Study: Warming would cream corn yields

Swamp writer Tankersley again shows that he can faithfully regurgitate what the eco-lobby spits out. Good job!

Please keep helping the eco-lobby out, Mr. Tankersley. Please, don't ever do an article on what even you acknowledge are "other studies" that would contradict the one you cite above.

Please keep censoring the facts: a) there is no conclusive proof that mankind causes any significant "global warming"; b) there's every indication that we currently are NOT in a period of unusual "global warming"; c) the current trend, if any, is toward global COOLING, not warming, and d) both logic and science indicate warming would be a benefit to crop growth.

Please, continue to write articles only from one side's viewpoint.

So the corn belt moves north and other crops more attuned to greater warmth move in. Perhaps just grass lands for bio-energy production and/or meat/milk production without such high cost feed. It should be never overlooked that an argument can be made that global warming, although a fact from temperature readings, is not necessarily being caused to any measurable degree by human activity AND, even if it were, can a change in human activity measurable change the result. Earthquakes and volcanoes,etc. are all unknowns and climate changes beyond our control.

Corn likes hot nights for its vegetable sex ..... when it's pollinating. That's what determines the kernel-count, the weight of the ear, the yield, and the proceeds - along with appropriately-timed, proper inputs of moisture and a hundred other factors ..... most notably including the moods of the market and the level of perfect competition.

Most of the prognostication I've read suggests that the Upper Midwest will benefit - for a while - from global climate change.

kossack,

You don't want science, you want propaganda. There is no debate, just the one in your head:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-04-06-arctic-sea-ice_N.htm

warming, and d) both logic and science indicate warming would be a benefit to crop growth. Please, continue to write articles only from one side's viewpoint.
Posted by: Daily Kossack | April 9, 2009 11:56 AM
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Daily Teresa,

Thanks for representing the big oil companies and the Rethuglican party deadenders on here, everybody is always picking on us and calling us dumb and I just don't get it. We all know that global warming is a myth because it was cold where I live yesterday, in fact it was cold here two of the last five days. I had to go outside and bring in my pet flying unicorn. Poor little guy, he was freezing so I put a blanket on him and fed him some pixie dust.

Sincerally, America

The Daily Kossack responds verbatim with Psalms from the Denialist Bible.

He says we are not in a warming period, that it is cooling.

Amen

You just have to have faith that he is right.

Or, when you take your temperature and the thermometer reads 98.6 degrees, you can be a take the denialist sacrement and say that the thermometer isn't working.

It is obviously about control from mercury manufacturers who only care about profits.

Thermometers are a liberal right wing tree-hugging scam to steal money from the sheeple.

I get such a kick out of Denialists, they are like zebra-mussels straight from the bilge water from Chernoble.

I refused to get involved in the larger - global warming vs. no global warming debate. I am not an environmental scientist, and there are too many people all over the place on that issue for me to have confidence in either side of the question.
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However, I have a question for those who support the narrower proposition that global warming will harm corn yields. The question is: Since “experts” have been telling us that we have already been suffering the effects of global warming, and said warming harms crop yields (and corn yields in particular), wouldn't we expect that global warming would have already damaged corn yields?
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As follow up questions, I would also like to know: If global warming wouldn’t have already harmed corn yields, why not? And, in the alternative: If said warming harms corn yields, why are our corn yields per acre getting better every year instead of worse?

On the other hand, in a warmer world we'd be able to grow corn farther north, where there's more land (Canada, for instance, is larger than the United States) so global corn yields would likely increase. Illinois farmers would be able to switch over to sugar cane, which is less destructive of the land than corn, and eight times better for ethanol production. So, bring it on!

DaveB,

Among other things, you missed the part about pests. In the west, huge swaths of pine trees are dead and dying from the Pine Bark Beetle. Scientist think milder winters and climate-chang-induced drought is making trees more susceptible to the pest. Why do cons hate science?

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112290

Posted by: John W. | April 9, 2009 2:07 PM

No John, we would not necessarily have seen effects already. Corn, like any other plant, has a range of temperatures in which it grows ideally. Temperatures can be rising, while still remaining within that range in the prime corn growing regions. It would only be after that range is exceeded that we would begin to see a noticable effect on corn yields.

dt[hollow square}, the pine bark beetle attacks mature forests. Used to be, that those forests would periodically burn and hold down the population of mature trees, therefore minimizing the beetle attack. Now, we put those fires out. The trees grow up, the beetles kill them, then they serve as fuel for wildfires that, because there is so much dry fuel, are very difficult to put out. So, the fires come anyway.

Even if the dead trees don't burn, they die and open up the forest canopy, which allows succession plants to grow, ultimately more trees.

Grew up in the woods. Don't hate science; have scientific education, probably better grasp on it than most lefties.

Sorry Dave--Climate change is real, and it is having an adverse effect on forests:

http://coloradoindependent.com/20607/usgs-study-western-forests-dying-at-alarming-rates-due-to-climate-change

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/22/AR2009012202473.html

http://www.fs.fed.us/ccrc/topics/bark-beetles.shtml

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=4728&Method=Full&PageCall=&Title=Bark%20Beetles%20Decimating%20Drought-Stricken%20Forests%20in%20Western%20U.S.&Cache=False

The Environment America study, based on government and university data, projects warming temperatures will reduce yields of the nation's biggest crop by 3 percent in the Midwest and the South, compared to yields in a world without further warming. ~ J.T.
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We Wingnuts have always said that liberals have an alternative universe that they live in. This acknowledges that there is a "world without further warming", somewhere out there. Apparently it is the liberal Homeland, devoid of Pretty Latinas warming the heck out of it. This is Science to believe in.

"Not all the effects of global warming will be bad for agri¬culture; growing seasons will be longer, and increased carbon dioxide levels encourage plant growth," the report states.
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And then there are those Scientists that can not make the argument that increased CO2 is a detriment, even though they conclude somehow that the the net effect is negative. The net effect is somehow always negative in an uncertain kind of way.

There needs to be a higher level of confidence in the data and the CONCLUSIONS before an entire Economy is pushed over the cliff. The IPCC is FULL of weasel words. I could never get away with something this fuzzy in a written report. Include this / Exclude that / Not sure about the other / Old model bad, New model good. Angry Bear boss man would devour that without so much as a belch.

New-Age Science, I suppose. Great for research grants, but do they now actually approach the college undergrad science / engineering student with this insipid kind of stuff? That's messed up. Science is not supposed to be Agenda Driven. Have a nice Good Friday.