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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.