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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."
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
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."
When the overwhelming majority of scientists working in fields related to climatology say "AGW is real", and even the very small number of researchers working in fields related to climatology who are publicly skeptical rarely if ever actually publish papers in journals backing up their skepticism, I have to say, seeing some random AC on /. posting links to notorious denier sites doesn't exactly convince me that said AC actually a. knows what the fuck he's talking about, b. cares about what the fuck he's talking about, or c. is ever going to be willing to even consider really actually fucking learning a fucking thing about what he's talking about.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You know what's awkward for the deniers?
When you talk about the ozone layer.
The same people who said "if we stop using halons and CFCs, we can fix the hole in the ozone layer"
are the ones saying "hey, this global warming stuff is a problem"
Unlike the denial industry, the scientists have already been proven correct once.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
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!
We're mostly growing crops that nutritionally not the best for our population, and by not rotating in crops of different nature (how about more green leafy veggies or other veggies that can be eaten fresh and not processed 1400 different ways before consumption?) or allowing fields sufficient time to recover...the soil depletion will likely be the death of the food basket section of the US.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How much under? What would a 200lb agent bring? Is that hanging or live weight? What's the price elsewhere? Really don't want to pay California taxes.. So, is the cold war back?
Maybe you shouldn't speak for anyone but yourself.
I'll bet the same argument was once made when it came to not just shit in the street but to dig a hole out back.
And the bit about "economic growth" is bullshit. The only "growth" that ignoring climate change guarantees is that of the bank accounts of a handful of energy companies.
Did you learn to live with a 640k limit on address space? It appears as though you have learned to live with a very dim view of humanity's ability to innovate. "Solar energy isn't any good and we just need to learn to live with it" and, "Internal combustion engines are here to stay and we just need to learn to live with it" and, "Pumping toxic chemicals into the ground water under extreme pressure is how we're going to keep the lights on and we just need to learn to live with it".
I will never understand why there is a small but vocal cadre of tech nerds who for some reason believe that we have reached the absolute zenith of technological innovation when it comes to energy, but will gladly engage you in a discussion of the best types of interstellar drives to power ships for colonization of deep space.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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
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.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
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.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
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.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Hint : IT WASNT A THEORY
I guess you're unaware of what a theory is. Theories of gravity are still theories despite being confirmed to a lot of decimal places for the regimes where they apply. The speculated effect of surface emitted CFCs on the ozone layer is a theory.
Any rational person would be concerned about the lack of good data collection before the era of satellites. This problem cripples all of climate research.
I find it interesting how people babble about how bad "deniers" are while simultaneously demonstrating profound ignorance of scientific matters.
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.
I'm getting sick of chaos being used as the trump card to invalidate any measure that doesn't meet the expected values.
You aren't the only one. It was clear to me the moment the AGW High Priests invoked chaos to explain what was happening that they'd made it impossible to falsify their claims because if things go the way they predict, it's considered to be proof that they're right, and if it doesn't, they just invoke chaos. IANACS, but to me, at least, ever since they started explaining inconvenient events with chaos, AGW became, as Popper would phrase it, a meaningless noise.
That being said, I do think that cutting back on CO2 emissions is a good thing and that the farmers in Iowa should be taking better care of their topsoil, because that's just common sense, and AGW has nothing to do with it.
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Do you even know what a scientific theory is? Do you understand that a theory doesn't actually have to graduate to anything more? A scientific theory is a statement that describes all current known evidence and is contradicted by none. Furthermore, a theory should be able to predict the results of new experiments in the same field. There is no such idea as "just a theory" in science because a theory is a very powerful and well vetted tool. It is entirely different than the use of the word in the vernacular.
Satellites are not the only means of collecting climate data. Ice cores go back tens of thousands of years and even human recorded history goes back thousands of years.
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"
Wouldn't growing a fodder crop like wheat be the same as fallow?
Negative, you need a nitrogen fixing crop like Alfalfa, Soybeans, etc...
Wheat is pretty much the definition of a 'depleting crop'.
I don't read AC A human right
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.