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Malingerer Donating Member (39 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:05 PM
Original message
Wacky idea..
Ok this is just wandering thought of mine.

There are thousands of repercussions to global warming... if in fact it is/or will happen.

One benefit would be the change in agriculture. Most crops, corn for one, would grow better in warmer, wetter (frequent rain) and higher CO2 conditions. The benefits from improved agriculture may enable us to feed lots more hungry people.

Thoughts, rebuttals, support? This is just one tiny facet of a huge global change...
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mattclearing Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:07 PM
Response to Original message
1. This has nothing to do with Rove and will be ignored.
:D
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tk2kewl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:07 PM
Response to Original message
2. it's my understanding that those areas will shift latitude but
not necessarily become more abundant.

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salinen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:08 PM
Response to Original message
3. Wonderful
Edited on Fri Jul-15-05 03:08 PM by salinen
as we contract more diseases from elevated temperatures and more humid world, we will eat more corn.
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bloom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:30 PM
Response to Reply #3
12. genetically modified Monsanto corn...

China OKs import of Monsanto Roundup Ready corn

http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2005/07/11/daily8.html


Genetically Modified Corn Study Reveals Health Damage andCover-Up

http://www.organicconsumers.org/Monsanto/spillbeans0605.cfm
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justinsb Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:08 PM
Response to Original message
4. Less rain
higher sea levels from melting polar caps. Less rain + warmer temperatures will mean crop lands drying out.
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teach1st Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:09 PM
Response to Original message
5. Good thought! We'd need the extra nutrition...
...'cause we'd be burning up more calories running from the rising oceans.

On the other hand, ALASKAN SURFING! Dude!
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Kraklen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:09 PM
Response to Original message
6. More rain =
more soil erosion. More soil erosion means less crops.
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eyepaddle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:18 PM
Response to Original message
7. This has been pretty thouroughly addressed and
shredded a thousand ways from sunday breakfast. Plants in the rainforest grow taller and faster with increased CO2, but with less density and less overall health--this is also likely to affect agriculturally important plants.

See The Heat is On, by Ross Gelbspan for pretty effective demolition of this point, which was raised in a movie John Sununu was quite fond of called The Greening of the Earth (or something quite similiar--it's been a few years since I read the Gelbspan book)

Oh yeah, let's just state it out in the open Climate Change IS IS IS IS IS IS IS IS IS IS IS IS IS IS IS IS happening--there is no "maybe it will", or even "it will"--it IS occuring. There is a very strong scientific consensus on that point. No serious climate researchers differ on that. The only debate is what are the precise outcomes and mechanisms of the change. Some areas will be warmer and drier, some warmer and wetter, some even colder and habitats will change.

The off chance that increased CO2 will helps us "feed lots more hungry people" is vastly outweighed by the other concerns.
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MadisonProgressive Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:20 PM
Response to Original message
8. Better ag in some places, worse in others
Everything will be unpredictable and unstable.
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0rganism Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:22 PM
Response to Original message
9. That will be of great condolence to the millions losing their homes
Hope you didn't invest in beachfront property. On the other hand, corn futures might just go through the roof.

*sigh*
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The Doctor. Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:23 PM
Response to Original message
10. Funny...
That's exactly the same garbage you hear from industry schills paid by energy companies to debunk Global Warming.

Follow the money, and you will find that the only people who still argue against the fact of Global Warming and the certainty that we're contributing to it are directly funded by energy company coalitions.

With this array of talent for hire, the fossil-fuel industry has beep able to lay a heavy smog of suspicion over the light of science. Even before release of the I.P.C.C. report, Frederick Seitz, chairman of the Marshall Institute, wrote an Op-Ed piece for The Wall Street Journal headlined "A Major Deception on Global Warming." Echoing a Global Climate Coalition report published three weeks earlier, Seitz insisted that the final version of the l.P.C.C. report was not the version approved by contributing scientists, that it was in fact a "corruption of the peer-review process" that censored greenhouse skeptics.

The l.P.C.C. chairman and others involved in the review strongly -- and credibly --denied Seitz's charges (which didn't stop The New York Times from running a story on the "controversy" or pro-oil politicians from demanding that Congress hold hearings on the l.P.C.C. Benjamin Santer, of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the highest-ranking U.S. scientist involved in the report's preparation,wrote a letter to the Journal that read in part, " actions reflect an apparent attempt to divert attention away from the scientific evidence of a human effect on global climate by attacking the scientists concerned with investigating the issue."

If the Op-Ed was part of an industry attempt to slander and discredit the bearers of bad news, it wasn't the first such attempt. As early as 1991 an organization called the Information Council on the Environment (I.C.E.) was formed to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)." Run by a Washington-based P.R. firm, Bracy Williams & Co., I.C.E. was financed by the coal-mining and utility companies that make up the Western Fuels Association. Its science advisory panel consisted of Dr. Robert Balling, Dr. Sherwood Idso and Dr. Patrick Michaels, three leading "climate skeptics" who, by their own account, have received close to a million dollars of coal- and oil-industry funding (including a publishing grant from the government of Kuwait) for their efforts to refute the scientific consensus on global warming. I.C.E.'s media strategy, revealed in internal documents, was to move people from advocating "extreme positions on global warming," meaning legislation, to "less extreme positions," i.e., further study.

http://www.ecosyn.us/adti/Corrupt_Idsos.html

Go read the whole thing.

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bloom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:25 PM
Response to Original message
11. "World's land turning to desert at alarming speed"
You'll find this and other similar articles in the environment forum.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=115


---

It's possible that a few places might have better weather. And it's always nice to look on the sunny side. But overall - there is no way global warming is going to be a good thing.
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XemaSab Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:31 PM
Response to Original message
13. Nope
In an increased CO2 environment, corn would need even more nitrogen than it already uses. Also, it's unlikely that the cobs would be bigger or more plentiful, just the plants *might* be a bit larger if all other factors were equal.... but they're not.

If our crop production areas get shifted northward, we're going to grow less stuff in our rich soil areas and more stuff in our poorer soil areas... not to mention Canada's poorer soil areas.

If climate cells get shifted northward under global warming, our climate is more likely to be like northern mexico: very arid.

Finally, as my plant physiology teacher put it, for every plant that suffers under climate change, another one is dancing the dange of eternal joy, but corn ain't it.

Our human societies depend on the weather being pretty much the same in the same place from year to year, like rain in the winter in California and rain in the summer in the East, and if that changes, we're hosed.

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dogindia Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 03:35 PM
Response to Original message
14. peak oil.
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rurallib Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jul-15-05 04:13 PM
Response to Original message
15. Not necessarily 'warmer & wetter' weather
From what I understand what many people miss in the global warming is that things will get more extreme, not just warmer & wetter. Dessertification is expected to increase, as is flooding. Neither of these are conducive to agriculture.
I am in the middle of the ag belt in the midwest. We are in the midst of the driest and and maybe hottest) summer on record. Plants are getting stressed.
Also weather will be much more volatile. We used to be able to pretty much count on a wet spring, with the weather drying as we moved to harvest time. Certainly not so any more. Dry and hot in April, wet & cold in May, followed by extremely hot for june with the rain pretty much stopping.
While weather has always been the chancy part of farming, it is getting chancier & chancier.
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