{"id":275129,"date":"2023-08-23T12:28:34","date_gmt":"2023-08-23T10:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=275129"},"modified":"2023-08-23T12:28:53","modified_gmt":"2023-08-23T10:28:53","slug":"wrong-vermont-public-vermonts-weather-isnt-getting-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=275129","title":{"rendered":"Wrong, Vermont Public, Vermont\u2019s Weather Isn\u2019t Getting Worse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From ClimateRealism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Linnea Lueken<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A recent article on the news and commentary website Vermont Public, titled \u201cVermont farmers say they need more gov\u2019t help as climate change causes more extreme weather,\u201d\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0claims that recent weather events which damaged crops and infrastructure in Vermont and elsewhere in the world are due to climate change. This is false. There has been no increase in extreme weather like flooding, cold snaps, or other natural disasters, globally or in Vermont. For as long as humans have grown crops, extreme weather events have impacted them, but production data from Vermont show that their main agricultural products, maple syrup and dairy products, have enjoyed significantly increased production even as the earth has modestly warmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Vermont Public piece describes \u201cunpredictable weather\u201d faced by Vermont farmers this year, which resulted in crop and equipment losses, threatening farmers\u2019 incomes. These weather events included severe flooding of the Lamoille River in early July, and a cold snap in May that damaged budding fruit trees. Vermont Public writer Lia Chien interviewed local organic farmers, who claim there is desperate need for government assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chien explains regarding flooding this year that in Vermont, \u201cover 200 farms and 17,000 acres of farmland were affected by the floods, totaling over $12 million.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her numbers may be accurate but provide no evidence that climate change is making flooding in Vermont worse or more frequent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As explained in the\u00a0Climate Realism<\/em>\u00a0guest post by ecologist and geologist Jim Steele \u201cThe Dishonest Climate Fear-Mongering Headline of the Week Goes to @USATODAY,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Vermont has always been prone to severe flooding throughout the region\u2019s history. Steele quotes a Vermont Historical Society paper that explains \u201c[r]arely does a year elapse without a flooding event of a significant magnitude being reported in at least one of Vermont\u2019s fourteen counties or perhaps statewide, making this the number-one hazard across the state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several occasions in Vermont history saw extremely bad floods, including \u201cThe Great Flood of 1927\u201d which resulted in the Winooski River rising 40-45 feet above its normal level. Vermont\u2019s unique topography makes it prone to these kinds of events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The organic farm owners interviewed for the Vermont Public story have their farm in the valley of Johnson, Vermont. For the\u00a0Johnson section of the Lamoille River,<\/a>\u00a0National Weather Service data on historic river crests show that the flood of 1927 caused the record height at 27 feet, nearly 100 years of global warming ago, with the flooding from this year coming a distant second at 21 feet. The next records are from 1995 (19.98 feet), 1973 (17.23 feet), and 2019 (17.28 feet). Down the line of historic crests, there is no trend of increasing flooding events for the Lamoille. (See image below)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The article also mentions that the cold snap from this spring was bad enough that \u201cU.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack\u00a0approved Gov. Phil Scott\u2019s request for a disaster designation for those affected by the freeze<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, cold snaps are not becoming more unpredictable. As discussed in\u00a0Climate Realism<\/em>\u00a0posts\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>, and\u00a0here<\/a>, for example, the recent modest warming has produced longer growing seasons with fewer late season frosts. But, that does not mean that on occasion unexpected late season frosts will never occur now, as they have in the past, due to local weather patterns. There are just less likely to occur with regularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Vermont Public post worries over production of apples and other fruits, Vermont itself doesn\u2019t even make the top ten list apple producing states. The honor of biggest apple producer is held by\u00a0Washington state<\/a>, which generally has a milder climate than Vermont.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vermont\u2019s main staple crops are maple syrup and dairy products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current trend in dairy farming in Vermont is a shift away from the smaller farms, and towards fewer larger farms,\u00a0as evidenced by<\/a>\u00a0a declining number of farms but increasing number of cows-per-farm, producing around 300 million gallons of milk produced annually. Despite climate change, the records show no decrease in production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maple syrup is the product most often cited as threatened by climate change, but even that has been seeing increasing yields in the United States and Canada over time, as most recently explained by\u00a0Climate Realism<\/em>\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>. 2022 was a\u00a0record-breaking year<\/a>\u00a0for Vermont maple syrup production, despite climate alarmist fears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article encourages moving to more organic farming and the use of solar and electric equipment, and other \u201cclimate friendly\u201d farming techniques to combat carbon dioxide emissions to supposedly stop climate change. However, organic farming produces lower yields, and wind and solar technologies make farms more susceptible to vagaries of weather and extreme weather events, not less, regardless of climate change.\u00a0Climate Realism<\/em>\u00a0has pointed this out\u00a0many times.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that weather is not getting worse, and that the production of Vermont\u2019s top agricultural staples have increased, refutes the claim that that Vermont\u2019s farmers are more threatened than ever because of climate change. Smaller organic farms in river valleys will always be at risk of catastrophic flooding, especially in a state like Vermont which is uniquely prone to severe floods. Although farmers may need some help getting back on their feet after a rash of bad weather events, there is no evidence of a long-term worsening trend for such events in Vermont. There is value in Vermont Public covering the plight of small farms in the state, but wrong to blame climate change for their recent misfortunes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Linnea Lueken<\/a>https:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\/\/www.heartland.org\/about-us\/who-we-are\/linnea-lueken<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent article on the news and commentary website Vermont Public, titled \u201cVermont farmers say they need more gov\u2019t help as climate change causes more extreme weather,\u201d\u00a0\u00a0claims that recent weather events which damaged crops and infrastructure in Vermont and elsewhere in the world are due to climate change. This is false. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":275138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691822017,691822016],"class_list":{"0":"post-275129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-the-great-flood-of-1927","10":"tag-vermont-public","12":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0autumn-in-vermont-484270482-f5e7a0d7cf9a4a8fbc2fdd096a870525.jpg?fit=2121%2C1414&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-19zz","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":268902,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=268902","url_meta":{"origin":275129,"position":0},"title":"The Atlantic: \u201cVermont Was Supposed to Be a Climate Haven\u201d","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"23\/07\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"In 2020, a\u00a0ProPublica\u00a0analysis identified Lamoille as the one county, across the entire United States, that could be most protected from the combined effects of climate change, including sea-level rise, wildfires, crop damage, and economic impact. But that was before the floods.","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0default.d202aca8.springfield1927flood.jpg?fit=1170%2C780&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0default.d202aca8.springfield1927flood.jpg?fit=1170%2C780&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0default.d202aca8.springfield1927flood.jpg?fit=1170%2C780&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0default.d202aca8.springfield1927flood.jpg?fit=1170%2C780&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0default.d202aca8.springfield1927flood.jpg?fit=1170%2C780&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":268112,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=268112","url_meta":{"origin":275129,"position":1},"title":"Dishonest Climate Fear-mongering headline of the week goes to USA TODAY","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"18\/07\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Similar catastrophic claims were suggested throughout the click-bait media-verse from the NY Times, the Washington Post, CNN, etc, etc Rarely does the media provide a scientific historical context, preferring to weaponize weather","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0Riverfront-Cape-Girardeau-Mo-flood-Mississippi-River-Mo-April-20-1927.webp?fit=1200%2C755&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0Riverfront-Cape-Girardeau-Mo-flood-Mississippi-River-Mo-April-20-1927.webp?fit=1200%2C755&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0Riverfront-Cape-Girardeau-Mo-flood-Mississippi-River-Mo-April-20-1927.webp?fit=1200%2C755&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0Riverfront-Cape-Girardeau-Mo-flood-Mississippi-River-Mo-April-20-1927.webp?fit=1200%2C755&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0Riverfront-Cape-Girardeau-Mo-flood-Mississippi-River-Mo-April-20-1927.webp?fit=1200%2C755&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":276216,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=276216","url_meta":{"origin":275129,"position":2},"title":"Were The Vermont Floods\u00a0Unprecedented?","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"29\/08\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"So, no Guardian, this year\u2019s floods were not unprecedented. 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Devastating downpours dumped two months of rain on Vermont in two days. Smoke from Canadian wildfires choked East Coast skies, causing the worst air quality on record for some locations. 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