Kellie - you are a lawyer and as you certainly know you can weasel and crook your way out of any agreement.
We have lots of land and certainly the ability to produce lots more food. So it gets hotter who says that it is going to be a bad thing for Australia? Scientists? Do not make me laugh they will just "research" for ever taking us to the last dollar but then as a lawyer you would know all about that.
The average Joe has firm opinions on the probity of lawyers and the ethics of "Science". Those two were the mugs who said the earth was flat and then the lawyers prosecuted the people who thought they were wrong.
We need a tax on Doomsday theories and the abolition of Fringe Benefits tax exemptions, that would sort you lot out!

Typical alarmist nonsense. If AGW were real it would improve crop yields.

As it is CO2 is plant food; if we are really concerned about the plants and crop yields we should all be working flat out to produce more CO2. In fact I think laws making it compulsory to produce a minimum amount of CO2 each day should be introduced.

Ms Tranter is obviously already doing her bit with her hyperventilating articles. Her CO2 footprint must be huge.

< Food security is an issue that must be carefully and comprehensively addressed by our government as a matter of critical forward planning. >

But of course, Kellie. You would think this would go without saying, but alas it just completely isn’t happening.

Not only is our government doing nothing of the sort, they are very strongly taking us in the opposite direction.

Very high immigration and hence continuous rapid population growth is the No 1 negative factor here.

I mean; how obvious is it that food security in Australia is of critical importance? And that the future prospects of greatly increasing food production are grim to say the least….. And yet our MAD government continues to rapidly increase the domestic demand for food!

‘MAD’ is a total understatement!!

We not only have a rapidly increasing demand for food, we have a rapidly increasing demand for export income from food.

The most critical thing that needs to happen is for or government to quickly steer us towards a stable population.

In other words; we need to address the demand side of the equation much more fervently than the supply side.

In order to do this, we need to somehow make government independent of big business, which constantly pushes for rapid population growth.

I think that Labor would be very happy to greatly reduce immigration and head towards a stable population if they could. And it would be a winner with the votership. But the real power base – big business – simply won’t let them do it. As for the Coalition - there's no sign of this most fundamental necessity at all!

We’re pretty well screwed if we continue on the current path of highly divergent demand and supply capability for food.

A timely article on our food security given yesterday's release of the latest IPCC report on climate change.
It will be interesting to see if the ostriches finally get their heads out of the sand because of growing hunger pains or getting their bums burned by an ever hotter sun.
Unfortunately for us, the sensible three point plan outlined in the last paragraph will prove incomprehensible to our government of camp followers. China is buying into our agricultural capability, while the Yanks are planning to tell us how to manage what we have left.
Perhaps not such a lucky country after all.

The Chinese irrigation project on the Ord is going to produce sugar, as is another large mooted irrigation project in Queensland. You'd think there would be some requirement to produce actual food. There is also scope to convert tobacco growing land to food production -such as 2 million hectares in China.

You are going to be screwed if you don't come to the conclusion that something is playing havoc with our weather patterns. CO2 is an obvious choice because it has never been so high, and that is without gigantic volcanic action. To blatantly disregard climate change hence forth is foolhardy and dangerous.

An interesting article. I am not so alarmist but I'm aware that Asian markets (people) will continue to grow for at least the next 40 years. We export about $30 billion in food stuffs and consume about $9 billion ourselves. It would be a most excellent idea to research future demand and if we can produce new sorts of food suitable for higher temperatures which may require less water. China is doing studies along the same lines.

Not necessarily!
In a warmer wetter world, the extremes might well become much more evident, with even higher rainfall averages, and longer more enduring droughts for us.
If that is the case, we can plan for it, with many more dams in critical places.
In literally thousands of cases, those dams will be very minor creations built by upland farmers, that then force water into the landscape, thereby, vastly improving fertility, forcing the salt table lower, and quite dramatically lessening the downstream turbidity!
This will also extend environmental flows well beyond current norms.
In many places, problematic but reliable salt water, can be used, by pumping it around buried ag pipes, wrapped in high tech membrane, and then planting various crops, to utilize this water source!
Some plants have greater pulling power than pumps!
The Murray-Darling will become even dryer, so will need to adapt and grow thing like oil rich algae, in order to not just survive, but become very rich, as the world continues to run out of recoverable oil.
Algae only requires 1-2% of the water, of conventional irrigation!
Some industry experts tell us, and given economies of scale, we could market this bio fuel at just 44 cents a litre, retail!
We can grow much more food in Tasmania, which has huge untapped water resources, and a cooler climate.
Then there are things like fodder sheds and shade houses.
Given our rainfall averages actually increase, we, but only if we're well led, could increase food production, and export much of it to an increasingly hungry world!
Rhrosty.

I cannot see a problem at all in the future.

Tasmania has a lot of very fertile soil but

A It gets too cold at times in places but Climate Change or Global Warming or what ever it will be called next year will make it 2 Degrees warmer.

and

B It's covered in trees !

Solution .. Chop down all the trees.. burning them in huge piles could be a Tourist Attraction... then... Plant stuff that we can eat !

As for the Population increasing too fast....easy

Australia should withdraw from the UN Refugee Convention.

So Kellie .. all problems solved solved

Next I shall address ..'The meaning of Life " !

Excellent article, Kellie

Countries need to plan for decent safety margins so as not to collapse when something bad happens. It is worth considering the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. The Spanish conquistadors had brought the potato back to Europe from the Andes, but it took some time to develop varieties that would grow in Northern Europe due to day length issues. Eventually, Europe's farmers succeeded in this, and the potato proved to be immensely productive under Irish conditions, feeding approximately 3 times as many people to the hectare as grain.

The Irish went through a population boom, growing from approximately 1.2 million in 1600 to 8.5 million in the 1840s. At the same time, the British, who had conquered Ireland, were commandeering vast areas of the best land to grow export crops. They also exacerbated the population problem with colonial laws (quickly changed after the famine) that required land to be divided among all the sons, meaning that all could marry and raise families.

In the 1840s the potato blight arrived from Mexico and completely devastated potato crops, as well as stored potatoes. It kept coming back season after season. The Irish didn't have any resistant varieties, and large numbers of people were living on plots of land too small to feed a family on anything but potatoes. Food exports continued under military guard while people were starving. 1 - 1.5 million people starved, and another 1.5 - 2 million were forced to emigrate.

You might compare our own government, using immigration to grow the population at 1.8% and allowing agricultural land to be sold off to foreigners or threatened by fracking operations. Not smart. I also share Kellie's worries about the trade agreements. No doubt an Irishman raising concerns about the dependence on the potato in the 1790s would have also been called 'alarmist'.

An Internet version of The Guardian featured an article "Climate change a threat to security, food, and humankind--IPCC report". This article caused the following response:

All disastrous events occurring since atmospheric carbon dioxide increases have taken place occurred in the past when increases were not taking place. All data is readily available on the Internet. For the past few decades, the frequency and intensity of catastrophic events have been less than in previous years.

The paper said crop yields are decreasing. Carbon dioxide is an airborne fertilizer that increases crop growth and root sizes that makes crops more tolerant to drought. Increasing crop yields allowed feeding the population growth from 3 billion to 7 billion.

The article said there is a decrease in food supply due to climate change. This may be true due to the U. S. annually wasting 5 billion bushels of corn for ethanol and one billion bushels of soy beans for biodiesel. World-wide food for fuels programs could feed 500 million.

The report mentions increased violence and wars due to global warming. Are the writers unaware of horrors during the Little Ice Age from 1350 to 1850. Europe had the Hundred Year War, The Thirty Years War, Napoleon, etc. Glacier advances in Central Europe from 1400 to 1600 wiped out thousands of villages that was thought caused by witches. Ten thousand witches were reported burned at the stake which must have been a solution because glacier advances stopped. Burning witches is just as successful a solution to climate change as today's solutions.

The UNIPCC Report is spreading fear that has taken place since the start of civilization. Professor Paul Ehrlick and Dr. John Holdren claimed 100s of millions would starve to death by the end of the 20th century. Instead of starvation, farmers produced enough food to feed the doubling of the world's population.

Australia should not fall victim to these scary UNIPCC Reports. You have vast farmlands, coal deposits, and natural gas that should make the country prosperous for centuries.

James H. Rust, Professor of nuclear engineering.

Jameshrust, I think your example of 14C climate change would support rather than disprove the UNIPCC Report. In essence, they are predicting food shortages due to extreme weather events. The 14C may have been an “little ice age” but more than that it was a time of extremely high rainfall, crops couldn’t be ripened, were washed out or if they could be produced at all they couldn’t be transported any distance to supply needs.
We need only to look now at Southern Europe and the MENA countries, drought has ravaged agricultural production and combined with depleted energy and mineral resources, resulted in rioting and mass emigration. This is just the situation that Kellie is concerned about, we are not immune to it.
As to our “vast farmlands, coal deposits, and natural gas” we will of course be paying world price for all this and the vast farmlands will probably belong to China.

You are right James H, Co2, is a very efficacious fertilizer, that causes increased top and bottom plant growth!
This is known as the greenhouse effect! [ F-, Greater effort and more homework please!]
It also increases moisture aspiration. i.e., an acre of trees will evaporate 2.5 times, the evaporation numbers of open ponded water, average ambient temperatures, being largely equal!
It is also a well known phenomena, that regions subject to regular winter frost, only see it on nights where the humidity is low, and not at all on overcast nights, given atmospheric moisture is the best naturally occurring thermal blanket, that traps radiant heat and even creates diurnal warming rain events and so on; which in turn, creates the micro climates of rain forests.
Are you following me so far?
Given it is increased atmospheric moisture that most effectively traps radiant heat, and plants releasing more of it due to the quite brilliant fertilizer effect of Co2, promoting increasing plant growth and consequent moisture aspiration!
Given this is all proven science, then there is a connection to increased atmospheric Co2, and global warming, warmer oceans, more evaporation, more atmospheric moisture, more trapped heat, more rapid ice melts, more consequent evaporation, more atmospheric moisture, more retained heat. [The greenhouse effect!]
On and on she goes, where she stops, nobody knows!
Are you still with me, or blinded by the science?
Simply put, we need to reduce atmospheric moisture, by reducing that which promotes plant life, Co2. [The greenhouse effect!]
The simple facts are, we can do this and create massive profits/economic growth, while adapting!
Call yourself a physicist or a scientist?
Then start thinking/reasoning like one! It would be a huge improvement!
Rhrosty.

So sad but so predictable. As soon as anything remotely related to climate change or global warming is printed out comes the usual rat pack of deniers, shills, ratbags, hollow men and people with 'authority' in other areas. The chance to have a fruitful discussion on this site is limited by the neo-Orwellian sheep with their deafening blasts of misinformation, disinformation, twisting of facts, cherry-picking of other facts and in most cases ignorance of reality.
The Drum posts an article and gets hundreds of responses. OLO puts up a reasoned argument for a rational review of current practices and gets less than 50 responses, usually from people who don't know what they are talking about or who are paid to cloud the issue.
So sad - that is why so few people come here.

Australia is the same as the U. S. when someone disagrees with CAGW. They attack the messenger and not the message. For those who claim increasing carbon dioxide makes plants lose moisture, the following answer say no:

How does all this happen? Plants use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide from the air, and water and minerals from the soil, into the carbohydrates and other molecules that form plant biomass. More CO2 means more and larger flowers; higher seed mass and germination success; and improved plant resistance to droughts, diseases, viruses, pathogenic infections, air pollutants, and salt or nitrogen accumulation in soils. Higher CO2 levels also improve plants’ water use efficiency – ensuring faster and greater carbon uptake by plant tissues, with less water lost through transpiration.

More airborne CO2 lets plants reduce the size of their stomata, little holes in leaves that plants use to inhale CO2 building blocks. When CO2 is scarce, the openings increase in size, to capture sufficient supplies of this “gas of life.” But increasing stomata size means more water molecules escape, and the water loss places increasing stress on the plants, eventually threatening their growth and survival.

When the air’s CO2 levels rise – to 400, 600, or 800 ppm – the stomata shrink in size, causing them to lose less water from transpiration, while still absorbing ample CO2 molecules. That enables them to survive extended dry spells much better.

(The 2009 and 2011 volumes of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change report, Climate Change Reconsidered, especially this section, and Dr. Craig Idso’s www.CO2science.org website summarize hundreds of similar studies of crops, forests, grasslands, alpine areas and deserts enriched by carbon dioxide. CO2 Science’s Plant Growth Database lets people search for more studies.)
- See more at: http://www.cfact.org/2013/08/18/time-to-praise-co2-the-miracle-gas/#sthash.BwYPavm2.dpuf

James H. Rust

Dear Kellie,

There are plenty of serious reasons to worry about food security, as well as that horrible TPP - so why discredit yourself and these important issues by flogging that "climate change" nonsense?

Brian of Buderim; what a hateful, spiteful, arrogant comment which is so typical of the hating, elitist, vainglorious acolytes of the failed theory of AGW, a 'theory' so bereft of scientific evidence it has to trawl the Old Testament for vindication:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16177

The Drum, unlike this place, is a parasitic, tax-payer funded swamp where idle, censorious fools parade their self-declared superiority.

Why don't you scuttle back there.

As ever, more heat than light is generated by this forage around random statistics on "climate change". Everyone immediately leaps on their favourite hobbyhorse - hi there Ludwig, nice to see your "demand-side" mantra raising its head yet again - and does a quick cut'n'paste of their last post. And the one before that. And the one before that...

There are so many blithe assumptions and random factoids lumped together in this "article", it is difficult to grab any individual thread to pull. For myself, I had the greatest difficulty moving past this, the very second sentence...

"Its publication coincides with the recent release of the final report from the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food"

There is a UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food? What the...

"...the right to food is the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensure a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear."

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/issues/food/Pages/FoodIndex.aspx

I expect he wanders around the refugee camps in Somalia, showing a grateful people a piece of UN headed notepaper showing how their "rights" are being protected by the United Nations. Phshaw.

And its good to see Divergence once again taking the opportunity to take up the cudgels (shillelaghs?) on behalf of the Irish.

>>No doubt an Irishman raising concerns about the dependence on the potato in the 1790s would have also been called 'alarmist'<<

Yep. If only they had been able to write.

Divergence

Agree. Parallels with the Irish Famine are important. A lesser known fact about the 1840s potato blight is that it hit seven countries in all, not just Ireland – France, Alsace Loraine (Prussia), Flanders (Holland), Belgium, Sweden and the Scottish Highlands.

The combined total of recorded deaths across the six other countries totalled 80,000-100,000. Yet, a million people died in Ireland alone. Two million people were forced to migrate; yet, except for the Scottish Highlands, none of the other countries hit by the blight lost significant population through emigration.

The catastrophic effect of the blight on Ireland was a direct outcome of the laissez-faire zealotry that dominated Westminster at the time. Where the five non-British countries implemented immediate crisis management by closing the ports and cancelling all export food contracts, the Whigs of Westminster believed that even charitable famine relief was too much interference with the purity of the market. Also, personal correspondence from various British politicians revealed they saw the famine as a means of solving the ‘Irish problem’ (i.e. kill them off).

There is a lot more that could be said about the parallels between Ireland of 1845 and the global free trade zealotry of the world today, and its accompanying disdain for people as anything other than just another market. As the storm clouds of climate change and global free-trade madness slowly gather, the world is a famine waiting to happen.

Hi Brian of Buderim, I totally agree with you that nobody comes here because of the commenters who are encouraged. It has been a long time since I bothered to comment although I did for a while a few years ago. I check out the site occasionally now for a laugh and a cry at the insanity on show and I saw your comment.

Graham Young must be happy with the results of his insistence on the right for everyone to be a bigot and a climate change denier without expecting them to take responsibility for how they use this right. So the bigots and the bullies just drown out everyone else while they complain about having no voice. lol

I doubt it will get any better here. I won't be back for a while even for a chuckle. Good luck. :)

Another hypocrite Kilarney bleating about the Irish famine as another example of wicked capitalistic zealotry.

Have shot at the death toll from the zealotry of Lysenkoism, the closest idea to AGW from the past, Kilarney.

Another one, mollydukes, from the slush fund which is the ABC presenting no argument, no evidence or reason or logic, merely a sanctimonious demand for censorship for those who don't agree with her/him/transgendered.

This is so typical of the left in this nation; they hide behind, indeed demand public funding for their self-indulgent views and heap vitriol on those who contradict those indulgences. What little bullyboys/girls/transgendered they are.

Take Ms Tranter's little piece here; based on a discredited, rebutted and corrupt UN and its offshoot, the IPCC's latest chicken little report.

Ms Tranter ignores the fact agriculture production has increased for nearly every crop since 1970:

http://www.geohive.com/charts/ag_crops.aspx

Ms Tranter ignores the 2010 IAC audit of the IPCC which found the science of the IPCC was substandard, unreliable and unscientific. The IAC made recommendations for the methodology of the IPCC but none of these recommendations have been implemented. Yet with every prediction by the IPCC either failed or problematic Ms Tranter still accepts the IPCC's ever worsening predictions for the future when what they have predicted for the present is not happening.

AGW is a lie yet we are meant to believe related dire predictions from an ideologically motivated person like Ms Tranter; and because some reasonable people treat such articles as the rubbish they are we get castigated by ABC drones for not toeing the party line.

The ABC should be closed immediately then it will be either sites like this or street corners for the likes of the 2 interlopers currently here.

As a lawyer and human rights activist, Kellie has a great affinity to the United Nations. I wonder how much of her income might depend on that body, the most corrupt organisation ever to soil the planet.
What ever the case, she has an incredibly strong interest in promoting any garbage the UN puts it's name to.

Then we have the scientists. Have any of them ever got anything right? I have to wonder when they talk global warming, or our inability to produce more food.

In my district alone I could show you tens of thousands of acres of once productive farm land now doing nothing more useful than graze a few horses, cattle or kangaroos. Again with a trip to the Mary valley, or the Cherwell river area I could show you thousands more. The home of the best mandarins ever now has not a single orchard in production.

Why is this? Because it's just worth the effort growing stuff. When you get paid more on the dole, than a 70 hour week working the land can earn, only stupid old men will do it. Kids are too smart to fall for it. As the old farts die off we are left with empty farms, useless lawyers, & scientists who could not find GO on a monopoly board.

We could double our food output next year, just by reopening some cultivation. We could quadruple it within a few years, with some dams for irrigation, & less damn fool environmental flows, where such flows never existed previously. Yep there were destructive floods, but no more water in the rivers a few months later.

If we want to do it, just make it worth doing. Pay enough for the food, to make growing it a viable business, & make farm labour more attractive than welfare, & you will feed the multitudes, no problem

Australia is already importing over 70 percent of it's fish and that has nothing to do with CO2 or acid or emissions, never has, never will.

It's no use tying to twist cause of already devastated ocean food supply into being caused by AGW - CO2 emissions and need for an ETS.

Kellie our food production is down because of cheap imports, locking up of good land for food production, Govt over regulation, water restrictions, carbon tax and your ignorance.

Google Agenda 21 and the LIMA Agreement. They want to de-populate you and bring in an unelected world Govt. Google New World Order.

"analysis of satellite data shows that between 1982 and 2011, 20.5 percent of the world’s vegetated area got greener, while just 3 percent grew browner; the most likely causes are higher temperature, higher levels of carbon dioxide, or both."

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374742/why-ipcc-report-neglects-benefits-global-warming-rupert-darwall

It takes a special kind of chutzpah to claim that plants are being killed by two of the three things which plants rely on for survival and growth.

cohenite

What Lysenko and the Irish Famine have in common, as well as the Chinese famines before and after Mao, the Russian famines under the Czar and the Soviets, and the Indian famines of the nineteenth century and the big one during WWII - to name a few - is that the people affected had long since had their means of localised self-sufficient food production and consumption taken away from them.

These countries all suffer/suffered the curse of centralised planning and decision making, which occurred thousands of miles away from where they lived and were undertaken by people who had absolutely no interest in their personal welfare. Instead, ideology ruled over compassion and common sense and food became a commodity for the rich patrons of the central controllers to trade and invest.

I certainly hope I'm wrong, but I do believe that global free trade is a global famine waiting to happen - with or without climate change.

Brina of Buderim, mollydukes, you are spot on. OLO is dying on its feet because a good idea has been poorly implemented. If the posts were moderated and trolling blocked debate might stand a chance.

Furthermore, OLO fails to enforce its own rules:

"General prohibitions

You must not up-load, post, transmit or otherwise make available through this site any material which:

may harass or cause distress or inconvenience to, or incite hatred of, any person.

restricts or inhibits any other user from using or enjoying this site.

@Candide:

"You must not up-load, post, transmit or otherwise make available through this site any material which:

may harass or cause distress or inconvenience to, or incite hatred of, any person.

restricts or inhibits any other user from using or enjoying this site."

Global warming alarmism, like religion, is clearly on the skids when it has to play the outrage card. "How dare you offend me by presenting facts and figures that refute my cherished beliefs! Moderators, remove this offensive person at once!"

Nothing shows more clearly the growing desperation of the warmistas than their increasingly frantic efforts to get their critics to shut up, SHUT UP, just SHUT UP!

You have got to laugh.

Brian of Buderim comes in swinging haymakers like this: <<the usual rat pack of deniers, shills, ratbags, hollow men>>

And he is the hero ...the exemplar (according to Candide & Mollydukes)

It's everyone else who is doing the " harass[ing] or ... incit[ing] hatred"

LOL

Well said Killarney! I do disagree though that world wide famine can come up again. See there is no profit it letting consumers starve and die. Food from another country can be sold at better prices to starving punters. When I say better prices I mean a shed load more than it was bought from the grower.

Consideration of world famine these days should surely include disruption of available fuel supply for production and transportation of food. Food rotting in trucks empty of fuel, desperate hungry irritated people raiding gardens, is already happening in some countries.

Does anyone think a famine can or will happen overnight?

There is a protein famine right now amongst many Pacific Islands people no longer able to obtain adequate affordable essential protein from the sea. Malnutrition is destructive, including of trade between people and nations.

Think about human influence on cloud cover likely to impact seagrass that is dependent on sunlight and photosynthesis. Seagrass and algae and plants do not produce oxygen at night or under heavy cloud. The ocean food web is dependent on seagrass nurseries.
N.B.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16169&page=4

James H Rust, I am not sure when I read so much ignorance in a single post. It may have been the last time I looked at Natural News.

The climate risks for Australian agriculture are less about temperature and more about water availability. Increasing temperature will have an impact on production, regardless of the “fertilizing effect” of CO2. The major crop species grown in Australia, wheat, has an optimum of 19 C for grain production. It is well known in grain production the planting dates need to be carefully managed to reduce the risk of spring heat impacting on yield. Increasing temperatures will increase the risks of spring heat. If spring temperatures were to increase by 2 C, there would be a dramatic decrease in wheat production area.

But the real problem is water availability. The vast majority of the production area is rainfed and at the mercy of rainfall. Rainfall is predicted to decrease with climate change in the main agricultural production areas in the south of the country. This has already happened in the south-west of Western Australia. In addition, rainfall patterns are predicted to change with less rainfall in autumn when winter crops are planted and more in summer when nothing is grown.

So, let them eat cake, eh James?

"So, let them eat cake, eh James?"

No agro, let them build dams; oh, that's right none of that environmental vandalism under the Greens.

Green policies are to blame for food shortages; nothing else. We see this in the growth of biofuel cropping, land given over to 'carbon' sequestration, policies preventing clearing of vegetation [as in the Peter Spencer case and many others], green prevention of GM technology and so on.

It is hypocrisy of the highest order to fabricate scenarios where food production will be curtailed due to the imaginary AGW and ignore the real oppressive effect of green ideology on food production.

That's not cake agro, that's a triple layer mudcake with extra dollops of cream and cherries right in the kisser.

Dams, cohenite? How are dams going to help when there is going to be less water available?

To fill dams you need run-off. Less rain means even less run-off. Perhaps Australia should build dams in Kakadu and pipe the water to Wagga?

Or perhaps you are thinking of capturing that extra summer rainfall and holding it in dams where it will evaporate faster due to the increasing summer temperatures?

Or more likely, you are not thinking.

Agro you are just not thinking just spouting the usual bile and "We are all going to die" nonsense. Cohenite is correct the Greens have much to answer for.
One question, why do Greenpeace have revolving spokespersons? So they can never be pinned down? They really are a disgusting scam and making millions. Putin showed how to deal with them and the Icelanders will be just as hard! Cannot wait to seem them get another blood nose although what will stop there gallop is a finance investigation. When people see the misappropriated millions the brown stuff will hit the oscillating blades.

Come on Agronomist, you can't quote from one half of the warmest bull dust, without recognizing the other half. You appear to have carefully forgotten the "flooding rains" bit. Remember, it will be drought & flooding rains, if you believe their crap.

If so, it's a win all round. Flooding rains fill dams, regular rains don't. So build those dams, [not desalination plants], & trust in the con men to provide the floods to fill them.

You've got to give it to the conmen warmists don't you? If it's drought, it's global warming, & if it floods it's global warming, but their last one must be the best rationalization in history. When there is record breaking cold, [US & much of Siberia] it's global warming. And you still claim to believe the lying bludgers. Come on mate, fair crack of the whip.

2 points: I forgot to include the word "troll" in my post. You will exactly where it should be positioned.
The second point is that it is very difficult to have a reasoned, calm and rational debate when 2 of the people who are contributing, but not listening, are paid employees of The Heartland Foundation or The Climate Skeptics?

JBowyer, I am just commenting on what has already happened http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=timeseries&tQ%5Bgraph%5D=rain&tQ%5Barea%5D=seaus&tQ%5Bseason%5D=0305&tQ%5Bave_yr%5D=T and what is predicted to happen http://www.climatechangeinaustralia.com.au/nswactrain20.php in south-eastern Australia. Even if the outcome is not as bad as the prediction, what has already happened is bad enough. Declining autumn rainfall in south-eastern Australia is going to make crop production riskier, because it will be harder to get the crops sown in a timely fashion so they mature before the earlier spring heat that is already happened http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=timeseries&tQ%5Bgraph%5D=tmax&tQ%5Barea%5D=seaus&tQ%5Bseason%5D=0911&tQ%5Bave_yr%5D=T and is predicted to continue http://www.climatechangeinaustralia.com.au/nswacttemp20.php. Again, if the outcome is not as bad as the prediction, what has already happened is bad enough.

I have no love for Greenpeace, as a perusal of my posts will show, but I am competent with data and am conversant enough chemistry and physics to understand what the implications of the data are. And to know that Anthony Cox is ignorant of science and is deluding people.

Agro’s post is a sorry reflection on the alarmist position.

A cursory glance at the BOM graphs shows fatal discrepancies. The temperature record begins in 1910 while rainfall begins in 1900.

The arbitrary floor to temperature means the very hot periods in the late 19thC and early 20thC are excluded. There is no good reason for this exclusion. The argument that Stevenson screens were not ubiquitous until 1910 even if correct, which it isn’t, or that the Glaisher screens were defective, which they weren’t, doesn’t mean you exclude data from the many sites which had Stevensons prior to 1910 or from the Glaisher records.

Agro has shown that rainfall in the SE Australian area is declining. It is also declining in the SW area around Perth. Agro attributes blame to AGW without offering any mechanism why AGW should reduce rain there but increase it in the North of Australia.

In fact there is a cogent reason why rainfall is declining in the lower extremities of the continent; urbanisation and land clearance as David Stockwell clearly shows in slides 11-13 here:

http://landshape.org/images/StockwellCSP.ppt.pdf

Agro asserts that sceptics seek to mislead and misinform. Why should they do that? None get paid; all the money is flowing into the alarmist basket even from big business which is standing in line to get the government handouts for renewables and AGW research. It is a grotesque accusation and applies to the alarmist supporters not the sceptics.

For instance there are many examples of leading alarmists advocating lying and exaggeration:

“We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts…
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.”
- Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports

Can agro point to such a deliberate intent to obfuscate by any sceptic? Of course not; when agro or the irritating Brian complain about sceptics they are really looking in a mirror.

Agro I am extremely irritated by the current nonsense from the BOM & the ABC. I do not include you in this but I honestly believe that the weather in Melbourne has not changed in the last 40 years I have lived here.
I had to get weather data in 1989 from the BOM and the man said despite what people think our temperatures have not decreased over the years. Apparently we remembered hotter summers in our youth.
In the 1970's it was going to be another Ice Age? Well I think this tawdry little episode will hopefully result in a healthy dose of scepticism straight up the scientific clacker!

@Brian of Buderim: "The second point is that it is very difficult to have a reasoned, calm and rational debate when 2 of the people who are contributing, but not listening, are paid employees of The Heartland Foundation or The Climate Skeptics?"

And who would that be, Brian?

James H Rush is an advisor for the Heartlands Foundation and Anthony Cohen is the secretary of the Climate Skeptics [sic]. James H rush information comes from Google and Anthony Cox comes from this website.
Neither is impartial but makes no reference to their employment in posts on this website.

Brian is what is loosely defined as a Concern Troll:

"A concern troll is a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to the one that the user claims to hold. The concern troll posts in Web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group's actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed "concerns". The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt within the group"

Concern Trolls are common, indeed ubiquitous amongst alarmists and are easy to strip of their pseudo moral veneer to reveal their censorious, platitudinous shell.

Brian has contributed nothing to this debate; his sole purpose is to denigrate and besmirch the right of sceptics to express their view and this site for having the temerity to host sceptic views.

Since alarmists, even the best [sic] of them, have nothing except recourse to authority such as the BOM, IPCC etc, which have been discredited they cannot respond once their authoritative source is shown to be deficient.

I'm not sure but I think I saw Brian's name on the credits for Noah as one of the talking rocks; if he wasn't he should have been.

JBowyer, my impression is that Melbourne is drier and warmer now than when I lived there as a child. But because impressions can be wrong, I prefer to look at data. Autumn rainfall in Melbourne has declined by about 80 mm over the past 40 years, which is quite a decline. Spring temperatures have increased by 0.8 C, which is perhaps less concerning.

Because these changes are the same as predicted by models describing the effect of increased CO2 in the atmosphere, one has to consider the possibility that that extra CO2 in the atmosphere is playing a role. We know from research done more than 100 years ago that CO2 absorbs energy in the IR and re-emits it, so increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will warm the atmosphere. We also know from measurements that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere than there has been since agriculture was invented. We also know from measurements that the surface is warmer now than it has been at any time since measurements began and probably since agriculture was invented.

Even if there was to be no more effects of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere, there is a problem in south-eastern Australia. Because spring is warmer, farmers will have to plant their crops earlier to avoid heat stress. However, as autumns are drier, they are getting fewer opportunities to sow the crop. This will inevitably reduce crop yield.

Then we get the scientifically ignorant like cohenite going on about how it there were very hot periods in the late 19th Century and the early 20th Century. Well there were, but they were not as hot as the present temperatures. But if that is some sort of argument around crop production, it is worth remembering that average wheat yields in the first decade of the 20th Century were about 0.5 T/ha as a result of drought (which was also connected to the fact that temperatures were higher)

In response to agro; it is default setting 101 for alarmists to denigrate anyone who disagrees with AGW science; it doesn't matter whether it is Dick Lindzen, John Christy, Roy Spencer, Ross McKitrick or Stewart Franks, all of whom I consider to be the top climate scientists in the world and who are all sceptics. All are wrong.

It is a pathetic tactic.

Agro claims today is climatically exceptional. This is crucial to AGW. But it is NOT TRUE. The MWP was warmer; so was the RWP, the MInoan Warm Period and the Holocene; in terms of the interglacials, this current one is the coolest.

In respect of the Hockeystick McShane and Wyner is the definitive rebuttal of the claim that today is climatically exceptional.

Globally temperature has paused.

Australia seems to be a little hot oasis. Agro has dismissed any concern about the discarding of pre-1910 temp data by BOM. In fact it is a scandal. It is almost certain that the late 19thC was warmer than today in Australia but due to a problematic complaint about a warming bias in the Glaisher stand which was resolved by the Stevenson stand the BOM has literally thrown away decades of temp records.

That single fact along with the rounding controversy when Fahrenheit was converted to Centigrade in 1972 goes along way to explaining why the temp trends in Australia are warmer than the rest of the world.

A real scientist would be concerned about this. Enough questions have been asked about BOM and the CSIRO for an audit but that is being resisted. As I say that is the issue not AGW or the supposed ignorance of sceptics.

Sorry Agro but the AGW people always do retrospective forecasts like Flannerry. Whatever happens it is "Climate change", why not "Global warming"?
I suggest you read Water into Gold written by Ernestine Hill in the 1960's. That detailed much higher temperatures and frosts that destroyed the vine industry crops.
She also detailed when the Murray Darling was a succession of pools for years at a time, enviromental flows anyone?

I remember being advised in the 1950's to look out for livestock because of toxic algae blooms in the Darling River south of Bourke.

Those were days when Australia was self sufficient in fresh fish from the ocean, not so these days. Now Australia imports 70% of it's fish including to feed aquaculture.

I think the actual subject of world food security has come into being because governments are now quietly aware under the table, that world ocean fish stocks are seriously and generally depleted. Independent evidence however indicates they are devastated.

Many farmed animals need fishmeal or similar affordable and viable protein supplement, especially during winter such as in Europe.

I am amazed ocean food sustainability collapse is not being discussed generally concerning food security.

I agree, JFAus, that we ought to be talking more about food security both on land and in the sea. I heard, and I wish I could remember where, that the whole problem of Somali pirates brgan when honest Somali fishermen could no longer make a living from fishing off their coast. Supersized trawlers had vacuumed up all the fish the fishermen had depended on for their livelihood.
Global climate zones are moving poleward and we need to make sure that we can grow what we need with the changed water supplies and the new weather that farmers are already experiencing.

Food security now that every climate prediction and increasing ocean acidity prediction by the IPCC has been wrong or exaggerated, is the new scare tactic.

AR5 has a specific dire prediction about the MDB and its agricultural prospects.

It is culpably wrong as Ken Stewart's thorough analysis shows:

http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/ipcc-dud-rainfall-predictions-for-the-murray-darling-basin/

This is the thing; the IPCC is overseeing an attempted revolution in humanity values from how we live, to how we grow our food, our energy production and use and how we should react to 'nature' and indeed how we view existence and its limitations.

This revolution is predicated on scientific evidence which is consistently wrong, inadequate and demonstrably tainted with ideology of a quite loathsome misanthropic type.

And still we have sanctimonious fools flinging vitriol at sceptics. And complaining when they get a taste of their own medicine.

Too bad.

Brian of Buderim, I understand Somali fishermen had to contend with fishing boats including from western Pacific waters. The super size you mention is new to me but the vessels involved would have been super sized to Somali people. The fish link to that sorry situation in Somalia is I think kept under the carpet by news media that for whatever their reason is keeping the devastated state of world fish stocks under wraps. Yet it is inevitable it become known in order to understand essential solutions. Aquaculture is not the answer because that product can not be afforded by the majority in need.

I think Buderim ginger has also taken a hit due to lack of rain. Look, I consider weather and climate is changing due to human impact but the cause is not increase in CO2 according to evidence I am seeing. I think the problem is solar warmth held back in unprecedented sewage nutrient fed algae plant matter in ocean and sea and big lake waters. The Great Lakes for example, and that warmth is held back for 4 or 5 hours into the night.
There is more on that at another OLO thread, later pages at:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16169&page=

cohenite, I think some sceptics can be as hard minded as warmers.

I find myself in the middle here, between sceptics and warmers, dealing with reality presently not yet on sceptic or warmer radar.

I think a lot of the IPCC false alarms may be due to more localised weather change events, not global at the same time.
The whole atmosphere of the planet is not warming at the same time, because increased warmth I am seeing is coming from some very huge patches of warm water where algae is more dense than usual.

I think that categorically increased density of ocean algae matter has not been measured and assessed and included in AGW computer modelling. The GW seems wrong I think because of the localisation of the warming events.

Perhaps you can get an idea of how weather change can begin in a local area, for example the Pacific equatorial area, by considering availability of nutrients for algae influencing the El Nino algae phenomena. And I advise there is no mention of nutrients from east Pacific coast waters, prawn farms sewers and all. No nutrient pollution. No excess in algae. No increase in mass retaining whatever slight degree of increase in warmth unnaturally for a few hours.
Only upwelling nutrient supply is stated, we assume that supply is natural. See:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ElNinoColor/el_nino_color_3.php

JF, my understanding is that algae can only produce energy from sunlight whereas cyanobacteria can produce energy from both sunlight and such nutrients as you talk about.

The level of cyanobacteria is therefore a better marker of the 'pollution' from agriculture runoff and other human activity which is often declared to be a serious pollutant affecting such things as the GBR.

Whether cyanobacteria is declining or not is problematic with Boyce et al initially claiming it is but subsequently retracting that conclusion:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/25/the-ocean-wins-again/#more-38673

Science is rarely settled except when it comes to AGW.

cohenite and others,
With regard to warmth, I think of algae only as mass, increased mass. Increased unnatural mass. e.g cast iron mass v/s copper mass - difference.

I do not see green ocean algae generating warmth.
The slight warmth in ocean algae I am on about originates from the sun. But when warm algae mass covers a vast area, I think considerable warmth is involved.

As for cyanobacteria I was not aware it produces energy.
In 2000 I personally observed estuary sediment dispersed on Surfers Paradise beach, which led to the beach northerly flowing alongshore current causing a 30-40 sq km RAMSAR seagrass site at Amity Banks to be destroyed for the season. Consequently mass starvation of mutton birds occurred with mortality along coast from Rockhampton to South Australia and around Tasmania.

The algae with the warmth I notice is primarily the green algae, the chlorophyll green pure vegetable matter algae. Look for green in water.

NASA shows coccolithaphore phytoplankton with limestone (calcite) shell and chlorophyll. I think the limestone shell forms an even greater increase in mass capable of absorbing and storing solar heat, for a short but perhaps important period of time. The huge mass in the Bering Sea is where ice is reported melting more than usual.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Coccolithophores/

Note the following link, "never observed" in such mass until the 1990’s.
When was the unusual ice melt first seen?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Coccoliths/bering_sea.php

And why is the real state of the ocean environment not out there in news and debate about world food security issues, and AGW issues?

Cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae), like algae, photosynthesize.

The specific heat capacity of limestone is less than water's, so its thermal inertia is lower i.e its temperature variation over 24 hours is greater than water's, its temp ranging lower and higher for the same amount of heat absorbed or radiated. Regardless of the material the quantity of heat energy emitted or absorbed are the same.

Sorry, couldn't stand by when a further small dose of physics might yet open JF Aus' mind to the inconvenient truth. Just kidding, of course:-)

"Regardless of the material the quantity of heat energy emitted or absorbed are the same."

You need to check that, starting here:

http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/07/31/the-amazing-case-of-back-radiation-part-three/

Noting this:

http://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/emissivity-vs-wavelength-various-substances2.pn

The emissivities of limestone or white marble (calcium carbonate, comprising phytoplankton skeletons) and water are all around 0.95 (max possible = 1.00). Water has a higher specific heat, so its temperature rises/falls faster than whatever might displace it (algae/phytoplankton)

Regarding back-radiation and "The world we live in does absorb DLR and adding 300W/m2 to the surface energy budget is the reason why the surface temperatures are like they are." If this is so it has always been so....yet we have the hockey-stick. Furthermore, even assuming this is correct, it neither support JF's hypothesis for AGW, nor falsifies it.

What JF needs is a published study of his hypothesis for AGW, not speculative obfuscation of the accepted one.

"...so its temperature rises/falls faster..." that should be "slower", of course.

"yet we have the hockey-stick."

Your side have the Hockeystick lucie; sceptics used it for firewood some time ago.

We'll see which way the cinders fall after Mann vs Steyn.

You'll have to try harder to sink the inconvenient truth than that, cohenite, there's a bigger stick (10000 yrs longer than Mann's).

For the layman: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-03/09/hockey-stick

For the scientifically bent: http://content.csbs.utah.edu/~mli/Economics%207004/Marcott_Global%20Temperature%20Reconstructed.pdf

For the politician and concerned citizen: https://docs.google.com/viewer?pid=explorer&srcid=0B5NgIqKD_aX4Y3Y0dG9pdDFEUGc&docid=e73beb68456ab5a310eaa280ad0a0a3b%7C67a652d697b3744513d2e5804dd5800c&a=bi&pagenumber=1&w=800

Marcott? Seriously Lucie? Marcott is number 5 of my most recent list of worst AGW papers:

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/new-ten-worst-agw-papers-by-cohenite.html

The limit stopped me posting and I have been travelling. Will reply in the morning, Sunday. Cheers. JF

In Anthony Cox universe, the definition of worst papers is not based on how bad a paper is, how poorly executed the work is, how tortuous the logic and how wrong the conclusions. To become a worst paper in Anthony Cox universe the conclusion must disagree with the Anthony Cox view of the world. The more difficult it is for Anthony Cox to rationalise away the conclusions of the work, the worst the paper must be. This is why you would never see this paper in Anthony Cox’s list of worst papers http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603 or this one http://multi-science.metapress.com/index/B757046647343465.pdf or this one http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00254-006-0261-x and definitely not this one http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/v3600623g8txh577/

This is why in Anthony Cox universe, the list of the World’s 5 top climate scientists contains an economist and an engineer. Because this is an alternative universe folks where you don’t want reality getting in the way. You might have noticed how Anthony Cox and his great friend cohenite repeatedly link to the blogs of a former TV weather presenter, a former children’s television presenter and a retired school teacher for information on climate science. It is because in Anthony Cox universe these people have significant expertise that cannot be found among publishing climate scientists

Luciferase,
Are you saying that according to physics an increase in matter cannot retain an increase in heat?

From my poin of view, there is a significant amount of limestone/calcite suspended in the Bering Sea. The coccolithaphore phytoplankton there is micro and yet it can be seen from a satellite in space.

I think an increase in limestone/calcite shell suspended in Bering Sea water would equal an even greater increase in solid matter mass than usual, and I think that increased mass would retain warmth more than usuaI.

I think limestone is a more dense matter than green algae plant matter. Yes no?

A basic experiment should indicate what I mean.
If some powdered limestone is placed in one of three equal containers, algae in the second container, clear water in the third container, with boiling water added equally at the same time in all at sunset, in order of cooling which container/substance would stay warm the longest?

OLO is providing a virtual test ground for me, e.g about whether or not a human activity-linked source of warmth is being carried into hours of night, to whatever slight degree, and whether or not that has been measured and assessed by AGW science.

At end of the day I know green algae in water carries warmth into hours of night and I know that from real world experience 50 years ago, pre Internet science.
And I did an experiment recently that confirms that carry over of heat by algae in water.

people have significant expertise that cannot be found among publishing climate scientists
Posted by Agronomist, Sunday, 6 April 2014 9:17:29 AM

Agronomist,
Your comment there is so true. Makes me think of my very first job in life. I left school to ride horses mustering in the outback but on arrival I was given a half round broom, a spanner, a shovel and an old army jeep. The job was cleaning stock water troughs on the 240,000a acre property 200 miles west of Bourke.

After 3 months of that task I was about ready to quit, not a horse in sight.
I asked the manager why that work. He explained when sheep come in late afternoon they want a cool drink. He said if the water is warm some sheep hang back till 10 or 11 at night until the water cools, some stay until morning. He said sheep hanging about the watering place puts dust in the wool and that reduces wool value. So there was need to keep algae out of the troughs as much as possible.

No doubt there was primary industry science on that at the time, well pre Internet like in the late 1950's.

These days I think subject of warmth carried over in algae is a missing part of AGW science, not seen by today's publishing climate scientists

Look agro, if you don't like my list make your own bloody list; you're a big boy and you're 1/2 way there already. You stomp around here moaning and groaning; do something useful: make a list!

I should point out however that Spencer and Braswell's paper is in this list:

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/has-man-made-global-warming-been.html

The Chilingar paper you list I have seen and is not in any list by me but another Chilingar paper is:

http://jennifermarohasy.com/2008/09/ten-of-the-best-climate-research-papers-nine-peer-reviewed-a-note-from-cohenite/

I am familiar with the Manuel and Archibald efforts but they are not on any of my lists. Knock yourself out.

Hockey one, hockey two, hockey three, four, five six..........: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large-scale_temperature_reconstructions_of_the_last_2,000_years

JF asks "Are you saying that according to physics an increase in matter cannot retain an increase in heat"

More mass = more heat absorption or radiation for a given substance as it rises or falls to the surrounding temperature.

Phytoplankton displacing water would have to either be heavier than the water it displaces (yet it doesn't sink?) or have a higher emissivity or specific heat than water(which it doesn't), to absorb or radiate more heat than the water displaced.

You need experimental research to demonstrate my theorizing is wrong and that science has overlooked something of tremendous significance that smashes the CO2 hypothesis to smithereens. Thought experiments on blogs like this won't cut it, you need to convince the world. Surely cohenite's climate scientist are at your disposal, at least (cohenite?)

What you may also be onto here, JF, is why sea levels are on the rise, by crikey!

Emissivity is an intensive property.

Sea level rise is not apparent from my point of view.
In the SW Pacific Islands I see that seabed and islands have sunk down during earthquake.
There is dead coral almost everywhere.
Atolls are formed from coral sand and rubble, supply of which is now reduced due to so much dead coral.

The sinking of seabed and islands when the 2007 Ranogga earthquake occurred has not been duly investigated and reported by AGW-interested media. I did hear an half-baked ABC radio interview with misleading questions put to the author of Sinking Islands". But reality of the true situation is not being honestly reported. Sea level rise can not just occur at Tuvalu of Kiribati and not off Tasmania and elsewhere.

If nutrient pollution and algae is the problem and not CO2, proper solutions will be put in place.
There are indications the nutrient loading dumped into ocean ecosystems each day can be reduced at a profit.

http://jennifermarohasy.com/2008/09/ten-of-the-best-climate-research-papers-nine-peer-reviewed-a-note-from-cohenite/

You do like parading your ignorance don't you cohenite. Those "nine peer reviewed" papers are actually only 7 peer-reviewed papers. So someone has trouble counting again.

But what I really like about that list is how internally inconsistent it is. It is a bit like going down the rabbit hole where one has to believe 10 impossible things before breakfast.

If any one of these papers is the best and therefore (presumably) correct, then all the other nine have to be wrong and a load of junk.

Just an example: If Chillingar et al. is correct, the greenhouse effect does not exist. Yet all the other papers in the list start from the assumption that the greenhouse effect does exist, but make claims that it cannot increase no matter how much CO2 is added to the atmosphere, or that it is increasing a little bit and other spurious arguments.

Yes, those 2 complaints, about there only being 7 peer reviews and if as you say Chilingar is right then a greenhouse effect doesn't exist, were addressed in the comments.

The first complaint is right but the 2nd has no force. I was simply putting up papers which critiqued AGW; and alleged internal inconsistency between these papers was grist for the mill.

But it is typical of alarmists to dwell on such confected 'errors' on the sceptical side while ignoring the asteroid size holes in their own science. Perhaps that's why you won't produce a list of say the 10 reasons why AGW is real or the 10 best peer reviewed papers supporting AGW.

Come on agro, put your expertise where your grizzles are; produce a list.

"I was simply putting up papers which critiqued AGW; and alleged internal inconsistency between these papers was grist for the mill."

So cohenite, you don't really care about the truth of the matter? All you care about is whether there is a critique of AGW.

I have been aware for several years that this was the case, but it is nice of you to confirm it for all the other readers.

You can trust me to remind you of this at frequent intervals.

You're a piker agro; all bleat and no beef. Criticism from you is like a breeze from an ant passing wind.

Again, you are all worrying about the wrong problem;

First, our population should not exceed what food we can produce in the worse drought.
Second, food production is directly proportional to the amount of energy consumed producing it.
Third, we will be importing 100% of our diesel & petrol.
A war or other disturbance could put us into starvation in three weeks.

And you are worrying about 2 degrees !