Word: croppings
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That means that barring a swift and sudden reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, by the end of the century an average July day will almost certainly be hotter than the hottest heat waves we experience now. And the extreme heat will wilt our crops. Battisti and Naylor looked at the effect that major heat waves have had on agriculture in the past - like the ruthless heat in Western Europe during the summer of 2003 - and found that crop yields have suffered deeply. In Italy, maize yields fell 36% in 2003, compared with the previous year, and in France they fell...
...Klein proposes that victory in Afghanistan requires, among other things, cracking down on opium growing, correctly pointing out that sales of this crop are an importance source of finance to terrorism. Yet cracking down on production has never proved effective, as years of effort in Columbia have proved. The only real solution is to decriminalize drug use. Outlawed drugs cannot be regulated, and profits go directly to the enemies of society. Illicit users find it harder to seek treatment, for fear of prosecution, and are at greater risk of losing legitimate sources of income, leading to increased criminality in society...
...through the grapevine about neighbors losing jobs or being reassigned to jobs they didn't want. No livelihood seems secure. We are (or were) journalists and college professors, government workers and architects, administrative assistants and teachers, a hairstylist, car salesman, computer technician, library administrator, nurse, social worker, bank employee, crop scientist, graphic designer and small-business owner. And suddenly we seem divided into two equally nervous camps: the overworked company employees and the underworked, often newly self-employed, scrambling to find customers or a new career...
...Cuban tobacco from Europe to Asia. Columbus had claimed Cuba for Spain, and the Spanish soon cornered the nascent industry, mandating in the 17th century that all tobacco for export be registered in Seville; they later tightened their stranglehold on the market by forbidding Cuban growers to sell the crop to anyone but them - a monopoly that persisted until...
...fact, the jury is still out even on advanced biofuels; switchgrass would clearly be a big improvement on corn, but it's not yet clear if it would be an improvement on gasoline if there isn't enough unproductive land. Perhaps advanced biofuels from crop waste or even municipal waste would work better. In any case, it was interesting to see Obama make two references Wednesday to "advanced biofuels" and none to ethanol. And it's interesting that Vilsack has thought about this stuff in some detail...