Higher Atmospheric CO2 May Leach Up To 15% Of Nutrients From Staple Grains

[hatrack]

t started with a seemingly off-the-wall question in a 2004 global change biology class at Southwestern University. The discussion was about how increases in carbon dioxide, a contributing cause of global warming, lead to a decline in the amount of proteins in some plants. "How would rising CO2 levels affect the Atkins diet?" asked Holly Allen, then an undergraduate majoring in environmental studies. The Atkins diet, still en vogue then, emphasizes proteins over carbohydrates.

Searching for the answer led to a study, to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Global Change Biology, that provides a serious answer: Protein levels in staple foods like rice and wheat could decline by as much as 15 percent by the year 2100. Those results could have far-reaching consequences for nutrition, especially in developing countries.

"Wheat and rice are really major ingredients of the food aid we deliver worldwide in some 80 countries," said Bettina Luescher, a spokeswoman for the United Nations' World Food Program. Protein is a key source of nourishment, according to the World Food Program. Climate-change scientists say the carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, currently about 380 parts per million, could jump to between 540 and 958 parts per million by the year 2100.

Allen, a classmate and Southwestern biology professor Max Taub pored over more than 200 previously published studies to determine how the higher carbon dioxide would affect nutrient levels, winnowing out studies that relied on carbon dioxide levels above or below the 2100 predictions.

EDIT

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/01/21/0121protein.html

[phantom power]

1. I do not like this game anymore.

[pscot]

2. It didn't have to be this way

Which is what makes it so very sad.

[GliderGuider]

3. Some people think this has been unavoidable for 10,000 years.

Given our biological/psychological structure, overexploitation of the planet and outgrowing its capacity to house us was inevitable. It's ironic but not surprising that the development of agriculture started that process and a breakdown in agriculture will probably put a stop to it. Human history will be bookended by sheaves of wheat.

[hatrack]

4. "The biotic potential of any species exceeds its carrying capacity" - William Catton,"Overshoot"

This even surfaced (in modified form) in Margaret Atwood. In Oryx & Crake, Jimmy's roommates are constantly arguing about how it's been game over ever since the invention of agriculture.

Interesting.

[phantom power]

5. "It may be that biospheres ... maximize the rate of exploration of the adjacent possible."

"if they did it too fast, they would destroy their own internal organization, so there may be internal gating mechanisms. This is why I call this an average secular trend, since they explore the adjacent possible as fast as they can get away with it. There's a lot of neat science to be done to unpack that, and I'm thinking about it."
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman03/kauffman_index.html

One beautiful conjecture is that this process proceeds in a state of self-organized criticality, which means that the distribution of overshoots and collapses is scale-free.

And all that that implies.

[pscot]

6. It seems to me that that's the issue:

do we have free will, can we control ourselves, or are we like lemmings and rabbits, locked into a biologically determined march to oblivion. Catton's view is essentially deterministic. WE're headed over the cliff. I think most Americans would argue, like Red Green, that that we can change, if we have to. Unfortunately, by the time we arrive at some sort of global consensus, it will be too late (394 ppm and rising faster than anybody expected). The world is ending, while we sit around arguing about it.