Monday, December 31, 2012

Piers Corbyn: We are shifting towards a Little Ice Age










Sunday, December 30, 2012

Higher CO2 Concentrations Will Feed A Billion More People


CO2 is used as a supplement in greenhouses. In a closed greenhouse, growth slows or stops if the plants use it up and CO2 drops below 200 ppm as the plants absorb it. CO2 supplement systems are sold to greenhouse farmers to supply supplemental CO2. Levels up to 1000 ppm or more are often used (see here). Extra CO2 also reduces a plant’s need for water by closing the leaf stomata (see here). Leaf stomata are the ports on the lower side of a leaf that lets plants breath.

One of the most important crops in the world is rice. Studies have been done on Co2 enhancing rice production. If CO2 is increased 200 ppm above the current levels, (which have already increased production by the 13 to 15% cited above) production will increase by another 13 to 15% (see here and here).

Here is an illustration of growth over a range of CO2 levels:
C3 and C4 refers to the chemical pathway used by the chlorophyll in plant leaves to produce sugar. C4 plants include many grasses and corn. It has been argued that C4 plants are immune to changes in CO2, but as you can see in the illustration above, this is clearly not true. They just don’t respond as dramatically as C3 plants. They do, however, become more drought tolerant due to the stomata response reducing water vapor loss.

Plants need 3 major inputs to grow: water, CO2, and nitrogen. From these they produce sugar for energy and proteins and cellulose for structure. Some have argued that increased CO2 produces protein-poor plants. This is true only if increased nitrogen is not supplied along with the increased CO2. A plant needs both in balance. Any greenhouse farmer knows this. But still, this increased growth with increasing CO2 assumes no improvement from fertilization, genetic engineering or plant breeding.

The experiments have been done holding all factors except CO2 constant. That increase from CO2 alone is about 100 million metric tons for each 15% increase in yield per year. That feeds about 700 million more people if one assumes 150 kg of rice per person per year. Imagine the gain if additional fertilizer was supplied along with the increase in CO2. Wheat production with double the current levels of CO2 increased by up to 38 percent (see here). Corn responds to elevated CO2 by needing less water (see here). It is clear that CO2 increases will greatly improve our ability to feed a growing world population.



Saturday, December 22, 2012

Wall Street Journal: Our Fading Footprint for Farming Food

Jesse Ausubel and Iddo Wernick of Rockefeller University, and Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, have reached this conclusion by documenting the gradual “dematerialization” of agriculture. Globally, the production of a given quantity of crop requires 65% less land than it did in 1961, thanks to fertilizers, tractors, pesticides, better varieties and other factors. Even corrected for different kinds of crops, the acreage required is falling at 2% a year.



Global population growth has slowed markedly in recent years—the rate of change halving since 1970 to about 1% a year today. Growing affluence leads people to eat more calories, and especially more meat. Since it takes two to 10 calories of maize or wheat to produce a calorie of meat, depending on the animal, carnivory demands more cropland. But as a country gets richer, total calorie intake soon levels off, even as wealth continues to rise, and the change in meat consumption decelerates. Chinese meat consumption is now rising less than half as fast as Chinese affluence; Indians have grown richer without taking to meat much at all.

What the Rockefeller team did was plug some highly conservative assumptions about the future into a model and see how much land would be required for growing crops in 2060. Compared with current trends, they assumed population growth will fall more slowly, that affluence will increase faster and that the gluttony of people will rise more rapidly. Conversely, they assumed that farm yields would rise more slowly than they have been doing. This seems highly implausible given that the gigantic continent of Africa seems to be at last embarking on a yield-boosting green revolution as far-reaching as Asia’s was.



Read the full article:

The Spectator: Why 2012 was the best year ever









Christmas in Britain will not be without its challenges: costs are rising (although many children will give quiet thanks for the 70 per cent increase in the price of Brussels sprouts). The country may be midway through a lost decade economically, but our cultural and social capital has seldom been higher — it is hard to think of a time when national morale was as strong as it was during the Jubilee and the Olympics. And even in recession, we too benefit from medical advances. Death rates for both lung and breast cancers have fallen by more than a third over the last 40 years. Our cold winters still kill people, but the number dying each year halved over the past half-century. The winter death toll now stands at 24,000 — still unacceptable in a first-world country, but an improvement nonetheless. Britain’s national life expectancy, 78 a decade ago, will hit 81 next year.


North India face cold wave. Leh -17.2 degrees Celsius. Dal Lake frozen. New Western Disturbance will plunge temperatures further by Christmas

(DNA) Cold tightened its grip in North India on Friday as minimum temperatures dipped below normal across the region. In capital Delhi, the maximum temperature was recorded at 22.8 degrees Celsius, one degrees more than the normal and the minimum temperature was 7.6 degrees C, one less than the usual.

Amritsar was the coldest place in the two states with the minimum temperature at 4.6degrees C which was one degreesree above normal. Hisar in Haryana recorded a low of 5.8 degrees C.

The minimum temperatures at most places, including Chandigarh, Ambala, Bhiwani, Karnal, Narnaul, Ludhiana and Patiala were either at normal level or above normal, a MeT office spokesman said. In Kashmir, 'Chillai Kalan' — the 40 day period of harsh winter — made an anti-climatic entry as bright, sunny and clear skies marked the first day on Friday.

Gulmarg skiing resort in north Kashmir and Pahalgam in south Kashmir and some other areas in the periphery of the Valley have witnessed snowfall last week but the weather has remained dry since then. The clear skies have, however, resulted in drastic drop in night temperatures across the Valley with Gulmarg recording a low of minus 10.8 degrees Celsius on Thursday night.

Pahalgam resort also saw the mercury dipping to a low of minus 8.2 degrees Celsius while in rest of the Valley the minimum temperature stayed around three degrees below freezing point, an official of the MET department said.

Leh town was the coldest place in the state recording a minimum of minus 17.2 degrees Celsius followed by Kargil town at minus 13.8 degrees C, a drop of over 5.0 degrees compared to this day last year at both places. The cold wave in the Valley began earlier this year than the normal period of 'Chillai Kalan' due to snowfall in higher reaches during the last week of November and early December.

Meanwhile, several areas of Himachal Pradesh groaned under sub-zero temperature as cold wave further tightened its grip in the region inspite of a dry day. While Keylong in tribal Lahaul and Spiti was coldest in the region with minimum temperature at minus 10.1 degrees; Kalpa, Manali and Bhuntar recorded a low of minus 2 degrees, minus 0.8 degrees and minus 0.2 degrees C respectively.

Solan and Sundernagar recorded minimum temperature at 0.5 degrees, three degrees below normal, while it ranged between 4 and 5 degrees at Palampur, Mandi, Nahan and Una and Shimla and Dharamsala, which recorded a low of 6.8 degrees C.

The maximum temperatures also dropped by one to two degrees to stay at 21.8 degrees at Una and Sundernagar, followed by Solan 20.8 degrees, Bhuntar 20.5 degrees, Dharamsala 18.8 degrees, Nahan 17.3 degrees, Shimla 15.8 degrees and Kalpa 09.4 degrees C.

The local MeT office has predicted dry weather during next three days but a fresh feeble Western Disturbance (WD) is likely to affect the western Himalayan region from December 24 onwards.