food is good, right?

[mellowtigger]

The big problem with global warming is not just changing rainfall patterns. Another issue is that warmer soil will evaporate its moisture at a faster pace. So even if rainfall patterns remain constant (which they won't), the soil still dries out sooner than it would have in the past. So existing farmland requires more water than it did before just to maintain the same crop cycle.

The thing is, though.... the water (rainfall and snowmelt) are also changing.

Now that we have actual scientists reporting on... you know... science-y things, here's what our new U.S. energy secretary, Stephen Wu (Nobel-prize winning physicist, but not a climatologist), has to say about our dire need to change our energy needs away from fossil fuel resources which are causing global warming.

"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he said. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." And, he added, "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going" either.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-warming4-2009feb04,0,7454963.story

Much of California is actually desert, as I learned in my geology class a few years ago. With dwindling water resources for people to dump (in ever-increasing frequency, remember) onto their false, human-planted ecosystem, it will certainly return to its native condition: desert.  There goes America's most productive domestic food supplier.  Similar crop-loss changes are already happening in Australia, where they have a farm area nearly twice the size of France, according to this article:
http://www.grist.org/news/2009/02/04/AustraliaHeat/index.html?source=rss

So what's the solution?  In my opinion, it's already too late to reverse global warming in any profound way before these changes take effect.  The only alternative is to relocate our farmlands and train a new generation to produce food at higher latitudes.  In an interesting twist, something like this plan is already underway.

Montana is trying out a lease-to-own program that tries to match people who want to become farmers with old farmers who want to give up their business to someone who will continue farming it.  Here's a perfect opportunity to have new people try out new methods and new crops.
http://www.newwest.net/city/article/land_link_montana_launches_to_match_farmers_with_ground/C8/L8/
http://missoulian.com/articles/2009/02/04/news/local/news01.txt

With changing energy needs and changing climate, I hope that more states (especially northern states) adopt programs like this!  I'd certainly do it if I knew how to navigate the bureaucracy.

Comments

Here's what worries me about receding glaciers and disappearing snowpack:

[anziulewicz.livejournal.com]

SNOW INSULATES.

Let's say you have two wooden decks built side-by-side. An overnight snowstorm drops a layer of six inches of snow on both decks. The next day the sun comes out.

One of the wooden decks you simply leave alone, covered in its layer of snow. The other deck you clear a few paths across with a snow shovel, but still leave 90% covered with snow.

What happens?

The deck that remains undisturbed under its layer of snow will likely retain that snow for quite a few sunny days, since the white snow is insulating the darker wood from the sun's warming rays. But the deck that you partially shovelled will end up losing the rest of its snow relatively quickly, since the wood that's exposed will warm a lot faster in the sun, and the remaining layer of snow will melt more and more quickly. In other words, by clearing just a small amount of snowpack, you have triggered a runaway melting cycle.

I see a similar runaway melting cycle occuring in mountain ranges, albeit at a far more deliberate pace.

[mellowtigger]

Yes, the pace of warming will surely increase now that the snowpack is fast disappearing. Even if we stopped, overnight, producing any more greenhouse gas emissions, I think (not certain) that it's already too late to avoid polar ice melts and loss of snowpacks on most mountains.

Sure, Al Gore insists that we can still turn things around. Maybe, but I'm just not convinced yet.

[anziulewicz.livejournal.com]

And then there's what I consider the BIG UNKNOWN FACTOR: Methane hydrate (also called methane clathrate). Would any of the massive beds of methane hydrate on the ocean floor begin erupting if the ocean temperature was tipped a bit too far upward? And how far would that have to be?

Because if that began to occur, a far more serious runaway greenhouse gas situation would occur, and THEN, as Porky Pig would say, "Th-th-th-that's ALL, folks!"