Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[GaWx]

On 10/4/2025 at 6:30 AM, chubbs said:

Do you have a reference for this? Per the articles below, we have had larger crops due to technology improvement not climate change. The impact of climate change depends on the crop and region. No large net impacts so far. On a global average, doesn't look like a disaster in the future either; but, some regions and crops may have significant negative impacts. Also need to consider extreme events which will pack a bigger punch in a warmer world. A bad year can be destabilizing regionally.

https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields-climate-impact

https://ourworldindata.org/will-climate-change-affect-crop-yields-future 

Hey Charlie,

 As promised with the help of a Midwest pro met., here is the first response supporting the net benefit of CC to crops. This one covers soybeans (posts to cover other crops to come later):

Let's separate out other factors(technology for instance), so that we can look only at the photosynthetic benefits from increasing CO2 to soybeans.

Turns out that the impact of CO2 on soybeans has more studies than almost any other plant. 

Here's how to access the empirical evidence/data from the site that has more of it than any other. Please go to this link:

http://www.co2science.org/data/data.php

Go to plant growth data base:

http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php

Go to plant dry weight(biomass):

http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject.php

Pick the name of a plant, any plant and go to it based on its starting letter. Let's pick soybeans. Go to the letter S: http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject_s.php

Then scroll down and hit soybeans. This is what you get:

http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/g/glycinem.php

 Look at the following screenshot for the table showing the large benefits of CO2 to soybeans:

[chubbs]

15 hours ago, GaWx said:

Hey Charlie,

 As promised with the help of a Midwest pro met., here is the first response supporting the net benefit of CC to crops. This one covers soybeans (posts to cover other crops to come later):

Let's separate out other factors(technology for instance), so that we can look only at the photosynthetic benefits from increasing CO2 to soybeans.

Turns out that the impact of CO2 on soybeans has more studies than almost any other plant. 

Here's how to access the empirical evidence/data from the site that has more of it than any other. Please go to this link:

http://www.co2science.org/data/data.php

Go to plant growth data base:

http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php

Go to plant dry weight(biomass):

http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject.php

Pick the name of a plant, any plant and go to it based on its starting letter. Let's pick soybeans. Go to the letter S: http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject_s.php

Then scroll down and hit soybeans. This is what you get:

http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/g/glycinem.php

 Look at the following screenshot for the table showing the large benefits of CO2 to soybeans:

A quick check indicates that CO2science is not a balanced website. Its advocating against US regulation of CO2 emissions and focusing on the benefits of CO2 on plant growth without acknowledging offsetting adverse impacts. I'd put it in the climate denial camp. I ourworldindata piece I linked above is more trustworthy. Recent gains in yields are mainly from improved seed genetics and increased fertilizer and other inputs. You have to strip that out to get climate change impacts.

I googled up this recent Nature paper which finds significant future negative impacts on agriculture, even after farmer adaptation, albeit from a high emissions scenario. I haven't gone through the literature review section but that would be a good place to start on recent scientific work in this area.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09085-w.pdf

[GaWx]

2 hours ago, chubbs said:

A quick check indicates that CO2science is not a balanced website. Its advocating against US regulation of CO2 emissions and focusing on the benefits of CO2 on plant growth without acknowledging offsetting adverse impacts. I'd put it in the climate denial camp. I ourworldindata piece I linked above is more trustworthy. Recent gains in yields are mainly from improved seed genetics and increased fertilizer and other inputs. You have to strip that out to get climate change impacts.

I googled up this recent Nature paper which finds significant future negative impacts on agriculture, even after farmer adaptation, albeit from a high emissions scenario. I haven't gone through the literature review section but that would be a good place to start on recent scientific work in this area.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09085-w.pdf

Hey Charlie,

  Thanks. I had no idea because I hadn’t checked his source’s (CO2Science) bias rating. I just did my own check and see at the reputable “mediabiasfactcheck” that it’s rated as “low” on factual reporting and “pseudoscience”. It says that it “promotes climate change denial and misinformation”.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/co2-science-bias-and-credibility/

This, I just posted this to him:

 I then googled CO2Science, myself, and saw at the reputable “mediabiasfactcheck” that it’s rated as “low” on factual reporting and “pseudoscience”. It says that it “promotes climate change denial and misinformation”.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/co2-science-bias-and-credibility/

Sorry, but unfortunately this source, just like “Watts Up with That?”, isn’t going to cut it for my use due to bias as mediabiasfactcheck rates it with the same “pseudoscience” rating that it rated Watts with. I appreciate your help though.

[TheClimateChanger]

 

On 10/1/2025 at 12:44 PM, bdgwx said:

That is a hell of find. I have a large stash of historical articles related to climate change. Anyway somehow Gorrell's contribution above from 1911 was missing from my archive. 

Gorrell references LeConte 1903 work here which was also missing from my archive. Anyway, here are other LeConte quotes.

"But a sufficient cause of secular changes of temperature, affecting the whole earth alike, is found in the variation in amount of the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere."

"On account of its heat-absorbing properties the CO₂ is vastly the most important element affecting climate. It now forms only about 1/3000 part of the atmosphere. With its thermal potency it will be seen that comparatively slight variation in amount would produce great climatic effects. Physicists have long recognized the fact. It is believed that doubling the present small amount of CO₂ would produce mild climate to the poles, and that halving the present amount would bring on another glacial period."

"The several factors in our present climate-atmospheric, astronomic, geographic, and geologic-are so delicately balanced that any slight change might produce great effects. Of these factors, the amount of carbon dioxide (and depending on it the amount of water vapor) is doubtless the most influential."

The point...this isn't some fringe or politically motivated scientific theory. It was mainstream in the early 1900's and even late 1800's and builds upon scientific discovery's that date back to at least to the 1600s.

BTW...my archive of historical articles related to climate change is fairly extensive. If anyone is interested private message me and I'll see what I can do to get you these publications. I've even included the works of Marriott from 1681 who, to the best of my knowledge, was the first to hypothesize the heat trapping effect. I also have de Saussure who demonstrated how the Sun's heat could be trapped in 1796 with his heliothermometer.

 

I think the weirdest thing is how it was there was a general consensus that the late 19th century and turn of the 20th century was unusually warm among period scientists, but a lot of bogus "reconstructions" today try to tell us it was the coldest since the early Holocene. See, e.g., below, that period is shown as nearly the coldest in the past 1,000 years, surpassed only by a cooler interval in the 15th century. Makes a big difference with how the present looks compared to the past. If there was already say 0.2 or 0.3C warming by 1900, then we're even further off the charts then commonly supposed. It makes VERY little sense to say these very smart people were investigating the cause of the observed warming trend, when, in fact, it was unusually cold. But if you buy the reconstruction below, that's exactly the implication to be drawn.

[TheClimateChanger]

9 minutes ago, TheClimateChanger said:

 

I think the weirdest thing is how it was there was a general consensus that the late 19th century and turn of the 20th century was unusually warm among period scientists, but a lot of bogus "reconstructions" today try to tell us it was the coldest since the early Holocene. See, e.g., below, that period is shown as nearly the coldest in the past 1,000 years, surpassed only by a cooler interval in the 15th century. Makes a big difference with how the present looks compared to the past. If there was already say 0.3C warming by 1900, then we're even further off the charts then commonly supposed. It makes VERY little sense to say these very smart people were investigating the cause of the observed warming trend, when, in fact, it was unusually cold. But if you buy the reconstruction below, that's exactly the implication to be drawn.

And it's kind of surprising too, when a lot of empirical data supports warming in that era.

This blog suggests a systemic early warming bias in the instrumental temperature records that predate the adoption of the Stevenson Screen, and questionable SST data... although I'm not sure how that would impact proxy-based reconstructions. It looks to me like a lot of proxy data (e.g., the above) would support warming, but I'm not sure if empirical data like this enters into the proxies since such data does not exist for earlier years.

Early global warming