Fauquet said cassava is most likely to perish from the increase in pests and pathogens linked to warmer and wetter conditions. Mealybugs in Thailand and white flies in Africa are significant threats, with the latter serving as a vector for plant viruses.
"There will be a lot of outbreaks of diseases associated with climatic changes," he said, "in every part of the globe, for every crop."
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
See what we're tweeting about
13 Comments
Add CommentInteresting disconnect between the article and the title. The title indicates tangible reality while the article talks about the very wide range of uncertainty. Why must the editors create such a disconnect? Difference between journalistic politics and scientific inquiry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWill the warmists every use the real planet and its atmosphere for analysis instead of their fantasy planet in their computer models? So far, your models have predicted heat from the last decade that never appeared. So it is likely the next 50 years of "predictions" are just as wrong because the warmists still don't accept their theory is flawed. What is sad is it might even be true but the warmists are so caught up in their religious like fanaticism that the planet is warming and only caused by CO2, they are probably missing something legitimately wrong. So then they take their ridiculous models and look around the planet for "proof" they are right (not look at all data to determine if their theory is right or wrong, just right) and they find "erratic" weather as if the weather has not been erratic before the industrial age. Then we get to the outcomes, the constant claim that somehow all the water on the planet will disappear causing drought everywhere, yet at the same time flood everywhere, roast everything, freeze everything, make up your minds warmists, how is Armageddon going to happen this time?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only thing the author didn't do was tie the title to the reality of what uncertainty and - more importantly - change means to farmers in these areas. Can you imagine having to move your entire farming operation up or down in elevation? Moving at all could mean an inability to continue farming for many of them or it could be conflict over decreasing arable land either at higher altitudes or over low altitude land that is in use for other crops or already spoken for. The author should have delved into what that means for these farmers. Uncertainty and change /are/ hard times for the vast majority of human beings on this planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are really creating a straw man argument Priddseren. You are taking a bunch of climage changes which are going to happen in isolated spots on the planet and saying that global climate change has to be only one of those or none of those. There will be places where water will become scarcer and some where it will be more abundant. There will be places where the temperature will go down and places where it will go up. There are places where the temperature will not go consistently up or down but will fluctuate more wildly than ever before. It is actually possible that some places on the planet will be come vastly colder, i.e. the front range of the Rocky Mountains would get much colder if the higher temperatures in the Pacific cause the Jet Stream to turn south. I'm sure the ski areas would love that but there would be many impacts on people living in the area.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCalling it Global Warming is deceptive and was a mistake on the part of the scientists who originally coined the term. It's really Global Climate Change and also Global Climate Instability brought on by an overall increase in the planet's temperature.
One thing to think about is that the number of times insurance companies have had to call in the core insurers (the mega insurance companies that back up the smaller companies) has increases by an order of magnitude in the last 10 years. The number of billion dollar payouts for catastrophic events has hit record levels. Related to Global Climate Change? Well, ask yourself what else could it be. And also ask yourself if we should maybe err on the side of caution. This is after all the only atmosphere and only planet we have at the moment. Kind of reckless to experiment with it without regard to the consequences.
Are you suggesting that all climate models (the majority) that predict warming due to GHG's are flawed? Being a skeptic is one thing - broadly rejecting a global body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence and branding (apparently) anyone concerned about this issue as a "warmist" demonstrates a lack of understanding at best, or maybe a penchant for highly improbable conspiracy theories?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRemember that climate models are designed to give us the approximate details and timing of future climate change based on present and predicted levels of GHG in the atmosphere. While these details are important (and subject to error and variables), they are not the be all and end all of predicting climate change, i.e. the consequences of de-sequestering huge amounts of carbon and returning it to the atmosphere are very well understood, if just from the basic physics of the heat trapping properties of the element.
Again, the details are necessarily complex and messy but the overall story is very easy to comprehend...I am also curious whether you discard ocean acidification as a fiction as well? As an "Acidifist" I can tell you that decreasing ocean PH levels are an existential threat to civilization (as we know it) and reason enough alone to decrease mankind's carbon footprint.
The same old strawman about models are the basis of AGW is here again. The topic rarely matters ... the echo chamber only has a few oft-repeated notes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the key finding:-
"To farmers in tropical regions, climate change has become a tangible reality."
The rest of Priddseren's gibberish shows as little knowledge of the issues as his opening statement.
What disconect? Hard times ARE comming, like the title says. The article states that we just don't know for sure how bad it will be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore non-science rambling from the warming cultists at 'Unscientific American'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAndy Jarvis says...nothing in particular but twist this into another extremist headline with no connection to any tangible research.
priddseren: "make up your minds warmists, how is Armageddon going to happen this time?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, it's amusing how the GW groupies can endorse a dozen scenarios from the same variables
How can you tell when a Warmist is lying?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHis or her lips are moving.
Several months ago I put up a comment on how a local debate on development of a mine was hijacked by an Eco-corporation whose representative stated that he would say or do whatever necessary, including lying, to make sure the mine wasn't built. Several posters here slagged me and said that the Warmists don't lie.
Yeah... right.
Typical pro-pollutionist misuse of an old worn-out joke joined at the lips to a rambling piece of idiotic rubbish.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo wait, your unsubstantiated claim drew ridicule from others and you're wining about it? Give me a break. Produce the quote and I'll look it up. Produce the name of the "Eco-corporation" (ooohhhh! Scaaaary!) and I'll look that up. You see, this is how a debate is SUPPOSED to work. You bring facts, I look them over and either concede points to you or debunk them. Then I bring facts and the process repeats until we boil down to the irreconcilable differences, if there are any, and agree to disagree on those.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, I can't even get an acknowledgement that CO2 traps heat out of you deniers. We can't even take the FIRST step in having a debate! So don't start pouting when people call you out on what you actually are: either a paid misinformer of the fossil fuel industry or a closed-minded conspiracy theorist that has a total disregard for the facts!
It is even more amusing to watch deniers adhere to mutually exclusive arguments, so as:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate sensitivity is low; Lindzen's iris effect hypothesis of clouds proves this.
Climate has changed wildly in the past; therefore, it is not our fault this time.
Which is it? If the climate inherently stable, then the library of studies indicating large changes in the past are all wrong.
CO2 is a trace gas; there isn't enough if it to have any effect.
CO2 is saturated; there is so much of it that any more will have no effect.