by Vijay Jayaraj
One of the largest agricultural countries in the world, India, expects its highest summer crop production for 2021–2022.
This comes at a critical juncture when energy shortage crippled food production in China. The record numbers will play a critical role in maintaining global food security.
The record harvest also challenges claims that climate change will reduce global crop production.
For example, the Observer Research Foundation—an organization that is partnered by Apple, Bill Gates, Uber, Google, and Microsoft—says climate change threatens India’s food security. That assumes Indian agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate disasters.
But India’s agricultural production has been at historic highs recently, and it is projected to increase in coming decades due to increased rains from warming oceans.
Record Food Crop Production in Consecutive Years, Thanks to Monsoon Rains
For most of the farmers in India, the Monsoon rainfall is the lifeline, deciding between profit and loss. This year, the rains were normal in terms of the Long Period Average used as a yardstick.
Based on the rainfall amount, the Indian government has predicted the Monsoon food crop (plants sown during the summer season) production to exceed 150 million tons in crop year 2021–2022, a new all-time high.
Even if India receives moderate rainfall during the next few months, it will record its fifth consecutive annual increase in food grain output. Despite unpredictable rains, the country’s progressive improvement of year-on-year performance is a great boost to the economy and to global efforts to ensure food security.
Welcome Relief for the Country’s Poor and Marginalized
Paddy (rice) and pulses (lentils)—two key staple foods for India’s 300 million in poverty—are expected to be the largest contributors to this record production. For most people in India, a rice (or wheat) based food is accompanied by lentils and vegetables.
The government provides free (or highly subsidized) rice, wheat, lentils and sugar to the country’s 300 million poor, a program that picked up pace during the pandemic.
To feed these 300 million, and the other 1 billion people in the country, agricultural production is critical. The use of fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, and efficient irrigation technologies have greatly improved crop production.
Inference on Current Climate Theories
Other major factors behind India’s remarkable agricultural success have been the introduction of gene-edited crops by Norman Borlaug in the 1970s, the increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration levels, and the optimum temperature levels for plant growth.
Contrary to popular media claims, present CO2 concentrations and temperatures have helped plant growth—including food crops—globally, as attested by scientific studies.
So, the notion that climate change will disrupt global food crop production is false. If anything, climate change has aided plant growth and has been the perfect ally for farmers worldwide.
India’s case is not unique. Wheat production has reached historic highs in recent years globally. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization says wheat production will hit a record 780 million tons in 2021: “The world cereal production is also expected to rise by 1.9 per cent, lifted by higher-than-expected outturns reported for maize in West Africa, for rice in India, and wheat harvests in the European Union, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation.”
Warming temperatures in no way endanger food production. Even if temperatures rise drastically, GM food crops capable of withstanding droughts are readily available to help. However, cold weather fronts pose a danger to plants globally. So thank God for global warming.
Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England), is a Research Contributor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and resides in Bengaluru, India.
Food, love, sex and babies is anti-climatic.
Because CO2 is plant food, not a pollutant.
They balanced that lie by declaring an mRNA contaminant a Co2vid Vaccine.
I got that. Most others seemed to miss that subtlety.
CO2 is greening the earth … let them know at COP26 Joe!
I suspect he won’t. Joe still thinks it’s pollution.
I’ve known that for 50 years since I did an experiment in 5th grade with dry ice and greenhouses.
Thats what gets me…the climate cluckers are calling a vital element a pollutant and an enemy of humanity and the planet.
What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.
Richard Lindzen
I’m sure this report is true, however, I just watched CNN send off Joe -Ice Cream is the Top of the Food Pyramid -_Biden to Glasgow, and Joe read from a teleprompter that Climate Change has produced food shortages, and it’s your (that’s all of you except me) fault. Who to believe?
Oh Noes! Mother Nature is mucking with It’s/them’s narrative. Not to worry. They have made sure that food can’t make it to the consumer due to a COVID collapsed supply chain, so nobody has to know about the dreaded abundance.
Biden said it was “code red” for the Earth’s climate.
So he can distinguish the primary colours, then. How is he with ordinal numbers?
It would help a lot if someone just sewed biteme’s mouth shut.
So much for India being unable to feed itself, as some are so desperate to believe.
Just wait until India gets its dose of green new deal.
They will no longer be able to feed themselves.
(of course this artificial famine will be blamed on global warming)
Hopefully things are getting much better but distribution (transportation facilities) and storage have long been India’s real food problems, according to studies going back at least as far as Buckminster Fuller’s.
The AGW threat to food is a canard that has been around for more than a decade. My first post here back in 2011 exposed the NRDC deliberately misrepresenting ‘scientific’ food impacts to Congress, while the maize paper they misrepresented itself comprised academic misconduct by explicitly omitting a key cross term from the multi variable regression analysis. That became provable after the lead author (whose newfound fame went to his head) released in graphical form the underlying US maize data. The proof is in the post.
Do we need more food? 40%of america’s corn is blended with gasoline.
AKA unnecessarily driving up the price of both food AND fuel to “solve” nothing. But hey, the farm lobby will greatfully vote for those that support the boondoggle inside the Beltway.
And because those people are confused that food is for eating not for running one’s care … I must pay $1.00 a cob for fresh corn, in season. That’s criminal.
It’s not just about “human” food. More corn means more livestock feed as well, thus meaning lower meat costs.
O.P. attempts to declare as some kind of absolute truth that : “… warming temperatures in no way endanger food production …” in their final paragraph. This is definitely not a true assertion in all contexts. [I can refute that assumption later because have to go do something now.]
Fear of heathy, happy dark skinned people?
@4E Douglas – why did you write such a thing? Has critical race theory infested WUWT now?
O.P.?
That is true.
Not all crops grow in tropical heat. But, those that do benefit from greater warmth.
Spinach, iceberg lettuce, peas are all cool weather crops. Planting them where they might suffer heat stress is the fault of the gardener, nor the climate.
Don’t overlook the studies that demonstrated higher CO₂ levels better enabled plants to deal with heat.
There are 2 kinds of cytokinin, isoprenoid & aromatic; cytokinin involved in shoot/root can be distinct from plant reproductive organ cytokinin. Crop productivity requires all kinds of cells organizing & cytokinin is required for cells to enter mitosis (from where auxin phyto-hormone brought the cell just to G2 phase).
Cytokinin is essential in mitosis because it regulates mitotic spindle formation proteins. It’s action allays a dividing cell nucleus getting stymied (it is a meta-phase & not pro-phase mitosis agent). At the exponential cell growth phase cytokinin phyto-hormone peaks.
Cytokinin is integral to cell cycle control & stimulating protein synthesis. When recalling how inappropriately timed heat can cause pollen to be ineffective part of the dynamic is related to cytokinin heat response; in zones of dividing cells the % of cytokinin normally goes up.
As cytokinin goes up so does calcium go up that is associated with differentiating cells’ membranes. Not only does the % of cytokinin in aerial parts of a plant change with temperature, but also the % cytokinin changes with photo-period & light level/irradiance. [Flowering that is photo-period induced involves leaves sending a molecular inducement to in effect get the SAM stem cell niche involved & I’ve already generally discussed SAM cytokinin.]
Gosh you sure know a lot about cytokinin. It’s a pity you were unable to use all that knowledge to make an actual point. I’m guessing that the scientists who develop the seed, bred for higher temperatures know just as much about it as you do … leading to the increased crops being recorded world wide. Won’t it be great when they develop similar strategies to deal with the far more critical LOW temperatures on the horizon?
Hey there R.F.:
As is usual for the climate propagandists, you equate the increase in the average temperature with an increase in “heat,” i.e., daytime high temperatures. Since most of the “warming” (i.e., increase in average temperature) has been an increase in the overnight low temperatures, this is much ado about nothing.
I have not discussed day, night, or any categorization of temperature. Since O.P. declaration I dissent from did not define “warming temperature” neither have I.
Meaning your entire post was a waste of time to read. In order to make informed judgements you *have* to provide enough detail that it is actually providing information.
Not defining your terms, e.g. warming, makes what you have to say pretty much non-informative and pretty much useless.
@ Tim Gorman – More nonsense from you.
In other words you can’t refute my assertion so you just use the argumentative fallacy of Argument by Dismissal. Sweet. But just as irrelevant as you refusing to define your terms.
@Tim Gorman – You are flogging a dead horse. The O.P. did not define “warming” & thus you can define it for yourself.
For the lettuce and peas
https://www.wired.com/story/growing-crops-under-solar-panels-now-theres-a-bright-idea/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Good idea, however the added cost of building the supports for the solar panels to allow equipment to operate under them and the BS comments of climate fallacies throughout the article (power 300 homes) obscure the reality that the whole process is a waste of time.
Who says the warming is from maximum temps going up? It is high max temps that degrade most grain crops. Yet it seems that it is minimum temps that are going up and is what is causing the Global Average Temp to rise, not maximum temps.
Higher nighttime temps lengthen the growing season and increase nighttime crop growth, especially of grain crops and pasture for livestock. Even things like peas and tomatoes grow better with higher nighttime temps.
Your proof better be based on maximum temps and not on the GAT.
Actually, based on greenhouse studies, it is true that each crop has some heat stress temperature. For Maize, about 100F continuous. But it is also true that the stress is lowered toward zero in the presence of sufficient soil moisture. (It is actually heat/drought stress, not pure heat stress.)
Monocots make relatively more cytokinin phyto-hormone than do dicots. Dicots need serial sequences of cytokinin and then auxin to get new organs (organ-o-genesis) started; the cytokinin activity is likened to a DNA level of priming.
Cytokinin fosters cell wall rigidity, increasing plant turgor; cell water potential goes up & less water uptake is required. Auxin phyto-hormone, on the other hand, increases water uptake.
Stress in plants is mediated, in part (I generalize) by the phyto-hormone “ABA” (abscisic acid). Cytokinin plays a role in increasing the conjugation of ABA, rendering ABA less inhibitive to embryos formation (embry-o-genesis).
But the cytokinin rhythm in relation to phyto-hormone abscisic acid ABA is itself critical. A non-lineal paradigm arises since levels of “osmotin” (found in all plant tissue) levels naturally rise once floral organs (pre-floral & floral apex) are developing & ABA boosts “osmotin” [ABA also cross-talks with auxin; ABA signals regulate genes that modulate auxin].
Thus the plant in various contexts must regulate cytokinin levels. Homeo-stasis is the role of the enzyme (protein) cytokinin oxid-ase.
And the cytokinin degrading enzyme in different plants has different activity levels. In other words, different kinds of cytokinin in different circumstances (temperature, illumination, photo-period) will segue levels of cytokinin differently.
Different geno-types of the same kind of plant can also have different cytokinin homeo-stasis & perform as relatively more, or relatively less heat tolerant. A geno-type growing that has the temperature go lower than it’s optimum temperature will have reduced growth & a geno-type growing that has the temperature go higher than it’s optimum will also see it’s growth decline.
“A geno-type growing that has the temperature go lower than it’s optimum temperature will have reduced growth & a geno-type growing that has the temperature go higher than it’s optimum will also see it’s growth decline.”
Meaning higher nighttime temps provide more plant growth if the nighttime temp never goes below optimum.
That’s what we’ve been saying all along. “Warmer” nights are GOOD. Longer growing seasons – greater harvests.
Glad you now agree.
@ Tim Gorman – You seem to think that plant physiology is always linear.
Today, elsewhere in this thread, I detailed that despite assumptions like yours that “… higher nighttime temps provide more … growth …” (wheat) grain yields are actually less (ie: not as good) when the night time temperature differential from day time temperatures is only 8*Celsius lower (ie: night temperature is closer to day warmth) in comparison to when the night time differential is actually 12* C than day tine temperature (ie:night temperature is not closer to day warmth).
In simple terms – you are mistaken in terms of wheat grain yield.
And all your concern for optimal temperatures is also muddled thinking. My other wheat example today reported that at cool 15*C day w/15 *C night provided better wheat grain yields than when grown at 24*C w/25*C nights.
You make the erroneous assertion ” … higher night temps lengthen the growing season … longer growing season … greater harvest ….” Since the 15*C day w/15*C at night at crucial stage took 47-56 days for grain filling & gave numerically more filled grains per spike than 30*C day w/25*C at night during crucial stage finished much quicker the premise of your contention is dis-ingenuous.
The spring wheat tested performed better with longer growing season precisely because of the relatively lower temperature parameters; which is not the dynamic you propounded. In other words the issue with important food crops like wheat is not that growing temperatures “… never go below optimum …”, but rather for crops like wheat less difference in the nighttime temperature (ie: when night *C closer to day *C) then the more potential arises for reduced yields. [This dynamic was seen regardless if daytime temperature was 32*C, or 26*C – when it was 12*C less at night yield was better than when it was only 8*C less at night.]
You want me to validate your allusions about night time temperatures that “warmer nights are good [sic]”. Since I have here factually debunked your concept I must deflate your being “Glad” because your thinking that I “now agree” with you is wishful thinking.
I don’t think anything is linear.
I *SEE* what is going on in the ag sector here in Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska.
This is only true during warm, summer weather. It is *not* true for mild spring weather. During spring growth, where daytime temps run around 40F to 45F and nighttime temps from 32F to 37F.
Sorry. Not true. We had an early spring with average moisture. The result for winter wheat, corn, and soybeans have been bumper crops.
Really? You think we have 60F temps both during the day and at night in the spring when spring wheat is growing?
You think we have 80F days and 70F nights? Where is that?
What in Pete’s name do you think I have been telling you? You can’t have a longer growing season without minimum temps getting above freezing earlier in the year! I.e. higher nighttime temps!
Temperatures don’t just jump from freezing to 90F at some point in March or April. Higher nighttime temps mean you see temperatures above freezing quicker, i.e. earlier in the year lengthening the growing season. This is better for the wheat growth! As has been demonstrated amply over the past decade!
You haven’t debunked anything! All you’ve done is state that high summer nighttime temps, i.e. above 80F hurt growth. What you have ignored is the advanced growth seen during the spring when nighttime temps are NOT 80F! In other words, you framed your scenario incorrectly!
You are doing nothing but echoing the AGW alarmists saying we are going to see famine because of “warming” temps. And you ignore that reality doesn’t conform to your assumptions. Grain harvests *are* growing, not decreasing!
@Tim Gorman – You have thrown in the proverbial kitchen sink & seem offended I have not anticipated all your scenarios : specific states, undefined “mild” spring weather, moisture, uncertainty of discussed temps, transition from freezing & even AWG.
I am not prepared to spend indefinite amount of time attempting to address all the things you want to. I have provided enough information to support my actual comment that cytokinin is a crucial phyto-hormone relevant to crop yields & WUWT readers should understand that despite the O.P.’s inference “warming” ( as is readily understood to mean a temperature increase) can impact cytokinin.
Maybe this will help you: in a very generalized (!) sense figure that the level of cytokinin phtyo-hormone that is theoretically working ideally at 17*C (63*F) there would need to be about ten time that amount of cytokinin at 24*C (75*F) in order to get same ideal work. The reason is that as temperature goes up there is loss of activity (degradation) for cytokinin.
After your winter the SAM stem cell niche cytokinin activates & perennials’ show new shoots (a SAM dynamic involving significant cytokinn & auxin interplay). The plant will subsequently make more cytokinin than what over-wintered in SAM niches; only then will the level of cytokinin seasonally rise – which we see as growth that will generally fill out.
In the full warmth of summer the same plant will not be showing a lot of new shoots/ leaves – it will have done most of that already. Since plant cells are capable of generating new growth from just one cell & the established plant has also created countless SAM stem cell niches why would it not continue exponential growth during the height of seasonal temperature?
The big factor (obviously not only parameter) is that cytokinin levels are down because as seasonal summer warmth reaches it’s maximum a greater loss in the % of active cytokinin naturally occurs. The ratio of cytokinin to auxin changes & cytokinin’s influence on plant auxin phyto-hormone activity lessens [for brevity I skip over auxin].
Now in annual plants & plants otherwise sown as annuals the monthly growing season stage of any specific kind/geno-type of plant can be a factor of when germinated/sown. Irregardless, cytokinin still has a relationship with increasing warmth; however, human crop selection has tried to collect/breed seeds from geno-types with relatively more warm temperature tolerant cytokinin [beyond the scope of comment].
“Maybe this will help you: in a very generalized (!) sense figure that the level of cytokinin phtyo-hormone that is theoretically working ideally at 17*C (63*F) there would need to be about ten time that amount of cytokinin at 24*C (75*F) in order to get same ideal work.”
Spring temps in most grain growing areas don’t reach those temperatures in the spring when the plants initiate their growing cycle. Not winter wheat, not spring wheat, not corn, and not soybeans.
But you insist on using the period when summer stress begins. As I keep pointing out, earlier growth helps the plants by avoiding having to grow during summer stress from temp and lack of water.
But you keep right on avoiding the issue and focusing on maximum temps (which are going DOWN in most of the central US thus causing *less* summer stress). You’ll *never* be able to explain the continuous growth in grain harvests globally over the past two decades – just like the CAGW alarmists who keep predicting we are all going to starve to death from higher maximum temps!
Heavy mulch is often the successful solution.
Did the O.P. differentiate between maximum, global and diurnal temperature? I did not see that. Cytokinin is sensitive to heat in all context.
Please! That means all plants would grow and pollinate better in below freezing temperatures rather than above freezing temperatures. Want to revise your assertion?
No. You still seem confused about what I actually wrote about some features of phyto-hormones. You are being argumentative about “freezing temperatures” relevance.
*YOU* are the one that refused to define your terms. Thus *anything* goes. At least now you are defining your terms to EXCLUDE freezing temps and below. Keep working at refining your definitions. Then you might actually wind up with something worth reading.
@Tim Gorman – Every time you respond to one of my WUWT comments about plants I have tried to educate you. This thread is about my finding this O.P.’s blanket “warming” statement decisedly un-nuanced.
Since my cited O.P. words said nothing about “freezing” I feel it is not relevant to my comments. Is there genuinely something specific about “freezing temperatures” you would like to know about plant productivity?
The cytokinin phyto-hormone is inactive at certain freezing temperatures & conveniently for perennial plants fully stabilized at -20*Celsius. The cytokinin in SAM (shoot apical meristem) stem cell niche of plants becomes active as temperatures rise above freezing – when people see green shoots in spring it is proof cytokinin (among other things) weathered whatever freezing temperatures the plant endured.
You aren’t educating me. You are telling me to not believe my lying eyes. The problem is that it is easy to correlate seasonal temps with grain harvests. Especially when you live in rural America like I do. Warming minimum temps *do* contribute to higher grain harvests whether you like it or not.
You can’t make assertions without defining your terms. If you don’t then critical thinking will cause you to be called out!
@Tom Gorman – You want to talk about “warming minimum temps” as if that defines the O.P. context “warming”. Because the O.P. did not specify “warming minimum temps” & he had been discussing Indian crop yields I saw no reason to assume he was referring to “warming minimum temps”.
You only want to talk about “warming minimum temps” here & elsewhere want to argue a out other temperature classifications. I stand by my objection to O.P.’s blanket “warming” statement.
Let me make it clear to you : I am not upset that temperature variations exist, not that CO2 levels change. I value WUWT as a resource & comment in detail for fellow readers who get declarations asserted without context.
As I have stated before. If you don’t define “warming” then no assertion about “warming” has any meaning whatsoever.
You can get upset about that if you want, it’s no skin off my backside.
But if you don’t specify exactly what is warming then you just fall into the CAGW alarmist propaganda trap. “Warming is going to fry us, warming is going to cause mass starvation, and warming is going to drown us all”.
Indeed (I’ll file under “great minds think alike”) – further, increases in overnight low temperatures mean less killing frosts, which are far more devastating to crops than any barely measurable increase in the “global average” temperature.
@ Tim Gorman, – Your declaration that “… higher nighttime temperatures … increases crop growth, especially of grain …” is generalization that misleads lay WUWT readers. For example: Wheat is an economically valuable crop for the grain harvested and well researched for decades; anyone interested can find countless studies wheat grain yield is a function opposite than your assertion.
Here are just 2 illustrations that “higher nighttime temperatures” have relatively worse outcomes for wheat grain yields.
Example: comparing spring wheat grown at 15*Celsius (*C) daytime coupled to 15*C nighttime temperature (which took spring wheat variety tested 47-56 days for grain filling) to the same variety of spring wheat grown at 30*C daytime coupled to 25*C nighttime temperature (which took 18-24 days for brain filling) there was a difference in yields. The number of grains/spike was greater when temperature was lower (15*C) at night than when 25* C at night. [ Maximizing the yield of wheat is a factor of how many individual grains on plant spikes actually form filled; spikes can form & ovules can form; but if ovule not pollen fertilized in an appropriate time frame wheat grain can’t begin to fill.]
Another example: comparing wheat grown with 4 different day to night temperature differentials experimented with 8-12*C different variations between day & night temperature. At 1st with less variation between day/night *C grain filling rate was faster; but because late wheat grain filling rate went down significantly when less day/night temperature difference the end result was less total grain weight at harvest.
In this example directly above the individual wheat kernels weighed more when nighttime temperature was greater than 8*C (in test range differential of 8-12*C).In other words wheat crop productivity was less when nighttime temperature was relatively closer to day time temperature & total grain weight yield was greater when at night there was a reduction of 12*C temperature from the daytime temperature. [Experiment used day temperatures from 24 – 34*C.]
So what? No one has said anything about nighttime temps approaching daytime temps! The point is that higher nighttime temps increase the GAT and also lengthen growing seasons and increase plant growth.
A study done by P. V. V. Prasad in 2008 showed that:
Both winter and spring wheat gain an advantage when their growth starts earlier in the year, avoiding much of the stress of warm summer temps coupled with moisture stress. That is one big advantage winter wheat has over spring wheat.
You can argue this till you are blue in the face but the proof is in the harvests. Grain harvests are going up while nighttime temps are going up and daytime temps are stagnating or going down. Higher nighttime temps allow wheat to grow more when soil moisture is high from snowmelt and spring rains. As I said, the proof is in the pudding – and the pudding is how much grain is trucked to the silo, not what some model based on climate change predicts.
@Tom Gorman – Please re-read you own abstract link. Because it confirms my representation of decades of wheat research – nighttime temperature is a factor where-in more is not better.
Quote:” … high nighttime >20*C decreased spikelet fertility, grain per spike, grain size ….” Translation = those decreases are undesirable & can be linked to night time temp.
“Because it confirms my representation of decades of wheat research – nighttime temperature is a factor where-in more is not better.”
No, it doesn’t. It says impacts only occur when nighttime temps approach 20C. I don’t know what springtime temps are where you live but here you don’t get 70F nighttime weather in spring!
Essentially O.P. is untrue for edible crops involving flowering (& pollination) because the plant phyto-hormone cytokinin is heat sensitive; cytokinin can degrade as temperature rises. This is why I object to the specified O.P.’s statement.
The induction of floral genes involves a large band (“UFO”, abbreviation of “unusual floral organ”) which underlies shoot stem cell niches (“SAM”, for “shoot apical meristem”). The male & female flower organs arise (“organ-o-genesis”) from stem cell niches & those respective male & female organized cells (organs) are responsive to hormonal influences.
An assortment of phyto-hormones play various roles in producing edible harvests from plants as a consequence of flowering. For brevity I’ll mention auxin phyto-hormone, which is involved in non-linear flower dynamics & cytokinin phyto-hormone.
Yes, auxin is required for male/female fertility & maturation during flowering; as well as important for fruit formation. The gradient of auxin deployment must be synchronized in time frames of how much auxin is being canalized at distinct times (via 2 different gene families of gene transcription regulators). It is cytokinin phyto-hormone that is the agent of auxin re-distribution (ex: via influence on auxin shuttling efflux carriers called “PIN”; there are several distinct PIN with various relevance & not all PIN involved in organo-genesis).
Thus cytokinin is integral to maximum crop productivity. In the stem cell niche SAM auxin phyto-hormone performs a function of SAM maintenance & initially holds a (floral) inflorescence stem cell niche’s lateral layer in limbo. When there is low cytokinin phyto-hormone levels in a SAM stem cell niche then the size of that SAM is reduced & the SAM’s activity is less.
An example of the cytokinin phyto-hormone importance is that a (floral) inflorescence pro-cambrial cells need a level of cytokinin signal in order to get activity in an inflorescence’s cambium (vasculature). Organ development requires a cell wall protein called “extensin” & sudden flowering events are characterized by elevated extensin levels. Cytokinin phyto-hormone instigates expression of extensin; in this context flower formation is triggered by adequate levels of cytokinin.
“Essentially O.P. is untrue for edible crops involving flowering (& pollination) because the plant phyto-hormone cytokinin is heat sensitive; cytokinin can degrade as temperature rises.”
This would be true if maximum temps are rising. Do you have data showing that max temps are rising globally? I don’t. All my data (typically cooling degree-day values) show that max temps are not rising globally. They are either stagnating or going down.
This is why I hate the term “warming”. It is based on the Global Average Temp going up. But the GAT can go up from minimum temps going up just as easily as from max temps going up. Some kinds of “warming” are good. It’s why the models should be required to formulate max temp *and* minimum temps outputs as well as anomalies developed from “averages”.
I see you have twice mentioned formulated temperatures. I have not expressed anywhere my interpretation of temperature & have not implied “max temps are rising globally.” My statement elaborates on a known phyto-hormone property that cytokinin is influenced by heat & I took the time to inform WUWT readers a bit about cytokinin who may not understand the final paragraph of O.P. is just a generalization.
And in the process you are deliberately skirting reality, i.e., you keep discussing “heat” aka higher maximum temperatures, which is not what is occurring and is therefore irrelevant.
Did I quote my specific objection to the O.P. or not? O.P. used the word “warming” without any specific definition in reference to temperature.
Since O.P. used it as a throw away line to suggest an assertion I elaborated on what “warming” means in a specific aspect of plant hormone activity. The warmer it gets means that temperature is rising.
Would you be happier if I wrote a long string of words about “warming” instead of offending you by forcing you to read the single word “‘heat”?
The fact is that cytokinin phyto-hormone is sensitive to rising degrees of warmth. And the more degrees of warmth above a specific plant’s ideal temperature (at that specific time of life, for that specific plant when plant cytokinin activity is relevant to that specific plant’s life cycle) then the more likely the available active cytokinin level is lower because cytokinin is sensitive to elevated degrees of warmth.
*WHAT* temperature is rising? You are still being vague.
“And the more degrees of warmth above a specific plant’s ideal temperature”
Now you are getting closer. “ABOVE” a specific plants ideal temperature. What “ideal* temperature might that by? 95F for corn?
You see, a rising GAT does *NOT* mean that temperatures are going above any specific “ideal” temperature. In fact, much of the Great Plains never saw temperatures over 100F this past summer. Much of the time the temp was BELOW 95F. If there was any “warming” it was in minimum temps which are also still well BELOW the ideal temp for things like corn, wheat, and soybeans.
Vagueness wins you nothing in a debate.
Your assertion is just as much a generalization as that of O.P. If you say that cytokinin is influenced by heat but refuse to specify what that “heat* is then your assertion is useless.
@Tim Gorman – I am not going to do your homework assignment for the specific “ideal” temperatures for every geno-type of crop and temperature readings for every planting site. Anyway, you won’t don’t write like an open minded person who would accept any current scientific report I cite that goes into detail about crop yield decreases should there be rising “warmth” from their cited reference point (you can internet search for those kinds of reports yourself).
You ask ” What temperature is rising” & I told you repeatedly it is the O.P. who brought “warming” into the discussion of crop productivty – not I. Elsewhere you object I have not parsed “freezing” to your satisfaction.
If you read my immediately prior response to another of your comments I think it provides basic scientific data & not model data that decisively refutes your debate points there. Nothing vague about what I presented there, nor elsewhere in this thread – despite your tangental arguments.
Yeah, right. You haven’t even done it for ONE type of crop!
ROFL! In other words the cite from a scientific report I gave is not believable, right? Physician, heal thyself.
“cited reference point”? Just another slick way to avoid giving any details. You STILL haven’t refuted my assertion that the earlier the temp goes above freezing the better winter wheat, corn, and soybeans do. I.e. warming minimum temps generate more food. I give you the past twenty years of ever increasing global harvests as proof. Something *you* ignore.
And I gave you a cite that supports my assertion. But I guess to you that cite is just garbage. Why am I not surprised?
That’s just another feedback! More crop, more Indians, more emissions, more global warming.. 😉
Well that would be the warmunistas’ narrative.
I see her Maj, has pulled out of FLOP26 for ‘health reasons’ and JugEars hasn’t been sent in her place. Perhaps Boris will send Princess NutNutz instead.
Perhaps finally someone has whispered to her the answer to her plaintiff complaint ‘why don’t they do something” with the true answer
….Because nothing needs to be done or can be done , your Majesty. It’s all a show to make more money out of energy and generate support for world government….
Actually, it appears that H.M. may have been late-night binge-watching various shows and is, as a consequence, royally knackered! A few weeks rest should hopefully do the trick and it’s not like she’ll miss anything at the copfest.
The birth rate in India is falling rapidly and will get to 2.2 well before 2030. Bangladesh is already at 2.2. There are only a few African countries with high fertility rates.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673618322785
Proving the little known fact that when a population is warm, well fed and relatively happy, birthrate drops correspondingly. Personal wealth seems to be directly tied to the size of families. As long a the parasitic, UN socialists are kept at a distance and people are allowed to enjoy the benefits of a free market, nearly all other social problems seem to melt away.
Family size has almost always been driven by two things: First: replacement of children who die from living in morbid conditions (e.g. poverty, starvation, etc). And two – spreading of the work load needed for survival in hunter/gatherer conditions or in primitive agriculture conditions.
Take away both of those and the need for a high birth rate goes away, i.e. your warm, well-fed, and happy population aren’t as driven.
It’s odd, Tim; when I use your argument against those who are eugenics inclined they just don’t seem to get the logic.
That’s because they don’t live in the real world. They are elitists living in basements or labs with walls covered with blackboards.
None of them have ever faced manual hoeing of an acre of corn! None of them have ever faced one meal a day consisting of a handful of beans boiled in a gallon of water to make soup for a family of six. None of them have ever faced hauling 150lbs of deer six miles home by themselves!
And this doesn’t even compare to the hardships faced by generations of poor earlier than mine. Nothing like experience to give you a good hard slap of reality.
It isn’t called the “Ivory Tower” for nothing. I remember I once hand scythed a three acre field for a friend. I gained new respect for when that was common place. Years ago, I stripped, hand split, and then reshaked my roof. It was only 15 squares … but what a load of work.
Wow! 3 acres? I would have been incapacitated from blisters before finishing!
I once pitchforked loose hay from a 40acre field onto a wagon and then into a barn (the farmers baler had broken down and he didn’t want it to get wet). Even with gloves I had blisters on my hands the size of silver dollars when we were done!
I don’t know if you recognize the song Reuben James or not:
Reuben James,
you still walk the furrowed fields of my mind,
faded shirt, the weathered brow,
the calloused hands upon the plow,
I love you then and I love you now,
Reuben James
There was a reason for those “calloused hands”!
I must say, it didn’t get done in a day and my hands were already pretty toughened. My friend had recently come home after a heart bypass and his view from the porch, where he was recuperating, overlooked the hay field … watching his field about to be go to waste, was stressing him unduly. Well … you know what they say about watching work. It must have been pure comedy until I found the rhythm and the technique.
I’d not heard that Reuben James. I only know the Woody Guthrie song about the Sinking of the Good Reuben James, sung to he tune of Wildwood Flower. Just played Kenny Rogers singing your version … good stuff.
Yep, skin grows back, gloves wear out.
what a great thread. I have lived among the Karen of Burma. they are jungle dwellers eking out meager existence growing food in the poor soil. They are undersized and malnourished.
They would love to have access to fossil fuel energy as so-called renewables are useless there.
And all this on a reducing landmass as modern innovations in industrial agriculture allow a lot more land to return to natural vegetation. It won;’t be converted by most media because it doesn’t support the climate lie they are selling.
Yes this still happens and it is back breaking work. However, the picture looks staged on account of the woman being dressed in her best new unfaded clothes.
If it’s staged, there is someone who genuinely threshed that pile of grain. That didn’t happen with a few whacks on a handful of wheat.
The irony is wheat being threshed by hand against an oil drum.
Yes this still happens and it is back breaking work. However, the picture looks staged on account of the woman being dressed in her best new unfaded clothes.
If it’s staged, there is someone who genuinely threshed that pile of grain. That didn’t happen with a few whacks on a handful of wheat.
There is a guard with a rifle standing there.
Probably not a guard – in all likelihood it’s a farmworker protecting the crop from Naxals. It’s a problem in some parts of India – hence the need for the gun.
The cutting and stooking of grain is far more “back breaking” than threshing. The winnowing will also be back-breaking. Surprisingly, women in those countries often dress in bright, unfaded clothing … rarely having the luxury of more than one change of clothes, if that. Although India has many natural dyes which are colour fast, using various mordants, these days synthetic dyes are even more common.
That is most likely rice – not wheat.
Doesn’t look like rice and it doesn’t look like a rice paddy.
It looks exactly like rice to me and most rice paddies look like that in India.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRnXxL6J7SC83z3QCd9EHXTd6MXx8CRIuM3NQ&usqp=CAU
I’ll admit then that it’s a rice field in India – it’s just that I’ve seen rice fields in India and that’s the very first time I’ve seen one looking like that, maybe I was in the wrong area or the wrong time of year but still.
Unless they’re terraced pretty much most rice fields look like that. If you look at the base of the grass stalks, you’ll see that they grow in bunches, unlike other grins. During planting the fields are flooded, by harvest time they/re dried out.
I believe it looks exactly like rice and the field is definitely a rice field in India.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRnXxL6J7SC83z3QCd9EHXTd6MXx8CRIuM3NQ&usqp=CAU
Oh dear. That is indeed most inconvenient news for the hordes of Climate Liars and assorted carpetbaggers who will be descending on Glasgow this weekend like some sort of plague. So I guess that means they’ll have to concentrate on bad weather and fires and other mumbo jumbo to try to sell the message that fossil fuels, which are the reason why humanity has advanced as far as it has, and are the foundation of healthy economies are somehow evil, and need to be eradicated.
Nonsense, no part of reality need be entertained.
Read this great book on the subject on why fossil fuels are really the only option. Please share it with you family and friends.
The moral case for fossil fuels
How much does this contribute to the social cost of carbon?
That is the most stupid concept ever created by Greentards. So lets start with the basic when you say carbon do you mean atomic carbon or are you using code speak for CO2?
Once we get thru that stupidity we can move on to the next.
If there were any honesty to all the blather about the “social cost of carbon” they would have to correctly call it the “social benefit of carbon.”
It is interesting that the traditional diets of India consist of a grain and a pulse eaten together. This provides a complete protein that the body can use. It is still not ideal for growth and development unless some milk is added.
Many Western vegetarians load up on the pulses without the grain to keep carbs lower, eating an incomplete protein that the body cannot use for anabolic purposes. The “food guides” do not help because they list beans and pulses as “protein”.
The Amerindians solved the same problem the same way, by mixing corn and lysine rich beans to get a complete protein. And like Hindu Indians, they also had a vegetable rich diet (vitamins and minerals) from various winter squash. Corn beans, and squash were the Amerindian food ‘trinity’.
Amerindians tended to eat their dietary trinity (Three Sisters) together. Just as they planted the three plants together.
Corn that provided grain and poles for the beans and squash.
Squash that shaded and cooled the roots and ground around them, keeping moisture levels higher.
Beans that grew up the corn and improved the ground by converting nitrogen, and supplied both fresh and dried beans.
It was the Amerindians who taught the colonists to fertilize corn.
Amerindians also harvested and dried fruits, berries and nuts. Ground into a paste with dried meat added made pemmican. A food that included vitamin C through the winter months.
A little further south and Amerindians and South Americans were nixtamalizing their dried corn turning it into a much more nutritious food.
It was only a matter of time before Amerindians living further north imported the practice.
Those Amerindians seemed to have had an unfair advantage: no feudal system to dominate them, no church or king to interfere with best practices.
Because the overwhelming majority of global warming occurs in the Arctic, at night and in the winter, it can never affect food production in a harmful way.
Add to that the fact that C3 crops have already evolved to efficiently use greater than 1000ppm CO2 puts the final nail in the coffin to the myth of any agricultural peril from CO2 induced climate change.
Is the guy guarding against tigers and poisonous snakes?
Or is that area close to difficult neighbors?
No – a bigger problem are the Naxals; left-wing Maoist insurgents that will seize crops unless protected. A problem in some regions but not all.
Vijay ==> Borlaug did not use gene editing — he used plain old plant breeding techniques.
Certain weirdos predict it will get cooler from here. Just so long as we keep pumping out that good plant fertilizer we should be ok.
Climate is doing what it always has, increased agricultural output puts the lie to leftards’ lies.
Increased CO2, NOT climate change.
Energy shortage crippled food production in China?
How come we see photos of Indian farmers working in what might be termed a “primitive method”: (threshing the old-fashioned way as in the photo at the head of the article) and find that India is thriving (as is the USA using more modern harvesting methods) and China can’t figure things out? I know, I know: I’ve seen videos of farmers in the Chinese hinterlands doing the tractor work, but it’s legitimate to ask just what IS going on there? And why is India doing so well, when China is sadly lagging (& lacking)? Could this possibly be bad planning and too much meddling?
For the umpteenth time: GREEN land
They had a REASON for naming it that.
Narendra Modi’s government lashes out as country slips towards the bottom and behind neighbors on the Global Hunger Index
https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/india-among-worlds-hungriest-despite-record-harvests/
¨The latest Global Hunger Index says India dropped from 94th place in 2020 to 101 this year out of 116 countries with enough data to calculate scores. India now ranks behind its neighbors Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan.¨
Looks like Modi will attend FLOP26. Maybe he can explain this….
Bumper crops yield is not enough – modern industrial agriculture storage and distribution are decisive.
What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.
Richard Lindzen
Read this great book on the subject on why fossil fuels are really the only option.
The moral case for fossil fuels
What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.
Richard Lindzen