4 ms·

I should have heard this already, but why exactly would there be "crop failures" rather than "massive increases in agricultural production" which would seem to

• empath75 7y ago
  There will be crop failures in some places and increases in others.
• paragraft 7y ago
  Water availability and weather events damaging crops I think are the big dangers. Greater variation in weather events isn't good for agriculture in either direction. Flooding at one end (like the midwest US got hit with badly this year), or drought at the other. In between there's the increased occurrence of sudden events like hailstorms, wildfires. Areas with good aquifers presently find themselves with a decent buffer against drought, but there's a worldwide phenomenon of aquifer consumers overdrawing and proving unable to properly regulate sustainable access to those, let alone factoring in the changing supply rate to said aquifers. E.g, if your aquifers are snow-fed, but the winter snowfall is gradually waning up in the mountains, then what used to be sustainable could "suddenly" run dry. The Yemen water crisis is a good example of this (aided by overconsumption for growing khat), but we've seen the same coordinated action problems even in wealthy democracies like California. There's also other risks from heat stress (some crops affected by this more than others), and also secondary risks, e.g a lot of these same stresses (plus all the other stresses of modernity) on pollinators like bees.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• steanne 7y ago
  more plant mass isn't necessarily better if it's not as nutritious. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/climate/rice-global-warming.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/climate/rice-global-warmi...