Scientists Say Climate Change Is Damaging Iowa Agriculture

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Radio Iowa reports that 155 scientists from 36 colleges and universities in Iowa are jointly issuing a call for action against global warming and calling on the US Department of Agriculture to update its policies to better protect the land. 'The last couple of years have underscored the fact that we are very vulnerable to weather conditions and weather extremes in Iowa,' says Gene Takle, director of the Climate Science Program at Iowa State. Both years were marked by heavy spring rains followed by droughts that damaged Iowa's farmland. 'This has become a real issue for us, particularly with regard to getting crops planted in the spring,' says Takle adding that Iowa had 900,000 acres that weren't planted this year because of these intense spring rains. 'Following on the heels of the disastrous 2012 loss of 90% of Iowa's apple crop, the 2013 cool March and record-breaking March-through-May rainfall set most ornamental and garden plants back well behind seasonal norms,' says the Iowa Climate Statement for 2013 . 'Iowa's soils and agriculture remain our most important economic resources, but these resources are threatened by climate change (PDF)." When the Iowa climate change statement was first released in 2011, 44 Iowa scientists signed on and last year's statement was signed by 137 Iowa scientists. "It's easy to set up a straw-man argument, to say, 'Oh, well climates always change; there have been changes in the past. This might just be natural,' " says David Courard-Hauri. "And often that gets played on the Internet as, 'Maybe scientists haven't thought about the fact that there have been natural changes in the past and maybe this is related.' " Of course scientists have thought about that possibility, says Courard-Hauri, but the evidence strongly suggests the climate is changing faster than could be expected to happen naturally."

Comments

Re: You're an idiot...

[Namarrgon]

Let's stick to the science, whether it supports AGW or not (at the moment the probability of AGW being the most significant factor in our climate is decreasing - as far as I can tell).

Then maybe you should be looking more closely at the actual science, as the IPCC AR5 review upgraded their assessment of the majority of climate change being human-caused to "extremely likely" (95%+ probability). And while a few specific effects of climate change are now considered less likely, others such as polar ice melt have been outstripping projections.

Be careful about cherry picking your science, or letting others do so for you. Read the AR5 executive summary for yourself; it's by far the most comprehensive review of the actual science. And its conclusions are not that everything's fine - quite the opposite.

Re: You're an idiot...

[Nimey]

You seem blissfully unaware of two things:
1) Weather != climate
2) Weather is an inherently chaotic system, and adding more energy (c.f. global warming) increases the chaos, i.e. makes for more unexpected/extreme weather.

Re:You're an idiot...

[Jane Q. Public]

"Where are you suggesting these pay checks issue from? What would the UN, say, stand to gain by influencing IPCC research toward alarmism -- or bias in any direction, for that matter? In the other corner, as it were, who is bankrolling the denial camp?"

I didn't write anything about "bankrolling" a "camp". That sound suspiciously like conspiracy theory to me. As for paychecks... they do come from somewhere, yes? I'm not suggesting any kind of big conspiracy, as you seem to be doing. I'm simply saying: AGW is what they're doing, and they are getting paid for it. Is there something about that with which you disagree?

"Also I am pretty sure the latest IPCC report made a point of stating more clearly and unambiguously then ever before that climate change is real and man-made. We discussed it here on /. at the time."

Yes, the report does make a point of saying so, in their executive summary. Which is just proving my point. Because the actual science in the report (pdf) does not justify the claim. If anything, the actual evidence is weaker than before. (That is a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature Climate Change, by the way). 117 climate models were studied. Of those, 114 overstated the actual amount of warming (by, as I stated before, an ever-increasing margin), and the mean divergence between those 114 models and current reality was 100%. In other words, the models, on average, predicted 100% more warming than has actually been observed.

Put that together with the increasing number of new studies that contradict the very foundations of most AGW climate models, and the only reasonable conclusion is that these ever-more-shrill pronouncements are nothing but hot air (pun very definitely intended).

Re:Agribusiness

[Penguinisto]

Having lived in Iowa for awhile, I have to jump in and say that no, you're quite wrong. A typical Iowa farm does rotate crops between fields - usually between some variety of corn, soybean, and either alfalfa or wheat. They have even gone beyond and introduced no-till, contour plowing, and many other means of conserving the soil.

If there is a problem in farming there, it isn't in any alleged lack of crop rotation, but in the constant (and in many cases over-) use of Anhydrous Ammonia as a fertilizer - and in huge quantities.

Re:So they want money for Iowa?

[Concerned Onlooker]

Just as a point of reference, Iowa has been an incredibly fertile place to grow many types of crops. It is one of two places in the world that had huge loess deposits. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loess:

"Loess tends to develop into very rich soils. Under appropriate climatic conditions it is some of the most agriculturally productive terrain in the world."

Now, it's another thing entirely that Iowa farmers have been systematically killing their soil with heavy application of ammonia, fertilizers and the practice of fence-to-fence planting rather than the traditional "steward of the land" approach that prevailed so long ago.

Re:You're an idiot...

[microbox]

The same people who said "addressing CFCs will destroy the economy" are the same people (the very same) who said "addressing acid rail will destroy the economy" are the same people (the very same) who say smoking isn't linked to cancer, are the same people who say "addressing climate change will destroy the economy". And these people call their detractors "alarmists", and themselves "skeptics". It is madness through and through.