Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to climate researcher Nancy Fresco, Alaska could have the potential to feed itself by 2100 – but lots of government intervention is required to kickstart Alaska’s agricultural revolution.
Climate change could enable Alaska to grow more of its own food – now is the time to plan for it
February 4, 2022 12.10am AEDT
Nancy Fresco
SNAP Coordinator, Research Faculty, University of Alaska Fairbanks…
As a climate researcher at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, I recently worked with other scholars, farmers and gardeners to begin investigating our state’s agricultural future. We used global climate change models downscaled to the local level, coupled with insights from farmers growing vegetables for local markets and tribal groups interested in gardening and food security. Our goal was to take a preliminary look at what climate change might mean for agriculture in communities across the state, from Nome to Juneau and from Utqiaġvik to Unalaska.
Our research suggests that planning for future decades and even future generations may be crucial for keeping Alaska fed, healthy and economically stable. We have created online tools to help Alaskans start thinking about the possibilities.
…
Our climate modeling suggests a dramatically changing future for Alaska crops by 2100, with frost-free seasons extending not just by days, but by weeks or months; cumulative summer heat doubling or more; and the coldest winter days becoming 10 or 15 degrees less extreme.
…
Growing more fresh foods here would help Alaska economically and nutritionally – but it won’t happen automatically. To achieve meaningful long-term increases in agriculture, the Alaska Food Policy Council has recommended creating a proactive state-funded nutrition education program, developing more food storage infrastructure, offering financial incentives for expanding agriculture and teaching residents about northern growing methods. The council’s research suggests that the state could realize major benefits from investments in training, technology, support for clustered businesses such as packaging and storage, and programs to foster a farming culture.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/climate-change-could-enable-alaska-to-grow-more-of-its-own-food-now-is-the-time-to-plan-for-it-174939
The idea that kickstarting Alaskan agriculture would require government intervention is even more absurd than the idea that Alaska will experience dramatic warming over the next century.
Farmers are always on the lookout for low cost land which might be productive.
I remember a very educational radio interview with an Australian marginal desert wheat farmer. He explained he got into it because he couldn’t afford to buy a regular farm, but once you considered capital costs he was making more profit than regular farmers. He only harvested a decent crop two years in five, but leasing vast acreages of marginal land from the government was so cheap, it more than compensated for the bad years.
How many second sons of farmers are there, people with the skills but not the inherited land, who would flock to exploit any new land opened up by global warming? It would be like a new gold rush.
All the Alaskan government would have to do is get out of the way.
They forgot to mention that global warming will also turn Texas into a tundra landscape … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHsjpWmNyFI
On January 31, 1949 the low in San Antonio was 0F, that is zero.
Net zero
nyet zero
The year 1949 featured a lot of exceptionally cold and snowy weather over the North American continent. I remember. I was a witness to it.
I was born in July of 49, and as I recall it wasn’t that bad…
cool web site (no pun intended)- with a lot more videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpNje5Hgfp0VGL0u2uQmRQg/videos
it needs more than 413 subscribers
Thanks for the comment … YouTube shadow bans me, but that’s no going to stop me.
oh, didn’t realize it was yours- now I’ll look at some more
Try Rumble, no shadow- banning there, and people are hungry for content.
Thanks — most are on Rumble … Parler … GAB …and some on BitChute and GETTR.
10 to 15 deg C warmer … in just 78 years? Wow! That makes even RCP 8.5 seem like a nothing burger by comparison.
Well, don’t build up your seed corn supply just yet, or go out and buy a bunch of tractors and combines based upon this fantasy projection.
Besides, regardless of climate only 1% of the total land area of Alaska is privately owned, with the other 99% owned by the Federal government, the State of Alaska, local governments, and Native tribes. And most of Alaska is not serviced by roads, rail, or other practical transport of agricultural goods. It was such transportation that made mass agriculture feasible through most of the lower 48.
You pretty much nailed it. Even as recently as the 50’s in the continental US, a lot of small towns had railroad spurs for the transportation of just about everything, including ag products. This was before the development of the long-haul trucking industry.
There is going to have to be a *big* growth in what I call farm-to-market transportation infrastructure in Alaska before any of this can happen in real life.
Evolution
Train tracks ran through all the small towns in Saskatchewan
Then they started pulling them up, demolishing elevators and replacing them with centralized massive inland terminals.
End result, everything switched to bigger and bigger trucks to haul long distances and destroyed the secondary and grid road networks.
They are still trying to build those up
The same thing happens in oilfields.
Very productive fields transport the oil through pipeline networks and eventually, to refineries.
As production dwindles, (salt) water injection techniques are used to increase production and the pipelines deteriorate. Eventually, it isn’t cost effective to repair/replace the pipes and heavy truck transport becomes the norm and local roads deteriorate.
By that time, the local tax base has been greatly reduced, as there is less taxable oil being produced and far fewer tax paying exploration and production people around, along with those good people in supporting communities.
With little money to pay for maintenance, the roads only get worse.
I spoke of the Burbank Field, in Northern Oklahoma, as an example.
Until the early 50s, the primary method of transport in the field was by rail, with small rail lines crisscrossing that vast field. Eventually, the rail lines were replaced with pipelines and now, by road transport.
The Burbank field was at one time, the world’s third largest producing oil field and had a population of over 40,000 people.
I doubt if 3,000 people live there, now.
The populace of Alaska was feeding itself long before the white man showed up. It’s a different story now. And even if the locals went back to the old ways — which they’d have to relearn — they involved killing whales and seals. That would never be allowed today. 2100? Who knows?
Subsistence hunting and gathering can only supply a very small population, and then pretty much every member thereof spends all their time doing the hunting and gathering and support tasks like food prep, tanning hides, making arrowheads and spear points. With no time for much anything else.
In the Americas well south of the Arctic and the boreal forests, native humans could support far larger and more concentrated populations only thru agriculture. That development resulted in far fewer numbers of people directly engaged in food supply, which in turn favored development of “civilization” with written language, education, mathematics and astronomy, and organized enterprises like mining, erection of buildings, road building, written laws, and government.
A bad road all around, no?
“Somebody’s got to go back and get a sh*tload of Dimes.”
Apparently there’s a toll road on the way to Eden, Alaska
Dimes? Ha!! It’ll be $10 coins pretty soon with the Bidinflation.
I wonder if Nancy Fresco ever visited the Matanuska Valley, near Anchorage, in the summer growing season? Sure, Alaska is not that warm in summer, but the (near) 24 hours of sunshine make vegetables grow like crazy. The University of Fairbanks needs to check the credentials of Nancy, she seems a little off her meds or something. 10 or 15 degrees by 2100? Definitely off her meds.
That is the “fertilizer” that makes her research viable. Without that warming, it is just frozen fertilizer. She is the SNAP coordinator. So she is aiming this at deep pockets, that can keep her churning out the fertilizer until she retires and can laugh at those that fell for the scam.
“Our climate modeling suggests”
People will still believe this utter garbage. And they do. And its been factchecked by PolitiFact as being true….
Yes. Looks like settled science…
“According to climate researcher Nancy Fresco…”
Seriously? Someone labelled her a “researcher”?
Ah that’s the new term for a climate fantasist.
I grew up in NJ – “The Garden State”. I think there were gardens before there was a state. AK please take note. If climate change favors growing more food, no doubt you already know what to do. If not, you already know what to do. There. No new programs required.
During the 60s and 70s, a time of declining global temperatures (like now), “knee high by the fourth of July” was a common sign in the southern parts of Minnesota, that the corn crop could be good that year. In the northern parts, the growing season was simply too short to even try to plant corn. The soil was ok, so potatoes were reliable, and in the similar climate of North Dakota, wheat crops were often successful. Farther north in the rich plains of Manitoba the growing season was even more difficult.
If someone wants to spend money speculating on expanding their agricultural base because of global warming, there’s a lot of much more likely places like these to wager it, rather than in Alaska. You might even find some oil if you pick the Dakotas and Montana.
They better hurry. Soon the Dakotas and Montana will be covered with wind mills and glass panels.
Isn’t that blight sad?
My grandparents grew up in ND and it was so beautiful to see open fields as far as the eye could see.
You can watch your dog run away for 3 days!!!
Old Saskatchewan joke, ND qualifies
😀
That’s why they put Leavenworth in Kansas. Escapees are visible for days….
Kansas isn’t all that flat. It’s very rolling. At least it is for many miles around Fort Riley. Wisconsin is flatter, in my experience.
Fort Riley is in what is called the Flint Hills. It’s a string of rolling hills that stretch from almost the Nebraska to around El Dorado. East of those hills is a transition area from the Missouri forest country to the High Plains. West of the hills is *really* flat. The only thing inhibiting your view once you get west of Salina is the curve of the earth!
and massive battery instalations
If so Putin might want it back,
Bidet would probably give it back as a show of good faith. You know, “Peace in our time.”
The only sensible things anybody is ever going to grow and harvest in Alaska might be reindeer.
Or seals maybe = the fat blobby things that polar bears like to eat so there may be some competition there.
Salmon maybe if some scrap wind turbine towers were dumped in the water, just offshore to get some Iron into the system.
The sun is far too low in the sky for anything else, esp plant material.
It’s the Cumulative Solar Radiation that counts, not any amount of cumulative heat.
Folks living in that part of the world need ultra high-density nutrition – cabbages and turnips wont work.
Don’t the words fail when super intelligentsia, the ones who know all about the quantum mechanics of the the Green House Gas Effect, don’t realise that.
You are what you eat…
ummm ..
Foods that Grow in Alaska: Farming on the Last Frontier …https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/ip3/farmflavor.com.icohttps://farmflavor.com › alaska › foods-grow-alaska
Potatoes Contributing a net value of over $3 million to the state’s economy annually, potatoes are one of the most valuable crops grown in Alaska. Planting usually begins in the middle of May, when the day length reaches about 17 hours, and the growing season continues through September.
😉
3 million? that’ll cover the Pentagon’s expenses for about 5 minutes
Nancy thinks quantum mechanics is the guy who fixes her Ev
Moose outnumber reindeer by about 10 to 1 in Alaska and a moose dresses out to several hundred pounds. I’ve never eaten reindeer but moose meat is quite edible and even delicious depending on the cut and method of its preparation.
And of course there is salmon, as you mention. With it, Alaska exports more seafood than it could possibly consume. As others have pointed out, the endless sun of summer yields colossal vegetables. A 7 kg carrot I imagine would be quite filling.
I think the people of Alaska pretty much have their food supply issues worked out at the moment and their collective intelligence greatly exceeds that of Ms. Fresco. She can’t really improve upon the market today, so she has to tell everyone what is best for them in the year 2100.
You’ve beclowned yourself, Peta, once again. Alaska already produces much of the Salmon harvested in the whole world without adding any iron to the ocean, and some of the largest vegetables in the whole world. Look up Matanuska valley veggies. The simple and obvious thing you overlooked is that, while the sun angle is lower in Alaska, in the summer growing season they get 20 or more hours of sunlight. Turns out that many types of veggies love that.
Peta, seriously, you could avoid constantly beclowning yourself if you would just do a few minutes of research before each post. But, of course, you’re not going to do that until you realize that you don’t know as much as you think you do. By now, you should have picked up on that fact.
“You’ve beclowned yourself, Peta, once again.”
It’s all that sugar.
Can anyone think of any example of where AGW is not used as an excuse for more government spending?
it’s used an excuse for everything
I can see it now- in the courtroom- the Judge says, “Mr. Smith, did you beat your wife”. Smith says, “climate change made me do it”.
I know what you mean, but AGW is not alone as an excuse for more government spending. Seemingly everything is an excuse for more government spending.
Nevertheless, at the very least, there would be some reduced cost of heating government buildings at play. Legislators don’t ask for peanuts though.
Lack of government spending is an excuse for more government spending.
provisions for citizen militia units
With energy inexpensive enough, just about anything can be grown anywhere in greenhouses.
In fact, making energy cheaper today will provide immediate benefit to those living today, as well as providing wealth for those who come later, even 80 years later.
Nonsense. Nothing is cheaper anywhere today, the world debt is $300 trillion. Those who come later will be born into poverty automatically.
If the whole world is in debt, who are the creditors? Aliens?
Methinks someone should tell the Alaskans.
“We used global climate change models downscaled to the local level”
Oh yeah, that’ll work.
… and would work much better if it was downscaled to the real temperature!…
To be fair, if you believe hysterical forecasts, then preparing for a broader crop belt is exactly what we should be doing right now. I wonder why there aren’t more proposals like this.
Are you talking about an arugula belt?…
Its a tad premature, that’s why.
Leftists are so funny…
They’re basing Alaska’s future agricultural production output on climate model models that are currently running 4~5 standard deviations above UHA6.0 observations, which means the models are completely worthless.
Leftist hacks get around this climate-model disconfirmation by comparing them to frequently manipulated global temperature anomaly datasets that miraculously somehow stay within 2 standard deviations of median climate model predictions..
“Neat Trick”…
They’ll be surfing in Kachemak along the Homer riviera.
Catch some tasty waves and a halibut!
A few hearty people do.
Used to be dinosaurs up there
So yes, it can happen
Except for the coming mile thick ice sheets.
That might throw a wrench into it
We are constantly being encouraged to fear imaginary, unfounded external threats to our existence. The real and proven threat is the power in the hands of ignorant, unscientific politicians, “experts” and policy makers. The more their whims become actions the greater the risk that the quality of our lives and even our lives themselves will come to an end in some catastrophic miscalculation of how nature actually works.
They’re not ignorant or unscientific. They’re scheming, devious, power-hungry petty tyrants, who will use “teh science” to manipulate the gullible, and beat down the proud.
Your views and mine are both reasonable assessments. I tend to count as “ignorant and unscientific” behaviors that, while self serving, will ultimately lead to a world where none but a sociopath would be happy and where most of the current human population would perish rapidly,
CAGW has jumped the shark right into straight up fiction writing. They’ve tossed the pretense of “science”, and given themselves completely to science fiction. 🤣
In Brazilian Portuguese, “frescura” (the quality of what is “Fresco”; cf. name of the self-proclaimed “climate researcher”) is used to qualify an ingenuous, utopical and simplistic idea…
(in Portugal, “frescura” just means freshness in the sense of fresh salad, cool water, etc.)
This is a common trait amongst leftists, the belief that without government direction, nothing would ever get done. I was recently informed by one, that without government, the poor would always be poor.
It was because of government that serfs had to remain serfs. It was because of government that slaves were not allowed to escape to areas that allowed them to be free.
The bigger problem is big government.
If there’s one thing government doesn’t do anymore, it’s get out of the way!
First of all you’d have to make sure that there are 17 or 23 different permits needed, two or three of which can’t be applied for until all others have been approved, and will be arbitrarily rejected a few times unless appropriate palms are greased. After all we must prioritize non-binary undocumented migrant persons of color.
Ha! Send some of that warming down here!
Rough week for this trucker. Sent up to Skokie, and Elk Grove Village as the big winter storm came through. There was no way to get back to the yard in Anderson, IN within the legal time.
As I headed to my first stop up in Skokie along the lake just north of Chicago, my right side windshield wiper blade just flew off. Probably ice build up had broken the little plastic retaining clip. The first opportunity to repair it without getting off of I-94 was a toll booth where all the cash lanes are closed and I could pull off onto what were the merge lanes out of traffic.
I carry a spare set of wiper blades at all times and during the winter they’re the heavy duty type. They are stowed in the right side tool box.
To replace the blade required opening the bonnet and climbing up on the steer tire in order to reach the arm. While I was up there I scraped the ice that had built up along the bottom of the windshield. That ice was at least 1/2″ thick and it took some doing.
It took me about 20 minutes to do this repair and get back out on the road.
That day was one of once again reaching out the side window to grab the wiper blade arm on the drivers side and pulling it away from the windshield so it would slap back down against the glass and break off the ice that was accumulating on both tips of the blade.
Heading back knowing the truck stops and rest areas would be full I pulled off on a ramp at exit 215 on I-65 south that I know has wide shoulders and truckers often park at to take my 10 hour break at the end of the 16 hour exception duty time.
Made something to eat and had just laid down in the sleeper when an Indiana State Trooper was banging on my door telling me to move along. It is illegal to park on ramps in Indiana but enforcement is at best spotty. And it is common to see the ramps at the exits where there are truck stops with trucks lined up parked along the shoulders.
But the guy has a badge, a gun, and a ticket book. And I was so pissed off about being rousted by the bonehead I wasn’t going to sleep anyway, even if I did find a place to park. So I drove the 128 miles back to the yard. Ended up working for 22 hours.
Then yesterday morning I was to take off for a Lear Logistics run from Anderson, IN to Romulus, MI then down to Indianapolis and then back to Anderson.
No trouble getting out of my snow drifted driveway in the Toyota FJ. Knowing how things get when we have these storms I arrived at the terminal at 02:30 for an 04:00 departure.
The truck had a pollution control system problem and the mechanics had taken it out of my usual parking spot and into the garage to fix it. And while it was in the garage those plowing the snow at the terminal filled my parking spot with plowed snow.
So when they were done with the truck they parked it in a snow covered spot.
I found the tractor and cleaned the snow off of it. But when I tried to back out I was stuck even when I engaged the interlock so I had four wheels pulling and turned off the traction control which is like having posi-traction. I cleared the piled up snow from the path of the wheels and still could not get out. I could not rock it because the bone head mechanic had put the steer tire right up against the parking block.
So it took an old timers trick to get out. I took a gallon of windshield washer fluid from my right tool box and poured 1/4 gallon over each of the four drive tires. And that did the trick. I backed right out. Clorox bleach will do the same for you folks at home if you happen to get desperate.
Roads were fine. The only problem after I left the yard was at the Lear facility in Indy where it was a total mess. After dropping my trailer in door 64 and getting my signed paperwork I was supposed to hook to an empty to bring back to the yard in Anderson.
Thankfully the roads were in great shape, but the Lear facility in Indy had not been plowed. After putting the trailer I brought in door 64 I was to hook to an empty trailer to bring back to the yard.
There were two empty trailers there but I wasn’t going to back under either one because if I had I was sure I would be stuck.
BTW I used a total of 4 gallons of windshield washer fluid today, not including the one I poured over the tires.
Wow…Rah.
RAH, how much do you pay for wiper fluid in bulk (say -20 or -25C)?
I never noticed this problem before, but when it got down way below 0F the other day, my wheels went out of balance. At first I thought I might have had a flat but my pressure indicator didn’t show that.
It turned out to be ice buildup around the rims. I pressure washed my tires at the $1 car wash and that took care of it.
The company I drive for has it out for drivers to grab as much of it as they need for their trucks.
Last night when I got in I topped off the fuel and the DEF and purged the air tanks at the fuel island. I also filled the tank for the washer fIuid and checked out all fluid levels, belts, and wheel seals.
I then pulled over a pass door at the garage.
First I went in and got a brush full of grease and greased the fifth wheel. Then I walked down by the office and making two trips carried 5 gallons of washer fluid back to my truck and stowed them in the left side tool box. I then walked to the parts department desk and got a new heavy duty wiper blade to replace the one that I had used.
Gotta take care of the equipment.
Thanks for sharing Rah. Impressive way to make a living!
My job is to cover loads that don’t get covered or for which drivers call off. There are now 10 of us that do that job and 9 of us were running. The one that wasn’t didn’t have the hours. This happens because the labia of regular so called drivers starts hurting when it gets cold and nasty outside and road conditions and visibility sucks, and they call off or simply don’t show up for work. It’s just that simple.
And so I have driven in a lot of winter weather over the past 8+ years I have been doing this on call job.
Do you “professional” drivers actually think that it’s a good idea to be circulating on the highways during bad weather? It seems that photographs of super winter wrecks and subsequent traffic jams usually include jack-knifed trucks on freeway exits and entrance ramps. Is it so critical that a load of paper towels or dog food make it to the local big box that a much increased risk to the admittedly silly automobile drivers is justified?
https://youtu.be/OebNn9avnUg
They also show a lot of cars. What was it those drivers of 4-wheelers needed to be out there so bad? Could it be a pay check? Think about it? Your post has a strong whiff of bigotry to it. And BTW. The most dangerous thing for us drivers of big rigs at all times, are the drivers of the 4-wheelers around us. The periods when I’m not in traffic in those conditions is when I am least tense.
Mr Hewitt,
“Is it so critical that a load of paper towels or dog food make it…”
The next time you turn up to your local supermarket and find there is no toilet paper or no food for you or your pets, you will think differently about this.
This is no theoretical occurrance either – for me, it happened at the beginning of the Covid outbreak, when the supermarkets ended up with low supplies of toilet paper and various foodstuffs. For folk in the Northern Territory of Australia, it is happening right now due to road and rail washouts caused by monsoon rains.
It might dawn on you then that trucks are rather important in the modern world and that you will not survive long without them getting stuff from place to place, no matter the weather.
The “Covid outbreak” seems to have no end in sight and is an apple to the orange of a blizzard. Bad weather generally ends in hours and the highways are cleared for normal use by maintenance crews quickly. It’s pretty unusual for snowfall to create shortages of necessaries anywhere in the US, including Alaska.
On the other hand, federal regulations govern the commercial flights of aircraft in inclement weather conditions and flights are frequently cancelled for this reason. Of course, it’s unusual for mid-air collisions to occur in even the most dangerous weather while cars and trucks smash into each other regularly on even slightly slippery roads. But thoughtless and incompetent drivers feel that there’s a constitutional right to zoom down to the C-store for a pack of smokes and a frozen pizza no matter what the conditions might be. It’s a part of the epidemic cultural insanity that grips the West.
For me, I was carrying auto parts. Parts needed at manufacturers to keep their lines running. Others will be carrying produce which is time critical so it doesn’t spoil. Lots of reasons truckers have to keep rolling if at all possible.
Thanks for YOUR service, rah. Given what you guys go through to support us home-dwellers, it’s not hard to see why Canadian truckers are out protesting. I wish I had a big air horn sometimes…
Just doing a job I love most days.
As I type this I’m parked at A place in Janesville, WI. Tomorrow I hit this stop then go to Walworth, and then Milwaukee. After those three stops I take the load to the Vandalia, OH terminal.
I take a break there then come back up here to do it all again on Wednesday. One more iteration after that and after dropping the load at Vandalia I go back to my home terminal in Anderson, IN early Saturday morning.
This run is all Toyota parts. Some for production and some for service.
If we just allow history to guide us, it’s well known that 78 years before Ohio became a state, government bureaucrats planned diligently for food storage infrastructure. Thanks entirely to their efforts back in 1725, Ohio successfully became a state in 1803 and became an agricultural powerhouse.
Farmers’ daughters (and some sons possibly) flocked to the well planned communities from Eastern states. Taking full advantage of the investments in training, technology, support for clustered businesses such as packaging and storage, and programs to foster a farming culture, the inexperienced and utterly government-dependent farmers were empowered to thrive!
Where would the early pioneers of the American frontier have been without the foresight displayed by the true heroes, our government bureaucrats?
Unfortunately, today’s Bureaucrats did not descend from those. Assuming that your story is true.
Assuming my story is true?!! Are you suggesting that I am writing in jest?
In 1725 our British overlords considered Ohio to be aboriginal territory where colonists were forbidden to settle. Even still, the government was able to predict from various political science models that there was a Revolution coming that would open up the Northwest Territories to development. Therefore they worked on the infrastructure and worker training programs in secret, so secret that no record can be found today.
Of course it’s true that the unconstitutional Louisiana Purchase gave some odd John Locke justification to the invasion of the rest of North America by the Anglo pirates. But the treaties made with those aboriginals, a process for which no context existed in the native American world, were ignored moments after being signed, even though they still exist.
About as relevant today as decrying the Norman Conquest or the plight of the Canaanites, Tom.
The 1725 myth is, on the other hand, quite contemporary. There are some aboriginal facts, however: https://nailheadtom.blogspot.com/search?q=bender
I would say that the gormless idiot who wrote this piece of tosh is one of the 97% of climate scientists who support the global warming consensus and bolster the ninnies in power and in the media . She should go out and get a real job but alas she seems to lack the qualifications
This looks like an advertisement for the Alaska Food Policy Council. I looked at two reports linked to in the article. Both reports are unsigned. Lots of thought went into them. The 2021 Alaska Food Security Investment Recommendations estimates $40 million to start with. (The population of Alaska is about 710,000 people. The number of AFPC members is unknown).
The nonprofit Council does “increase awareness about Alaska food issues”. I assume that they’ll also increase awareness of inflation.
It’ll be interesting to see if the slight population decline of Alaska of the last couple of years continues.
Echos of Lysenko here. Reason has nearly disappeared from the western world. A few years ago I happened upon a long post by some fellow in Iowa who had planted decorative almond trees because Iowa had officially moved one climate zone (I can’t recall if the USDA was involved in fomenting this belief or not). His trees suffered one disaster after another and finally all died after having been mutilated repeatedly over late and early frosts killing limbs.
His final explanation was that while Iowa may have moved to a warmer climatic zone because of global warming, climate change had altered the polar vortex, and that is what killed the trees.
It was all very serious, but one could not have written a better parody of the idiotic beliefs that people form under expert misinformation.
Too bad. Iowa could use some almond dairies.
Nut milk just sounds better than nut juice or nut cream.
It’s all pretty nutty…
Alaska 60° south, 70° north (latitude). Sea ice reaches land in December and is ice free in July at 71° north(latitude). Anchorage 61° (latitude) (last 0 freezing level) April 12th and first October 28th. 4 day periods above freezing (Anchorage) can occur which happens more than once for the months of Dec/Jan/Feb. South of Alaska is the pacific ocean(warm source of air). West is land where temperatures get as low as -60°C. East is Canada which again is has very low winter temperatures. The article refers to their computer models to justify their prediction. We know how faulty and unreliable climate computer models are. Only people who are science illiterate will think this prediction (frost free winter days will be weeks and months by 2100) is plausible. Food (vegetables) growing period is possible between May and September in the south (not the north). If these vegetables are not tolerant to freezing conditions.
Alaska is a garden state, they farm like a sonuvabeeatch up there. Moronic college educated f**kbags.
Forkbags?
Got to carry them around somehow. 😉
What makes her think Alaska is warming? Why. Alaska? Surely all of Canada first? With its population moving north at last from the American border!!! Pull the other one.
Anyone betting on an “agricultural revolution” in Alaska using their own money deserves to lose their money. Anyone betting using taxpayer’s money deserves to have their hiney kicked.
Alaska is already a garden state, with bushel basket cabbages, et cetera.
I think the Belgian endive will do well there.
This prediction reminds me of a newspaper column written by a deacon in my old church many years ago. This deacon was a nature enthusiast but had no scientific training. The article was, of course, about AGW and all of the supposed deleterious effects that it would bring to the area (referring to central Maryland, Baltimore and DC area). I remember laughing when he said that “by 2020 there will be palmetto bugs, palm trees and lizards running around the aforementioned central Maryland area. He wrote the article some 25 years ago, and like pretty much all other AGW predicted catastrophes, hasn’t come close to coming true. Nope, you still don’t plant your tender veggies outdoors until Mother’s Day in this area.
The very idea that any place on this earth is going to have that kind of massive climatic shift in a few decades is nuts, at least not without some kind of obvious (not mandmade) driving force like major volcanic eruptions.
I am afraid that the SNAP project, which produced this report, is nonsensical. They base the whole thing on two model choices, GDFL and NCAR, but don’t give any indication what IPCC scenario upon which the projection is based. Models only tell youwhat you ask hen to tell you. No scenarios means SNAO thinks rheir is only ONE possible future out 100 years. Nuts.
It will be fun to watch Alaska grow crops during the 6 months of winter darkness.
Why do folks keep going on about upcoming Global Warming when the climate cycles keep showing that this Pleistocene (current ice age we are within) is at the tail end of its current 12,000 year inter-glacial, and soon to head back into yet one more glaciation phase? We have been in an ice age for the last 2.58 million years now, with no end in sight. Here is one of many charts that show this:
Ice Age Chart
Where is the profit in an attitude like that?
I think you meant to post:
I really don’t like how the warm periods are just ‘tips of the iceberg’ – very short in duration compared to the cold stretches. I really wish CO2 was the Earth’s Temperature as we’re going to need an extra 6°C of warming when the ice age returns!
More proof Enviros are green on the outside, Red on the inside. Not a dime of taxpayer dollars for what the private sector can accomplish 5 times faster and ten times cheaper.
Alaska was an animal refugia during the last glacial period and humans traversed the Bering Strait land bridge to begin the population of the Americas during the current inter-glacial period.
Svante Arrhenius once quipped something along the lines that CO2 warming might give Sweden and Denmark a more salubrius climate to attract immigrants and allow more food production. I think he may have gotten the immigrants and the food production part right, but not through a warmer climate.
Strangely, the exact quote seems to have been purged from several of the places I’d remembered reading it before…hmm. Isn’t it interesting when the mob has to censor their own patron saints?
“All the Alaskan government would have to do is get out of the way.”
The government could make dams and provide water at low cost-
a competent government could, I mean.
There are other means that might work better and woruld displace no one. Many, many well placed farm ponds to capture runoff.
Mayan and Incan rulers used hallucinogens and still had much more practical dreams than these crackpots.
Besides using the least rational and forever wrong climate models, they’re planning for a future that does not exist. Even after thirty years of alarmism pushing longer summers, warmer winters, all without the sunlight to make it useful in Alaska.
If this were true, than Trudeau’s insistence on fighting global warming should be considered treason against the people of Canada.
It rather seems that way, regardless.
” .. more; and the coldest winter days becoming 10 or 15 degrees less extreme.”
In Fairbanks, the coldest winter days are -40. Even 10 to 15 degrees warmer is -25. Not growing anything.
In 1988 after nearly a decade of hot, dry summers, weather “experts” in Canada were telling us that by 2000, the southern p arts of the Canadian Prairies would have a climate like Kansas, while southern Ontario and Quebec would be like Virginia. Dead wrong again 34 years later,
All this climate modelling has driven various govt’s crazy but they still pay for it and want more . Promotes fear in the voters and the polly’s will save them .
When they can model the weather for more than a few days with all the scientific and super brains and computers at their disposal and actually get it right , they might have some slight believability .
I used to joke, some 30 years ago when I moved from California to Maine, that it was a bet that Global Warming was true. Turned out that the joke was on me!
That said, I must say that watching a dump truck drive across a frozen lake to deliver building supplies to an island is fun and educational to watch.
But scenes like that don’t keep keep the alarmists quiet. They profess great worry about rising sea levels (currently measured at 3mm or less a year). This in a state where the average tidal range is over 3,000mm A DAY! If you want to understand sea level mitigation, just visit any local harbor…
Simple recommendation for Alaska: wait until they are growing and harvesting barley on the western coast of Greenland (as was done during the MWP), THEN break out the tractors for Spring planting. Until then, pay no attention to these nonsense-mongers.
“All the Alaskan government would have to do is get out of the way.”
That’s the last thing governments want to do.
Then all the Leftists can move there.
I can see Alaska warming enough to call a temperate garden state, but not until after the next glacial period.
Could come sooner if we get smart with geo-engineering and decide to forestall the next glaciation by regularly dusting the great white north with sooty coal plants. We can turn Alaska into a garden state any time we want.
“and the coldest winter days becoming 10 or 15 degrees less extreme.” 15°C off of very, very, very cold is still very, very cold. And you can’t grow anything in the dark – unless you use intermittent wind power to light the grow lamps… but then that kind of crop is not considered a food.
While alaska is huge, it is 80% mountains. There isn’t enough flat land to farm on. In 1930 the us government sent Northern farmers to develop some lands for food. 🥔 grow fine, cucumbers also and cabbage also and pumpkins but forget corn, and other vegetables.
No amount of global warming will alter the fact that places like Barrow are dark for 6 months of the year. Plants and gardens don’t like that.
At least there are days of 24hr sunshine. But, yes, it’s going to require greenhouses and such. I would think they would focus on high value expensive crops – but everything is super expensive in the North because of transportation costs.
So growing local helps – but of course the little bit of extra CO2 in the atmosphere won’t make that much of a difference, it will be the artificial level of CO2 in the warm greenhouses that will be the big deal.