Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes.
I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come from? Will the US import vastly more food than it does now? Will we build water pipelines down from Canada?
Will there be rogue geoengineering projects to try to make it rain? Will there be official projects? Will the US and everyone else stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere?
The US produces several times more food than we need.
A single acre can easily produce enough food for a small family and we have 408 million acres under cultivation. Corn is something of a super star at 8,250 lb. of corn per acre. However, we end up feeding most of this to animals which drastically reduces overall efficiency.
So, sure we are going to spend a lot of effort maximizing food production. But a 50% drop in the food supply over a few years would not be that big of an issue with a small increase in grain prices and a significant bump in meat costs.
The guy is not a dilettante, he's professor of Physics and Astronomy at UC Irvine.
It would give us basically unlimited control over solar input (depending on how big you make it). It would be a massive project that would require global cooperation, which is again good - especially in the current geo-political... um... "climate".
Also, massive undertakings such as this have a way of galvanizing creativity and progress across the whole society.
Or maybe it's my personal bias towards giant, Pacific Rim style, howling-metal projects. Big problem, big solution. Don't waste your time putting around in the mud.
If less rain means that the relative deserts of California and Arizona can't be irrigated/subsidized as heavily, the resulting price increases will shift agricultural production back to more natural locations in the Midwest. There was once a dairy industry here, for one thing. We couldn't compete with the desert alfalfa of the Salt River Valley, but then again maybe their advantage wasn't an environmentally sustainable one. It requires a certain perspective to bemoan the fact that deserts aren't great places for agriculture.
We could produce the same amount of food with a tenth the water we do currently.
A simple system, like drip irrigation, could save 50%. An ebb and flow hydroponic system could save 95%. These technologies aren't new, they're just not cost effective until water becomes less cheap.
I think in 20 or 50 years we'll look back at the current sprinklers that just spray water into the air as ridiculously wasteful.
My naive brain can't compute how drought and global warming go together. If we assume that water is trapped within the atmosphere and can't drift off into space, then won't global warming just heat up the oceans, causing more precipitation? It seems like global warming is the cure for drought not the cause? It's like a giant desalination system for free.
The best way to cheaply remove CO2 is to plant more trees. The simplest solution is still the best: it requires no new technology, can scale itself when the trees reproduce and is eminently accessible to all sorts of people, all around the globe. As an added benefit, some trees can even give fruit... which are delicious.
Do you happen to know if there are there realistic risks of permanent desertification of the great plains? (like what happened to the sahara) Or does that involve changes of a more dramatic sort than 'less rain'?
>I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain."
Um, there is quite a difference between weather forecasting and climate forecasting. The linked article deals with conditions in the second half of the century.
this is likely not a CO2 issue. If anything everything grows better in a higher CO2 environment, let alone a warmer one. We can see this from when it happened before.
Trying to go through the NA Drought Atlas, curious if there are other geological events they can tie some of the really severe past droughts too. If anything their document simply states that severe droughts are a matter of record and its possible that current climate issues attributed to man by some may exaggerate the effect of subsequent droughts; frankly as far as I am concerned it can go either way because some past droughts were incredible and in no way affected by man though they did a number on a nontech world
The downside being its not scalable. You need an entirely artificial setup to get aquaponics up and running, motors, pipes, and chemical cleaning. Don't get me wrong aquaponics is a great technology, I think it needs some changes in order to make it feasible for the large scale.
I worked with Geoff at his farm in AU, and he's done some amazing work there. His swale and pond layout, as well as the food forestry corridors for his animals are spectacular. Large scale implementation of arid desert techniques from the Permaculture handbook is one thing that definitely needs to be looked into.
Our agriculture techniques are going to destroy the planet if something significant doesn't change, any quickly. The Savory Institute[1] has been doing interesting things as well, but is it all going to end up too little, too late?
> "Globally averaged surface temperature has slowed down. I wouldn’t say it's paused. It depends on the datasets you look at. If you look at datasets that include the Arctic, it is clear that global temperatures are still increasing," said Tim Palmer, a co-author of the report and a professor at University of Oxford.
Well, this time they've performed controlled experiments, and tied the models to lab-reproducible results, and used validation periods longer than their tuning periods, and the model range includes extreme rainfall points from the fossil record... Oh, wait. Never mind.
Historically the Great Plains have been very dry. Well, pre-historically, from a European colonization perspective. There is a history of mega-droughts. If Europeans had arrived in the midst of the thirty-year drought in the 1700's the settlement of the West would have been quite different.
So independently of the accuracy of climate models--and the hiatus is a real, non-cherry-picked feature of the Hadcrut data, which was everyone's gold standard until the hiatus showed up in it (http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1460)--there is very good reason to be concerned about the Great Plains returning to what amounts to historical conditions.
This is the general case for policy responses to AGW: climate models don't have to be very accurate (which is good, because they aren't) to justify a modest investment in climate robustness, because our economic systems are finely tuned for the modern climate and we know it isn't going to last. The things that someone who wasn't insane would to to reduce GHG emissions--building nuclear power stations, regulating thermal coal into oblivion, shifting taxes from incomes to carbon emissions, investing in solar and storage--are all things that also either increase economic robustness against climate variations or have other economic benefits (you'd have to be some kind of wealth-hating socialist to want to tax incomes instead of carbon emissions, since incomes are good and carbon emissions are bad, and an externality besides.)
the correlation between the observational data and the computer models does not look that impressive so far. Maybe if the Southwest goes into an unprecedented drought shortly as the models predict then that would be some evidence that they have predictive power but so far it looks a bit iffy.
> So, scientists can't yet get the weather forecast correct for even part of an afternoon, in a single city... but they've got the next 1,000 years figured out? Let me know how that works out.
If I can't predict what side of the coin will be facing up on the tenth flip, how can I possibly expect to be able to predict the average of ten years of coin flipping?
I think the most easiest solution to this problem with the existing technology we have is to start building water collection reservoirs in the surrounding mountains of California and the Colorado rockies too. Then Desalination plants in and around the Gulf of Mexico and pipelines to move water where needed.
This is an opportunity to employ both blue & white collar workers as well as tech professionals as well and should be considered.
This type of project requires a great deal of energy. Theoretically, increased utilization of our current energy sources might make these problems worse.
[+] [-] cryptoz|11 years ago|reply
I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come from? Will the US import vastly more food than it does now? Will we build water pipelines down from Canada?
Will there be rogue geoengineering projects to try to make it rain? Will there be official projects? Will the US and everyone else stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere?
So many questions.
[+] [-] Retric|11 years ago|reply
A single acre can easily produce enough food for a small family and we have 408 million acres under cultivation. Corn is something of a super star at 8,250 lb. of corn per acre. However, we end up feeding most of this to animals which drastically reduces overall efficiency.
So, sure we are going to spend a lot of effort maximizing food production. But a 50% drop in the food supply over a few years would not be that big of an issue with a small increase in grain prices and a significant bump in meat costs.
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade
The guy is not a dilettante, he's professor of Physics and Astronomy at UC Irvine.
It would give us basically unlimited control over solar input (depending on how big you make it). It would be a massive project that would require global cooperation, which is again good - especially in the current geo-political... um... "climate".
Also, massive undertakings such as this have a way of galvanizing creativity and progress across the whole society.
Or maybe it's my personal bias towards giant, Pacific Rim style, howling-metal projects. Big problem, big solution. Don't waste your time putting around in the mud.
[+] [-] jessaustin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|11 years ago|reply
A simple system, like drip irrigation, could save 50%. An ebb and flow hydroponic system could save 95%. These technologies aren't new, they're just not cost effective until water becomes less cheap.
I think in 20 or 50 years we'll look back at the current sprinklers that just spray water into the air as ridiculously wasteful.
[+] [-] omilu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rd108|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbattle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcosdumay|11 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, that one is easy.
[+] [-] happyscrappy|11 years ago|reply
Um, there is quite a difference between weather forecasting and climate forecasting. The linked article deals with conditions in the second half of the century.
[+] [-] Shivetya|11 years ago|reply
Trying to go through the NA Drought Atlas, curious if there are other geological events they can tie some of the really severe past droughts too. If anything their document simply states that severe droughts are a matter of record and its possible that current climate issues attributed to man by some may exaggerate the effect of subsequent droughts; frankly as far as I am concerned it can go either way because some past droughts were incredible and in no way affected by man though they did a number on a nontech world
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qeorge|11 years ago|reply
The author is selling his "Zero To Hero" design plans for a shockingly reasonable $10 here: http://www.frostyfish.com/shop/aquaponics-plans-2/zero-hero-...
And if you want to buy a 4x8 kit, he also has that for about $400: http://www.coldweatheraquaponics.com/shop/aeration-2/zero-he...
I've been wanting to try it, but have not as of yet.
[+] [-] acadien|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maerF0x0|11 years ago|reply
ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1rKDXuZ8C0
[+] [-] dylanz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|11 years ago|reply
1. http://www.savoryinstitute.com
[+] [-] the_economist|11 years ago|reply
Is there reason to believe that rainfall predictions will be more accurate?
[+] [-] estebank|11 years ago|reply
> "Globally averaged surface temperature has slowed down. I wouldn’t say it's paused. It depends on the datasets you look at. If you look at datasets that include the Arctic, it is clear that global temperatures are still increasing," said Tim Palmer, a co-author of the report and a professor at University of Oxford.
[+] [-] jessaustin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjradcliffe|11 years ago|reply
So independently of the accuracy of climate models--and the hiatus is a real, non-cherry-picked feature of the Hadcrut data, which was everyone's gold standard until the hiatus showed up in it (http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1460)--there is very good reason to be concerned about the Great Plains returning to what amounts to historical conditions.
This is the general case for policy responses to AGW: climate models don't have to be very accurate (which is good, because they aren't) to justify a modest investment in climate robustness, because our economic systems are finely tuned for the modern climate and we know it isn't going to last. The things that someone who wasn't insane would to to reduce GHG emissions--building nuclear power stations, regulating thermal coal into oblivion, shifting taxes from incomes to carbon emissions, investing in solar and storage--are all things that also either increase economic robustness against climate variations or have other economic benefits (you'd have to be some kind of wealth-hating socialist to want to tax incomes instead of carbon emissions, since incomes are good and carbon emissions are bad, and an externality besides.)
[+] [-] vixen99|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|11 years ago|reply
https://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/figure-31.png
the correlation between the observational data and the computer models does not look that impressive so far. Maybe if the Southwest goes into an unprecedented drought shortly as the models predict then that would be some evidence that they have predictive power but so far it looks a bit iffy.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] emergentcypher|11 years ago|reply
If I can't predict what side of the coin will be facing up on the tenth flip, how can I possibly expect to be able to predict the average of ten years of coin flipping?
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MagicWishMonkey|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SCAQTony|11 years ago|reply
This is an opportunity to employ both blue & white collar workers as well as tech professionals as well and should be considered.
[+] [-] jessaustin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briantakita|11 years ago|reply
Healthy soil captures rainwater & grows food.