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

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#141

Post by davidhbolton » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #129

germandiago wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It could be a fact that climate is changing. And also that we contribute to it in some known ways. > 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. This is only because you don't understand the problem, or don't l…

The trend is not clear and undeniable. Climate science is at best contentious and certainly highly politicised. All of the IPCC predictions of temperature rises have not happened. Sea level rises? The Maldives have been building several airports and both Al Gore and Barack Obama bought very expensive properties ($9 million and $15 million) by the sea. Hardly the actions of someone who believes flooding is imminent.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#142

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #133

BoHerfIIIJrEsq wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As it will get hotter, hundreds of millions will die of heat stroke and water and food shortages We used to die in droves from heatwaves and water and food shortages, but we don't anymore, because of technology. Is increased CO2 going to harm crop yields? No, it's the opposite. Was increased CO2 bad for life on ancient earth? No, it was the opposite -- earth used to be an endless jungle teeming with life. It seems…

We still die because of heatwaves and water and food shortages. It doesn't happen so much in the colonial empires of Europe and the USA, but it is still happening in most other places on Earth. Any attempt to export the lifestyle of average US and European citizens to the billions of other people would accelerate the problem even more, requiring an ever-increased rate of energy use to maintain livable conditions. The…

The solution is precisely the opposite: dial down energy use (from all sources - industry, consumerism, travel etc) in the parts that consume too much.

The solution to the risk of societal decline is to force society to decline? No. The solution is to make clean energy (solar, nuclear, etc.) abundant to the point that everyone has more energy available than they know what to do with.

We have the scale to change the climate of the entire planet, and the technology to understand that we are doing so. We undoubtedly have the ability to overcome this hurdle, just like the many hurdles faced by humanity before. And yet people's first thought is, "My life is too good, let's (let everyone else but me) go back to subsistence farming and dying of cholera."

Nature is indifferent to us. It will not provide for us if we just let it do its thing, with or without CO2 emissions. Its fragility is a problem to be engineered through, not a call to abandon all progress.

The solution is to double down on the technological sophistication that allowed for all modern life, not to give up at the first hint of a real challenge.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#143

Post by titzer » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

svieira wrote: post #135

titzer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> C. S. Lewis Figures. Back then, corporations weren't such a huge thing. Now we've got growthism. No matter how much money a megacorp makes, it's always gotta make more for its shareholders. If the CEO and board are not going along with that, they will be replaced. Corporations are stuck on a hedonistic treadmill divorced from the finite capacity of a human stomach to be sated. Conscience? Since when did a corporati…

Lewis came _after_ the East India Trading Company ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company ) - he's talking about corporations that resemble the fever dreams of _Neuromancer_ and _Snow Crash_, not the (relatively) puny things we have today. He didn't lack imagination at all - he's saying that the moral busybody is _worse_ because their impetus is a better one, so they have more focus and energy to pursue th…

I understand what he is saying, I just disagree. We are blind to the horrors of our own system when we apologize for it and point the finger at things that we fear and distrust. It's nothing more than an intentional distraction from the evil that already exists in this world. I suspect that he got himself into these contortions trying to apologize for a Christian view of God as all-loving but wrestling with the problem of evil. Especially because those robber barons and mega companies of the day mouthed Christian platitudes all along their conquest.

I just ran out of patience with the "socialism bad" reductionism that underlies a lot of sophisticated-sounding analyses but ultimate amounts to "just let me do whatever I want, look those baddies aren't that bad, maybe they're even good!"

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#144

Post by titzer » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

Hendrikto wrote: post #130

mark_l_watson wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One friend in particular eats met every day and doesn’t want to pay more for it.

What people don‘t realize is that they ARE paying the price either way, just indirectly.

We're going into debt, or rather, we are emptying the large reservoir of biodiversity and consuming arable land in order to fuel short-term profits. The long-term consequences of soil depletion and biosphere destruction (with potential collapse) are not priced in.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#145

Post by djohnston » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

Should I be buying land in the Dakotas?

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#146

Post by MAGZine » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 4:04 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.

Rice is important but western agriculture (Wheat) is becoming increasingly precarious, too.

Wheat likes long growing seasons sure, but you know what it doesn't like? Too much or too little rain. Extreme climate (hail+wind can basically shear off wheat). Early frost, or late frost.

As the weather warms we experience more variable weather. This could mean more crops that get damaged or destroyed by random freezing events that start to happen in August or late snow/freezing that happens in May/June, after the seed is in the ground.

We'll still be able to farm wheat for sure, just like asian/equatorial countries will be able to farm rice, even as the temperature rises. The ability to produce will certainly decline as weather ravages crops before harvest.

Places that have traditionally been in the goldilocks zone for production are leaving it.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#147

Post by angelzen » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #124

bobbytit wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. C. S. Le…

> C. S. Lewis Figures. Back then, corporations weren't such a huge thing. Now we've got growthism. No matter how much money a megacorp makes, it's always gotta make more for its shareholders. If the CEO and board are not going along with that, they will be replaced. Corporations are stuck on a hedonistic treadmill divorced from the finite capacity of a human stomach to be sated. Conscience? Since when did a corporati…

You have never experienced Soviet bureaucracy and its petty spitefullness in the name of fighting on behalf of the oppressed. Though the DEI commissars are quickly filling that void.

Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#148

Post by randomdata » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

PYTHONDJANGO wrote: post #126

randomdata wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a quite a few farmers on HN, myself included. How are we being chained? I am quite familiar with the usual talking points you see in movies, but they are intended for a non-farmer audience and don't really mean much to those actually involved in agriculture. More technically, speaking to an actual audience of farmers, what does this mean and how does it play out in practice?

You do not own the seeds - owning the crops always was the real wealth for farmers. It is similar to not owning your hardware, but with much worse consequences for humanity as we loose crop diversity, which is very important for producing new resistent crops.

Bin run wheat can arguably compete with what seed producers are putting out, but there is no GMO wheat on the market, so that's moot. When it comes to the other crops I grow, I have little interest in owning the seeds. The commercial seed producers produce seed that will far outperform anything I can produce. I'm going to be buying my seed from them each year regardless of ownership structure because, frankly, they sell a better product. It has been that way for much longer than GMO has been a thing. DIY isn't always better.

In the modern world the wealth is in the land. Seeds are worthless if you have nowhere to grow them.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#149

Post by allkrop » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

bobbytit wrote: post #122

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…

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. C. S. Le…

Ah yes, C. S. Lewis, renowned economist/historian/sociologist.

What is a reader supposed to gain from your triple-logical-leap from "tax the unsustainable pollution and water-guzzling that factory farms hide from the public eye" to "tyranny" to...what I can only assume is your point, that pollution and cheap meat is the work of "robber barons", and less pollution and/or more expensive meat is the work of "omnipotent moral busybodies", therefore poisoned lakes and Happy Meals are Better.

If you're going to draw that analogy, please point out where the "sleep" and "satiation" is occurring in the behavior of factory farming and downstream cheap-meat industries. And point out what, specifically, is the "endless torment" that will be wrought by those forcing these "robber barons" to change that course, to either raise prices, cut profits, actually looking for other sources of cheap meat, work harder at cheating the "moral busybodies" like they already do, or, in all likelihood, a little bit of everything.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#150

Post by ajuc » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 4:29 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.

Farming wasn't forcibly collectivized in Poland unlike in USSR, the split was almost 20% state-owned farming land and 80% small private farms. Both private and state farms grew hops for beer and potatoes/grain for vodka. If wineyards were possible we would have had them.