The Tropical Fruit Forum

I did wonder from the Exxon chart (your climate files link). Bottom right shows Exxon's estimate of temp change stretching back 150k years overlaid in red with "simulated change". Any thoughts on the disparity between the pre"today" temps? Advances in core drilling and interpreting maybe? Or just years of additional sampling maybe? ... Not really an argument for or against anything, just interesting.

Okay, I finally got a minute out of the heat with a cup of fresh coffee to look at this. I kind of want to talk to a scientist about this (I have a couple of acquaintances who are forest ecology scientists who could probably point me at a climate scientist colleague), but I'm guessing that it's not as big of a disparity as it looks since what they're looking for is a broad trend match; you want to see dips and rises in about the same places even if by different amounts to tell if that last complete divergence is just a statistical fluke or not

I have to imagine that modeling has improved by now based on forty additional years of data collection and better collection methods, but I admit I don't know as much about the specifics of climate modeling as I would like to. I do understand that part of it also has to do with vastly enhanced computer processing, and very recently deployment of AI. Ironically to this conversation, two recent AI simulations that were trained on all available climate data in the world put us relatively close to Exxon's worst-case-likely projection (2C rise by 2050-2060, which is... not great) than to other more optimistic independent researchers that were probably assuming more would be done by now to sink or reduce carbon output.

I'll let you know if I get an answer back from the climate scientist, I'm curious too now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times

Quote from: achetadomestica on Today at 03:32:40 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1e5HAZo4iw

Thanks, I was going to say something about that. The Epoch Times is not a trustworthy source for info and they do not have the best interests of anybody but their inner group as a guiding principle. Also they won't stop spamming my parents after they signed up for one mailing list, once.

I did actually watch the first half of that video just to be fair and it has some serious issues. It's conflating predictions by news outfits and PR groups with scientific predictions (I think I mentioned this earlier, but you can't use news article content as proof of the science it is referencing, and that was apparently true in the 50's as well as now), and they just outright lied about the thickness of the arctic ice caps being basically the same when they've actually decreased by a significant and accelerating amount per decade (https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/). And Arctic Shipping HAS increased drastically as a result of new lanes opening up as the permafrost recedes (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230427173544.htm). Like... that prediction IS in the process of coming true.

EDIT: Okay I rewatched part of it and there are definitely some other issues: AOC is not a climate scientist and her being hyperbolic doesn't prove anything about the science, the Doomsday Clock has ALWAYS been a PR stunt to raise awareness of existential threats to humanity like nuclear war and not a prediction of when the world would actually end, Paul Erlich was a nutbag biologist whose wild predictions outside his area of expertise were widely decried at the time that book was published by other scientists ALTHOUGH we DID avoid a famine in parts of the developing world after WW2 due to the Green Revolution.

And I looked up the actual paper that he referenced about the Ice Age and actually that was fascinating. It's true that climate scientists Rasool and Schneider predicted that a global mini-ice-age was possible (their paper is here: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ra00600k.html) due to a massive increase in aerosols. Ars Technica does a better non-technical write-up of WHY they thought that but basically it came down to a math and assumption error: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-climate-science-really-call-for-a-coming-ice-age/. By ten years later when better models were available, it was clear that aerosols didn't have more of a cooling effect than the warming effect of the greenhouse gasses (this was mentioned again in those oil company papers I originally linked). I'd understood that this was a fringe theory but the actual specifics are interesting.

Also this is important for illustrating that modeling has improved over time, actually, which I don't think is what the people making this video want people to think. I mean, if you're like "yeah seatbelts were way worse in the 1970s than now", my thought isn't "well seatbelts are inherently untrustworthy".

Anyway, I don't have more time to watch but yeah that bit was interesting at least. Full of inaccuracies and important omitted context, but interesting.

If we're going to have hammerhead sharks breeding in our backyards it would be appreciated if you didn't delete your large science-based rebuttal. Please re-type it and at least PM it to anybody you assume to be a flat-earther here.

Okay, since you asked. I'm going to actually take the time to write out a proper response to this like I'm talking to somebody who hasn't been openly mocking me when I hadn't said anything to you to provoke you first, for the last however many pages, and I would appreciate a similar consideration. If you don't agree with me, fine, just say so and we'll both move on like adults, okay?

I actually had something to say in response to your snow comment yesterday but first one thing: your hammerhead comment here is an example of the disconnect between your opinion and my opinion (and that of some other people in here). You have a habit in this thread of using big examples for emphasis that nobody here has actually been arguing. No one here is saying Florida's going to be underwater or something, the only reason that it was brought up at all is that there's a general understanding that sea level rise and more frequent storms, IF they are happening (and the sea level rise is measurably happening there, the local universities have been measuring it for decades: https://climatecenter.fsu.edu/topics/sea-level-rise), would cause more frequent and more severe local floods because Miami's drainage situation is already a shitshow. Not city underwater. Yes possible problems for local fruit growers.

The people who are saying climate change is real in this thread are talking about trends and averages that cause effects that are expensive and difficult but not apocalyptic within anybody's lifetime here and probably not afterward either. I get why you're doing it, but is disingenuous to paint the arguments as such. I don't believe Florida's going to be underwater, the OP doesn't believe that, nobody commenting here believes that, or at least if they do I think they're wrong too. Based on hard data. Well previous to this discussion I've looked at worst-case 6-degree-warmer-globally projections of sea level rise where all the polar ice caps and permafrost would be melted all year, and most of Florida is still above water even then. Probably even if that happened, engineers could figure something out. Seems like they're already trying to (https://miami-dade-county-sea-level-rise-strategy-draft-mdc.hub.arcgis.com/)

Similar issue with the snow comment, which actually is an issue in my back yard. Let's take a look at that for a second because that was one thing I was originally responding to last night:

Careful now! The "Snow is a thing of the past" and "Children just won't know what snow is" predictions were quickly shot down by reality so they've gone from instilling fear of Global warming to instilling fear of Climate change.

Okay. So here's the issue I think. You're responding here to a big batch of headlines that I've seen too over the last however many years talking about "snowless winters". Here's one of the usual for reference, pretty much the usual clickbait crap: https://brightly.eco/blog/scientists-warn-winter-without-snow-is-coming

That article is trash, it's full of the kind of overblown over-simplistic takes you've been making fun of, and so are most of the articles writing about that subject, because headline writers don't typically read science papers either even when they're referencing them. Their job is to get people to pass around ragebait on social media.

That said, let's actually look at the scientific study most of these articles have been referencing when they say "no snow" for a second. Most of these breathless "no snow" articles (including the one that I linked to, which again is garbage) have either been referencing this study or one of the studies that it is analyzing: https://rdcu.be/cAivm

It's a 20 page article which is full of jargon but they tried to sum up the main points at the beginning. If you look at "Key Points" on page two, that is a really far cry from what comes to mind when most people think "no snow". It's one study, looking at one area (Western US), and the only actual prediction is 25% less snowpack average by 2050.

Again, this is the actual science article that all those dumb headlines have been referencing (either that or New York and the East Coast seeing less snow on average over the last hundred years, but unlike the Western United States that isn't likely to impact the food supply so f' it).

Just to be fair to your comment, I *did* go hunting for any research at all in the past that predicted no-snow winters being common or the norm by 2023 or earlier (that paper I linked puts them at anywhere from 2035 to 2090 or not at all), but they don't exist as far as I can tell. If somebody ever told you that we'd be seeing "no snow" by now (which needs qualifiers, like, where? What states? Etc), they weren't a scientist or citing any actual science. I can absolutely believe some idiot newspaper writer might have churned out something like that once, though.

Anyway. 25% reduction is both way less than "no snow ever again", BUT ALSO it's a huge amount of decrease for us regionally. Most of those projections are based on the average over the last 70 years, in which we've seen a 15%-25% decrease which has been enough to drop Lake Powell and Lake Mead (major water resevoirs and power generation) to less than 25%. Someone else referenced that earlier in thread.

The problem isn't one dry year. We could have no water all year for a year, probably for a few years, as a freak act of god, and we would recover. It's that trendline that keeps going down down down for over seventy years now. The reverse is also true, big freak snow years don't fix it. We had a TON of snow this year in areas that feed the Colorado River (150% above twenty year average), which is the center of the entire water infrastructure of the west of the country, and those major resevoirs went from about 23% to... 26% full. Record snow, literal drop in the bucket. But I'm still hearing people (not here, but elsewhere) say things like "well since it snowed so much I guess the drought's over". It isn't yet. Check again in ten years.

And like the flooding thing, this isn't about some apocalypse scenario in anybody's lifetime. It is potentially about trillions of taxpayer dollars completely reworking the water distribution in the western united states, it's about higher food costs, and it's about water cost increases and potential water rationing that's going to make it harder for (to bring this back around to the forum here) people in the southwest and California subtropics to take advantage of our otherwise somewhat favorable climates to grow anything besides cactus. That sucks. I don't want to deal with that. Nobody wants to deal with that.

Anyway, my central point here is that actual science that those stupid clickbait headlines are mangling are actually about slow but measurable changes that we can see (rising sea levels worse in some areas than others, decreasing snowpack decade by decade), and that are making areas with certain vulnerabilities have non-apocalyptic problems. And most of the people in here who don't believe in climate change are, instead of responding to that, talking about overblown apocalypse-like scenarios that they probably heard on the news ten years ago. That disconnect makes it hard to talk about current reality.

I'm willing to blame a lot of this disagreement on the news media, honestly. Left, right and center. They've all done a garbage job of communicating, or even intentionally obfuscated, what is ACTUALLY being measured and what people are doing their best to predict based on those measurements. Instead, they're all running stupid b.s. headlines and making fun of the other side's stupid headlines and framing difficult systemic issues (I don't think "just stop using petroleum, bro" is as easy or feasible as some people wish it was) as either nonexistent or simple to fix by just buying a Prius and turning off the water while you brush your teeth.

And just for the record, at no point did I actually have anything positive to say about that stupid racism news article that Calusa linked, even though you referenced me when making fun of it. I actually went and read that thing and the central idea was actually "hotter temps and systemic breakdowns of things like water supplies are going to effect poor people and people at the equator more, and there's a whole lot of darker-skinned poor people at the equator", which is kind of like "well no s*** sherlock". I don't want to debate that since I don't agree with a bunch of other conclusions in there either and it isn't relevant to what we do here except distantly so, I'm just repeating what is actually in there. Just because I believe in carbon-driven climate change based on the research made available to me, doesn't mean I uncritically accept every scrap of editorial ragebait that somebody slaps a dumb headline on. And that's probably true of everyone else in here who's expressed a belief in climate change in this thread, too.

TLDR: People in here who believe in climate change are mostly expressing concern about trends causing small but significant or expensive changes that mess up our ability to grow stuff, I don't believe that any actual scientist has ever said children are going to forget what snow looks like and so I don't think that's been disproven, the actual science is usually not saying what headlines are saying, and also the news sucks at actually informing people.

I'll be glad to respond calmly to anything that's an actual critique of anything I actually said as opposed to mockery, otherwise I'm pretty much done with this subject aside from congratulating Julie when the city fixes her issue. I've said everything I wanted to say.

Quote from: Aaron on May 30, 2023, 09:50:28 AM

You'd figure a bunch of misplaced tropical fruit growers would be excited about global warming

Not if you live in Miami-Dade County.  Also, it doesn't work out that you just seamlessly transition zones with no other issues

Agreed as a low desert resident. Higher winter averages may be great for most everything except the stone fruit but our average summer temps are already insane. More nights over 90 and days over 110 stress even the heat tolerant stuff.

I'm not convinced what Phoenix is going to look like overall as time passes though, even if warming continues; a lot of our local water comes from the monsoons as opposed to the Colorado and there's not a strict consensus on what higher global temps is going to do to monsoon season. But Vegas and other parts of the low desert are very possibly going to see some ridiculous water costs and/or serious rationing.

We can call it the BBCeeJay theory. Climate change and racism fueling stronger storms. I wonder if they've ever heard of the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, the strongest documented storm to ever hit Florida. Maybe Climate change was just ramping up in 1935 but racism was at its all-time high and this produced the strongest storm. Then Climate change died down for a bit, the Civil rights movement began, and the hurricane powers that be gave us a break until "the past 30 years or so" bro.

Yeah see this is exactly what I was talking about. Personal attacks, straw man b.s., not actually addressing anything factual or anything I said anywhere (or that ANYBODY said), trying to stress people out because that makes them feel like a big smart adult man or something. Pretty standard old-school trolling by somebody who abjectly failed to grow up after 14 or so, I guess, just codified in a political ideology.

Anyway, dwfl, you can keep going with your fanfiction shtick about me if it amuses you, or not, but honestly at this point it's just pathetic.

I may have to agree with shot and say cool this down, it is getting personal.

These calls for chill and decorum need to include a call for ceasing the blatant partisan political stumping or it's not going to work. A couple of comments up somebody's posting an article calling for voting for Trump in the title, and that other guy is yelling about the "Looney Left" again while linking to some editorial fluff as a straw man argument about what he believes people with an opposing viewpoint to be like as a whole. Can we ask people to stop that crap too? It doesn't have squat to do with growing anything.

It's exhausting. Nobody else is here for this political horses***; we're trying to get and share info to grow our plants. But it sure seems like a subset of folks uncritically think that their particular brand is the One Truth and everyone else is automatically an idiot, and they're not afraid to say it loudly and repeatedly. Meanwhile the fact is that there are a lot of people here from different countries and of different political persuasions (including apolitical) who don't appreciate their hyper-local partisan "us vs. them" b.s.

The "own the libs" brand of hot trash where everyone who disagrees with the groupthink must be a "leftist" (or whatever it is this week) is particularly exhausting to deal with. Especially when trying to discuss non-political, factual content.

And that's the core issue that occurred here: Hard science about climate topics (which very definitely relates directly to growing tropical fruit trees in marginal environments) is only political/religious for this one single group; to the rest of us it's non-political and the same as discussing anything else related to agriculture like soil science or pathogenic bacteria. And the rest of us might disagree but we generally do so based on actual evidence and are open to having our viewpoint changed.

Meanwhile, you could post a series of satellite data showing changes in storms off the Florida coast in the last thirty years or something, with no commentary whatsoever, just hard un-processed data, and some of those other people are going to respond to it like it's a political attack which is insane person behavior.

They can't discuss any of this in good faith, because they just won't respond to anything that could actually disprove anything they believe. At least, they won't respond with factual content. Political slurs, straw man arguments, yeah sure they'll do those. They're doing that in this thread. Look at it: these guys are having a discussion with themselves about how stupid their perceived opposition are and making up arguments for them that nobody here is actually making. And you won't find a single case of one of them posting any actual evidence as support for their beliefs, they're just yelling about how everyone else with a different viewpoint is stupid and agenda-driven while shoving their own agenda down everyone else's throats. You cannot have real civility or productive discussion when people are acting like that.

If you want actual civility that includes a variety of viewpoints (which is generally a good thing to have when trying to solve problems, and a lot of this forum is about problem-solving when it comes to a highly specific skillset) then these guys need to grow up and learn to keep their personal politics to themselves.

Looks like some folks didn't get Roblack's memo asking for chill, I guess. Sorry Roblack.

Quote from: shot on May 28, 2023, 12:08:02 PM

Freeze this thread!!!!!

Not until we all read this National Science Foundation funded paper that is of utmost importance to all of us!

https://reason.com/2016/03/07/this-university-of-oregon-study-on-femin/

Lol, yeah, nice, a strawman hit piece in a Koch-funded infotainment rag. Cause "news" the petroleum barons pay for is totally legit when it comes to stuff that directly impacts their business. Totally a legit source. What was that that dwfl said earlier, something about "agenda-driven"? Anyway.

EDIT: Y'know, this thread has been pretty depressing in terms of the quality of information and critical thinking that it turns out people are bringing to the table. Gonna have to take some of the fruit growing advice with three or four grains of salt going forward. At least folks like Pagnr and some others are around, I guess.

Much of the research used to promote the climate change scare has been proven by numerous respected scientific bodies around the world to be extremely flawed, skewed and downright fraudulent.

Oh yeah? Feel free to link this research by these "numerous respected scientific bodies". Go on, show some actual evidence.

And the doomsday projections from decades ago have never occurred.

And exactly which actual scientists were making doomsday projections decades ago that were to occur within this time period now? If you knew about the actual research, you'd know that the bulk of it from back then AND now put the major visible effects in either the second half of this century (2023 ain't halfway) or even later. I linked to some of it. Estimates have since been revised on some issues like the polar ice caps (which ARE receding faster than earlier projections, sorry to bust your bubble, but there are actual things happening that are measurable within a human lifetime).

Also, most of those "doomsday" scenarios I'm assuming you're talking about (like, what? A rapid release of frozen methane causing a rapid-in-decades five degree rise? Be specific, man) are discussed as hopefully-unlikely worst-case scenarios in the scientific community. Maybe you're confusing headlines you thought you read with actual science?

Seriously, how can you know that the science is bogus when you don't even seem to know what it actually is?

Sad to say, it's pretty plain to see that people have been spoon fed this climate doom and gloom for so long they accept whatever  comes across the television or the news feed on their phone, and will not listen to or accept any other scientific view, opinion or fact presented to them. They just keep slurping the Kool-Ade and repeating what they've heard.

You say this and yet everything you've said so far is free of anything that could be fact-checked, has no sources, and absolutely could be word for word something that you heard out the corner of your ear listening to Tucker rant while you fell asleep after dinner. It also doesn't directly answer anything that any of the rest of us have said. You're just giving us a straight party line.

You certainly haven't said ANYTHING that directly answers my point asking how it is all b.s. if the oil companies have internal research that shows the same effect curve as independent scientists. Do you have something for that or just gonna pretend it isn't real because it's inconvenient?

Also, if you read back up, nobody in this thread is doomsday-ing. There's been people discussing what amount to the effects of what would be really small changes. Miami's drainage is so crap that even a few inches of sea rise (something that is measurably happening right now whether your politics let you believe that or not: https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/rising-sea-level-impacting-south-florida/, the city is ALREADY having to take steps to deal with it: https://www.miamidade.gov/global/economy/resilience/sea-level-rise-flooding.page) could plausibly have effects on flooding that you over on a side with slightly higher elevation and more drainage wetlands wouldn't see as much of.

THINK for a minute and stop knee-jerk reacting to what you THINK people are saying.

Just wanted to thank CeeJay and johnb51 for fighting the good fight here, but it's unlikely to change any minds. For political reasons, many people have decided "academia is bad" and "big business is good" and until the leaders of their wing of politics finally accept what every good-faith scientist in the world has long since accepted, they will continue to spout the same denialist conspiracy theories their leaders are spouting.

I appreciate the sentiment. It's non-academic to me, my state's still in the midst of negotiations for water rights from MUCH reduced sources that we share with other states, for a start. Like, it's already here and biting those of us in the Southwest in the bum.

Also we're on a forum that is very heavily centered on pushing the boundaries of very climate-specific produce; everything we talk about on here is at enhanced vulnerability for any sort of environmental disruption. It boggles my mind that people who spend oodles of cash and personal time to *grow finicky tropical fruit* are sometimes so willing to toe a party line or just stick their fingers in their ears without doing some critical thinking on something that might impact their trees (which, you know, is something I don't like to think about either with the water situation but it's something that I have to weigh).

Yes, agreed drymifolia.

Getting back to the OP’s question.  Has there been any recent construction in your area?  It can affect the hydrology of the area. Retention ponds can drain the surrounding area while building up a nearby neighborhood can cause flooding in the older areas.

Good question. That was my (non-engineer) understanding of Miami's situation too, that the loss of draining wetland areas for non-draining concrete was the main driver of the local flooding and sea level rise was mainly an accelerant. Also, looks like precipitation HAS been notably higher than last year for the same months: https://www.weather.gov/mfl/mia_cliplot

EDIT: It's probably pointless to engage with people whose position boils down to "well it's not raining where *I* am so clearly it's not raining *anywhere*, and also my recollection of the weather in the place I live is more valid evidence than global satellite data" as if that were evidence or proof of anything, but for anybody else besides Calusa who's still on the fence on the whole climate change thing: Shell Oil (https://www.climatefiles.com/shell/1988-shell-report-greenhouse/) and Exxon (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063) both had internal research as far back as the 1970's that fossil fuel emissions were causing a CO2 buildup that would have effects before 2050. In fact, Exxon's own internal projections from that time period (https://www.climatefiles.com/harvard/assessing-exxonmobils-global-warming-projections-science-january-2023-supran-rahmstorf-oreskes-reference-documents/) are very close to independent scientists then and later, including those that Calusa dismisses as just wanting that gub'mint cash (a motivating factor that wouldn't have applied to Exxon's internal scientists, btw). Possibly closer, actually, since we're on track to hit 2 degrees of global warming (GLOBAL, so not just St. Petersburg or Miami) closer to Exxon's 1980's estimate than some more conservative models.

So yeah, we don't have to trust the scientists that people like Calusa thinks are biased for whatever reason, because the oil companies themselves came to the same conclusions as all those other climate scientists forty freaking years ago.

Also, ffs, Miami is 30-something feet lower in elevation on average than St Petersburg even before considering differences like water abatement or position in regards to weather or soil composition; it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that hey maybe the *lower elevation* coastal city might see effects sooner, assuming the Exxon and Shell scientists to be correct.

Hey thanks folks for the replies. I've changed up the soil medium a bit and also started adding some gentle balanced fertilizer to see if that fixes the issue.

Hey gang, I'm still learning to grow theobroma and I was wondering if anyone experienced is sure what's going on with this guy. Leaf edges and tops are browning slightly, slight yellowing. One of the new leaves just dropped off. Plant is in well-draining moist slightly acidic soil, very mild very infrequent fertilizer (I'm afraid of salt burn), neutral ph water. Plant has a mix of indirect natural light and indirect full spectrum grow light.



Thoughts?

Occasional bad winters over time would have winnowed out the plants that couldn't handle periodic freezes. Citrus lives for decades so one lost year at creating seeds isn't the end of that genetic line, but the plant freezing to death would be.

Great selection and glad to see all the survivors. I'm kind of wishing that I had left my campomanesia guazumifolia out a bit more this last winter to acclimate seeing how well the related did here.

Still wish I'd picked up a governor's plum when they were available last year in Nate's shop >.<.