http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2004/03/07/374021-cp.html Lester Brown, founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Earth Policy Institute, predicts climate change and depletion of freshwater aquifers around the world will result in a global food crisis within two years.
Predicts climate change within two years, huh? The national weather service with all their satellites and computers can't even predict the weather for tomorrow most of the time!
Back in the mid 70s after a couple of very cold winters, the "experts" were predicting the next ice age would soon be upon us. Any way, Malthus beat him to this prediction of food shortages, although for a different reason, by about 150 years. DS
Are there signs of hope? "You never know. Leaders and societies will respond. Sometimes in a crisis situation you have a Nero, sometimes you have a Churchill, you never can be sure. " Euh ... I don't see a fundamental difference between Nero and Churchill at least for that problem
We are in virtual reality: it suffices that they make it believe and price will jump that's what they want, a pretext to inflate the price. Same for oil, there is no real shortage of oil in far future - hey I've been in a petroleum engineer school remember - also new form of energy is in preparation, but all the fashion around ecology serves the interests of the oil producers for believing in shortage, don't wonder why Greenpeace are subventioned by them... now there is some real destruction of ecology I won't pretend the contrary - but there are also some exagerations. In general they play with fear. Sometimes the danger is real - you know what I mean - sometimes it is artificial.
There is a domestic shortage of soybeans right now. May CBOT beans are 2.26 higher than November (new crop) futures.
the problem is more fundamental than grain production, water will be the resource that will become the largest concern. 2 years is cutting it quite fast though, maybe its a worst case doomsday scenario. -m.o.
Around the turn of the century it was also predicted that the world population would not grow beyond a certain point because there was not enough land to grow enough food. The logic being that if you planted all the land you could not grow enough food. Well there are other variables and of course simplistic notions are almost always wrong. Efficiency changes has caused the per capita food yield per acre to go up since them There is a cool new product out that is made from agar in seaweed. They look like grains of sand. You mix them in the soil. When water is introduced they capture the water and are the size of ice cubes. The plant roots grow right into them. Hence all the water utilization is greatly increased. They are just starting to be used. With about 1 milk jug gallon you could capture all the water in a moderate swimming pool. Also don't handle them with bare hands. Otherwise you will have the hands of an 150 year old in about 20 minutes. The mother of invention is....
We have gone from global cooling to global warming, now it's global dessification. It all just puts $ in the pockets of environmental attorneys.
definitely a good point about science. although i don't think hopeing science will solve everything is a good idea, its absolutely true that there are things in horizan that'll change everything. Think hypoponic farms, soybean modification, etc... -m.o.