Mental health, public health, global health. New and interesting developments in technology and the arts. Meditation research. And occasionally cute animals.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
“Farm chiefs have a narrowing chance to diversify vital crops at rising threat from drought, flood and pests brought by climate change, food researchers warned on Monday.
The world’s nearly 7 billion people are massively dependent on a dozen or so crops that, thanks to modern agriculture, are intensively cultivated in a tiny number of strains, they said.
When climate change gets into higher gear, many of these strains could be crippled by hotter and drier – or conversely wetter – weather and exposed to insects and microbial pests that advance into new habitats.
“Farmers have always adapted, but the pace of change under climate change is going to be much greater than in the past. There’s going to be a real need to move fast,” said Bruce Campbell, head of a research programme called Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)…
“There are two sorts of changes that are going to happen. One is a gradual temperature increase, the other is the extremes, extremes of heat and floods, and I think they are already here. In the meteorological records, there are so many extremes that are being beaten, although it’s very difficult to pin them to climate change.”
The adaptation strategies are being published in a compendium book, Crop Adaptation to Climate Change.”
Source: Eco-Business
(Source: plantedcity)
Global food prices are soaring again, as droughts, freezes and floods have affected various crops in many parts of the world. At the same time, demand is rising with living standards in fast-growing countries.
The price spikes are not as sharp as they were in 2008, but the new volatility reflects more than the sum of recent freakish weather “events,” from severe droughts in China and Russia to floods in Australia to a deep freeze in Mexico.
Economists and scientists have identified longer-term changes — from global warming to China’s economic growth to a lack of productive farmland — as the culprits. Is the world producing enough food — specifically grain? Is this a continuation of the 2008 crisis, or something quite different?
Rising ocean levels brought about by climate change have created a flood of unprecedented legal questions for small island nations and their neighbors.
Among them: If a country disappears, is it still a country? Does it keep its seat at the United Nations? Who controls its offshore mineral rights? Its shipping lanes? Its fish?
If there’s one thing more potentially contentious than the international politics of global warming (which the world has spent at least the past 20-plus years dithering about), it’s the politics of the most radical suggestion to solve it: geoengineering. After all, he who controls Earth’s thermostat may well control Earth. And what’s good for one nation (i.e. Bangladesh and its shoreline prefer today’s climate, fearing sea level rise under a warmer one) may not be good for another (i.e. Russia might enjoy a balmier Arctic Circle).
