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We are already considering moving out of the country. I apologize for the intrusion of politics in this thread, but if the current political climate continues we feel it will be time to leave within the next 5-6 years. If not sooner.
BTW Nebraska is not the breadbasket of our country.
We are already considering moving out of the country. I apologize for the intrusion of politics in this thread, but if the current political climate continues we feel it will be time to leave within the next 5-6 years. If not sooner.
BTW Nebraska is not the breadbasket of our country.
Unfortunately. I don't think other countries are much better when it comes to this.
The scenario as postulated by the OP is plausible. As the earth continues to warm up, climate zones will shift northward and those areas now semi-arid will become deserts. America's upper Midwest from, say Kansas to the Canadian border will likely become desertified the same way the high lava plains of Eastern Oregon and Southwestern Idaho are today.
Valentine and Chadron in Nebraska are two examples of places near the Sand Hills. Both average about 16 to 18 inches of precip per year, perfectly adequate for growing the stuff that gets grown around there. Much of that is in the form of snow.
Now, if the warming scenario plays out the way experts say it will, I would expect both places to drop to around 11 inches averaged of over each 30 year period. Without irrigation, that won't be enough to sustain what is commonly grown there now. This region won't be a desert the way "desert" is defined by the climatologists wedded to Koppen classifications but will be close enough that the differences will be trivial. In addition there will be far less snow than at present. I can easily see some years where none at all will fall.
The "good" news in this rather pessimistic view (which may end up not being a reality) is Canada won't dry out as much. But will get considerably warmer. Enough that it will replace the U.S. as the world's breadbasket.
So, as far as all this goes, civilization will take a hit but I see no reason it will crash completely. But let me touch on something that isn't related to crops in our (or Canada's) Midwest but has implications here and world wide.
As of this year, there are about 400 ppm of CO2 causing the climatic grief (or blessings) we're seeing now. All that Carbon we burnt since the start of the industrial age and is said to create a blanket in our atmosphere that retards heat loss should yield an atmospheric concentration much higher. Perhaps by a factor of two. So, what happened to it?
Most of it wound up in our oceans and seas and dissolved there. Well, that's great, isn't it? Think how awful things would be if our CO2 concentration was twice what it is today!
It's not that great. What happens to all that extra CO2 is it acidifies whatever it fell into. Think soda water; basically H20 with a lot of CO2 dissolved in it. Stick in a piece of pH paper and it will come out acidic. Not terribly acid but acid nonetheless. One of the things that acid does is dissolve the carbonate skeletons nearly all of our plankton depend on to live. This includes those critters that generate about 70% of the Oxygen we breathe.
Our oceans are becoming increasingly acidic as a result of all this CO2; enough so that it is increasingly difficult for these organisms to grow their skeletons. We are getting really close to the point where oceanic environments are so loaded with CO2 that our plankton will not be able to grow them at all. When that happens it's lights out not only for them but for the rest of us as well.....
I voted for other (I think I would drown and it would feel terrible). If the moisture from a 90+ degree gulf isn't finding it way into the midwest, it means copious amounts of moisture are constantly flooding into the Southeast.
I'll be long dead by the time it happens, if it ever happens at all, so I really don't care.
That is an easy answer unless you have grandchildren or great grandchildren. I worry about mine as this world becomes more and more effed up in many ways.
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