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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."
I take it that they're going to allow us to adapt to climate change this way rather than have to, you know, stop polluting.
No offence but maybe it is a bad place to grow anything and the reason they are growing apples and decorative plants is that they don't have real jobs.
2. Profit!
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Because Iowa should see perfectly consistent weather every year so our crops can be planted right on time and produce 100% harvest without fail.
Ordinarily there is no love for high fructose corn syrup growers around /., but today they'll get all the climate change kudos they can stand.
More or less the entire scientific community of the planet has been in a consensus about this for most of the last decade or two and our government still does not give a fuck. Iowa is not going to accomplish by itself what the whole freaking world didn't all together. The only way we'll ever start making progress on climate change is if somebody finds a way to outspend big oil, the car manufacturers, and every other petro-lobby.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
The first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970, to " to create awareness for the Earth's environment and to encourage conservation efforts."
The phrase "Damn tree huggers" has been heard ever since. Yeah, even in Iowa. So, 40 years of deliberate ignorance and acrimony is coming home to roost? Tough grid.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Is it any coincidence that Iowa is like right next door to Nebraska, and that both of these stories involve so called "scientists"?
I smell a conspiracy to pollute our precious bodily fluids. Or communists. Or something.
And Isn't Area 51 almost also next door to Iowa? You never can be sure, since the government also makes all of the maps.
Three Squirrels
3D printing will rescue us all.
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."
www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com
Don't let the facts get in the way of your new 'religion'.
Petro-lobbies indeed.
Let me guess, you're a 'climate change' shill, who is really a 'scientist' who gets paid for making up this alarmist nonsense. I mean, 'climate' scientists couldn't possibly benefit from this alarmist nonsense, in the form of endless grant money for their fraudulent 'research', could they...
CARBON! CARBON! CARBON!
Go on, keep repeating it over and over and over again. Idiot.
It's all propaganda made up to discredit climate science.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/10/18/los-angeles-times-endorses-censorship-with-ban-on-letters-from-climate-skeptics/
After all, 'the debate is over', according to the alarmists. What debate? They never had one, and they don't want one, because their crimes will be revealed.
See: How a Bad Rye Crop Might Have Caused the Salem Witch Trials.
so...
Maybe they're petro dollar shills too. (Nah, just kidding, they're grant mongering shills.
And Science doesn't work on the consensus of people who never studied the actual evidence. Science depends on repeatability of experiments which are publicly available and carefully state their premises, assumptions, findings and raw data. The biggest names in Climate Science haven't been practicing "science" at all.
No, peer review by your buddies doesn't count.
No, hiding methods and data behind the proprietary wall of a university doesn't count.
Make it public or it didn't happen.
AGW is real, in that humans have caused the climate to warm, but that doesn't mean we can or should do anything about it.
Yes, that's the only way, and fortunately that's not going to happen. When all is said and done, if you could give people a choice between driving their cars and economic growth now, and a few degrees warmer temperatures and a few feet of sea level rise, they are going to prefer driving and growth.
Of course, the idea that we even have that choice is an illusion. Global warming is inevitable and we better just learn to live with it.
rice?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Make what the fuck public? Jesus, fucktard, the evidence, the models, all of it out there.
How about you actually go look, instead of hiding up your own ass and only visiting denier sites that function as you're echo chamber.
You have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about, and worst of all, you think that's a good thing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No. There will be more food problems. Food prices will increase, so people in poorer countries will starve. Western world will not care, but just buy their food and say something about capitalism having it's way.
Climate will change and nature will adjust as it did for millions of years. The question is not if the "new" climate will be habitable. It will be. The question is if will fit in.
Privacy is terrorism.
We have had a 50 meter rise in sea level in about 20,000 years. Does that give ANYONE a clue? Do you think any government could have stopped that?
Egypt was the most powerful nation on earth about 5000 years ago because of its fabulous growing regions. They are now desert caused by NATURAL climate change. Could any government reverse that change?
Based on lack of Sunspots of late, we may have an inordinately cold hard winter (climate change?) and some areas in the upper midwest already had 20,000 steers freeze to death. Climate change? Well, the same thing happened back in the 1960s, so was it climate change? Tell me when the next Maunder Minimum will occur? No solar scientist knows if or when. We still don't understand the long term variations of climate due to the variability of the Sun's output. Vary the sun up or down .01-.02% and the earth has large changes.
Scientists afraid of losing their job don't necessarily want to publish papers that go against the grain of politics. To do so may eliminate one's income.
There are damn good reasons to eliminate pollution where they occur, but the U.S. is not going to eliminate Asia's soot, carbon and heavy metals and chemical pollution. About 25% of the Los Angeles air pollution was noted in the paper recently to be from Asia/China. The US is NOT going to stop that by spending large sums in the US.
If we start spending massive sums before we really understand what is needed or even after, we may doom society to merely working for the government bureaucrats on a futile search for "stability" that can never be reached meaning we will all be serfs to an omnipresent government.
Here in New England, I've noticed that the fall foliage season (October, so we're at peak right now) has been much less impressive than I've remembered in decades past. The leaves change color but they're mostly wilted, so you don't have an overall effect of brilliance. My guess is that global warming has a lot to do with it.
I guess the only objective measurement you could get would be on the statistics for "foliage tourists" travelling to New England from overseas.
http://albertaventure.com/2013/06/albertas-farmers-adapt-to-climate-change/
“It’s jokingly been said by some people that we’ll eventually become the grape producers of America.”
The Good:
One of the ways this is measured is through the boundary for corn heat units, which measures where corn can be grown in the province. The northern boundary for these units has moved up a couple hundred kilometres since the 1910s, and it’s advanced about 50 kilometres since the 1940s.
The Bad:
His county was flooded four years ago, but he didn’t get any rain at all in July or August of 2012. “You can go from one wet year to extremely dry with no gradual buildup. Basically you just get hit with it and you have to survive it,” he says. “Nothing is consistent anymore. You think you have things figured out and then it throws a loop at you to say to you, ‘No, you don’t.’
Follow The Money:
agriculture-oriented investment funds have taken an increased interest in Canadian farmland?
We are looking at a high probability of the complete extinction of our species, and that very soon . . . possibly within the next twenty years. There have been five major extinctions on our planet. Two of those extinctions appear to be from impacts, perhaps from asteroids, but three others appear to have followed a very different path; a climate change path very similar to the one that we are now upon. This sequence of events is described in an article by Peter Ward which was published in Scientific American in 2006 (http://www.chicagocleanpower.org/ward.pdf). In this scenario the oceans and atmosphere are contaminated with lethal levels of hydrogen sulfide gas that, at least in the case of the end-Permian extinction, killed from eighty to ninety-six percent of all species on land and in the sea.
In a recent novel (Hubris Ark, William Bradford Cushman) the author argues that the timeline of these events is best understood by thinking in terms of the “hockey stick” shape of exponentially occurring events, and that we are now at the point in our climate change where the curve begins to rise very rapidly. In addition to Ward, the book also cites the work of Dr. Lee Kump who has modeled the H2S concentration of the end-Permian extinction --- a model which finds the atmosphere going from life-supporting to lethal between two data points just one hundred years apart.
We have got to get the bribery that now runs our government stamped out, or these coin-operated idiots are going to get us all very dead. The IPCC predictions have proved to be about seventy years too optimistic so far. Which is to say that this problem is not going to wait for a fix nearly as long as those making oil profits keep saying.
Iowa agribusiness has been cultivating more land than ever due to high commodity prices. Between 2001 and 2011 Iowa went from under 1700 million bushels of corn to over to almost 2400 million, while soybean is nearly the same during that interval.
We did not become 40% more efficient at growing corn since 2000. That growth represents more land use; land that was considered marginal when commodity prices were low is now viable. Marginal means flood plain, land with poor drainage or limited access to water. What's actually happened here is that since the marginal land is now in the rotation, farmers incur higher risk of big losses during outlier years.
Two bad years after apparently 10 good years (at least) is not Climate. It's weather. And "Weather Is Not Climate." Or so I'm told whenever we get a cold spell.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Iowa has 36 colleges and universities?
FUCK SCIENCE!
"More or less the entire scientific community of the planet has been in a consensus about this for most of the last decade or two"
Wrong: http://www.climategate.com/
Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RlPZZGZCt6s
The entire Human Created climate change theory was created, financed, pushed through science and the mainstream media through the Rothschilds.
And as usual on Slashdot, some dumb motherfucker mods you up to 5, when you provide no sources on the "entire scientific community's" opinion.
And no, The Rothchilds funded IPCC does not count as a legitimate scientific resource, because it lies about science, blatantly, and in your face.
Yes, the irony of your post is you are the problem. Repeating like a dumb, retarded parrot what your masters have repeated to you. Rather than doing your own science and concluding with your own facts, you simply listen to the mainstream media and science outlets directly controlled by the Rothchilds.
How I hate your ilk with a passion.
I own about 500 acres that I rent out. Last year we had our best yielding soybean crop yet plus the prices were up there. I know we sold most of ours at about $15 a bushel last year and even booked a bunch this year @ $14 a bushel.
Rice yields last year were up, but not by a large amount. This year's rice looks to be a slight improvement over last year and the beans are still in the field, yet is the most consistent stand I've ever seen in 20 years on the farms.
The farm income and my work income are about the same and the farms earn more than my wife's salary and she's a corporate attorney at a Fortune 300 and makes decent money.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Stop saying there is no consensus. There is a quasi consensus *on the science*. Once politics , denier, and teh conservative STARTS tio admit that point and stop trying to denie it with all their strength, we MAY take a step toward a solution. But as long as news media trump up some fake "let both side speaks" as if there were two side of the debate, and all the associated shenanigan to refuse admit the science is real, there cannot be any step toward a solution as long as people/politician deny the science. Once that hurdle is gone, solution will be found. But we haven't gone past that step.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The entire Human Created climate change theory was created, financed, pushed through science and the mainstream media through the Rothschilds.
The lizard people? David Icke, is that you?
Stick Men
Has anyone noticed that they now describe Man Made Global warming, which nobody uses anymore to describe climate change based on man made contribution, or that is, to initiate a world wide carbon tax, is now generic Climate Change?
Which, nobody will argue that climate change happens, which is I think why they are starting to try and deceive people by suggesting historic climate change is the same as mane made climate change, which there is not one shred of evidence to support, and in fact is false.
We should have no winters by now, and extreme changes in climate when Al Gore and his crony investment banker buddies were setting up a Global Carbon Exchange to make billions.
Climate Change used as a term to masquerade as Man Made Global Warming is a gigantic scam.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
155 scientists from 36 colleges and universities in Iowa
That would mean there are more scientists and universities in Iowa than there are in the country I currently live, which is one of the more civilized in Europe. Now I may have been sleeping for all those years, yet....
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Anything made of atoms (including gases) can change temperature. The gases/particles we have added to the atmosphere are slightly heated by Earth and then cool down. Some of this captured/lost heat returns back to Earth.
Nonsense! Government subsidies are destroying Iowa agriculture. Last time I was there I saw a pro-subsidy billboard every mile. It's a religion to them. For a supposedly conservative state want a big and bloated DoA. What's wrong with the subsidies? Go fly over Iowa and look down. EVERYTHING is corn and soybeans. It's a monoculture from border to border, with a few isolated dots that might be hog barns. This is not healthy for the soil, it's not healthy for our diets, and it's not healthy for our economy.
The Rothschilds? The 19th century called, they want their anti-Semitic conspiracy theories back...
Dear Global Warming Alarmists:
Stick it in your ear please.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/10/18/new-study-2013-ranks-as-one-of-the-least-extreme-us-weather-years-ever-many-bad-weather-events-at-historically-low-levels/
Too cold, too hot, too much rain, too little rain, it's all the fault of that evil Bogeyman climate change.
The long term trend is warmer, wetter, greener, which has overall been good for food production.
When 20 something year olds are the experts of course you have to wonder. http://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
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.
Human civilization is doomed if this site is representative of "intelligent" humans.
So Iowa's problem has been record rains? Funny - most of the dire AGW predictions across the interwebs have been for drought, drought, drought. I'm sure that the coldest week this winter will be additional proof of carbon-belching excess.
Climate scientists say a lot of things that they have to filter first.
Lol climate depot has zero credibility to anyone with a brain. Which of course rules out denialists morons like you.
Has anyone published a comprehensive plan for world-wide replacement of fossil fuels? One that address the loss of the benefits of fossil fuels. Much of the quadrupling of the population of Africa in the last 50 years was fed by the over production of subsidized Western farms. A self impoverish West will not be sending food anywhere. India and China will not re-impoverish themselves, who is going to make them?
Posters on another thread voiced the dangers of a world wide economic collapse from an American debt default. The American money machine runs on oil, sun beams and unicorn farts will not power it.
why is this modded +3? this is a sophomoric rant with no content.
Lol climate depot has zero credibility to anyone with a brain. Which of course rules out denialists morons like you.
hahaha what kind of person would mod down an AC? oh yeah... an AGW zealot. Moron. Try commenting on the data instead.
Monsanto and co will just genetically engineer the crops to grow in whatever conditions the climate throws at them...
Scientists Say Climate Change Is Damaging Iowa Agriculture
If I were the scientists, I will focus much more on the diminishing aquifers underneath Iowa first
It is true that global climate changes have effected agriculture patterns all over the world, but by screaming " CLIMATE CHANGE DAMAGING IOWA AGRICULTURE ", to me at least, is a little bit too thick
All agriculture needs water (plants need water to grow) and the aquifer system beneath Iowa has seen its water disappearing in an alarming rate
Make sure you guys get the water supply problem licked first, scientists !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
For one thing the code to the models. Second, the raw data that was fed into the models. Where have you been?
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
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.
This is really getting monotonous.
Deforestation caused this. Read enough and you'll figure it out.
I know, I know, they'd never lie to you. Read.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Climate change is already damaging a lot of other stuff.
Well we have had many phases:
- There is no global warming
- There is almost no warming and it's not global
- There is some global warming but the consequences are far less than actually doing something about it
- There is global warming but it's not our fault!
And thus now: there is global warming but we can't be bothered to do something about it (which was the motivation for all the denialism all along of course).
If you intend to engage in adult conversation, kindly cease your condescension.
Sorry about that, most of the links you have ever provided me with are full of tabloid ad-homs about "greedy scientists selling their soul", so I figured snaky catches your attention. ;)
Nothing below the above sarcastic apology is intended to be insulting / snarky / sarcastic / offensive / condescending. I have used "scare quotes" in places where I lack a more descriptive phrase.
Seriously Jane, why do you go to Senator James (coal state) Inhofe's propaganda site to read their interpretation of what "peer-reviewed and/or science-oriented journals" say about climate change? Why not go directly to where the cream of the climate science community hangs out ?
I know you pride yourself on being a skeptic and we've talked about self-skepticism before, so in all seriousness here's the challenge.
Take a random climate depot article about the AR5, take a random climate science article about the AR5. Pick out a few random contradictions between the two articles that can be resolved by checking the AR5. Let me know how you go, no need to respond here if you don't have the time right now, I will remember for next time we cross paths. In the spirit of non-snarkyness. I'm willing to spend an hour or so to do a similar self-assessment on my own claims if you can offer one that you think may help me see "the error of my ways".
Personally I think that if your not concerned about climate change and the current political response then you are simply not paying attention. So use the PRIMARY source Jane, it's more ardours than the myriad he-said-she-said sources but it will free your mind as it did mine in the mid 90's. When/if that happens you will understand why I (unintentionally) haunt your posts. There is no shame in ignorance or falling for corporate propaganda, however refusing to use basic research techniques such referring to primary sources to resolve apparent contradictions, is just another way of saying "wilfully ignorant".
Seriously, I was you in my early 20's, albeit with a different subject, when you try the exercise above your going to get pretty pissed at the people who have "brainwashed" you into doing their bidding. If you want a "mastermind propagandist" to focus you anger then Inhofe is the common thread that runs through the vast majority of links you have thrown at me. When you see one of their victims in the future you will want to shake them like I shake you every now and then (often without realising it's you before I hit submit). So here's a couple of obvious questions you might ask about me...
Why do I care if you or anyone else is "brainwashed" by corporate propaganda?
Why did I spend 30 minutes typing up this reply??
Simple succinct answer from "the greatest polymath of all time" - "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" - Voltaire.
I'm not immune to that law of human behaviour and neither are you, I have no other motive to convince you AGW is a problem other than my 3 grandkids will have to live with our collective decisions. I may "take the piss" every now and then but if you can manage to take a step back from the verbal duelling thing we have going, you might be able to see that I am a
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Link description was supposed to read "random real climate article", my "R" key is dying, and the spell-checker cocked up "arduous".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The evidence! The models! It must be true! Someone wrote SimEarth and it shows that AGW is real, so it must be! Look at how much happier the Sims are when I spend simoleans on solar plants and fusion plants!
If only we had cheat codes for real life, we could actually pay for all that.
What's really sad is that irrational rants like yours that make literally zero logical arguments get modded +5 Insightful. Either most people really are so gullible that they fall for it, or there really is a giant conspiracy to dupe people...or both.
You have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about, and worst of all, you think that's a good thing.
The hypocrisy is killing me...wait, I mean, the planet...
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Is this 'climate change' the one they falsely predicted or the one that actually happened.???
Is this the 'climate change' the result of natural cycles (since those studies quoted by so many apparatchik no-nothings and that scientific moron algore turned out wrong and things were the opposite of what they said they predicted)???
Are the policies going to be decided by big government politicians to help their own agenda and we are being asked to turn control over to them ??
The fucks means he's mad. Or serious. Or madly serious.
Calm down, your douche quotient is abnormally high.
Apparently proper crop rotation along with cover crops in the winter does wonders for the soil. They should change their farming practices even if they insist of trying to fight CO2.
Is this guys practice a good idea? Seems to work for well for him.
The midwest has never suffered from floods and dustbowls before in modern history.
*yawns*
Honestly, the poor agricultural techniques practiced are probably more to blame than anything else. Corn, Soy, Corn, Soy, Corn, Soy, oh and Alfalfa on occasion.
Miles of mono-crop with poorly tended farm soil and bad farming practices. There is a reason the dustbowl happened. And no, we didn't change ANYTHING except discover a deep underwater aquifer.
As proof, I offer what this one guy said, thereby invalidating what these thousands of other scientists(frauds) are agreeing on.
We are pointing out one of many predictions that have failed on the part of AGW. In fact, AGW has an extremely poor track record on predictions.
Second, we're not the one who keeps writing articles about every variance of weather as a sign of global warming. Record hot, record cold, record rain, record snow, record temperate mild temperature with perfect rain and a smattering of snow = proof GLOBAL WARMING
We just wish you dumb !@#$% would live by what you preach. Every time you guys say weather != climate, I sit there *facepalming* and exclaiming "That's what we've been trying to prove to almost every author of these dumb articles."
(I am an Iowan)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iowa_products_2006.jpg
Agriculture (tied with Forestry, Fishing, and Hunting) is only a minor driver of Iowa's economy. However, it clearly takes up the most land of all of Iowa's products. But calling our soil our most important economic resource is just plain wrong.
Now, I realize that a significant chunk of the non ag industries probably have an indirect relationship to ag. (For instance, I worked at one time for a concrete contractor that built pig lots.) However, there are indirect relationships for all industries, so I'm not concerned about it.
Maybe...just maybe...it's cause so-called experts have so often been WRONG!!!
REALLY.....sorry....yes, we have a chance of complete extinction within 20 years. But it's more likely due to us missing that big ol' rock headed toward earth *ka-BOOM*
Intelligent
Informative
Thank you.
You do know what scientific models are, fall back to a conspiracy, and use Ad Hom attacks.
Nice argument~
DO you know the facts all this science is based on? at all?
Let me clue you in:
1) CO2 is transparent to visble light
2) CO2 is opaque to infrared light.
3) Visible light creates Infrared frequencies when it strikes something.
Predictions form these faces:
1) The globe will trend up on top of preexisting cycles. Check
2) The upper most atmosphere will not warm: Check.
and so on and so on
What do you propose will happen with the extra energy that is trapped?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Honestly, I don't get your comment at all.
1. Your first prediction doesn't "check" out at all (assuming I know what you mean by "trend up on top of preexisting cycles").
2. Your "clueing" me in amounts to, "CO2 is a greenhouse gas! And the sun is shining on us!" Thanks for that insight, Sherlock. But it doesn't prove anything whatsoever about AGW.
What do you propose will happen with the extra energy that is trapped?
What extra energy? What would "extra" energy even be? What qualifies as "extra"? And who says it's trapped? The earth is radiating energy constantly.
What are you going on about? Honestly, this nonsensical banter is what seems to pass for "evidence" and "science" nowadays, but all you're really doing is tossing around a few terms, cliches, and facts that no one argues with but which don't support the AGW hypothesis at all.
The current Slashdot quote is so appropriate: You see but you do not observe. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
This seems like more Climate Alarmism? It appears that Iowa has an extensive history of periodic droughts
Iowa overdue for drought
"Elwynn Taylor, an Iowa State University Extension climatologist, said the state averages an extended dry spell every 19 years. Tree rings from the past eight centuries prove it, he said.
Despite ample moisture the past six months, history and emerging weather patterns indicate the spigot could abruptly shut off.
Taylor, who's also an agronomist, said the longest time between droughts is 23 years. The last one was in 1988.
"Yes, we're certainly due looking at history," Taylor said. "A lot of people would be happy if it was dry next week, but not for six weeks (or more)."
The most substantial drought indicator is the developing weather phenomenon called La Nina, Taylor said. Pacific Ocean temperatures are cooling, which often leads to dry and hot weather in the Midwest. Taylor expects on official start of La Nina within weeks."
http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/iowa-overdue-for-drought/article_9f872012-a993-51bd-94b3-13793d4c57e9.html
Drought, heat wave of '36 were devastating to the nation
(And to Iowa)
"The year was 1936. The place: Midwest farms. The scene: desolation.
Record heat scorched crops. Damaging hail fell, but rain did not. Great clouds of dust billowed across the Plains from the southwest, blacking out the sky. Plants and people withered, but bugs thrived. Like great Biblical plagues, grasshoppers and chinch bugs devoured what remained in fields.
To be sure, the 2012 drought is severe and will be an economic hardship. But to know the true struggle against relentless cruelties of Mother Nature during drought, we must look back 76 years to find the worst summer in Iowa history.
The 1936 heat wave devastated the nation. As many as 5,000 people died because of the heat. Things became desperate.
"Weather was the dominant feature of our existence," recalls Neil Harl, 78, an Iowa State University professor of agriculture and economics who was just shy of 3 years old in the summer of 1936. "We were just trying to survive."
Harsh conditions were nothing new to rural America and Iowa in particular by 1936. Cities mark the beginning of the Great Depression with the 1929 stock market crash on Wall Street. But the rural economy had been in turmoil for most of the 1920s. After World War I ended, other countries imposed high tariffs on imported foods. That closed foreign markets. Land values and crop prices crashed. Poverty set into agrarian society well before it overtook cities."
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-08-12/iowa-midwest-drought/57011352/1
"The 18th century seems to have been a relatively wet century in North America, but there were apparently droughts in Iowa in 1721, 1736, and from 1771 to 1773.[22]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_the_United_States
Chris Shaker
Organic sustainable agriculture anyone? Taste an organic apple. Be fair. Try them for a month. Not only do they taste better, they're better for you! And, send the scientists home.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/amsdrought.pdf
"we bring together evidence of a greater range of drought variability than found in the instrumental record, from all
available sources of paleoclimatic data, including historical documents, tree rings, archaeological remains,
lake sediment, and geomorphic data, to evaluate the representativeness of twentieth-century droughts in
terms of those that have occurred under naturally varying climate conditions of the past several thousand
years."
"Many of the tree-ring reconstructions suggest that the droughts of the 1930s and 1950s have been
equaled or, in some regions, surpassed by droughts in the past several centuries. This is illustrated in the
graphs of PDSI reconstructions from Cook et al. (1996) and Cook et al. (1998) for grid points in eastern Montana, central Kansas, and north-central Texas in Fig. 6. Other studies support this finding. Stockton and Meko (1983) reconstructed annual precipitation for four regions flanking the Great Plains (centered in FIG. 2. Locations of sources of historical drought data for the Great Plains, 1795–1895. Green shaded areas represent climate regions based on cluster analysis from Mock’s (1991) analysis of nineteenth-century climate records. The dates (dark green) represent years in which droughts were reported in more than one region for two or more consecutive seasons. Brown areas are regions of sand dunes and eolian activity, accompanied by the years (in red) in which active sand movement was reported (Muhs and Holliday 1995). The gray region represents the general region of early meteorological stations from which Ludlum (1971) derived drought years (in blue). Newspaper accounts are from a variety of newspapers in eastern and central Kansas (Bark 1978).Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2697 Iowa, Oklahoma, eastern Wyoming, and eastern Montana). Although they found the individua l years of 1934, 1936, and 1939 to be among the driest
10 of 278 years investigated (1700–1977), they found several periods of widespread prolonged drought (3–10 years) that
equaled or surpassed the 1930s drought in intensity and duration: the late 1750s, early 1820s, early 1860s and 1890s. Periods of extreme drought revealed by other dendrochronological assessments for the west-central
Great Plains coincide with these periods (Weakly 1965; Wedel 1986; Lawson 1970; Lawson and Stockton 1981). Stahle and Cleaveland’s (1988) reconstructions of June PSDI in Texas showed the most severe and uninterrupted drought since 1698 was the 1950s drought, but the three driest decades (with some interspersed years of nondrought
conditions), by decreasing severity, were 1855–64, 1950–59, and 1772–81. Another dendroclimatic study
from the southern plains found prolonged (10 years or more) droughts in Arkansas around 1670, 1765,
1835, 1850, and 1875 that were comparable to twentieth-century events (Stahle et al. 1985), whereas
a study in the Texas–Oklahoma–Arkansas region found the drought of the 1950s was exceeded only in
1860 in the last 231 years (Blasing et al. 1988), a particularly noteworthy year in the historical data, as
mentioned above. In a reconstruction of precipitation for the corn belt of Iowa and Illinois, no droughts in
the past 300 years were found to be appreciably worse than the 1930s drought, but two were of about the
same magnitude (late 1880s–1890s and around 1820) (Blasing and Duvick 1984). Reconstructions of precipitation in Iowa (1640–1982) indicated that four 10-yr periods were drier than the period 1931–1940, and in order of decreasing dryness, these were 1816–25, 1696–1705, 1664–73, and 1735–44 (Cleaveland and Duvick 1992)."
Chris Shaker
Article about historic droughts in North America from the 1996 New York Times
Great Plains or Great Desert? The Sea of Dunes Lies in Wait
"AS devastating as the present drought in the southern Great Plains has been, scientists who study ancient climates are finding that droughts, floods and severe cold far surpassing anything in the modern era have punctuated the 10,000 years since the last ice age.
The discovery has surprised experts because the climate of this most recent period in earth history, called the Holocene, has long been considered relatively stable and serene, and its comparative tranquillity has long been thought essential to the development of civilization.
Now, paleoclimatologists are finding in case after case that the Holocene climate has been more volatile than had been believed. The disturbing implication is that these natural catastrophes could come again at any time, quite apart from any change in climate that might result from emissions of waste industrial gases that can trap heat.
"We like to think of whatever climate we're in as normal," said Dr. Daniel Muhs, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey in Denver, "and our natural assumption is that it will keep on that way -- that's a very tenuous assumption.""
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/28/science/great-plains-or-great-desert-the-sea-of-dunes-lies-in-wait.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Chris Shaker
Or perhaps I'm just seriously mad!
I get so tired of these accusations of conspiracy, when a fair chunk of the information is out there on the Internet, available for the price of having to read it (as in, its free other than in time taken to read and understand). Yes, some is behind a paywall, which sucks, whatever the particular scientific discipline, but plenty is freely available.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A large portion of North America last March and April were unseasonably cold. Where I live, we had 20 days in April with snowcover on the ground (the first 8 being some of the days without snow). It was unprecedented weather for that time of year (i.e. unseen in my lifetime). The icing out out lakes in the area set records or were close to the records for lateness.
Where in North America do you live? I ask, because according to NOAA, you only saw colder temperatures along the west coast in March, whereas the midwest saw temperatures up to 15 F higher than average, making it the warmest March on record since 1895. We also saw lower than average snow fall west of the Mississippi in April. There was a late-season snowstorm in the Appalachians in April 2012 though, but despite this, it was the third warmest April on record, nationally.
I am not disagreeing with global warming or that it can cause anomalous patters in weather. But all predictions and forecasts were opposite to what actually happened. This can not be waved away by your two points.
Then let's provide more data! After all, North America isn't the whole planet, and in March 2012, Europe also had one of its warmest Marches on record, Australia had record rainfalls, and the Greenland ice sheet had it's ninth lowest sea ice extent on record. (On the other hand, the Antarctic had one of its 4th largest.) Averaging over the globe, it was the 16th warmest March on record.
April, on the other hand, turned remarkably chilly in Europe, making it one of the coldest on record in several countries, and the Greenland sea ice "rebounded" to become one of the greatest since 2001 (still 1.8% lower than the 1979-2001 average). Globally, this was still 0.65 C over the historical average, and ocean temperatures were the 11th warmest on record for April.
Overall, 2012 was about the 8th or 9th warmest year on record. I find it amusing that you cite regional weather for one or two months in one part of the world as evidence that the whole world isn't warming and chide the GP for only providing "two points."
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Lots of Paydirt if you search Google Scholar for 'droughts iowa'!
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=droughts+iowa&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C38
Drought Recurrence in the Great Plains as Reconstructedfrom Long-Term Tree-Ring Records
Charles W. Stockton and and David M. Meko
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University ofArizona, Tucson 85721
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0450(1983)022%3C0017%3ADRITGP%3E2.0.CO%3B2
"Abstract
Recently collected tree-ring data were used to reconstruct drought from 1700 to the present in four regionsflanking the Great Plains. Regions were centered in Iowa, Oklahoma, eastern Montana and eastern Wyoming.Reconstructions derived by multiple linear regression explained from 44 to 56% of the variance in regionallyaveraged annual precipitation from 1933 to 1977. Years of widespread severe drought clustered into droughtepochs lasting 5-10 years. A weighted mean of the four regional reconstructions pointed out the severity ofthe 1930's drought; the years 1934, 1936 and 1939 ranked among the driest 10 of 278 years. When droughtconditions were averaged over periods of three or more years, the 1930's drought was equaled or surpassedin severity by droughts in the 1750's, 1820's and 1860's. Spectral analysis of the 1700-1977 reconstructionindicated that precipitation averaged over the four regions had a penodicity of 16-19 years, but reconstructions for the individual regions deviated considerably from this result. The Iowa region was dominated bya 22-year periodicity, the Oklahoma region by a 17-23 year periodicity, and the other two regions by arelatively strong 60-year penodicity. Separate analysis of 88-year subperiods of reconstructions indicated thatevidence for a 22-year periodicity was strongest in the most recent period (1890-1977), weaker for 1802-89and lacking entirely from 1714 to 1801."
Chris Shaker
Twentieth-Century Drought in the Conterminous United States
KONSTANTINOS M. ANDREADIS, ELIZABETH A. CLARK, ANDREW W. WOOD, ALAN F. HAMLET, AND
DENNIS P. LETTENMAIER
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/
See Results on pages 990 - 997 for drought data expressed two ways, in terms of soil dryness, and in terms of rainfall
Effects Of The Great Drought On the Prairies of Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas
From 1936
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1932761?uid=3739856&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102808123143
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1468&context=agronomyfacpub
Iowa climate reconstructed from tree rings, 1640–1982
M. K. CleavelandD. N. Duvick
Article first published online: 9 JUL 2010
DOI: 10.1029/92WR01562
Abstract
"Tree ring indices from an expanded network of 17 white oak (Quercus alba} sites in eastern and central Iowa were used to reconstruct state average July Palmer hydrological drought index (PHDI), annual precipitation (previous August to current July), and other climate variables for 1640–1982. We removed nonclimatic variance trends caused by changing sample size and senescent growth. July PHDI correlated better with tree growth than annual precipitation. Occurrence of prolonged droughts throughout the reconstruction suggests that decades like the 1930s occur about twice per century in Iowa. Iowa climate is correlated with the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) from June in the year of El Niño onset (Yr0) through the next February (Yr+1), with negative SOI (El Niño) associated with wetter conditions. When the June (Yr0) to February (Yr+1) average SOI reaches extremes + 1.0 or 1.0, it correlates significantly with observed and reconstructed July PHDI (r = 0.37 and 0.56, respectively). Climate during solar cycles centered on sunspot minima alternates between wet and dry regimes that differ by an average of 1.21 units of observed July PHDI and 46.7 mm of annual precipitation for 1877–1982. The solar relationship has been stable since 1640. Combining solar and SOI influences in forecasts may improve prediction of Iowa climate"
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/92WR01562/abstract
Chris Shaker
I do but only credible data not the drivel on sites like climate depot. The down mod is most appropriate.
...explain that to the next generation (your gambling the fate of the planet on 600+ scientists being wrong)
What extra energy? What would "extra" energy even be? What qualifies as "extra"? And who says it's trapped? The earth is radiating energy constantly.
The energy coming in that the top of atmosphere (TOA) can and is being measured. The energy leaving at TOA can and is being measured. From the conservation of energy the difference has to be the change in energy within the system. The difference is positive meaning more energy is being retained. It's as simple as that.
Ok then: given that the sun has been shining energy on us for a very long time, and given that CO2 levels in the past have been much higher than they are now, why are we still here? Why haven't we been cooked already?
The amount of CO2 being produced by humans is minuscule compared to what the earth itself produces. It's as simple as that.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
CO2 levels have not been as high as they are now (400 ppm) for at least 5 million years and maybe as long as 15 million years. That's before humans of any kind existed. CO2 levels have not been over 1000 ppm since before the K-T event 65 million years ago. As the Sun ages it gradually gets brighter by about 10% every 1.1 billion years so it was cooler in the past. The layout of the continents was different in the past. All of those things are factors in why we haven't been cooked already.
The amount of CO2 being produced by humans is minuscule compared to what the earth itself produces. It's as simple as that.
No, it's not as simple as that. You are completely ignoring the other side of the equation, the Earthly sinks of CO2. Have you ever heard of the Carbon Cycle? For the past 10,000 years the CO2 level was stable at around 280 ppm varying up and down by around 10 ppm in the yearly biosphere cycle. For the past million years or more CO2 levels have remained between 180 and 300 ppm depending on the stages of glaciation. In the past 100+ years CO2 levels have risen from under 300 ppm to 400 ppm all of a sudden. What changed? The obvious answer is that by burning fossil fuels humans are adding carbon that was sequestered for 10's to 100's of millions of years to the active carbon cycle. It gets distributed among the various carbon sinks like the atmosphere, the oceans (thus causing ocean acidification), the land and the biosphere but the relative balance between them remains about the same. That's why only 40-45% of human emissions remain in the atmosphere.
If you want to claim that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is from natural sources then you have to explain what changed to cause a sudden, rapid rise in CO2 to levels unseen for millions of years. You have to explain why the release from natural CO2 sources increased suddenly and/or the uptake of natural carbon sinks decreased suddenly. Without that explanation you're just blowing smoke.