively makes lettuce so lovely, green and crisp is the huge amount of nitrate within it. It would be yellow soggy and limp otherwise. Water utility companies in the EU spend *colossal* amounts of money, under legal law direction to minimise the nitrate content of drinking water because it is supposedly bad. Yet lettuce, loaded with nitrate is good. Crazy.
3.1 You get old or whatever and find your dik doesn’t work too good – you get Sildenafil medication and guess what, it works on the nitrate chemistry within you.
3.2 You are diagnosed with hypertension. Food experts tell you to eat beetroot to help lower your blood pressure. Guess what, nitrate again.
4. A BBC program called ‘Harvest’ occurs on an annual basis, 4 (I think) episodes covering the autumn harvesting activities of farmers in 4 parts of the UK. While flashing her fallopians through a pair of spray-on blue jeans and ‘driving’ a combine harvester, the blonde presenter told us that it was ‘fantastic’ (yes fantastic, something to fantasise about) that the UK produced 50% (half) of all the food it eats. Do the 30 million people here with no food to eat think it is so ‘fantastic’?
5. And as a lot of folks here realise/say – it is alarmism pure and simple. Yet there is huge a huge reaction and the story is blown out of all proportion. Again I suggest, just like when you’re half-asleep and someone prods or shakes you, you JUMP. You get a huge fright and over-reaction to a minor stimulus. And because of sugar in the form of processed starch, almost the entire world is chronically ‘half-asleep’
I’m having trouble reconciling your points 1 & 3, Peta.
How can you be sure lettuce is “lovely, green and crisp”…if nobody really eats it? 😉
“While flashing her fallopians through a pair of spray-on blue jeans and ‘driving’ a combine harvester, the blonde presenter ”
do you need this kind of outdated misogyny to make your point?
you are right lettuce is inedible
Actually, that was a great description. An image created, that 1000 other words couldn’t describe.
It was a sentence that conveyed a range of things.
The misogyny was in the presentation. Peta was just describing it.
PS – PMS
I like lettuce
Perhaps you have heard of the Honeymoon Sandwich ……..lettuce alone.
Tom
As part of a salad. Not on its own. I’m not a rabbit.
Sorry Tom
I missed the joke.
1. Nobody *eats* lettuce – its just put on plates to look pretty then thrown out
Reminds me of Sir William Coleman, one of the first millionaires who made money selling something that people leave on the side of their plate.
Low levels of sunlight caused by Stratopheric Aerosol Geo-engineering; you only have to watch as the lovely blue sky in the mornings is gradually turned into a nasty to a nasty toxic soup; there seems to be 2 sort these days: criss-cross grid pf trails which spread out to form a vaguely uniform off white “cloud”, & the parallel lines that spread slighty to form lines of fluffy whitish “cloud”. For more info. go to the Geo-engineering Watch site
Mods, are chemtrails not a banned item on this site – and this is a chemtrails posting I’m replying on
Glad we can agree on something. This is just spam, identical cut and paste stuff.
A thought has just occurred to me: no-body’s blamed Vlad. Putin/Russia for this veggie shortage!!!!!?!!!! —Yet!!!!!!
Don’t you mean Brexit & Trump?
It’s literally chaos.