From the UK Independent
‘Farmers are used to dealing with fluctuations in the weather but if we have two or three extreme years in a row it has the potential to put growers out of business’
- Josh Gabbatiss Science Correspondent @josh_gabbatiss
The potato snack was left an inch (2.5cm) shorter on average in 2018 after extreme heatwaves robbed them of much-needed water over the summer months.
This was one of the many changes catalogued in a new analysis by the Climate Coalition network and scientists at the University of Leeds.
They explored how rising global temperatures and associated extremes are likely to impact crop production and make British-grown produce harder to find.
Analysis conducted in the wake of last summer’s heatwaves by the Met Office found the event was made 30 times more likely by climate change.
Potato yields were slashed by a fifth in England and Wales in 2018, while carrot production fell by up to 30 per cent and onions by 40 per cent.
At the other end of the weather spectrum, more than half of UK farmers reported being affected by severe flooding or storms over the past 10 years.
The intensity of winter rainfall has gradually been creeping up in recent decades, as the changing climate tampers with weather systems and increases the chances of major downpours.
HT/Willie Soon
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Farmers always complain.
You wonder how they produce potatoes in hot and dry summer Spain.
We grow them in places where other crops cannot give good yields, such as Vitoria, Álava. Usually at high altitude. It snowed last Saturday over there, by the way. Not all of the country is hot and dry.
What do you mean? There is no global warming in Spain?
I thought the rain in Spain was mainly in the Plain…
Same in hot and dry Idaho.
“We’ll all be rooned, said Hanrahan” – John O’Brien
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Said_Hanrahan
Thank you for remembering “Rooned.” Love that poem… classic if not quite epic!
Alarmists always complain.
#DRRUPERTREADONTHECOUCH. WHY ARE CLIMATE ALARMIST UNCRITICAL OF IMPERIAL WAR AND IMPERIAL POWER STRUCTURES?
https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/jesuisbourgoiseblanchomme/
A look at the Psychiatric notes of a leading climate change alarmist.
My Great Grandfather came to the US during the Irish potato famine in 1858. Since the Irish potato blight was the result of a changing climate resulting in favorable conditions for fungi growth, was it the result of burning whale oil? If so, let me thank the whalers of the early 1800s.
Oh lord, so crops might be smaller in a one-off drought year in a normally-damp country if those crops are not watered? Who’d have thought?
It’s been a fine AGW day for us Brits. This story stands up well alongside the BBC latest pronouncement from an “Environment Correspondent” that the oceans will get bluer with “climate change”.
See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47092201
We can mark this down for future use as another AGW proponent’s prediction that didn’t happen.
It’s reassuring to see how settled the science is, Ian. Check this out:
https://futurism.com/oceans-color-global-warming/amp/
Personally I prefer the beeb’s deep azure over futurism’s baby-puke green.
Bottom line is something might maybe possibly change and that’s BAAAD.
No matter what happens, someone, somewhere, will have predicted it. That means ‘they’ can claim that CAGW theory is correct because all the events were predicted.
If all the experts predicted the same thing, and that was what happened every time, it would shake my skepticism. As it stands, they are usually left making up excuses for why their predictions failed. The problem is that someone, somewhere, will have predicted that particular event correctly. We need a way to hold all the alarmists responsible for all the failed predictions rather than letting them take credit for the correct ones.
EXACTLY!
“We need a way to hold all the alarmists responsible for all the MANY failed predictions rather than letting them take credit for the VERY FEW correct ones.”
I will remain skeptical so long as the “correct ones” occur no more often than random chance would dictate. There appears to be little that is actually “robust” about their predictive science.
Psychic readers work the same way. Throw a bunch of stuff against the wall, some of it fairly obvious, relatively high-probability events, and if even one prediction sticks, claim it as proof of their special powers.
Yes, and alarmists also rely on people’s short memory: flooding caused by a greater than average spring run off is climate change, and here’s a model that proves this is the new normal (more precipitation).
That this occured just three years after a smaller than average spring run off, which was also climate change, which also had a model that proved a new normal (less precipitation)…into the memory hole.
commieBob said: “We need a way to hold all the alarmists responsible for all the failed predictions rather than letting them take credit for the correct ones.” Name a correct one.
Despite the opening lines of the Beeb article saying the oceans would get bluer, the closing lines said:
“some species of phytoplankton will respond well to a warmer environment and will create larger blooms of more diverse marine organisms. This is likely to show up with more green regions near the equator and the poles, the researchers say.”
So, no matter which way it goes, they can say they predicted it
Climate scientist proponents of CAGW are getting bluer I’ve noticed. A certain testiness is a symptom of it. The Arctic blast was met with a grim Please-go-way silence until Trump’s cheery tweet. This brought out an explosion of angry silly contradictory remarks about global warming causing them and at the same time global warming resulting fewer of them. One, sent a drawing like children’s art you see stuck on fridges with a flying kettle boiling over the Atlantic. What kind of non sequitur is this? It immediately conjoured B. Russell’s tiny orbitting teapot of which CAGW is a perfect example.
Ask the big question: if CAGW causes a 300% anomaly enhancement in the Arctic, where did all that bitterly cold air come from covering two big continents. Much of Russia was similarly flash frozen. Shouldnt
Chicago have been less cold? It came within a whisker of the record set on the 1970s.
Climatologists actually believe that nobody is smart enough to adapt to changing conditions.
Nor animals. I remember one “study” about a species of bird in Tennessee and how its habitat was severely threatened by Climate Change. Much gnashing of teeth, of course, about human indifference.
Fast forward to hurricane season, same year, and the remnants of a hurricane in the Gulf swept up through Tennessee. What happened to the birds? They flew to CUBA and PUERTO RICO to bide their time… Something like 800 miles to avoid a hurricane and they can’t adapt to a degree of climate change?
The birds are better at getting out of the way of a hurricane than humans are…
It’s not the drought, it’s the infra-noise from all the wind turbines.
/sarc
Thanks, I had seen that link but couldn’t bear to click on it until you brought it up.
“Scientists say there will be less of them [phytoplankton] in the waters in the decades to come.”
The limiting factor of phytoplankton is supposed to be that the ocean is too warm? This seems to go against “old knowledge”, i.e. that plankton respond to increasing sunlight in the spring, utilising nutrients that have been built up over winter; then blooming, stripping out the said nutrients, and crashing again by midsummer, with a second burst in the autumn.
Unless they are suggesting that the oceans will stratify for longer and nutrients will therefore be depleted for longer? Who knows. Maybe I ought to read the study before pooh-poohing it!
The farmers should ell he potatoes to toughen up. Being under the soil should make things easier.
Do you need some WD-40 on the “t” key?
When both law and facts are on your side, pound on the tee.
I’d watch the fish – those chips look already awfully meagre. What if the fish shrink? OMG.
I’d give Jamie Oliver a call .
And the tomatoes for the ketchup.
OH MY, …… does that mean half-full bottles of ketchup on the store shelves?
probably
the new smaller sizes for the same or more cost trend is growing
industry of course swear theyre not ripping us off.
suuuuure
Just think with that Lancet report on overeating as enforced dieting.
It is the inflation of the fiat currency witch makes ketchup bottles and savings shrink.
We’ll be lucky if there are any fish at all, leave alone shrunk ones – see the link to the BBC story in my comment above.
People eat the fish and throw the chips away, anyway.
Not in my neck of the woods they don’t, lots of people have gravy on them as well, a particular Northern England delicacy.
J. Oliver says the best chips are done twice in beef fat, never mind all that vegie stuff. And the fish batter is then so crispy!
The best fried potatoes are always cooked twice.
Even the easily available frozen french fries and tater tots are pre-cooked. Though they call it blanching.
Cooks that drop stuff with water (e.g. blanched) into fry kettles eventually have an unhappy experience. The easiest alternative is to fry the potatoes until soft, drain and let cool, then fry a second time till crisp.
e.g. the famous puffed potatoes originally served to Napoleon were the happy accident of a cook trying to reheat cold potatoes by frying them a second time. That a sous-cook prepared the potatoes properly is another accident; i.e. sliced lengthwise evenly.
All I care about is the grapes shrinking and getting less wine in my bottle.
Don’t worry, Global Warming(tm) will cause your bottles to be smaller as well.
Hmmm…. “Rule 97% – If it exists, Climate Change will make it smaller.”
(Corollary – If Climate Change doesn’t make it smaller, a research papers will be published until it does.)
Don’t you get more chips now?
Did you hear the one about the Englishman whose car broke down on a rainy night?
Well, he knocked on the door of a Monastery and his host ushered him in to dry off and enjoy a tasty plate of Fish n’ Chips.
After eating, he asked his host, …….. “Are you the fish Friar?”
And his host responded, …….. “No, I am the chip Monk”,
Brexit will make potatoes only available for the rich.
Robertvd
Our children won’t know what chips are.
We Americans already don’t:)
NY knows them as French Fries – did’nt the Governor try to ban that appellation a while back?
HotScot
For once I disagree with you.
http://www.frietmuseum.be/en/
leitmotif
You know that, and I know that but alarmist types will say it anyway, despite the evidence.
🙂
The poor always suffer the most.
Let them eat crisps
🙂
“British chips shrink by an inch”
Not the only British thing to shrink by an inch in this cold weather !
Especially if you can’t allow to heat the house because of expensive green energy. You wonder why africans want to live in Britain?
COLD WEATHER CAUSES SEVERE SHRINKAGE. DROUGHT IS NOT THE PROBLEM.
Mor evidence:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/18/trump-is-right-to-question-climate-change-causes/#comment-2496356
Utter nonsense – warmth is NOT the problem.
Circa 1990 I went for a swim at the Forty Foot at Dun Laoghaire near Dublin, one fine warm summer Sunday morning. http://www.fortyfoot.org/
The water temperature was colder than I’d ever experienced – I thought my heart would stop – I swam out to a big outcrop, shot back to the ladder, and climbed out, glad to still be alive.
The little man was littler than he had ever been, and the twins were lost for an entire week.
Britain has the most stable climate ever : lots of rainfall and opportunity to stock water . Mild winters and warm ( rarely hot ) summers . If anything a bit of variation from rainy winter , raint spring , rainy summer and rainy autumn would be nice ..
It used to have… since 2000 we have seen a string of severe storm events, tidal surges, extreme rainfall and flooding events, mild start to winter and extreme cold and late snow in the new year. And the odd very hot summer.
The UK climate has definitely changed.
Oh geesus please.
There is about 20 different variables and hundreds of places, and time scales in scores. There ought to be a record of some kind every year somewhere.
The summer had weather. As the winter has weather. Stop talking about weather as global warming. Talk back to me when it starts raining aged inlaws.
griff…who are you putting on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_in_the_British_Isles
“… since 2000 we have seen a string of severe storm events, tidal surges, extreme rainfall and flooding events, mild start to winter and extreme cold and late snow in the new year. And the odd very hot summer.”
Compared to… what? 1990 to 2000? 1800 to 2000? 8000 B.C. to 2000 A.D.?
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/10/11/extreme-rainfall-in-england-not-getting-worse/Kills the rainfall claims off.
“British chips shrink by an inch as climate change slashes potato yields”
Oh dear, blaming climate change for shrinkflation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation
If you go to the original story, there is absolutely no attribution for the claim of shrinking chips. Where that trope is coming from, I have no idea.
Scientific American, 1920
potatoes: CO2 enriched vs CO2 starved.
Oh dear. Tell Prince Charles about it.
Why? Did his shrink an inch too?
It and the twins are all in the lock box, along with his shrunken brain. Nothing to worry about, unless he outlives his mother.
What “extreme” heatwave? It was a warmer than normal summer, that’s all.
“What “extreme” heatwave? It was a warmer than normal summer, that’s all.”
You know those Alarmists, they get SO dramatic.
I bet Alarmists could “cry Wolf” a million times without losing steam.
“To be able to enjoy our mash, chips or jackets for years to come, we need to take measures to tackle climate change urgently. If we don’t, then the impact on both growers and consumers is just one of the ways our lives will change in a world of climate breakdown.”
This gets to the very heart of the matter. You can accept as true everything the alarmists claim about future weather patterns, CO2 sensitivity and forcings, and mankind’s contribution to global warming. You STILL do not find justification for the actions being proposed. Spend trillions of dollars… or move the potato farms. Growing potatoes o’re thar instead of here doesn’t strike me as that big of a deal, especially considering that if what they say is right, that the potato farms are going to be moving anyway.
Yet in 2017 we had the 2nd highest yield in 9 years. This doesn’t look scary at all https://www.freshplaza.com/article/9053130/uk-potato-production-hits-lowest-level-since-2012/
In the UK , according to Wiki, we only use 80 varieties of the thousands theoretically available from the Andean Highlands , of varied climate conditions, (although most modern commercial varieties are derived from those originating in the cool damp conditions in Chile I gather) where they were first domesticated :
-“There are about 5,000 potato varieties worldwide. Three thousand of them are found in the Andes alone, mainly in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia. They belong to eight or nine species, depending on the taxonomic school. Apart from the 5,000 cultivated varieties, there are about 200 wild species and subspecies, many of which can be cross-bred with cultivated varieties. Cross-breeding has been done repeatedly to transfer resistances to certain pests and diseases from the gene pool of wild species to the gene pool of cultivated potato species. Genetically modified varieties have met public resistance in the United States and in the European Union.[21][22]”-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato
I would think that there is plenty of opportunity for modifying varieties for different climatic conditions. All it needs is money (of course) and real scientists , like biologists and geneticists , not faux climatologists.
June and July 2018 had the highest easterly QBO values since 1948 for those months, that likely assisted the blocking pattern.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/qbo.data
I grow vegetables in my yard in Derbyshire. The first-early potatoes weren’t great but the second earlys and main crop were the best I’ve had for years; large crop of large potatoes. My onions were also the best crop for years.
What is not stated is that potato yields have doubled since the 1960s
https://goo.gl/images/6h7avQ
Yes, would be interesting to to see a chart going back 500 years. I mean, considering it would be flat (as in zero, as in nada grown AT ALL) for the first part…impressive growth.
The real reason they shrank is, of course, because they were in the pool.
“……if we have two or three extreme years in a row it has the potential to put growers out of business’…….”
The British Government issues an immediate tax increase in order to assist farmers increase the length of their chips. In other news, the British Government is concerned at the obesity crisis, and authorises an immediate tax increase to fund initiatives to decrease the size of potato chips…….
Of course, anything has the POTENTIAL to put growers out of business. Unhappy love affairs, tripping on a step and aliens landing in Norfolk all have the POTENTIAL to put growers out of business. Perhaps, to be on the safe side, we should ban everything.
That will, of course, result in a huge tax increase to fund the necessary bureaucracy…..
“Aliens landing in Norfolk”
They did that years ago – and found plentiful work at the UEA Climate Research Unit…
huge tax increase to fund the necessary bureaucracy…..
==========
The most likely event to put famers amd everyone else out of business.
Plants and animals solved the parasite problem via reproduction and death of the host. Could explain the basis for revolutions. Kill the host government to get rid of the parasitic infestation.
They don’t seem to have modeled the effect on price of a decrease in supply. There’s no reason to believe that it will become impossible to grow potatoes in the UK, simply that yields will fall. If that happens, then the price will rise, unless there is some untapped source of potatoes we can import.
But the strangest thing about the story is the suggestion that shorter chips are the problem – personally I prefer the medium to short ones, they tend to be crisper.
Aliens landing in Norfolk?
Make a change from Surrey.
If longer chips are a must, then let the UK buy potatoes from Idaho. They keep well.
BS. In Maine yield/per acre is steadily increasing, only variable in # of acres. Proper watering is most important factor.
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/New_England_includes/Publications/Current_News_Release/2017/Maine%20Potatoes%20-%202016.pdf
The solution to the chips crisis is simple and is the same as for any crisis:
Stop using fossil fuels. Raise taxes. Form a One-World government.
I dodn’t know why people get so upset when the solution is so simple.
Potato yield fell little in 2017. Can’t compare to previous years, since from 2016 data exclude seed and starch, and are for Great Britain only:
https://www.potatopro.com/united-kingdom/potato-statistics
2017: 460,000.00 hg/ha
2016: 462,000.00 hg/ha
However yield did drop last year:
https://potatoes.ahdb.org.uk/publications/gb-potato-production-falls-489mt-lowest-2012
But had nothing to do with “climate change”. Just WX. Potato yield has grown during the postwar era of fertilized air.
Potato yield: If the farmer planed smaller potatoes producing plans but each plant yields the same number of potatoes or more as the larger potatoes producing plans wouldn’t potato field yield more lbs of potatoes? Sounds like the farmers and restaurants are adjusting to inflation.
Would a frozen over Thames in winter be better for potatoes?
Easier to get to market?
They’re not British chips in that photo, they’re inferior french fries. Here is a photo of British chips:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/768db3417a945abbdf431c30828fbede7f2f086f.jpg
Looks like they were chipped from small potatoes.