Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years by S. Fred Singer & Dennis T. Avery

Author:S. Fred Singer & Dennis T. Avery
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics, Science
ISBN: 9780742551176
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2006-09-10T22:00:00+00:00

Fifth: Modern Transportation

The biggest technical advantage of the modern world in dealing with weather-related famines is modern transportation. In the coming warming centuries, we will undoubtedly be able to produce enough food from the land that gets good weather in any given year to supply all of the world's food needs. Equally important, we will be able to store food safely from years of plenty to ensure food abundance in lean years; all it takes are inexpensive concrete silos and modern pesticides to keep the rats and bugs from feasting on our food reserves before we need to draw on them.

Thanks to modem transportation, we will also be able to transport the food, wherever it is grown, to wherever in the world it is needed. Think of fifteenthcentury communications-ships, ox carts, and foot messengers. It could take weeks for news of a food shortage to reach from regions where people were starving to places where extra food was available. Think of the fifteenth century's cold, wet weather and dirt roads-where carts would be mired in hubdeep mud-and its plodding, undernourished oxen. It would have been very hard to get much wheat, rice, or livestock feed from the farms of one region to the cities of another. Think of the fifteenth century's little wooden ships, braving the storms to reach famine victims with food, and blown off course for days and weeks at a time while the rats and weevils in the hold gradually destroyed its vital cargo.

Today, a message of potential crop failure and impending hunger is received before the crop has failed. The news travels at the speed of light, from Earth to satellites to Earth again. Huge trucks and railcars are set next to giant grain silos, and the food moves along computer-controlled railroads or modern interstates to giant vessels waiting at the nearest port. The ships can arrive anywhere in the world in a few days and unload a million tons of supplies at an astonishingly low cost.

Japan, one of the remarkably successful societies of the twentieth century, has almost no natural resources, and very little farmland. Japan typically imports more than 40 million tons per year of food grain, feed grain, oilseeds, meat and dairy products. It keeps one month's supply in storage, one month's supply moving toward its islands on ships, and uses forward contracts to ensure future deliveries for the longer term.

In the twenty-first century, this will be possible on a larger, more consistent scale. It will become even easier and cheaper to move food from where it grows best to where people choose to live.

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