That would leave the world with adaptation, innovation and technology. I could be like the DA's and say it's impossible and never happen before.
Avoiding use of the word catastrophic, on balance the bad will out weight good. Agricultural crops are adapted to specific, well-defined parameters, including onset and length of the growing season, temperature, and precipitating. Any change - early, late, warmer, cooler, wetter, dryer, etc. - or a change in variability - reduces productivity.
Parts of the country are already experiencing the effects from an earlier start to the growing season. For reasons not completely understood, if the growing season is only a few weeks early, it shortens the juvenile growth stage and, as a result, adult plants flower less. Although overall yield has remained strong - and even increased in recent years - individual plant yields have decreased. At the moment, we're winning an agri-technological battle (at a substantial financial cost), but only narrowly.
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Robert –
>>… the peak occurring in the late Cretaceous era (approximately 65 million years ago).<<
The Cretaceous was a period of extensive continental drift. 65 million years ago the continents were not configured in their current arrangement and so the two climate systems (then and now) are not comparable.
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Ryan Gergely,
>>…It goes in cycles…<<
Climate is driven by cyclical input variables such as solar variation and Milankovitch cycles (e.g., precession of the earth’s axis and variations in its elliptical orbit). The existence of these cycles is based on empirical evidence and they can be described mathematically in terms of their time, frequency, and model domains.
Simply claiming that some (undefined, non-specific) cycle is responsible for current mean global temperature is no different that saying, “The Temperature Fairy did it.”
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Rick B –
>> 40 years ago they were worried about another ice age coming.<<
No, they were not. 40 years ago more scientists predicted global warming than global cooling.
In any case, 50 years ago most people thought that the continents had always been located exactly where they are now.
Scientific knowledge increases over time – apparently your knowledge does not.
While human impact on climate change and the environment is certainly not something to ignore, I feel like the media has created a "hype" around it. The fact of the matter is that in the long term history of climate change, the period we are in now is relatively cool, the peak occurring in the late Cretaceous era (approximately 65 million years ago).
Here is a link to a graph which shows approximations based on ice core samples found in Greenland.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/la...
Overall in regard to climate change, our biggest worry should be fluctuations that could occur in regard to rainfall which could impact growing seasons on crops we're dependent on. Not that we'll be living in a post apocalyptic world that's covered by the ocean as that would have happened millions of years ago, were it possible.
It depends on the region we are talking about. Some areas of the world will face much harsher times. The economic output of these areas will be affected. Evidence for this can be seen in the recent heat waves that occurred in years past in the southern US, Russia, and so on. And this didn't only have an effect on the local economy either. Worldwide prices for specific products rose sharply. Farmers, as you state, saw this and had to deal with it. Only the way they dealt with it resulted in economic losses.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/2...
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-07...
So despite your claims that farmers will adapt, it does not always point toward that outcome does it? However, as I said, it depend son where you live. Some areas of the world will become more efficient at growing crops while others will not. I think that the areas that will widen crop yields are those areas in between the various climate types away from regions that get a lot of drought and flooding. There will more than likely be a gradual shakeup between regions. And some types of economies whose products depend on the climate may see much harsher times.
http://skepticalscience.com/global-warmi... has a nice list of the positive and negative (mostly negative) effects of global warming.
These are from scientific sources, so I think they are likely to be... closer to correct than any guesses I could make.
There will undoubtedly be winners and losers, with global warming, but I suspect on the whole there will be more losers than winners. I'm also concerned about the *distribution* of those winners and losers. The losers will disproportionately be subsistence farmers in poor countries, and the like. The winners will disproportionately be the already wealthy. This is... injust.
For example, in your "farmer" example... big industrial farms can decide "we'll plant this variety of wheat this year". Poor subsistence farmers... are generally planting part of last year's harvest, so they're planting the same variety of wheat regardless of conditions.
I think it will be catastrophic due to the fact that the natural resources are being depleted and the world is way to over crowded and humans are destroying the planet with pollution which is slowly suffocating the human race.Sorry I couldn't say happy pleasant ever after things but look up Chem trails for one and see that the same thing was done once before in Viet Nam.just giving a point of view.
Climate Change isn't real, it's all a big sham to line Al Gore's pockets. It goes in cycles, the climate. The Earth warms up, it cools back down. Continue the pattern.
No. We are not affecting the climate.
We may be going through a warming cycle. 40 years ago they were worried about another ice age coming.
Quit worrying about what you cannot change,
How many people here think it will be catastrophic, I mean any change will produce good and bad results, how many people agree that overall it will be bad for us, and why?
