Green | June 22, 2009 | 5 comments

Rising temperatures already hurting US agriculture

source: http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/rising-tempe...

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JanforGore
And without a doubt the main culprit is industrial agriculture. The proliferation of pesticide use and getting away from sustainable agricultural methods such as cover crops, no till farming, etc. have depleted soil quality releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Also, the amount of land cleared to grow corn for ethanol and to provide more land for GMO crops to profit Monsanto has also increased carbon emissions. Drought, soil nutrient depletion, and not doing enough to sequester carbon in soil along with reforestation have all lead us to this point. And yet, Congress doesn't think this is important enough to be addressed in their climate bill. It is becoming more and more obvious that this bill is clearly designed as it stands now to benefit corporations by taking advantage of climate change rather than truly finding solutions to mitigate and adapt to the effects of it. Agriculture is really one of the biggest areas that needs to be addressed, including forests and the planting of trees to offset emissions and yet it is virtually being ignored. This does not bode well for the future of agriculture in America or the climate balance of the planet.

Excerpt:

"The United States' National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released an assessment of climate change and it key effects for American agriculture.
Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator and undersecretary of commerce, said the report confirms that "human-induced climate change is a reality" and that "climate change clearly affects agriculture and is also affected by agriculture".

In a media call hosted by the Center for American Progress, Ms Lubchenco said under scenarios of higher heat-trapping gas emissions, projected climate changes are likely to increasingly challenge US capacity to as efficiently produce food, feed, fuel and livestock products.

Tom Kenworthy, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, added that the NOAA report shows what a warming world would mean for farmers.

"Some will do better, while many will not. American agriculture faces profound and painful challenges if nothing is done to curb global pollution," Mr Kenworthy said.

For instance, the US is already seeing more extreme weather events, and those trends will continue.

This includes increased heavy rainfalls in the Midwest and East and more severe drought conditions in the West and Southwest.

The report found that heavy rain downpours that led to flooding and agricultural damage have increased over the last 50 years.

The downpours have increased 27 per cent in the Midwest, 18pc in the Southeast and 13pc across the Great Plains states.

According to the report, the average temperature has risen 1.5 degrees F in 50 years, and some areas have seen larger increases.

The result has been more heavy rains in the Midwest and New England areas; also, more winter precipitation is falling as rain, which reduces snow pack. That will reduce water available for farming in the West.

In the report, the expected temperature rise ranges from a low of 2 degrees F if emissions are reduced relatively quickly to a high of 11.5 degrees F if nothing is done.

Tom Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, noted that 11.5 degrees F could be optimistic, explaining that "recent emissions seen are higher than the highest scenario".

For grain crops, which are a huge part of the U.S. farm economy, faster growth that comes with warmer temperatures means less time for the seeds to grow and mature, Kenworthy noted. "Even moderate increases in temperature will decrease yields of corn, wheat, sorghum, bean, rice, cotton and peanut crops," the report predicts.

"Further, as temperatures continue to rise and drought periods increase, crops will be more frequently exposed to temperature thresholds at which pollination and grain-set processes begin to fail and quality of vegetable crops decreases
  1. groups:
    Green,   Food,   Sustainable Agriculture,   Agriculture,   1 more
  2. tags:
    Green,  Environment,  Climate Change,  Food,  10 more
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5 comments // Rising temperatures already hurting US agriculture

  • JanforGore
  • echoz
    • 0
      echoz  

    • Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fears soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of anthropogenic global warming fears. [See: U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims & See Prominent Scientist Fired By Gore Says Warming Alarm ‘Mistaken’ & Gore laments global warming efforts: 'I've failed badly' - Washington Post – November 11, 2008 ]

      “I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man-made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen's supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation,” Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained. [Note: Here are the results a Google Scholar search on Theon. - Theon's complete written correspondence to EPW reprinted at the end of this report. ]

      “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.
      “As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research,” Theon wrote of his career. “This required a thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate science since retiring by reading books and journal articles,” Theon added. (LINK) Theon also co-authored the book Advances in Remote Sensing Retrieval Methods.

      Theon was elected a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, given the NASA Exceptional Performance Award twice, elected an Associate Fellow of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, and awarded the AIAA's Losey Medal for contributions to airborne remote sensing. He was also awarded the Radio Wave Award by the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications of Japan for contributions to the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission -- a joint NASA-Japanese Space Agency satellite. Theon has authored or coauthored more than 50 NASA Reports, journal articles, monographs, chapters in books, and edited two books in the scientific literature.

      [an interesting, accomplished man with presumably little to gain for his unpopular honesty.]

    • 2 years ago
  • echoz
    • 0
      echoz  
    • Image

    • "projected climate changes are likely to increasingly challenge US capacity..."

      that "projected" is the key bullshit here. We have better models today that debunk this to a significant-enough degree, and more than a few prominent scientist agree.

      "According to our computer model, neither the number nor intensity of storms is increasing," says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Hamburg-based Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the world's leading climate research centers. "Only the boundaries of low-pressure zones are changing slightly, meaning that weather is becoming more severe in Scandinavia and less so in the Mediterranean."

      and there's a lot more... the truth is only valuable when it's in a comprehensive perspective.

    • 2 years ago
  • Tomcatt
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • I already notice the changes here in NJ. This has been the wettest year I can recall for many, seasons are starting later, bees and other types of insects like caterpillars are becoming a rarity to see in my area, and there are many more mosquitoes. Scientists have already stated that within fifty years Cape May NJ will be under water. Sea level rise is going to be a big factor in the Northeast as drought will be and already is in the West. i wish this was as important to people as the election in Iran. Maybe then we could get people on the streets to call for our sustenance. I suppose it will have to get to the point where there is no going back before people realize we can't go back.

    • 2 years ago
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