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"concerns about climate change are wildly overstated for the developed world" Can I ask you why you think that is the case? Why would industrialized farming an

"concerns about climate change are wildly overstated for the developed world" Can I ask you why you think that is the case? Why would industrialized farming and the food supply chain that feeds the developed world do better?

stale2002 8y ago
The simple answer is because modern day society has a lot of money, and decades in the future we are going to have even MORE money. Compound interest is a hell of a drug, and GDP growth. is showing no signs of slowing. What I mean by this is that we as a society arent fully exploiting our land even CLOSE to as much as it could be. Our food production system operates in the normal economic model of marginal costs. We could produce way more food if we wanted, it would just cost more. And in the future, if global warming has reduced our food production capacity, we wouldn't run out of food. The only thing that would do is force us to use these more expensive methods of food production. And we have more than enough money now, and definitely in the future, to pay for it. Food is a small percentage of everyone's paychecks. Costs going up by 20% doesn't mean much.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  What are those methods of production that will feed 8B people in a world that is 5 deg C warmer? I think you are just hand-waving around hard, unsolved, and possibly intractable problems.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    Firstly, 5 degrees C is a much larger degree of warming than anyone is predicting for any of their worst case scenarios in the next 200 years. So 200 years from now, the problem will likely sound laughable. But to answer your question anyway, yes I think that we could solve that problem today with current technology. There are a couple reasons why. For 1, increasing temperatures also opens up unused land in cold places, that werent bring used before. Potentially, it might produce MORE arable land than it removes, once we get all the infrastructure up, of course. And 2, it's not about "technology". There are tons of land that we "could" be using for food right now. We aren't using that land, because it is mountainous or has a bad climate, and would therefore produce lower yields. But just because a mountainous area or a bad climate produces low yeilds doesn't mean that it would produce literally 0 food. It would produce SOME food, and the only reason we aren't using it now is because it is more expensive. So the answer is the tons and tons of land that we aren't using for farming right now, but we could be using.
    - throwaway5752 8y ago
      https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm...

stale2002 8y ago

The simple answer is because modern day society has a lot of money, and decades in the future we are going to have even MORE money. Compound interest is a hell of a drug, and GDP growth. is showing no signs of slowing. What I mean by this is that we as a society arent fully exploiting our land even CLOSE to as much as it could be. Our food production system operates in the normal economic model of marginal costs. We could produce way more food if we wanted, it would just cost more. And in the future, if global warming has reduced our food production capacity, we wouldn't run out of food. The only thing that would do is force us to use these more expensive methods of food production. And we have more than enough money now, and definitely in the future, to pay for it. Food is a small percentage of everyone's paychecks. Costs going up by 20% doesn't mean much.

throwaway5752 8y ago
What are those methods of production that will feed 8B people in a world that is 5 deg C warmer? I think you are just hand-waving around hard, unsolved, and possibly intractable problems.
- stale2002 8y ago
  Firstly, 5 degrees C is a much larger degree of warming than anyone is predicting for any of their worst case scenarios in the next 200 years. So 200 years from now, the problem will likely sound laughable. But to answer your question anyway, yes I think that we could solve that problem today with current technology. There are a couple reasons why. For 1, increasing temperatures also opens up unused land in cold places, that werent bring used before. Potentially, it might produce MORE arable land than it removes, once we get all the infrastructure up, of course. And 2, it's not about "technology". There are tons of land that we "could" be using for food right now. We aren't using that land, because it is mountainous or has a bad climate, and would therefore produce lower yields. But just because a mountainous area or a bad climate produces low yeilds doesn't mean that it would produce literally 0 food. It would produce SOME food, and the only reason we aren't using it now is because it is more expensive. So the answer is the tons and tons of land that we aren't using for farming right now, but we could be using.
  - throwaway5752 8y ago
    https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm...