4 ms·
Yeah, this bothered me a lot back in 2012 or so after reading a paper by James Hansen pointing out that one of the chief effects of adding CO2 is to change the
by tuatoru 3y ago
Yeah, this bothered me a lot back in 2012 or so after reading a paper by James Hansen pointing out that one of the chief effects of adding CO2 is to change the shape of the distributions of seasonal temperatures and rainfall
The bell curve gets flatter and wider, so extremes become much more likely, so the risk of simultaneous extremes in two or more regions at the same time, and for consecutive harvests, goes up even more.
From O(1 in a million) in the 1980s, to O(1 in 10) by the 2050s. (Numbers for illustration, not exact, but the change in order of magnitude is about right, I think.)
But then I realised how much fat there is in the global food production system, particularly with biofuels and animal feeds (wheat, soy, maize). It's not likely to be a problem until every other harvest is failing.