re: #494 b_sharp

Farming will tend to move north and away from the prairies as the temp increases. That will work for a few decades, but as the centre of food production in North America moves to the northern Canadian prairies the arable land will give way to Shield where growing grasses like wheat will deplete the soil rather quickly.

If farming technology keeps in step with food production drift, adding fertilizer to the soil will boost production on bad soils and dry farming techniques will help retain moisture.

Unfortunately, high tech farming has a limited life span if water becomes scarce, as it will when continental glaciers disappear. Even if the technology for collecting water from the air and irrigation improves considerably over the next 75 years, there is a limited supply of land and water. It would be very difficult to support 400,000,000 million people with predicted water scarcity and the growth of droughts.

I think you may be over blowing the rhetoric with your pictures, but I certainly understand your frustration and sense of urgency. Our ability to adapt, through technology, land use improvements, and expanded protein sources will have an significant impact on how well that size of population survives. On top of reducing CO2, we better start putting money into adaptive technologies now.

North America, especially northern US and Canada will do considerably better than most other countries and that understanding may be why some refuse to believe increased CO² is a bad thing for humans.

Agreed. We may not be able to stop AGW entirely, but we might be able to reduce its severity enough to make it survivable.