When and how bad?

[ggelsrinc]

Climate change and extreme weather events have already been happening, so when can we expect to see a reduction in world food production?

[JackTaylor]

Climate change and extreme weather events have already been happening, so when can we expect to see a reduction in world food production?

When we do NOT have enough 'fresh' water through rain - snow pack available for irrigation.

[Shared Humanity]

Climate change and extreme weather events have already been happening, so when can we expect to see a reduction in world food production?

If we do see these drops, they will be due to local weather variability.

British wheat harvest....

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-09/farm-wheat-supply-drops-in-england-after-wet-harvest-defra-says.html

U.S. cattle population....

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2013/Q1/u.s.-cattle-numbers-lowest-since-1952-indiana-and-ohio-not-immune.html

U.S. 2012 agriculture report and analysis......looks at crop effects and the impact on supply, prices and exports.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/in-the-news/us-drought-2012-farm-and-food-impacts.aspx#.UcRdqpzd1RE

I could certainly paste more links.....they are easy to find and these reports on the impacts on 2012 agriculture are being produced by reputable sources.

[Shared Humanity]

Climate change and extreme weather events have already been happening, so when can we expect to see a reduction in world food production?

And while rain has increased significantly through the midsection of the U.S., 2013 is shaping up to be a difficult year.

http://www.agweb.com/blog/Farmland_Forecast_148/

Winter wheat harvest will be a disaster due to the drought through the winter. Meanwhile corn and soybean planting was delayed due to excessive spring rains and they are behind last year in development. With improved ground moisture, there is a good chance that both may recover. This will be dependent on the weather in what will be a shortened growing season. We should expect commodity markets for both to swing wildly as there will be less time to predict yields prior to harvest.

Meanwhile, the culling of herds in the U.S. over the last two years will make it difficult to build the number of head as ranchers are still faced with high feed prices.

http://lubbockonline.com/local-news/2013-01-16/2013-southwest-beef-symposium-focuses-drought-future-cattle-production#.UcRgnpzd1RE

[Shared Humanity]

Climate change and extreme weather events have already been happening, so when can we expect to see a reduction in world food production?

Drought has eased in the U.S. but most of the increased and sometimes excessive rain occurred in the Mississippi River valley and parts east. Pasture land, west of the Mississippi has received little moisture so forage for cattle is poor. Winter wheat will continue to suffer as well.

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

[Shared Humanity]

Climate change and extreme weather events have already been happening, so when can we expect to see a reduction in world food production?

An estimated 25,000 sheep died in record breaking snows in Great Britain where drifts were as high as 15 feet. This is expected to have no real effect on sheep supplies as it represents a small part of the herds but individual farmers have been devastated.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/22022888

Let's play a game and look for record breaking extreme weather events and the impact on world agriculture. I am sure the stories are nearly endless for the last couple of years. While overall production has not been disastrously effected, most climatologists are predicting more extreme weather as the Arctic moves to an ice free state. I can't see how this will not cause more damage and eventually impact world production.

[ccgwebmaster]

Climate change and extreme weather events have already been happening, so when can we expect to see a reduction in world food production?

If I already cited this, my apologies. There is evidence that climate change is already reducing world food production (I suspect I might have done as this whole thing is just going around in circles).

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6042/616.abstract

Models that link yields of the four largest commodity crops to weather indicate that global maize and wheat production declined by 3.8 and 5.5%, respectively, relative to a counterfactual without climate trends

It is important to note that the abstract suggests 2008 is the end of the data period for this paper. That's significant because the majority of the uptick in extreme weather relating to disturbance of the jet stream has manifested itself since then. It is very hard to see how the picture improves for more recent years.

It must be kept in mind that an absolute fall in production may first manifest itself as a slowing down in the trend to increase production, and also that production must increase on average year on year just to stand still and maintain a constant balance of supply against demand. The market can be undersupplied even with just a slowing of the growth in production - by the time we see an absolute drop in production - that is probably a very bad thing indeed for the world.

As to what the science says, I think Apocalypse4Real made a very helpful contribution. Common sense also suggests making large and dramatic changes to a system that humanity has tried to match agriculture as precisely as possible for hundreds and thousands of years is not going to result in a magic market fuelled era of plenty.

Many people may still think decades for serious impacts, but we will find out soon enough what the true consequences of losing the Arctic sea ice seasonally are on the earth system. Inasmuch as that territory is far beyond human experience and at the fringes of human imagination perhaps it is to be expected that people will cling to notions of what is normal and familiar - or in some cases to dogmatic beliefs in the power of abstract human fictions such as the "power of the market".

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

A food production impact that's in progress since the 2008 period of that study is land-grabbing. Interesting that this is going on while not enough constructive (non-fossil fuel) response to AGW is happening.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/26/chinese-firms-and-gulf-sheiks-are-grabbing-farmland-worldwide-why/

""Over less than a decade, the rates of land and water grabbing have dramatically increased," said Paolo D'Odorico, Ernest H. Ern Professor of Environmental Sciences in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences, and a study co-author. "Food security in the grabbing countries increasingly depends on 'grab-land agriculture,' while in the grabbed countries, local populations are excluded from the use of large parcels of land. Even just a fraction of the grabbed resources would be sufficient to substantially decrease the malnourishment affecting some of the grabbed countries."

The study shows that foreign land acquisition is a global phenomenon, involving 62 grabbed countries and 41 grabbers and affecting every continent except Antarctica. Africa and Asia account for 47 percent and 33 percent of the global grabbed area, respectively, and about 90 percent of the grabbed area is in 24 countries.

Countries most affected by the highest rates of water grabbing are Indonesia, the Philippines and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The highest rates of irrigated water grabbing occur in Tanzania and Sudan.

Countries most active in foreign land acquisition are located in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. Overall, about 60 percent of the total grabbed water is appropriated, through land grabbing, by companies in the United States, United Arab Emirates, India, United Kingdom, Egypt, China and Israel."

[ggelsrinc]

Climate change and extreme weather events have already been happening, so when can we expect to see a reduction in world food production?

If we do see these drops, they will be due to local weather variability.

British wheat harvest....

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-09/farm-wheat-supply-drops-in-england-after-wet-harvest-defra-says.html

U.S. cattle population....

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2013/Q1/u.s.-cattle-numbers-lowest-since-1952-indiana-and-ohio-not-immune.html

U.S. 2012 agriculture report and analysis......looks at crop effects and the impact on supply, prices and exports.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/in-the-news/us-drought-2012-farm-and-food-impacts.aspx#.UcRdqpzd1RE

I could certainly paste more links.....they are easy to find and these reports on the impacts on 2012 agriculture are being produced by reputable sources.

I'm sure there were woes of being a farmer reports going all the way back to the invention of agriculture, but that is only one side of a balance sheet and doesn't say when world food production will decline. Impacts on agriculture and food production decline are two different things. Raising the food prices has an impact on food production. The farmers will grow more of a food that becomes more profitable. The main reason world wheat production was down last year was because farmers switched to corn which was more profitable and not because of the weather. Corn production increased last year in spite of the drought.

You can spend your lifetime pasting more links and never paste one showing a decline in world food production. It isn't one dimensional. Those satellites don't turn their cameras on and off just to take pictures of sea ice. Post a link that says the Earth isn't greening with increased temperatures, moisture and CO2! Are the list of scientific references in this article lies?

http://www.co2science.org/subject/g/summaries/greeningearth.php

I have enough sense to know AGW and our CO2 emissions are a bad thing and being a bad thing doesn't require it being bad at everything. If mankind was slowing adding CO2 over a long enough period of time, it could be a great thing, but that isn't the way it's happening. The world is full of examples of good things that can be very bad if done excessively.

 

[ggelsrinc]

Climate change and extreme weather events have already been happening, so when can we expect to see a reduction in world food production?

If I already cited this, my apologies. There is evidence that climate change is already reducing world food production (I suspect I might have done as this whole thing is just going around in circles).

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6042/616.abstract

Models that link yields of the four largest commodity crops to weather indicate that global maize and wheat production declined by 3.8 and 5.5%, respectively, relative to a counterfactual without climate trends

It is important to note that the abstract suggests 2008 is the end of the data period for this paper. That's significant because the majority of the uptick in extreme weather relating to disturbance of the jet stream has manifested itself since then. It is very hard to see how the picture improves for more recent years.

It must be kept in mind that an absolute fall in production may first manifest itself as a slowing down in the trend to increase production, and also that production must increase on average year on year just to stand still and maintain a constant balance of supply against demand. The market can be undersupplied even with just a slowing of the growth in production - by the time we see an absolute drop in production - that is probably a very bad thing indeed for the world.

As to what the science says, I think Apocalypse4Real made a very helpful contribution. Common sense also suggests making large and dramatic changes to a system that humanity has tried to match agriculture as precisely as possible for hundreds and thousands of years is not going to result in a magic market fuelled era of plenty.

Many people may still think decades for serious impacts, but we will find out soon enough what the true consequences of losing the Arctic sea ice seasonally are on the earth system. Inasmuch as that territory is far beyond human experience and at the fringes of human imagination perhaps it is to be expected that people will cling to notions of what is normal and familiar - or in some cases to dogmatic beliefs in the power of abstract human fictions such as the "power of the market".

There is evidence that climate change is already reducing world food production

There is evidence of someone making a model and evidence that someone thinks what a model says is actual evidence it has happened.

[wili]

There is evidence that there are people that will never accept any evidence to refute their pet own pet world view, evidently.

[ggelsrinc]

There is evidence that there are people that will never accept any evidence to refute their pet own pet world view, evidently.

How very true!

You said:

There is evidence that climate change is already reducing world food production

and it isn't true. You said 100 to 1000 species are going extinct everyday and it isn't true. World food production statistics exist and no one has used them as evidence of reductions in world food production. The reason no one has used those statistics is because they show world food production increasing and not decreasing.

http://www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/psdreport.aspx?hidReportRetrievalName=BVS&hidReportRetrievalID=425&hidReportRetrievalTemplateID=2

http://www.fas.usda.gov/wap/current/default.asp

http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1860

http://www.fas.usda.gov/report.asp

http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/csdb/en/

[TerryM]

Lynn


Any idea of who in Canada is buying up African farmland? I always thought it was one thing we had a surplus of.


wili & cc


I assume both of you read Jim's piece that mentioned that in 7 of the last 8 years the world consumed more food than it produced. I realize that with a growing population this doesn't mean that production didn't expand, but it does indicate that unless that 8th year was really a big one we are on an unsustainable path.


I saw the Canadian prairies totally inundated in 2011 with no crops being planted from Ontario through to the Rockies. This year I'm hearing of unseasonal flooding through southern Alberta, and Europe as I understand isn't planting anything that won't float.


I have no idea of how much food reserves we have, but it sounds as though we're munching our way through them quite rapidly. Jim had mentioned the human condition on another thread. I don't think it comes down to being unable to grow enough food, but rather being unwilling to grow food to feed the hungry when more dollars can be made turning farm land into golf courses or raising crops for biofuel.


Terry

[wili]

Good points, Terry.

To get back to the prime question, "When and How Bad," here's more evidence that the answer is "Now and Really Bad":

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/50000-trapped-by-flooding-and-landslides-in-himalayan-tsunami-8667854.html


50,000 trapped by flooding and landslides in 'Himalayan tsunami'

Fears that death toll of 150 could soar, with up to 14,000 unaccounted for

[ccgwebmaster]

I have no idea of how much food reserves we have, but it sounds as though we're munching our way through them quite rapidly. Jim had mentioned the human condition on another thread. I don't think it comes down to being unable to grow enough food, but rather being unwilling to grow food to feed the hungry when more dollars can be made turning farm land into golf courses or raising crops for biofuel.

I think food reserves may actually be off the floor they reached around 2008 (when if I'm not mistaken it was thought much of the worlds wheat reserves were "in transit"), but still not especially strong by historic standards.

The scary thing about drawing down reserves consistently it that it masks the onset of problems. Then the problems - critical shortages - seem to arrive far more abruptly as a result. I gave an example (meaningless values) to someone interested in these things (not sure if they're active on these forums):
Produce 5 units, Consume 5, Stocks 5
Produce 4 units, Consume 6, Stocks 3
Produce 3 units, Consume 7, Stocks 0
Oops!

That's greatly exaggerated of course - but the principle is simple - we live mostly from year to year with food production and the buffering effect of stocks disappearing conceals the scope for a large and relatively sudden surprise to emerge even without introducing large additional shocks into the system or spiking the trends with rapidly increasing incidence of extreme weather due to loss of ice albedo in the Arctic regions. The dogmatic belief in the market notwithstanding, it has failed to boost production enough to moderate prices in recent years and at this point in history it would appear to make good sense to grow stocks of food as fast as possible (given escalating climatic disruption).

I agree entirely that the main part of the problem - and the additional factor driving collapse - is inability of humanity to ensure basic resources such as food are distributed to the poorer sections of the population adequately. I think that's come up however many pages back in this thread.

If the human element and dogmatic belief in markets were fixed - there's arguably plenty of slack in food production as some have argued. At the end of the day though if I'm living on potatoes and there are those able to afford plenty of meat and to fill their gas tanks with corn based ethanol - and the price of potatoes goes beyond my reach - it requires a special sort of naivety to think I'll just stay at home and peacefully starve.

These links look promising:

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2013/world/global-grain-reserves-are-low-legacy-of-u-s-drought/

http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C54

Finally I'd like to note something else. Quite a few additional countries are now exhibiting signs of social unrest. Superficially this is perhaps due to economic factors - but I would urge the consideration of the links between poor economic conditions and high food prices, and note the factors driving the Arab spring revolts (and it wasn't a sudden lust for "democracy").

Recently that I can recollect (and setting aside the ongoing situation in Syria - and a note that globally refugees are now historically rather high), there's been reports of social unrest in:
Turkey
Brazil
Sweden

And I just searched for other riots in 2013 and stumbled over this. It contains the graph referred to many pages earlier in this thread (on at least one occasion) but raises a question I'm a little ashamed to admit I hadn't thought about. That question is - the matter of the long term food price trend in relation to the proven link between food prices and social instability. I had previously been thinking only short term and in terms of price spikes and a new plateau in food prices - I hadn't given a lot of thought to the question of long term rising trend.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425019/the-cause-of-riots-and-the-price-of-food/

If I understand the premise - the question raised is what happens when not only is the price index for food exceeding conflict triggering levels on a sporadic basis - but on an ongoing permanent basis?

I'll guess there will be plenty of company fighting for potatoes? I wish I could say I was entirely joking about the whole potato thing...

[ggelsrinc]

Lynn


Any idea of who in Canada is buying up African farmland? I always thought it was one thing we had a surplus of.


wili & cc


I assume both of you read Jim's piece that mentioned that in 7 of the last 8 years the world consumed more food than it produced. I realize that with a growing population this doesn't mean that production didn't expand, but it does indicate that unless that 8th year was really a big one we are on an unsustainable path.


I saw the Canadian prairies totally inundated in 2011 with no crops being planted from Ontario through to the Rockies. This year I'm hearing of unseasonal flooding through southern Alberta, and Europe as I understand isn't planting anything that won't float.


I have no idea of how much food reserves we have, but it sounds as though we're munching our way through them quite rapidly. Jim had mentioned the human condition on another thread. I don't think it comes down to being unable to grow enough food, but rather being unwilling to grow food to feed the hungry when more dollars can be made turning farm land into golf courses or raising crops for biofuel.


Terry

You can get back years of this report:

http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/csdb/en/

The ending stock is the surplus in the world for this report. For wheat, the 2013/2014 forecast updated 13 June 2013 estimates production, supply, utilization, trade and ending stock. The wheat surplus is estimated at 25% of this years production. They will, of course, try to get rid of the surplus to keep things fresh. That particular link has the current and past 4 growing seasons with last season not finalized. That particular report is for cereal, wheat, coarse grain and rice. There are similar reports on all kinds of food items and Canada should have it's own reports. Cereal is expected to be in surplus around 23%, corn around 17% and rice around 36.5% of the 2013/2014 forecast production.

The amount of food held in surplus does use a substantial amount of storage and associated costs. Obviously the person who grew the crop to become surplus food has to be paid for them to produce food the following year, so the food is purchased. The food utilized is often processed which creates another inventory of food and storage costs. When the intended targets buy and eat it, it's food. There are wastes along the way. You might bail up a bunch of hay and have it ruined by mildew, an area could be oversupplied or be like produce where only a portion is sold. Before ethanol, there were constant complaints of US grain rotting away in storage, particularly corn. Corn has the corn oil removed, ethanol is made from carbohydrates and the rest is animal feed. 2.8 gallons of ethanol are produced per bushel and the rest is food processed for human and animal consumption. It's quite common raising livestock to feed them corn. I would be using corn and sugar from sugar beets or crude cane sugar imports to make ethanol, like a good moonshiner. Cane sugar is nutritious before it's processed and since the largest product is animal food, I'd want the nutrition. Regardless, if someone is complaining about using food to make ethanol, they should calculate the percentage of a bushel of corn that isn't used for food and not pretend like it's the whole bushel. The government pays oil refineries to blend 117 octane ethanol to make your 83 octane fuel. The government in the US also pays farmers not to grow food. I've never seen the US growing food near capacity.

Canada, Austrailia, Russian Federation and the EU are listed as a major exporters of corn and wheat and the US as a major exporter of corn, wheat and rice. I would say major exporters have surpluses. Brazil is a major exporter of corn and is rapidly advancing in agricultural production.

Some of the other links I posted have the production from major countries. I've never had a problem getting production figures and even the details of where a commodity is export to or imported from.   

[TerryM]

gg
Thanks for the link!


Meat, dairy and fish prices seem to have climbed in recent years according to the Food Outlook pages that your FAO page directed me to.


I'm not arguing that the world is incapable of feeding everyone, rather that with free markets it won't choose to do so. IIRC during the potato famine Ireland was exporting grain to feed English horses even as the populace was starving.


Cuba managed to feed everyone after the Soviet Union went under. They deliver food to each family daily at no charge. I understand that the average weight loss has been between 5 and 10 kilos, but everyone eats. I'm not sure that such programs could or would be instituted in countries less ideologically driven. When you compare say Louisiana and Japan's responses to major disasters it's obvious that some cultures will do much better than others in the face of calamity.


When an exporting region is unable to produce due to global weirding it's those reliant on imports that feel the sting. So far we've been lucky in that only one region has been affected in any particular year, but when 2 or more big exporters simultaneously have bad years there simply isn't enough stockpiled to keep everyone supplied. When we couldn't buy new hard drives for a few months because of flooding we made do. If we can't provide food for a couple of months the overpopulation problem will start to self correct.

Terry

[ccgwebmaster]

When an exporting region is unable to produce due to global weirding it's those reliant on imports that feel the sting. So far we've been lucky in that only one region has been affected in any particular year, but when 2 or more big exporters simultaneously have bad years there simply isn't enough stockpiled to keep everyone supplied. When we couldn't buy new hard drives for a few months because of flooding we made do. If we can't provide food for a couple of months the overpopulation problem will start to self correct.

I prefer to think in terms of producers - as not all are major exporters, but they're still potentially very significant if they have problems. The biggest agricultural producer is China - and if they have problems - it doesn't necessary follow they'll be the ones to starve first - if they have sufficient foreign currency reserves to purchase food at the expense of other importers.

Likewise it isn't always the case that the importers are the people who feel the sting - if they can outcompete in the marketplace the population of the exporting nation. With an affluent nation such as the US - it's safe logic - but with a country like, say, Argentina - they can be a major exporter - and continue to export (as noted with Ireland during the potato famine) while their own people go hungry simply because of the financial aspect to things.

The problem with that latter scenario is that then the exporting nation feels the social stresses - and those are the regions we most need to remain stable (instability in exporters is far more dangerous for ongoing food supply). The regions far in excess of their local carrying capacity - logically - ought to be more disposable. The distortion of wealth overrules that logic.

[wili]

Have you guys heard of the "Export Land Model" with regard to the peak oil issue? The idea is that it doesn't really matter how much oil is produced globally. The real bottle neck is the point at which the main producers start to consume as much (or more) oil as they produce. That's when oil become essentially unavailable on the international market to traditional importers.

I think we may be starting to see a similar phenomenon with food, especially as GW disruptions start to set it, but also as elites become more and more accustomed/addicted to western high-meat diets.

We can't really expect the MSM to make any of these connections. That the combination of ELM and GW heatwaves in Russia lead were major factors leading to the Arab spring in Egypt is blindingly obvious to anyone looking at the raw numbers. But these connections were never made (as far as I could see, anyway) in the major news outlets.

So, what would a fully elaborated food version of the "Export Land Model" look like?

[ggelsrinc]

gg
Thanks for the link!


Meat, dairy and fish prices seem to have climbed in recent years according to the Food Outlook pages that your FAO page directed me to.


I'm not arguing that the world is incapable of feeding everyone, rather that with free markets it won't choose to do so. IIRC during the potato famine Ireland was exporting grain to feed English horses even as the populace was starving.


Cuba managed to feed everyone after the Soviet Union went under. They deliver food to each family daily at no charge. I understand that the average weight loss has been between 5 and 10 kilos, but everyone eats. I'm not sure that such programs could or would be instituted in countries less ideologically driven. When you compare say Louisiana and Japan's responses to major disasters it's obvious that some cultures will do much better than others in the face of calamity.


When an exporting region is unable to produce due to global weirding it's those reliant on imports that feel the sting. So far we've been lucky in that only one region has been affected in any particular year, but when 2 or more big exporters simultaneously have bad years there simply isn't enough stockpiled to keep everyone supplied. When we couldn't buy new hard drives for a few months because of flooding we made do. If we can't provide food for a couple of months the overpopulation problem will start to self correct.

Terry

A major drought in the Soviet Union in 1972 led to the sale of 390 million bushels and an agreement was assigned in 1975 under the détente policy to supply the Soviets with grain over a five-year period.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_United_States#Wheat

That's how markets respond to an increase in demand and I can remember farmers being delighted. Markets are very predictable.

Back in the Cold War days, nations kept more surpluses of food, but as nations advanced trade, the need to have such a large surplus declined. If someone thinks the world surplus of food must be increased to prevent future famine then the consequences are obvious. Places like the US and all those other exporting countries are the places that have those 23.7% of cereal surpluses. If they are expected to use more of their land for production and build more storage for the surplus, then someone will have to pay for that additional expense in higher food prices. That hurts the poor the most. The future threat of famine worried about is now a present reality, even if it's to a lesser degree than envisioned. Someone somewhere is on the edge of the starvation cliff and raising the food prices is pushing them off that cliff.

I gave you the percentage of surplus v production in the other post, but surplus v utilization is a better metric for what is happening. 23.7% of the amount of cereals consumed, meaning wheat, corn and rice is placed in storage for the next growing season. It's always been a reality in agriculture that crops can fail and surpluses are needed for insurance. It's also been a reality that agricultural production doesn't fail all over the world at the same time. It's cheaper to not operate the cereal market with large surpluses and if we don't need large surpluses, it doesn't make sense to have them. Raising prices also decreases utilization, even if only slightly.

The best insurance against future food problems are nations actively trading with each other.  Selling that surplus, instead of paying to store it, is a good thing. Suffering agriculture in the USSR created a bonanza for the farmers in exporting nations. In the past, abundant harvests led to hugh surpluses destroying the market and that led to price supports to moderate the market. Agriculture has a long history of unintended consequences.

Meat and cereals are very interdependent. People with more money want meat and a lot of those cereal crops are used to make meat and raise dairy. Fishing needs a hugh worldwide conservation program and has supply problems. Aquaculture can help. 

I used the forecast figures which aren't fact until after all harvest and data are certified. You can trace the accuracy of past forecast archives to yearly stats. That 23.7% surplus comes to 162.5 pounds per human being (7 billion) and the utilization is 686.3 pounds per person.

If some country with a trade relationship with the US is starving, the problem is something internal to that country. That could only happen if for some reason they don't have the ability to transfer the money spent buying their product to buying our food surpluses. There seems to be a popular notion that it's a have and have not thing involving nations when in reality it's a have and have not thing internal to a country. A country with a developed economy and trade relations is not going to have problems importing a needed commodity. For most countries, it's easier to make a list of countries they don't trade with than the ones they do. I don't fault the market or economics for some country's political problems. If some country isn't buying our surplus cereral commodities, it's their choice. The USSR didn't have a problem buying wheat during the Cold War, so why would they? I don't know of any country that fits that imaginary notion of a poor have not country that just has to starve. The efficiency adjustments in the amounts of cereal surpluses were caused by the changes in trade changing the insurance equation to maintain food supplies. The industry is sophisticated enough to calculate the price increases associated with increasing surpluses.

The UN has and also needs to be involved to make sure people aren't starving.

When an exporting region is unable to produce due to global weirding it's those reliant on imports that feel the sting.

I don't think so. If one of those exporting nations had a problem and wasn't able to export, it wouldn't be any different than the USSR example. Any exporting nation would be delighted to gain the extra business and the importing nation isn't going to feel a sting. Compare world maps of food production and population! The similarities are obvious and they are producing food in many places all over the world. China and India weren't mentioned as exporters, but they are hugh food producers with hugh populations. The unintended consequence of an exporting nation's troubles is a bonus to another exporting nation not affected by the problem and maybe having a great harvest. A nation losing it's present supply of food imports would just switch to the next best source. For large producers, crop insurance and government regulation of the food market are normal. Hugh financial institutions are involved in food production and the world has banks. From production on a farm to consumption by a consumer, there are many money interests who only make a profit if someone buys that food, consumes it and it's gone. If there is a problem on the farm, those other money interests will get enough farms to keep production as needed to maintain a healthy market. The largest problems I've seen to agricultural markets came from too much surplus causing farmers to fail when prices fell.     

[wili]

The global wealthy, of course, rarely feel any kind of 'sting.'

For the billions who spend up to half their meager income on food, the dramatic increases in prices in recent years has not been so painless. When a major exporter stops exporting, obviously the global price rises. GW is, of course, only one of the pressures increasing price, but it is one that will not go away, and will have an increasing effect on food production world wide.

(By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, the USSR ceased to exist a couple of decades ago.)


But again: To get back to the prime question, "When and How Bad," here's more evidence that the answer is "Now and Really Bad":

Massive fires in Indonesia cause dangerous smog in Singapore

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/10134845/Singapore-smog-shuts-tourist-attractions.html

Deadly flooding in France follows the deadly flooding in Germany

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57590293/lourdes-pilgrimage-site-closed-by-deadly-france-floods/

http://www.dw.de/after-the-floods-relief-work-and-cleanup/a-16897279

And don't forget that thousands are still stranded by the deadly flooding in India

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/india-floods-strike-himalaya-f/14377311

Calgary is under water

http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/world/calgary-alberta-canada-flooding-claims-lives-mountain-rains-cover-cities-in-brown-floodwater

Deepening drought, fires, and threat of fire in the US West...

Worst ever power outages and general mayhem from super-storm in Minnesota

http://www.startribune.com/local/212602521.html


That "worst ever" phrase keeps popping up in these stories. 

Perhaps something has fundamentally shifted in the global climactic system?

[ggelsrinc]

The global wealthy, of course, rarely feel any kind of 'sting.'

For the billions who spend up to half their meager income on food, the dramatic increases in prices in recent years has not been so painless. When a major exporter stops exporting, obviously the global price rises. GW is, of course, only one of the pressures increasing price, but it is one that will not go away, and will have an increasing effect on food production world wide.

(By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, the USSR ceased to exist a couple of decades ago.)


But again: To get back to the prime question, "When and How Bad," here's more evidence that the answer is "Now and Really Bad":

Massive fires in Indonesia cause dangerous smog in Singapore

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/10134845/Singapore-smog-shuts-tourist-attractions.html

Deadly flooding in France follows the deadly flooding in Germany

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57590293/lourdes-pilgrimage-site-closed-by-deadly-france-floods/

http://www.dw.de/after-the-floods-relief-work-and-cleanup/a-16897279

And don't forget that thousands are still stranded by the deadly flooding in India

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/india-floods-strike-himalaya-f/14377311

Calgary is under water

http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/world/calgary-alberta-canada-flooding-claims-lives-mountain-rains-cover-cities-in-brown-floodwater

Deepening drought, fires, and threat of fire in the US West...

Worst ever power outages and general mayhem from super-storm in Minnesota

http://www.startribune.com/local/212602521.html


That "worst ever" phrase keeps popping up in these stories. 

Perhaps something has fundamentally shifted in the global climactic system?

(By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, the USSR ceased to exist a couple of decades ago.)

By the way, in case you haven't noticed, I posted a link to the drought in the Soviet Union in 1972 and it was the USSR then. How is that fact or any part of history changed by the USSR ceasing to exist on 26 December 1991?

I also don't see the connection with fires caused by slash and burn agriculture to the when and how bad of climate change. Why don't you explain what about climate change causes Indonesians to set the forest on fire?

These fires are nothing new and have caused massive peat fires in the past. Here is an image from 1997.



As far as the Alberta floods go, the town in the early pictures showing flooding is named High River. I looked at the geography and flooding isn't anything new to that area and neither is the name of the town of High River. The PDO switched to positive in May and that means SSTs off North America in the northern Pacific are above normal. A positive PDO brings higher temperatures and precipitation to northwest North America. I made an effort to see if there was a connection between Climate Change and the flood at High River when I first heard about it. I couldn't find one and it's nearly impossible to connect a single weather event to climate change. Scientists know that and don't try. Proving the frequencies of weather events to climate change is another matter. Having examined the rivers in that area of Alberta, I'd be surprised when they don't flood. The area goes from the Rocky Mountains to a flat plain over a very short distance.

An Alaskan heat wave with a positive PDO is normal, so the when and how bad shows up in the frequency of record heat. The effects of climate change will manifest themself in those record heat events. The PDO is worth watching in it's development and the time to watch Alaska is in the winter if the PDO stays positive and strengthens. Someday, there will be a when and how bad event with a positive PDO and strong El Nino, like there was in 1998 that will show what additional warming can do to global temperature records.

[ccgwebmaster]

But again: To get back to the prime question, "When and How Bad," here's more evidence that the answer is "Now and Really Bad":

I dunno, I'm loathe to tack too many superlatives onto the "bad" just yet - since as far as I can see, it's worsened quite a lot in just a few years, and yet there's still quite a long way left to run on the Arctic changes driving all this...

... and no reasons not to expect atmospheric circulation to continue to be increasingly abnormal in the context of human experience over at least 10,000 years and possibly orders of magnitude longer.

If thermohaline circulation is affected once the ice starts to be seasonally gone - the fun is just getting started. I suspect that would send shockwaves out far beyond the track of the newly deviant jet stream.

Furthermore as the temperature gradient between the Arctic and the rest of the planet shallows, this will gradually reduce heat transport into the Arctic. While that might put a ceiling on the changes there (for some time at least) it will cause an escalation in warming in those regions that will then be transporting less heat polewards. While this temperature change should be quite a bit milder than that in the Arctic, that would probably add an additional layer of effects onto major agricultural regions.

The world is changing and a lot of people seem to struggle with that idea. Maybe that's why they cling to delusions that changes we have never seen before (far worse than milder changes that have reliably toppled ancient civilisations and bad on even paleoclimatic measures of previous mass extinctions) will just be a spot of minor inconvenience where some less fortunate people (than them, I suppose, I can't say I feel well placed there) suffer and die.

[OldLeatherneck]

Have you guys heard of the "Export Land Model" with regard to the peak oil issue? The idea is that it doesn't really matter how much oil is produced globally. The real bottle neck is the point at which the main producers start to consume as much (or more) oil as they produce. That's when oil become essentially unavailable on the international market to traditional importers.


.................So, what would a fully elaborated food version of the "Export Land Model" look like?

Wili,

You have brought up a very interesting point regarding using ELM as a metric for food exporting nations.  When these exporting nations are faced with declining agricultural yields and increasing internal demands due to population increase, they will eventually transition from being a net exporter of food to a net importer of food.  This negatively affects that nation's economy relative to the global markets and also leads to social unrest when food shortages manifest themselves.

You are correct in pointing out that Egypt ceased being a net exporter of crude oil at about the same time the price of wheat increased due to the extreme drought in Russia.

[ggelsrinc]

But again: To get back to the prime question, "When and How Bad," here's more evidence that the answer is "Now and Really Bad":

I dunno, I'm loathe to tack too many superlatives onto the "bad" just yet - since as far as I can see, it's worsened quite a lot in just a few years, and yet there's still quite a long way left to run on the Arctic changes driving all this...

... and no reasons not to expect atmospheric circulation to continue to be increasingly abnormal in the context of human experience over at least 10,000 years and possibly orders of magnitude longer.

If thermohaline circulation is affected once the ice starts to be seasonally gone - the fun is just getting started. I suspect that would send shockwaves out far beyond the track of the newly deviant jet stream.

Furthermore as the temperature gradient between the Arctic and the rest of the planet shallows, this will gradually reduce heat transport into the Arctic. While that might put a ceiling on the changes there (for some time at least) it will cause an escalation in warming in those regions that will then be transporting less heat polewards. While this temperature change should be quite a bit milder than that in the Arctic, that would probably add an additional layer of effects onto major agricultural regions.

The world is changing and a lot of people seem to struggle with that idea. Maybe that's why they cling to delusions that changes we have never seen before (far worse than milder changes that have reliably toppled ancient civilisations and bad on even paleoclimatic measures of previous mass extinctions) will just be a spot of minor inconvenience where some less fortunate people (than them, I suppose, I can't say I feel well placed there) suffer and die.

From what I know of the science, the decrease in temperature gradient between the equator and poles is the reason why the jet stream meanders more north and south, like it does during a negative phase AO. There is no evidence in the past that warming isn't going to keep the arctic warmer and the arctic is not going to benefit by a decrease in the temperature gradient. The warm air can get to the arctic without being caused directly by the temperature gradient, because the jet stream will take the warm air to the arctic and bring the colder arctic air further south. It's like the decrease in temperature gradient has positive feedback causing a decrease in temperature gradient, because of the jet stream changes. The exceptional weather is a product of these jet stream meanders stalling in place for extended periods of time.

The place to watch for changes in ocean circulations is the North Atlantic warming and changing the Eastern equatorial Atlantic upwelling zone. The deep water formation in thermohaline circulation occurs before it reaches the arctic sea ice and the current is going to cool and have deep water formation regardless of whether there is sea ice. The danger to disrupting thermohaline circulation involves a fresh water pulse and people will be wanting some global warming if that happens again (Younger Dryas).

[ccgwebmaster]

From what I know of the science, the decrease in temperature gradient between the equator and poles is the reason why the jet stream meanders more north and south, like it does during a positive AO. There is no evidence in the past that warming isn't going to keep the arctic warmer and the arctic is not going to benefit by a decrease in the temperature gradient.

That does seem to be why the jet stream is increasing amplitude north (and perhaps south a little - I seem to recall it had moved overall northwards). I don't think I argued that there would be any Arctic cooling - and I have no idea how the Arctic benefits from a decrease in the temperature gradient in this case (or anywhere or anyone else for that matter).

The warm air can get to the arctic without being caused directly by the temperature gradient, because the jet stream will take the warm air to the arctic and bring the colder arctic air further south. It's like the decrease in temperature gradient has positive feedback causing a decrease in temperature gradient, because of the jet stream changes. The exceptional weather is a product of these jet stream meanders stalling in place for extended periods of time.

Are you suggesting the increasing amplitude of the jet stream track will compensate for an overall weakening of the thermal gradient in the atmosphere or any slowing/stopping of thermohaline circulation? There is no way that is the case - or else we wouldn't see the thermal gradient shallowing in the first place (ie there would be no Arctic amplification).

I'm not sure it's right to think of it as exceptional weather any more - it's a lead in to a new climate and to a new norm (though neither of those can apply until it settled down long term). Anyone viewing it as exceptional is arguably biasing themselves to thinking it will go away again (as exceptions tend to be temporary deviations from the norm).

One of the sentences above I couldn't understand:

It's like the decrease in temperature gradient has positive feedback causing a decrease in temperature gradient, because of the jet stream changes.

I don't see it as positive feedback. In the sense that polewards heat transport will reduce (tending to restore the thermal gradient), it's a negative feedback - but not strong enough to maintain status quo any more.

The place to watch for changes in ocean circulations is the North Atlantic warming and changing the Eastern equatorial Atlantic upwelling zone. The deep water formation in thermohaline circulation occurs before it reaches the arctic sea ice and the current is going to cool and have deep water formation regardless of whether there is sea ice. The danger to disrupting thermohaline circulation involves a fresh water pulse and people will be wanting some global warming if that happens again (Younger Dryas).

Even if the ice weren't involved directly in cooling and salinising the water (and it is, and salinisation matters too) there is plenty of scope for fresh water to become an issue in the Arctic basin. Without the sea ice (even just seasonally) you have the potential for freshening from rainfall and from fresh water land run off, and increasing ice loss from GIS (that melts to provide additional fresh water). I'm setting aside any scope for abrupt injection from Greenland via this mechanism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_event as I don't understand it well enough (specifically in the context of whether or not such a situation could occur with Greenland, and in a near future timescale or not).

The Younger Dryas is a very flawed analogy to quote at this point as carbon dioxide levels are far above the levels they were then. It isn't clear that you can achieve overall cooling in the Arctic or northern hemisphere as a result at this point - rather than simply leaving more heat to accumulate closer to the equator (the planet is still out of thermal budget balance, so this is a perfectly possible outcome).

Only rapid reglaciation could stop the ongoing processes in the Arctic and given that under current conditions we are busy melting all that ice at an impressive pace, it seems to me that the balance of probability (and going by paleoclimatic precedents) is very much that we wouldn't expect more than a temporary slowing or halt in that melting at the very most. The process might put a ceiling on Arctic amplification, too late to help us in terms of climatic norms that we're used to though.

Even in a rapid reglaciation scenario - such regional cooling would presumably restart circulation and transport heat polewards again. That extra carbon dioxide relative to the Younger Dryas really changes things.

I don't think most people grasp how big and fundamental these changes are. The turbulence of the Younger Dryas may provide useful analogs in some respects (rate of change and mechanisms for change more than type of change) for our near future but mass extinctions such as the PETM (and potentially even end Permian) are our longer term analogs.

I stumbled over a BBC documentary () about the search for the causes of the end Permian extinction that I thought was good. It highlighted two things for me that I think are pertinent:

1. We do actually have a substantial chance to ultimately trigger a methane catastrophe, albeit it may take quite a while for the heat to accumulate sufficiently in the oceans (if one is talking on a global scale at least, the ESAS remains a very specific regional concern)

2. With particular reference to some of the views expressed by Fishmahboi - I think one should take heart in the reference in the program to at least one large complex land organism that managed to survive the whole thing (that is thought to be a very remote human evolutionary ancestor)

[EDIT] http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/dayearthdied.shtml

[wili]

ggel, sorry about the USSR thing--I assumed you were referring to the more recent 2010 event.

On Indonesian fires, I guess I'm old enough to consider 1997 relatively new. IIRC, Lovelock claimed that those fires alone that year contributed 40% of the ghgs for gw (but I don't have the reference in front of me right now, so that could be off).

"It's like the decrease in temperature gradient has positive feedback causing a decrease in temperature gradient, because of the jet stream changes."

Good point. I hadn't thought of that in terms of feedback before.

OLN, I'm glad to hear you think my application of ELM to food stocks may have some merit. I'm not sure I can do all the fancy graphing on it that WestTX used to do with ELM on TOD. And, of course, it is much harder to determine on what particular year any particular country is going to have a gw-related drought or flood that will take out or vastly reduce their ability to export ag products. What is predictable here is that these catasrophes will increase in intensity and duration. So over a ten or twenty year period one could, I suppose, average those likely effects out.

And it is predictable that many developing countries, including BRIC, will want to eat ever higher on the food chain and so use more total grain/soy domestically as that gets used for animal feed rather than directly feeding humans. Raw population increase within a country would be another factor that would be somewhat predictable for the coming decade or more.

What are other factors that such a model would have to consider--predictable and un-?

ggc wrote: "it's worsened quite a lot in just a few years, and yet there's still quite a long way left to run on the Arctic changes driving all this...

... and no reasons not to expect atmospheric circulation to continue to be increasingly abnormal in the context of human experience over at least 10,000 years and possibly orders of magnitude longer."

Truer words were never spoken.

"If thermohaline circulation is affected once the ice starts to be seasonally gone - the fun is just getting started. I suspect that would send shockwaves out far beyond the track of the newly deviant jet stream."

Good point. I think this is going to be something of a discontinuity in global (and especially NH) climactic patterns, probably the point at which we start to get the very serious crop short falls that ggel is so disappointed not to have seen so far. Another complication to my ELM-based food availability prediction.

"Furthermore as the temperature gradient between the Arctic and the rest of the planet shallows, this will gradually reduce heat transport into the Arctic. While that might put a ceiling on the changes there (for some time at least) it will cause an escalation in warming in those regions that will then be transporting less heat polewards"

I guess this will eventually happen, but I would think only when temps in the Arctic are approaching those in the tropics! I hope that isn't right around the corner!

In the mean time, as ggel points out (and as Prof. Jennifer Francis and others have so nicely illustrated), the larger amplitude waves caused by the reduced temperature gradient are serving to bring even more heat into the Arctic, accelerating the rate of change there (and causing stalled out systems that make the weird seemingly endless rains in some places and endless droughts elsewhere).

Here's one recent presentation on these effects, by Francis and Ostro: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/22/2150561/the-alarming-science-behind-climate-changes-increasingly-wild-weather-ostro-and-francis-on-video/

[ggelsrinc]

ggel, sorry about the USSR thing--I assumed you were referring to the more recent 2010 event.

On Indonesian fires, I guess I'm old enough to consider 1997 relatively new. IIRC, Lovelock claimed that those fires alone that year contributed 40% of the ghgs for gw (but I don't have the reference in front of me right now, so that could be off).

"It's like the decrease in temperature gradient has positive feedback causing a decrease in temperature gradient, because of the jet stream changes."

Good point. I hadn't thought of that in terms of feedback before.

OLN, I'm glad to hear you think my application of ELM to food stocks may have some merit. I'm not sure I can do all the fancy graphing on it that WestTX used to do with ELM on TOD. And, of course, it is much harder to determine on what particular year any particular country is going to have a gw-related drought or flood that will take out or vastly reduce their ability to export ag products. What is predictable here is that these catasrophes will increase in intensity and duration. So over a ten or twenty year period one could, I suppose, average those likely effects out.

And it is predictable that many developing countries, including BRIC, will want to eat ever higher on the food chain and so use more total grain/soy domestically as that gets used for animal feed rather than directly feeding humans. Raw population increase within a country would be another factor that would be somewhat predictable for the coming decade or more.

What are other factors that such a model would have to consider--predictable and un-?

ggc wrote: "it's worsened quite a lot in just a few years, and yet there's still quite a long way left to run on the Arctic changes driving all this...

... and no reasons not to expect atmospheric circulation to continue to be increasingly abnormal in the context of human experience over at least 10,000 years and possibly orders of magnitude longer."

Truer words were never spoken.

"If thermohaline circulation is affected once the ice starts to be seasonally gone - the fun is just getting started. I suspect that would send shockwaves out far beyond the track of the newly deviant jet stream."

Good point. I think this is going to be something of a discontinuity in global (and especially NH) climactic patterns, probably the point at which we start to get the very serious crop short falls that ggel is so disappointed not to have seen so far. Another complication to my ELM-based food availability prediction.

"Furthermore as the temperature gradient between the Arctic and the rest of the planet shallows, this will gradually reduce heat transport into the Arctic. While that might put a ceiling on the changes there (for some time at least) it will cause an escalation in warming in those regions that will then be transporting less heat polewards"

I guess this will eventually happen, but I would think only when temps in the Arctic are approaching those in the tropics! I hope that isn't right around the corner!

In the mean time, as ggel points out (and as Prof. Jennifer Francis and others have so nicely illustrated), the larger amplitude waves caused by the reduced temperature gradient are serving to bring even more heat into the Arctic, accelerating the rate of change there (and causing stalled out systems that make the weird seemingly endless rains in some places and endless droughts elsewhere).

Here's one recent presentation on these effects, by Francis and Ostro: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/22/2150561/the-alarming-science-behind-climate-changes-increasingly-wild-weather-ostro-and-francis-on-video/

The odd thing is the AO has trended in the positive phase since the '70s and that should cause less meandering of the jet stream and create less exchanges between the arctic and latitudes below the jet stream and vice versa. The meanders would be more explainable if the AO trend had been negative phase. I would think a positive AO would mitigate the waves in the jet stream, even if only partially. It would be interesting to compare the data for the jet stream and the AO, if the record goes back far enough. I'm not sure how far back good jet stream data goes.

[Lynn Shwadchuck]

Wow, a lot has been posted here since I put up that article about farmland grabs.

Terry, I found this article. http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2013/06/201362111193073903.html

Canada's Agcapita is the company "investing in the global food crisis".

The article in Aljazeera is questioning the nobility of the G8's new initiative:

"A year after the launch of a US-led initiative to lift millions out of poverty and hunger in Africa, we examine the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition.
The alliance was formed at the 2012 G8 summit led by the United States. Its stated goal was to reduce hunger and lift 50 million Africans out of poverty over the next decade.
Critics say this seemingly noble effort - among wealthy nations, African leaders and international corporations - to increase private sector investment in agriculture, is precisely the problem. Several NGOs and civil society organisations say this solution focuses too heavily on private investment and is the wrong solution to a complex and growing hunger crisis."

CCGW: Thanks for that informative BBC video on the end of the Permian.

[ccgwebmaster]

And it is predictable that many developing countries, including BRIC, will want to eat ever higher on the food chain and so use more total grain/soy domestically as that gets used for animal feed rather than directly feeding humans. Raw population increase within a country would be another factor that would be somewhat predictable for the coming decade or more.

What are other factors that such a model would have to consider--predictable and un-?

I think if you're attempting to grapple with reality - the ELM is a better way to look at things as population is still rising in almost all regions, and affluence is changing consumption patterns in many (certainly a significant proportion of global population).

However, there is still the tendency to assume all else remains constant with it - in the sense that abrupt climate change is highly likely to start to introduce substantial additional downward pressure on yields above and beyond cost of oil and related products, availability of irrigation water or rainfall, depletion or loss of soil quality and so on.

Good point. I think this is going to be something of a discontinuity in global (and especially NH) climactic patterns, probably the point at which we start to get the very serious crop short falls that ggel is so disappointed not to have seen so far. Another complication to my ELM-based food availability prediction.

But the prediction still gives you a more realistic baseline?

Yield reductions from abrupt climate change are unlikely to be linear. They are more likely to be driven by extreme events - and non linear transitions (eg where whole regions rapidly and permanently move from suitable to unsuitable conditions for the form of agriculture currently practised there).

Extreme events you might be able to get a statistical handle on - though I don't think there's enough data yet to start to draw strong conclusions or forecast ahead far into the future.

Non linear transitions... well, that's a whole other story.

"Furthermore as the temperature gradient between the Arctic and the rest of the planet shallows, this will gradually reduce heat transport into the Arctic. While that might put a ceiling on the changes there (for some time at least) it will cause an escalation in warming in those regions that will then be transporting less heat polewards"

I guess this will eventually happen, but I would think only when temps in the Arctic are approaching those in the tropics! I hope that isn't right around the corner!

This (to me at least) is an interesting question.

I think a lot depends on if the Arctic is able to find a stable equilibrium point (for some time...) where it is seasonally ice free in the summer, but still capable of losing enough energy during the winter to refreeze and put a limit on how far the positive feedback runs (for now). If that is possible, it will buy a bit more time until greenhouse gas levels (not necessarily from human sources - we have committed natural feedbacks to consider too now) push things through either another transition phase (whether abrupt or linear but I suspect the former as the moment you achieve year round ice free conditions up there is exactly when excess energy by definition can start to really accumulate and warm the region properly).

Inasmuch as it takes time for the system as a whole to absorb heat (and we're still waiting on substantial additional greenhouse gases, even if only from natural feedbacks) I think the question must include other potential sources of rapid feedback that are out there.

It may be a slightly moot question for the bulk of people though - a little like asking if you prefer to be shot in the head once or three times? It seems rather unlikely to me that all the existing billions (let alone any additions) can continue life as usual with even a fraction of the change coming down the pipeline. Best case - the Arctic transitions to a seasonally ice free state that is somehow manageable and we get a little more time until the next big positive feedback goes off.

Worst case - well, we've explored that towards the start of this thread.

[Bruce Steele]

"The place to watch for changes in ocean circulations is the North Atlantic warming and changing the Eastern equatorial Atlantic upwelling zone. The deep water formation in thermohaline circulation occurs before it reaches the arctic sea ice and the current is going to cool and have deep water formation regardless of whether there is sea ice. The danger to disrupting thermohaline circulation involves a fresh water pulse and people will be wanting some global warming if that happens again (Younger Dryas)."
« Last Edit: Today at 02:41:56 PM by ggelsrinc »
 The MOC has both a northern  and a southern component. The formation of AABW that drives the southern end has been slowing for decades.  There is a good discussion over at the Antarctic page that ASLR prodigiously informs. Slowdowns or increases in the surface flow of the Atlantic northern component ( the gulf stream) are affected by the positive or negative phase of the NAO. The paper below shows a 10% decline during the little ice age.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3621426/
There are also a couple good books by Brian Fagan that make a good argument that the cooling in Europe and the eastern U.S. were localized events not worldwide. He shows that concurrent with the LIA the desert southwest suffered some very serious droughts.  Thanks ggelsrinc for the tip on the phase change of the PDO. We have spent a major portion of the years since 2000 in a negative phase and we could switch back again but if the PDO stays positive for very long it will trigger some large changes here in the eastern Pacific. Fish populations and productivity both respond to the PDO phase.

[Bruce Steele]

I just checked the PDO index and although the + .08 is the first monthly positive number since May 2010 it will be awhile till we can say the generally negative phase since 2000 has changed. Give it several months or a year.    Here is a link to current numbers.
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest

[Shared Humanity]

Yield reductions from abrupt climate change are unlikely to be linear. They are more likely to be driven by extreme events - and non linear transitions (eg where whole regions rapidly and permanently move from suitable to unsuitable conditions for the form of agriculture currently practised there).

Extreme events you might be able to get a statistical handle on - though I don't think there's enough data yet to start to draw strong conclusions or forecast ahead far into the future.

Non linear transitions... well, that's a whole other story.


This (to me at least) is an interesting question.

I agree that non linear transitions are how it will happen. We are already getting a lot of evidence of this in natural environments. It is only a matter of time for this to occur in the artificial man made environment of agriculture.

http://www.fs.fed.us/ccrc/topics/plant-diseases.shtml

You could argue that the shifts occurring in the southwestern U.S. are the cumulative impact of severe weather events and the pests, pathogens and fires that occur as a result.

[ggelsrinc]

I just checked the PDO index and although the + .08 is the first monthly positive number since June 2010 it will be awhile till we can say the generally negative phase since 2000 has changed. Give it several months or a year.    Here is a link to current numbers.
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest

I follow daily SST anomaly maps, so trends in ENSO or PDO are occurring months ahead. Since the ocean temperature doesn't change much in short periods of time, you can anticipate what will be reported before monthly values are calculated.

Climate patterns are just good indicators of probability.

ccg was talking about all hell breaking loose with the arctic becoming ice free and thermohaline circulation being affected. I called it disruption of thermohaline circulation and said it wasn't going to happen with an ice free arctic. Have you ever read anything claiming MOC was constant? Variability and disruption are too different things. I believe the arctic sea ice protects the fresh water lense at the surface and ccg believes it protects against precipitation causing the surface to become less saline. Common sense says since the Arctic Ocean is stratfied by salinity instead of temperature, that it's the sea ice doing it. Common sense says without sea ice, the surface will become more saline as it mixes with more saline waters from below and the Arctic Ocean will eventually become temperature stratified like all the other oceans. I told ccg where to look for changes in ocean currents, but maybe I should have been more clear again. When I am discussing changes in ocean currents, it doesn't mean they are constant and don't vary, such as with seasons. It means the ocean currents are changing enough to change the climate of an area. I gave examples of climate change, like the Green Sahara. I've made it clear that there is 100% chance that continued warming will alter the climate of some areas on Earth enough to radically change the way people have to interact with that environment. That means food couldn't be grown in an area and with change it can be and food was grown in an area and with warming changes you won't be able to grow food there. It means if livestock are put in an area after the climate has changed that much they will die and an area used to not support livestock and with change it does. Climate change on Earth has never caused all the areas of the Earth to move their climates in the same direction. The net change has always been a summation of some areas experiencing positive changes and some negative. It isn't possible to globally change climate and have all areas benefit or suffer. We are living in an Ice Age and climates are always changing, plus there are damned good records of how past warming and cooling changes have affected the climate of various Earth regions. 

[ccgwebmaster]

I called it disruption of thermohaline circulation and said it wasn't going to happen with an ice free arctic.

Your track record for downplaying and minimising the impacts (along with occasional apparent statements verging on denial) makes me rather skeptical by default.

You are saying there will be no disruption of thermohaline circulation with an ice free Arctic? And you therefore imply that the ice does not play a role in cooling or salinising the water to help drive said circulation.

Catlin survey seems to disagree with you.

http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/thermohaline-circulation-2011/

This paper seems to explore the role of sea ice being exported from the Arctic, and concludes that sea ice does affect thermohaline circulation by this route.

http://met.no/forskning/vare_forskere/cecilie_mauritzen/filestore/Mauritzen_Hakkinen_GRL1997.pdf

This abstract appears to mention the insulating effect of the Arctic sea ice in terms of the implications for thermohaline circulation, presumably because it helps ensure that the ocean water remains fairly constant in temperature and warmer fresher water can't accumulate at the top.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442%281998%29011%3C2789%3ASIEOTS%3E2.0.CO%3B2

The message here is a little more complicated, but they are certainly not arguing that sea ice doesn't matter:

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI4232.1

On the whole it seems to me that sea ice is important to thermohaline circulation and while one may not be able to predict precisely the type of changes we should expect it is delusional to think it won't cause changes.

I see little point in spending more time to dig out more of the same (you after all provided nothing to support your assertion), nor in worrying too much about the rest. It's odd how you think so many things will be unchanged or even undergo net improvement in a world that has a seasonally ice free Arctic - it flies in the face of both common sense and the evidence.

[ggelsrinc]

I called it disruption of thermohaline circulation and said it wasn't going to happen with an ice free arctic.

Your track record for downplaying and minimising the impacts (along with occasional apparent statements verging on denial) makes me rather skeptical by default.

You are saying there will be no disruption of thermohaline circulation with an ice free Arctic? And you therefore imply that the ice does not play a role in cooling or salinising the water to help drive said circulation.

Catlin survey seems to disagree with you.

http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/thermohaline-circulation-2011/

This paper seems to explore the role of sea ice being exported from the Arctic, and concludes that sea ice does affect thermohaline circulation by this route.

http://met.no/forskning/vare_forskere/cecilie_mauritzen/filestore/Mauritzen_Hakkinen_GRL1997.pdf

This abstract appears to mention the insulating effect of the Arctic sea ice in terms of the implications for thermohaline circulation, presumably because it helps ensure that the ocean water remains fairly constant in temperature and warmer fresher water can't accumulate at the top.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442%281998%29011%3C2789%3ASIEOTS%3E2.0.CO%3B2

The message here is a little more complicated, but they are certainly not arguing that sea ice doesn't matter:

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI4232.1

On the whole it seems to me that sea ice is important to thermohaline circulation and while one may not be able to predict precisely the type of changes we should expect it is delusional to think it won't cause changes.

I see little point in spending more time to dig out more of the same (you after all provided nothing to support your assertion), nor in worrying too much about the rest. It's odd how you think so many things will be unchanged or even undergo net improvement in a world that has a seasonally ice free Arctic - it flies in the face of both common sense and the evidence.

I'm saying there is nothing in science to suggest an ice free arctic will disrupt the thermohaline circulation, so instead of just saying it, post something in science to support your claim! You can't figure out that saying so doesn't make sense and treat your own words as facts.

If you can't post science to support your position, then your position isn't based on science.

Do you know what the word disrupt means? It doesn't mean you have disrupted thermohaline circulation by removing a drop of water from the ocean. You painted the picture of a major catastrophe associated with the lose of arctic sea ice, because of it's affect on thermohaline circulation.

North Atlantic Deep Water Formation doesn't happen next to the sea ice and Greenland like the image in your Catlin survey shows. If it doesn't happen that way, why go to the trouble to make a map showing that it does?

The fact that all the oceans are involved in thermohaline circulation seems to be ignored. The major components of thermohaline circulation are ignored.

What does the data show concerning transport of heat to the arctic by the oceans? Has it declined with the arctic sea ice or increased?

On the whole it seems to me that sea ice is important to thermohaline circulation and while one may not be able to predict precisely the type of changes we should expect it is delusional to think it won't cause changes.

Things tend to seem to you the way you choose to allow them to seem. No one has to predict, because the world hasn't always had arctic sea ice. Again, you go back to talking about changes and not disruptions. Sea ice has to have an affect on temperature (thermo), because ice regulates the temperature of the water below it. Sea ice ejects brine (haline), so it's creating fresher water at the surface and protecting that fresher water from mixing with the more saline waters in the Arctic Ocean. Changes always make changes and that thermohaline circulation is changing whether it's in a world with or without arctic sea ice. There are many things losing that arctic sea ice during the summer won't do and disrupting thermohaline circulation is one of them.

That arctic sea ice is like some of it's neighbors in many ways. It's possible to walk from land to sea ice and not even know it. When it's gone, it's going to allow much faster melt in Greenland and the CAA. It's going to allow the permafrost to melt faster. It's the real problems associated with the loss of arctic sea ice that need focus.

Right now there are areas on Earth that have deep water formation. As warm water is transported northward, it loses heat and it's salinity increases because of evaportation. That is what fuels the deep water formation in the north. The area will change as the Earth warms during the summer and cools during the winter. The arctic sea ice is not cooling or evaporating that water which makes deep water formation. If you think it is, then your concept of thermohaline circulation is wrong and it's contrary to very basic science. It should be obvious that the water in the process of becoming or became deep water formation can be sampled and analyzed rather easily.

[wili]

What ccg said.

The past is no longer a very good predictor of the future. We are increasing the level of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere almost certainly at a faster rate than has ever happened on the planet.

The planet is a very complex set of systems.

None of us can say we know for sure what the outcome will be--too many variables and feedbacks and unknown unknowns.. But most of the best science points to mostly very bad consequences in most places.

[ccgwebmaster]

I'm saying there is nothing in science to suggest an ice free arctic will disrupt the thermohaline circulation, so instead of just saying it, post something in science to support your claim! You can't figure out that saying so doesn't make sense and treat your own words as facts.

If you can't post science to support your position, then your position isn't based on science.

Science, like the research paper abstracts talking about various aspects of how sea ice affects thermohaline circulation? Or do you want a link to Carlos Duarte mentioning it in his "enquiring minds" lecture available on Youtube?

Do you know what the word disrupt means?

If you want to be taken seriously, I can recommend not questioning my knowledge of basic English as a good starting point.

North Atlantic Deep Water Formation doesn't happen next to the sea ice and Greenland like the image in your Catlin survey shows. If it doesn't happen that way, why go to the trouble to make a map showing that it does?

As far as I am aware the precise sites of deep water formation are not fixed and can move around. It should be beyond dispute that there will be significant changes within the arctic basin.

You may feel that if the main site of deep water formation is nearby, it will remain unaffected by large changes in close proximity. You may feel that it won't move, that overturning will not be affected by a change in behaviour in the large adjacent body of water. You may feel that the Arctic is just a remote cold area that can be disconnected from the earth system and ignored, too - but I would dispute all counts.

The fact that all the oceans are involved in thermohaline circulation seems to be ignored.

Precisely my point? (including the Arctic ocean)

What does the data show concerning transport of heat to the arctic by the oceans? Has it declined with the arctic sea ice or increased?

IPCC forecasts are for decreasing transport of heat to the Arctic via the oceans.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-es-15-atlantic-ocean.html

Observations are suggestive of a slowing of thermohaline circulation, but data is limited. There does appear to have been an unusual event in 2009/10 where it slowed markedly. Look at Fig 3 at the following link - states the science is not well enough understood and we urgently need to understand it better (which makes it odd you know better about all this...):

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00151.1

This is Duarte's lecture referred to:



He talks about thermohaline circulation from 28:00 onwards, but I strongly recommend the whole thing to anyone who hasn't seen it who is interested in what is happening in the Arctic (he covers methane too).

Things tend to seem to you the way you choose to allow them to seem. No one has to predict, because the world hasn't always had arctic sea ice.

Care to back this assertion up with some scientific evidence of what has happened regarding thermohaline circulation during previous ice free regimes? (preferably as analogous as possible to current conditions, at least in the key respects)

Again, you go back to talking about changes and not disruptions. Sea ice has to have an affect on temperature (thermo), because ice regulates the temperature of the water below it. Sea ice ejects brine (haline), so it's creating fresher water at the surface and protecting that fresher water from mixing with the more saline waters in the Arctic Ocean. Changes always make changes and that thermohaline circulation is changing whether it's in a world with or without arctic sea ice. There are many things losing that arctic sea ice during the summer won't do and disrupting thermohaline circulation is one of them.

I already posted any number of links suggesting possibility for effects on thermohaline circulation within the Arctic basin (and not just in this post).

I disagree strongly that thermohaline circulation is not going to be impacted. I believe it will be, and I'm tipping it as one of the next big things we can expect. The changes to the jet stream took me off guard (and I think a lot of other people) and it's clear the earth system is far more complicated than we can understand. Therefore I'm looking at what I think is going to happen next - once the ice is gone. The oceans seem a strong candidate.

The question in mind is not whether thermohaline circulation will be impacted - the question is how serious will be the resulting changes be in the context of everything else that is going on. That's much harder to answer as it requires a bit more quantitative input as opposed to purely qualitative (by the way, Duarte puts the lie to your notion of it meaning an ice age for Europe if it slows/stops by superimposing the other warming to show a final picture).

There's too much junk (whether intentional or not) in the rest of your answer for me to want to reply to each single point. Sorry. Thermohaline circulation is neither well monitored, nor easy to do so, and evaporation (when, where, how much) itself is liable to be impacted by the ongoing changes (the earth system is highly interconnected).

However, if you could kindly provide at least a tiny bit of the science you say I'm not offering, I'd appreciate it.

Otherwise I'm still very interested in any views on this - as I say - I'm starting to consider that it might be one of the near future things that come up next. The next "unknown unknown", as it were. If I can gather my thoughts together to a more refined extent I'll kick off a thread just for it, if I can't already find one.

[ccgwebmaster]

What ccg said.

Except you managed to say it far better and more concisely than I have.

[ggelsrinc]

You talk about the arctic basin as if it isn't the most isolated ocean basin on the planet. You talk about deep water formation as if it doesn't involve water flowing down the slope of the ocean floor into the ocean basins. They even use the analogy of a river to describe this. Water shed or drainage basin is a better analogy.

The Eemian shows no disruption of thermohaline circulation and I seem to recall ccg questioning or making an off the wall comment about the obvious disruption of thermohaline in the Pliocene caused by North and South America connecting. Younger Dryas was a disruption of thermohaline circulation.

[ccgwebmaster]

You talk about the arctic basin as if it isn't the most isolated ocean basin on the planet. You talk about deep water formation as if it doesn't involve water flowing down the slope of the ocean floor into the ocean basins. They even use the analogy of a river to describe this. Water shed or drainage basin is a better analogy.

The Eemian shows no disruption of thermohaline circulation and I seem to recall ccg questioning or making an off the wall comment about the obvious disruption of thermohaline in the Pliocene caused by North and South America connecting. Younger Dryas was a disruption of thermohaline circulation.

Don't believe I said anything about the Eemian except that to a) dispute it's value as a good analog and b) to point out even that analog implies rather dramatic changes. You're still not apparently able to provide at least a link to a published paper that shows the Eemian had no changes to thermohaline circulation.

In addition to everything else quoted, someone (elsewhere) drew my attention to a specific item that apparently caused a (relatively recent) reduction in thermohaline circulation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_Sea#Odden_ice_tongue

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/96JC01440/abstract

If I remember the points from the Carlos Duarte presentation the fact that the Arctic basin is relatively isolated is actually one of the reasons he expects the water in there to freshen disproportionately from increased melting - as it is surrounded by land - aka sources of increasing amounts of fresh water.

Anyway the behaviour of the Odden ice tongue would count as evidence of things changing with respect to thermohaline circulation as a result of the loss of Arctic sea ice and warming of the region - as well as demonstrating the role of salinisation in causing water to sink.

The question therefore stands as to the possible significance of this class of effect - it seems to me to be somewhat of a black hole - there are an awful lot of people learning about and watching the highly visible sea ice sitting on the surface but not so many looking at related things up in the atmosphere (until changes started to become very obvious) or below the surface of the ocean.

The earth system may be complex but that doesn't preclude trying to anticipate what other things might change in an extremely rapidly changing region that plays a key role in the dynamics of the overall system. While very large changes may be coming our way - all of them are based on the rules of physics.

Total disruption of thermohaline circulation would not be required to cause disruption to specific regions of the earth. A deceptively subtle effect warming or cooling any given region could move it beyond the parameters for the agriculture being practised there. If overall circulation slows (or stops) we can generally expect a more rapid accumulation of heat and related effects in more southerly latitudes as the heat is moved away less.

[ggelsrinc]

They don't make many scientific papers to prove a negative, so why do you keep asking for someone to post one? Just how many scientific reports on changes in thermohaline circulation that there is no proof ever existed do you expect anyone to find?

There is no evidence thermohaline circulation was disrupted during sea ice free Eemian times. It's just like there is no evidence of massive methane releases during Eemian times. There is evidence of what the atmospheric methane levels were during Eemian times.

Let's consider your claims that a sea ice free arctic will disrupt thermohaline circulation and produce massive methane releases a hypothesis! You can either wait until it happens and observe it or find the most recent sea ice free arctic times and prove it.

Since it's your claim or hypothesis, you prove it! I've looked at the evidence and can't find anything to support your claim.

Consider one of your other claims that global warming causes loss of agricultural potential another hypothesis! What is the satellite evidence of changes in vegetation during recent warming? The evidence doesn't support your claim or hypothesis. The fact is there are tons of scientific evidence that contradict your claim and the evidence is rock hard science. Finding someone else who believes as you do is not scientific proof. Finding evidence to support your claim in the HTM or Eemian would be proof.

I hate the term carbon dioxide fertilization and I'll just leave it at that. Two of the areas of focus in recent Greening are deserts and tundra. Global warming causing tundra greening is very reasonable, but the desert greening was different. It isn't the warming, but the additional CO2 that creates the greening. The satellite pictures show greening in deserts that even lost some precipitation. Vegetation is primarily limited in deserts because of lack of water and not the heat. The additional CO2 allows the plant to obtain it's necessary CO2 without losing as much water to do so. That's rock hard science because scientist use stoma fossil evidence to estimate past CO2 levels. Satellite evidence is rock hard evidence. It's also pure Physics that a warmer Earth is wetter just as a cooler Earth is drier. All the areas show greening and forests expanding.

If you have a hypothesis or claim, treat it like a hypothesis and prove it with evidence. There is evidence of an increase in extreme weather events, but there is also a record of their increase in the past. That means extreme weather events were increasing as the Earth became greener. Why wouldn't I expect that trend to continue?

[TerryM]

Just a few questions - definitely NOT a hypothesis!


If weather got weirder as vegetation proliferated, does it necessarily follow that agricultural output would increase?


Has desertification increased or decreased during the last few decades and would "green" deserts make up the difference?


I've only seen the desert green once. In 1998 Death Valley got so much water someone kayaked from the north to south end of the park. Wildflowers were everywhere, but nothing for human consumption. How will green deserts affect agriculture? The same question applies to greener tundra.


Terry

[ggelsrinc]

Just a few questions - definitely NOT a hypothesis!


If weather got weirder as vegetation proliferated, does it necessarily follow that agricultural output would increase?


Has desertification increased or decreased during the last few decades and would "green" deserts make up the difference?


I've only seen the desert green once. In 1998 Death Valley got so much water someone kayaked from the north to south end of the park. Wildflowers were everywhere, but nothing for human consumption. How will green deserts affect agriculture? The same question applies to greener tundra.


Terry

Agriculture is based on what the market will bear and not how much can be produced.

The Sahel drought is now claimed to have happened because sulfate emissions cooled the Northern Hemisphere.

If you want to check the amount of greening, you can look at the satellite evidence. Let it tell you whether desertification was more significant than greening. Blooming is one thing, but I've seen pictures of deserts from many areas of the world visibly showing many more plants. There are similar pictures showing more vegetation in areas suitable for agricultural production.

[ccgwebmaster]

There is no evidence thermohaline circulation was disrupted during sea ice free Eemian times. It's just like there is no evidence of massive methane releases during Eemian times. There is evidence of what the atmospheric methane levels were during Eemian times.

We've been through that discussion before - I can't see the value of an Eemian analog on methane (or plenty of other things). Rate of change and ultimate finishing level for carbon dioxide are very different.

Let's consider your claims that a sea ice free arctic will disrupt thermohaline circulation and produce massive methane releases a hypothesis! You can either wait until it happens and observe it or find the most recent sea ice free arctic times and prove it.

We all have a strong vested interest in not just "waiting until it happens". The most recent ice free times for the Arctic are not a sufficient analog to disprove such a hypothesis.

Since it's your claim or hypothesis, you prove it! I've looked at the evidence and can't find anything to support your claim.

In case it wasn't clear enough - I'm not saying we face a thermohaline driven catastrophe - just speculating that we may see additional effects from this arena as things change rapidly in the Arctic. To that extent I'm not sure it's very different from what the IPCC say on the link to part of AR4 I provided... I might just be speculating the changes they think are very likely will occur faster than they've stated, when it comes down to it.

[ccgwebmaster]

If weather got weirder as vegetation proliferated, does it necessarily follow that agricultural output would increase?

I'm very skeptical it could increase agricultural production. Around the world farmers have adjusted their agriculture to suit the stable historical conditions as precisely as possible. Even so their crop choices are sometimes driven in part by forecast expectations for the year ahead - or by centuries of accumulated wisdom.

Given the variance away from parameters to which people have made such a long term effort to adapt and fine tune to, and the loss of predictability and knowledge about what will happen to try to select the right crop choice - I find it very hard to see how agricultural output can increase as a result, even if vegetative growth in general could (I'm not convinced here either though).

I've only seen the desert green once. In 1998 Death Valley got so much water someone kayaked from the north to south end of the park. Wildflowers were everywhere, but nothing for human consumption. How will green deserts affect agriculture? The same question applies to greener tundra.

Even if large areas of former desert and tundra should rapidly and improbably turn into prime agricultural land (and I'm skeptical, as it takes time for topsoil to form for instance - so just how fast can a desert become farmland?) - there are a whole host of other issues that would preclude immediate human exploitation of available potential in those regions.

There isn't any infrastructure to speak of. There is no population to speak of in those regions to build it either. So how would it be exploited rapidly enough to cope with ongoing declines in other formerly fertile areas? A mass movement of both population and infrastructure would need to occur in a controlled manner, presumably without vested interests fighting over the newly available resource (driven by the pressure of diminishing resources elsewhere).

I can't foresee that even if large tracts of new farmland magically opened up in formerly useless regions (and I'm ignoring a lot of points observed by other people earlier in this thread in even acknowledging a theoretical possibility) - that humanity would just smoothly transfer production to those regions.

Usually as far as I can see - exploitation of former wilderness for farmland happens from neighbouring regions, as in Brazil where they convert rainforest into farmland. Unfortunately the loss of existing regions needn't necessarily proceed from the edges - those can be lost all at once.

[wili]

Again, mostly what ccg said (and I do think you say it better than I).

But also, most models, iirc, show most dry places getting drier and most wet places getting wetter, on average, with increased gw.

Please note that wetter is not necessarily better for ag--more crops are destroyed by rain than by drought (again, iirc).

But more than anything, wherever it rains, the rain is more and more going to be coming down in torrents that wash vegetation clear out of the ground. These event will still occur in places that are getting drier, overall, but they won't help things get 'greener.'

And even generally wetter places will get stuck in very bad 'flash droughts' that will knock down ag and other plant life.

The one-two punch of

1) plant-withering drought followed by

2) biblical torrents that wash all those weakened plants clear out of the ground, then wash the soil that the plants' roots once held place down the local river and out to sea

together will render more and more of the planet unfit for most life forms.

Read Lynas's very solidly backed Six Degrees for more details(or simply go back to your warmist fantasies that nothing much bad will come from a bit of gentle global warming).

[ccgwebmaster]

I've only seen the desert green once. In 1998 Death Valley got so much water someone kayaked from the north to south end of the park. Wildflowers were everywhere, but nothing for human consumption. How will green deserts affect agriculture? The same question applies to greener tundra.

I just did a little digging around, as I recalled that 1C is thought to introduce scope for the US midwest to revert to desert. Looking at the Holocene climate optimum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum I get the vague impression that perhaps the Sahara in Africa would green as the US midwest dries out.

Whether or not it would balance out the loss of the US output, I'm not so sure - but it would make for an interesting change. Unfortunately, while it seems reasonable to expect similar impacts to those thousands of years ago - I would think they'll just be transient milestones on the way to far bigger changes (given the rate of change and significant chance to end up at much higher carbon dioxide concentrations).

[ggelsrinc]

Again, mostly what ccg said (and I do think you say it better than I).

But also, most models, iirc, show most dry places getting drier and most wet places getting wetter, on average, with increased gw.

Please note that wetter is not necessarily better for ag--more crops are destroyed by rain than by drought (again, iirc).

But more than anything, wherever it rains, the rain is more and more going to be coming down in torrents that wash vegetation clear out of the ground. These event will still occur in places that are getting drier, overall, but they won't help things get 'greener.'

And even generally wetter places will get stuck in very bad 'flash droughts' that will knock down ag and other plant life.

The one-two punch of

1) plant-withering drought followed by

2) biblical torrents that wash all those weakened plants clear out of the ground, then wash the soil that the plants' roots once held place down the local river and out to sea

together will render more and more of the planet unfit for most life forms.

Read Lynas's very solidly backed Six Degrees for more details(or simply go back to your warmist fantasies that nothing much bad will come from a bit of gentle global warming).

Forests don't grow on Greenland if the ice sheet hasn't melted. That is a consequence that isn't gentle. Ocean acidification isn't gentle. Extreme weather events happening more often aren't gentle.

If we had a hydrogen economy and was warming the Earth with our water emissions, it wouldn't be gentle.

Not wanting something to happen doesn't make me inclinded to call fairy tales science. You should be able to support your claims about warming with the record of it warming. That is how science is done. If someone claims the warming has to come from CO2 for it to matter, they should provide the reason why.

Just exactly why can't these claims be supported by the past warming we all agree has happened?

[ccgwebmaster]

Just exactly why can't these claims be supported by the past warming we all agree has happened?

Firstly, you're talking about events that happened long before the human race even existed - and therefore there simply is no past evidence for the impacts on our species - as the human race has not experienced these conditions before. Not only did we not exist before, but we also weren't practising and depending upon agriculture before in the context of large climatic shifts (to the very limited extent our species has experienced them at all). Therefore for some elements of discussion there is no possibility of direct evidence from the past.

Secondly, large amounts of scientific evidence have been introduced at various points in this (extensive) thread to support certain assertions - you've just generally chosen to ignore it and retreat into claims that the Eemian is your proof against them. By cherry picking the last time the Arctic was ice free (which ignores the larger context of the rest of the earth system) or Eemian stabilisation conditions for 400ppm (which we're flying past right now, and anyway stabilisation conditions ignores the question of transient conditions on the way to stabilisation, as well as the lack of human history under either the transition or stabilisation regime for even 400ppm) - you're effectively choosing to reject the evidence presented.

Your world does sound appealing - a little gentle warming, an increase in agricultural production with the power of the market to arbitrarily scale it up to meet demand, no major consequences or structural threats to humanity, etc. I know that isn't precisely what you're trying to say (you've acknowledged that climate change is a potentially serious problem after all), but it is how it comes across when you put so much effort into contesting the more serious problems we face. It skews how you are perceived as you are therefore discussing proportionately less whatever more mild problems you expect to happen (I assume you do expect at least some).

Nonetheless I'm optimistic other people who read the thread will find it informative, and potentially even weigh in with opinions in either direction (preferably supported by a coherent argument that sits better than flat out denying the possibilities - and I have to admit you have at least presented some arguments, even if I haven't often accepted them as convincing).