So let me tell you what I really think.
I think that to ask any political question about the subject matter of 'global climate change' is ridiculous in the first place, and asking for trouble in the second place. I shall first recount some of my own blather on the matter I recently posted to Facebook.
I agree that American politics on the matter of climate change is ridiculous, pointless and mental masturbation. The only aspect of it that actually does have any credibility is the extent to which some fraction of the populous is compelled to defend scientific research. I have sympathy with that - however the 'science clique' has resorted to demogoguery of the worst kind, and that's the thing that annoys me. So I always make a point to raise matters of scientific study that do not support the popular scientistic consensus.
Of course I also enjoy mocking Progressives on this particular matter because it is the rise of the BRICs that will, should the entire 'carbon theory' prove correct, be responsible for what warming there would be. So how will Progressives convince Indians and Chinese to *not* want first world transportation systems? And how would global anything be enforced without empire? I think these are questions they are too dainty to address - that they would rather pick on Americans than deal with the actual environmental intransigence of the global populations.
Tangentially, if science is so smart, how come they are so often hapless do-gooders? I mean how have they not figured out how to get along with each other, form a cabal and have their way with everything? Hmm. Maybe it's because they're just dreaming and have delusions of grandeur. Or perhaps they simply don't believe in actual reality as much as political reality. After all, you cannot make money betting against reality in reality-based markets. So where is the reality-based market on the delivery of cotton in China? Everywhere. It's as old as China itself. Well, anyway, back to the topic at hand.
When I get really serious about questions of climate change, the most important question I have deals with how the world's food is produced and distributed, because truly the only thing that is going to make an important difference is whether or not what is good farmland and good fishery today is going to be good tomorrow. And indeed nobody's livlihood depends more on weather than farmers. Am I right? So take JR Simplot for egregious example. They are the world's king of potatoes. And if I had a metric I would do as Paolo Bacigalupi has done in his excellent 'The Windup Girl' and begin to measure total world food production in terms of calories and then divide that by how many people are in the world. Who grows how many calories and who eats how many calories, now what's the price of calories? How we know this about gasoline and oil and don't know it for food shows how unimportant the food problem is. Today.
So when do the weather watchers, who are also money minders, at JR Simplot say. Hmm. We may have to relocate out of Idaho because the climate has changed and Idaho just don't mean potatoes any more. Do the global warmists think JR Simplot are a bunch of dumb micks who will just die out in a potato blight? They surely think that the dudes at BP are bloody geniuses who will exploit the last drop of oil where ever on the globe it may be. So I think that sort of thinking should be applied to all of the seed bankers and mega-agriculturalists on the globe. Which is to say, they will figure out how to feed us all because it's in their interests, and furthermore the weather is not going to creep up on these guys. I am trying to imagine which group of eggheads has more access to more satellite time, feeds, maps and data - the scientists at Monsanto or the grad students at East Anglia? Duh.
So now you know my drift. I am much more interested in food scarcity as reflected in the business of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the likes of Duke & Duke. Nobody ever, ever, ever puts these two things together when talk about 'global climate change' is discussed. That's because they are politicizing the 'science' and ignoring the economics. Yeah I said 'they', and I don't bother to find out who they are.
Here's the nut. Whatever the hockey stick is with climate change, farmers will move production, swap crops and otherwise be quicker than the weather or the climate. Say what you like about El Nino or the Ozone Hole, neither Katrina nor Sandy made one whit of difference to Iowa. When hurricanes get as far west as Ohio, maybe we can all take a hint. And what about you and me? You and I will eat whatever. Hell, if we can miss Twinkies and put up with non-alcholic beer, we really have no worries.
Now let me speak my other piece.
That is about the BRICs. Well, I'll just underscore the fact that so long as people on Earth will want automobiles for their personal transportation, then we'll keep using fossil fuels for cars. And we'll keep burning coal for electricity because we all want nightlife. And nobody in these environmental movements will, in the next 40 years (because they're all the same and they haven't done a damned thing about Sudan or Tibet - all they do is move to Seattle and take trips to Alaska to wash oily ducks) will suggest we go to war in order to stop the Chinese from polluting the planet, or the Russians or the Indians or anyplace else that horrendously polluted. Hell we don't even stop Mexico, and have you been to Ciudad Juarez? Holy crud!
So. Show me where agribusiness is losing the war against weather on a crop by crop basis with regard to the cost of global calorie provision, and I'll tell you exactly what I care about global climate change.
UPDATE:
Interesting Link: USDA Global Agricultural Report
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