US 'climate hubs' to save farms from extreme weather

Bowerbird · Feb 8, 2014

The hubs are essentially a combination of real-world and online networks that will operate out of the offices of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to connect existing government agencies more effectively. The hope is that the hubs will help minimise the harmful effects of climate change, such as excess storms and droughts, by helping scientists, farmers, ranchers and forestland-owners talk to each other. Without that communication, farmers may not be aware of new solutions to their problems, while scientists may not fully appreciate the problems that still need to be addressed.
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and

McNulty says climate change is ravaging the US. In 2007, the south-east battled a major drought like the one California is facing now, with cities such as Atlanta almost running out of water. The 2011 Texas drought has been linked to climate change. In other years, storms like Katrina and SandyMovie Camera caused havoc, though climate change's role in those events is hard to pin down.

But things could be better when the next drought or storm comes, says McNulty. There are already techniques to protect the timber industry and cattle farmers in the south-east of the US from a water shortage, including drip irrigation and better early warning systems.
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Complete story here
http://www.newscientist.com/article...-farms-from-extreme-weather.html#.UvbOBf2Aw4Y

I have always said that the biggest problem with climate change will be for agriculture

lucasd6 · Feb 9, 2014

I believe the IPCC agrees that droughts, floods, etc are not related to manmade CO2, i.e., global warming. (See Chapter 12, Table 12.4 of AR5 as well as the IPCC SREX Report, Chapter 4)

Poor Debater · Feb 10, 2014

lucasd6 said: ↑

I believe the IPCC agrees that droughts, floods, etc are not related to manmade CO2, i.e., global warming. (See Chapter 12, Table 12.4 of AR5 as well as the IPCC SREX Report, Chapter 4)
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You're misreading. Table 12.4 only relates to abrupt climate change, not to all climate change. Here are more representative quotes from Chapter 12:

"Model projections show rainfall becoming more intense, in part because more moisture will be present in the atmosphere. Thus, for simulations assessed in this report, over much of the land, 1-day precipitation events that currently occur on average every 20 years could occur every 10 years or even more frequently by the end of the 21st century. At the same time, projections also show that precipitation events overall will tend to occur less frequently. These changes produce two seemingly contradictory effects: more intense downpours, leading to more floods, yet longer dry periods between rain events, leading to more drought."

"Regional to global-scale projected decreases in soil moisture and increased risk of agricultural drought are likely in presently dry regions and are projected with medium confidence by the end of the 21st century under the RCP8.5 scenario."

"The large-scale drying in the Mediterranean, southwest USA, and southern Africa appear across generations of projections and climate models and is deemed likely as global temperatures rise and will increase the risk of agricultural drought."

"The consecutive dry-day index (CDD) is the length of the longest period of consecutive days with precipitation less than 1 mm (Box 2.4, Table 1). CMIP5 projected changes in CDD over the 20812100 period under the RCP8.5 scenario ... Substantial increases in this measure of meteorological drought are projected in the Mediterranean, Central America, Brazil, South Africa and Australia while decreases are projected in high northern latitudes."

"While previous long-term droughts in southwest North America arose from natural causes, climate models project that this region will undergo progressive aridification as part of a general drying and poleward expansion of the subtropical dry zones driven by rising GHGs."
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Battle3 · Feb 10, 2014

Bowerbird said: ↑

and

Complete story here
http://www.newscientist.com/article...-farms-from-extreme-weather.html#.UvbOBf2Aw4Y

I have always said that the biggest problem with climate change will be for agriculture
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If we had implemented the entire Kyoto treaty, the impact would be barely measurable.

But a few little "hubs" are going to help minimise "excess storms and droughts".

This is just another money grab by the climate parasites, and another way for obama to kick back some payback to his political buddies.

Bowerbird · Feb 11, 2014

lucasd6 said: ↑

I believe the IPCC agrees that droughts, floods, etc are not related to manmade CO2, i.e., global warming. (See Chapter 12, Table 12.4 of AR5 as well as the IPCC SREX Report, Chapter 4)
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hmmmm - left out the word there - INDIVIDUAL

Hmmmm - but it is interesting the WAY you have "referenced" the information - for a start - no link. Second - no page number Third quoting from a "table" instead of actual contents makes me suspect that there has been cherry picking going on

So let us look at table 12.4 and see what the AR 5 ACTUALLY says about it
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter12_FINAL.pdf
page 1115

The statement which goes with that Table is

Table 12.4 | Components in the Earth system that have been proposed in the literature as potentially being susceptible to abrupt or irreversible change. Column 2 defines whether or not a potential change can be considered to be abrupt under the AR5 definition. Column 3 states whether or not the process is irreversible in the context of abrupt change, and also gives the typical recovery time scales. Column 4 provides an assessment, if possible, of the likelihood of occurrence of abrupt change in the 21st century for the respective components or phenomena within the Earth system, for the scenarios considered in this chapter.
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under long term droughts "potentially abrupt change" - answer yes but there is "Low confidence in projections of changes in the frequency and duration of megadroughts"

Which is NOT saying that droughts are not related to manmade CO2
now let us examine what the text says

12.5.5.8.1 Long-term Droughts
As noted in Section 5.5.5, long-term droughts (often called mega- droughts, see Glossary) are a recurring feature of Holocene paleocli- mate records in North America, East and South Asia, Europe, Africa and India. The transitions into and out of the long-term droughts take manyyears. Because the long-term droughts all ended, they are not irrevers- ible. Nonetheless transitions over years to a decade into a state of long-term drought would have impacts on human and natural systems.
AR4 climate model projections (Milly et al., 200 and CMIP5 ensem- bles (Figure 12.23) both suggest widespread drying and drought across most of southwestern North America and many other subtropical regions by the mid to late 21st century (see Section 12.4.5), although without abrupt change. Some studies suggest that this subtropical drying may have already begun in southwestern North America (Seager et al., 2007; Seidel and Randel, 2007; Barnett et al., 2008; Pierce et al., 200. More recent studies (Hoerling et al., 2010; Seager and Vecchi, 2010; Dai, 2011; Seager and Naik, 2012) suggest that regional reduc- tions in precipitation are due primarily to internal variability and that the anthropogenic forced trends are currently weak in comparison.
While previous long-term droughts in southwest North America arose from natural causes, climate models project that this region will under- go progressive aridification as part of a general drying and poleward expansion of the subtropical dry zones driven by rising GHGs (Held and Soden, 2006; Seager et al., 2007; Seager and Vecchi, 2010). The models project the aridification to intensify steadily as RF and global warm- ing progress without abrupt changes. Because of the very long life- time of the anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 perturbation, such drying induced by global warming would be largely irreversible on millennium time scale (Solomon et al., 2009; Frölicher and Joos, 2010; Gillett et al., 2011) (see Sections 12.5.2 and 12.5.4). For example, Solomon et al. (2009) found in a simulation where atmospheric CO2 increases to 600 ppm followed by zero emissions, that the 15% reduction in pre- cipitation in areas such as southwest North America, southern Europe and western Australia would persist long after emissions ceased. This, however, is largely a consequence of the warming persisting for centu- ries after emissions cease rather than an irreversible behaviour of the water cycle itself.
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http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter12_FINAL.pdf

Page 1118

Long long way from what you are averring

Taxcutter · Feb 12, 2014

Information is of little value when government restricts action. Viz: the delta smelt and CA water shortages.

lucasd6 · Feb 13, 2014

From Chapter 2 of AR5.
“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.”
“In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.”
“In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems.”
“Based on updated studies, AR4 [the IPCC 2007 report] conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated.” (emphasis added)
“In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extra-tropical cyclones since 1900 is low.”

These conclusions are consistent with Chapter 4 of last year's IPCC SREX (IPCC Special Report on Extremes). Plus that report disagreed with the notion that climate change was causing an abnormal loss rate due to climate disasters: “There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change” .

I say "potato"; you say "potahto". The fact is there is no clear connection between "severe weather" and "climate change", i.e., AGW. So the entire basis for the hubs is bogus.

Bowerbird · Feb 14, 2014

lucasd6 said: ↑

From Chapter 2 of AR5.
“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.”
“In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.”
“In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems.”
“Based on updated studies, AR4 [the IPCC 2007 report] conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated.” (emphasis added)
“In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extra-tropical cyclones since 1900 is low.”

These conclusions are consistent with Chapter 4 of last year's IPCC SREX (IPCC Special Report on Extremes). Plus that report disagreed with the notion that climate change was causing an abnormal loss rate due to climate disasters: “There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change” .

I say "potato"; you say "potahto". The fact is there is no clear connection between "severe weather" and "climate change", i.e., AGW. So the entire basis for the hubs is bogus.
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No you are saying potato I am saying "An edible starchy tuber of the nightshade family"

BTW nice cherry picking and "borrowing" from another site

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/coverage-of-extreme-events-in-ipcc-ar5.html

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