Climate Denial Crock of the Week

 Think Climate Change has no impact on you?

NPR Morning Edition Business News:

Toyota says it’s shutting down its North American production tomorrow for one day and halting overtime at several U.S. plants. It’s because the automaker can’t get parts from Thailand. Thailand is a global car manufacturing hub, and deadly floods there are damaging carmakers’ facilities. Toyota’s plants in Thailand will be shut through the end of next week. Ford and GM have also suspended production. Honda delayed the release of a new model because it couldn’t get the necessary parts. Thailand is also one of the world’s largest producers of hard-disk drives and other computer parts. Sony, Canon and Toshiba are all experiencing production slowdowns. Apple says the flooding has also affected the supply of parts for its Mac computers.

Truth About Cars:

Toyota says it will suspend production at its assembly plants in Indiana, Kentucky and Ontario, Canada, along with an engine factory in West Virginia to cope with a shortage of parts, caused by flooding in Thailand. The parts shortage is beginning to affect global operations.

The plants will remain closed on Saturday while Toyota “will continue to monitor the supply situation in Thailand.” the company’s North American unit said in a statement. Before, Toyota had said it would adjust production at its vehicle production plants in Japan from October 24 through October 28, after which  “a decision on production hours from October 29 onward will be made based on an assessment of the situation as it develops.”

It is said that about 100 kinds of parts are affected, including electronic items.

Reuters: 

TAIPEI, Oct 28 (Reuters) – Taiwan’s Acer Inc expects fourth quarter sales to fall as much as 10 percent from the previous three months and will raise prices as flooding in Thailand disrupts supplies of hard disk drives for PCs.

The company told an investor conference on Friday that it hopes to see some improvement in the supply of hard disks in the first quarter of next year, but added that with prices for disks rising up to 20 percent, it needs to take action.

WeatherUnderground: 

The most damaging natural disaster in Thailand history is growing more serious, as the flood waters besieging the capital of Bangkok continue to overwhelm defenses and inundate the city. Heavy rains during September and October have led to extreme flooding that has killed 373 people and caused that nation’s most expensive natural disaster in history, with a cost now estimated at $6 billion. Thailand’s previous most expensive disaster was the $1.3 billion price tag of the November 27, 1993 flood, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).

Floodwaters have swamped fields and cities in a third of Thailand’s provinces, affected 9 million people, and damaged approximately 10% of the nation’s rice crop. Thailand is the world’s largest exporter of rice, so the disaster may put further upward pressure on world food prices, which are already at the highest levels since the late 1970s.

Ocean temperatures in the waters surrounding Thailand during September and October have been approximately 0.3°C above average, which has increased rainfall amounts by putting more water vapor into the air. The remains of Tropical Storm Haitang and Typhoon Nesat also brought heavy rains in late September which contributed to the flooding.

Bloomberg News:

Thailand’s worst floods in more than a half century may have wiped out as much as 14 percent of paddy fields in the world’s biggest rice exporter, potentially erasing the predicted global glut.

The Thai export price, a global benchmark, may climb 21 percent to $750 a metric ton by December, according to Sumeth Laomoraphorn, president of C.P. Intertrade Co., the country’s largest seller of packaged rice. Tropical storms inundated 62 of 77 provinces, destroying 1.4 million hectares (3.5 million acres) and as much as 7 million tons of crops, the government says. That equals 4.6 million tons of milled grain, 1 million more than the surplus expected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Rice, a staple for half the world, was already this year’s best-performing agricultural commodity after drought cut the U.S. harvest to the lowest level in 13 years. Prices also rose as Thailand started buying at above-market costs to boost farmer incomes. That is adding renewed pressure to global food prices monitored by the United Nations, which had dropped 5 percent from a record in February as other grains declined.

“I’ve never seen such a catastrophe, watching the field turning into a sea of floodwater,” said Wichian Phuanglamchiak, a 74-year-old farmer in the central province of Ayutthaya, speaking from the second floor of his house. “My entire crop was wiped out and I have to wait for the water to recede before I can replant in December.”

Put down any hot liquids or sharp objects. Make sure shoulder harness is fastened.

The intense G-forces induced during Mitt Romney’s switchback on Climate change may cause your airbag to deploy.

Discovery:

The towers, according to the website of the designer Stefano Boeri are “a project for metropolitan reforestation that contributes to the regeneration of the environment and urban biodiversity without the implication of expanding the city upon the territory.” Each 27-story tower will house 900 trees including oaks and amelanchier as well as a wide range of shrubs and floral plants.

Were this forest to be on land it would cover a little over six square miles. The towers will use the latest in green technologies including water reclamation, wind and solar.

Beroni’s website says, “The diversity of the plants and their characteristics produce humidity, absorb CO2 and dust particles, [while] producing oxygen and protecting from radiation and acoustic pollution; [thus] improving the quality of living spaces and saving energy.

From the comment by danielsangeo at MediaMatters:

I see it this way.

A man eats McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for years and piles on the salt and drinks massive amounts of soda pop while sitting around all day watching TV, barely moving. He starts to get chest pains one day and he goes to the doctor. The doctor tells him that if he doesn’t start eating healthy, he could die of a heart attack.

The man calls the doctor a “fear monger”. The doctor says that the science is out there and many people have died due to a poor diet and sedentary lifestyle.

The man asks the doctor the precise number of burgers he can eat before he has a heart attack. “Is it 50 more burgers? 100 more? 500 more?” The doctor says that he can’t put a precise figure on it but if he cuts down on the bad eating habits and begin exercising, he will be able to avoid a heart attack caused by his lifestyle.

The man says, “You’re just a fear monger and you can’t even give me precise information as to when this ‘heart attack’ will happen. I’m going back to McDonald’s.”

Easy to understand overview of how climate models improve over time. Worthwhile.

We’ve heard it a hundred times – “More CO2 is good for plants.”

Agronomists and Botanists around the world have been asking food crops the question – “So how is all the extra CO2 working out for you?”

Reuters:

For years, as scientists have assembled data on climate change and pointed with concern at melting glaciers and other visible changes in the life-giving water cycle, the impact on seasonal rains and irrigation has worried crop watchers most.

What would breadbaskets like the U.S. Midwest, the Central Asian steppes, the north China Plain or Argentine and Brazilian crop lands be like without normal rains or water tables?

Those were seen as longer-term issues of climate change.

But scientists now wonder if a more immediate issue is an unusual rise in day-time and, especially, night-time summer temperatures being seen in crop belts around the world.

Interviews with crop researchers at American universities paint the same picture: high temperatures have already shrunken output of many crops and vegetables.

“We don’t grow tomatoes in the deep South in the summer. Pollination fails,” said Ken Boote, a crop scientist with the University of Florida.

The same goes for snap beans which can no longer be grown in Florida during the summer, he added.

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The above from a debate thread at SkepticalScience  relating to  my latest video. Sample comments:

• “Not bad. But, why resort to name calling (Junior Woodchucks, climate cranks, etc…). If what you’re saying is sound – you really don’t need to do that.”

•  “Yep, calling people “Junior Woodchucks” – that’s ‘no holds barred’ and will drag us all down to a ‘base level of reality’. And fails to ‘maintain standards of integrity’. Sure.
Is there anything that Sinclair does that actually could hope to meet these exalted standards? Heck ‘Climate Crocks’ as a name, that’s really disrespectful, isn’t it? It’s amazing how popular the series is, though, don’t you think? Perhaps because it’s both punchy and funny? There’s this thing we call ‘satire’…”

• “I think Peter Sinclair’s video is excellent, except I agree he should have left off the “Junior Woodchucks” and similar comments. It simply gives places like WUWT a reason to deflect their response (if they do respond) away from the science — where they are getting increasingly incomprehensible and contradictory — towards complaints about ad hominen attacks from the “warmists.”

• “WUWT can realistically draw attention to issue of ad hominens when they stop publishing Viscount “that is a fascist point of view, Zeig Heil, and on we go” Monckton.
The simple fact is that many of the climate change deniers, including explicitly Monckton are conspiracy theorists of the tin hat variety. Monckton personal view is that global warming is a conspiracy by the UN to establish a “global, bureaucratic-centralist dictatorship” to achieve world government which will “… not, I repeat not be democratic government”.
This is not an ad hominen, except to the extent that describing Monckton’s views in print since 2009 (at least) is ad hominen. What is absurd is that this tin hat conspiracy theorist is lauded by the press, and taken seriously by the majority of climate change deniers.
I do not share the delusion that we should maintain the illusion of Monckton (and other deniers) rationality by carefully keeping concealed the absurdity of their purported beliefs out of some misplaced sense of politeness.”

I called ’em Junior Woodchucks, and by Golly I meant every word. They’re all a bunch of Junior Woodchucks. Let ’em scream.