I've tried not to get too hawkish with climate change talk. I know that a majority of my readers, who April sunshine be darned still have their snow shovels at the ready by the front step, would likely vote for global warming.
But ag columnist Alan Guebert says farmers and ranchers should get serious about climate change, for the simple reason that it's going to make it hard to farm and ranch. Guebert pulls grim prognostications from the latest U.N. report on climate change. More drought, declining water supply and water quality, lower crop yields... but we know that since the U.N. says those things, it's just a plot to take over our land and put it under the control of foreign dictators (kind of like Keystone XL... oh, wait...).
Guebert finds Iowa State University agronomy professor Eugene Takle offering similar, science-based warnings:
Currently, Takle and ISU colleague Jerry Hatfield, director of the National Lab for Agriculture and Environment, are lead authors of the ag chapter of the mandated 2014 National Climate Assessment. The report, due later this month, "will paint a sobering picture of climate change globally and its impacts on the U.S.," Takle related when interviewed last fall for a campus publication.
"One of the key messages of the report," Takle said "is that the incidence of weather extremes will continue and will have increasingly negative effects on crop and livestock productivity because critical thresholds are already being exceeded."
At least someone at a respected American agricultural institution believes climate change will be the 21st century farm and ranch game changer. Too bad it's not an actual farm or ranch group [Alan Guebert, "Climate Change an Ag Game-Changer," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2014.04.09].
Part of the policy problem here is that even if South Dakota's ag producers pay attention to climate change, they can't single-handedly stave it off. They can reduce their reliance on industrial pesticides and fertilizer. They can turn to local markets to reduce their reliance on long-distance transport. But much of what would need to be done to stave off climate change caused by human activity won't happen in their fields. It will happen in the voting booth, where they have to stop voting for candidates like Kristi Noem and John Thune who tell them the Environmental Protection Agency is their enemy, and who promote short-term corporate profit (which bears some relationship to political contributions) over long-term stewardship.
Maybe it's just easier to believe that one's own actions, in the field and at the ballot box, don't really cause anyone else harm. Maybe it's just easier to believe that we either don't have to change or that any changes we make won't do any good anyway.
But will farmers just let the storms and droughts come, let more cattle and corn be lost, let more land wash and blow away, without even having a conversation about what's changing the climate and looking for policies that might stanch that change and preserve their livelihoods?
Whether or not we want to talk about it, climate change will bring changes to agriculture. The difference between thriving and perishing lies in changing our talk and our actions in response.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/04/10/298890213/no-plows-cows-sows-not-your-grand-fathers-youth-farm-group
Takle was one of my favorite professors at Iowa State. The man knows his stuff. It's not politics. It's science.
If there is even a pitifully small percentage chance that man's exploitation of fossil fuels can alter the world's climate to the extent to make earth uninhabitable, it makes sense to switch to wind, solar, water, etc. A recent scientific discovery has potential for direct conversion of carbon monoxide into ethanol. Scientific research and conversion of our systems is a key to economic superiority of the US and jobs for millions. Putting $billions into energy research makes more sense than dumping $billions into Ukraine so they can buy fuel from Russia.
Shifting to environmentally friendly fuels and homes, transportation, etc makes both economic and environmental sense. It is win-win for everybody except the fossil fuel industries.
Stopping XL dead is a start. Our newspapers are again filling with letters to editor and editorials demonstrating wishful thinking and ignorance of the real purpose of XL.
""is that the incidence of weather extremes will continue and will have increasingly negative effects on crop and livestock productivity"""". This has been the case forever in SD. It seems the only way they can comfortably move us is through fear. We all know it would be nice to never have another fossil fume in existence. Get the brilliant ones to cap the volcanoes, stop natures fires and they'd make a darn good start on it.
I've lived all my life - 60 years - in eastern SD. Anyone who does see the climate has changed is willfully blind. Last year's snow until end of April for example. We've lost a month off the top of the growing season because we can no longer rely on a last frost day. What does it matter if it's warm past October? Sunlight hours aren't there for growing.
correction - does NOT see climate change
Yes Kathy it has and will continue to change. You act as though 60 is somehow a long time in the relationship to change in our world which you would prob admit is millions or at least hundreds of thousands of years old.
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That said, the 60's and 70's were hail and drought. Since, with the exception of a few years it has been very good for us. Climate change, yes, and always will regardless of man. It would be nice if we could leave a much softer footprint though.
We are shipping record crop productions out of SD. Beyond our wildest dreams of just a couple decades ago. Change if it comes is not always bad.
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Because we've changed the rivers and ocean fronts with dams and levies which now flood they tell us change is a comin. NSS.
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We haven't lived to see the 100 year flood more or less the 1000 year event Noah.
“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
Les, climate change is, in part, about the cost of those record crops.
Production, transport, and use of all the chemicals that are used to grow those record crops requires a great deal of fossil fuel. In. addition, those chemicals do much damage to the environment, hastening the harmful effects of climate change.
When waterways dry up, or intakes become so fouled by massive algae blooms, we won't be getting hydro electric power.
The costs of those record crops are simply enormous and unsustainable.
I'm not saying record crops do anything but put the farmer in a more indentured state and cut us off from the old family farm. I am saying SD has always been a land of extremes as far as our recorded history shows.
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And science has never been wrong Steve?
Well, Les, let's put it this way: science will give you a better handle on what's coming down the pike than, say, looking at a sheep's entrails, or checking out the astrological signs. So far, science has provided us with these computers, television and other media/communication technology, space exploration, vaccines/treatments/cures for a wide range of diseases and conditions, oceanic exploration, ways to light/heat/cool our homes, and air/water/ground transportation. Science has cut the rate of infant death from 50% to 6.17%, increased our longevity from about 47 to about 77 (and rising), has provided us with ways of staying clothed, housed, and mobile comfortably. Not to mention effective antibiotics and painkillers. So what's the gripe with science? (Personally, I don't want to go back to 19th century medicine or technology.)
And, of course, there's the simple fact that no matter what you believe, gravity, among other scientific facts, is real.
For every success you mention Eve, three are 1000's of scientific failures. Yes science is wonderful and I've been fully integrated in technology from a young age. That doesn't give every voice with a new scientific prediction relevance.
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I watched them tax you on freon saying our atmosphere had ozone depletion. Freon selling for $2/pound went to $30 and you paid. They still use freon and it has a smaller molecule to escapes more readily and our ozone layer has a natural fluctuation. Al Gore is Global Warming, now the fight is over climate change. Fraud in the international science foundation on Global Warming.
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You tout nothing other than a .001% of what science has tried to promote.
Unlike religion and mythology (and Republicans apparently) science learns from mistakes and testing and doesn't keep trying the same failures over and over again expecting a different result.
Unlike Republicans trying the same failures over and over from the broken record "Wiken".
"The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, conducted from Thursday to Sunday as the media was ramping up coverage ahead of the rules’ release, included this question: “Do you think the federal government should or should not limit the release of greenhouse gases from existing power plants in an effort to reduce global warming?” Not only did 70 percent of all respondents reply in the affirmative, but more than twice as many Republicans said “yes” as said “no.”
http://grist.org/news/even-republican-voters-support-obamas-new-climate-rule/