
U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years - edward
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-droughts-will-be-the-worst-in-1-000-years1/
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cryptoz
Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain
is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going
to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes.

I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for
agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.".
What will happen, where will the water come from? Will the US import vastly
more food than it does now? Will we build water pipelines down from Canada?

Will there be rogue geoengineering projects to try to make it rain? Will there
be official projects? Will the US and everyone else stop pumping CO2 into the
atmosphere?

So many questions.

~~~
Retric
The US produces several times more food than we need.

A single acre can easily produce enough food for a small family and we have
408 million acres under cultivation. Corn is something of a super star at
8,250 lb. of corn per acre. However, we end up feeding most of this to animals
which drastically reduces overall efficiency.

So, sure we are going to spend a lot of effort maximizing food production. But
a 50% drop in the food supply over a few years would not be that big of an
issue with a small increase in grain prices and a significant bump in meat
costs.

~~~
code_duck
One area the U.S. could definitely focus on is reducing food waste.
Restaurants throw away a lot of food that was perfectly good 4 days prior. The
habits of people here regarding food waste is significant, too - I have a
friend who will go to Taco John late at night, get six tacos, three potato
things, 10 packets of sauce, eat two tacos and a potato thing and leave the
rest to waste in his kitchen counter. He sees it as $5, but the costs to
society may be more than that. Or my girlfriend's kids, who will fidget and
fight about eating a burrito until we throw away half of it. Based on my vague
observations, at least half the food produced gets tossed out for some reason
(and not even composted!).

For instance, significant resources went into creating meat like this 30-40
lbs I saw wasted in a dumpster outside a restaurant in Denver :
[http://i.imgur.com/ns4TunE.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ns4TunE.jpg) Beef is one
of the most water intensive food products, too.

~~~
r00fus
Most of what you complain about can be reduced by appropriately costing-out
the externalities of meat production.

Of course, the problem always comes when big corporate AG can essentially shut
down public debate by buying all the seats of any discussion (i.e.,
corruption).

~~~
code_duck
Indeed, restaurants and individuals waste food because they can afford to.
It's a shame if the only way to stop that is for food to become dramatically
more expensive. Ending government subsidies on agriculture and food would be a
good step to consumers realizing the actual cost of food.

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ChuckMcM
I am greatly encouraged by operations such as this one:
[http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/archives/2014/0227/upsta...](http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/archives/2014/0227/upstart-
farm-viridis-aquaponics-aims-to-set-a-world-
standard/article_e0fccd5e-9f26-11e3-b912-001a4bcf6878.html) which is pushing
aquaponics. A lot less net water use and plenty of food.

~~~
acadien
The downside being its not scalable. You need an entirely artificial setup to
get aquaponics up and running, motors, pipes, and chemical cleaning. Don't get
me wrong aquaponics is a great technology, I think it needs some changes in
order to make it feasible for the large scale.

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is what they are tackling, the scalable aspects. Their goal is to get to
thousands of equivalent acres and they are looking at the places where the
system runs into scaling issues. I don't know if they will be successful but
they have a heck of a start.

In one of those interesting coincidences there is a well funded and ready
market for intermediate versions from the marijuana folks as well. There are a
number of venture firms putting money in that space.

When my wife did the solar panel installation boot camp (back in 2001) (a week
of training followed by work on a job site installing panels) roughly half the
students were there from pot farms as well.

~~~
acadien
Yeah the marijuana community always seems to be on the cutting edge of growing
technology, much the same way the gaming community often leads use of cutting
computing technology.

Anyways, a 'thousands of acres equivalent' solution would be absolutely
fascinating to see implemented.

~~~
golergka
Also reminds how porn industry is often on the cutting edge on content
delivery and analytics as well.

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maerF0x0
Surprised permaculture isnt being talked about more. These guys are making
beautiful green land out of deserts.

ex:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1rKDXuZ8C0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1rKDXuZ8C0)

~~~
dylanz
I worked with Geoff at his farm in AU, and he's done some amazing work there.
His swale and pond layout, as well as the food forestry corridors for his
animals are spectacular. Large scale implementation of arid desert techniques
from the Permaculture handbook is one thing that definitely needs to be looked
into.

~~~
huherto
This is fascinating. But why isn't it more popular?

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dylanz
I would probably guess a lot of reasons. I'm not sure that there has been
"that" many large agro studies on many of the techniques. Also, I think
something as simple as planting large crop on swale (not in a straight line)
drastically changes how the farm would run (what equipment to use, industry-
wide crop measurements, etc). That's just the first thing that comes to mind.

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the_economist
No scholars predicted the global warming hiatus was coming:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_hiatus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_hiatus)

Is there reason to believe that rainfall predictions will be more accurate?

~~~
estebank
From that very link:

> "Globally averaged surface temperature has slowed down. I wouldn’t say it's
> paused. It depends on the datasets you look at. If you look at datasets that
> include the Arctic, it is clear that global temperatures are still
> increasing," said Tim Palmer, a co-author of the report and a professor at
> University of Oxford.

~~~
tjradcliffe
The Arctic has actually warmed far faster than models predicted. The normal
response in science to a model that gets things this badly wrong is, "Hey,
that model isn't very accurate!" not "The models were right all along!"

The debate about the hiatus is a political debate. "Worse" and "better" are
political terms. "Accurate" and "inaccurate" are scientific terms. In
scientific terms, the models are not very accurate. Much less accurate than
most people appreciate.

This does not mean we should now feel free to gather the entire world's supply
of hydrocarbon fuels into a big heap in the midst of old-growth rainforest and
set it on fire for the purpose of roasting endangered species. AGW is real and
a real problem. It just means climate models are not very accurate.
Unfortunately they have been sold as being very accurate, which is
embarrassing now they are proving not to be.

It's even more embarrassing when people point to their horrible accuracy in
the Arctic as if it was somehow confirmatory of the model's predictions.
That's only even remotely the case if you believe the Earth's climate system
is a linear one-dimensional system, so you can meaningfully extrapolate an
error into the future. You can't: if you could, we wouldn't need models in the
first place.

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vixen99
For an alternative view ('The paper has two strikes against it right from the
get-go: paleoclimatological data and climate models')
[http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/13/new-paper-
unprecedente...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/13/new-paper-
unprecedented-21st-century-drought-risk-in-the-american-southwest-and-central-
plains/)

~~~
tim333
Glancing at the graphs

[https://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/figure-31.png](https://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/figure-31.png)

the correlation between the observational data and the computer models does
not look that impressive so far. Maybe if the Southwest goes into an
unprecedented drought shortly as the models predict then that would be some
evidence that they have predictive power but so far it looks a bit iffy.

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SCAQTony
I think the most easiest solution to this problem with the existing technology
we have is to start building water collection reservoirs in the surrounding
mountains of California and the Colorado rockies too. Then Desalination plants
in and around the Gulf of Mexico and pipelines to move water where needed.

This is an opportunity to employ both blue & white collar workers as well as
tech professionals as well and should be considered.

~~~
jessaustin
This type of project requires a great deal of energy. Theoretically, increased
utilization of our current energy sources might make these problems worse.

~~~
sologoub
We don't need to pipe water far, smaller plants can be setup around
communities that need the water. Much of the energy can be generated from
solar.

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briantakita
Now is time to plant trees, build swales, capture rainwater, build ecosystems,
permaculture, etc.

Healthy soil captures rainwater & grows food.

