Let them Eat Asparagus
'Due to warm temperatures', Lower Austrian farmers report 'exceptional asparagus harvest'
Translation, emphases, and bottom lines mine.
‘Exceptional’ Asparagus Harvest Delights Farmers
Via ORF Niederösterreich, 8 April 2024 [source]
Due to the high temperatures, the asparagus harvest in Marchfeld began in mid-March this year—earlier than ever before. Three weeks later, the local asparagus farmers are taking stock and speak of an ‘exceptional’ quantity.
Whether green or white asparagus—the quantity harvested so far this year in the Marchfeld and in the region around Stockerau (Korneuburg district) is ‘exceptional for the time of year’, says Werner Magoschitz, chairman of the Marchfeldspargel [Asparagus from the Marchfeld trade] association. The Pannonian climate in the areas is helpful here.
The vegetation is three weeks ahead of previous years. Temperatures were already particularly high in February. This also had a positive effect on the asparagus, they say. Because on hot days or with lots of sunshine, an asparagus shoot grows five to six centimetres per day.
Foreign competition
Due to this development, small quantities of local asparagus were already available in supermarkets in mid-March. Now there will be more step by step, says Magoschitz. The farmers are happy about this and hope to be able to outdo asparagus growers from abroad.
Intermission: there was a prior short piece in the same state news outlet, which I also reproduce here. It was linked in the above article, and it provides a bit ‘more’ information.
Asparagus Harvest Started Earlier Than Ever
Via ORF Niederösterreich, 23 March 2024 [source]
Due to the warm weather, the asparagus harvest has already started in the Marchfeld region this year—’actually earlier than ever before’, local asparagus farmers say. At the same time, they want to keep up with the foreign competition and are using special techniques.
‘We have a very, very early year’, says Werner Magoschitz, Chairman of the Marchfeldspargel association and an asparagus grower himself, in an interview with noe.ORF.at:
There were already very high temperatures in February and the asparagus needs a heat sum of 500 degrees. That means we measure the temperature every day, add up the daily average, and when we reach 500 degrees, the asparagus has grown through 40 centimetres. That’s already the case this year.
According to the chairman, asparagus has been harvested since 15 March; the asparagus harvest in Marchfeld normally starts at the beginning of April. ‘The demand for the first asparagus is of course always very high, and we also have to make sure that we are on the market early’, says Magoschitz, who is not at all inconvenienced by the early asparagus harvest. Asparagus from Peru, for example, is already on sale.
Local Asparagus Available in Small Quantities
Local farmers also use special techniques. ‘If you drive through the Marchfeld, you can see that the asparagus fields are all covered, especially the white asparagus. The white asparagus is covered with a black and white film to keep it dark so that the head doesn't turn red. But to make the asparagus arrive earlier, we also need a transparent film. We have to put this over the black film to simply increase the heat. This means that the soil simply heats up faster’, explains the chairman [take-away: if you’re an asparagus grower, ‘heat’ is good].
Small quantities of local asparagus are already available in food retailers. The farmers are expecting a larger quantity of asparagus over the next few days. ‘Unfortunately, there has been morning frost on the green asparagus over the last few days and some of it has frozen off. But it will also be harvested in the next few days’, says Magoschitz.
Bottom Lines
I vividly remember the many stories of gloom and doom as February 2024 was yet another ‘anomaly’. What does ‘the Science™’ have to say?
Here’s the monthly ‘climate report’ for February 2024 by Geosphere Austria, the gov’t-funded weatherfrogs:
Temperatures in February 2024 were dominated by very high to extremely high temperatures. There was hardly any frost in the lowlands, in some places the air temperature never fell below the freezing point. Below 500 metres above sea level an average 0-degree [Celsius] limit was reached in mid-February on five days. This corresponds to a a deficit of 75 %. There were no days on which there was continuous frost, so-called ice days, below 1500 metres above sea level. In an average February, there should be four such ice days below 500 metres, five from 500 metres to 1000 m, and between 1000 to 1500 m above sea leaves, there should be eight ice days. days. With an average of two ice days between between 1500 and 2000 metres, the deficit of 80 % was was also exceptionally high. Above 2000 m above sea level, the average deviation of 30% was not that extreme.
The ‘report’ is a bit longer, but I’ve highlighted the one sentence that gives away the game. Shall we enquire what ‘an average February’ is?
According to the news release that accompanied the above ‘climate report’, this is the reference period:
Compared to the 1961-1990 climate period, February was 6.4 degrees above average in the lowlands and 5.9 degrees above average in the mountains.
This is all we need to know. Of course, the ‘climate report’ and the news release abound with horrifying graphics, such as the one below:
As you can see in the two top images (the left column shows deviations of temperatures, precipitation, and sunshine from 1961-90, the right column from 1991-2000), the was burning hot, and I’m saddened to report that Austria has gone up in flames in February 2024. It is no longer. RIP.
Oh, wait, there’s more from the news release:
‘Never before in the 257-year history of measurements has a month been so far above its multi-year average’, says climatologist Alexander Orlik from GeoSphere Austria. ‘February 2024 was 5.5 degrees above the average for the 1991 to 2020 climate period in Austria's lowlands and 5.0 degrees in the mountains.’
We note that this paragraph is followed immediately by the paragraph I cited before the illustrations:
Compared to the 1961-1990 climate period, February was 6.4 degrees above average in the lowlands and 5.9 degrees above average in the mountains.
Which periods are we comparing now? I get it that it was kinda ‘warmer’ than usual, but we do get a third useless comparison:
Another comparison also shows how unusual February was: ‘February 2024 was so mild that it would rank 16th even in the series of the warmest March months in the 257-year measurement history’, says climatologist Orlik.
I have absolutely no idea why they do such ‘comparisons’, because, for the sake of the argument, if I compared my 12 year-old self to my 13 year-old self, we’d note that the latter would be ‘stronger’. Would that sound like a reasonable comparison to you? If not, well, you’re not a ‘climate scientists’, I suppose, and your opinions on that one are—just that.
At this point, two more things:
Wouldn’t it be (more) reasonable to pick a period before the alleged human-caused climate-altering emissions associated with industrialisation as the reference? I mean, in terms of methodical rigour, it would appear to me that, to make one more outrageous comparison for the sake of the argument, if you’d come down with any given infectious disease at, say, age 50, it wouldn’t make sense for doctors to simply ignore whatever occurred before you got sick to determine its proximate causes and formulate treatment options?
Alas, there are no data to support these comparisons, for that would mean to go to the ‘old’ measurement record, derived by then world-class scientists with chemical methods, which is virtually summarily dismissed by the ‘modern’ cultists around Mr. Keeling and his ilk:
Ernst-Georg Beck, a German spare-time scholar, actually looked at the studies from the 19th and early parts of the 20th century that were dismissed from 1958 onwards:
The results are staggering: there were peaks of more than 400ppm at least twice in the past 200 years (1820s and 1940s), if memory serves.
This all begs the question—how much CO2 in the atmosphere is actually ‘anthropogenic’, i.e., human-caused. It is the topic of a recent paper by Skrable et al. (spoiler alert: not enough to induce ‘catastrophic human-caused climate change’):
Check out the comments the authors received by people who felt, apparently, outraged that they had not been cited by the authors. Talk about cult-like in-vs-out-group behaviour.
To round off this piece, I shall quote, once again, from abbot Julius Hörweg’s (1784-1847) extensive diary. He resided mostly in Zwettl Abbey, which is also in Lower Austria, hence it’s close enough by way of comparison:
The months of March and April [1811] were mostly bright, and some days were as hot as in summer. Around 20th April everything was already green in our area - Waldviertl - and the trees were already getting leaves, which never happens here at this time of year.
On 10 May, corn ears were already appearing.
On 14 May there would have been unbearable heat if it had not been tempered by a northerly breeze and such heat lasted the whole summer.
As regards 1817, Hörweg wrote the following:
The winter this year was so mild and light through the months of January, February, March and partly also in April that one could not really speak of a winter at all. The thermometer has seldom been below the ice point; and when even if there was sometimes a little snow flurry, there was no snow; the ground almost always remained thawed. That's why we didn't know how to get ice for the ice pit.
On 8 February a letter arrived here from Vienna stating that the weather there was already very pleasant, so much so that young hares and wild geese could be found in the area around Vienna, and that the stags were already beginning to shed their antlers, which is unheard of at this time of year. All the newspapers were full of this mild weather.
More and citations of these quotes may be found here:
Remember: if stuff happens today, right now, there’s no amount of historical or other experiences, including evidence to the contrary, that will ever be deemed sufficient by ‘the experts™’ to contradict the claim ‘this has never happened before’. It has.
Moreover, to return to the subject at-hand, this spring’s asparagus harvest in Lower Austria, it would seem that warmer temperatures and less frost, coupled with higher amounts of ambient CO2, might actually be good for plant growth.
So, join me tomorrow when we’ll discuss the scientific evidence for the ‘claim’ that more plant food (CO2) results in more ‘green stuff’ (plant growth).
As a teaser, watch this de facto ‘official’ clip by NASA:
Better harvests? Oh, what a scourge of humanity!
Climate cultists should move north of the Arctic circle and try their hand at farming, or at least move to 1000ft above sea level, away from large bodies of water.
Bonus points if they move to an area with moraine soil.
Reminds me of the semi-hysterical reports of archeologists finding human settlements which are revealed by the melting ice.
It never seems to occur to the reporters that these finds indicate that temperatures must have been higher in the past or the settlements would not have existed at all.