Investors and Crops
For the last few years, every time a hurricane strikes the US, we've been treated to yet another round of, "What about THIS one? Is THIS hurricane a sign of global warming? Not exactly? What Crap!" Every time they're trotted out to answer for the latest natural disaster, climate scientists always make the point that global warming makes all of our weather more extreme, which means more intense and frequent hurricanes AND more intense and frequent floods AND more intense and frequent droughts. This always seems to be greeted by the mass media as a weak argument on the part of a mealy-mouthed academic, since it's not contributing to their black-and-white, sensationalist pursuit of higher ratings. The problem is that any number of strategies can be deployed to deal with consistently different weather patterns, like more or less rain, higher or lower temperatures. We're good at dealing with these sorts of longer-term changes. Where we and our agricultural practices fall flat on our faces is when we can't depend ...
Posted on October 15, 2008 2:04:57 PM EDT
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