Robert Lynn <[email protected]> wrote:
> One wonders how these coffee plants ever survived the 10°C colder > temperatures of the last ice age, or the 3°C hotter temperatures of the > Holocene Climate Optimum 5-9000 years ago. > They did not exist. No domesticated plants existed 9,000 years ago, and none could survive in the wild alone without human protection. Maize and other domesticated plants never survive feral, any more than domesticated turkeys or cows do. You never see crops growing in abandoned farms. I have seen hundreds of acres of abandoned farmland in Yamaguchi. The grain crops, kiwi, oranges and other food crops are wiped out in ten years. Livestock including chickens don't last a week. They fall to predators such as wild boars, monkeys and badgers. Those chickens can be pretty fierce. The only feral domesticated animal that survives are house cats, which are only half-domesticated in any case, and they do not last long. Climate change of a few degrees would be an unprecedented disaster. The descriptions are not hyperbolic; they hardly begin to tell how bad it will be. No one knows how bad it would be, but there is no question it is a disaster. The thread title here is "A dreadful price to pay." Yes, the cost is extravagant and for what? The benefit we derive from using fossil fuel is trivial. Our energy costs a little less than it would with replacement sources. After 10 or 20 years of investing in these other sources the cost would be about the same, and after that it would be cheaper. - Jed
