According to a new study released by Nature Climate Change we are, remarkably, at the very peak of conditions for wheat growth worldwide — and it’s all downhill from here. (What are the odds?) The last 15 years, which have been the “hottest on record” and saw massive human CO2 output, were the peak time for wheat. But all that is about to fall off a cliff if we do … more of the same.
To demonstrate that millions will starve: take projections of extremes from broken climate models, and put them in wheat crop models, and then assume we take no adaptive measures for the first time in human history. Ignore that even the IPCC doesn’t think extreme events are necessarily changing: “Climate models are unable to predict extreme events because they lack spatial and temporal resolution. In addition, there is no clear evidence that sustained or worldwide changes in extreme events have occurred in the past few decades. “
There’s been no increase in drought globally in the last 60 years either. Pouring free fertilizer into the sky, along with better agricultural practices, has produced a global boom in crops (See CO2science for scores of studies on biomass gain, and photosynthesis). But from now on it’s doom, gloom and pain — even though in a warmer world the air will be more humid and the temperatures more stable (the extremes of hot and cold happen under clear sky conditions). Nevermind. Give me another grant.
See this graph? It’s all over, the crash is coming, you better believe it. Nature Climate Change says so:
Source: Worldwatch, VitalSigns.
Climate change may dramatically reduce wheat production, study shows
Climate change may dramatically reduce wheat production, study shows recent study involving Kansas State University researchers finds that in the coming decades at least one-quarter of the world’s wheat production will be lost to extreme weather from climate change if no adaptive measures are taken.
Vara Prasad, professor of crop ecophysiology and director of the USAID Feed the Future Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab at Kansas State University, is part of a collaborative team that found wheat yields are projected to decrease by 6 percent for each degree Celsius the temperature rises if no measures to adapt to extreme weather fluctuations are taken. Based on the 2012-2013 wheat harvest of 701 million tons worldwide, the resulting temperature increase would result in 42 million tons less produced wheat — or a loss of nearly one-quarter of the current wheat production.
“It’s pretty severe,” Prasad said. “The projected effect of climate change on wheat is more than what has been forecast. That’s challenging because the world will have to at least double our food supply in the next 30 years if we’re going to feed 9.6 billion people.”
Prasad and colleagues published their study, “Rising temperatures reduce global wheat production,” in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature Climate Change. The study was supported through the Kansas Wheat Commission and the Kansas Wheat Alliance, two organizations seeking ways to increase wheat yield.
For the study, researchers systematically tested 30 wheat crop models against field experiments from around the world that were conducted in areas where the average temperature of the growing season ranged from 15 to 32 degrees Celsius. The models accounted for planting dates, planting rates, temperatures and other crop management factors.
With the models, researchers were able to look at the effects of temperature stresses on wheat and predict future changes based on temperature changes.
Researchers found that the effects from climate change and its increasing temperatures on wheat will be more severe than once projected and are happening sooner than expected. While Prasad said increases in the average temperature are problematic, a bigger challenge is the extreme temperatures that are resulting from climate change.
“Extreme temperature doesn’t only mean heat; it also means cold,” Prasad said. “Simply looking at the average temperature doesn’t really show us anything because it’s the extremities that are more detrimental to crops. Plants can handle gradual changes because they have time to adapt, but an extreme heat wave or cold snap can kill a plant because that adjustment period is often nonexistent.”
Researchers also found that increasing temperatures are shortening the time frame that wheat plants have to mature and produce full heads for harvest, resulting in less grain produced from each plant.
“It’s like having one minute to fill a tall glass with water. Under optimal conditions, we can fill that glass pretty well,” Prasad said. “But now we’re factoring in extreme temperatures that are affecting the growing window and the grain size. So it becomes like trying to fill that same glass, but now we only have 40 seconds to do it and the faucet is running slower.”
Currently, Prasad and colleagues at Kansas State University, in collaboration with the university’s Wheat Genetics Resource Center, are using growth chambers and heats tents to quantify the effects of temperature. The data will help in refining the crop models so that they can be more accurate in predicting wheat responses.
Their work will help scientists develop more robust models that can help farmers globally select more weather-tolerant and resilient wheat varieties based on their location. Additionally, farmers can determine the optimal planting date to avoid stress and minimize possible exposure to extreme weather events, such as heat and cold snaps, during the growing season.
I’m sure better crop models are good, but what farmers need more than anything are climate models that predict the climate.
We’re doomed.
I thought I’d better mention that as early as possible.
261
This reminds me a lot of how the self serving AWB (wool) idiots succeeding in almost total destruction of our wool market, & how they made an effort to remedy their selfish damage by reducing the supply during the early 1980’s. Hilariously they lacked the brains to understand that wool doesn’t sink very easilly in fresh or salt water.Luckily for them most government at that time were just as ignorant as now, so many of those same people are still involved.
81
maurie, you are all at sea with your details about wool. The one thing you are right about is “they lacked the brains to understand”. Seriously so.
It’s a long, sad story, too long to tell here. But, while the Hawke government was responsible for the original bust in 1989/90, it was the Howard government which bankrupted the entire world trade in wool as they dumped the last of the stockpile from 1999 to 2002. Citing “The Law of Supply and Demand”, they showed that they understood neither supply nor demand, as they forced us to slash supply until there was too litttle wool for anybody to profit from trading in wool. They created an acute artificial scarcity of supply which made it impossible for traders to make secure plans to trade in wool.
No plans means no trading. Twelve years of that has wiped out what was until not so long ago Australia’s biggest industry. There is no good reason why wool should not now be a $20 billion a year industry. Through the folly of educated men it is a $2 billion a year industry and dying!
The direct loss for Australia’s rural economy and the national economy too is now in multiple hundreds of billions of dollars over a 25 year period. This is the biggest cause for all the economic hardship in rural Australia over that time.
21
This was all recorded in Australia a century ago.
SAID HANRAHAN
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.
The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.
“It’s lookin’ crook,” said Daniel Croke;
“Bedad, it’s cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad.”
“It’s dry, all right,” said young O’Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.
And so around the chorus ran
“It’s keepin’ dry, no doubt.”
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.
“The crops are done; ye’ll have your work
To save one bag of grain;
From here way out to Back-o’-Bourke
They’re singin’ out for rain.
“They’re singin’ out for rain,” he said,
“And all the tanks are dry.”
The congregation scratched its head,
And gazed around the sky.
“There won’t be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
There’s not a blade on Casey’s place
As I came down to Mass.”
“If rain don’t come this month,” said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak–
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week.”
A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed a piece of bark.
“We want a inch of rain, we do,”
O’Neil observed at last;
But Croke “maintained” we wanted two
To put the danger past.
“If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.
And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.
It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o’Bourke.
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”
And stop it did, in God’s good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.
And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o’er the fence.
And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey’s place
Went riding down to Mass.
While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.
“There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
John O’Brien.
John O’Brien was the pen name used by Father Patrick Joseph Hartigan. This poem was published in 1921 in “Around the Boree Log.”
401
And thanks for that Ted…it’s great!
71
A wry laugh from me RoHa! I’m glad you got it in early so that it is over and done with! 🙂
51
Its OK, we can then step away from the faulty “healthy eating” food pyramid ( heavy in grains and carbs ) and back toward a balanced diet with a lot more animal fat….
http://openheart.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000196.full
“Evidence from randomised controlled trials did not support the introduction of dietary fat guidelines in 1977 and 1983: a systematic review and meta-analysis
There were no differences in all-cause mortality and non-significant differences in CHD mortality, resulting from the dietary interventions.
The reductions in mean serum cholesterol levels were significantly higher in the intervention groups; this did not result in significant differences in CHD or all-cause mortality.
Government dietary fat recommendations were untested in any trial prior to being introduced.”
I find it intersting the UN recently has come out with a counter-balance ( another faulty CAGW linked…do they every give up flogging a dead horse? ) “requirement” to “save the planet from climate change” of – you guessed it – we need to go on a VEG diet……
which of course means no nasty, evil, ozone depleting animal fats….
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet
The lunatics are running the asylum.
51
” we need to go on a VEG diet……
which of course means no nasty, evil, ozone depleting animal fats….”
Don’t eating loads off greens make us produce more GHGs on our own ?
20
Steve, The USA is going even further.
The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) came up with the recommendation that America Should Adopt a ‘Plant-Based’ Diet. It recommends taxes on dessert, trained obesity “interventionists” at schools and worksites, and electronic monitoring of how long Americans sit in front of the television or computer. The new Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 and Obamacare Act will be used as the weapons to transform American dietary habits into a more sustainable pattern of eating.
So why are Americans suddenly about to be forced into a change in eating habits?
A year ago the chair of DGAC told us why and it has NOTHING to do with health and everything to do with Agenda 21 aka Sustainability. She said:
That statement certainly sounds like the DGAC is more concerned with Sustainability than with the health of Americans. The Chair goes on to say.
Based on my past 20 years of experience I can say with authority Clancy doesn’t know what the heck she is talking about. Years of crop farming removed 2 feet of top soil from my farm until it was sold because nothing was left but inorganic clay that produced weeds not crops. I have used it for livestock farming and rebuilt six inches of fertile black soil.
Clancy goes on to say:
So beef production, not the health of Americans are the ‘greatest concern’ Gee thanks for telling us that up front.
However the US Food Gestapo has already sprung into action even though the Dietary Guidelines are still up for comment.
Hospitals to begin monitoring your credit card purchases to flag ‘unhealthy’ habits
The first time one of these people ‘reaches out’ they are going to find out not only am I a carnivore but I BITE! Long pork YUMMmmm
20
OOPS forgot:
The report is open for public comment for 45 days:
http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2015/comments/
So if you are from the USA go tell these would be tyrants what you think of their intrusion into your life. Heck even if you are not from the USA tell them what you think of Agenda 21.
10
Anyone who still thinks Agenda 21 is some conspiracy theory, better think again. Soon.
Anyone who thinks this is only happening in the US, better think again. Soon.
Abe
00
gai,
The Apparent Problem
The Background
There’s a quote by Thomas Jefferson which has been thrown around and misquoted and paraphrased beyond recognition. That quote is from his book, “Notes on the State of Virginia”. That quote is as follows . . .
I’ve taken the liberty of presenting said quote within the larger context of what he was discussing at the time, that being the various religions that had found their way into the state of Virginia. The context is as follows. . .(I’ve highlighted various phrases to emphazise the thrust of his argument.)After presenting a summary of the religious oppresion of the time and a partial removal of that oppresion, he states . . .
. . . and then . . .
When we examine what is being said here, It’s clear that President Jefferson is explaining to us how our bodies as well as our souls are ours and ours alone, so long as what we do, say, or think, does not harm others. Government should not have any say in what we eat any more than it can have a say in what we believe.
The Real Problem
By framing people’s eating habits as being dangerous to others by contributing to climate change, this [snip] of a person, is in effect using Thomas Jefferson’s defence of individual rights to body and mind as a justified attack on those same rights.
I personally don’t have the legal, scientific, or intelectual capability to construct a viable defence for this type of attack. Maybe someone out there does. The battle will not be easy.
My heart tells me that there must be way to win this thing, my mind just can’t seem to find what that way could be.
Abe
10
Apparently 9.6 billion people are going eat twice as much as 7 billion people. I find that a bit hard to swallow.
490
Yes, their arithmetic is abysmal.
How long has 41 been 25% of 701?
290
Since the advent of Modern Climate Science.
300
Post-Normal Science at it’s Best… No really, that’s the best it does.
Don’t worry about measurements and data, How does this theory make you FEEL.
180
Actually, Post-Normal Science makes me feel sick to my stomach, because it isn’t Science, and it ain’t Normal either. It is deliberate, constructed, coordinated, and insidious propaganda.
But thanks for asking, anyway.
80
I keep reading that CO2 has risen by 40 or 50%, but it’s only 32%.
160
Never trust Warmists wielding percentages. They’re not even real quantities and are only wheeled out for effect
60
Base or reference date?
Let’s be scientific here.
From some reference dates CO2 has DROPPED enormously!
🙂
KK
141
That’s probably “Anthropogenic annual emissions of CO2 have risen 40%.”
Those emissions of CO2 form only about 3.75% of the planet’s total Annual Emissions of CO2, so a 40% increase in `Squat’ is still ‘Squat.’
Bo need to panic.
20
I suspect that it might be intentional and a desperate clinging to self respect. A cryptic /sarc.
30
Thats right, it should be 42, by dedinitkon, since it’s the answer to life, the universe and everything…
40
Oops, the virtually unusable virtual keyboard got me again
30
Especially since people will be shorter due to AGW, I’m sure I read.
120
People are already “stupidier” due to AGW…
In any case, food riots were already predicted to have happened by the late 90’s through European capitals and, well, there is that prediction to add to the heap of manure being feed the electorate.
And, please correct me if I’m wrong on this, but were the “food riots” predictions not made by a then-up-and-comer that nowadays sits high on the IPCC or some such? One just can’t keep track of all the nonsense from these characters.
60
There were no food riots, but I remember the “TV flat screen riots” in Central London just a few years ago.
Obviously they wanted to find out from the media how much the GW crap was going to effect them.
40
Yes but modern electronics contain many essential vitamins and nutrients – like propganda, BS and piles of un-scientific nonsense….
30
Yes but, at the moment people eat other things too. The expanding population is going to want nothing but wheat to eat, because meats out.
160
Damn those vegans!
60
Vegans HA!, their ideas aren’t worth a sausage….
120
+10 internets
30
I wondered about that. Thanks for clarifying this!!
30
Hey! I’m a life-long vegetarian, so on some level, I am all for people eating things which aren’t meat!! – but my dietary choices are mine alone, and I don’t expect anyone to do what I do…
Call me mean, but I still find it absolutely hilarious to see the trendy and oh-so-noisy ‘I love to make a big public fuss about being gluten intolerant just because it’s popular, not because it’s true’ crowd eating meat substitutes made from wheat-derived gluten…
60
Yup…and I’ll bet if you could map “vegies by choice to save the planet” onto the map, youd probably find many in the inner city areas, and in close proximity to trendy coffee shops…..
50
Having driven there in their “Toorak Tractors”!
00
From their heavily lit McMansions !
00
Yes, it’s worse than we though.
Should the models turn out to be inaccurate and the world cools for the next 30 years then it is entirely likely that grain production will be adversely affected. Cooler temperatures could see reduction or even elimination of the Canadian crop, and the need for the growing zone to move 1-200 kilometres further south, displacing the corn belt and its biofuel production.
The effect on the Middle East with 50-85% of the wheat being imported isn’t likely to improve stability there either. Locally there is likely to be more rain as the rain bearing winds move further north. We may yet see wheat growing on the shores of Lake Eyre again.
181
This is such nonsense, as different strains of wheat and moving the growing areas a little northward solves any problem that any supposed global warming might cause.
It might have a small shred of truth if we were limited to the types (or is it strains?) of wheat which were available around World War II. However, there are now many more types/strains compared to back then; the ear to stalk ratio has increased enormously, likewise so has the number of types/strains multiplied which can thrive in marginal types of climate conditions.
Just another case of: “this is a huge problem and needs much more expensive research, so gimme lots more grant money, and gimme it now!”
Typical ‘climate science.’
Sigh……………………
280
Peter, this “Wheat Study” is at best a second-rate Modern Climate Science effort in that the portion of the study reproduced by Joanne above meets only one of the three (Fear Mongering) defining tenets of Modern Climate Science (see: http://joannenova.com.au/2015/02/weekend-unthreaded-66/#comments). There’s no mention of GAIA and I can’t find an invective anywhere.
100
Please note the graph in the article is from “Worldwatch Institute” . They have been putting out alarmist drivel for about 30 years, and none of their predictions have been forthcoming.
00
One obvious question the “researchers” have not asked is if there were to be significant warming how would that effect the dates of the four seasons. And would it not be possible to get the same results as now by say planting crops a little earlier or at advantageously different times from the present.
One suspects they imagine they have ruled out that possibility by postulating, not merely gradually rising average temperatures but erratic weather patterns. If they were a little better informed they would be aware for example of very old sayings like “Melbourne can experience four seasons in one day”. In other words the Earth does not require AGW to produce erratic weather.
140
Llew, read the study, 😉 they didn’t need to ask whether people would change sowing dates or varieties, they assumed “there would be no adaptation”.
210
The atudy is a crock for additional reasons. Most global wheat is ‘winter’ varietires (3/4 of US, virtually all of China). Planted in the fall, dormant through winter, harvested late spring or early summer (end of June in the area of my Wisconsin farm). The do NOT explain how hypothesized global warming could ever affect winter wheat with spring anthesis. (high heat during anthesis does reduce all cereal yields, so only even a potential issue for spring wheat).
150
In the last two years, its been frost damage to crops in most of the SE of Aus that has reduced yields.
We will not get such high temperature increases without greater humidity which means less frost in spring. When it does rain, it should rain more and when the land gets parched, the crop has already been harvested. A hotter Dec-Feb should mean nothing as the crops will be harvested in early Dec if not earlier because of favourable weather.
100
but those frosts are a sign of warming don’t you know….
50
Those frosts are an outcome of the positive PDO phase and the lower humidity, lower rainfall regime in our SE Australian atmospheric environment that comes with this positive PDO phase.
A positive phase we are now well on the way to moving out of and into the negative phase of the PDO and the strong probability for much wetter seasons here in the SE for the next couple of decades.
Certainly over the last two years the gliding conditions appear o be moving towards the superb gliding conditions in this part of australia that we experienced in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
My father when he moved onto a farm some 25 kms north of Horsham in Victoria’s Wimmera and where I grew up and then farmed with my wife for some 40 years, was told by the locals to never sow before a certain date as to do so would mean that frost would severely damage the crop when flowering and near maturity.
And that was based on the severe frosting of crops during the very dry hot years of the mid to late 1930’s, the then positive PDO phase as we now know.
In 1948, the Old Man in his usual extraordinarily lucky manner and just when he had moved to the new property, the whole structure of the seasons changed quite suddenly from a very dry, frequent drought conditions of the mid 1930’s to the mid 1940’s [ positive PDO ] to a wet regime although as is usual with Australia’s climate, the occasional mostly mild dry to drought years included such as the mid 1960’s, until the very wet mid 1970’s which coincided with the cool negative phase of the PDO which appears to coincide and mean a wetter regime for us here in the SE.
Consequently and I was always well aware of it, I rarely if ever saw any serious frost damage and in fact can’t remember any instances of heavy and severe frost damage , light sporadic damage yes, but not severe wide spread frost damage in the district to near mature and flowering grain crops for some 30 years until the 1990’s.
Frost damage then became a problem becoming severe and very widespread in it’s effects particularly in the very droughty 2000’s, a period of the severe dry/ drought for us and still in the dying gasps of the positive phase of the PDO that first began with the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1978 followed by the 33 year long period of dry and drought for us here in the SE..
There has also been a very strong move by the plant breeders to keep bringing the various crop types and varieties flowering and maturity dates ever earlier in Australian conditions to counter the chances of damaging heat stress on the flowering and maturing crops if they mature later in the season.
A plant breeding trend as I can testify due to my connections in the plant research community and which I have argued with some plant breeders about, that has been brought about by the climate model predictions of ever increasing heat and strong advocacy by University climate scientists with links to the Ag research institutes.
An early maturing crop trend for which we might yet pay a very high price in crop yields due to the lack of later maturing varieties as the early maturing varieties try to flower at times and in conditions where the cold of late winter may prevent them from fulfilling their essential biological flowering and grain filling and maturity functions.
We have actually seen this happen around here when early sowing and seeding completion competition between a few not the brightest farmers has led to very early seeding times and the crops when they matured, tried to ripen very early in the cold of late winter and early spring simply had little or no grain and that grain of very bad quality in the heads when harvested
The early flowering and maturity breeding trend has also lead to the crops flowering and maturing during mid to late spring when frost can still be encountered and become a severe yield destroying problem.
A lot of seeding is now done on a date basis so as to try and fit the flowering and seed setting and maturing of the different varieties of crops types and species into their particular time slot between encountering the statistically derived dates of the last frosts for the season and the first of the high temperatures which also severely affect crop yields.
In the end it comes down to the climatic environment in which our food crops are grown.
In Australia we could benefit considerably from cooler conditions during our crops flowering, grain filling and maturity periods.
In Canada, Russia, the Ukraine and perhaps across the Northern Great Plains of the USA, they would all benefit from warmer conditions. assuming of course that the breeders have the varieties suited to those cooler or warmer conditions.
The world has far, far more to fear about it’s food grain crops from the evolving of new strains of diseases and rusts such as the deadly rust strain Ug99 of a few years ago for which fortunately, new genetic resistance for this rust strain was found in the wild species of wheat related grasses.
Those resistant genes were then bred into new varieties of wheat in a crash breeding program where australian plant scientists played a key role thus ensuring that the Ug99 rust plague was halted in it’s tracks by the new resistant varieties.
But there will always be a new and possibly more deadly version of such diseases somewhere, sometime just waiting and breeding up for another onslaught onto mankind’s basic food crops.
Thats just Nature as she truly is.
Compared to the devastation new ever evolving strains of rusts and disease can pose for the world’s grain crops , in fact food crops of every conceivable type, a couple of degrees change in global temperatures would have little more effect than a mite on a flea’s gonads on the world’s grain crops.
We just adapt and we take our food crops along with us in that adaption just as we have done for at least 10,000 years of the known history of agriculture.
151
One of the prime requirements for grain crops and in fact for just about every annual plant species are the cumulative Growing Degree Days, the number of hours/ days multiplied by the degrees temperature each hour above a minimum temperature, typically around 0c for the cereals and about 10 C for corn crops.
This number of required “growing degree days” from emergence of the crop to the maturity when the ripening process gets under way is about the same for each specific crop type and species when grown anywhere in the world under whatever conditions prevail.
Example; Growing degree-day calculation
In Australia down here in the SE we might need very roughly about 180 days to get the required number of growing degree days for most of the various cereal food crops.
That is the required number of hours multiplied by the temperature during each of those hours to calculate the growing degree days.
[ generally days are used along with the average day temperature to calculate this figure ]
In Canada up around the Peace River district in Alberta, about as far north as commercial grain crops were grown a few years back but are now grown even further north with new Canadian grain crop varieties, the number of days to achieve the same number of growing degree days is about half of our days, that is about 90 days due to the very long daylight hours and very short nights of those northern latitudes.
In Montana it is about a 100 days. When we were told this our reaction was “How the hell does it grow so fast”?
The Montana farmers reaction to our 5 or 6 month long growing period was” How the hell does it live so long? ”
The growing degree days are similar in each case.
So if we have some warming then providing water and nutrients such as the required amount of fertilizers are adequate the crops will merely grow a little faster to maturity, something the northern hemisphere grain producers would certainly welcome.
There is a quote from some of the more realistic grain growers in Australia’s very sandy, poor soils as in sandy, usually low yielding grain growing regions.
The sand is to stand the plants up in
Everything else is supplied.
70
Rud Istvan;
Just for info.
Spring wheats are almost exclusively the only type of wheat so far sown in Australia.
A few Australian winter wheat varieties are just now starting to come onto the scene.
Their big advantage is that in the higher rainfall sheep / grain zones the winter wheats in our non snow, relatively warm winter conditions, comparatively speaking, can be sown a couple of months earlier and then grazed until the mid vegetative stage and then still give grain yields approaching those of the spring wheats.
20
Yes Jo I missed that. However the following excerpt shows their required assumption is that projected increasing temperatures are not the problem per se but the postulated resultant increase in “weather fluctuations”.
“Vara Prasad….. is part of a collaborative team that found wheat yields are projected to decrease by 6 percent for each degree Celsius the temperature rises if no measures to adapt to extreme weather fluctuations are taken.”
40
There was a farmer in Iceland being interviewed by the BBC promoting their Iceland is wàrming 4 times faster than anywhere else narrative. He seems delighted by the extending growing season.
From 6minutes30 in
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052j57f
They refer to it as climate getting better.
160
Every place in the world is warming faster than any other place in the world.
Work that one out.
70
It is climate science, multiply by 1 for growth, divide by zero for gain.
Wonderful what wisdom a computer programme can produce.
30
Depends on who you ask, however all alarmists will claim that anyone who says otherwise about any of them is a “d*nier”; that’s how the CAGW religion works.
10
Meanwhile, in sunny Greenland, Global Warming is presenting a few problems.
http://arcticjournal.com/climate/1339/any-which-way-warm
30
Since 1998 the amount of land used for agriculture has declined. The population has been increasing 1.4 million per week. CSIRO reported that the planet/ deserts have been greening over the last 30 years.
I would say the climate has never been better.
240
Rrrrrright, so in summary…
At 600ppm CO2:
* real experiments show Durum wheat will have 60% higher biomass.
* computer models project a doubling of CO2 is 2.1°C warming and a 12% yield reduction.
Which in total makes a net increase to wheat yield of 48%.
TL,DR: Peak Wheat is half baked.
221
An English farmer’s view of carbon dioxide and yields….
http://www.fwi.co.uk/farm-life/opinion-a-lot-of-hot-air-and-some-bumper-yields.htm
80
Thanx for that link Charlie, very amusing.
20
I’ve said this for ages. You can SEE the effect of increased CO2, especially if you’re over 60 like me. Sometimes in the spring it’s like Day of the Triffids; the plants seem to be taking over!
20
“…(or maybe not)…. (What are the odds)…”
Very good, Jo, my first chuckle(s) of the day. (But as for the rest of you, esp. the later commenters–you’re not laughing hard enough. This is grand comedy–laugh (don’t analyze).
110
Cooling is a much greater threat to wheat production than warming. As David Archibald and others have pointed out, given the history and status of the solar cycles and their proven impact on past weather. Cooling is currently a much greater possibility than warming. The threat to wheat production posed by cooling is much greater in Australia than other areas because most of Australia’s wheat production relies on winter wet growing seasons. Sure people could adapt wheat production to cooling, and we could develop more frost tolerant varieties of wheat; however, no one is working on that because everyone is blindly following the low probability warming theory.
231
Matt, interesting point. I had not thought Australia would be hit too hard – frost doesn’t shorten the season here… Silly me. Instead, I see, frosts are more likely mid growing season rather than at the start or end. (Our wheat crop is grown from May to Nov -obviously our winter months– because it’s too damn hot and dry in summer.)
I’ve spoken to a wheat farmer at the hotter northern edge of the WA growing zone and he seemed pleased with the idea of cooling because he figures even if the rain doesn’t change, the evaporation rates will be lower. But for him soil moisture is everything. For more southern farmers it will matter a lot more.
This quote suggests cold itself (not just frost) may slow growth too. Though presumably we could harvest later to make up for slower growth? (As long as the summers are milder too).
PS: Matt, always great to hear from you! – Jo
170
A thing to consider is that ripe wheat is vulnerable to frost, though that results in economic hard ship for the grower.Late season frosts prior to harvesting are hard to take!
50
That’s all spot on Jo. I grew up on a wheat farm here in WA. When wheat farmers in WA whinge it is usually about three things (excluding government): early rains, frosts, late rains.
Frosts are obviously more of a problem in the southern half of the wheat belt.
Frost shrivels the grain and takes the bulk and goodness out of it.
80
Actually in the last few years because of the increase in severe frosting incidents in the Australian grain crops there has been a very considerable amount of breeder and plant biologists and genetic research trying to identify and find genetic resistance to frost effects.
CYMMT in Mexico, the world centre for cereal crops is doing a lot of work on frost tolerance as are Australian geneticists, breeders and biologists.
Grains Research and Development Corporation,[ GRDC ] the main central research funding body for Australia. Funded 50% by a grower levy and 50% by the federal Government.
One example of research out of many; Frost nurseries identify tolerant grain varieties
30
I once grew a variety called Takari. It was supposed to be frost tolerant.
00
I will give you one guess why the ekeophreaques are pushing so strongly against GMO’s. GMO’s have vastly increased the quantity and quality of food stuff production for the past 10,000 years. Now that we can actually do it by manipulating the genetic mechanism, the rate of improvement can skyrocket. What then will become of all of their predictions?
Answer: Their predictions will fail.
One more time, in a very long line of predicted catastrophes, the global famine that is to befall the earth and reduce the health and wealth of the world’s population will fail as well. They cannot allow that to happen. Their real intent is to destroy modern technological civilization and 95%+ of mankind with it. It is THAT effort they are desperately attempting to prevent from failing.
200
Lionell Griffith,
Commercial interests such as Monsanto have been spreading this interpretation of GMO which is not technically accurate. There is a distinct difference between the historical practices/techniques (such as breeding, cross-pollenation, and grafting) and the newer techniques (gene-splicing using micro-particle bombardment or gene guns, among others).
The first category of human intervention in the variety of organisms in the ecosystem has been going on as far back as humans have been cultivating crops, and domesticating animals. The second category, the transgenics, has only been going on for under fifty years.
Those people that want to promote GMOs, use this argument to make it seem as if there is no difference between the historical strategies and the newer laboratory strategies. This is refered to as equivocation and is universally considered a logical fallacy.
If you look at one of the patents from Monsanto, . . .
you can see that they themselves recognize that a difference exists.
Abe
50
You are missing the point totally. ALL the food we eat from farm production, vegetable, grain, or animal, has been genetically modified from its original form. There are very few unmodified ancient crops and none, I suspect, produced in any substantial quantity.
Originally, genetic modification was by selection of seeds and animals to be used for the next generation. Followed by cross breeding of similar plants or animals in hopes of improving the offspring. Then eventually taking advantage of natural mutations, some/most of which were caused by radiation.
That the technology of genetic engineering is more advanced than that of the farmers of Mesopotamia, makes a difference only in the rate and selectivity of genetic modification. The basic genetic mechanism was changed.
The first farmers unknowingly modified the genetics of their food crops where we knowingly do it. That is true for nearly everything we do today compared with what was done in ancient Mesopotamia. They had tradition, taboo, and superstitions to follow. We have, or at least had, scientific knowledge to follow.
33
Lionell Griffith,
Once again this is an equivocation of terms. What we have been doing historically is breeding. This means that subjects are selected for replication so that traits that are already contained in their DNA will either express or supress. The traits are already there. Have you forgotten Mendel?
Transgenics artificially introduce gene sequences from one biological family to another.
For example, Monsanto’s Rounup Ready crops introduce bio-matter from a bacterium, delftia acidovorus, into the cells of certain varieties of plants.
This quote from Monsanto patent 8,916,752 clearly shows . . .
The introduction of genetic material, AAD-12 . . .
which comes from a bacterium, delftia acidovorus,
You know very well that humans have never bred germs with plants. There are other GMO processes even more extreme than this but you can research these on your own if you like. I have, and so should you.
Abe
10
The real problem is predatory governments not permitting free market capitalism. They regulate supply, control distribution prices, methods, and mechanisms. They generally prohibit genuinely voluntary trade between individuals and groups. The result is a vastly less effective, efficient, and productive economic system.
40
To the moderator(s),
I’ve written a detailed response with the appropriate links to reliable sources and It’s been sitting in moderation for over four hours. I’ve also sent an e-mail to support. Has my reply been lost? Was the e-mail received? If not, what was wrong? Should I go ahead and re-post my reply?
Abe
00
Lionell Griffith,
Greenpeace is one of the leading detractors of GMOs. Just because they are wrong in most of their positions, primarily with regards to AGW, does not mean that they are wrong on everything. In the case of GMOs, the opposing arguments are far wider than just the process involved in creating these organisms. There are also issues of monopolizing the seed markets for some of their products, and the adverse affects to the surrounding bio-sphere.
My personal opinion to GMOs being used as a means to providing a solution to the worlds food supply and preventing the deaths from malnutrition and starvation is that the real problem is distribution and not production.
One clear example is the widely accepted practice of surplus crop destruction to maintain higher prices on the supply-side of the equation within the agriculture industry.
Abe
30
No one mentions man made CO2 driven Global Warming. That would be laughable. So you start with the magic phrase “Climate Change” and smoothly segway to “temperature rise” and throw in “extreme events” for effect. Yesterday’s Science fiction has become today’s science fact.
“Climate change may dramatically reduce wheat production..wheat yields are projected to decrease by 6 percent for each degree Celsius the temperature rises..to adapt to extreme weather fluctuations..the resulting temperature increase”.
So without even mentioning man made CO2 warming, you have temperature rises and extreme weather and a 25% reduction in wheat production. All based on the same broken theory of global warming and the models which predicted it. There is even the new prediction that with increased CO2, increased average temperature and more water are actually really bad for wheat production. To get a 25% decrease based on this logic, you need a 4C increase in temperature. On the plus side, production of flying pigs will be up.
This 4C increase does not need Global Warming is fully supported by the implicit Flannery approach to facts, “trust me, I’m an agricultural scientist”. “Even the rain which falls will not fill the dams”. Did Prasad attend the Pachauri school of self promotion and factless fantasy? Have these people no shame?
140
Just a note, the links in the article to CO2Science biomass gain and photosynthesis are broken. FYI
10
This link may work.
10
Studies like this have convinced me of one thing: The climate of Catastrophic Climate Change has definitely peaked.
80
I keep reading that CO2 is fertilizer?
No, fertilizer is a trace element, something other than CO2 or H2O. Perhaps Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Magnesium, Boron, Iron, Chromium or rarer metals.
A plant is simply solid CO2. Photosynthesis is entirely the capture of CO2, releasing O2. That is the only process behind all life on earth. Carbon Dioxide capture. So plants are solid CO2 and water, bound or unbound.
Yes, the dry weight of plants is Carbon 45%, Hydrogen 6%, Oxygen 45% and these three along form 96% of the dried plant.
However note that big Oxygen component. Carbohydrates are C(H2O)n and consider that H2O still accounts for 45% + 45/8% or 5.62% of the 6% of hydrogen which cannot be removed by simply drying. Remove this chemically bound water and the Carbon content of plant matter without H2O is closer to 45/49 or 92%. This means 92% carbon excluding H2O and 8% everything else.
So remove all H2O and solid carbon is the entire plant. Add 2% Calcium and you have humans with skeletons at 86% C. We are carbon life forms built with photosynthesis and CO2. When we eat to live, we eat the Cm(H2O)n, add the O2 generate in photosynthesis and recover the sun’s energy captured in photosynthesis. We need both and the plants need our CO2. Plant life should boom with the extra CO2.
Without both CO2 or H2O, you cannot have life, although there have been Sulphur based primitive forms prior to photosynthesis. More CO2 and H2O and you have more life. You cannot grow plants without both CO2 and H2O.
Increase CO2 and water and add sunlight and higher average temperatures for faster chemical reactions and you get more wheat. Simple. It is hard to know what they are teaching in (Agricultural) science. In the 1970s India was starving with only 400 million people. Now they are self sufficient with 1300 million. The prophets of doom were wrong, again. Good news never sells.
180
So H2O is not a pollutant. O2 is not a pollutant. Why should CO2 be a pollutant? Why should carbon be a pollutant, or is it just because it is black? You cannot see O2. You can see clouds of H2O and they are pretty even if they block the sunlight. You cannot see CO2 but you can see Carbon and it is black (unless it is diamond), so it must be evil. Four hundred years of chemistry and we still have witchcraft? Arguing that all life on earth is carbon pollution really redefines pollution as a word.
60
I read in the book Dark Emu Black Seeds (also Greatest Estate On Earth) that the Australian Wheat Belt follows the native grasslands that were managed by Aborigine tribes for thousands of years using fire to fertilise the ground and to encourage regrowth. The seeds were harvested and used to grind into a flour like product that the Aborigines used to make a damper. It is believed that the Australian Aborigines lived here for at least 50,000 years and more recent studies suggest a much longer period.
The evidence collected shows that the Aborigines were domesticating plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing. They hunted too but often did so selectively and using excellent quality nets to trap their prey. Last year a western NSW property owner took me to a remote location to see a natural spring pond near a small cave with tool grinding marks on the walls and other signs of a campsite. The property is in the Wheat Belt.
311
Dennis,
Sorry, your story is all bull$hit.
122
You have of course read those books and have studied the period before white settlement and the decades that followed? I thought not.
111
Dennis,
I actually spent 30 years in the bush, predominantly with the Wiradjuri, on my first trip out the first question I was “If we left you here without anything, do you believe you would survuve?”
Anything other than ‘yes’ was a quick trip back to town.
That’s how I know the only cooking in the encampments was of animals caught during the constant move through abundant regions and the only grains used were introduced from Brittain.
You are full of it, but if that’s what you choose to believe – great. I certainly wont argue with you, but don’y stamp your feet and try to force your bull$hit stories on me then presume to know my experiences, qualifications and knowledge.
You are an ignorant and arrogant prat.
92
How about modifying your language James. As for your bragging, so what, you were alive before white settlement were you, and again I ask if you have read the books I quoted. Note please, I quoted.
There is a history of denigrating the original Australians to claim that they were far more primitive than they were.
312
It’s not about being primitive. Agriculture itself was only discovered in the fertile crescent 10,000 years ago.
Until then and certainly 50,000 years ago when the aborigines came here, only hunter gathering was known. There was no agriculture. Not here and not anywhere. Isolated as they were and surrounded by abundant meat and as the top predator in a marsupial world without tigers and lions and bears and wolves, man was well fed. The only danger was other aborigines. Unfortunately as with the lions in Africa, it took 10km2 to feed a human, so they fought their neighbours to the death. That was the world of man until the plough.
This is not abusive. It is reality. Even fish traps are arguably a European invention, quickly copied. Everything is obvious in hindsight and they learned quickly. Authords have since created a fantasy world where aborigines had left the stone age and the hunter gatherer to create a fantasy world. So where are the cities? Where are the houses? Where are the channels for water? Where is the evidence of agriculture and seed storage.
One aspect of this is that echoes tragically today is that stored seed rots and forms alcohol. Aborgines had never stored seed and so had never experienced alcohol and have not developed the enzyme to metabolize it, as had Europeans. 20% of Japanese are the same. It kills them. In fact almost no trees in Australia are fruit trees and we have no monkeys. So no drunk animals either. Rhia means that aborigines have no resistance to alcohol and it kills them.
Until this is recognized, alcohol will be the scourge of the aborigines as people continue to insist that everyone is the same. They are the same in human rights, but not medically. Nor historically. To say otherwise is a disservice to aborigines and stops them from helping themselves.
160
Sorry, Rhia was This. Finger slippage.
20
I recommend the books to you TdeF.
As for the James Bradley opinion, I would like to correct one of his fantasies, read my post again, no grains from Britain were mentioned, native grassland seeds were the harvest. Your comment ignored that which tells me you reacted and did not consider the points.
And you failed to acknowledge my reference to two books when you wrote that I was “full of it” and that I was “an ignorant and arrogant prat”.
The anger generated by the truth is truly amazing, that people could be so willing to dismiss researched information. No wonder the IPCC can fool so many
22
Research does not make things right and the IPCC fooled no one who did not want to be fooled except those trusted UN researchers to be competent or even to tell the truth, say about the major announcement that the Indian Glaciers would vanish in 35 years based on hearsay from a single tour guide. Even from Margaret Thatcher’s day, Global Warming was a manufactured political issue, not a science one. It remains one today.
People can go into research with fixed ideas and everything they see can simply confirm what they already believe, bias confirmation. The idea that aborigines, unlike any other stone age (which is a statement, not a criticism or judgement) and all such pre agricultural people in the world were preparing, planting, minding, watering, harvesting and storing seeds does not fit any previous story of aborigines or their observed migratory behaviour or lifestyle. There are none of the domestic, storage, water and other structures, implements and traces to support such a conclusion. Personally I have never seen or read of the infrastructure or behaviour patterns which would support such an unusual conclusion. There have been fantasies written about aborigines, like the stories of slave markets in Brisbane in the 1840s when slavery was a serious offence throughout the British empire.
Please save everyone the effort and explain simply what specific facts in these two books convinced you that aborigines mastered the basic principles of agriculture, storing seeds, preparing soil, caring, harvesting and storing grain? As with the IPCC volumes, you cannot believe everything you read. It is critical to be sceptical. That is the hallmark of a scientist.
60
Yes there was agriculture, not of the European model, however the Australian Aborigines did manage their country, including native grasses, and other native plants.
The denial of the past is rather sad
03
It is not the European model, but rapidly spread throughout the world from one area apparently. The hardened burned stick according to Geoffrey Blainey made all the difference, but as Dad in the Castle said, it was what you did with it. Then domestication of animals and the plough.
The cycle of harvesting and planting and storing enabled the invasion of Europe where people could build and live in towns, live together, survive the freezing winters of Europe and Russia and Japan. Social classes were created of artisans and philosophers and engineers and supervisors and even accountants, people with time to create and develop and record and manufacture. There is no evidence of this. Aboriginal jewellery? Rather Australian aborigines lived in a land without predators, without winter, without enemies and the need for forts, without even the need for agriculture. So why would anyone bother? Eating things is not agriculture. That is simply gathering in hunting and gathering story.
30
Dennis,
You got me, I wasn’t born before white settlement, but neither was Pascoe.
I suppose the aboriginal hunters who used glass for spear tips must have manufactured the glass?
So far there is no evidence in the continued traditional culture that indicate farming.
Dot paintings, glass tips and any agriculture are not traditional.
Pascoe throws in some challenging concepts, but so did Von Daniken.
More power to him, hope he makes a quid, problem is this will be taught in schools as history to mollify the socialist sense of victimhood, assign the guilt and make apologies.
The prat comment was cathartic.
112
The glass you talking about is obsidian, a volcanic rock that resembles glass. To produce glass you have to have furnaces and knowledge, no such thing. Aborigines were a truly Stone Age people who did not even invent the wheel. It was just a harsh survival and no one had any time to do anything else. Paintings were sporadic and rare. The idea that they were custodians of the land doing bush fire prevention is lunatic. If we even can,t do land management now what sort of chance the aborigines had? In fact they were the first destroyers of the local fauna and flora, just like early humans in the Americas. He have to recognise the the giant marsupials have been largely destroyed by the early humans. No climate change, no meteoritites will obsolve humans from this calamity.
90
“… obsidian, a volcanic rock that resembles glass. …”
Small correction, obsidian is actual vitreous silicate glass, not resembles glass.
Given how brittle obsidian is and how often you’d need a new tip, it’s far more likely they were re-working solid chert and else quartz from hydro thermal veins into their spear tips. Seen plenty of sandstone aboriginal hand axes too, picked them up off the ground in the middle of nowhere. They stand out because they’re often of a rock type not found where you find them.
50
Another small correction, the spear heads were actually made from discarded/broken glass bottles brought over from Britain.
The aboriginals used their ingenuity to make a better product than the one they had.
60
They also broke the glass insulators on the telegraph line to get sharp edged pieces. So much so that ceramic insulators were introduced.
32
Obsidian was commonly used because of its ease to shape it, particularly in European cultures where there was plenty of it. Convex and concave surfaces are easily achieved and in Australia the aborigines used whatever material that could yield the same result. One of them was silcrite, or any rock that is old and hard, so sandstones, siltstone were also used. I have come across whole hills covered with that suff in my geo field trip jollies. Australia is covered with extremely old rocks and anything hard was used including quartz veins that are often left behind after softer rock was eroded away. Obsidian is a rare material in Australia as no recent volcanism occurred . It also weathers quickly and hence it is not preserved.
20
And Bruce Pascoe too angry ignorant James?
Why are you angry and so determined to deny the truth?
03
Oh no, I’ve been labelled a ‘denier’.
More power to them – if they can write successful pieces, I hope they enjoy all the kudos and possessions that goes with it, your paying for it.
50
Nice knowing you James … it is sad that you have to crawl away to die, in the denier corner. I am really sad. You will be sorely missed. It is ironic, that a seasoned researcher like you, is killed by second-hand and second-rate propaganda delivered by a squawking parrot. But I guess them’s are the breaks. Sorry, I am going to cry.
50
No, I’m fine, pretty sure I been called that before.
30
Did you deliberately ignore the other book I posted;
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, Reviews
Book by Bill Gammage
02
And what about Did you deliberately ignore the other book I posted;
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, Reviews
Book by Bill Gammage
02
Dennis,
The Biggest Estate on Earth – more socialist, apologetic drivel.
Get a life, if you can’t cop critisism don’t post a reveiw of an opinion and claim it as fact.
41
A comment from a dumb Yank.
From my very long ago Anthro course on American Paleo-Indians, there was one chapter of interest.
The scientists found evidence that the Great Plains hunter/gather Indians moved in a great circuit returning over and over to the same camping areas at the same time of year. Remains of seeds at these campsites were found. The seeds were much larger than the current wild variety leading the scientists to believe the women gatherers were selecting and planting seeds to provide food to be gathered the next year.
This type of ‘agriculture’ may have also been practiced in Australia. The Paleo-Indians also used fire to burn areas. Not being stupid, they realized fire set back vegetation to the earlier more productive stages of growth and favored the most desirable species for food and game as well as opening up forests making it easier to hunt.
Sorry I can not find anything on this on the internet.
00
James maybe talking through his hat.
http://australianmuseum.net.au/blogpost/science/food-culture-aboriginal-bread
50
el gordo,
Could be you are correct.
Your link is to a piece written in August 2014.
Pascoe’s book was published March 2014.
Which came first the history or the thesis?
52
Glass insulators before white settlement?
The follishness continues
12
Dennis,
Read 16.1.2.1.2.
Shrilly is all over it.
20
Dennis,
Your folly certainly does.
20
Post-Normal Research:
First, have an idea that may be grant-fundable.
Then, express the idea as an hypothesis, and apply for a research grant (linking it to Climate Change where possible).
Look at all available historical records, “interpreting” those that align with your hypothesis, and discarding those records that do not support it.
Restate your thesis as a formal paper, and publish in a friendly journal.
Apply for a further research grant to expand your thesis, and investigate possible impacts on society in general, and one specific ethnic group in particular.
Based on that research, identify another idea that may be grant-fundable and continue from the second step, described above.
20
“Extreme temperature doesn’t only mean heat; it also means cold,” Somebody is trying to have a bet each way, or is this a case of trying to shift the attention from broken models to “We-Need-More-Money”?
130
I noted that the new agreement to be submitted to member nations at the Paris Conference contains a clause that binds nations to paying their agreed annual amounts of money even if the climate change models (IF?) are wrong and Earth cycles continue without the IPCC predicted breaking point. “We-Need-More-Money” is it.
171
Peter #17
Yes that bit’s interesting:
Since when did the posited CO2-forced atmospheric warming effect introduce the notion of extreme cold temperatures occurring?
I don’t recall reading about this in the IPCC Assessment Reports. Anywhere. What is the physics to support this (unexpected, until now,) effect?
Methinks Prasad is making this up as he goes along.
90
The most recent geology of Perth shows incredible variation in biota. Currently we have reefs (Rottnest island is one of them) and beaches full life (80% organic matter, 20% silica) and yet some 20,000 years we had beach ridges that were 100% silica (the bassendean formation) with absolutely not evidence of any shells. Yet similar sands are currently deposited in Esperance some 500kms south of Perth. There is only conclusion that one (not just a geologist) can come to: the Perth climate must have been similar to Esperance in the recent past. Why? Because of the most recent glacial period that effected Perth killing all the offshore biota.
I also enjoy magnificent views of the city because my house is on top of the recently killed pinnacle reef with its top some 10 meters above the current sea level. What or who killed the reef? Certainly not my house or me as that happened some 20,000 years ago again. The cold again was the culprit but for a different reason. The seal level has dropped so low that exposed and killed the growing reef.
But hey, what geologists know? They must be making all that stuff up, just like that scientist Prasad.
60
Not only are many of the world’s staple crops in record production levels and have been for a while.
It would seem the price of the those basic foods is also falling http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
These facts of course do nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of The Greens for global disaster. http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/property/rural/australia-has-no-serious-plan-for-food-security-milne-says/39681
70
Jo
FYI
“A Well Done Comparison of Iceland Temperatures V.S. GIStemp Fantasies”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/a-well-done-comparison-of-iceland-temperatures-v-s-gistemp-fantasies/#comments
70
A steadily rising graph is a sign of an impending “peak” if it something that might be a good. Have to maintain the proper scientivistic pose of alarm, despondancy and extreme pessimism. Note however that the manufactured steadily rising graphs of temperature they keep waving around never seem to provoke speculation of impending peak temperature.
30
Just more hyped climate alarm,
That wouldn’t do wheat any harm,
The best in this field,
Who know about yield,
Are those who work down on the farm.
200
One day this will happen, and there is nothing that can be done to prevent it.
Right now there is a much bigger problem for wheat. The price of oil.
What quantity of grain and other foodstuffs was used last year to produce biofuels? Remember that these biofuels were produced in competition with last year’s price for oil.
How much biofuel will be used this year to sell in competition with this year’s price for oil? Probably a helluva lot less, given the cost of biofuels cannot match the drop in the price of oil.
If less biofuel is used, the grain already being grown to produce it will come back to the food market. This will cause the price of wheat to collapse.
How much wheat will be produced next year in response to the lower wheat prices? Probably a great deal less.
The world will then be heavily dependent on the coming year’s surplus, which was originally intended for biofuels, to carry over until the 2017 season.
There is a big danger that 2017/2018 will bring serious food shortages, caused by the drop in the price of oil.
50
Not sure if I follow your logic. Lower oil price will lead to less bios and hence more and cheaper food for the people. People will die less as they can afford the cheaper food. This is good eh?
50
Dariusz actually in the western world cheaper food means people die more.
10
The worry is that the price might drop so low that in response to that price too little food is produced for the following year.
00
Which is why the USA used to have a strategic grain reserve until the Grain Traders told the government it kept them from making as much money as they wanted.
Volatility in price is the name of the game.
http://www.cfr.org/united-states/fp-goldman-sachs-created-food-crisis/p24904
00
Just give me a couple of hours to do some homogenising, and I will graphically demonstrate to you that crop yields are actually declining.
40
Sir William Herschel, Variable Stars, Sunspots and the Price of Wheat
~ ~ ~
I vaguely remember reading about the subject of correlation between wheat price & sunspots @jonova once.
Might have been a comment in passing.
Using the search tool @jonova yielded no results (my criteria might be wrong; herschel sunspots wheat)
The ‘oogle link above provides these quotes:
“A piece in The Edinburgh Review lambasted his ‘erroneous theory concerning the influence of the solar spots and the price of grain’ as a ‘grand absurdity’.
And in the modern era of sensitive political debate over climate change and global warming, pointing at possible links between earthly weather and cycles of solar activity has become more charged and contentious than ever.
But the time may come when scientists will be forced to revise the orthodox view.
Two hundred years after William Herschel urged the Fellows of the Royal Society to investigate the links between sunspots and Earth’s climate, Israeli scientists Dr Lev A Pustilnik and Dr Gregory Yom Din used modern statistical methods to re-examine Herschel’s ideas and concluded that the great astronomer had been right after all.
The implications of this finding go far deeper.
In August 2012, scientists studying climate patterns in Central Europe, specifically the winter freezing patterns of the Rhine, revealed a striking correlation between unusually cold Central European winters and periods of low solar activity.”
~ ~ ~
Is that a consensus being overturned?
60
In the recent film “Interstellar” the worlds food crops were failing due to a mutating disease that spread to all species of agricultural food produced, this scenario is way more plausible than the idea of more sunlight, warmth and CO2 will hinder plant growth.
60
The demise of the bee populations is a worry.
50
CCD is a good example of a tangible cause and effect, of course the CAGW indoctrinated will blame you know what, big sigh.
This makes quite a good analogy for the demise of capitalism in respect of following the wrong path for answers to a question, the workers disappear, production stops and the entire system collapses, for this one I blame big government!
30
Which bees?
The introduced european bees?
Or the native bees?
Up here the native bees seem to be thriving in the mixed woodlands, but the monoculture crop areas south of us are pretty slim pickings for any creature that lives off of flowers …1 feast, then long famine.
30
Too many introduced after white settlement items impacted adversely on the 50,000 years or double that history before the British Empire came to what is now called Australia
02
Dennis,
Absolutely agree, if only we could take civilisation back 50,000 years to a much more peaceful, environmentally friendly and harmonious time.
We could divide Australia into a tropical region and a cold region and call one Victoria and the other Queensland.
20
But we could at least accept that our closed minds need refreshing. And that the BS you posted, most of it, had nothing to do with my references to Australian Aborigines caring for land and harvesting NATIVE GRASS SEEDS. And that I used two books that you scoffed at.
But any fair minded reader of your BS would see through your closed mind.
01
You’re on a commission aren’t you. (that’s rhetorical)
00
As o/t as possible to go o/t @jonova …
the Pachauri scandal, as summed up by Donna Laframboise:
“In an e-mail to India’s Economic Times newspaper earlier this week, Pachauri said he has been hacked.
The texts and e-mails, he says, are the work of “unknown cyber criminals.”
They are, he says, “completely false, fabricated, forged and manipulated.”
If that is true, a hacker has been in control of Pachauri’s computers and mobile phone for more than 17 months – during which time the IPCC’s latest climate change report was finalized and released.”
. . .
Will the frightbats speak up?
SMH, Dec 2014: Strong women strengthen us all so let’s hear it for the frightbats
41
I guess the “gorebullwarming” charade is about to run it’s course so they need, or is that knead, a new scam.
60
If we had a bucket of water and a packet of flour, we could really make some dough.
70
I always suspected CAGW scientists got their qualifications from a Wheeties Box, all their predictions didn’t have a grain of evidence to yield any results worth milling over.
80
‘Feed the Future Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab’ WTF!… Oh you mean farming.
No doubt they have Lab for inventing a Circular Friction Reduction Device as well. I’m sure with enough grant money they could come up with something.
60
ABC, 22 Feb, 2015: Darling River graziers seize opportunity to harvest lake beds after rare floods
“About once a decade, graziers on the vast flood plain of the Darling River in far western New South Wales get busy on the tractor.
But it needs to be in the aftermath of a major flood that fills the ephemeral lakes of the Great Darling Anabranch.
Then it usually takes at least a year of dry weather to dry them out.
His last opportunity to grow a crop was back in 2000.
(
Unprecedentedunpredicted) Floods in 2010 in far off Queensland replenished the previously dry lakes.Unusually, just two years later another (
unprecedentedunpredicted) flood topped them up.The McLeods harvested 1,800 hundred hectares of wheat, with some a patch of oats for hay and some sorghum.”
. . .
Observations do not match the thesis of Doomsday Global Warming.
50
the CAGW crowd really have lost control of their pathological lying affliction , the Guardian has an article on eight foods which will be lost to global warming , one of which is maple syrup . And yet during the “Hottest Year Evah” , maple Syrup production dropped from 2013 levels according to the USDA because of COLD :
It’s going to be interesting to see how short the season is going to be in 2015 with record breaking/nudging cold across most of the Eastern United States .
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Byron,
The disinformation being promoted in the popular media gets more blatent by the day.
Notice how the title of the article attributes the loss of these foods to climate change and then the sub-tittle refers to global warming. In the article the author states:
. . . meaning that the season will start sooner.
But the problem being reported by the FDA in the pdf you link to is that the cold is shortening the season for sap flow!
. . .and . . .
A later and therefore shorter season causes a reduction in production. Not an earlier one!
WTF!
The trully maddening thing here is that a majority of readers will go through this and other similar articles and not even spot these kinds of contradictions. And when the cold finally sets in, and it will, the authors of this article will be able to claim that they were right!
Abe
40
The interesting thing about these “hottest year ever” claims that follow a year where numerous cold records were broken is that it is an average.
So when one thinks about it, with all of these cold records bringing the average down, where was all of the record breaking or even record tying heat that would be needed to compensate for the record cold and bring the average up? I certainly didn’t experience or hear about any of it.
10
Not wheat related but latest evidence of global warming happened in the last few days:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/cyclone-marcia-climate-change-is-expanding-the-tropics-20150220-13kdfi.html
“The southward shift of cyclones under climate change will force planners to demand stronger building standards as far south as Coffs Harbour on the NSW North Coast, Cairns climatologist Steve Turton says.”
Maybe its not global warming but climate change. Some current photos of US big freeze:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/11423402/Ice-and-snow-lead-to-record-freeze-in-the-USA-in-pictures.html
There is no longer weather but anything varying from average is now labelled climate change:
” That pattern can be blamed on a variety of physical causes: a wavier-than-normal jet stream, hotter-than-average ocean temperatures off the Pacific Coast, melting Arctic sea ice linked to human-induced climate change, and more. Despite the persistent extreme cold in the East, North America’s still running a fever at the same rate as the rest of the globe.”
From this link:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/02/19/freezing_cold_temperatures_hit_record_lows_in_missouri_and_kentucky.html
There must come a time when statements like “melting Arctic ice” get challenged by journalists with an ounce of curiosity. Right now Arctic ice is increasing and will do so till March:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
All that snow in the northern hemisphere should be increasing the earth albedo and leading to a reinforcing cooling; the corollary of the no snow leading to accelerated warming that climate modellers have predicted.
60
The graph shows the amount in metric tons of increase.
Without a similar graph to show the increase in hectares planted how can we compare yield rates?
30
Don’t worry, Greenpeace will fix it – oh wait, they just destroy wheat crops, don’t they?
They hate genetically modified foods, and they hate humans, so to strike a blow like this against GMOs which would help humans must have been quite an orgasmic experience for them…
40
I thought we weren’t supposed to eat wheat. Isn’t it a “toxin” or something, according to the food Gestapo?
50
Some people can have an allergy to wheat, which can make them irritable & bad tempered.
Some know of a gluten intolerance but many who test negative for that still swear that cutting out bread and other wheat based products does wonders for them.
I’m no expert, but they still haven’t got to the bottom of my bad temper, though I do find bread, cakes & pastries irresistible.
50
For us older folks, wheat (and carbs) can cause nightly reflux. Cut out the wheat and the problem disappears. For me I have not had a recurrence unless I cheat.
00
I have the dogs on a “grain free” diet in part for allergies and in part due to the fact that you don’t see many dogs in the wild, or wolves which they descend from, on a vegetarian diet. Grains they would normally ingest would be via the stomach contents of some herbivore that became their dinner.
We humans may have allergies to various grains as well, but as to it being a toxin never heard that. With what constitutes a healthy diet changing every time I turn around depending on who got funding to produce a study supporting which results etc. it wouldn’t surprise me that someone is claiming that.
Isn’t it odd though that traditionally farmers would eat these diets that the food police would condenm, frying their eggs in bacon grease, wolfing down the carbs, etc. then go out and work their butt off for 12 or more hours of the day were generally damn healthy. It’s the latte sipping office crowd that needs to buy a gym membership so they can ride a bicycle that goes nowhere while they park their butt on a ridding mower to tend their lawn that have all the food worries.
One could argue that having a real life that involves real work allows one to eat real food with fewer concerns.
10
“…wheat yields are projected to decrease by 6 percent for each degree Celsius the temperature rises if no measures to adapt to extreme weather fluctuations are taken …”
Based on the 4.5C rise to 2100, top end of alarm.
We need a new term for this kind of science: “Derivative Science”.
Derivative Science is that work which takes as axioms things which are still contested or merely modeled. Derivative Science is based on assumptions and is an aspect of Computational Truth, which is a truth derived from a mathematically correct series of calculations built upon contested equations of causality or recognized inaccurate or questionable data.
The entire CAGW narrative is Derivative Science. It is not Observational Science, the source of Representational Truth, which is truth derived from close matching of prediction based on causal relationships to future results.
10
The graph at the top is wrong. It shows the recent rise in corn production (as coarse grains) without the cumulative for rice and wheat going up as well. So the graph is saying that rice production has nearly halved. This isn’t your graph Joanne. Just be aware that it is deficient.
[I held this for Jo to see] -Fly
10
It is a UN graph. I did note the dramatic fall in rice, and searched to try to find a reason. But I gave up — the story was about wheat. I merely wanted to show how warmth and CO2 had been “not so bad” for wheat.
But a more up to date graph with wheat (and or accurate on rice) would be better.
10
The graph means nothing if you don’t provide the increase of area planted over the same period.
Also, new teqniques and technology would have a bearing.
You’ve cherry picked data with no correlating information!
00