Earth may be 2.4 degrees Celsius warmer by 2020, potentially triggering global scrambles for food supplies, according to a new analysis
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Editor's Note: This story from Climatewire is informed, in part, by a press release that was subsequently retracted by the online news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The study itself has not been retracted. It presents an aggressive scenario for future warming under climate change that many climate scientists question. We will publish an Observations blog post later this afternoon to offer more background on the issues surrounding this story.
Earth may be 2.4 degrees Celsius warmer by 2020, potentially triggering global scrambles for food supplies, according to a new analysis.
Work from the Universal Ecological Fund, the U.S. branch of Argentina-based nonprofit Fundación Ecológica Universal (FEU), sketches a somber portrait for world hunger by the end of the decade.
Rising temperatures will slash yields for rice, wheat and corn throughout the developing world, exacerbating food price volatility and increasing the number of undernourished people, the report warns.
It projects that food demand will substantially dwarf available supply.
The group drew upon existing climate and food production data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the World Meteorological Organization and other U.N. agencies to draw its conclusions.
Chief among its findings, UEF said, is that if the planet continues on a business-as-usual path, temperatures may rise at least 2.4 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels -- or 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit -- by 2020. Crossing a 2-degree-Celsius climate threshold is commonly considered dangerous.
The level of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, which was 284 parts per million in the preindustrial era, tallies more than 385 ppm today. By 2020, it could reach 490 ppm, cautions the report. Carbon concentrations that high are associated with a global temperature rise of 2.4 degrees Celsius, according to IPCC estimates.
Potential timing gap
Still, it's not certain how quickly the planet would heat up if the planet had that concentration, said climate scientist Brenda Ekwurzel, with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"If you look at Earth as an oven, by hitting 490 you turn the dial, but it could take a while for the oven to reach the temperature," she said.
Climate scientist Osvaldo Canziani served as the scientific adviser on the study, going over it "line by line," said Liliana Hisas, the executive director of the Universal Ecological Fund and author of the report. Canziani was unavailable for comment.
While not every part of the planet is expected to experience adverse effects of climate-linked impacts on agriculture, the report's numbers suggest that by 2020 there will be a 14 percent deficit between wheat production and demand, global rice production will stand at an 11 percent deficit, and there will be a 9 percent deficit in corn production. Soybeans, however, are expected to have a 5 percent surplus.
To meet the needs of a world that is expected to have an additional 890 million people by 2020, the global community would need to increase food production by about 13 percent, the report states.
Josef Schmidhuber, a senior policy analyst at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, questioned some of the underlying assumptions for regional production figures and said that this UEF study also fails to consider other external factors that could affect these results.
"The only rationale for this to hold would be for climate change to have such a strong impact on the non-agricultural economy that people would lose purchasing power and thus would be so poor they couldn't afford the food they need to meet the requirements," Schmidhuber said. "Food security is much more than a production problem -- it reflects above all a lack of access to food and a lack of income," he said.
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21 Comments
Add CommentDon't mention that much of the world's agricultural productivity depends on petroleum for industrialization and mechanization as well as soil fertilization and irrigation of water, often from irreplenishable fossil water aquifers - the same water and fuel required by the still increasing largest human population that has ever existed. Not to mention any effects of global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm confused by this article. The latest IPCC report suggests a maximum temperature rise of 0.2C per decade in the near future. This is a factor of ten less than this article says. Perhaps I'm not the one who is confused.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor gods sake does anybody at SCIAM read even one contrary article? You could start with this-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110119/ts_afp/climatewarmingfood_20110119163335
The question is just where you put the baseline. Here it is at pre-industrial averages temp while many others use the mid-20th century average as baseline.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat will be a much bigger issue considering that the crude oil price will rise significantly over the next couple of years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEither way, no food shortage if we start growing our own food. Regardless of any climate change, if you're growing your food indoors, you have no issues. www.wegrowhydro.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo Scarface and Wegrohydro,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScarface, Sciam has access to far more than just the mainstream press at their disposal for researching their material. Maybe it's you who needs to look at additional sources seeing as how nearly every journal publication on climatology in the last ten years has supported global warming as real... If you look hard you can find dissenters, but oddly most of them publish in oddball journals... One was published in a taxidermy journal (incidentally the editor of said journal had to step down after publication because serious questions regarding his integrity were asked that he couldn't answer)... The point being, is you're the one cherry picking your data, not sciam.
For you Wegrowhydro, kindly produce an indoor growing set up that third world countries could afford to use on an industrial scale when most of them don't even have reliable water supplies. You remind me of the organic farming nuts who go on about saving the world with organic farming and ignore the harsh realities of economics. Which is to say, it takes far more labor, and is far less productive than modern agricultural methods. I'll grant it's better to the soil and produces more nutritious food, but tell that to all the people who starve to death because food production plummets.
Sheesh people, wake up and smell the famine. The fact is food production is already dropping measurably due to degraded soils. Adding unpredictable climatic changes to the mix is far more likely to be bad than good. Geneticaly modified crops MIGHT be able to make up the difference, but wingnuts like you have already convinced half the world they are poison. I always applaud weenies who encourage other people to starve while they live out their lives safe in their first world homes and cities... NOT.
Lastly, and this one is back at scarface, what is the harm, exactly in being cautious about climate change? Downside? Well there will be some economic hardship. Upside, even if global warming doesn't materialize (although that's the way to bet), how does independence from oil do any harm? It actually increases national security. Having spent the majority of my time in the military floating around off the coast of unstable oil producing nations I think being independent of their product would be blasted nice.
to E-boy, while I see your point coming from way atop your high horse, I think you should take your own advice and do some reading and research. Companies like EZ-Clone have a 1440 site hydroponic unit in Africa, which they are using to feed starving tribes with 100's of pounds of tomatoes a week. Either way, glad to see people like you who are enthusiastic about the issues. While I understand there are other issues and "growing your own food" has costs associated with it, I don't believe that continuing to buy and eat GMO food will help anything. I'm on your side my friend, I agree that we should keep an eye on global warming, but don't be so quick to think that those of us who like to watch what we eat are all "Organic farming nuts" as you say.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou make good points all the way around. But I tend to subscribe to the old axiom "follow the money". Man made Global warming is at best something to carefully watch for, examine, and proceed cautiously. As we write huge sums are going to organizations, and researchers who blather on and on that doom is near. When everyone jumps on a "crusade" bandwagon, my BS alarms go off.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd to add to that explain what happens once we get the government to stop the subsidies to farmers to not grow crops? This article predicts a 9% drop in corn and 11% drop in corn. We pay for both to not be grown in the US. When famine is in play we lift the ban and voila, food. This seems like no emergency at all. Also, isn't the world pop supposed to flatline aroung that time?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes they may and then again they may not...?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBLAH BLAH BLAH
I think it is very likely there will be a food shortfall that is some combination of increased population and decreased productivity, related to climate change and peak oil, in the not too distant future. But the odds of getting to a 2.4 K warming in the next 10 years seems pretty low to me based on other works and the fact that we'd have to triple to current amount of warming that we've had in the last ~100 years in the next 10.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is getting warmer faster,
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:726/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:72
But I can't see the line stretching that far up in the next ten years. I'd SWAG it at sometime between 2050 and 2100.
It is amazing that no matter how poor the track record of these alarmists is, how inaccurate they are in their use of data (2º per decade instead of .2º) they are still getting funding & air play. I guess we could look at the reports like this in SCIAM in a similar way to the way we look at astrology charts in a serious news paper. Trouble is this once proud scientific journal seems to have contracted an alarmist virus that infects a large proportion of the publication. Diminishes the credibility of everything it publishes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore information about this story at the link below-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/19/aaas-withdraws-impossible-global-warming-paper/
Anyone notice this?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/19/false-climate-change-study
2.4C by 2020 is 2.4C in nine years isn’t it? Does Scientific American not check the facts? Crop yields are increasing. They will continue to increase with the rising C02 levels and increased warmth. Until the time that this planet enters another glacial. Then crop yields will crash and the human population will be decimated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs "pre-industrial" the same as saying "during the little ice age?". Can you find a more biased set of dates for comparison?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe bias around here is getting ridiculous.
That's bleeping hilarious. Does SciAm print retractions? I think this one is already overdue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will add my share of comments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA) Scarface is correct- follow the money. This "green house effect" come global warming is where the money is. All govt's are dumping billions if not trillions into alternative energy which at best is also a farce - but some are making the big bucks playing along.
Why is Solar energy a farce? COSTS TOO MUCH FOR TOO LITTLE ENERGY! Inefficient piece of junk. Heaven forbid someone tries to justify those monstrosities call Wind turbines - even more inefficient and extremely costly.
B) Of course we will have a food shortage because the bucks are in growing fuel not food. DUH!
C) TOO many mouths to feed. I think that is where the solution is. Now when someone comes up with a solution to overpopulation, then we can solve the food shortage problem.
People live in houses or shacks, doesn't matter, they also pollute. So if we grow more animals for meat means more land for them and more contaminants. If we all go vegetarian, we need more land for that. Where will the people live? Best bet is under ground, under the crops and animals.
With Internet, everyone can work and school from home (underground) and work their own crops on their roofs (above ground). No need for Air-conditioning, massive transit problems are eliminated, roads can be turned into crops, all of that is a plus to solving the food shortage and energy problems.
I know most of you want to over think the problem and find expensive solutions that wont work after all. Though it gives you all mental ejaculations, these ridiculously costly ideas just postpone the inevitable- doomsday.
Meh, a piece of debris made it past the filters; it happens once in a while, humans are not perfect. Does that mean that everything that makes it past the filters is debris? No.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can make a big deal out of it if your want to, but I'd be careful about casting stones.
And yet, there is hope. Let's examine wheat, for example. As things warm up, those types of wheat grown in Kansas and Nebraska will be grown farther north, say in Nebraska and South Dakota. Types of early wheat now used in the Dakotas will grow in North Dakota and Canada, and so on. The good news is that some of these soils get new crops that weren't grown on them before, and hopefully we can put better soil management practices.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real trick here is to figure out what we can grow in those areas where it is too warm to grow the wheat we used to grow. An obvious entry is wheat that has been modified to better tolerate the heat, whether conventionally or genetically (no genetic engineering discussions, please). Other crops may be suitable as well; we can look to the south to see what might be viable.
The same holds true for many crops. Sure, there are obstacles, but I believe that they are not unsurmountable. I've learned that if there is enough incentive, people will find a way.
The farmer that sees declining yields will hear about a more head/drought tolerant wheat that the ag dept. or a neighbor is using, and he's riding it to the bank! Or said farmer hears about another crop that is doing well and decides to plant that next season. We may end up eating more corn tortillas and fewer wheat (flour) tortillas, but it _can_ work out.