Live data from Hacker News

Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

economist.com

121–130 of 188 posts

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#121
post #114

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.

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

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#122

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. Lewis

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, of course we'd still want to stop it. It would be much riskier though, as the consequences would be harder to know - messing with the environment is always risky. This is also why geo-engineering solutions to climate change are suspect - stopping CO2 production is just going back to a state of the world that we know worked. Seeding the ocean with iron or changing the color of the sky are radically different from any previous state of the Earth, so their impact is unknown.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#124

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…

> 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 corporation ever have need of a conscience?

In short, Lewis lacked imagination.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#125

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…

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…

> 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 to me like some people want to mess around with the climate because they imagine some neo-Malthusian horror story about the future, like we won't use technology to adapt. But they don't want to call themselves nature obstructionists, like I suggested elsewhere, because they insist that the warming is the fault of humans, despite the fact that the climate seemed due to warm up anyway, even if all humans had been wiped out by a plague in the year 1000 or whatever, since it had been in the Scotese "ice box" stage.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these crops do not work as you think they should work. Their function in modern agricultural industry is to chain the farmer to buy more and more chemicals and patented crops. "Saving the world with gmo crops" is marketing talk by companies that make big money selling these chemicals and crops. Please check https://www.gmwatch.org/en/ to train your critical thinking.

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.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#128
post #124

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…

He specifically talks about robber barons, who were the greedy corporations of their time.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 listen/trust the entirety of the scientific community. Like all organisms on Earth, humans and human society can adapt to a limited set of circumstances. We can create thriving societies in Finland and at the Equator, but we can't create thriving societies in Antarctica or the Sahara desert.

What (the certainly man-made and certainly happening) climate change is doing is going to make a lot more of the Earth unlivable for humans. Even the livable parts will become much more variable in their livability. Humans will migrate in massive numbers from the now-unlivable places (such as Bangladesh, currently housing ~160 million people) to places where society can still thrive - but as can be seen from the massive reaction to the minuscule trickle of refugees from Syria to Europe, this is met with utter hostility. Further, scarcer resources (especially water in many places, such as the US south or India and Pakistan) will likely lead to wars, further creating refugee crises and disrupting supply chains.

The timeline is indeed unclear, and there have been cycles of too-pessimistic predictions and too-optimistic predictions. The current discussions seem to imagine massive changes in the 50-100 year range, but recent weather patterns seem to suggest we may be on the optimistic side at the moment.

But regardless of timeline, the general trend is clear and undeniable, as are the conclusions. In some sense, you are right that "we will adapt", as humanity as a species or even human civilization are unlikely to simply end. But they are also not going to remain the change, and there is no plausible path from current society to a +2-4C average temp society that does not involve the deaths of billions.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#130
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.
Post reply on HN