Read here. The rice yield study is quickly becoming infamous for borderline science fraud, or would that be incredible science incompetence? Like so many recent journal peer-reviewed studies advocating the threats of global warming, this one on rice yields is flat-out awful. Even laypersons can easily understand this study's major failings and politically driven AGW stupidity. This type of science is effectively undermining the public's trust.
"But whichever dataset they used, they are comparing a two year series of yields against a twenty-six year trend. I’m sorry, but I don’t care what the results of that comparison might be. There is no way to compare a two-year dataset with anything but the temperature records from that area for those two years.....As a result, they are comparing the Chinese results to a theoretical trend which has absolutely no relationship to what actually occurred on the ground.....they base their predictions for the future on a single computer model of the regional changes. It is widely agreed that computer climate models are not very good at predicting regional changes, so that part of their study seems very weak. I am most mystified by their use of the 26-year temperature trend. Why not use the actual year-by-year changes in the local temperature? The rice is responding to actual temperatures, not to a mathematical trend … so why not compare yields to actual temperatures? So once again, we have questionable methods used with uncited data to give alarming results."
Update: I think we found the underlying reason why so many of today's "scientists" are such incompetents, and have lost the faith of the public. ;-)
(Note: We should mention that this analysis was done by one of the true WUWT stars, Willis Eschenbach. The other star who provides timely and valuable insight is Steve Goddard. Either one is always a great read and informative.)