Interesting post at www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/4/11/crop-yields-and-dumb-farmers.html … where it is assumed in an academic paper that rising co2 levels would have an adverse effect on crop yields – and they are bemused that it has not (or something like that).
The commenters are the best part of the story and they concentrate on last summer – cool and wet, and the coolish spring – and the way these two seasons have affected their gardens, allottments and farms. Julia Sligo from the Met Office puts the cold weather down to CAGW – is she burying her head in the soggy ground?
At http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/oh-for-the-love-of-peat/ … EM Smith has a look at a 1998 NASA-GISS paper concerning Arctic and Siberian peat lands and the comment by the authors that 'permafrost' had increased – the opposite of global warming'. Note the date of the paper, 1998 (when CAGW was in full steam with a massive propaganda drive). The paper was about looking at the tundra regions for clues as to how climate had responded over the last 10,000 years, by digging holes inside the Arctic Circle and taking samples. Nowadays, the tundra is an expanse of green wetlands dotted with shallow lakes. The field research found that climate had changed in the Arctic region on several occasions (Russian and US scientists were involved), switching from dry tundra (peat) to wetter tundra (more lakes and marshes). About 6000 years ago spruce trees migrated north (in the Mid Holocene Warm Period), coinciding with the period when the Sahara was green and the Fertile Crescent was verdant. Since then the trees have retreated. In other words, global warming is not happening until the larch, birch and spruce trees reinhabit the tundra, muses Chiefio. Aye.