[GPSCC-chat] Cherries

[Cameron L. Spitzer]

My impression is the actual climate situation is quite a bit worse than 
the public is being told.  Scientists active in the field complain in 
private that the IPCC's function is to water down the findings because 
the reality is far beyond what politicians can admit in public and 
remain in office.

That said, we climate activists need to be very careful to always speak 
with scientific accuracy.  Every mistake or distortion is carefully 
recorded by the denialist campaign, and never goes away.  Some of the 
most persuasive talking points in that campaign are exaggerated 
predictions from decades past which didn't come true.  Rush Limbaugh's 
web site has a countdown to the day and minute when Al Gore said New 
York would be under water, Hurricane Sandy notwithstanding.

There's a rich irony here.  No scientist positively attributes any 
particular extreme weather event to global warming.  That's despite the 
fact that we are beginning to get large events which were highly 
improbable (p < 0.01) before the current temperature anomaly.  Climate 
models don't predict such brief events as a single warm winter.  They 
just say warm winters are more likely.

I'm here to congratulate Wes for getting it exactly right.  May we all 
speak as carefully and as authoritatively, citing real evidence, as he does.

-/Cameron/




On 04/14/2014 07:17 AM, Wes Rolley wrote:
> I went to a fruit growers meeting on Saturday.  Interesting topic was 
> the fact that no one has good cherry crops in the South County this 
> year.  Not in Morgan Hill, not in Gilroy, not even down in Hollister 
> (San Benito County).
>
> Lest you think that the culprit might be colony collapse disorder in 
> bees, or drought, the information that I was given by a respected 
> Morgan Hill Grower is simply that it was too warm this winter... or 
> conversely, there was not enough hours of chill (850 for many 
> varieties) to trigger the right response in most cherry varieties.  
> So, localvores beware, cherries will be much more expensive if they 
> are available at all before Washington crops come in... and those will 
> not be local.
>
> Why do I post this?  Because both the drought and the effect of rising 
> temperatures on food prices are both features of climate change that 
> the scientists have been warning us about.
> -- 
> "Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, 
> then you are wasting your time on this Earth" - /Roberto Clemente/
>
>
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