Climate change will alter where many crops are grown • Hacker News Board

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#111

Post by prawn » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #76

malka wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French wine has more and more ethanol in it, due to grapes being more sugary, due to climate change.

I read that French winemakers are hedging their bets by buying land further north in places like Britain and Scandinavia, but not sure if that's an isolated occurence or a trend.

My wife's wine-growing family are hedging bets in Australia by buying/planting vineyards in a different state with a cooler climate. There have been cases where large swathes of a region have lost a vintage to smoke taint from bushfires also, so having a backup option is useful.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#112

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

BoHerfIIIJrEsq wrote: post #96

yellow_lead wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty sad - that the climate has changed that much. I am glad he is enjoying them, I wish it were on better terms.

Well, hang on. Which was the correct climate? At various times, the planet has apparently completely encased itself in ice and then thawed itself out. According to the climate historian Scotese, the average temperature has varied between 10C and 25C for two billion years. "Recently" it's been about as cold as it ever gets. Is it actually sad that it's warming up? What was it supposed to do, stay cold forever or get e…

This bad take reminds me of an old George Carlin joke about environmentalism: people often use(d) the term "save the planet", but it's in fact us that need saving - "the planet" will go on regardless.

So yes, there is no "correct"\"natural" temperature for the Earth. But there very much exists a correct temperature for human (and many others) organized life, and that is basically the temperature of ~200 years ago. As it will get hotter, hundreds of millions will die of heat stroke and water and food shortages, wars will erupt probably killing billions, civilization as it exists today will dramatically change. Many plants and animals will die as well. Other people, societies, plants and animals will take their place of course - the Earth will sustain life for a wide range of temperatures - but that does not mean that we shouldn't fear these possibilities.

Edit: George Carlin, not "Steve" Carlin...

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#113

Post by mark_l_watson » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

politician wrote: post #101

Would someone confirm my understanding that rice fails to germinate above 34C, and that most rice is grown in equatorial regions hovering around 32C? Given the +1.5C in the IPCC report, the loss of suitable land for a food crop as important as rice seems like something we should be actively talking about.

Thanks for mentioning that, never heard this discussed before. Sorry for making this political, but if just a small percentage of what is spent on unending wars for profit was spent instead on new food and water preserving tech, then I think we could fix this.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#114

Post by junon » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #110

Sorry for being off topic here: I get pushback on this opinion from my friends, so I expect this to be an unpopular opinion here also: the cost of meat should be priced to also cover external costs of water and harm to the environment. I enjoy a steak once or twice a month, so I am not talking from a vegan-purity perspective. I think that there should be a tax on meat that directly supported research and infrastructu…

Can your friends justify their opposition? Because it makes sense to me, not that politicians will ever do anything about it.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#115

Post by guntars » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #102

ajuc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Similarly my parents grow 1 grape bush for 3 decades already and make wine out of it each year, but it's a hobby, it wasn't commercially viable till a few years ago. There were less than 20 wineyards in Poland in 2000 and none in 1990, now there's almost 500.

Correlation does not imply causation. Poland was a communist country with closed borders until not long ago. Commercial enterprise was not exactly blooming in the late 90s. In addition, supply chain and shipping costs hadnt yet grown and fallen in price to the level they have today , making new crops a real export opportunity.

All true, of course, but USSR had wine regions just the same, they just weren't in Poland. This was a surprise for me, but apparently:

> The former Soviet Union (FSU) was the fourth largest wine producer in the world in 1980 behind Italy, France, and Spain.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#116

Post by germandiago » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

hack-news wrote: post #104

BoHerfIIIJrEsq wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, hang on. Which was the correct climate? At various times, the planet has apparently completely encased itself in ice and then thawed itself out. According to the climate historian Scotese, the average temperature has varied between 10C and 25C for two billion years. "Recently" it's been about as cold as it ever gets. Is it actually sad that it's warming up? What was it supposed to do, stay cold forever or get e…

The "correct" climate is one that isn't changing so fast that we'll need to globally rethink the logistics of food production. It's one that does not include being in the middle of an extinction event.

There have been fatalist predictions since ever and about so many topics.

In my own country, Spain, you could find an article about Maldives shrunk in 2010 and with no human-consumable water in 1992, that would make 200,000 people abandon the islands. It never happened. The article from 1988.

Also about a lack of food and a hunger in 1975. Syberian weather for 2000 in 1970 article for UK...

And many I am not going to mention here since the 60s as far as I researched. It looks like we are approaching a disaster and the end of the world continuously.

It could be a fact that climate is changing. And also that we contribute to it in some known ways.

What I am not convinced about at all if most of this phenomenon is human-induced. If it is not we will set heavy restrictions for no gain, maybe even impoverishing people.

Who will be responsible for the consequences? Also, we can keep adapting, as we always did if the climate is changing.

I do not see the point in taking every piece of news from climate change like the end of thw world: we will have to keep adapting. But no fatalisms, after all, media has a TERRIBLE track in publishing bogus predictions or incorrect and half-baked.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#117

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

politician wrote: post #101

Would someone confirm my understanding that rice fails to germinate above 34C, and that most rice is grown in equatorial regions hovering around 32C? Given the +1.5C in the IPCC report, the loss of suitable land for a food crop as important as rice seems like something we should be actively talking about.

There can't possibly be a hard cutoff like that, because day-to-day temperature variations far exceed 1.5 degrees.

Of course, even an incremental difference can tip farms over the line from sustainable to unsustainable, especially in subsistence farming regions where people are barely clinging on in the first place. But that has much different implications than a scenario where the world as a whole can't grow enough food.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#118

Post by mark_l_watson » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

gonzo41 wrote: post #49

I have to remind myself that Life will survive climate change. Humans may not but Life will. I really find it so crushingly bleak at times. I know that nature is cruel and indifferent. And that's sort of attaching intent rather than it being more just what it is, a product of physics. There's going to be some rough years ahead.

+1 Also, with new evidence from space-based telescopes, instead of there being potentially tens of thousands of life friendly planets in the Universe (a Nature article from several years ago), I saw recently an estimation that there might be trillions of planets that are life friendly. If we mess up our planet, I believe that the Universe is teaming with life. When I was a kid, I thought that life like we have on the earth was unique, a view I no longer hold.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#119

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

bobbytit wrote: post #109

bobbytit wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A plant in the field can only take advantage of the extra co2 if there is adequate inputs but it does not do the plant harm if not. It would be like giving a city as much food as they want irrespective of individual need.

and temperature.. without the warmth you guys are so scared of there would be no life

If you think bigger temperature implies more life, why don't you set fire to your own home to make it more livable?

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#120

Post by BoHerfIIIJrEsq » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #107

BoHerfIIIJrEsq wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, hang on. Which was the correct climate? At various times, the planet has apparently completely encased itself in ice and then thawed itself out. According to the climate historian Scotese, the average temperature has varied between 10C and 25C for two billion years. "Recently" it's been about as cold as it ever gets. Is it actually sad that it's warming up? What was it supposed to do, stay cold forever or get e…

The “correct” climate is the one human civilization is adapted to.

Well, suppose climate change wasn't thought to be anthropogenic, but it was happening the same way, i.e., warming up from being about the coldest it ever gets. So, it's not humans' fault, but it's inconvenient for humans. Would you still want to try to stop it? If so, would it be fair to call your stance nature obstructionism or something like that?