http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/11/carrying-capacity.html

I honestly have no idea Phillip.

Grasses coincidentally being the single most important plant on the earth in terms of feeding humans.

But surely the sea has a lot that we could find a way of using. I’m not suggesting we do, but fossil P is no more the be-all, end-all than fossil C.

“The craft of traditional farming”, though, is a bit of a non-sequitur here in Oz. The tradition is one of continual change. The valley where my mother grew up has gone from Aboriginal landuse, to extensive sheep production, to dairying, to beef+tourism+vines in five generations or so. Methods for growing wheat get shaken up every 20-30 years (the classic graph is here, but doesn’t include the advent of controlled-traffic farming). Come to think of it, it’s a non-sequitur anywhere: traditional farming just isn’t going to feed 9 billion people at +2 degrees.

Re #9: every tonne of carbon tied up in the soil takes 20 kilograms of phosphorus with it. Leave aside the cost of this ($25-50/tonne CO2-e for the P alone); leave aside the immense problems of measuring & monitoring soil carbon. Peak phosphorus is coming, and we need to sequester C without P attached, ’cause they’re not making any more.

There’s a really great chapter on this stuff in the Flora or Australia Volume 43 including a section on the impact of changing atmospheric C02 concentrations. It refers to some studies that are probably worth a read to those that may be considering altering their land management practices, because some of the what I’ve read so far seems quite counter intuitive.

It’s funny this subject should pop up, as I’ve dedicated my “too hot to work week” to doing some reading on this stuff.

Industrial farming depends on inputs that we are running short of, particularly oil for fuel and herbicides, and various chemical fertilisers. Peak oil and peak phosphorous will cause havoc.

Additionally, the few successful GM crops will certainly reduce biodiversity, just at the time we need greater biodiversity to cope with rapidly changing climate.

To say that GM has failed to deliver is a simplistic and indeed circular argument. To the extent that the technology has not been adopted as widely as it might have been, this is largely because of hugely over-onerous approval and regulatory systems. So the argument in effect is that GM has failed to deliver because we stopped it doing so by regulating the crap out of it; this proves that we were right to regard it as of limited potential and therefore to regulate it.

And does it not occur to these people that, if the most promising new technology is stymied by regulation, so that after big investments in research and commercialisation products don’t get to market, then the reduction in research and commercialisation effort that they complain about is inevitable and largely brought about by policies that they have themselves urged?

GM in relation to an impending food crisis is the equivalent of nuclear energy in relation to greenhouse emissions. The problem, if there is one, is not going to be solved without it. But over-regulation and disinformation, in both instances ironically often supported by those who are most vocal about the supposedly looming catastrophes, are ensuring that they can’t play such a role.

Changing this management can have an immediate impact as the presentation mentioned below shows. Restoring these degraded lands helps take pressure off the rainforests and our arable lands, and also has a marked positive impact on our planet’s albedo.

Please take a few minutes and look a little more into the massive and positive impact changed grazing management could have. Professor Tim Flannery has stated that sequestering carbon into the soils of our grazing lands is one of the best means we have available to us for dealing with climate change.

There is growing concern for significant action to avoid catastrophic climate change. Please take a few minutes and look through the presentation on Soil Carbon at http://www.soilcarbon.com.au

Not enough people are yet aware of Soil Carbon and the critical role it can play in helping to reverse the impacts of global warming.

Did you know that just a 1% change in soil organic matter across just one-quarter of the World’s land area could sequester 300 billion tonnes of physical CO2?

Recent Australian studies have shown that a 1% change can occur within a few years – and in fact up to 4% changes were measured in some areas. The management changes required to achieve these increases are very readily implemented. I hope you find the presentation of interest.

North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modelers.

Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains

Which I think is to a certain extent a broader issue for modelling worldwide. We don’t know for certain (and possibly cannot know) what rising global temperatures will mean other than change, possible big changes. However the rate of change could be hugely important to agriculture as could be any chaotic instabilities. I’m not convinced market philosophy will necessarily generate a miracle solution.

Can we do it? Yes We Can.

dd, I know there will be winners and losers, but I’m going with what seems to be the majority view. On Sahara, I saw one model out of six saying it would be wetter, but only to the extent of growing a bit of grass.

The issue of shrinking fresh water supplies is huge, as we are over-using groundwater and the problems of sea level rise and the loss of ice caps/glaciers is very significant, especially in the Himalayas.

Most point out that the increase fertility of the air comes unstuck after the temperature goes up more than a couple degrees. Also there was a switch over from C4 to C3 dominant plant species (or the other way around) over 20 million years ago as the planet cooled.

I recall one British study saying that with each extra degree in their patch plants needed 10% extra water. The increased irregularity is also a problem.

In the Southern hemisphere, much of the extra rain falls on the Southern Ocean.

Will Steffen, who’s advising Penny’s Dept, has called for widespread GM cropping to cope with the anticipated shocks.

Ballardian much?