The Great Lakes region is benefiting from global warming, with objective data showing improved soil moisture, record crop production, and modestly but beneficially warmer temperatures despite alarmist claims from global warming activists. These real-world developments are welcome news to people living in the Great Lakes region, but decidedly bad news for global warming alarmists.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data show a beneficial increase in precipitation and soil moisture and a remarkable lack of drought during recent decades in the Great Lakes region and the Upper Midwest. During the first half of the twentieth century, when carbon dioxide emissions were minimal and global temperatures were cooler, precipitation was much less frequent and drought frequently afflicted the Upper Midwest. In contrast, NOAA records show, precipitation has been much more prevalent and drought conditions virtually nonexistent in the Upper Midwest during the past 50 years as the Earth continues its modest and beneficial recovery from the cold temperatures of the Little Ice Age.
The enhanced precipitation has been especially important given the growing water demands of the region. Great Lakes water levels have fared remarkably well in recent decades despite the pressures of a growing population. NOAA data show all five Great Lakes currently have water levels above their century-long averages, with Lakes Erie and Ontario faring particularly well even as water demands grow and temperatures modestly warm.
Global warming is bringing improved soil moisture, record crop production, and a host of benefits to... [+]
The warmer temperatures, longer growing seasons, enhanced atmospheric carbon dioxide, more frequent precipitation, and improved soil moisture are spurring record crop production in the breadbasket regions of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and contributing to U.S. crop production that sets new records seemingly every year.
The 2014 U.S. corn crop was the largest in history, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports. Ideal climate conditions and abundant rainfall fueled the record crop, according to the USDA. The 2014 record corn crop followed another record crop in 2013.
The 2014 U.S. wheat crop was also quite strong, contributing to a record global wheat crop this year. Again, the USDA credited favorable climate and weather conditions for the strong U.S. wheat crop.
Global rice and soybean crops also set new records this year, the USDA reports.
The near-perfect crop conditions were especially apparent in the Great Lakes region, with record corn and soybean crops reported in states such as Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In Michigan, the apple crop set an all-time record and the record sugar beet crop was so bountiful that processors are having a difficult time processing all the beets. In the Great Lakes region, throughout the United States, and throughout the world, global warming is proving quite beneficial while enhancing crop production and improving human health and welfare.
In the Great Lakes region, as is the case nationally and globally, global warming is defying the predictions of global warming activists by warming much more slowly than predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and alarmist computer models. As a result, the modest warming is barely perceptible, with record cold temperatures still occurring on a regular basis. For example, ice began to coat the Great Lakes this year a month earlier than normal. Last winter, Lake Superior broke its all-time record for most days with visible ice. This year, ice began forming on Lake Superior 10 days earlier than last year’s record ice cover.
In Chicago and other Great Lakes cities, residents bemoaned 2014 as the Year Without a Summer. The remarkably cool summer in the Great Lakes region merely continued a decades-long nationwide trend of fewer and fewer days with temperatures exceeding 90 degrees.
All of these real-world facts are undeniable, and yet global warming alarmists do everything possible to mislead the American public into believing humans are creating a global warming crisis. The more that real-world data show improving climatological conditions are benefiting human health and welfare, the more that global warming alarmists conjure up flawed and discredited “models” that alarmists claim are more scientifically credible than real-world climate observations.
Given the strikingly positive news regarding real-world climate conditions, and especially in the Great Lakes region, expect alarmists to conjure up all sorts of new doom-and-gloom predictions to divert attention away from the real-world good news. I will go out on a limb and predict somebody like renewable energy shill Hank Paulson will lead the effort to claim the sky is falling in the Great Lakes region, as the real-world good news in the Great Lakes region continues to undermine his over-the-top alarmist claims. Indeed, if 12 months go by without a major alarmist effort to sow climatological doom and gloom in the Great Lakes region, I will write in Al Gore on my ballot for President in 2016. But don’t worry, the alarmists are too predictable for that to be an even remotely likely scenario.
