Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumHow will climate change affect food production?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/19/climate-change-affect-food-production?intcmp=122Dried sunflowers in a village near Sofia, Bulgaria. Heatwaves in Europe, some as hot as 40C, have ruined the harvest in many regions of the country. Photograph: Vassil Donev/EPA
Food is one of society's key sensitivities to climate. A year of not enough or too much rainfall, a hot spell or cold snap at the wrong time, or extremes, like flooding and storms, can have a significant effect on local crop yields and livestock production. While modern farming technologies and techniques have helped to reduce this vulnerability and boost production, the impact of recent droughts in the USA, China and Russia on global cereal production highlight a glaring potential future vulnerability.
There is some evidence that climate change is already having a measurable affect on the quality and quantity of food produced globally. But this is small when compared with the significant increase in global food production that has been achieved over the past few decades. Isolating the influence of climatic change from all the other trends is difficult, but one recent Stanford University study found that increases in global production of maize and wheat since 1980 would have been about 5% higher were it not for climate change.
All else being equal, rising carbon dioxide concentrations the main driver of climate change could increase production of some crops, such as rice, soybean and wheat. However, the changing climate would affect the length and quality of the growing season and farmers could experience increasing damage to their crops, caused by a rising intensity of droughts, flooding or fires.
ag_dude
(562 posts)have very bright agricultural futures.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)It depends on how the loss of the Arctic ice cap affects the polar jet stream. That was probably behind the drought mess in the US this summer, and it's going to keep getting worse as the ice cap dwindles.
I used to think that Canada and Russia would fare the best under global warming, but it's not the change in average temperature that's the real problem, it's the change in atmospheric dynamics. Those will be affected most strongly in the temperate and northern regions due the polar amplification effect. This affects weather by changing the jet stream.
eppur_se_muova
(36,227 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I used to think that Peak Oil would break civilization, and that Climate Change would be a medium term effect. I now strongly suspect I was wrong. Climate change impacts on the food supply are here now, and will get worse as time goes on.
It's going to be a convergence of problems that breaks civilization: problems with the food supply, energy supply, water supply, money supply and governance in the face of massive refugee movements - all coming to a head over the next decade or two.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)I don't doubt we're in trouble, but on the other hand, I just don't see massive amounts of refugees being much of an issue for us in the U.S., or the rest of the Americas and Australia for that matter, for several more decades. However, though, there does exist the possibility of significant strife in certain parts of the world over
refugees in the next 2-3 decades or so....including maybe even some countries in Europe, unless the far-right gets the heavy smackdown most of us here at DU would hope for(they may not, though.).
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Breakdown problems in Europe, Asia or Africa are as significant to me as problems in the USA - not least because they will eventually make their way into North America in some form. The USA has the potential for two problems with climate refugees. One is from Mexico, the other is internal. Tens of millions of people could begin to move out of the center towards the coasts if this drought becomes a semi-permanent feature of the continental climate. You might not call them "refugees" for political/propaganda purposes, but that's what they would be.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)CRH
(1,553 posts)After only one year of drought, the Guardian is reporting today a 14% hike in food prices in England, because of the global mass slaughter of livestock, farmers can't afford to feed. The article says it will push food prices higher than they have ever reached. The following link is the article cross posted from LBN forum.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014236568
Last week GG posted a study predicting food riots in 2013. Seems the first effects of climate change are right on time.
Gregorian
(23,867 posts)It's the same with the Republican mindset.
Just one example that may seem unrelated- I am using a realtor who almost never returns calls. She has miserable communication skills. When she was a child her mother was married to one of the Merry Pranksters who died at a young age. And the mother shipped this child all over the world in order to get her out of her hair. As a result this realtor is acting out her childhood/parent relationship with everyone. This is highly common among most humans, by the way. I've spent five years trying to tell her how simple her life could be if she only did a couple of things. But her skull is so thick she just can't hear me. So she suffers. But my real point is that she just doesn't see that what she is doing is causing the problem. She looks everywhere but the source. And that is just what we're doing with global warming. We're engineering this, and sequestering carbon dioxide that, and restricting things that are tiny fractions of the problem. But the worst part is that on an individual level people don't see that their tiny acts are all contributing to the problem. It's a problem of consciousness.
It all stems from not being educated AND conscious of what we are doing and how it affects the environment.
Now, after all I've been saying about population, for years on this forum, I want to say something that is in direct conflict. I believe that even though our biological reproductive process is exponential, and we exploded from a billion people into what we have now, it took this essential size in order to facilitate a collective intelligence required to even see we had a problem.
Part of our problem was necessary. But now we're in an emergency, and we had better stop complaining about how distasteful the solutions are and get going with them. One of those solutions is birth control. We can't continue arguing while the ship is sinking.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)Even some small changes today could delay catastrophic changes tomorrow. I'm afraid money speaks far too loudly to too many to find time to reflect on what they actually are accomplishing.
CRH
(1,553 posts)CRH
(1,553 posts)but the krill population down 80% in the Antarctic will flow down through the chain effecting fish and mammals alike. Safe bet, eventually the ripples will effect humans.