Ultimately, nothing is more important than agriculture. - Dennis Gartman
The recent blockbuster announcement reports that solar activity is dropping off a cliff and we may be headed into a little Ice Age. Basically, some of the most prestigious solar scientists have published a study saying that sunspot activity has dropped so low that the next 11 year solar cycle (Cycle 21) may not even happen. The last time that this happened was the Dalton Minimum - a period of unprecedentedly cold winters around 1800 AD that included "The Year Without A Summer".
This would be very bad news - many more people die in cold events than in hot ones. Most of those deaths have historically been from starvation, and there's really nothing to suggest that anything is fundamentally different today. Sure, world wide transport is easy, but world food stocks are the lowest they've been in decades.
How long before David Suzuki and friends start advocating the release of CO2 into the atmosphere to delay this 'clearly' man made disaster? Any bets?!?
Oh, and they won't forget to mention that their new position is 'completely consistent' with their old one...
I can't wait for the Al Gore sequel: "An inconvenient falsehood"
How long before Dr. Fruit Fly and The Goreacle blame the lack of sunspots of Carbon Dioxide.
They blame everything else on CO2 in the atmosphere.
Ladies & Gentlemen - start your engines.
The world needs more carbon dioxide to stave off an ice age.
The world needs more CO2 to allow for increased food production - our plants are CO2 starved as it is.
CO2 is an odorless, invisible, harmless gas that is essential to life on earth. Al Gore is not essential at all, heh.
We are in cycle 24. The next one would be 25. There appears to be a typo.
If I didn't already know there is a God I would swear there is a God that takes great pleasure in destroying the hubris of the imbecilic. Let's build a tower tall enough to survive the greatest flood. FAILURE! Let's build a ship that will never sink. FAILURE! Let's control the climate with our CO2 output. FAILURE! Isn't it sad that we never seem to learn?
I am waiting for that Orwellian moment in time when the granola crunchers go full retard and claim the cold weather is because of the Tar Sands and SUV's.
I feel that this occasion merits its own name, similar to armageddon.. I propose we call this moment 'Forange' not for any particular reason, but it does rhyme with orange.
Joe, exactly. They are infallible in their own minds.
BTW, the furnace ran a number of times this morning here north of the city of bridges.
It could be worse.
Our sun could be gobbled up by a massive black hole.
Link: http://n.pr/jUw8i9
Our sun could be gobbled up by a massive black a-hole.
B-b-but Al Gore's not black!
As this article says,
Chill, dude
Actually, it's a good review of some likely forcings correlated with low sunspot activity & why sun spots, which are cool areas, paradoxically exert a slight warming effect.
"Sure, world wide transport is easy, but world food stocks are the lowest they've been in decades."
More importantly, the people at risk for starvation have no money to pay for food. Are we supposed to give them free food, so we can end up starving, ourselves? It seems more and more westerners are buying into that idea.
As for the lack of solar activity, didn't we just hear warnings of a huge solar flare putting satellites at risk? Wasn't that about 2 months ago? I'm almost as sceptical about sunspots affecting weather as I am about humans affecting weather. Stock analysts used to use sunspots to predict commodity prices, until they came to the conclusion sunspots had no effect on crop production. When did we go back to centuries old weather forecasting?
Rex Murphy, with an elegant few words, puts a red-green wrap 'round the incestuous AGW religion.
Here is the bow: "It's the perfect propaganda circle."
...-
"Much of what the world bizarrely allows to be called climate "science" is a closetgame, an in-group referring to and reinforcing its own members. The insiders keep out those seen as interlopers and critics, vilify dissenters and labour to maintain a proprietary hold on the entire vast subject. It has been described very precisely as a "climate-assessment oligarchy." Less examined, or certainly less known to the general public, is how this in-group loops around itself. How the outside advocates buttress the inside scientists, and even -this is particularly noxious -how the outside advocates, the non-scientists, themselves become inside authorities.
It's the perfect propaganda circle. Advocates find themselves in government offices, or on panels appointed by politicians disposed towards the hyper-alarmism of global warming. On the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) boards and panels, like seeks out like. And when the IPCC issues one of its state-of-the-global-warming-world reports, legions of environmentalists, and their maddeningly sympathetic and uninquisitive friends in most of the press, shout out the latest dire warnings as if they were coming from the very mouth of Disinterested Science itself."
"Inviting the fox into the henhouse"
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/Inviting+into+henhouse/4968242/story.html
World foodstocks low? When? Which type of foods? They were low in 2008.and even though the all-knowing expert said this could 'continue for decades' it didn't and the stock was normal in 2010.
What about the diversion of corn to biofuel?
Most certainly, agriculture is a key and vital necessity in an economy and more needs to be done to acknowledge and support both large, medium and small farming. But - this doesn't mean large scale government intervention; it suggests less intervention and less regulations.
Couple of things:
One of the major causes of the "global food shortage" was the US's disastrous corn for ethanol plan. The subsidies were so high - the total subsidy paid for converting corn into a gallon of ethanol was higher than the price of importing switchgrass ethanol from Brazil - that American farmers sensibly diverted thousands of acres of farm land into corn for ethanol, eschewing corn for people, soybeans, and other grains. This had ripple effects throughout the entire food chain: higher prices for wheat, rice, and the bean complex, higher feed prices for beef/hog producers (and hence higher meat prices for consumers), and finally greatly reduced food exports from America. This led to unrest in places like Mexico, where corn tortillas are a staple, and in the absence of American corn, prices rose sharply. Reduced American rice exports (the US provides about 1 in 8 lbs of exported rice in world markets) caused some major Asian exporters to put a moratorium on rice exports, raising food prices throughout Asia and the Middle East. (Parenthetical thought: Rising food prices was one of the major reasons for "the Arab spring". Some day I want to explore this more fully.)
The good news is the US house seems to have come to its senses; they reportedly passed a bill this week to end the ethanol subsidy. So even if next year's growing season is a bad one, so much extra corn (and other grains) will be redirected from ethanol, food prices should be restrained.
If this is true (and I am thinking it might be) it would be a great time to invest in the energy, and food production sectors. And as for ethanol, that lunacy will end as soon as there are food shortages to worry about.
I am glad I just bought an acreage, and now have a really big garden. And that I have guns.
There is not food shortage. The capacity of the land base and the technology to produce more food is enormous - more than enough to meet two or three times the current world population. Trade barriers and other impediments are to blame for any Regional shortages.
KevinB, you're absolutely right about the idiotic corn to ethanol program. The big question now is whether there will be sufficient farmland to feed the N. American population in 10-15 years if agricultural areas move too far southward. That would make most of Canada unsuitable for agriculture and maybe we'll have food production from oil sands powered by nuclear reactors once it's too cold to grow wheat in this country.
One thing that struck me today is perhaps there is some type of innate knowledge about solar cycles in people and the massive surge in obesity we're seeing might be a response to the upcoming Maudner minimum. What better way to stock up on calories than to carry them around with you and the fat also serves as insulation during the colder winters.
A word of advice to doctors in training; don't specialize in treating non-insulin dependent diabetes - get some training in treating malnutrition as a new Maudner minimum is going to be as effective in eliminating non-insulin dependent diabetes as the siege of Paris was during the Franco-Prussian war.
"This would be very bad news - many more people die in cold events than in hot ones. Most of those deaths have historically been from starvation"
My 2 stroke ten inch 3 hp Eskimo ice auger is getting a new diaphragm and a tune up as we speak. Can't wait until I can take my Jeep out onto the ice of Lake Ontario and fish for 30 lb salmon a mile off the Toronto Islands.
Cross your fingers.
On the other hand I've read somewhere that if the mean temp of Lk Ontario went up just 2 degrees we'd have 16 times more small mouth bass.
Ready to drill.
I'm with Gord.
Gord is right. If the political climate allows the farmers of the former Soviet Union countries to keep improving crop production, develop their infrastructure and eventually produce consistently like North American farmers do, the capacity is enormous. Those of us that are connected with farming have already seen the effect that the Ukraine's wheat and canola production has had on our markets. The black earth area of European Russia and Siberian Russia, as well as Kazakhstan are also becoming more productive.
" Isn't it sad that we never seem to learn?"
Joe, yes it is sad, heaven keeps moving every time science pushes our frontier out a little farther. These kristians are as bad as the neo-scientists. The great flood didn't happen as many christians believe it did, and the tower of Bable was not built to reach above any flood.
Now as to a possible "cold spell", this may turn out good as it could cause people to once more think for themselves, rather than let the government do it for them.
GYM:
Considering that myth of the "great flood" is not only present in the Old Testament (Jews, Christians, and Muslims), but also in the Sumerian epic "Gilgamesh, in a South American myth "Popul Vuh", in a myth of the North American Indian Palouse tribe, in Hindu myth, and in Norse myth. I find it hard to believe that something that exists in the myths of civilizations all over the world didn't happen.
Now, if your comment was supposed to mean that the flood didn't happen exactly as detailed in the Bible (Noah and the ark, etc.) then I agree with you. Nothing happened exactly as detailed in the Bible; it is stories about events written down thousands of years after they actually happened. Of course they are subject to exaggeration and enhancement. But let me suggest to you that your succinctness of phrasing leaves your comment open to misinterpretation.
KevinB: It is best to simply put GYM into the "Suffers from imbecilic hubris" category and move on.
The best part about the coming Ice Age is that the left can't argue that idling your car isn't helping.
It's so cute when Kevin tries to think :)
I am tired of saying that over and over w/o anyone hearing, but I'll repeat: we have to burn coal at the rate we are able to attain to offset loss of plant productivity due to declining temp with increased CO2 content.