Climate Change Is Already Shrinking Crop Yields

The story below is a laugh a minute. A world warming due to high CO2 levels would produce FLOURISHING crops -- as CO2 is their basic food and a warmer world would be wetter. So if any of the stories about crop failures below are true, they indicate global COOLING -- which does in fact appear to be happening

For years now, people have wondered how climate change will affect farming. How will humanity feed itself during a time of rising temperatures and recurring drought?

Here in the US, we're starting to get a taste of things to come—and it's bitter. Brutal heat is now roiling the main growing regions for corn, soy, and wheat, the biggest US crops. According to Bloomberg News, 71 percent of the Midwest is experiencing "drier-than-normal conditions," and temperatures are projected to be above 90 degrees in large swaths of key corn/soy-growing states Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana through July 7 if not longer.

As a result, Goldman Sachs projects that this year's corn yields will come in 7.5 percent below the USDA's projection of 166 bushels an acre. (Why is a Wall Street behemoth like Goldman Sachs fussing over corn yields? That's another story, altogether, and an interesting one). Accordingly, crop prices are rising steeply, Bloomberg reports.

Of course, we can't tie any individual heat wave to long-term climate trends—there's plenty of random weather variation even in times of climate stability. But we do know that hot, dry weather can stunt plant growth and reduce yields—and we also know that we can expect more hot, dry weather in key growing regions as the climate warms up.

I hope the current heat wave gets policymakers thinking about the effect of climate change on food, because for for a long time, the consensus was that global warming might be more or less neutral for agriculture. Sure, the thinking went, climate change will likely make droughts more common and make some already-hot areas too hot for farming; but it will also lengthen the growing season in cold-winter areas like the US Midwest, perhaps increasing crop yields. Also, all that carbon dioxide we're pumping into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels would be manna to plants, allowing them to grow faster. These factors, many thought, would largely cancel each other out, and mean that climate change would have no great effect on global food production.

But back in 2008, a pair of researchers from the USDA and Columbia University shattered that comforting idea. In a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, they looked at three major US crops (corn, soy, and cotton) and found that rising temperatures would indeed cause a slight increase in crop yields—up to a certain point. But when temperatures climb above that critical threshold, yields would plunge dramatically. And here's the kicker: At current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, average temperatures are expected to rise well above the critical levels identified by the researchers. As a result, they project that yields will fall by the end of this century by as much as 43 percent "under the slowest warming scenario" and 79 percent "under the most rapid warming scenario."

The paper should have exploded like a bomb in US and even global policy circles. The US produces around 40 percent of the entire globe's corn and soy, the authors pointed out. The global food system is highly geared to those crops, and dwindling production in the US heartland would be devastating. You'd think policymakers would have been compelled to act. Instead, they looked the other way. President Obama's tepid push for a climate bill collapsed ignominiously in the Senate, and the much-ballyhooed Copenhagen global climate talks ended in a cloud of hot air.
According to Monsanto's own data, its drought-tolerant corn seeds don't work any better than already-existing conventional varieties.

And then in 2011, another major study, this one published in Science, found that climate change is already biting into yields of major crops. By 2008, global corn and wheat were 3.8 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively, lower than they would have been without climate change, they found. For soy and rice, the good and bad effects of climate change had, to that point, largely balanced out, they found. But these crops, too, could eventually see lower yields as temperatures keep rising.

What to do about this, especially when it seems apparent that there will be no global pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions any time soon?

More HERE





Climate Scientists Ripping-Off The U.S. Taxpayer? Lonnie Thompson & Ellen Mosley-Thompson

Billions have been invested in climate science research by the American taxpayers with the expectations that climate scientists would produce results that would become part of the public record - but some scientists appear to be ethically-challenged



It's a great lifetime gig if one is comfortable by making a career of ripping-off the U.S. taxpayer. Just get the taxpayer to repeatedly fund your climate science "research" trips, literally from Pole-to-Pole, and then just conveniently forget to produce the scientific results in the manner required by Federal policies. And, by the way, don't worry your pretty little head because neither the science bureaucrats, nor the appropriate Federal agencies (hmmm....the IRS?), nor any spineless politico will actually challenge your perpetual forgetfulness or your ethical and moral compass.

Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit very bluntly describes how the Thompson "scientists" have been doing this for decades and the public has nothing in return other than some basic ice core squiggle charts, like the one above.

What are they required to produce if funded by the Feds?

* "...despite clear U.S. federal government policies dating back to 1991 which, on paper, require thorough data archiving by the climate community as a condition of receiving grants."

* "Full and open sharing of the full suite of global data sets for all global change researchers is a fundamental objective. As data are made available, global change researchers should have full and open access to them without restrictions on research use…"

* "The data products and their metadata will be provided in a standard exchange format no later than the grant final report or the publication of the data product’s associated results, whichever comes first."

And what did the public and science community receive instead?

* "Unfortunately, the U.S. climate funding bureaucracy has been thoroughly co-opted by the climate industry and has failed to enforce regulations that, on paper, would require the Thompsons and others to archive data."

* "While Lonnie Thompson has been a frequent example at Climate Audit of a serial non-archiver, it turns out that Ellen Mosley-Thompson is even worse. Mrs Lonnie has spent her entire career in the ice core business> According to her CV, she has led “nine expeditions to Antarctica and six to Greenland to retrieve ice cores”. However, a search of the NOAA paleo archive for data archived by Mrs Lonnie shows only one data set from Antarctica or Greenland associated with her. Lest this example be taken to mar her otherwise unblemished record of non-archiving, the data was published in 1981 while she was still junior...I believe that it’s fair that she has not archived at NOAA (or, to my knowledge, elsewhere) any data from the “nine expeditions to Antarctica and six to Greenland”."

* "Squiggles for 6 of Mrs Lonnie’s Greenland cores (5 PARCA and one 1989 core) and 3 of her Antarctic cores (dating back to the early 1990s) were shown in a 2006 article. None of this data has been archived."

* "The total failure of the PARCA program to archive a single d18O measurement is really quite remarkable."

As we said, a great lifetime gig if one has no conscience or scruples.

Honestly, is it any wonder why the public has such low regard for the climate science community? Is it really that difficult for the academia and government 'elites' to understand why the public's trust in science has faded in recent years when this type of crap happens and officials keep condoning these Federal "science" rip-offs?

SOURCE (See the original for links)





Exxon CEO blames 'illiterate' public for 'overreacting' to global warming

This will give Warmists erections all round -- to have a genuine representatice of Big Oil opposing them reinforces all their fantasies

The CEO of ExxonMobile says fossil fuels might be causing the Earth to warm, but says a collaboration of scaremongering environmentalists, 'lazy journalists' and the 'illiterate public' are blowing the problem out of proportion.

Rex Tillerson, who leads the world's largest oil company, believes the true impact of climate change cannot be accurately predicted by scientists. And whatever fallout might come from the, he said, humans will be able to adapt.

Meanwhile, scientists claim the disastrous effects of global warming are on display across the nation right now, as American celebrate the July Four holiday with record heat, dangerous thunderstorms and the remnants of horrific wildfire still burning in Colorado.

Tillerson dismissed the dire warnings about consequences of possible global warming. 'We have spent our entire existence adapting. We’ll adapt,' he said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'It’s an engineering problem and there will be an engineering solution.'

He added that the oil industry is capable of providing cheap, reliable and safe energy well into the future.

Fears about spills, environmental contamination and the disastrous effects of global warming are overblown by environmental groups that 'manufacture fear' and 'lazy' journalists who report their findings without checking that the claims are valid, Tillerson said.

Because of this, he said, the industry's biggest challenge is 'taking an illiterate public and try to help them understand why we can manage these risks.'

SOURCE





More Greenie tyranny

A small seaside village in Oregon was forced to cancel its Independence Day fireworks display that has been a lifeblood for local businesses -- and this decision was for the birds.

Depoe Bay has attracted hundreds of visitors every July 3 for nearly 20 years with a pyrotechnics show that filled its small motels and brought diners into its restaurants.

But now, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has demanded a halt to the fireworks because they disturb nearby seabird nests.

In 2010, a resident called the federal agency to report that the explosion of the rockets over Pirates Cove sent flocks of bird fleeing their nests in terror, the Oregonian reports.

The next year, regulators studied the behavior of the fowl, such as the Brandt's Cormorant, during the fireworks show. They used aerial photography, video footage and observers on the ground watching the nests, as well.

They discovered some of the cormorants fled their nests and returned to find that predators had destroyed or damaged their eggs.

'We did document disturbance, including nests that were lost,' Rebecca Chuck, a project leader with the Fish and Wildlife Service, told the newspaper.

The village fought the conclusion, arguing that the harm to the birds from one fireworks show each year was minimal.

But the federal government threatened that Oregon could be held liable under the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, even though the Brandt's Cormorant is not listed as endangered or threatened by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

This year, the state refused to issue a permit for fireworks to Depoe Bay.

'It's a great loss to our community,' Peggy Leoni, co-owner of Trollers Lodge, a small motel, told the Oregonian.

Business owners have tried drawing tourists to the village this year with a series of sidewalk sales, events and restaurants specials.

However, they say no matter what they do, their efforts will not attract nearly the numbers of people that the fireworks show did.

SOURCE





Cold Comfort

By Alan Caruba

Unless you live in Seattle, you likely did not know that the National Weather Service just announced that the city endured its third coolest June on record. As much of America swelters through a heat wave, it’s not surprising that the usual suspects are telling everyone that it’s because of “global warming.”

On July 3rd Seth Borenstein, a reporter for the Associated Press, a newswire service that has been reporting global warming lies for decades, wrote that “If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks.”

IT’S SUMMERTIME, SETH! IT GETS HOT IN THE SUMMER!

It did not take long for the high priests of global warming to proclaim the current WEATHER to be CLIMATE. There’s a very big difference. Weather is what is occurring now while climate is measured in terms of centuries. It’s about trends and cycles.

It surely has been a hot summer thus far. Reuters reported that “more than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat wave baked much of the United States.” The announcement was made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on July 2nd.

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi took another reporter to task for coupling the heat wave with global warming, pointing out that “The US is less than 10% of the globe” while ignoring that "Scandinavia had coldest June on record and that Australia is having a bad winter.”

What we should all know by now is that the Warmists all use trickery to advance their hoax.

The simple fact is that heat waves are nothing new. In 1936 a North American heat wave was the most severe in the modern history of the continent. It occurred in the middle of the Great Depression, killing more than 5,000 Americans and desiccating vast amounts of crops. To put it in perspective, there were no home air conditioning appliances at the time. People depended on fans to circulate the air.

The sun surely is hot, but its heat—solar radiation—has not been sufficient to avoid cyclical ice ages and short term periods of intense cold because the sun itself goes through cycles of increasing and diminishing solar radiation.

There was a “Little Ice Age” that lasted between 1550 and 1850. Temperatures dropped to the point that the Thames River in England froze over and “frost fairs” were held on its surface. It was felt through Europe and parts of North America.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley noted that “Over the past million years, it has been as warm as this or warmer for less than 10% of the time, during 11 brief episodes known as interglacial periods,” adding that “this warm spell is already 11,600 years old, and it must surely, in the normal course of things, come to an end.”

The average length of interglacial periods is 11,500 years.

In the 1970s, prior to the global warming hoax, many scientists were convinced that a new ice age had begun. In January 2012, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Habibullo Abdusamatov, predicted that the next ice age will begin in 2014 and will last at least two centuries. Regarding the timing, he could be right. He could be wrong. One thing is sure. The Earth is overdue another ice age.

My friend, Robert W. Felix, the author of “Not by Fire, But by Ice”, is an expert on ice ages and magnetic reversals. It is the latter that accompanied mass extinctions such as the dinosaur’s fate and many other species at the end of the Cretaceous period. In ice ages, the Earth’s water doesn’t disappear, it turns to ice. The current growth of the planet’s glaciers is an indicator of what is actually occurring.

Another indicator, of course, is the sun. On January 29, 2012, writing in the Daily Mail, a British newspaper, David Rose noted that “The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the plane has not warmed for the past 15 years.”

“After emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters, and a shortening of the season available for growing food. Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.”

“We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’…but sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th century.” Oddly, despite the obvious and documented effect of the sun on the planet’s average temperature, there remain scientists who are unconvinced of its essential role. Only a relative few even understand the role of magnetic reversals on the planet’s history.

Actually, the diminishing number of sunspots has been known for a while. In June 2010, Stuart Clark, writing in The New Scientist, observed that “For the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise.”

The obvious often catches people by surprise. The last Ice Age came on very swiftly and the next is likely to do so as well. In the meantime, the current heat wave will capture everyone’s attention.

SOURCE





Legal action against corrupt temperature records

In New Zealand there is an ongoing legal action against the government producer of the New Zealand temperature record, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research Limited [NIWA].

Researchers found the temperature record produced by NIWA had a warming bias which basically created a warming trend of 1ºC per century when the raw data showed no increase at all. After being stonewalled by NIWA the researchers issued a Statement of Claim seeking a Judicial Review of the temperature record.

The Defence issued by NIWA was novel in that it claimed there was no official New Zealand temperature record [clauses 6 & 7].

An Amended Statement of Claim was issued and the case is now at the Affidavit stage.

Could a similar case be brought in Australia challenging the validity of the Australian temperature record which is prepared by the Bureau of Meteorology [BOM]?

There are similarities between BOM and NIWA: both have adjusted their temperature record and both have created a warming trend through the adjustments.

The BOM’s temperature has adjusted their temperature by approximately 40%. This appears not to be consistent with criteria laid down by Torok and Nicholls and Della-Marta et al.

However a complication with BOM is that they have replaced the former High quality network [HQ] with the new improved ACORN adjusted temperature network. In ACORN supposedly the problems with the HQ network which involved the creation of a warming trend have been corrected. However the temperature trend in ACORN is greater than in the HQ network!

Clearly the ACORN temperature network has not corrected the problem. But is it possible to litigate the ACORN temperature record and, as in New Zealand, seek a Judicial Review that the ACORN record is flawed and misleading?

More HERE (The article goes on to argue that a legal challenge is possible but expensive)

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