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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Climate change may have begun to hit humans where it hurts—in the stomach. Research has shown how changing temperatures have influenced wheat yields in Montana over the last 60 years. And now catastrophic fires sweeping Russia give a taste of what climate change may bring to that bread basket.
Millions of hectares of this year's wheat crop have been lost to the heat, drought and fires this summer in Russia—prompting U.S. wheat prices to double in a matter of days. Fears of a shortage led Russian and Ukrainian officials to impose controls on wheat exports. And that means higher costs for staples like bread or cereal.
Fortunately, global wheat stockpiles are in better shape than during the last food crisis in 2007 and 2008. The supply may allow the world to dodge a repeat.
But climate change means that the risk of such fires—and the catastrophic floods that have affected 20 million people in Pakistan—continues to increase. In fact, the two events were connected by the same weather system, leading some scientists to blame human greenhouse gas emissions. That may or may not be the case with this individual weather event, which generally cannot be tied to global warming. But scientists will likely have to be very clever to assure that vital food crop yields keep pace with the coming climate of change.
—David Biello
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10 Comments
Add CommentNo worries, all we need to do is make Soylant Green...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe climate has been changing since we've had a climate, and nothing humans do can alter that. We simply have to learn ways of adapting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe writer left out, I'm sure innocently, that crop yields will be larger do to the fantastical, elevated co2 levels.
Not according to reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlobal Warming has actually reduced plant growth.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=67725
"When will you stop beating your wife" is the nature of this debate where the climate change proponants take the attitude that credible opponents are somehow guilty. This magazine threw up some pschobabel last week about it. These nuclear industry moles won't have a serious debate, backed out of one at the last minute. Read about how Cameron chickened out at the last minute. If they are soooo sure, why would they back out?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"James Cameron, Mega-Climate Creationist, Chickens Out On Debate"
http://tinyurl.com/2446mww
Corn -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this" that crop yields will be larger do to the fantastical, elevated co2 levels."
Except for rice production -
" Rising temperatures during the past 25 years have already cut the yield growth rate by 10 percent in several locations.
As nights get hotter, as predicted with climate change, rice yields will drop.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the report analyzes 6 years of data from 227 irrigated rice farms in 6 major rice-growing countries in Asia, which produces more than 90 percent of the world's rice.
"We found that as the daily minimum temperature increases, or as nights get hotter, rice yields drop," said Mr. Jarrod Welch, lead author of the report and graduate student of economics at the University of California, San Diego. "
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS273924329920100813
Australia's "breadbasket" -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe challenges facing Australia include managing scarce water resources at a time of rapid population growth, and ensuring food security in a continent with only six per cent arable land. Because of its importance, and its precarious condition, the Murray-Darling Basin could become a flashpoint.
The government's climate change advisers have warned that agricultural production there could fall by 92 per cent by 2100. .............. Thanks to minuscule water flows, the Murray has not reached the sea since 1996, and only continual dredging has kept the mouth open.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/on-the-frontline-of-climate-change-2056322.html
I'm not saying the climate isn't changing, just that we can't control it. just look at the Wisconsin deglaciation. How can that "global warming" period be explained other than natural earth cycle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen "scientists" reach consensus, it's no longer science, it's political...much like Scientific American.
jimmywat:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe answer to "When will you stop beating your wife?" is easy: "I don't know. I haven't started yet.
PayAttention - IMO, a few experiments do not outweigh the historical data. I'm not looking it up, but as I understand in past epochs with very high CO2 levels (including those that eventually produced all the oil & gas) production of the Earth's biomass increased dramatically. Water is also critical to plant growth, and what grows where can change dramatically and perhaps inconveniently, but I think that plants could generally benefit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally? Has the temperature warmed to the point of reaching th flash temperature of wheat? I don't think so. Further, global warming would not produce drought, quite the opposite, it would result in greater evaporation and more rain.
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