I Think We're Turning Japanese

The Vapors came three decades too soon...

Comments

  1. James GieseAugust 11, 2011 at 12:38 PM

    Dear Dr. Roberts,

    It seems we are turning something…I am not sure what…regardless…early 80s rock is the best.

    Completely unrelated…

    The USDA crop forecast was reduced today. The USDA corn-crop estimate was reduced by 4.1%, soybean harvest by 5.2%, and spring-wheat harvest by 5.2% below what it predicted in July.

    Also found this news report from Southwest Farm Press on the harvest in Texas interesting…to quote the news report…(full version here: http://southwestfarmpress.com/grains/texas-corn-hard-hit-droughtheat)


    Peter Hill, an agronomist with Pioneer Hi-Bred, says “it’s been a fascinating year for an agronomist to watch hybrid corn under stress.”

    It’s been less fascinating for growers, he said during a field day stop at a TAWC demonstration project. The 2011 corn crop has grown under extreme drought and heat conditions, with more than 35 days reaching 100 degrees or more.

    Hill says pollination has been affected, “regardless of water availability,” and that growers can expect to see a lot of lost kernels and less grain fill from the 2011 crop. “Kernels near the tip of the ear may be aborted. We had a very short period for grain fill.”



    I still find it interesting the point about “regardless of water availability” comment.

    Best regards,

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nonlinear Temperature Effects Indicate Severe Damages to U.S. Crop Yields Under Climate Change

Image
It's been a long haul, but my coauthor Wolfram Schlenker and I have finally published our article with the title of this blog post in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . We've been told that it would show up on the early-edition website this week. It hasn't shown up there yet so I guess it will come out tomorrow [Friday 8/28], probably late afternoon EST. UPDATE: You can find the article here . We set out to develop a better statistical model linking weather and U.S. crop yields for corn, soybeans and cotton, the largest three crops in the U.S. in production value. Our major new finding is that (by far) the best predictor of yield is a measure of extreme heat: how much temperatures exceed about 29C (84F) during the growing season. The threshold varies somewhat by crop--29C is the threshold for corn. Below this threshold, warmer temperatures are more beneficial for yields, but the damaging effects of temperatures much above 29C are staggeringly large. A
Read more

Renewable energy not as costly as some think

Image
The other day Marshall and Sol took on Bjorn Lomborg for ignoring the benefits of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.  Indeed.  But Bjorn, among others, is also notorious for exaggerating costs.  That fact is that most serious estimates of reducing emissions are fairly low, and there is good reason to believe cost estimates are too high for the simple fact that analysts cannot measure or imagine all ways we might curb emissions.  Anything analysts cannot model translates into cost exaggeration. Hawai`i is a good case in point.  Since moving to Hawai`i I've started digging into energy, in large part because the situation in Hawai`i is so interesting.  Here we make electricity mainly from oil, which is super expensive.  We are also rich in sun and wind.  Add these facts to Federal and state subsidies and it spells a remarkable energy revolution.  Actually, renewables are now cost effective even without subsidies. In the video below Matthias Fripp, who I'm lucky to be working w
Read more