The 2012 drought, which affected more than half the country was the largest drought extent in the United States since the 1930s. It was more extreme than the conditions in 1988. U.S. Department of Agriculture Drought Disaster Declarations reached more than 2,600 of the Nation’s 3,143 counties. The drought did $30B in damage. The final yield of 123.4 bushels per acre compared to the early USDA forecast of record yields of 166 bushels/acre due to record early planting.
Despite the fact the drought was worse than 1988, yields were 50% higher. Part of that are improved hybrids and farming practices but part is the positive effect of CO2, which produces more growth and makes plants more drought resistant. The 1988 drought in 2012 dollars produced between $80B and $120B in losses.
Under conditions of atmospheric CO2 enrichment, plant growth is more vigorous and plant canopies shield the ground from the hot sun, keeping the soil cooler and moister. Also importantly, stomatal apertures typically decrease, thereby reducing stomatal conductance and transpirational water losses from plants.
Water Stress: When plants are growing under less than optimal conditions of soil water availability, the percent growth enhancement due to atmospheric CO2 enrichment is generally greater than it is when water is readily available to them.
Elevated levels of CO2 thus tend to compensate for less than optimal water supplies; and they help plants recover, both more quickly and more completely, when they have experienced a period of severe water stress. This was seen with soybeans, which recovered more than expected when cooler less stressful conditions developed in August.
Water Use Efficiency: With higher concentrations of CO2 in the air, greater photosynthetic carbon uptake typically occurs. In addition, less water is lost via transpiration, as many plants exhibit decreased stomatal conductances at elevated CO2. Hence, the amount of carbon gained per unit of water lost via transpiration, or water use efficiency, generally increases substantially with atmospheric CO2 enrichment, sometimes even doubling with a doubling of the air’s CO2 content.
CROP YEAR 2013
In the June WASDE report, the USDA projected corn production down 135 million bushels to 14.0 billion with the average yield projected at 156.5 bushels per acre, down 1.5 bushels from last month. Despite rapid planting progress during mid-May across the Corn Belt, rains and cool temperatures since have delayed the completion of planting in parts of the western Corn Belt and raised the likelihood that seasonally warmer temperatures and drier conditions in late July will adversely affect pollination and kernel set in a larger share of this year’s crop.
Still that yield would be 26.8% higher than 2012 and production up 29.9%. This does not account for acres abandoned due to delayed planting due to cold, late snows and flooding and acres intended for corn planting where beans were instead planted or replaced flooded corn. In the June 28 report, the USDA will adjust acreage and production accordingly.
Joe D’Aleo is Chief Meteorologist for Agriculture at Weatherbell Analytics, providing global weather forecasting for grain and softs commodities. Joe and his co chief meteorologist Joe Bastardi who focuses more on energy, utilize natural factors to predict short, medium and long range weather. Between them they have 70 years experience. Go to weatherbel.com. for a trial. The two Joes both blog daily and post videos for weather enthusiasts as well as serve industry. All services include includes unique global modeling by Dr Ryan Maue and unique data and forecast portals.
National Academies of Science defines a scientific theory as
“a well-substantiated explanation of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.”
Dr Richard Feynman, Cornell Physicist in a lecture explained how theorys that failed the test of data or experiment are falsified ("wrong") and must be discarded.
GLOBAL WARMING THEORY HAS FAILED
(1) Warming not ‘global’. It is shown in satellite data to be northern hemisphere only
(2) It is now not warming. Warming (global mean and northern hemisphere) stopped in the 1990s
(3) Models suggest atmosphere should warm 20% faster than surface but surface warming was 33% faster during the time satellites and surface observations used. This suggests GHG theory wrong, and surface temperature contaminated
(4) Temperatures longer term have been modified to enhance warming trend and minimize cyclical appearance. Station dropout, missing data, change of local siting, urbanization, instrumentation contaminate the record, producing exaggerating warming. The GAO scolded NOAA for poor compliance with siting standards.
(5) Those who create the temperature records have been shown in analysis and emails to take steps to eliminate inconvenient temperature trends like the Medieval Warm Period, the 1940s warm blip and cooling since 1998. Steps have included removal of the urban heat island adjustment and as Wigley suggested in a climategate email, introduce 0.15C of artificial cooling of global ocean temperatures near 1940.
(6) Forecast models have failed with temperature trends below even the assumed zero emission control scenarios
(7) Climate models all have a strong hot spot in the mid to high troposphere in the tropical regions. Weather balloons and satellite show no warming in this region the last 30 years.
(8) Ocean heat content was forecast to increase and was said to be the canary in the coal mine. It too has stalled according to NOAA PMEL. The warming was to be strongest in the tropics where the models were warming the atmosphere the most. No warming has been shown in the top 300 meters in the tropical Pacific back to the 1950s.
(9) Alarmists had predicted permanent El Nino but the last decade has featured 7 La Nina and just 3 El Nino years. This is related to the PDO and was predicted by those who look at natural factors.
(10) Alarmists had predicted much lower frequency of the negative modes of the AO and NAO due to warming. The trend has been the opposite with a record negative AO/NAO in 2009/10
(11) Alarmists predicted an increase in hurricane frequency and strength globally but the global activity had diminished after 2005 to a 30+ year low. The U.S. has gone seven consecutive years without a landfalling major hurricane, the longest stretch since the 1860s
(12) Alarmists have predicted a significant increase in heat records but despite heat last two summers, the 1930s to 1950s still greatly dominated the heat records. Even in Texas at the center of the 2011 heat wave, the long term (since 1895) trends in both temperature and precipitation are flat. And when stations with over 80 years of temperature data were considered, the number of heat records last July were not extraordinary relative to past hot summers.
(13) Extremes of rainfall and drought were predicted to increase but except during periods of strong El Nino and La Nina, no trends are seen
(14) Alarmists indicated winter would become warmer and short. The last 15 years has seen a decline in winter temperatures in all regions. In places winter have been the coldest and longest in decades and even centuries.
(15) Alarmists had indicated snow would become increasingly rare in middle latitudes especially in the big cities where warming would be greatest. All time snow records were set in virtually all the major cities and northern hemisphere snow coverage in winter has increased with 4 of the top 5 years since 2007/08. Also among the east coast high impact snowstorms tracked by NOAA (NESIS), 11 of the 46 have occurred since 2009.
(16) Alarmists had indicated a decline of Antarctic ice due to warming. The upward trends since 1979 continues.
(17) Alarmists had indicated Greenland and arctic ice melt would accelerate. The arctic ice tracks with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the IARC shows the ice cover was similarly reduced in the 1950s when the Atlantic was last in a similar warm mode. In Greenland, the warmth of the 1930s and 1940s still dominates the records and longer term temperatures have declined.
(18) Sea level rise was to accelerate upward due to melting ice and warming. Sea levels actually slowed in the late 20th century and have declined or flattened the last few years. Manipulation of data (adjustment for land rises following the last glaciation) has been applied to hide this from the public.
(19) Alarmists claimed that drought western snowpack would diminish and forest fires would increase in summer. Snowpack and water equivalent were at or near record levels in recent winters from Alaska to the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies. Glaciers are advancing. Fires have declined.
(20) Alaska was said to be warming with retreating glaciers. But that warming is tied intimately to the PDO and the North Pacific pattern NP and happens instantly with the flips from cold to warm and warm to cold. Two of the coldest and snowiest winters on records occurred since the PDO/NP flipped cold again (2007/08 and 2011/12). January 2012 was the coldest on record in many towns and cities and snowfall was running 160 inches above normal in parts of the south. Anchorage Alaska set an all time record for seasonal snow in 2011/12. In 2007/08, glaciers all advanced for the first time since the Little Ice Age. In 2011/12, the Bering Sea ice set a new high in the satellite era. Latest ever ice out date records were set in May 2013.
(21) Mt. Kilimanjaro glacier was to disappear due to global warming. Temperatures show no warming in recent decades. The reduction in glacial ice was due to deforestation near the base and the state of the AMO. The glaciers have advanced again in recent years
(22) Polar bears were claimed to be threatened. Polar bear populations instead have increased to record levels and threaten the populace.
(23) Australian drought was forecast to become permanent. Steps to protect against floods were defunded. Major flooding did major damage and rainfall has been abundant in recent years tied to the PDO and La Nina as predicted by honest scientists in Australia. All years with La Nina and cold PDO composited show this rainfall. Drought was associated with El Ninos and warm PDO fro 1977 to 1998
(24) The office of the Inspector General report found that the EPA cut corners and short-circuited the required peer review process for its December 2009 endangerment finding, which is the foundation for EPA’s plan to regulate greenhouse gases. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report confirmed that EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program-which EPA acknowledges is the “scientific foundation for decisions” - is flawed, echoing previous concerns from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that the agency is basing its decisions on shoddy scientific work.
(25) Of 18,531 citations in the 2007 IPCC Assessment Report, 5,587 or 30% were non-peer-reviewed material, including activist tracts, press releases, and in one amazing case, “Version One” of a Draft. In important instances, IPCC lead authors chose non-peer-reviewed material, or papers of low credibility, favoring their argument, in the face of prolific peer-reviewed material to the contrary. Instances include alleged climate relevance to malaria, hurricanes, species extinction, and sea levels.
Given the failures of global warming science, just a few mentioned here, the most disreputable alarmists like Oreskes, Cook and Trenberth and the demagogue party have tried to convince the uninformed by using the consensus argument. See the latest failed attempt here. It was also described on Forbes here.
“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.” Michael Crichton 17 January 2003 speech at the California Institute of Technology
I picked up the paper and read this this morning, less than a week after Whiteface and Green Mountains were buried in a record late 36” snow.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
N.H. ski areas join petition to fight climate change
The Mount Sunapee Ski Area, shown Tuesday, April 30, 2013, in Newbury, is among 108 alpine ski areas around the country to sign the Climate Declaration, a document calling for policymakers to address climate change. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
BOSTON - Seven New Hampshire ski areas are among 108 alpine areas from across the U.S., as well big firms like GM and Levi Strauss, to sign the Climate Declaration, which calls upon federal policymakers to address climate change. New Hampshire ski areas that signed are Attitash, Cranmore, Gunstock, Loon Mountain, Mount Sunapee, Ragged Mountain and Waterville Valley.
The petition, at www.climate declaration.us, does not call for specific legislative or other action. It argues that “tackling climate change is one of America’s greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century. It is obvious that the success of ski business operations depends greatly on climate, which is why we are so invested in programs that keep our slopes sustainable. But our actions alone won’t be enough without strong policies,” said Brent Giles, chief sustainability officer for Powder Corp., of Utah, parent company to Park City Mountain Resort in Utah, Copper Mountain in Colorado and Killington Resort in Vermont. “We welcome legislative and regulatory initiatives that will reduce carbon emissions, incentivize renewable energy development and help improve our resiliency in the future.”
Ski areas in the U.S. employ approximately 160,000 people and generate approximately $12.2 billion in annual revenue, according to the National Ski Areas Association, which calculates that visitors to U.S. ski areas spent $5.8 billion at those resorts a year ago.
“The past ski season was a banner year for our guests and for our resort, but we can’t gamble on the weather in an uncertain climate. We have to take action,” said Jerry Blann, president of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming.
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TO WHICH I COMMENTED BACK:
It is a money making scheme. Some ski areas have figured how to get credits or offsets (money) for being green (recycling water for snow making, wind turbines (Jiminy Peak), using methane (cow farts) to power gondolas (Killington), etc). Never mind that this November to April period for the hemisphere ranked #1 all-time for snow extent beating out 1977/78.
The idea that climate change will put an end to the industry was advanced by the UCS in 2007 before the snowiest winter on record in northern New England (Concord, Caribou) and the winter with record snows from Alaska to Oregon to Colorado to New England.
They were silenced until 2011/12 when the US had a down year and this year in winter they felt it safe to repeat it again before record later winter and spring snows made them look foolish. Last weekend (Memorial Day Weekend) a record late 36” snowfall occurred at Whiteface Mountain and 1 to 3 feet in the higher Green Mountains. They waited to release their scare story for the first warm spell of the summer. Sorry not buying it. As meteorologist/climatologist in the business for 40 years, my advice is to ignore the hoax. We can explain all the climate changes with natural factors. And they point to very cold and snowy winters most years for the next few decades. Don’t waste a nickel on climate change remedies. Make sure we have the energy we need to keep warm at a price we can afford.
As a former major ski area PR person wrote me this am:
Doesn’t surprise. There are certainly people in the industry who buy the nonsense; these include Austen Schendler at Aspen, and Aspen management (who apparently aren’t bothered by their well-heeled clientele’s tendency to park their private jets at the local airport and run their APUs nonstop for the weekend), and the editor and publishers of the industry’s leading trade magazine (they ARE nice people, I’d add, even if they refuse to get it). And there are those who have made heavy investment in wind or other alternative energy - Jiminy Peak in Massachusetts has gotten lots of nice ink for its windmill, and Killington boasted this winter that the K1 gondola is powered by cows (methane credits). However, the bulk of the industry is, I suspect, quietly skeptical of the AGW premise and is simply going along to get along. A fair percentage of ski industry’s clientele is sufficiently ignorant to buy into the theory, and the industry would prefer not to risk pissing them off. I rather suspect the industry would be delighted to see AGW get the knockout punch it so richly deserves - this stuff is a PITA - but believes it has other battles to fight that are more important than this one.
Icecap Update: Please see the winter summary by Icecap Meteorologist Art Horn as published on the Energy Tribune. By the way here are images from Whiteface Mountain on the Memorial Day weekend when a snowstorm hit the mountains of the northeast. An amazing 36 inches was reported at Whiteface and 12-16 inches at Jay Peak and Mt. Mansfield.
Also listen to Joe D’Aleo’s May 23rd radio interview with Mike Janocik on WLCR AM
At Weatherbell.com we try to show people the ‘why’ before the ‘what’. My father taught me that if you are right, then you should have the reason why first, and not excuses for being wrong later. From where I stand, the reasons why we are right are clear. But the barrage of excuses coming from the other side is growing shriller with each passing day. But the idea that people spouting the CO2 idea are being driven from the field in spite of the overwhelming evidence against them is nonsense. When facts don’t matter, it’s not the facts that will force them to quit. This is well beyond science.
Any rational person can see what is going on and can say that in the least there is enough doubt to stop the madness that demonizes those that disagree. In reality, their point has been driven from the field.
What I am doing here is giving you the ‘why’ before the ‘what’. What I’m amazed at is how people can keep seeing things that are opposite of what they claimed would happen 5 years ago, simply change the terminology, and then say the things they say. That kind of mentality is one that does not accept any answer except the one they think it should be. So the fight is not on a level of a normal argument. The arguing is with people who believe they possess the “truth” and that anything short of their “truth” cannot be tolerated.
But we must smile and fight with facts. Debunk, and try not to demean.
In any case the following link will be very helpful in trying to get my point across, and I am going to use mixing ratios to show some of this. See.
Here is why this should be simple. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So what is the source of energy to the Earth? Answer: the sun. If outgoing radiation equals incoming, then there is no trapping and all this hullabaloo is a moot point. Since that is the case, the game should be over.
However if you want to start confusing the issue, you assign major importance to very minor items, control the language, and then you can control the perception.
The fact is that the Earth has been warming since the very cold period of the 1700s (Little Ice Age). It just so happened sunspots were in the tank, and it was cold. When sunspot activity increased, the Earth responded by getting warmer. Should be simple, right? The link to the oceans in the overall rise that has occurred is obvious in the graph below (from the outstanding site: Climate4you.
Figure 1: CO2 concentration and global temperature.Enlarged
The cumulative effect of the warm AMO and PDO added heat to the atmosphere, so temps rose from the late 1970s to around 2000. After the air absorbed the heat, it leveled off, the PDO flipped, and we started trending down.
Simply using the PDO, as seen in the chart below from Wikipedia, shows an almost direct correlation:
The warm years from the late 1970s to a bit beyond 2000, the latest downturn can be seen as well. The Pacific is much larger than the Atlantic, but the Atlantic turned warm in the mid-1990s so it is still not fully onboard with the cooling. But when it does turn, chances are global temps will respond as one would expect knowing the heat capacity of the ocean is 1000 times that of the atmosphere. This chart alone should cast doubt, if not slay, the CO2 dragon being a major climate factor, if any at all. It’s simply too small to do what these people spouting this agenda-driven idea say it will.
Again the overall rise of the past 200 years is easily explained by sunspots, which is why a lot of people are nervous about cooling. After all, if you are claiming the sun caused the warming, and you take it away, and the oceans flip to their negative phase, and a couple of volcanoes blow to boot, then there is real trouble. Hence the triple crown of cooling, which I showed on national TV 4 years ago when explaining why the cooling would commence, and by 2030 temperatures would return to levels seen in the late 1970s.
As for CO2, the rise may be due in part to a lag that FOLLOWS warming, and doesn’t cause it. Since the 1950s, the only time CO2 was correlated was when the oceans warmed. This is not brain surgery.
There is science and pseudo-science. Science comes up with an idea like the oceans are causing warming, and when they cool, the air cools. Pseudo-science says: well CO2 is adding to this, but how much? IT’S A QUESTION THAT CAN NEVER BE ANSWERED. Does the question then become: Would we already be heading into a mini ice age were it not for CO2 saving us? How do you answer that? Untold amounts of money are being thrown at a question that isn’t even something of consideration.
Now here is the problem. Temps have been dropping as you can see...not a lot, but some. But what should be very disturbing for planners and people looking forward is that the Relative Humidity is dropping. That means the wet bulb has dropped more than the temperatures. So far so good.
Why is the RH dropping? Think about it. A cooling Pacific, especially in the tropics, means less water vapor available to the system. So we get the initial temperature drop off because of the the cooling Pacific, primarily in the tropics, is no longer adding to the warmth of the air. But the RH is dropping too.
Where it’s dry, it does warm up and the large dry land areas do warm in the summer season, until such the entire earth/ocean system adjusts (the AMO flips to cold too). But the drop of RH, seen above in the chart is a big hint!
Notice how at this time, the 1000 mb is lagging. Eventually, though, the transport of moisture from the lagging low levels will cool the mid levels (increased moisture leading to temperatures falling toward the wet bulb), leading to more instability and more cloudiness. Until a balance is reached, the earths temps will cool. Perhaps faster.
A look at the skew T and the mixing ratio relationship to temperature really makes my point about why this is a distortion of temps and not warming. By distortion I mean its obviously warmer in the northern areas, but THE COOLING IN THE TROPICAL AREAS, EVEN THOUGH MUCH SMALLER, CARRIES FAR GREATER WEIGHT TO THE WEATHER AND CLIMATE .
A way to think about it like 2 people that weigh the same, but one may have more mass in one part of the body than the other.
An example of this can be seen when one looks at what it takes to change the mixing ratio 2g/kg at 30c, vs -20C.
Look at how the mixing ratios increase dramatically with higher temps. In other words, suppose we lower the temps 1C at 30C (from Wikipedia chart).
Doing so, we would change the mixing ratio by about 2g/kg. Now how much of a rise at -20C would we need to offset that? At -20C the mixing ratio is about 0.7 g/kg. To move up 2g to 2.7 g/kg, we would have to raise the temp about 15C.
The changes in temperatures in the tropics have a much greater overall impact on the climate than those in the arctic. It is, if you will, easy to warm cold, dry air, but to cool warm tropical air is harder. So if the earth’s temp is about steady, or falling off a bit as we saw in the graph above, and the arctic is still warm, the compensating drop in the tropics means more to the earths climate than the same movement of temps in the arctic It becomes a predictor of what has to happen as the PDO continues cold and the AMO turns cold.. the warmer northern polar regions will cool. A degree is not a degree when it comes to the climate system. A one degree movement up and down where wet bulb temperatures are 80 have far greater effects on the system than a 1 degree change where its near 0. That is the message behind the mixing ratio example above.
Now let me ask you this question, in terms of the climate system, which is far more important: the tropical oceans and the air masses around them, or what is going on in the Arctic?
Again this is simply saying there is a natural large-scale thermostat called the ocean. The warmer the ocean, the more it drives the whole climate system.
The slight cooling while RH is dropping is a sign of bigger things to come. This means the wet bulbs are falling faster than the actual temps. It is a predictor of future temperature falls (it’s worse than we thought). For usually when the RH falls, the temperatures rise. In this case, temps are already falling with the RH falling too!
At the very least I expect temperatures by 2030 to return to where they were in the late 1970s, which was the end of the last cold PDO phase and, by the way, the start of the satellite era: the most objective form of measurements.
Is the cooling worse than I thought? We are going to find out in the coming decades.
The Carbon Sense Coalition has awarded its Inaugural Golden Fleece Award to Kevin Rudd and coal industry leaders for “flagrant fleecing of community savings in futile ‘research’ on Carbon Capture & Sequestration, a costly and complex process designed to capture and bury carbon dioxide gas produced by burning carbon fuels such as coal, oil and gas”.
It is obviously possible, in an engineering sense, to collect, separate, compress, pump and pipe gases, so new “research” is largely a waste of money. Engineers know how to do these things, and their likely costs. But only foolish green zealots would think of spending billions to bury a harmless, invisible, life-supporting gas in hopes of cooling the climate some time in the century ahead.
About 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide are produced for every tonne of coal burnt in a power station. To capture, compress and bury it could take at least 30% of the electricity produced, greatly increasing the cost of the limited amount of electricity left for sale, more coal used, increased electricity costs, for ZERO measurable benefits.
We have come to expect stupidity from politicians, but coal industry leaders who agreed to waste money on this should be sued by shareholders for negligence. Maybe they were just drooling at all the extra coal they would sell in order to produce the same electricity.
Kevin Rudd wins this award for “a Flagrant Fleece of $400 million taken from tax payers to fund the fatuous Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.” There is little to show for the millions already spent except a lot of receipts for high class salaries, consultants, travel, entertainment and “operational expenses”.
Pumping gases underground is sensible if it brings real benefits such as using waste gases to drive oil recovery from declining oil fields
Normally, however, CCS will just produce more expensive electricity
This result is not needed as politicians have already invented dozens of ways of doing just that.
