Slashdot Mirror
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."
excerpt:
U.S. Corn Belt Expands to North "Warmer Climate, Hardier Seeds Help Crop Gain on Wheat, North Dakota's Staple
RUGBY, N.D.—Wheat has long dominated the windswept farm fields of the northern Great Plains. But increasingly, farmers here are switching to corn, reflecting how climate change, advancements in biotechnology and high corn prices are pushing the nation's Corn Belt northward.
...
The shift, which is occurring in northern Minnesota and Canada's Manitoba province as well, shows how warming temperatures and hardier seeds are enabling farmers to grow corn in areas once deemed inhospitable to the crop."
“In the scientific community, we have debates on the details,” [director of Iowa State University’s climate science program] said. “But there are very, very few scientists who are active in studying climate science who deny the existence of the role of heat-trapping gases in raising our global average temperatures, and the fact that these heat-trapping gases are produced by humans.”
Note that he does not say 'scientists agree what will happen as a result of extra CO2 in the atmosphere.' Scientists don't agree on that topic, it ranges from "nothing serious" to "civilization will be destroyed."
Note that he does not say 'scientists agree on how we should respond to global warming.' Scientists once again don't agree on that topic, it ranges from 'do nothing' to 'mitigate consequences' to 'stop all coal production immediately.'
One of the reasons government has done nothing to stop global warming is because scientists don't agree on what to do. This certainly annoys some scientists and some have taken to insulting other scientists, but the reality is, on the hard questions of global warming, there is no consensus.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"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."
If you want to pay attention to the "actual science", then you should not be paying attention to the summary, because as Dr. Richard Lindzen rather gleefully points out, as the actual science in the IPCC reports has been progressively offering weaker and weaker evidence of AGW, those summaries have become ever more alarmist.
Your comment is really just more evidence of what I was saying.
If I were in Iowa I'd worry less about the impact of climate change on the agriculture, which will take decades versus the immediate impact diverting massive amounts of ground water into ethanol production for fuel, which scientists estimate will take centuries to replenish. Stopping climate change today won't refill the underground aquafiers and without water, there are no farms, nor rural communities to farm them.
What's it to you whether climate disruption is real or not? Why are you so hot to deny it? You don't want to feel guilty for living a western lifestyle that generates lots of CO2, something like that? Makes you angry that you could be accused of contributing to the problem? You'd really throw our future away over such a petty emotional response? Really?
We're looking at the facts. And the facts say that big changes are happening, that we're the cause, and some of those changes are very bad. Yes, so bad that civilization could collapse. I know you think that's alarmist. You'd better wake up and pay attention. Do you understand why civil war is raging in Syria now? At the root it is crop failures thanks to an extended drought. If our food production falters, watch out. As Syria goes, so we all might go if we screw this up. Climate disruption has destabilized many civilizations in the past. The Mayas and the Pueblo Indians fell, and even the Roman Empire took a hit. If you think we are immune to that, because we're much more technologically advanced than those ancient civilizations, think again.
As to the accusations that scientists are making this all up to secure more funding, think more carefully about that. Not saying that such pressures can't lead to the production of less than stellar science, but this is beyond ridiculous. Any scientists who could show that climate disruption is not caused by us, and convince others because they are right, would publish in a heartbeat. The rewards for such groundbreaking work would be so great that some would break ranks to publish. There are so many organizations eager to publicize such work that it would be no problem finding a publisher. Yet this has not happened. Why? Because climate disruption is real.
Now, many of the more rabid environmentalists indulge in shaming. That's counterproductive. Try to get past that, and let's look at the problems, and think what is best to do about it. It's not only climate disruption, there is also ocean acidification. It may be that we need not be proactive, and the problem will fade away thanks to peak oil. We may be able to engineer our way out of this. Build dikes, scrub CO2 from the air, build more canals to maintain water supplies, and other measures of that sort. We can also act now, try to shift our energy production towards carbon neutrality. We will have to eventually anyway, so why not start now? We certainly should shift towards processes that save us money regardless of whether climate disruption is a problem or not.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
The code for one of the major models, the GISS Model E is here.
Links to other models and both raw and cooked data can be found on this page.
All of what you ask for is out there, you just have to be willing to put in the time to look for it.
The climate models don't get fed much raw data, just starting conditions and whatever scenario they're evaluating for a particular run.