In a departure from an earlier assessment, the scientists concluded that rising temperatures will have some beneficial effects on crops in some places, but that globally they will make it harder for crops to thrive — perhaps reducing production over all by as much as 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century, compared with what it would be without climate change.
Complex systems theorists predict that August 2013 will be a tipping point in civil unrest as the world is swept up in global food riots.
Black dots are the food prices, red lines are the riots. In other words, whenever the UN’s food price index, which measures the monthly change in the price of a basket of food commodities, climbs above 210, the conditions ripen for social unrest around the world.
All of this is, of course, exacerbated by global climate change. The drought in the US, the ongoing famines in east Africa, also caused by drought, rising sea levels, etc. will all contribute to the rising price of food.
This all goes to say that as long as climate change continues to advance—it seems that nothing can stop that now—and we maintain a global food system perennially subject to volatile price spikes and exploitation from speculators, without reform, our world will be an increasingly restive one. Hunger is coming, and so are the riots.
The original 2011 paper, The Food Crises and Political Instability in North Africa and the Middle East can be found here. In it, the authors argue that high food prices do not necessarily cause riots, but that the create a climate whereby riots are much more likely. A tinderbox, if you will.
This is yet another small piece of evidence that we are very nearly arrived at the world of Soylent Green.
Two bits of bacon that is! Oscar Meyer is promoting its new thick cut bacon by proposing it be used as currency. Indeed, bacon-based currency is an intriguing idea. Unlike worthless gold, bacon is... well... BACON!
Mr. Sankey’s trailer will be filled by Oscar Mayer with a ton and a half of its new Butcher Thick Cut bacon, which he is to trade for food, fuel, a place to spend the night and anything else he might need during his trip from the New York area to Los Angeles, by way of a route that is to include what Oscar Mayer executives describe as bacon-loving locales like Charleston, W.Va.; Louisville, Ky.; Chicago; and Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Oscar Meyer recognizes the value of their new high-end bacon.
The new product “is the new gold standard in bacon,” Mr. Bick said, and “we think it’s worth its weight in gold” – thereby inspiring the cross-country barter binge.
Gold standard! Get it? These marketing guys crack me up!
