Crops under stress as temperatures fall
Our politicians haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, observes Christopher Booker. [/align]
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By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:04PM BST 13 Jun 2009
Comments 155 | Comment on this article
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Waterworld: Floodwater surrounding a farm near Fargo, North Dakota, in March 2009 Photo: Reuters [/align][/align][/align]For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend "climate change". In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.
There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.
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[ul][*] David Cameron's cowardly caveat on a Euro referendum [*] Iranian elections a 'loathsome charade' [*] North Dakota: Thousands of people to be evacuated amid Red River flooding fears[*] Postcards from the Edge: the economic crisis that stretches from Wall Street to all streets[*] Birds 'are better at singing in the rain ? and the cold'[*] African tribe populated rest of the world[/ul][/align]None of this has given much cheer to farmers. In Canada and northern America summer planting of corn and soybeans has been way behind schedule, with the prospect of reduced yields and lower quality. Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya "“ used in animal feed and in many processed foods "“ are expected to fall to a 32-year low.
In China, the world's largest wheat grower, they have been battling against the atrocious weather to bring in the harvest. (In one province they even fired chemical shells into the clouds to turn freezing hailstones into rain.) In north-west China drought has devastated crops with a plague of pests and blight. In countries such as Argentina and Brazil droughts have caused such havoc that a veteran US grain expert said last week: "In 43 years I've never seen anything like the decline we're looking at in South America."
In Europe, the weather has been a factor in well-below average predicted crop yields in eastern Europe and Ukraine. In Britain this year's oilseed rape crop is likely to be 30 per cent below its 2008 level. And although it may be too early to predict a repeat of last year's food shortage, which provoked riots from west Africa to Egypt and Yemen, it seems possible that world food stocks may next year again be under severe strain, threatening to repeat the steep rises which, in 2008, saw prices double what they had been two years before.
There are obviously various reasons for this concern as to whether the world can continue to feed itself, but one of them is undoubtedly the downturn in world temperatures, which has brought more cold and snow since2007 than we have known for decades.
Three factors are vital to crops: the light and warmth of the sun, adequate rainfall and the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis. As we are constantly reminded, we still have plenty of that nasty, polluting CO2, which the politicians are so keen to get rid of. But there is not much they can do about the sunshine or the rainfall.
It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has forwhetherwe get enough to eat.
It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world's food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU's biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn't persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government "“ the one most of us didn't vote for last week.
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The worlds biggest Farce of all time. We are going to be made to spend a fortune on a problem that does not exist. I had some doctor appointments at the VA in Fargo back then, they called and said, don't come, you can't get near the place. The VA sets right on the bank of the Red River of the North.
Oops! We were wrong, it's not global waming, it's global cooling! And all that other crap that algore preached, well, it was wrong too, but now he's got it right and the answer is still send him money and let the government (you know, the same one that can't even run it's own cafeteria) take care of it.
[:'(]
__________________
"We can have no '50-50' allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all."-- Theodore Roosevelt
A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left. Ecclesiasties 10:2
The last four letters in American..........I Can
The last four letters in Republican........I Can
The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats
Oops!Â* We were wrong, it's not global waming, it's global cooling!Â* And all that other crap that algore preached, well, it was wrong too, but now he's got it right and the answer is still send him money and let the government (you know, the same one that can't even run it's own cafeteria) take care of it.
[:'(]
The jury is still out on this. I have long made it clear that I am a "global warming driven by human caused CO2 emissions" skeptic. Maybe climate change is happening: we know climate has changed in the historical past (notably the little ice age which lasted about 500 years, but also including others). Maybe global warming is happening: again, we know global warming has occured in the historical past (notably the medieval warming period from about 1000 AD to 1200 AD). The biggest question, however, is what role human beings have in altering climate. I'm skeptical for many reasons. I'm not convinced our climate science is mature enough to state uniquivocally that humans are causing global warming and changing our behavior will yield predictably quantified results (more on this in a moment). If climate science is mature, it ought to be able to definitively state the causes of the little ice age and of the medieval warming period, and yet it cannot. It cannot definitively state the causes of the mega-drought of ~130 years which struck the American southwest in about 1300 AD. With reference to quantification -- if it cannot be quantified, y'all, it ain't science. The climate scientists cannot tell us with any bounds of probability what the amount of increased average temperature we can expect to see if current trends continue or how much the oceans levels will rise. By the way, it isn't predicting to say "if 1/2 of the worlds ice cap melts, this will raise ocean levels X amount." What average temperature change is needed to drive this 1/2 of the worlds ice caps melting, and what is the probability that will happen? What are the feedback loops in climate that tend to keep the climate steering to a stable set point? Just not enough science here.
But as I say . . . the jury is out. The media is not yet on board with this story -- "hey, maybe it isn't getting hotter after all! It has not warmed for the last 11 years, in fact it appears that average global temperatures have cooled over the last 11 years. How does this decade-long average square with the rapidly increasing emission of greenhouse gases over the past decade? Isn't it fair to say that substantially more greenhouse gases were emitted from 1999 to 2009 than from 1989 to 1999? How can the average trend down over such an extended period of time if the equation is 'more gas emissions, higher temperatures' ?" I have hopes that people will bitterly complain about suffering economic pain in the form of carbon emission limits, particularly in the context of the present economy, and provide more time to observe the global cooling trend. What will be the position of the global warming zealots when instead of a 10 years long global cooling trend they are confronted with a 16 years long global cooling trend?
I do not know the answer. I am a skeptic, for some reasons given in summary above, but I don't claim to know. What I will say, however, is that should the day come that a concensus is reached that the proposition that "human driven emission of CO2 DO NOT cause global warming" is true, then I very much hope that we will call to account those who propelled us so headlong towards these draconian CO2 emission limitations. I want the heads of these people. In the names of science they attempted to storm the tower and turn our society and economies topsy-turvy (I exaggerate? give some thought to what the consequences of dialing back CO2 emissions to 1990 levels would be, my friend). How many people who claimed to be scientists subscribed to this unproven and hypothetical theory and staked their professional reputations that this was not a mere theory but a demonstrated fact? Those people need to be soundly discredited as scientists. How many people in the news media hawked this story and made themselves tools of the alarmists? Well, of course, it would be futile to expect that the news media would be held accountable for spreading misinformation: that has become the most patently obvious characteristic of their activities. How about politicians? The UN? How about the ecology movement itself? All of these parties, in my view, should be discounted for what they are -- propagandists with no claim to intellectual authority or suasiveness, CONTINGENT upon the ultimate conclusion that "global warming caused by human release of CO2 gases." And as I say, the jury is still out.
You're a skeptic. I guess I'm a cynic. I tend to believe that the global warming "crisis" is driven solely by a desire to find new and better ways for Algore and his ilk to reach into my wallet...
I tend to believe that the global warming "crisis" is driven solely by a desire to find new and better ways for Algore and his ilk to reach into my wallet...
I'm a true believer in your skepticism.
The only thing constant about the climate and the environment is change- whether humans are here or not.
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Obamanfreude - 1. taking pleasure from the misfortunes of an Obama supporter as he or she is adversely affected by the policies of their Dear Leader.
You're a skeptic. I guess I'm a cynic. I tend to believe that the global warming "crisis" is driven solely by a desire to find new and better ways for Algore and his ilk to reach into my wallet...
I think it's as much or more about politics and power as it is money. I don't believe it has anything at all to do with the betterment of the earth or mankind.
__________________
"We can have no '50-50' allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all."-- Theodore Roosevelt
A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left. Ecclesiasties 10:2
The last four letters in American..........I Can
The last four letters in Republican........I Can
The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats
You're a skeptic. I guess I'm a cynic. I tend to believe that the global warming "crisis" is driven solely by a desire to find new and better ways for Algore and his ilk to reach into my wallet...
I think it's as much or more about politics and power as it is money. I don't believe it has anything at all to do with the betterment of the earth or mankind.
In politics, money is power. The more the government can take from you, the more power they have, and the less power you have...
global cooling...who'd a' known ? Certainly not "Fat AL" Gore, and certainly NOT ONE SINGLE democrap.
And here I am looking to buy Florida real-estate...I may have to look closer to the equator....
Global Cooling continues
