Nature climate blog off to rocky start

Er, don't you mean McIntyre is mad that he wasn't given credit? *[Oops. Fixed. thanks. Tim]*

Tim:

Why? Why would Nature do that?

Also, can someone give us a Pielke overview? Which of the two, Jr. and Sr., have done what, said what, etc.?

This is very dispiriting. I completely have boosted Nature, and I imagine we all have at one time or another.

I have a feeling that RP Jr. may have lobbied Nature to start this blog, which would tend to explain the presence of Kevin Vranes. Note that of the five contributors who aren't Nature editors, three are from Boulder! Does the third one (Paty Romero Lankao of NCAR) have an RP Jr. connection?

Also, RP Jr. may have been eager to expand his blogging horizons since the lagomorph-inspired boycott of Prometheous has vastly reduced the quality of the commenters there.

Marion, a Pielke clan retrospective exceeds my current energy level, but IIRC Mature has been quite partial to RP Jr.'s stuff for several years at least. The obvious conclusion would seem to be that he has an in with one or more of the editors.

Thanks for the nice welcome to tbe blogosphere.

Not being a climate scientist myself I will not comment on the scientific comments you make, but in response to M. Delgado and S. Bloom, the contributors to the Nature Reports Climate Change (note, not a part of the journal Nature, but a blog of the separate (online) publication Nature Reports Climate Change, http://www.nature.com/climate/index.html, published by Nature Publishing Group) are clearly listed on the blog itself, if you click on the category "contributors" on the front page. http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/contributors/
Roger Pielke Jr's entry reads:
Roger A. Pielke, Jr. is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. He has degrees in Math, Public Policy, and Political Science, and spent 8 years at the U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research, 1993-2001. In 2006, he received the Eduard Brueckner Prize in Munich, Germany for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. His most recent book is The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics (Cambridge University Press).

Nature Publishing Group doesn't need anyone to lobby us to start blogs, we love blogs and have been running them since 2005. You can set one up yourself if you like, on our Nature Network at http://network.nature.com.
(I run two Nature Publishing Group blogs myself, one for authors and one on peer review. Nobody lobbied me in either case ;-) )

However Maxine, you do need someone to pay attention to the comments who is not gone for the first five days or so that the blog is opened. Eli posted a comment last night, very nice and polite it was, that pretty much matched in content that of Tim, and got an out of office reply till Wednesday.

Let me give you a clue. The success of a blog depends on the community that it builds and comments are an important part of that.

While Real Climate (with whom you obviously intend to compete) is going through growing pains with comments since the blorgers deal with them themselves, as a commercial enterprise you should be able to assign people to this.

BTW trying to blow people off with Roger's CV is not a useful tactic. We know him quite well, for good and ill as does pretty much anyone who blogs or comments on climate Roger is not shy, and neither are we. All you have done is show that you are clueless about climate blogs, which kind of contradicts your closing paragraph.

Tim-

1. I did write degrees when I meant zones. The point stands. To see a change of 2 zones requires a temperature change of >10 degrees if the zones span 10 degrees each. You can let me know where average minimum temperatures have increased by 10 degrees over 30 years.

2. Your views on short-term regional attribution are counter to those of the IPCC. You are entitled to them, but climate scientists disagree.

3. I'm happy to see that the Nature blog will attract the usual online trolls and conspiracy theorists, should ensure a continued focus on ad homs which I am sure Nature will love ...

Thanks!

Did RP just call Tim a troll and conspiracy theorist?

How disappointing.

Roger is not responding to Tim (and my) point, nor to what he wrote, but is moving the goalposts. His argument here is one with the USDA, who obviously did change the zones from 1990. And, btw folks that is 10 F not 10 C, and most of the zones are divided into a and b regions with 5 F differences between them.

I don't know for sure who RP was calling a troll and conspiracy theorist. However, in this thread, there was someone who said "I have a feeling that RP Jr. may have lobbied Nature to start this blog, which would tend to explain the presence of Kevin Vranes." They also said, "The obvious conclusion would seem to be that he has an in with one or more of the editors."

The assumption that RP was referring to Tim is, well, disappointing. Perhaps he was. Only RP knows for sure. But certainly an odd conclusion to draw...

So nice to see that Roger Pielke Jr. started his first post at Nature with yet another troll for attention. Typical Pielkieism.

And it is also typical of him to to cite the IPCC to buttress his opinion, when only last week he called the IPCC "embarrassing" for containing a graph that he disagreed with. Classic Pielkieism.

And it is so typical of RP Jr. that he will not respond to points that undercut any argument he makes. It looks like he must have some sort of relationship with an editor at Nature. That is the only thing that explains why they would bring him on, and it also explains why he keeps publishing opinion pieces in the magazine section.

I don't know what the people at Nature were thinking when they brought along people like RPJ and Kevin Vranes, but this just looks bad.

Roger,

(1) You did not write degrees when you meant zones. Here is your comment with zones substituted for degrees:

>Because the zones span 10 degrees (or 5 degrees in the case of the 1990 USDA map) and the largest change shown on the difference map is 2 zones, then clearly no location has jumped 2 zones!

Because the largest change shown is 2 zones the largest change can't be 2 zones? Doesn't make sense does it? What you actually did was misread the map as showing differences in degrees instead of in zones.

Show you a place where average minimum winter temperatures have increased by 10°F? That's what the difference map shows you. If you think its wrong, I think you need to present some evidence.

Is such an increase plausible? Well, if you look at the map, it looks like zones have moved on average half a zone north, corresponding to an average increase of 5°F. But some places have cooled, ie their increase was more than 5°F *less* than average increase. It seem likely that if some places were more than 5°F less than the average increase then others could be more than 5°F more than the average increase.

(2) The IPCC AR4 WG1 SPM states:

>Most of the observed increase in global average
temperatures since the mid-20th century is very
likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic
greenhouse gas concentrations.

That's mid-20th century not 1901. So why did you show a map of trends since 1901 instead of the map that was right next to it in the report that showed trends since 1979?

(3) [bites tongue]

To clarify:

Tim is not a troll, but he likes to make mountains of molehills and start fights (e.g., see this post).

Steve Bloom displays some serious conspiracy theory tendencies here.

Eli- What is your point? You wouldn't be trolling would you? ;-) Perhaps you are right that the problem is with the analysis of the USDA, Arbor Day folks -- and that lets the NYT of the hook, right? (see Judy Miller)

Bottom line is that the NYT front page article has some serious problems in how it presents basic climate science for adaptive decision making.

Lambert, quit wasting your time trying to lay out a logical argument to Pielke. You won't get a decent response, or you'll get his typical request for "substance."

Tim #11-

Well thanks for the substantive reply. A reply in turn:

1. You basic confusion about what the graph actually shows underscores how poorly the NYT communicated this point. Had you spend a little more time looking at the map you'd have noticed that the Arbor Day folks actually got rid of 2 zones at the extremes. You write, "it looks like zones have moved on average half a zone north, corresponding to an average increase of 5°F." Wrong. It is exactly this misleading impression that the NYT article gives. The reality is that the temperature increase is much closer to 2 degrees between the periods:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/images/usa-temps-1895-2006.jpg

2. Why did I present the long-term IPCC graph? Well that is the one used for attribution, which was the point I was making. The southeast has cooled over the long-term. Are trends since 1979 caused by global warming? I don't know and neither does the IPCC. This is not what the NYT said.

Why you begin by assuming that people present information in bad faith is beyond me. Reasonable people can discuss and even disagree without a bar fight breaking out.

Thanks!

I don't know if Tim will see my comment or not, but I do have to disagree with what he terms as the "plausible" explanation for what is going on in that graph. Personally, I look at a graph like that and I think that of the places that changed zones upward, they were probably places that were within .5 degrees or less of the nearest zone. So, when their temperature went up .6 degrees, they changed zones. Same for places that went down a zone. We know that temperature on the planet has been warming for at least 100 years, probably much longer, I'm not at all surprised that the majority of the places that changed were places that changed upwards.

And I think I agree with Roger that there is a chance that there are mistakes on this graph. Because the zones are 10 degrees, to assume that the swings are half of that doesn't see real plausible to me. If I have time this weekend, I may try to track down the underlying data and find the places that had such enormous changes in temperature. My engineering and laboratory background has tought me that when I see something that looks odd (especially this odd. Average minimum temperature increases of at least 11 degrees? That just seems sooo high....), you should verify.

Neither of us has any reason to think that we are right without examining the underlying data. Perhaps the only conclusion I would really draw is that a hardiness zone map is only useful for determining if your plant is hardy enough, and not for drawing climate conclusions.

a few points.

1. The USDA map is not based n average temperature, ti is based on minimum winter temperature. The NYT article says this, lambert says this, any gardener knows this. But Pielke Jr keeps pointing to the averae ANNUAL temeprature charts, which show les than 10F warming, and saying that USDA got it wrong. Minimum winter temperatures and average annual temperatures are different things - this is b edrock basic, and Pielke Jr is getting it wrong.

2. USDA as in the past used 13 and 15 year preceding periods to update the zone map. For this update they used 30 years. This tends to UNDERSTATE the recent change, compared to previous analyses, and this is clearly stated in the article.

Steve (#3) wrote:

since the lagomorph-inspired boycott of Prometheous...

What are you talking about??

R. Pielke claims: "The New York Times reports that these differences can all [bold added] be attributed to human-caused climate change, using the case of Atlanta as an illustration:"

But the text that Pielke uses from the Times to prove his point includes this:

"A scientific consensus has concluded that this warming trend has largely been caused by the human production of heat-trapping gases."

This means just what it says. It does not mean that the Times has attributed every shift on the zone map entirely to human-caused climate change.

Anyone who looks at a map of the temperature changes occurring over the US over the past few decades (or over the entire past century) can see that there has indeed been a warming trend for most of the US.

Only the Southeast and southern Great Plains experienced a (slight) cooling over the entire 20th century (primarily due to the cool decades of the 1960's and 1970's.), but since the 1970s have had increasing temperatures as well.

Anyone who looks at the changes to the hardiness zone map can see the same trend.

Most people know the difference between a trend and individual details -- and the difference between the words "largely"[NY Times] and "all"[RP, Jr].

But Pielke apparently does not.

RP Jr. on Lambert, post #6: I'm happy to see that the Nature blog will attract the usual online trolls and conspiracy theorists, should ensure a continued focus on ad homs which....

RP Jr. clarifies, post #12: Tim is not a troll, but he likes to make mountains of molehills and start fights (e.g., see this post).

RP Jr. then writes of Lambert, post #14 : Well thanks for the substantive reply.

Well, Lambert you've gone from troll to Mr. Substance, in the span of a few hours. It appears that Roger Pielke Jr. is backing off and realizing what a twit he looks like to others.

Roger Pielke says above: "Tim ...likes to make mountains of molehills"

In light of the context, that has to be one the most ironic statements I have ever read.

How many of those small "2-zone-change" spots [read: "mole hills"] are there on the plant hardiness map for the entire US?

Very few.

And taken together, what percentage of the entire US land surface do they comprise?

Diddly-squat.

#20 JB- Indeed, which is why I said it wasn't so important as compared with the attribution and time-period issue!

All- Thanks for the attention, and keep up the good work! There will be more stuff to pick nits at on the Nature blog before long, so keep reading ;-)

Roger Pielke Jr: Thanks for the attention, and keep up the good work! There will be more stuff to pick nits at...[snip]

Ah yes....the back-handed compliment mixed with the subtle "nit pick" pejorative.

Another classic Pielkieism.

Roger Pielke:

I'm not interested in stupid rhetorical games. If I were, I would post over on Prometheus.

Roger: I hardly see how Tim Lambert and others are nitpicking here. You accused the NY Times of saying something that you said is "just an error" and was one of your major points in your post attacking the Times article. That is a pretty strong statement and it is in fact just plain wrong. The NY Times said that the Arbor Day map indicates that many bands of the country are a full zone warmer, and a few spots are two zones warmer, than they were in 1990, when the map was last updated." This is in fact an accurate description.

You may think it is silly that they pointed out these few spots rather than just ignoring them and may question the underlying data regarding these few spots that changed by 2 zones. However, that is a very different argument than claiming that the NY Times made an error in describing the map when they did no such thing and when in fact you made a huge error yourself in reading that map by apparently confusing zones and degrees...when in fact a change in zones differs from a change in degrees by an order of magnitude!

If you are going to accuse others of making mistakes when in fact they are right and you are making the mistake, you should expect to be called on it and should be willing to eat some crow.

Joel-

1. I am happy to admit that I made a mistake on that post. I appreciate the correction!

2. You misrepresent the NYT piece (what about attribution?)

Thanks again!

Degrees or zones
Degrees or radians
Radians or zones

Phew! My head's just spinning in the confusion

Roger,

(1) I have looked at the Arbor Day map and they did not get rid of any climate zones. You wrongly linked to a graph of average annual temperatures when the maps are based on **MINIMUM** temperatures (and I already mentioned this). I looked at the NCDC site and I couldn't get a graph of minimum temperatures, but here is something similar: average temperatures for Jan (the coldest month) for the past 30 years. The trend is 2°F per decade, or 6°F over 30 years.

(2) I quoted the IPCC but you don't seem to have noticed what they said. Here it is again, with extra emphasis by me.

>Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures **SINCE THE MID-20TH CENTURY** is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.

The IPCC is attrinuting most of the increase since the mid-20th century to humanity. I truly do not understand why you think they aren't.

Roger:

(1) I am glad that you admit the mistake now. I assume that you also retract your statement in post #6 above in which you say, "The point still stands," unless you used this as shorthand to mean, "The point that I was making [which is that the NY Times was wrong about the two zones] is utterly destroyed."

(2) You have this strange admit--attack thing going here. Where did I "misrepresent the NYT piece" [a phrase which is unclear to me, by the way...Is the "NYT piece" the NYT article or your blog entry discussing that article?]? I did not get into the attribution thing at all and the closest I came to generalizing from the one point I did discuss is when I said that this "was one of your major points in your post attacking the Times article." Do you deny that it was one of your major points? By my count, you presented only two specific criticisms of the NYT article. Maybe you want to call one of them a major point and one of them a minor point? Fine. [At any rate, I find your attribution point to be pretty nitpicky anyway. Even assuming that the IPCC does say you need 30 years to detect a trend, once they have established from a longer trend that this trend is indeed there and it is indeed attributable primarily to humans, it does not seem unreasonable to conjecture that a change seen over an ~18 year period is likely attributable to the same factors that are producing the longer trend. Perhaps the NYT wording could have been a little more careful but I don't see how they have made a major error of fact.]

Oh...and I would add that it takes an extremely uncharitable reading of the NYT article to conclude that their statement attributing the warming to humans was meant to apply to the specific case of Atlanta. It seems fairly obvious to me that Atlanta is just a specific example and what they are giving the attribution to was not the trend in one specific city but rather the general trend for the whole map of the U.S. Again, I am not saying that the NYT wording was ideal in this regard...but it was fairly small potatoes compared to, say, confusing changes in degrees F and zones!

This new Nature blog is off to a smashing start. You've got Roger spreading his normal contrarian nonsense, and then you've got Zorita and von Storch resurrecting zombies and attacking Michael Mann for the Hockey Stick study.

Best of all, you see in the comments below the von Storch article that the usual suspects, Lubos Motl and Hans Errens, are beating up on von Storch for not giving McKitrick and McIntyre credit for "smashing the Hockey Stick."

What a circle jerk.

Tim-

Here you go:

Vose, R. S., D. R. Easterling, and B. Gleason (2005), Maximum and minimum temperature trends for the globe: An update through 2004, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L23822, doi:10.1029/2005GL024379.
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0523/2005GL024379/

If you don't have access to GRL:
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/100744.pdf

That should settle the question of the magnitude of minimum temperature increases in the US.

On attribution the IPCC you are misinterpreting the IPCC statement. It does not mean attribution has been achieved for any time period less than 50 years, but the opposite, that its attribution is for 50 years or more.

Joel-

1. I'll stand by my assertion that a change of 2 zones is a mistake, which maybe occurred when the Arbor Day foundation removed the most extreme zones, but who knows. The NYT faithfully reported this error, yes.

2. Lets agree to disagree that my NYT discussion was nitpicky .. maybe so maybe no. When you write, "it does not seem unreasonable to conjecture that a change seen over an ~18 year period is likely attributable to the same factors that are producing the longer trend" this is exactly the sort of misconception fostered by the NYT article! Such conjectures are simply not grounded in how the climate system works. This is why you see the debate in the NYT article over short versus long records for what to expect in the coming year.

Thanks!

Two quick points and then I'm done.

#1 From the article that Pielke posted, we find in the Conclusion: [M]inimum temperature increased at a faster rate than maximum temperature during the latter half of the 20th century.

This is what plant people are interested in, and it was the point of the Arbor Day Foundation and the NY Times article. And it's what Lambert wrote (see above). So the point of you attack on the NY Times was what?

#2 Pielke: I'll stand by my assertion that a change of 2 zones is a mistake

Wrong. That was Joel Shore's assertion.

Andy, the lagomorph reference was to Eli Rabbett (an intentional misspelling), who up until a year or so ago was a fairly constant critic of RP Jr. on the latter's blog. Along with Dano, another pseudonymous commenter, Eli was a pretty constant thorn in RP Jr.'s side (as were plenty of other who don't use psuedonyms, e.g. me). Tiring of the criticism, most of which was quite legitimate IMHO, RP Jr. changed his blog settings to bar pseudonymous or anonymous commenters. In response, Eli called for a boycott, which has been pretty successful in that the typical Prometheus commenter (on RP Jr.'s posts, anyway) is now a fairly low-grade denialist.

All of this may sound like a tempest in a teapot, but understand that from RP Jr.'s perspective his particpation in the blogosphere is intended to enhance his ability to influence climate change policy through e.g. Congressional testimony, op-eds and Nature articles. This would not be a problem if so many of his ideas weren't utter cr*p.

Oh, good grief, another "science weblog site"

Is this kind of collection of weblogs being done for the advertising revenue?

(Using Firefox I can block the ads, so I don't know how much advertising is being done on the Not-Really-Nature-Magazine website.)

A few months ago I noticed another attempt to come up with a "science weblog site" ---someone who happened to share my same first name was flogging his page in postings at RC for a while; I've lost track of it now (don't remind me, it wasn't impressive).

I suppose it's evolution in action (at least the mimicry aspect) that someone decided to create something that appears superficially to be from the well regarded Nature magazine, creating something that appears to be science weblogs.

Instead the content's familiar --- "you don't really understand me" argument predominates. Boring, eh?

Re #4 (Maxine from Nature): "Not being a climate scientist myself I will not comment on the scientific comments you make(.)" Then why let RP Jr. (a political scientist, not a climate scientist) interpret the science? An actual climate scientist would have been unlikely to err in that way, IMHO. Perhaps you (or the appropriate powers that be at Nature) should consider restricting him to posting within his expertise.

The Vose et al (2005) paper uses mean monthly minimum temperature data (from each station in the network that was analyzed). For each station, there were approximately 30 days (one month) of observations that were used to compute the minimum value for that one point in the series. For most of the data in the northern hemisphere, we are dealing with the average daily minimum temperature for January.

The plant hardiness zones are not based on mean monthly minimum temperatures, they are based on the minimum temperature recorded for each year.

The two data sets are not the same. The new plant hardiness zone map is based on annual minimums for a network of several thousand stations. The differences between the two maps highlight a change in extremes, not in mean minimum temperatures computed over a monthly basis.

So it appears that the Dr. Pielke has made an error in the interpretation of these maps and the data sets used to generate them.

As an equal-opportunity lambaster, let me make the same criticism here I made in the not-really-Nature-magazine page (where it will appear later, if they accept it).

Please post links to the _original_ information, not to a copy.

Neither of these images leads the reader to the original info:

http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/usseipcc1901-2005.jpg
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2007/05/usseipcc1979-2005.png

Rule one of database sanity: one record, many pointers.

It's the only way to teach people how to look at the _original_ information, read it in context, and think for themselves.

I realize it's a nuisance to make the effort. Please do.

Eli will admit to being a sharp carrot in Roger's side, but he does not recall asking anyone else to leave. OTOH the lack of his wit and Dano's wisdom did bring down the quality of the comments at the other place.

As someone with a small garden and a postage stamp front yard, I have to agree with M. Hamilton. What you need to know is the coldest day in the winter that will cost you your plants and you need to know the day of the last frost.

I can't help but notice that the trend in minimum temperatures means good news for growers in the US, and probably elsewhere as well. As Eli said

What you need to know is the coldest day in the winter that will cost you your plants and you need to know the day of the last frost.

Warmer "coldest" days, and fewer frosts are good things, are they not? Certainly this balances some of the gloom and doom alarmism.

Ahem.

I have multiple degrees in plant/environmental sciences. Not to argue from authority, but I use and think about this stuff often. I used to own a small landscape design company. I am making the plant list for my city, due next week. The announcement for this map IIRC came out mid-lateish last year and went around the plant geek listservs, & the arguments are old news.

The map will stand, there are no significant errors to warrant change.

Maybe Roger can share with all of us the letter and data he'll send to Arbor Day Found and we can discuss that. Anyway,

Plant hardiness maps (any of them, they are knock-offs of USDA's) are based on average annual low temps. That is: where Eli and the person behind the Dano character live (Dano lives in The Internets, of course), we can expect low temps between ~10º - -20ºF. Not every year, but most years.

Plants here expect to be chilled to this temperature for a certain time. Plants in other zones expect to be chilled to those average temperatures/times. If they aren't, they may not perform (fruit trees, some evergreens). One of my listservs recently asked about the rhododendron leaf burn in the US Northeast - likely due to abnormally warm winter (plant never went into dormancy, no sugars produced [antifreeze]).

This is why plants are migrating northward and higher in elevation - because they want certain low temperatures to achieve dormancy for a certain period of time. This migration is an indicator of climate change. We can guess why certain types don't want this hardiness zone optic to be spread around. Well, too late.

Denialists and contrascientists can atomistically quibble all they want. But plant people and ordinary gardeners have been dealing with this for at least a generation now.

You can't totemize this like a hockey stick, because little old ladies will laugh you out of their garden club meeting faster than you can squeeze your tea bag dry.

Forget it Roger. Your FUD will only work on the ignorant, and it won't work on the decision-makers. You should have tried this 6 months ago, and maybe you'd have play. Now you look like a clown. Sorry to be so blunt.

Best,

D

na_gs:

No. Crops have a max heat tolerance too. Your assertion must have both things working. Warming also means more spotty precip and likely less soil moisture overall. Sorry, wrong again you are.

Best,

D

This mail came following my attempt to post the above at the other site, re pointing to sources. So you read it here first.

"Heffernan, Olive"
"Out of Office AutoReply: [Climate Feedback] New Comment Posted to 'Confusion on Climate Variability and Trends'" .....I am out of the office until Wednesday, 9 May ...

Oy. is "nature.com" not Nature Magazine?

Aside, posted only here: yes, I know if people post the images on their own pages, and then link to them, that increases their own Google page rank ---- versus if people would post links to the IPCC page, to the original image, that would increase the IPCC page rank instead.

Think about that.

Re #31 (RP Jr.): The Vose paper uses a 5 degree square data grid, and so seems not especially pertinent.

Re #38 (ER): The most effective boycotts are the informal ones. Alternatively one could just say that the pattern of RP Jr.'s behavior that led him to evict the pseudonymice led others to stop participating. Certainly when I stopped commenting I hoped it would encourage others to follow suit.

This:

> "Warmer "coldest" days, and fewer frosts are good things, are they not?...."

is nitwittery, NanGo.

You can look this stuff up. You're obviously not a gardener, or you'd know better. So since you _know_ you _don't_ know, why not make the least effort to find out?

You could guess these search terms:
+gardening +"low temperature" +fruit

You'd find this typical statement, what any gardener will know, on the first page of hits:

http://www.urbanharvest.org/advice/fruitgardening/chill_cold_data.html
"... Latest Chill & Cold Data
.... an understanding of winter is important in what we should consider planting. Many fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals either depend on winter chill for success or are damaged by too much cold, so it is important to use plants adapted to local cold. This depends on where you are ....
How cold it gets on the coldest night of the year affects tropical, semi-tropical, and tender, temperate plants. ..."

It pains me to see you make ignorant comments that are so easily checked. And the garden club, who know this stuff, find pompous ignorance laughable. Please do better.

Many fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals either depend on winter chill for success or are damaged by too much cold, so it is important to use plants adapted to local cold

Exactly, and I'm certain that you'll find a wider variety of plants that are viable with the warmer min temps and fewer frosts.

Dano, max temps are not increasing as fast as min temps, so the question is whether the gains because of min temp increase cancel and perhaps surpass any supposed loss from the smaller max temp increase.

I bow to Dano's plant wisdom. Eli only eats the damn things.

re: nanny and the "warmer is better" argument.

I guess this would be why the world's breadbaskets are in the tropics, and we get such marginal production from Kansas.
(end snark)

It seems to have escaped the notice of too many people who keep repeating this 'warmer is better' stuff that the most productive farmlands for most of our most productive staple crops are in areas with substantial winter freezes. This is nto an accident. And nanny utterly ignores the issue of impact on local ecosystems of loss of sufficient winter chilling on locally-growing species.

Yeah.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6200114.stm
http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=thanks_to_climate_change_by_2050_…

Billy Sunday used to say, "They tell me I rub the fur the wrong way. I don't. Let the cat turn around." It's time for you to try turning in the other direction, to know you can.

Lee (#47) said: It seems to have escaped the notice of too many people who keep repeating this 'warmer is better' stuff that the most productive farmlands for most of our most productive staple crops are in areas with substantial winter freezes." So how come yields of wheat (kg/ha) are 6,500 in Egypt (FAO, 2005) which has no frosts and 2,800 in USA?

Roger, here is the USDA definition

>These temperatures are referred to as "average annual minimum temperatures" and are based on the lowest temperatures recorded for each of the years 1974 to 1986 in the United States and Canada and 1971 to 1984 in Mexico.

and here is the Arbor Day one

>Hardiness zones are based on average annual low temperatures using 10 degree increments.

Despite these clear definitions and corrections from multiple people in this thread, you keep arguing that the Arbor Day map is wrong using trends that do not measure average annual low temperatures. Your latest attempt is a map that shows average **DAILY** minimums. This is not the same as average annual minimums, which is the appropriate measure for cold damage or germination. Even I know that frost can kill plants and I live in zone 10.

The NCDC data is publicly available, so it is pretty easy to check the accuracy of the Arbor Day map. Which cam out last year, so if it was wrong, someone would have said so, since whether their plants live or die matters to a lot of people.

So you claim that the correct interpretation of the IPCC statement:

>Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.

is

> We cannot conclude that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.

I don't think I need to say anything more.

Pielke Jr: "I'm happy to see that the Nature blog will attract the usual online trolls and conspiracy theorists"

Yes, the hockey team conspiracy theorists. Plenty of those on that blog.

I did find Maxine's response helpful, and Pielke Jr.s CV was sort of useful in placing him.

I must say I was a little confused by some of it. Does this mean I could go there and start my own climate blog? Should I try?

I didn't want to put my ducks in a row so I haven't applied for a blog there (I have to assume it's an approval/moderation process). One problem is that I kept switching degrees, both undergrad and grad, and studied a lot of math physics (I suppose the computational physics selection is closest) and was most interested in thermal and statistical physics (not listed) and also it'd be interesting if you could say your interest was climate science skepticism skepticism, but you cannot. This is only the membership phase. I'll bite the bullet soon and see what happens. If this is wide open, any commenter here with a lot to say could do worse than to go there and join and perhaps start a blog.

Completely off-topic, right-wing think-tank hack Jen Marohasy is allowing John Berlau to work Tim Lambert over. http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002024.html#comments

RE #47

The "warmer is better" argument applies to agriculture in general, not specific crops in specific locations.

First of all, we are talking about projections of a gradual warming of about 2.3 degrees C over the next 100 years. If farmers can not adapt to that, they should not be farming. Secondly, the land-rich Northern Hemisphere is top heavy, with much more farmable land currently subject to a very limited growing season of only the hardiest crops. Warming will make this huge amount of land much more versatile and productive.

Finally, places like Florida are not the bread baskets of the country, but they are the fruit baskets and grow a big chunck of the domestic berry and winter vegitable supply. AGW should have less affect on Florida than on higher latitudes, so the net result will be a modest (almost indetectable) warming, with fewer killing frosts, but still plenty of the needed chill to make those oranges sweet.

There is not doubt that 'warmer is better' for global agriculture; at least the magnitude of warming we are taking about.

Jim Clarke has been shown many times how his argument is likely wrong.

Yet he continues to purvey his particular brand of FUD: lather, rinse, repeat.

Best,

D

Ok, one question got through on the not-really-Nature blog; I'll post my followup here too, since it's got a very long lag time and this info has a 24-hour expiration date if any of you aren't yet using Firefox.

Roger did promptly provide the original PDF link from which he took his chart, and I checked and replied thus:

Roger, why did you show only half of their Fig. 3.9 from p. 250?

The caption says:

Figure 3.9. Linear trend of annual temperatures for 1901 to 2005 (left; °C per century) and 1979 to 2005 (right; °C per decade). ...."

The white + marks indicate areas where the data is considered significant. Anything without the + isn't.

You're showing the left half but not the right half of the image inline here.

This is why links to original sources matter, to read in context.

Not everyone uses Firefox yet; let's see if I can share one of its advantages, the "pdfdownload" extension.

If it works, this link should work for 24 hours to get the whole image, for anyone:
http://pdfdownload.04340.com/070505/tmp-4lLoLs/260302016.png

This for a while will get the whole paper, quick-changed to HTML by Pdfdownload:
http://pdfdownload.04340.com/pdf2html.php?url=http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/…

(Images are deleted from the server at the pdfdownload site after 24 hours)

re 49, Tim Curtin's claim of 6500 kg/ha for Egypt wheat yields. I note he didnt provide a link. A short google search finds this FAO repository doc:

http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/y5863e/y5863e07.htm
which say sthe egypt wheat yields were1147 kg/ha in 2002.2003.

and wikipedia (fwiw) says this:

For example, average yields of corn (maize) in the USA have increased from around 2.5 tons per hectare (t/ha) (40 bushels per acre) in 1900 to about 9.4 t/ha (150 bushels per acre) in 2001. Similarly, worldwide average wheat yields have increased from less than 1 t/ha in 1900 to more than 2.5 t/ha in 1990. South American average wheat yields are around 2 t/ha, African under 1 t/ha, Egypt and Arabia up to 3.5 to 4 t/ha with irrigation. In contrast, the average wheat yield in countries such as France is over 8 t/ha. Variation in yields are due mainly to variation in climate, genetics, and the use or non-use of intensive farming techniques (use of fertilizers, chemical pest control, growth control to avoid lodging).[citation needed] [Conversion note: 1 bushel of wheat = 60 pounds (lb) â 27.215 kg. 1 bushel of corn = 56 pounds â 25.401 kg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture

NGS: "Warmer "coldest" days, and fewer frosts are good things, are they not?"

Gee, I don't know - let's ask the people with billions of dollars invested in olive tress which don't set fruit if the winter is so mild that no frost occurs.

Or we could ask the billion or so people in north India and the Yellow River valley who depend on melting winter snow for summer water flows.

I'd also appreciate a cite from Dr. Curtin on the "6500kg/hectare" wheat yield; I tried the FAO website search engine but didn't find it; it went unavailable after several tries.

I found one reference to a research result with that yield:
ttp://www.insinet.net/jasr/2006/746-750.pdf

(available for about 24 hours courtesy of the Firefox PDFdownload extension; I think other browsers may be able to see it but I'm not sure of that)

http://pdfdownload.04340.com/pdf2html.php?url=http://www.insinet.net/ja…

Journal of Applied Sciences Research, 2(10): 746-750, 2006
© 2006, INSInet Publication
Corresponding Author: Samiha. A.H. Ouda, Agroclimatology and Climate Change Unit, Department of Irrigation Research, Soil, Water and Environment Institute, Agriculture Research Center, Egypt

Predicting the Effect of Water and Salinity Stresses on Wheat Yield and Water Needs
Samiha. A.H. Ouda

Several wheat strains being tested under water shortage and saline irrigation with roughly those yields here, if I can defeat the software's tendency to collapse tables:

Variety . . . . . . . . .Actual yield (ton/ha) Predicted yield (ton/ha)

Sakha 93. . . . . . .. .6.96. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6.67

Giza 168. . . . . . . . .6.58. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . 6.29

Conversion (per Google): 6500 kg = 6.5 tons

This is more pertinent info on wheat yield; it's irrigation that allows Egypt to produce larger yields, so it's not a relevant comparison to the large North American midwest wheat farming area where that's not possible. That explains why the wheat production area in N. America is predicted to move into Canada -- the plow follows the rain.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y4252E/y4252e05a.htm

From their Table 3.7, my excerpt:

Wheat, Egypt, Actual, from 1997-1999 (latest actual numbers; forecasts also given are for slight increases above these, nothing dramatic though):

Yields in areas watered by rainfall: .... 1.28 tonnes/hectare

Yield in areas irrigated: ........................ 3.15 tonnes/hectare

"Among the major producers of the region, only Egypt and the Syrian Arab Republic had higher production in 1999/2001 than at the beginning of the decade. The evaluation of the possible land-yield combinations in the future (shown in Table 3.7), as well as the prospect that there will be no return to the heavy production subsidies some countries provided in the past, do not permit optimism concerning the possibility that growth of aggregate wheat and coarse grains production of the region could exceed 1.5 percent p.a. in the projection period. Hence the need for growing net imports to support the modest increase in per capita consumption."

Sorry, Dr. Curtin, , near as I can tell, it appears you gave a misleading response to the comment. Perhaps you misread your source?

Please show us your source so we can read it in context.

With regards to the Wheat belt moving into Canada, many people have pointed out that Canada does not have the correct soils for growing wheat. So, either they grow something else, or else maybe farmers will have to invest massive amounts of money in changing the soil or making artificial growth areas, to grow wheat.

Which means it would cost a lot of money, but that's alright, the market will see to it....

JIm Clarke, I note you said:
"If farmers can not adapt to that, they should not be farming."

Allow me to laugh my head off. If farmers don't adapt, a significant number of people starve to death. This is what is really pisssing me off. People have completely forgotten that they are ultimately dependent upon farming to produce their food. If the farmers can't produce enough food, people starve. Thats it. You don't get to use the magic wand and produce food, people starve.

Secondly Jim, this land rich Norhern Hemisphere has a great deal of land that is only farmable if you expend vast amounts of energy in making it so, by removing boulders, fertilising it, irrigating it. Even with climate change, Scotland will not gain much in the way of farmable land, because the potential candidates for such land are so few and far between. They will suffer from erosion, or have poor thin soils, or are mostly peat on hillsides, or are too rocky.

What on earth do you mean that AGW will have less effect on Florda than the rest of the country? What are the predicted rainfall patterns? What happens to the ecosystems that sustain the farming? What insect life cycles will change? Until you can answer question like that, you have no business asserting that it will be fine.

p.s., I'm most curious if anyone who's _not_ using Firefox and the PDFDownload extension can see either of these files (before noon tomorrow, I think, when the copies expire from the extension's server). I'm not sure if the files will show up for other browsers.

http://pdfdownload.04340.com/070505/tmp-4lLoLs/260302016.png
(The figure (complete) from the PDF page; part of it appears at the not-Nature blog)

This for the whole paper (large!); second half of this is the ucar.edu PDF file name:
http://pdfdownload.04340.com/pdf2html.php?url=http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/…

(Images are deleted from the server at the pdfdownload site after 24 hours)

Hank Roberts: I used Safari. Something in the web coding there claimed i was using firefox's pdf extension, but i highly doubt it. it'd be a first for safari to be doing so. anyhow, I got the page just fine after a fairly long delay. Safari showed it in browser.

Wow. Pielke Jr. is clearly out of his area of expertise.

Lee & Hank Roberts: try this (it's at ProdStat on the FAO site):
http://faostat.fao.org/site/340/default.aspx

Egypt produced over 8 million tonnes of wheat in 2005 at a yield of 6885.8 kg/ha. Of course it is virtually all irrigated, unlike USA with its 2825 kg/ha, but then the US unlike Egypt has all those frosty winters which ought to compensate for its lesser irrigation potential. Saudi Arabia with its higher temperatures than Egypt and lesser water resources manages 5404.4. No doubt Lee imagines there are frosty winters around Jeddah.

Apologies anyone?

Roger Pielke Jr. wrote, Perhaps you are right that the problem is with the analysis of the USDA, Arbor Day folks -- and that lets the NYT of the hook, right? (see Judy Miller)

Interesting analogy. So, according to Pielke Jr., the National Arbor Day Foundation's credibility is comparable to that of Ahmed Chalabi, a man who ran a forgery operation, was convicted of embezzling $300 million, and had an obvious conflict of interest.

Meanwhile, Pielke Jr. accuses the NY Times of "botching a discussion" while he mistakes zones for degrees and confuses average annual minimum temps with average daily minimums. I suggest that Pielke look more carefully after his own reputation.

Curtin,
Sweden is a bit over 6000, France is about 6500 kg/ha, New Zealand is a bit over 7000, Germany is about 7500, Athe UK is aobut 8000, Ireland and the Netherlands are about 8500.
What you have shown with the egypt data is that intensively farmed and irrigated wheat in ONE middle east country can push yields up to about the bottom end of intensively farmed yields in northern temperate countries.

Ang it loosk like egypt got a major increase in average yields very abruptly - that means they put a lot of resources into getting those yields. Egypt wheat production is primnarily in winter, BTW - wheat wont produce well in egypt summmer weather. Too hot.

The US average yield comparison is bogus - much of the us productin is dry-farmed, low-yield production, and that dilues the numbers from th ehigh-yield inensive production areas. of

I'd like to provide an Australian perspective on the assertion that a warming climate will be good from Agriculture. Down this-away it's is currently having very serious impacts. A couple of weeks ago, our Prime Minister made an address to the nation to declare that there will probably be no allocations of water to irrigation in the Marray-Darling Basin, because of the on-going drought has reduced inflows to the system to a record low (see here). This region is responsible for over 60% of Australia's agricultural output. In addition to the impact this will have on irrigated agriculture, our wheat harvests have been drastically reduced by the general lack of rain and the concurrent hike in evaporation rates. And to top it all off, the water levels in the reservoirs that supply most of our cities are also at extremely low levels by historic standards (generally 15 to 20%) and this has led to increasingly extreme water rationing, such as bans or very strong restrictions on outside water use (i.e our gardens and parks are all brown and dusty). There are suggestions that the price of many fruit and vegetables will increase by up to 4x and we will need to drastically increase imports of many products. If you live in an area where higher temperature is a bonus, and rainfall is not likely to become more erratic, then good for you. But on a global basic most people live in areas where this will have bad or catastrophic consequences.

Correction to my above post:

The Murray-Darling basin is responsible for over 70% of Australia's irrigated agricultural output. It contains about 40% of the nation's farmland and produces 40% of the nation's food.

Mr Pielke, in light of the above, are you actually going to correct the mistakes in your post on the climate feedback site?

Well, the Egypt data from the page Dr. Curtin points to is very different all the way back:

1990 is 5,196.70 kg/hectare
1997 is 5,599.50 kg/hectare

--- far higher than the wheat yield figures on the two other FAO pages for Egypt.

Dr. Curtin, did you find the FAO's several different yield figures and choose the higher one instead of the lower ones, for a particular reason? How come they differ so greatly, on the three different FAO pages? How did you decide which one to believe?

Lee, is it your contention that frost is OK for wheat crops? My understanding is that frost can damage wheat and lead to low yeilds. Is this not so?

Lee # 68: "Egypt's wheat production is primarily in winter, BTW - wheat won't produce well in Egypt's summmer weather. Too hot."

1.Egyptian winters do not have the frosts you proposed as a guarantor of higher yields.
2.It is clear that in more than doubling the area under wheat since 1980, Egypt grows it both in winter and summer (as I observed when I worked there from 1980-1983) (it is a big country, with climatic differences between north and south).
3.Your first post implied that frosty winters are all that matter for wheat yields.
4.Lee, you and others on this Blog need to study the remarkable work of Mendelsohn, Nordhaus, and Shaw (American Economic Review, 1994, also same authors in Agriculture and Forest Methodologies 1996).
5.Lee, do you know how to use Word's spell check, or can you simply not be bothered because you deem all other human beings to be below your intellectual high ground? E.g., why should I bother to reply this kind of garbage: "The US average yield comparison is bogus - much of the us productin is dry-farmed, low-yield production, and that dilues the numbers from th ehigh-yield inensive production areas. Of" ?? It was your statement that US wheat yields are "high" because of wintry frosts, now you qualify it, too late, mate!
6.Hank Roberts #72. Your assertion is defamatory, and actionable against Tim Lambert and his server. However I know you are not worth suing, any more than Tim Lambert. Anyway please feel free to ask FAO to explain any discrepancies between their various data for crop yields in Egypt. Having worked there and studied their data sources, I feel comfortable with what Egypt reports to FAO. Anyway I never looked beyond FAO's ProdStat database so I did not cherry pick, but I do confess to being surprised by the amazing increases in yields since I left Cairo in 1983, when like my then EU employers I felt Egypt had already reached the limit (indeed my then boss Claude Cheysson like all his fellow Greenies considered the Aswan Dam to be "une disastre" that ought to be blown up even though it is the basis for much of the increased output since 1980).

nanny,

it is my contention that the highly productive staple crop breadbaskets are primarily temperate, not tropical. This is what I said. Curtin mentined wheat as an alleged counterexample.

Curtin's counterexample consists of ONE country, a country which is committing very high levels of effort and subsidy to increae agriculture. Among other things the Toshka water projectwill pump about 10% of the nile's flow into a new canal system to creat an ag region - this is partially operational and sending irrigation waternow, and the result is highly subsidized water for ag. And that level of effort gets them into the bottom of the ranks of high-intensity counties for average yield - IF you beleive that one source Curtin cited, which is out of line with other sources Ive seen.

Spring fross during flowerind can reduce wheat yield. Wnter wheats are commonly sowed in fall, overwintered on land that may freeze hard in teh winter, and then grows in the spring. Frost per se is not a problem - unseasonal frost during flowering, or unseasonal early warming that leads to early flowering and exposure to frost during flowering, is a problem.

Re #74: Since when does asking questions constitute defamation?

Dr. Curtin, you're a teacher; you and two of your readers here have found three different numbers from the FAO's web pages, for Egyptian wheat production.

This is research, sir, we're all trying to find facts, aren't we?

Isn't this the approach you would take in a class?

It's not defaming the FAO to discover their information on different pages is inconsistent and ask who found what information.

It's not defaming anyone to ask those who found one or more of the several different FAO numbers whether they found more than one, and if so how they made a judgment and chose to rely on one, and why.

It's not defamation to find something someone else missed and point that out, and I don't yet even know if you found the two or three different numbers and chose one for good and sufficient reason you could share with us, or if you were as surprised as I am to find several different numbers from the FAO.

'Please explain your reasoning' isn't defamation, sir. It's not even hard argument, unless your classroom rules are different than I'd expect.

YMMV, of course.

Joel Shore asked (in reply to number 74) "Since when does asking questions constitute defamation?"

Isn't that obvious?

Since the microsecond before Hank Roberts posted at 4:00:00AM on May 6, 2007.

Roger has a record on the manipulation of baselines that's worth presenting:

(The issue here is really one of how data is reported and presented - especially as it relates to the reporting of anomalies as data - and yes, as this shows, the baselines DO matter.)

Previous exhange (on the use of baselines by NOAA):

"As far as the NOAA issue goes, the use of a baseline to calculate temperatue anomalies relates to the issue of what is meant by 'anomaly'. Now, in 2000 NOAA decided to start using the time period 1971-2000 as the baseline for calculating their anomalies, in contrast to the widely accepted use of the 1961-1990 time period for their baseline.

The differences in the two anomalies are fairly dramatic; see for example

using NOAA's 1971-2000 baseline, summer 2006:
http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/cmb/sst_analysis/images/archive/m…

Using the 1961-1990 baseline: summer 2006
http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/ocean/results/SST_anals/SSTA_20060625.gif

Also, NOAA uses the 1971-2000 baseline for their 2005 Arctic Climate Report, but does not explicitly discuss this. Obvious, this gives a perception that warming in the Arctic is less severe then it actually is.

When the word 'anomaly' is used in public discourse, it is taken to mean 'deviations from normal behavior'. So, does this issue represent 'cherry-picking' or deliberate manipulation of scientific data for political purposes, in your expert opinion?

Pielke response: "#65 Ike- Thanks for the clarification . . . the choice of base period for looking at anomalies makes no scientific difference, which may be what you are getting at. It does as you suggest convey a perceptual difference when the graphs are displayed. So were I a political strategist I'd suggest using an older period to emphasize trends and a newer period to downplay them. Such a decision necessarily must be made on nonscientific factors. There is no purely scientific answer to the question of what baseline to use."

What seems to be going on in the above post is that Pielke is choosing a baseline that reduces the trend (i.e. back to 1901) - in other words, as a political stragist, he is following his own advice and choosing the baseline that supports his political goal - which is apparently to get attention as a 'noted climate skeptic'.

It is very interesting that the lady from Nature in defence of Roger Pielke tells us he is the recipient of the Eduard Brueckner Prize. Now, this prize was given to Pielke by ... his friend and soulmate Von Storch! See http://w3g.gkss.de/staff/storch/material/brueckner/laudatio-pielke.2006…

If Tim Curtin resides somewhere where the equivalent of SLAPP torts exist, perhaps some should be investigated, if the false accusations of defamation are a persistent, intimidating pattern designed to have a chilling effect on controversy. But only if so.

I would surmise that most places in the world if Curtin actually tried suing people for not themselves asking which edition of data someone believed but actually not deleting a comment asking which edition of data someone believed, that would be an open and shut case of barratry.

And is that the science Curtin studied? Threats and Intimidation for Dummies?

Ludwig Bohlke:

For that catch, I hereby award you the Prestigious Svante Arrhenius and Giordano Bruno Award for knowing stuff about climate and being persecuted by the blind sheep around you.

This award is so prestigious, it has the word "prestigious" written on the bottom of it.

It's my privilege and honor to present this award. Never has such knowing stuff about climateness been combined with such attacks from people who are wrong about things. Your perseverence in the face of disagreement ranks right up there with when they burned Newton at the stake.

Lee @ #58: I have now looked at your FAO source, which appears to be quite largely fictitious, and certainly lacks basic arithmetic; my source was the Egyptian reprotage to FAO, your's was FAO's feverish imagination. Eg: Your's Table 6 shows wheat yield of 1147 kg/ha on 1mn ha. for total production in 2002-03 of just 1.2 mn tonnes, but the 2nd sentence after the Table states wheat production in the same year was 6.8 mn tonnes; same for maize, 1mt from Table 6, and 6mt in the text. BTW the text output data in your source produce about the same yields for the cited areas in Table 6 as the yields in my source and cited by me to your disbelief. Please check your sources before attacking me and mine in future.

Hank Roberts @ #61: How much more capital per ha do wheat farmers in England and the other northern Wasp countries cited by Lee deploy compared with the wretched peasantry in Egypt, not to mention the massive EU subsidies for wheat available in England etc but not in Egypt?

Dr. Curtin, I think the questions you ask are addressed further down on the same page
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y4252E/y4252e05a.htm

"... the EU faces the additional constraint that it can increase production for export only if it can export without subsidies. A key question is, therefore, whether market conditions will be such as to make possible unsubsidized exports....."

See the text citing references 15 and 16

I don't know whether the Aswan dam subsidized irrigation for farming. But I see no way to implement that sort of change in North American winter wheat farming; the midwestern drought is ongoing, and there's nothing like the Nile available.

Curtin,
re 74 - I did not propose frosts "as a guarantor of higher yield."

I did post a badly edited post - I apologize. You might consider doing the same for misrepresenting what I said.

US total wheat production is high, at reasonable cost, in large part because of dryland farming. With irrigation, higher yields are possible, and production in otherwise untenable regions becomes possible, but this will necessarily be limited by irrigation sources and capital and operating costs for the irrigation systems.

If you look at the table you cited for your yield numbers, you find that there are many temperate regions that have higher yields than Egypt's. France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, etc, all have significantly higher yields per Ha than Egypt. What your link shows is that intensive irrigated agriculture puts one country, Egypt, near or at the bottom end of temperate region yields for highly intensive wheat production. Your snide - and glaringly devoid of facts - rhetorical question about capital costs and 'Egyption peasants' in the last paragraph of 83 does not address this.
Egypt's irrigated wheat agriculture is dependent on the Aswan high dam - a significant capital expenditure - and ongoing construction of an irrigation system that has cost billions and is projected to cost 10s of billions of dollars. That water is not being delivered by 'wretched peasants.' Large scale irrigation is damned expensive. This is why these projects are constructed by governments - not "wretched peasantry" - and why all that I have looked at closely in the past run at highly subsidized ongoing losses when one looks at the cost of delivered water.

Lee #85.

1. You did say that "the most productive farmlands for most of our most productive staple crops are in areas with substantial winter freezes". When I then showed that Egypt exhibits higher yields without having such freezes (for wheat and maize) you resorted to abuse.
2. You now say "US total wheat production is high, at reasonable cost, in large part because of dryland farming".
But it is subsidised, and like the subsidised EU levels, at incredibly high $ cost per hectare (relative to Egypt), which you fail to mention.
3. Your #85 fails to apologise for your gross misreading of your source,which turned an actual yield of 6.5 kg/ha into the 1.5 that you cited here. If that is not charlatanry, what is?
4. The Aswan High Dam was built, despite the best efforts of your previous fellow travellers in the World Bank, White House, and the UK, more than 50 years ago. It is therefore a sunk cost and such costs are immaterial by now (and anyway the loans from Uncle Joe and successors have been paid off).
5. You still ignore the huge subsidies of the EU to wheat farmers in the countries that you mention.
6. Your contributions tend to support my view that most everything on this site is a conspiracy against the wretched of the earth (see my website (www.timcurtin.com) for my peer-reviewed article demonstrating this in regard to so-called "illegal" logging by non-wasp countries of SE Asia and the Pacific).

Defamatory, charlatanry. My, my my. Thank you, Timmy C, for being so buffoonish I no longer worry whether your FUD will get play.

Let us step back a moment re grain yields. Where are Europe's breadbaskets? Is it cold there in the winter? What about North America? Cold there too? Why do we think the particular soil/climate types there are best for growing, say, wheat? Why do the commenters above look askance at assertions that arid semideserts are better for growing the world's grain than the places that grow the world's grain?

And, as someone mentioned above, why do "some" say that warming will magically transform soil into wonderful grain-growing soil? Maybe because those same "some" don't know the first thing about farming.

Best,

D

Re #86, pt. 6:

I read your article quickly, so perhaps I missed it. However, I fail to see how that demonstrates in any way that Tim Lambert is "against the wretched of the earth", unless he is affiliated with certain companies I'm unaware of. Regardless, there is certainly no evidence that there is an intentional cover-up ("a conspiracy"). This coming from the guy who shouted defamation at a question.

Tim Curtin wrote, You did say that "the most productive farmlands for most of our most productive staple crops are in areas with substantial winter freezes". When I then showed that Egypt exhibits higher yields without having such freezes (for wheat and maize) you resorted to abuse.

Lee was talking about a general trend and you provided one counter-example as if it refutes an entire trend. It seems to me that you're cherrypicking data to satisfy your argument.

Lee wrote, Large scale irrigation is damned expensive.

I got a chuckle out of that.

Canada 2,724.30 kg/Ha

Australia 1,987.20 kg/Ha

Looks like that frost/snow cover does boost wheat yield.

Could we go back to the original posting?

What's inside the red circle here?
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2007/05/usseipcc1901-2005.png

Look inside the red circle.

Look at what the figure caption says about the figure.

Anything gray, or without a white +, is -- not cooling, or not significant --- am I reading this right?

What's cool?
Can anyone enlarge the area in the red circle?

Sorry, meant to quote the full caption from the file, for anyone who can't get that link to work:

igure 3.9. Linear trend of annual temperatures for 1901 to 2005 (left; °C per century) and 1979 to 2005 (right; °C per decade). Areas in grey have insufficient data to pro-
duce reliable trends. The minimum number of years needed to calculate a trend value is 66 years for 1901 to 2005 and 18 years for 1979 to 2005. An annual value is available
if there are 10 valid monthly temperature anomaly values. The data set used was produced by NCDC from Smith and Reynolds (2005). Trends significant at the 5% level are
indicated by white + marks.

Thus saith Tim Curtin:
"The Aswan High Dam was built [...] more than 50 years ago."

Actually, the high dam was completed 37 years ago, and the resulting reservoir filled to capacity 31 years ago.

Just clarifying.

Hank Roberts wrote, What's inside the red circle here?

Here's an enlargement. There's sufficient data inside the circle.

http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/249/trend1901to2005ch3.png

"Canada 2,724.30 kg/Ha
Australia 1,987.20 kg/Ha
Looks like that frost/snow cover does boost wheat yield."

Nah, Canuckistan growers are just better at it.

Thanks Aaron -- so three squares --- blue, with + marks --- had over the past century a cooling trend significant at the 5% level; and four more squares had a cooling trend not significant at the 5% level.

I wonder if that's due to the regrowth of the forest after the previous century, or to some non-local effect. Having grown up in the South, I remember how it looked after the timber companies had finished with it and how it's come back since.

Much appreciate the magnification; I suspect the web page display makes the blue and the gray more similar than they ought to be for clarity. Of course, in the South they're seen as very different colors (wry grin).

Thanks Aaron -- so three squares --- blue, with + marks --- had over the past century a cooling trend significant at the 5% level; and four more squares had a cooling trend not significant at the 5% level.

I wonder if that's due to the regrowth of the forest after the previous century, or to some non-local effect. Having grown up in the South, I remember how it looked after the timber companies had finished with it and how it's come back since.

Much appreciate the magnification; I suspect the web page display makes the blue and the gray more similar than they ought to be for clarity. Of course, in the South they're seen as very different colors (wry grin).

re 89, Aaron. As near as I can tell, Curtin is cherry picking the ONE possible counterexample.

re 86,Curtin,

1. Actually, Egypt does NOT have higher yields than other intensive production temperate areas. I've shown this, but you keep repeating the claim anyhow. The phrase "areas with substantial winter freezes" refers to AREAS with substantial winter freezes. That is why I used the word "areas." Temperate zones, that is. The wheat belts and corn belts actually. It is a combination of appropriate annual temperatures, soils, rainfall, seasonality, etc, that make it easy and relatively cheap to engage in large scale, low cost dryland or minimally-irrigated farming of such crops. Production outside those zones is much higher cost. It is possible, but it is dependent on very high cost capital investment - which is pretty much the point in discussing the impact of AGW and shifting ag zones, isn't it?

2. Wheat production in the US and Europe is subsidized, yes. But so is that in Egypt, at VERY high levels - at the tens of billions in the irrigation system developments alone, for example - which you seem to have decided not to mention in your replies after I made that point.

3. Why on earth should I apologize for finding a citation that disagrees with the one you used, especially when you failed to cite the one you used? And even more so, when examination of additional data from the one you used actually shows that your 'example' is cherry picked, and that appropriate comparisons to other high-intensive ag systems show results that are different from what you claimed?

4. Sunk costs or no, the fact is that large scale irrigation systems are very, very expensive both to build and to operate. I made this point, you largely ignored it, other than your largely-irrelevant 'point' that one such cost in one case was incurred some time ago. Just as one example, the last time I looked at the issue closely a decade or more ago, the California State Water Project and Federal Water Project between them consumed about the full-time output of a nuclear power plant, just to operate the pumping plants for the water system. Irrigation at that scale is NOT cheap, and much of that cost is absorbed by the governments and constitutes a very large ongoing cost necessary to make such large-scale irrigated agriculture possible at all.

5. re price subsidies - I "failed" to mention them, because they are largely irrelevant to this question. They alter market pricing and planting decisions, but not the basic ability to grow commodity foodstuffs at reasonable costs.

6. You say "Your contributions tend to support my view that most everything on this site is a conspiracy against the wretched of the earth." I (seeing no reason in the face of this kind of petty but vile falsehood to be polite, and therefore being blunt) say you are a despicable lying little fuck. Are you trying to imply that my statement that it is expensive to grow wheat in a hot desert climate means that I want the Egyptians "peasantry" to go hungry? How in the hell does a discussion of the costs and potential of commodity agriculture POSSIBLY support your accusation? It doesn't - you are simply casting for a way to discredit rather than respond to the points, and attempting it by casting vile false accusations. Don't bother to apologize.

dammit, my response to Curtin's #4 lost a sentence in editing. A good part of the electricity used in pumping - but a long way from all of it - is recovered in generating plants at the downhill side of the uphill runs. The point is the massive infrastructure necessary for irrigation systems at this scale.

Tim Lambert: I would be obliged if you would provide your server's name and address etc, as I see you do not apply your disemvowelling policy to attacks on me like those of Lee.

"Nah, Canuckistan growers are just better at it."

Maybe, but if you want to live a long time then whatever you do don't repeat that in a pub in an Australian wheat belt.

Timmy C wants to erase both his copious misstatements and the ease for which the commenters above pointed out his buffoonery. Pansified threats are merely the cover.

How does it feel to have your weak FUD thrust parried by every commenter with one hand tied behind their backs, Tim C?

It is this easy with all the bots, as they have nothing. The scientific case is such that all advanced societies on the planet - even in Murrica - is debating adaptation and mitigation.

They have moved on. Buh-bye buffoons! Bye-bye! Good luck! Byyyyye!

Best,

D

"If Tim Curtin resides somewhere where the equivalent of SLAPP torts exist, perhaps some should be investigated, if the false accusations of defamation are a persistent, intimidating pattern designed to have a chilling effect on controversy. But only if so."

Tim C. threatens lawsuits every so often. (I was the past recipient of one such threat.)

I wouldn't worry overly much about such threats.

I gave the NNature blog a five minute head start on posting this one, a closeup (thanks to Aaron for the high resolution image) on what's inside the Big Red Circle.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/52288953@N00/490746298/

Lest we forget:
"If CO2 has increased by 100 ppm since 1750, then non-CO2 must have decreased by 100 ppm since 1750."

Gresham's Law of Atmospheric Gases

Don;t forget "Banning chloroflurocarbons has led to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions." (That's a paraphrase Tim c. no need to threat legal action.)

Or "Maximum summer temperatures in Dubai are 10 degrees Celsius higher than virtually anywhereelse on the planet." (Antoher paraphrase Tim C.)

Or "None of the IPCC papers are of sufficient statistical rigor to get accepted into a top-rated econometrics journal like Econometrica. (Except for the ones that were published in Econometrica.)" Yes Tim that's another paraphrase.

Damn, Ian Gould - Mr. Curtin is, well, like something out of a novel. If someone that accepted climate science wrote a Crichton-style novel, say, and needed an evil, annoying climate science denialist to say ridiculous straw man things all the time. only, not so convincing.

The more I blog-search Mr. Curtin, the wider and rounder my eyes get. They're like dinner plates by now.

But we digress.

Back to Pielke?

Ah yes, TC, one of the best, a true bully, swings from both sides, both a victim bully and an assertive bully at the same time, AB/VB is our Tim Curtin.

"Gunsalus distinguishes between traditional, assertive bullies, who throw their weight around with bluster and force, and 'victim bullies,' who use claims of having been wronged to gain leverage over others.(pp. 123-4) Unlike simple passive-aggression, victim bullies use accusations as weapons, and ramp up the accusations over time. Unlike a normal person, who would slink away in shame as the initial accusations are discredited, a victim bully lacks either guilt or shame, honestly believing that s/he has been so egregiously wronged in some cosmic way that anything s/he does or says is justified in the larger scheme of things. So when the initial accusations are dismissed, the victim bully's first move is a sort of double-or-nothing, raising the absurdity and the stakes even more......"

Would someone good at addition and subtraction care to take a look at the big red circle and sum up the total trend enclosed therein? I think the circle's way too big to describe what's inside it as "cooling" --- a far smaller rectangle could be so labeled correctly.

No doubt a drafting error that will be corrected as soon as it's pointed out.

Dano re #86

As you certainly know, but others probably don't, the lands that will open up for farming in Canada with global warming are not particularly fertile. This is my understanding from talking to western Canadian farmers.

We are talking here about scrub pine forest, often on post glacial deposition (gravel, sand etc.). The soil is alkaline, precipitation is limited (most people don't realise how *dry* northern Canada is-- a major problem for tar sands development is the lack of water).

Current Canadian agriculture pushes the northern limit of the very fertile bowl of soils that is the Great Plains.

A longer growing season will be helpful, but the northern frontier of cultivation can't move much.

#99 - Lee

I don't know if you've been to Egypt, but one quickly realises there that the whole project of growing wheat in the desert is something of a political scam.

Otherwise these very poor people, with a high birth rate, would move into the slums around Cairo and Alexandria (Cairo has 20 million people already, 1/4 of the country). There, the islamic fundamentalists are the main political force.

Similarly in the Middle Nile region, there is huge rural poverty and political unrest (foreigners are not allowed to travel there) and the government subsidises agriculture as much as it can.

President Mubarrak has staked his political reputation on 'making the desert bloom' an old Nasserite dream. Regardless of cost or efficiency. It's part of the raison d'etre of the political state in Egypt.

The whole thing is an ecological disaster. The ending of the Nile floods has meant widespread soil salination, and huge waste of resources. Plus the ancient temples at Karnak and Luxor will be gone in 200 years, due to water penetration from the ground.

The same is true in Saudi Arabia, by the way. The rural families have the highest birth rates, and the greatest susceptibility to islamic extremism. The government accordingly subsidises *wheat growing*, using ground water resources which will someday be exhausted. This is to prevent unrest, and further migration to the cities. Wheat growing, in the dryest country in the world.

(actually Libya is in a similar situation-- Quadaffy pipes water from under the Sahara to farmer's fields on the coast)

J (@ #94): Thanks - of course I was confusing start of financing/construction in 1957 with completion.

Lee the charming gentleman with such brave new world courtly manners (@ #99), re your points:
1. I agree - but you did none of that. Making a sweeping statement - cold freezing winters are good for yields -invites a single refutation (a la Karl Popper), namely, not true for Egypt vis a vis USA.
2. You are wrong,Egyptian wheat farming is less subsidized than ANY farming in the USA and EU, which is what annoys both the latter in the WTO context.
3. You are telling fibs. First I assume you are as capable as I am of finding the FAO via Google and of navigating FAO once there. The difference between us is that the page you found had egregious arithmetic errors (implying total wheat production of 1.2 mt p.a.) when the text gave the correct figure of 6.8 mt. Using your language, which in my case will lead to disemvoweling by Tim Lambert, so I will have to save this to my hard drive, you are by your own admission nothing more than "a despicable lying little fuck".
4. The Aswan High Dam does more than provide water for up to 3 harvests a year, it also supplies most of the power for all Egyptian industry and cities (including fertilizers). Why should the wretched wheat growing Egyptian peasant be expected to pay for the total cost of Aswan, as you propose? You are indeed again no more than in your words "a despicable lying little fuck".
5. Garbage. Egyptian consumers pay far less for their bread than you do. You are the one ripped off by your own government for its outrageous subsidies to all agriculture in the USA. You, brave anonymous Lee, (no doubt you were a schoolyard bully as your despicable anonymity is typical of same) are the one who in your words is "a despicable lying ,little fuck", for your advocacy of world solutions (Kyoto #2) that screw the wretched of the earth everywhere except in the USA with its fat farmers like Gore and Bush (with their tax loss ranches).
6. You said "Are you trying to imply that my [Lee] statement that it is expensive to grow wheat in a hot desert climate means that I want the Egyptian "peasantry" to go hungry?" Yes, like all the bleeding hearts on this blog, who want said wretched to give up energy use so that Gore Lee Eli & co continue to enjoy their own incredible consumption levels. Once again, using your words, you are "a despicable lying little fuck".
Lee (@ #100). More of Lee's "despicable lying little fuckery". The Nile delta still uses the barrage laid down by the British over 100 years ago, so remarkably little new investment was needed.
Dano as ever fits Lee's epithet, "a despicable lying little fuck".
Ian Gould yet again suffers amnesia - I suggested that not me but Gary Kasparov had good grounds to sue him, but then Ian is regreattably - I had held hopes he could do better -just another "despicable lying little fuck".
Eli: sadly, is also another "despicable lying little fuck", as he last year suppressed my responses to him about industrial production and consumption of CO2.

Valuethinker (#113). I should have known from your anonymity that you are yet another "dllf". Your claim that "The whole thing is an ecological disaster. The ending of the Nile floods has meant widespread soil salination, and huge waste of resources" is total fabrication. How do you reconcile that claim with the FAO Prodstat data that the dllf Lee still cannot locate showing that the area harvested (for the top 12 food crops) in Egypt has increased by 151% (from 2.4 mn. ha in 1980 to 3.6 in 2005, and the average yield by 158%, from 8.9 t/ha to 51.2 in 2005, for a total gain in production of 238%, well in excess of the population increase?

Very eaasily of course, because like Ehrlich and his fans on this blog led by Lambert, you would be much happier if food production in Egypt had fallen behind people, so that they would all starve to death, as devoutly wished by all the AGW mob. The proof of my statement is in your fraudulent claim that the Egyptians only achieved this remarkable performance because of "subsidies". Quis ipsos custodiet? in this context that means who paid the subsidies? - certainly not the Egyptians en bloc (can you subsidise yourself?), nor you and all your fellow travellers.

Curtin - restating yoru refuted points is nto a defense of them.

1. I never stated that cold freezing winters are good for yield. I stated that the breadbaskets are in regins with cold winters. I clarified why that is in the post to which you are directly responding, as had several others previously. You have conspicuously not responded to those clarifications.

2. Egyptian wheat production is heavily subsidized BY THE IRRIGATION PROJECTS and its cost. As I clearly stated at least twice above. And again, as ive said several times now, the issue is the cost of infrastructure and the ongoing costs of production, given that we are talking about responses to shifting ag zones. Production subsidies are irrelevant, infrastructure subsidies are dead on target.

3. Tim, Tim Tim... You will perhaps note that subsequent to your posting the source you used, Ive relied on that source in responding to you. I initially posted a page that disagreed with you - it is a FAO page I found when you did not cite your source. Attacking me for using your source now that you have provided it is a bit off. wouldn't you say?

4. Wher eon earth did I "propose" that "the wretched wheat growing Egyptian peasant be expected to pay for the total cost of Aswan?" Where? I haven't argued against Aswan, I haven't ever argued against subsidizing Egyptian wheat farmers, I haven't argued against the irrigation system. I'm simply pointing out that they are damned expensive,and that wheat production in Egypt is impossible without such investments,a and that wheat production in the temperate wheat belts is possible with dramatically lower capital expense. If you would bother to respond to what I say, rather than to your incorrect imaginings of my motivation, you might come off with at least a bit of credibility.

5. Tim, Tim... again, stop responding to things I haven't said. I'm not arguing for or against subsidies in this thread. As an aside, I happen to think that subsidies to us agriculture are damaging to both the US economy and to farming and economic advancement in much of the developing world. I haven't made those points because they are irrelevant to the necessary minimum capital COST and ongoing COST of production. Which, again, is the point when discussing shifting agriculture n response to warming, and is the point you are failing to address.

6. uhhhh... WTF?

Very eaasily of course, because like Ehrlich and his fans on this blog led by Lambert, you would be much happier if food production in Egypt had fallen behind people, so that they would all starve to death, as devoutly wished by all the AGW mob.

Yawn. It's 5:27 AM here on the west coast of the United States, and I've just awakened after a very pleasant night filled with dreams of Egyptians slowly starving to death as my friends and I devoutly thank God for AGW ...

People actually listen to this Curtin idiot? He makes Limbaugh sound like an Einstein.

I don't know if you've been to Egypt, but one quickly realises there that the whole project of growing wheat in the desert is something of a political scam.
Otherwise these very poor people, with a high birth rate, would move into the slums around Cairo and Alexandria (Cairo has 20 million people already, 1/4 of the country). There, the islamic fundamentalists are the main political force.
Similarly in the Middle Nile region, there is huge rural poverty and political unrest (foreigners are not allowed to travel there) and the government subsidises agriculture as much as it can.
President Mubarrak has staked his political reputation on 'making the desert bloom' an old Nasserite dream. Regardless of cost or efficiency. It's part of the raison d'etre of the political state in Egypt.
The whole thing is an ecological disaster. The ending of the Nile floods has meant widespread soil salination, and huge waste of resources. Plus the ancient temples at Karnak and Luxor will be gone in 200 years, due to water penetration from the ground.
The same is true in Saudi Arabia, by the way. The rural families have the highest birth rates, and the greatest susceptibility to islamic extremism. The government accordingly subsidises wheat growing, using ground water resources which will someday be exhausted. This is to prevent unrest, and further migration to the cities. Wheat growing, in the dryest country in the world.(actually Libya is in a similar situation-- Quadaffy pipes water from under the Sahara to farmer's fields on the coast)

These people have the temerity to try to feed themselves? Good lord!

"These people have the temerity to try to feed themselves? Good lord!"

Yes, God forbid the Egyptian government stop giving out billions in hand-outs, spent about half as much money to import grain instead and spent the balance on health and education.

"Ian Gould yet again suffers amnesia - I suggested that not me but Gary Kasparov had good grounds to sue him, but then Ian is regreattably - I had held hopes he could do better -just another "despicable lying little fuck"."

So Tim when you were demanding my address and claiming to have consulted your lawyer you were doing so on Kasparov's behalf?

"The proof of my statement is in your fraudulent claim that the Egyptians only achieved this remarkable performance because of "subsidies". Quis ipsos custodiet? in this context that means who paid the subsidies? - certainly not the Egyptians en bloc (can you subsidise yourself?),"

I guess French and Japanese farmers aren't subsidised either.

Very eaasily of course, because like Ehrlich and his fans on this blog led by Lambert, you would be much happier if food production in Egypt had fallen behind people, so that they would all starve to death, as devoutly wished by all the AGW mob.

You know the morons have nothing when they trot out this canard.

Best,

D

Oh dear. This goes on and on.

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/01/24/yet-more-nonsense-…

Hank's link is hilarious.

Hans Erren, skeptic gadfly, schooling Tim Curtin on the basic physics of CO2 acting as a GHG. And sounding like a confirmed AGWer while doing so (because Curtin is being such an idiot).

Sorry for the multiple post, I was getting an HTTP 500 server error, but apparently AFTER the data was posted to the database.

Oh dear.

Who can we trust for science reporting --- NotNatureBlog, or USA Today?

http://blogs.usatoday.com/weather/2007/05/sizzling_summer.html

Ian Gould: subsidies in Egypt may well go more to the urban consumer of wheat than to the peasant producer

Tim, settign aside the usual rancour.

I think we can probably agree that Egypt would benefit from the staged withdrawal of both production subsidies and food price subsidies over an extended period and their replacement by income support payments targeted at both the peasant farmers and the urban poor.

"To see a change of 2 zones requires a temperature change of >10 degrees if the zones span 10 degrees each. You can let me know where average minimum temperatures have increased by 10 degrees over 30 years."

Well, New Haven, CT where for various reasons including gardening and random curiosity I have been keeping tabs on official minimum yearly temps since the mid 1980s, when they would hit -10 F with annual regularity; for the last 5 years, they have failed to go down as far as 0 F, which is why we have had our FDA hardiness zone bumped up one. My own remote reading/logging outdoor thermometer, new for this year, records a minimum of 2 F, achieved once.

Any other requests?

"Current Canadian agriculture pushes the northern limit of the very fertile bowl of soils that is the Great Plains."

Yes indeedy. The Canadian prairie, i.e. the northern extent of the American midwestern prairie, is a triangular area west of the Rocky Mountains, with the northernmost tip in central Alberta, running down through southern Saskatchewan, and catching just a sliver of southern Manitoba. Further north than that, all the topsoil was glaciated away leaving the granite "Canadian Shield", which is terrific if you are mining, not so much if you are trying to grow wheat. Ask Ian Tyson.

"Warmer "coldest" days, and fewer frosts are good things, are they not? Certainly this balances some of the gloom and doom alarmism."

Except for minor things like day length; for the folks who tried to "drop out" in the 60s and homestead and grow crops in northern Alberta, the temperature (which can be dealt with using.... greenhouses, ironically) is less of a problem than the large swing in day length. Plants just don't get enough light to do much of anything until pretty close to the equinox; then they respond to the looooooong daylight later on by synthesizing vast quantities of small molecule sugars without time to metabolize them further or polymerize them, so you end up with nice looking large plants which turn out to be basically soft sponges filled with largely tasteless and nutritionless bland juice.

The other problem is timing. The aforementioned annual -10F cold snap in CT would occur between Christmas and New Years. The current coldest point of the year comes much later, which many plants cannot handle. They fail to go into dormancy, even show new growth, and end up with serious frost damage, despite the low temperature being not as low. http://vvv.state.ct.us/caes/FactSheetFiles/PlantPathology/fspp056f.htm for instance.

"triangular area west of the Rocky Mountains"

Or east, if you prefer the "conventional" system of compass notation.

Z:

When Pielke said "You can let me know where average minimum temperatures have increased by 10 degrees over 30 years", he didn't really mean that. He was speaking in Pielkespeak which is a particular kind of rhetoric.

Besides, if you provide one example, he'll undoubtedly say it was just a fluke and ask for two..and if you provide two, he'll say it was a double fluke and ask for three....

I can't remember seeing so many invectives at one time and in one place - I know you are not personally as full of visceral vituperation as is manifested in the writing above. If I were to meet you all personally I am sure that my impression would be one of having met many charming and knowledgeable people.

Why do so many of you feel you need to get the last word, as if such bragging rights enable you to claim "HA, I won the argument" à la Nelson Muntz on the Simpsons. Does anonymity justify rudeness?
What is the point?
I would have thought [naïvely, it seems] that the idea herein is to have an 'exchange of ideas'?

As to the underlying pessimism I seem to detect, please don't sell yourselves and others short. The human species is NOT destroying itself. Whatever happens, we will cope, we always have, and we always will. That may be an inconvenient truth but it is no convenient lie.

As for various crops, agricultural practices, and adaptability of plants and farmers, please see NYT link for growing wine grapes in tropical locations in recent article "Napa Valley? Bordeaux? No, but Still Wine Country" at link
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/business/15wine.html

Hans, I believe the reason is that details and minor errors are what's being discussed, which leads to this sort of thing. Also often the participants aren't discussing the same thing, so it just goes 'round and 'round.

I'm quite sure a nice get-together would be fine, because everyone would have to decide on something to talk about, do it real time, and wouldn't have any links or papers. So I doubt anyone would spend an hour or two saying "yes it is" "no it isn't" back and forth. Assuming nobody brought slides or handouts. :)

Either that, or it would turn into a brawl.

Thank you Robert S.
Very refreshing to read such a civilized entry.
Yes, I agree with your analysis about what might cause this short-circuiting of what is probably good behavior on the part of such participants in other "normal" settings.
And you have raised an interesting area of social study (which someone somewhere is already no doubt doing research on).
And my inference of what you are suggesting, of having all the participants meet in a live setting now, after all the entries have been posted, would be fascinating.
I for one, would not expect not the "brawl" but instead something similar to a person with road rage rushing out of their car only to see that the driver in front of them that they were just swearing at, is a nice quiet 79-year old Miss Daisy-type, or someone who has just had a petit mal seizure and just could not start driving for the medical emergency they were experiencing.
Either way, our humanity would likely manifest itself (one would hope).

Hans, it appears that you and Robert S are engaged in a concern troll duet. Quite amusing.

"The human species is NOT destroying itself. Whatever happens, we will cope, we always have, and we always will. That may be an inconvenient truth but it is no convenient lie."

On the other hand,
"Cerulo, a professor at Rutgers University, wrote a book last year called Never Saw It Coming. In it, she argues that we are individually, institutionally, and societally hellbent on wishful thinking."

Hans Erren, 27 Aug 2005:

"Why is it that we worry about temperature in 2100?
The effects in 2100 are caused by emissions in 2080.
Everybody in this forum will be dead by then, and also their children."

Hans Erren, 16 May 2007: "The human species is NOT destroying itself. Whatever happens, we will cope, we always have, and we always will."

"Always" meaning "until the year 2100". BTW, I'm not certain that all my children will be dead by then. (Don't mention grandchildren etc.)

"As to the underlying pessimism I seem to detect, please don't sell yourselves and others short."

You mean the alarmist anti-free market arguments put out by Tim Curtin and others about the ruinous cost of reducing emissions.

Ah, Eli. Because I have some differences of opinion with some viewpoint? Troll? I'm not trying to stir anything up, so um, no. That would be you. But thanks for the comment, it was quite amusing.