Temperature Rising - A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself

Temperature Rising - A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself

www.nytimes.com

“The success of agriculture has been astounding,” said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a researcher at NASA who helped pioneer the study of climate change and agriculture. “But I think there’s starting to be premonitions that it may not continue forever.”

A scramble is on to figure out whether climate science has been too sanguine about the risks. Some researchers, analyzing computer forecasts that are used to advise governments on future crop prospects, are pointing out what they consider to be gaping holes. These include a failure to consider the effects of extreme weather, like the floods

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We can slug it out over arguing the validity of such bugaboos as "global warming" and "the greenhouse effect" but it is undeniable we have seen recently, for whatever reasons, extreme weather conditions that have effected our crop yields and sent food prices soaring. A moderate inconvnience in the US perhaps but our changing weather has turned-up the political climate and create or contribute to global instability.

Those price jumps, though felt only moderately in the West, have worsened hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was ousted in 2008 amid food riots, and anger over high prices has played a role in the recent Arab uprisings.

In 2007 and 2008, with grain stockpiles low, prices doubled and in some cases tripled. Whole countries began hoarding food, and panic buying ensued in some markets, notably for rice. Food riots broke out in more than 30 countries.

Improved crops strains that are more weather resistant and poorer nations taking serious interest in agrigultural production in ways they had never done before when food was cheap, these are ways we will pull ourselves together and come through these times but populations are increasing and before the end of this century our world population is expected to top 10 billion inhabitants.

Demand for more protein-rich foods and in greater quantities projections indicate food production may need to double in the coming years. With scarcity of new farmlands, temperatures rising, weather becoming more erratic coupled with water supplies tightening, that task is becoming increasingly difficult. Some feel there is hope that we can do this again, as we have done it before, though it will be a struggle.

“We’ve doubled the world’s food production several times before in history, and now we have to do it one more time,” said Jonathan A. Foley, a researcher at the University of Minnesota. “The last doubling is the hardest. It is possible, but it’s not going to be easy.”

www.nytimes.com
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reply to post by Erongaricuaro


improving crops is great, but doesn't that lead to unwanted things in our food. general care for our plants can help them with becoming resistant to certain things. companion planting helps with that. I don't buy any of my produce from the grocery stores anymore because for some reason they are making me ill. I firmly believe that organically grown no additives foods are better and healthier for the environment and our bodies as well.

Perhaps the main change comes about by the "thermal cycle" in the Earths Interior.

It is this phenomena, which drives continental drift, regarding the Earths Plates and produces Earth quakes, Volcanic eruptions etc.

The slight temperature changes may Not be entirely human driven, but also involves energy dissipation through the Earths Crust due to its internal thermal behaviour.

I think there is a flow of Energy through the Earths Crust, involving the diferential in temperatures above the Crust and the Internal temperature of the Earth.

What's your thoughts on this?

Excellent thread!

Human greed,and Human stupidity has surpassed any hope of feeding the world.
Pollution is mans greatest threat,and its downfall.

Instead of doubling the food supply ,we need to halve the intake.How is that possible? personally ,coffee and cigarettes is my way but for the general healthy? population then what better way to ration than times of war and depression.I hate to say it and see it but the only way seems to be war.

I get angry at this logic, it's a deliberate scarcity.Are you aware of just how much food is buried by farmers because they can't sell it for what it cost them and even worse they are not allowed to sell because of trade embargo's ? This is garbage,100,000's of ton are buried monthly because farmers have been legistlated and penalized out of existance. Fruit,veg and livestock.Learn where food actually comes from before using this as an excuse.It makes me sick at how farmers are losing their farms and homes.On average in my area at least 3 farmers shoot themselves a week and you never hear a word in the papers ! This is disgusting all this food going to waste while children are starving around the world.The goverment and their departments need their asses kicked.Throw the fat obese parasites out of office.Global warming is caused by all that hot air they blow out their asses.

reply to post by 13th Zodiac


I do agree with most of what you are saying but it’s a double edge sword my friend. I have seen it myself, the weather patterns are changing, each year getting worse. This year less than half of my seeds have germinated due to the weather. My water buts have now completely dried up and its early June. The weather patterns are changing and affecting plant life.

Peace.

Originally posted by 13th Zodiac
I get angry at this logic, it's a deliberate scarcity.Are you aware of just how much food is buried by farmers because they can't sell it for what it cost them and even worse they are not allowed to sell because of trade embargo's ? This is garbage,100,000's of ton are buried monthly because farmers have been legistlated and penalized out of existance. Fruit,veg and livestock.Learn where food actually comes from before using this as an excuse.It makes me sick at how farmers are losing their farms and homes.On average in my area at least 3 farmers shoot themselves a week and you never hear a word in the papers ! This is disgusting all this food going to waste while children are starving around the world.The goverment and their departments need their asses kicked.Throw the fat obese parasites out of office.Global warming is caused by all that hot air they blow out their asses.

That's exactly right but only part of the bigger picture. Just look at this BS with the newly bio-engineered E-Coli virus. Aparrently it affects cucumbers and other vegetables. Utter Rubbish. The food crisis in this world is caused by our governments who on their masters orders are trying desparately to irradiate the food (Fukushima), poison the food (E-Coli), poison the water supplies (Flouride and Lithium additives) and all to make way for the toxic Genetically Modified Monsanto Foods.

The governments need overthrown but to do that you have to overthrow the New World Order. And that won't be an easy feat when most of the population are still in dumb mode in believing things like God and Global Warming!!

NO!

If the planet was getting warmer, which it isn't. We would have increased plant life, and increased crop production. The fact is, the planet has been cooling for the last ten years, and we break thousands of cold and snow records each year for the last few years.

If anything is damaging our harvests, it's the cold snaps, and early-late frost.

The Earth is doing fantastically, it is continuing on it's usual cycle oblivious to the tiny fleas dancing around on it's back screaming about it's doom. Earth is a planet with constantly fluctuating weather patterns driven by solar, lunar, ocean, and orbital effects. It swings from warmth to glacial. We are living on it.

Originally posted by Tephra
NO!

If the planet was getting warmer, which it isn't.

Actually, it is. really, this fact isn't even up for debate; even the "denialists" are stuck with just trying to find some external, non-human cause to explain the rise.

We would have increased plant life, and increased crop production.

No, we wouldn't. The vast majority of our crops have been bred to exist in a cyclical cool-warm seasonal climate; that found in western Eurasia and most of North America. Minor shifts out of this climate result in crop failures; seeds don't germinate, the plants are sickly, yields are low, and that's assuming you don't even have to deal with aberrant weather.

For instance, sugar cane; it isgrown on a large commercial scale in Cuba. But it can't be grown on this scale in Florida, a mere ninety miles north. Why? because Florida is ever-so-slightly cooler. Similarly, you can't grow Iowa strains of corn in Mexico, because Mexico is too warm for those strains (ironic, given that corn originated in Mexico)

What a warmer climate would do is shift the climate zones northwards in the northern hemispere, and south in the southern hemisphere. That is, you could grow corn and peaches in Ontario, but the land we currently use for those crops would maybe be best-used for crops like sorghum and sugarcane.

Maybe this sounds like an ideal situation; "Hey, we can open new York wineries!" perhaps... Until you realize that the infrastructure and available land doesn't exist to move production north, and a complete overhaul of the agricultural systems in the south to a whole new roster of crops is... well, not likely to happen quickly

And again, this is all talking about temperature; total climate is very variable. Which leads us to your next point...

The fact is, the planet has been cooling for the last ten years, and we break thousands of cold and snow records each year for the last few years.

If anything is damaging our harvests, it's the cold snaps, and early-late frost.

First off, if by cooling you mean "nine of the ten hottest years on record" then sure. But I'll bet you don't mean that, since it's directly contradictory.

Second, weather is not climate. Repeat after me; WEATHER IS NOT CLIMATE. It's sort of like how a fever is not in and of itself a disease; the fever is caused by the disease. In the same way, the overall climate causes local weather events.

That means that while the global average is on the rise, the temperatures are not evenly distributed; If it drops five degrees in Canada, but goes up six degrees in Angola, then that is a total increase of one degree. You follow? In other words, just because you have a freak snowstorm in May doesn't mean that things aren't warming up on average.

And as you say, we're seeing lots of records broken, one after another - in parts of North America, it's record cold. In other parts of the world (Western Europe, for instance) it's record heat. Record floods in Pakistan. Record rains in Australia. Freak weather all over. Records are popping like bubble wrap on Christmas, and this doesn't strike you as maybe a little unusual?

Weather is caused by climate. Record weather events happening regularly around the world indicate something odd is going on with the global climate. Studies show that it is due to the global temperature rising. If you like you can argue about why this rise is occurring (don't expect me to listen to your inevitable avoidance of the simplest answer in favor of the most convoluted ones, though)

The Earth is doing fantastically, it is continuing on it's usual cycle oblivious to the tiny fleas dancing around on it's back screaming about it's doom.

How's about a little fire, scarecrow? See, nobody at all is worried that the earth is in any danger; it's a tiny lump of rock and water hurtling through a vacuum at 22,000 miles an hour, and the only thing between it and the gigantic nuclear explosion it twirls around, is a weak shell of magnetic energy. No, the earth, as in the planet itself, doesn't have to worry about anything going on on its surface. Its primary worry is that day in the far future when the sun will eat it and leave little more than an atomized cloud in its wake.

However, for those of us living on this speeding doom-rock in the bowels of stellar hell, conditions aren't looking too good. The planet is gfine, but the biota is in a bit of a fix.

Earth is a planet with constantly fluctuating weather patterns driven by solar, lunar, ocean, and orbital effects. It swings from warmth to glacial. We are living on it.

We also happen to be a species that functions best when the earth is at a "glacial" period; as are numerous other species around the world, given that "glacial" has dominated the climate for the last few million years. We're now coming to a period of almost no glaciation at all. So, maybe it's not a bad day for your average gazelle or pineapple, for for humans and the set of plants and animals we've been working with for the last ten thousand years or so, it's tough times ahead.

More global warming scare tactics, just in time for the heat of summer, a great way to push political agendas forward that will give the government even more control over the lives of the people.

Feeding the world would be easier, if so much agriculture (especially in the USA) wasn't being diverted to subsidized productions of bio-fuel and ethanol.

BILLIONS of tons of food are grown every year to make fuel... while the people of the world starve.

Humanity, either way, is no longer worthy of inhabiting this planet.

That problem will be fixed soon enough, in my opinion.

Again, manipuluative, striving to create the most negative, these people don't stop. The times in the past where food was abudnant were the warm ones. Its the ice ages you have to watch for. And heat from cosmic sources that might be extreme. However this article is about this small warm spell that hit for a brief period in a huge cold nasty year, wow.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


Wake up walking fox!

The seed companies are breeding out hierloom seeds, perhaps on purpose for the obvious reason of profit. And they will have farmers arrested for having hybrids from their seeds when the heirloom seed farmer's feild is next to Monasanto's field. Plus just use plain logic, how can ANYONE not notice the weather models can't get the temperature within 2 degrees very often on a daily basis in most locations they forecast. Ask yourself how they could not do that but seem to think they can get 100 or 200 years in predictions within 5 degrees?

I am one of those paid to be looking at pollution data for my livelyhood, and it is my opinion that we are not warming the atmosphere and if we were it simply HAS to be better than freezing to death in an ice age. Come on THINK for God's sake about going practically naked because it is so warm or looking for shelter from the wind and cold. I suggest that we are just in a small window observing a climate change that has included warming and cooling over long periods of time. Now whatever the recent warming data that was originally presented, it appears to have been skewed by being collected in UNSCIENTIFIC locations. Places like next to air conditions heat exhangers as well as in some reasonably normal scientific locations. Air conditioner heat exchangers near my monitors would be a deal breaker, period. No way I would accept that data as valid or I could lose my job and certainly my standing within my peers.

The simple fact that the so called scientists have had to take back comments from their theory they call a fact like the one the NASA head claimed about how the Antartica ice cap is shrinking, speaks volumes to us looking at numbers for a living. Some places will have more ice and some will start having less. Just as it has always been on the planet Earth. One more question you have to ask yourself is, do the other planets exhibit changes now? It appears to be YES, they are showing us new and amazing things we have never seen before, even x-rays is my understanding.

We are being used as money sources through fabrications being backed by both the media and lazy citizens. The sooner people like you realize it, the sooner we can all move on and FIX IT!

reply to post by 13th Zodiac

On average in my area at least 3 farmers shoot themselves a week and you never hear a word in the papers !

You wan't to provide anything with that statement?

Why don't you round up some death certificates of the farmers that 'on average' kill themselves every other day. I presume it would be a big news story and you could earn yourself some quick fame bringing it up.....

Walking Fox is in denial, and wrong on a couple of counts. Increased co2 and warmer temperatures would of course cause more lush and abundant foliage. Also, most plants evolved when the planet had higher concentrations of co2.

There is more than enough food already being produced to feed the world several times over. But, as mentioned, there are laws that prevent our surpluses from being distributed to the needy in our own communities and around the world.

Where does all of this "feed the world" nonsense come from?
Oh yeah, the globalists.
They are SO concerned, yet they allow international corporations (globalists) to rape third world countries and devastate their local economies, not to mention often the health of their environment.
They are hypocrites. If they call themselves "humanitarian", you can bet they are anything BUT.
The New York Times as an educational tool on climate and global health?
Please.

Originally posted by TheComte

There is more than enough food already being produced to feed the world several times over. But, as mentioned, there are laws that prevent our surpluses from being distributed to the needy in our own communities and around the world.

Not to mention the factions that squawk loudly any time there are food handouts to the poor or needy in the US - especially if any of those receiving the handouts did not originate from the US.

The article mentions developing disease-resistant and other improved strains of crops. Not unpredictably some here have immediately jumped on Monsanto GM's but there are other ways to accomplish this, by cross-pollenization, hybridization, etc. Can you say Luther Burbank?

I am sure in the day there were those who felt the russet potato would spell the end of mankind. Perhaps they are not far from wrong in that regard. I mean, McDonald's serves tons of russet fries and that is having a questionable effect on mankind.

It seems to me, a non-horticulturist, that Monsanto's aims with their GM's are much more sinister than Burbank's methods. Some suggest it is possible eating GM food may begin to modify humans in horrifying ways, could be. To a great extend Monsanto seems to be out to place their copyright on the foods we eat and if a farmer with an adjacent field happens to get his next-year crop cross-pollenated by the wind or birds and bees they want to take that farmer to court for infringement on their brand. I know if I were a judge I would think to employ a "birds and bees" judgement for Monsanto.

I think Monsanto is seeking to employ the Microsoft model to their GM's. Rather than just selling their copyrighted seed brand they want to license the grower to use their seeds. They may be missing the boat on a greater opportunity here in that they should be licensing the consumer to eat their products. In a short time with cross-pollenization, if they wisely choose to let that go unabated for a time, they can be nearly certain virtually every American will at least unwittingly consume their product and could demand across-the-board compliance for paying a license fee to them. Anyone not paying that fee could be taken to court and have a specimen demanded of them that the Monsanto inspectors could examine to prove the person had unlawfully consumed their products. Go to these extremes or not I still reserve for them a birds and bees judgement.

reply to post by Erongaricuaro


I think we should not over look that even when things were "good" we had nearly a billion hungry people in the world.

Now we are noticing that our climate is changing, (human caused or natural cycle who cares, it still affects our crops and us) demand for food increasing due to a continually rising population, and increased wealth in two of the worlds most heavily populated nations, and bio fuels, lets not forget those. We are also noticing problems with pollinators, (bees) and some possible problems with GM crops.

Some of us have long said, "we need to control our population or it will bite us in the butt one day." And people have been laughing at that for as long as people have been saying it. But its true. We cannot control nature. Climate change can happen at any time, and has time and again in the worlds history. Plants, bees, lots of factors are out of our control. The one thing we CAN control is how many of us there are. And a smaller more mobile population has a much better chance of not only surviving, but having a really GOOD quality of life.

But we wont act as a team, and slowly whittle our population down by consciously decreasing birth rates. (Except in first world nations where that is already happening, voluntarily) And first world governments are combating the natural instincts of the people by increasing immigration, and globalizing labor.

And this is no big surprise to anyone. The US government has known or at least suspected this for a long time. The Pentagon even commissioned a study on it called, "Imagining the Unthinkable."

bloodbankers.typepad.com...

The report explores how such an abrupt climate change scenario could potentially
de-stabilize the geo-political environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even
war due to resource constraints such as:
1) Food shortages due to decreases in net global agricultural production
2) Decreased availability and quality of fresh water in key regions due to shifted
precipitation patters, causing more frequent floods and droughts
3) Disrupted access to energy supplies due to extensive sea ice and storminess
As global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around the
world, leading to two fundamental strategies: defensive and offensive. Nations with
the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving
resources for themselves. Less fortunate nations especially those with ancient
enmities with their neighbors, may initiate in struggles for access to food, clean
water, or energy.

The report is a worthy read, for those not too lazy to do so. A lot of things (FEMA camps, domestic military forces and stronger borders to the north) make better sense when you realize your government is anticipating mass starvation and the civil unrest that will likely come with it.