Posted on 09/04/2018 12:30:40 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
A warmer world likely means more and hungrier insects chomping on crops and less food on dinner plates, a new study suggests.
Insects now consume about 10 percent of the globe’s food, but that will increase to 15 to 20 percent by the end of the century if climate change isn’t stopped, said study lead author Curtis Deutsch, a University of Washington climate scientist.
The study looked at the damage bugs like the European corn borer and the Asiatic rice borer could do as temperatures rise. It found that many of them will increase in number at key times for crops. The hotter weather will also speed up their metabolism so they’ll eat more, the researchers report in Thursday’s journal Science. Their predictions are based on computer simulations of bug and weather activity.
The researchers calculate additional losses of 53 million tons in wheat, rice and corn from hungry bugs if the temperature rises another 2.7 degrees from now.
If there are no drastic cuts in emissions from coal, oil and gas, the world will reach that 2.7 degree mark and extra insect loss around 2050 - give or take a decade or so, Deutsch said.
Another study in the journal looked at how the world’s vegetation changed since the last ice age and applied that concept to current warming. The study logged massive changes to Earth’s landscape around the globe over more than 14,000 years from the last glacier period.
The same magnitude of warming - more than 7 degrees - is projected to occur with human-caused climate change, but may be in only 100 years or so, said study co-author Jonathan Overwank, a University of Michigan climate scientist.
“It really paints a picture that is a lot more dire,” Overwank said, calling it “vegetation chaos.”
(Excerpt) Read more at santafenewmexican.com ...
Let me get this straight: Less food equals more food eaters? Is that the basic argument here?
I think they need to do a little more work before their computer model gets out of beta testing.
“Could” is not science or news.
Overwank's pulling too hard on this.
I think my heads going to explode
Whenever I see the word “may” in an article, I interpret it as “may or may not”.
Same with “could” and “might”.
Well played sir!
Elvis may not be dead. Madonna could be a slut.
I COULD be a billionaire.
.Hey ho...what are you doing there..coming up with real solutions..?
Exactly. They expect readers to get distracted by the described event and gloss over the conditional possibility, assuming that “could” means closer to “somewhat likely” instead of “extremely unlikely”. After all, why write the article if there’s only a snowball’s chance in hell of it happening? Because they want you to believe it’s going to happen.
In your opinion does it seem like there’s been an onslaught of climate change articles of late? Maybe just because it’s summertime?
“After all, why write the article if there’s only a snowball’s chance in hell of it happening?”
Hell is could get extra extra hot due to the remote possibility of man made Global Warming.
That’s the thing..they don’t really want solutions.
They want to 1) tax people even more 2) control people even more.
...and monkeys COULD fly out of my ass.
Yes, it's federal funding season.
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