Warming Northern Lands Could Grow More Crops; Just Ignore That 177 Billion Tons More CO2 From Soil

[hatrack]

As the climate warms in the decades ahead, billions of acres, most of them in the northern hemisphere, will become suitable for agriculture and could, if plowed, emit a massive, planet-altering amount of greenhouse gases. New research, published Wednesday in Plos One, a science journal, finds that these new "climate-driven agricultural frontiers"—if pressured into cultivation to feed a surging global population—could unleash more carbon dioxide than the U.S. will emit in nearly 120 years at current rates.

"The big fear is that it could lead to runaway climate change. Any time you get large releases of carbon that could then feed back into the system," said Lee Hannah, a senior scientist at Conservation International and co-author of the new research, "it could lead to an uncontrollable situation."

Large amounts of land, especially in the northern hemisphere, including Russia and Canada, are inhospitable to farming now. But already, some of these areas are thawing and could become farmland. Hannah and his fellow researchers wanted to understand what would happen if that land gets plowed up for farming over the next century.

They found that, as warming temperatures push farmers farther north, the churning up of lands, especially those with rich, peaty soils, could release 177 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. (Most of the shifts will occur in the northern hemisphere because it contains larger landmasses.) That's more than two-thirds of the 263-gigaton-limit for keeping global temperatures within 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. Scientists estimate that, with a projected global population of nearly 10 billion by 2050, the world will need to produce 70 percent more food. How—and where—to produce that food remain open questions. Pressure to produce more could push farming into these new agricultural frontiers if policies aren't put in place now, the researchers say.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12022020/agricultural-frontiers-russia-canada-climate-warming

[pansypoo53219]

1. my cousin got his PHd studying this. he said we are fucked. mostly cause humans keep breeding,

but yes. this will increase the hot house effect.

pray for a killer super volcano. otherwise humans will fuck this up. see orange fatso.