Today’s idiocy from the Guardian
Global warming will cut wheat yields, research shows | Environment | The Guardian‘
Wheat yields are up 300% from 70 years ago.
Between the fake scientists and the fake journalists, it is quite a flustercluck of moronity.
The more we believe in government the more these kinds of things are possible.
The prediction is based on crop models, or rather crap models. I can make a model to show anything you are willing to pay for. Wadda buncha boolsheet! If there is any crop yield reduction, it will be because of cooling with a subsequent shorter growing season. Warming would increase the yield. On a lighter note, here is something that will put a smile on your face. Ah, the good old days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqgtsai2aKY
Maybe we should just let North Korea hack all the research computers at NSAA NOAA and all the Universities getting EPAgrants
Might be a typo
YEAH! I can’t shake the image of a bunch of upset biddy-hens! I guess his spell-checker was too tired to remove the vestigial “l”.
We have a corn hockey stick! We are doomed! The entire planet will be covered by corn in 100 years!!!! 🙂
Bring out the salt and butter!
http://foodaroundthetrack.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/11-Corn-on-the-Cob.jpg
YUM!
Mmmmm!!
Global warmers are just making bigger fools of themselves with each one of these papers.
MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone!!
And may the new year bring some sanity to our country and our news media. (Well I can hope.)
Plenty of sanity in the good ole USA, however, the sane aren’t in charge.
Ain’t that the truth!
Hrm, by my calculations, this means that for every 1°C of temperature drop you’d expect a 6.4% increase in wheat production. I lived quite a few years in Kansas, & the Summers there regularly go above 100°F (38°C) & farmers generally manage 40-80bu/ac. The South Pole is around -30°C now, so they should be harvesting wheat running 2700 to 5400bu/ac come cuttin’ time!
Does New Holland make a combine that can handle 2700bu/ac wheat?
I think Cat does.
http://www.grahammesser.com.au/contentblock/57/2.jpg
Brilliant, Gail!!! Brilliant!!!
Glad someone appreciates my warped sense of humor. (Most of the people here do)
Whether Mann made or not, a warmer world is more hospitable world. Floridians don’t flock to Manitoba every winter. Vast farm lands are still limited be seasonal cold.
The most wheat harvested in eight hours is 797.656 tonnes (1,758,530.46 lb) and was achieved by New Holland Agriculture with a CR 10.90 combine harvester at Wragby, Lincolnshire, England, UK, on 15 August 2014.
I have seen an articulated cat loader like that used to move snow when ordinary plows can’t. ( Not that I think it would run in the conditions at the south pole. Too cold.)
Behold the Top Gear Snowbine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxgfFwEZjes
Had a ranch in central Nevada with occasional polar temps. To start the CAT dozer, I had to build a fire under the engine. Nothing to burn in the Antarctic, so if you get the equipment running,,don’t shut it off.
scizzorbill, I like my diesel trucks. When living in NH we had a minus 35F night. Plugged in the engine heater and a battery charger, Tossed a couple gallons of diesel I had warming in the bathroom in the tank and she started right up. I then spent a half hour jump starting the gas powered cars of all my neighbors at the apartment complex….
Won the bet I had with my next door neighbor too.
I’ve drained the oil out, put it on the stove for a bit, & then poured it back in the engine. You know it’s cold when you remove the drain plug & nothing comes out for 30 or 40 seconds.
Camp Ethan Allen Vermont Feb. 1983, 3rd Bn, 10th SFG(A) annual ski and winter warfare training. We had to start the engines of all vehicles and run them for 10 minutes of every hour despite the diesels having ether injection for starting in cold weather.
BTW in the kind of temps they get at the south pole frequently you’ll have a very hard time keeping diesel fuel from jelling without some kind of heat source.
It’s not the size of the combine that matters so much, but rather how much it holds before it needs to have what it has cut transferred to something else.
I don’t think there are any rail lines at the SP…
Transfer can be accomplished in the process of harvesting .
Oh, I don’t know about that. Combine harvesters clog up in heavy crops, ask me how I know. (hint: it involves 40 minutes in the dark inside of a combine with a pair of pliers pulling straw out of a rotor in 110°+ heat two or three times)
Holy wheat fields clueless city folk getting the goberment trough!
These citified folk ought to learn about places like Brazil, India, Australia, etc where the farmers choose hybrids that actually work rather than just toss random seeds on the ground!
……and we all know Monsanto will not be “bovvered” to make money by having better heat resistant seeds to attract foolish fowl to the bird slicers….
Hybrids are not GMOs. The biggest problem with GMOs and some strains of commercial livestock is the lack of genetic diversity that could save you when Ma Nature throws a curve ball.
Driving the ‘hobby farmers’ that raise heritage breeds of livestock and plants out of business is absolutely foolish. However that is what the Transnationals/WTO have decided is best for the corporate bottom line.
I have zero problem with the idea of GMOs as long as they are tested and any cross contamination is treated as criminal trespass instead of as theft of the genetics by the court system.
“It’s not the size of the combine that matters….”
If you say so, mjc, if you say so. 🙂
I’m just a layman but if it is true that for every one degree C in warming we would loose 6% in wheat production…then
Say in England, we grow wheat where the average mean temperature is 19 degrees C. And in Italy where the average mean is 25 degrees C. Does this mean that for the same area, Italy produces 36% less wheat because they have higher temperatures.
Maybe the question is stupid, but I can’t get my head around what they are saying. It doesn’t make sense. Warmer weather, more CO2 requires less moisture per plant = bumper crop? How do they come to their conclusion.
Actually they are telling great big whopping lies.
Take a look at a map of the Northern Hemisphere. Look at the amount of land in Northern Canada, Northern Russia and Northern China.
If the temperature goes up by one degree the Köppen climate classification moves north. That means MORE land capable of growing grains.
http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at/pics/map.jpg
You can see how the Köppen boundaries moved in the mid west of the USA over the 20th Century.
http://www.sturmsoft.com/climate/suckling_mitchell_2000_fig2_3.gif
Do we really want to go back to the 1970s when the land that could grow corn and wheat was ~200 miles south of where it is now?
Heck the major orchards in Florida have had to move south because the cold weather killed the trees.
Cold is much more dangerous than warm. During the Holocene Climate Optimum it was 1 – 3°C warmer than it is today.
“Do we really want to go back to the 1970s when the land that could grow corn and wheat was ~200 miles south of where it is now?”
I don’t understand this statement because in the 70’s corn and wheat were grown in the exact areas they are now and a lot further north.
But now they are growing a whole lot of soya beans in places in SD where only wheat was grown before.
And there is one other factor involved…the variety grown.
Not all varieties do well in all areas. The key is to grow one that does well in Italy in Italy and not Great Britain…
“Not all varieties do well in all areas….” Too true. And that goes for the micro-climates from farm to farm too.
Yet another reason to have local varieties instead of GMOs.
The really big OOPS in South Africa in 2009.
Monsanto GM-corn harvest fails massively in South Africa
GM Crops Failed
@PeterK: I’m an ex hay man (alfalfa) from central Nevada @ 6000′ elevation. I got 3 cuts per season. The grass was between knee and waist high, so good yield. Never got a 4th cut, after the first frost came. Turned the cattle into the fields to finish off what there was. If I would have had one more month of growing season, the yield would have been 25% more.
A lot of the increase in corn production is simply the result of a misguided ethanol mandate for gasoline.
Also consider that we still pay farmers not to plant crops. Lots of farmland lying fallow, ready to plant if needed.
Yes, but the graph (& the linked article) are about production per unit of farmland, not total production. However, both are up quite a lot.
Thanks for that. I was just trying to show some facts that should be an important part of any conversation on American farming. Only in America can you get paid not to farm or to grow a crop that is subsidized based on bad science.
They aren’t morons, they just have a different value system. Look at how much money they get for doing this.
“flustercluck” indeed!!
I would suggest that most of the increase you see in production is the result of the introduction of mechanically applied fertilizers like nitrogen. Our farmlands would have been exhausted over 100 years ago without this innovation. And if the current batch of mindless environmentalists were to have their way, this type of fertilization would be stopped (seen as evil) and only organics allowed.
It is mind numbing to consider what harm could be done to American farming if environmentalists were to have all their policies enacted. They’ve done enough harm as it is considering the attacks on GMO’s, pesticides, herbicides, particulates, wetlands, endangered species, keeping farmland fallow, etc.
SMS,
Actually you need a balance. But mostly you need decent scientific experiments and honesty in reporting ALL the results. Giants like Monsanto, especially when they get ‘their man’ such as Mike Taylor into the FDA guarantees you are not going to see that honesty.
(Taylor declared GMOs the equivalent of natural and not in need of testing.)
There is nothing wrong with using ‘organic methods’ where they work and using chemicals where they do not. Soils that do not have organic material added back will ultimately stop producing. I should know since I bought an old rented tobacco farm with worn out soil that would no longer produce a crop. The test results came back 98% organic matter free – pure clay that bakes to a water impervious brick in the summer. I turned it into pasture and the fields are finally starting to look really good.
My, farm according to the US soil survey, used to have over two feet of the best loam in the area. Just using the ‘organic method’ of planting white clover as a cover crop and plowing it under in the spring would have held the soil over the winter and added nitrogen and organic matter. However it was too much bother and expense so the fields were left bare to erode in the winter rains. (It is pouring right now) The same commercial farmers are doing the same bad practices in the farm fields next door. Bare fields and no cover crop. But then they don’t own the land. Now that my fields have recovered they want to rent my farm again — NO WAY!
Out here in my farmlands, we use cow manure and spread it on the fields. Much cheaper. Totally organic.
Usually this kind of articles are written in to manipulate the commodities market. The ‘reporter’ is looking to sell wheat futures to idiots who based on this piece will run to buy wheat believing the prices will rise
Harvests also rising sharply globally
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/global-food-production-rising-steadily/