Saturday, August 11, 2012

Agriculture's response to climate change

The technology of selective breeding crop plants and ranch animals is being used to make both more tolerant of hotter, dryer conditions. The lead sentences from a USA Today article:

"Across American agriculture, farmers and crop scientists have concluded that it's too late to fight climate change. They are trying to adapt to it with new generations of hardier animals and plants specially engineered to survive, and even thrive, in intense heat, with little rain."

Unlike trying to reduce carbon emissions, this adaption process faces few challenges, and those using it come out ahead pretty much as they do it. Switch from coal to solar power generation, and you generally become less competitive with those who remain on coal. Were fossil fuel power generation to pay for its total costs, environmental degradation included, renewable energy would definitely be competitive.

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GREENLAND - Will probably be the focus of near term sea level rise

Greenland is almost all covered by a very thick glacial ice cap. If all of Greenland's ice either melted or slid into the oceans, sea le...