Too many of the proponents for global warming use "data" excreted from their computer models. Very few of them actually stick their heads outdoors and look at what is happening - inconvenient numbers for them if they did.
E. M. Smith has one such metric:
Mid-July & No Tomatoes
One of the first things that tipped me off to the temperature record being a bit bogus (“over adjusted” to put it kindly…) was my tomatoes. Were I live, it is marginal for many types of tomatoes. They must be consistently above 50 F at night for fruit set. When I first moved here, it was “iffy” on the tomatoes. With proper placement, some black mulch, etc. etc. you can reliably grow them. Simple “garden square” with medium sun exposure and white cement border, well, you get late tomatoes, but don’t expect to be eating any on the 4th of July.
Now IF “Global Warming” had validity, it ought to have been getting easier to grow a tomato crop each year and I ought to have been harvesting earlier. It wasn’t… So when I looked at GIStemp (the NASA GISS temperature fabrication program) I adopted the “tag line” of “GIStemp- Dumber than a Tomato!”
I got a nice crop, modestly early, about 1998 and using some Russian low temperature selected vines. Other cherry tomatoes and some heirlooms did OK that year, but mostly harvested a bit late.
Some more historical crop records and this money shot:
Now my Dad always taught me that you knew you had timed your garden well (In Iowa and Central valley California, at least) if you had fresh corn on the cob and ripe tomatoes on the 4th of July. It’s now a couple of week past that.
Not only do I NOT have any ripe tomatoes; but I have no tomato set at all. I’ve inspected the vine. Lots of flowers. Some places flowers had been but had blossom drop when fruit set failed. It is NOT a warm summer when you can’t even get fruit SET by July 4th…
Anecdotal? Yes. Can’t say what limit of fruit set temperature is for this variety? Yes. Yet any ‘special’ set temperatures are to the cold side… it is the 50 F that is the “normal” and I don’t know of any that are selected for a warmer fruit set temperature. So, IMHO, this is a valid indicator.
It just is not warmer. I’ve had about 30 years of growing tomatoes here, on and off. Maybe 40 if you count “near here” about 15 miles away a bit closer to the mountains. Had we been warming for 30 to 40 years the “just barely enough” fruit set temperatures would have turned into “reliable” by now. Instead I’ve got “complete failure to set”. There are pollinators around (at least 2 kinds of bees). Evenings have felt quite cool.
Not warming, we have been having a 19+ year cooling trend and the output of our sun is very very quiet. I would prepare for an extended period of cooling, not warming.
Leave a comment