NYT: A Jolt to Complacency on Food Supply

[GliderGuider]

A Jolt to Complacency on Food Supply

“The negative impacts of global climate change on agriculture are only expected to get worse,” said a report earlier this year from researchers at the London School of Economics and a Washington think tank, the Information Technology and & Innovation Foundation. The report cited a need for “more resilient crops and agricultural production systems than we currently possess in today’s world.”

This may be the greatest single fear about global warming: that climate change could so destabilize the world’s food system as to lead to rising hunger or even mass starvation. Two weeks ago, a leaked draft of a report by the United Nations climate committee, known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggested that the group’s concerns have grown, and that the report, scheduled for release in March in Yokohama, Japan, is likely to contain a sharp warning about risks to the food supply.

The tone is strikingly different from that of a report from the same group in 2007, which discussed some risks, but saw global warming as likely to benefit agriculture in many important growing regions.

“Our past successes in agriculture have lulled many of those in decision-making positions into a false sense of security,” said L. Val Giddings, a fellow with the Washington think tank and a co-author of its report. “It’s been so long since any of them were actually hungry.”

It's all about the food. More AGW => less weather stability; less stable weather => lower food production; less food production => higher prices; higher prices => increasing social instability and unrest; more social instability => more failed states. And that's the bedtime story version of events. The upper bound on the error bars is into famine territory by 2050.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. The Ruling Elites have a simple plan for catastrophic climate change:

Die Peasants Die.

[GliderGuider]

2. I don't think it really matters if there is a plan for it or not.

It will happen anyway.

Personally, I don't think there is any such coordinated plan in place. The 0.1% don't really care if we live or die, but I don't think they're rubbing their hands with glee as the climatic equivalent of Zyklon-B is tipped into the atmosphere. Their eyes are elsewhere.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. They've known for 40 years what was coming.

And they have done fuck all about it.

My guess is that hundreds of millions if not billions of people will die as a consequence. Shouldn't we at least note that nothing was done on purpose?

Oh and I do think there is a plan, a plan for a much smaller human population and an automated robotic infrastructure.

[pscot]

3. Like a drunk deciding better booze

will solve his problem.

[hunter]

4. Typhoon wreaks havoc on agriculture with over a million farmers affected

Over one million farmers in the Philippines have been impacted by Typhoon Haiyan according to the UN.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says that hundreds of thousands of hectares of rice have been destroyed.

Coconut plantations which are a big earner of foreign currency were said to be "completely flattened".

Fishing communities have also be severely affected with the storm destroying boats and gear.



The Typhoon destroyed many coconut plantations such as this one near Guiuan

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24913139

We'll be seeing more like this...

[hatrack]

6. I remember seeing a denier post on Climate Central that "It wasn't a Cat 5!"

"We'd be seeing trees knocked over and snapped off it if had been!!! FREEDOM!"

Well, oops.

[Bigmack]

7. Thanks for the post, GG

Depressing as it is….. Alas, NOT surprising. Been reading this lots of places, and what to say, what to do?????? It's OBVIOUS that the ruling elite could GIVE A FUCK, but IN THE LONG RUN, nobody's gonna escape the consequences of this. As that noted philosopher John Prine noted YEARS ago, "Things are what they are and ain't what they ain't." And they're gonna be what they're gonna be. Alas. Ms Bigmack

[GliderGuider]

8. I've been thinking about the ruling elite a bit today.

I don't think there is any particular plan on the part of "the elite" to survive while we peons get snuffed or anything like that. I think they are just as much victims of their instinctual blindness as the rest of us, and every bit as as beholden to the operation of the Lotka/Odum Maximum Power Principle. It's not the people that are the problem, either in the elite or among the masses. If anything, it's the self-reinforcing system they (and we) help to implement - a system that has been gathering steam for the last 10,000 years and is now nearing the top of the hill just as the fire in the engine begins to falter.

The 0.1% didn't know the shit was going to hit the fan any more than the rest of us did. Probably less in fact, since there is much stronger motivation for them to keep the blinders in place than there is for us - they have more to lose. They thought the gravy train was going to keep going up forever, because that's what the court astrologers (aka economists) told them - it's what they wanted and paid to hear. I suspect they are more devout believers in the religion of growth than any of us plebes - we are "getting" the messages of stagnation and incipient de-growth much earlier than they are.

[TreasonousBastard]

10. No, there isn't, really. After all...

what's the point of being the ruling elite if there's no one left out there to rule? Holed up behind walls with a private army fending off the starving hordes? There's always Milton's observation of the choice of serving in heaven or ruling in hell, but the choice is rarely so clear.


What's missing in all the discussion is that it's really a game, with the "ruling elite" just being better, or luckier, players than the rest of us. Their goal is not to beat us into submission, but to get points over their competition, and we are the ants as the elephants battle.

The Midwest is already running out of water as the underground sources dry up. The Southwest is returning to it's eternal desert condition. There is no good news at all unless we find a way to desalinate sea water. And we will find a way, when it is the last choice, and we will find the money to pay for it.

[LouisvilleDem]

9. I thought the IPCC had backed off

...from claims that global warming would increase extreme weather events. Not sure though. Anyone know what section talks about that?