Where were you when they told us the world as we know it is over?

[HomerRamone]

http://agonist.org/told-us-world-know/

The documented risks presented include:

✓ Food insecurity linked to warming, drought, and precipitation variability;
✓ Death injury and disrupted livelihoods in low-lying coastal zones … due to sea level rise, coastal flooding and storm surges;
✓ Severe harm for large urban populations due to inland flooding;
✓ Systemic risk due to extreme events leading to break down of infrastructure networks and critical services;
✓ Loss of rural livelihoods and income due to insufficient drinking and irrigation water and lower agricultural productivity particularly in poorer regions; and,
✓ Loss of marine and terrestrial ecosystems and the services and livelihoods that they provide

What’s left?

<...>

Food production will be flat or reduced by 2% every ten years through 2100 while the demand for food is projected to increase by 14% a decade until 2050. Reduced food supply results from degradation of productive land and a lack of water to irrigate crops. Those factors flow directly from increased average temperatures and extreme weather conditions.

The association between food deprivation and social instability has been demonstrated again and again in recent history. Food riots are typically based on shortages due to price spikes, poor planning, or temporary crop shortages.

Imagine food riots in response to a permanent reduction in food production.

Further, imagine that there are no outside resources for relief...

<...>

When you hear pundits talk about how we’re all responsible, that represents a misinformed opinion or propaganda by the elites that enabled this most dismal future.

The failure to reach consensus until the apparent point of no return required deliberate denial of the facts as they emerged. The climate change deniers who argue from no scientific basis other than the title of scientist somewhere receive vast support from those who have no desire to clean up cars, factories, toxic waste production, etc. The media that claims that there are two sides to every issue are in the service of the financial and political elite that can only imagine a world with shrinking resources and wealth. Through their lack of imagination, denial, and negligence, they’ve made their vision come true.

It’s their fault.

END

[louis-t]

1. Oh, I thought you meant when I found out bush was

'selected'.

[NoOneMan]

2. Thats pretty minor compared to billions starving and global instability

[louis-t]

8. He contributed heavily to those things.

Especially global instability.

[NoOneMan]

9. Not really even remotely of the same magnitude

Sometimes I don't think people have a clue what's right around the bend. Otherwise, they'd be out in the streets over climate change.

Bush was a bad, terrible asshole president that led people to die with lies and stupid wars. Sure. Climate Change is an extinction level event potentially that will cause pain Bush couldn't even dream up in his sweetest slumber.

[HomerRamone]

10. and this thread has gotten but 9 replies and THREE recs in ite first 12 hours nt

[NoOneMan]

12. People are terribly uninterested in reality

If it can't have a catchy slogan and can be spun as a political win, what point is there to talk about it? Itll be interesting to see all these irrelevant political paradigms of the last century melt away in the coming decades. Some people won't be left with anything to believe in, beyond what they find on their dinner plate.

[HomerRamone]

4. you must know me ~(_8^(I) nt

[On the Road]

5. The Projections on Food Production

are, to put it mildly, at odds with history:

The association between food deprivation and social instability has been demonstrated again and again in recent history.

"The world is producing three times as much food today as in 1960; the population is two times what it was in 1960, so there's 41% higher food production per capita."

[img][/img]

"During the period when world population was doubling, from 1960 to 2000, no one would have thought that prices for food and non-energy commodities would be falling, and end up at about half in 2000 of what they were in 1960."

"The shift from large families making low investments in their children to small families making high investments in their children is a fundamental dimension of economic development during this period."

[img][/img]

http://bit.ly/oU100M

[NoOneMan]

7. You do realize these projections are based on climate change?

Right?

There comes a point where it doesn't matter how much chemicals you pour into the ground if the temperatures aren't quite right. And future water insecurity is not going to help. Do you think we are going to magically have a second green revolution simultaneously with climate change?

[magical thyme]

11. food production increased dramatically due to unsustainable practices and

changes that cannot be replicated, along with an exceptionally long period of exceptionally good climate.

You get so much increased production through pesticides, before the pests become resistant and overwhelm plants that have lost their natural defenses.

Monoculture ultimately leaves large swaths of crops more susceptible to diseases and resistant pests.

Auto-tilling the soil increases yields in the short run, but has cost massive loss of top soil. Like, several feeet deep of top soil blown away.

California agriculture is dependent on water pumped in from the Colorado, which is declining.

And the list goes on. Blowback is a bitch, and it is coming.

Earlier "predictions" were that warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels would increase yields. The reality is that planting becomes increasingly unpredictable. Extended droughts, sudden temperature drops in the wrong part of the season, heavy rains at the wrong time of year, will increase and will hurt production. Oh, and reality has shown that increased CO2 perversely apparently helps weeds and intruders such as poison ivy far more than the cultivars that we actually eat.

Large portions of the US will see increasing drought. Without water taken from the Colorado River, which is declining, large portions of California's agricultural regions would be desert. And coastal areas of Asian countries that provide their rice will be gone.

I lost a large portion of my seedlings when I hardened them off during a week that was predicted to be cloudy with occasional showers -- ideal weather to keep them from baking and drying out. Instead, we had frequent deluges and high wind and unexpected cold. The babies that weren't flattened by the wind were flattened by the deluges, drowned and their remains eaten by snails in short order.

What I question are the population growth predictions. There has to be a point where malnutrition will prevent conception. That certainly happens in the wild.

[Spirochete]

6. At home - listening to an REM album... n/t