4 ms·

This is the part of climate change that the media has really failed to talk about. It's always about sea level rise, but that doesn't make most people worry en

This is the part of climate change that the media has really failed to talk about. It's always about sea level rise, but that doesn't make most people worry enough (just move or build levees). The real impact is that the climate will change everywhere. Good farmland will become bad. Areas with bad farmland will become good. And it's not easy to just shift the agriculture industry from one place to the other, and there's no control over where this happens. Also climate change doesn't care about borders. A country that has a lot of food production could suddenly have almost nothing. And even if a country is lucky and suddenly has good farmland, it's still a food crisis until that country can get their agriculture industry up and running.

omegaworks 7y ago
Our modern rationalization for private land ownership is that it's the best means to optimize for long-term agricultural output. A shifting climate risks undoing the very American notion that success of private landowners can occur independently of the success of the larger society. A notion that emerged out of a simple abundance of land resources that had been sustainably cultivated by indigenous societies for centuries, and a government that encouraged white settlers to a first-come-first-serve buffet. It'll be interesting to see how it all unravels.
jay_kyburz 7y ago
If I were a large investor, I would put some money into working out how to farm food inside. Not just a glass house, but an air tight box, with a complete ecosystem inside. From the fungus in the soil, to bees for pollination. We need to understand how it works and how to manage it.
- pertymcpert 7y ago
  Uhm. You will need to input some carbon into the system because otherwise the plants won't be able to obtain raw materials to grow and actually produce food.
  - chronolitus 7y ago
    http://www.pickchur.com/2013/02/53-years-old-sealed-bottle-garden/ http://www.pickchur.com/2013/02/53-years-old-sealed-bottle-g...
    - pertymcpert 7y ago
      Right, so? Where did the plants get the carbon from to build their organic structures?
      - jay_kyburz 7y ago
        I imagine that in some distant future we are going to have to have near perfect recycling. Human waste, and even our bodies will have to go back into these closed ecosystems. I wonder if the energy from the sun is enough external input to sustain human life.
        chronolitus 7y ago
        It's certainly possible, since earth doesn't need much external input other from sunlight to sustain life. The question is, how scaled-down a self-sustaining ecosystem can we create and manage, which is capable of sustaining human life?
      - chronolitus 7y ago
        (assuming the story is true), the amount of carbon in the bottle is unchanged. Life has to destroy old structure and recycle materials to build new structure. What certainly needs to be added is energy (from the sun) to power the cycles. In this comment's grandparent referring to researching viable, man-made, self-sustaining biomes - which should then be robust to changes in external fauna/flora and conditions, I believe the idea is either to have the human become part of the biome (i.e. the carbon in your waste gets recycled) or to add materials when food is removed in some non-intrusive way.
- fillskills 7y ago
  Indoor farming has really taken off recently. Infarm, Bowery, Plenty etc have raised a lot of money this year. Hope they continue to grow. Though i am not sure how many crops can scale to indoors and at what scale
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Except many won't find they gained good farmland if they don't have it already. They'll still have poorer colder region soils with new higher temperatures. Getting the perfect temperatures to grow new crops won't fix marginal and often thin soil. Chances are the worms, microbes and fungi won't be right for the new conditions either. That would take ages to resolve naturally, or if we know how to shortcut, lots of coordinated effort - and no doubt yet more emissions.
maxheadroom 7y ago
>The real impact is that the climate will change everywhere. Precisely. Not only everywhere but it will be a constant. Calling it climate change is probably a disservice because it seems to infer a binary (false ==> true) relationship, where it's just hotter than it was before - not that it will continually worsen as the problem compounds exponentially over time. >Good farmland will become bad. Areas with bad farmland will become good. And it's not easy to just shift the agriculture industry from one place to the other, and there's no control over where this happens. Also climate change doesn't care about borders. A country that has a lot of food production could suddenly have almost nothing. And even if a country is lucky and suddenly has good farmland, it's still a food crisis until that country can get their agriculture industry up and running. Agreed but it's also not like good farmland will also remain a constant, as the problem progresses. I liken it to being in a car and you know you're driving in an heavy snow storm but you expect not to hit a patch of black-ice because... ...reasons?... The problem is: Once you hit it (the black ice signifying crops dying and food supplies dwindling), it's already too late. You're over-correcting, under-correcting, what-have-you as you continue to drive the car by the cliff's edge, thinking it could never happen to you - when that assumption is gravely incorrect and people could effectively die because of your arrogance. Remember "Time Enough, At Last" from The Twilight Zone? Well, we have a seed bank in Svalbard (Norway) with which to rebuild from any major calamity but it will be effectively useless, unless we plan now where those seeds should be planted in the future. Lab-grown food products aren't at the technology level to scale to feed a predominant portion of the planet. So, if we have no plan, is the plan just to have no plan? It's confounding that we're having this discussion in a "dark corner of the internet" because the implications are far-more-reaching and far-more-tangible than this discussion could hope to address, which saddens me. I'm going to go have some ice cream or something...

omegaworks 7y ago

Our modern rationalization for private land ownership is that it's the best means to optimize for long-term agricultural output. A shifting climate risks undoing the very American notion that success of private landowners can occur independently of the success of the larger society. A notion that emerged out of a simple abundance of land resources that had been sustainably cultivated by indigenous societies for centuries, and a government that encouraged white settlers to a first-come-first-serve buffet. It'll be interesting to see how it all unravels.

jay_kyburz 7y ago

If I were a large investor, I would put some money into working out how to farm food inside. Not just a glass house, but an air tight box, with a complete ecosystem inside. From the fungus in the soil, to bees for pollination. We need to understand how it works and how to manage it.

pertymcpert 7y ago
Uhm. You will need to input some carbon into the system because otherwise the plants won't be able to obtain raw materials to grow and actually produce food.
- chronolitus 7y ago
  http://www.pickchur.com/2013/02/53-years-old-sealed-bottle-garden/ http://www.pickchur.com/2013/02/53-years-old-sealed-bottle-g...
  - pertymcpert 7y ago
    Right, so? Where did the plants get the carbon from to build their organic structures?
    - jay_kyburz 7y ago
      I imagine that in some distant future we are going to have to have near perfect recycling. Human waste, and even our bodies will have to go back into these closed ecosystems. I wonder if the energy from the sun is enough external input to sustain human life.
      - chronolitus 7y ago
        It's certainly possible, since earth doesn't need much external input other from sunlight to sustain life. The question is, how scaled-down a self-sustaining ecosystem can we create and manage, which is capable of sustaining human life?
    - chronolitus 7y ago
      (assuming the story is true), the amount of carbon in the bottle is unchanged. Life has to destroy old structure and recycle materials to build new structure. What certainly needs to be added is energy (from the sun) to power the cycles. In this comment's grandparent referring to researching viable, man-made, self-sustaining biomes - which should then be robust to changes in external fauna/flora and conditions, I believe the idea is either to have the human become part of the biome (i.e. the carbon in your waste gets recycled) or to add materials when food is removed in some non-intrusive way.
fillskills 7y ago
Indoor farming has really taken off recently. Infarm, Bowery, Plenty etc have raised a lot of money this year. Hope they continue to grow. Though i am not sure how many crops can scale to indoors and at what scale

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Except many won't find they gained good farmland if they don't have it already. They'll still have poorer colder region soils with new higher temperatures. Getting the perfect temperatures to grow new crops won't fix marginal and often thin soil. Chances are the worms, microbes and fungi won't be right for the new conditions either. That would take ages to resolve naturally, or if we know how to shortcut, lots of coordinated effort - and no doubt yet more emissions.

maxheadroom 7y ago

>The real impact is that the climate will change everywhere. Precisely. Not only everywhere but it will be a constant. Calling it climate change is probably a disservice because it seems to infer a binary (false ==> true) relationship, where it's just hotter than it was before - not that it will continually worsen as the problem compounds exponentially over time. >Good farmland will become bad. Areas with bad farmland will become good. And it's not easy to just shift the agriculture industry from one place to the other, and there's no control over where this happens. Also climate change doesn't care about borders. A country that has a lot of food production could suddenly have almost nothing. And even if a country is lucky and suddenly has good farmland, it's still a food crisis until that country can get their agriculture industry up and running. Agreed but it's also not like good farmland will also remain a constant, as the problem progresses. I liken it to being in a car and you know you're driving in an heavy snow storm but you expect not to hit a patch of black-ice because... ...reasons?... The problem is: Once you hit it (the black ice signifying crops dying and food supplies dwindling), it's already too late. You're over-correcting, under-correcting, what-have-you as you continue to drive the car by the cliff's edge, thinking it could never happen to you - when that assumption is gravely incorrect and people could effectively die because of your arrogance. Remember "Time Enough, At Last" from The Twilight Zone? Well, we have a seed bank in Svalbard (Norway) with which to rebuild from any major calamity but it will be effectively useless, unless we plan now where those seeds should be planted in the future. Lab-grown food products aren't at the technology level to scale to feed a predominant portion of the planet. So, if we have no plan, is the plan just to have no plan? It's confounding that we're having this discussion in a "dark corner of the internet" because the implications are far-more-reaching and far-more-tangible than this discussion could hope to address, which saddens me. I'm going to go have some ice cream or something...