The World in 2050_ Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future - Laurence C. Smith [75]
In contrast to these studies, a broad pattern of rising crop yields in Canada, some northern U.S. states, southern Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, and parts of Russia have been repeatedly demonstrated by climate-change model simulations for years. Already these countries are major producers of wheat, barley, rye, rapeseed, and potatoes. As early as 1990 it was apparent that regardless of what climate model was used, the northern U.S. states of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin would likely benefit from rising average temperatures, even if corn, wheat, and soybean production in the rest of the country declined.316 Similar north-south asymmetries in crop yield (with gains in the north and declines in the south) were later demonstrated for Europe and Russia.317 The general idea is that in the marginal northern fringes of present-day agriculture, rising temperatures and longer growing seasons will boost current crops and perhaps allow introduction of new ones; in marginal southern fringes, rising temperatures and drought frequency should harm them.318
Other questions revolve around the relative importance of temperature versus moisture stress on plants, soil quality, strength of CO2 fertilization, and whether extreme events (heat waves, flooding) might be even more important determinants of future food supply than the long-term temperature and precipitation statistical averages produced by climate models.319 It is also an oversimplification to assert that Russian and Canadian agriculture, for example, will universally benefit from warmer air temperatures. Russia’s current agricultural heartland lies in its dry southern steppes, where crop declines may not be fully offset by gains in the north.320 The same holds true for Canada’s western prairies. But relative to the rest of the world, the NORCs—especially the northernmost U.S. states, parts of Canada and Russia, and northern Europe—count among the few places on Earth where we can reasonably expect to see rising crop production from climate change.
Please pass the potatoes.
CHAPTER 6
One if by Land, Two if by Sea
In August 2007 the Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker Rossiya broke a path to the North Pole, the research vessel Akademik Fyodorov trailing closely behind. An opening was cut through the sea ice and two tiny submarines lowered by crane into the freezing water. Their crews then dove 4,300 meters—more than two and a half miles beneath the ice—to the floor of the Arctic Ocean. A robotic arm collected samples and planted a titanium tricolor Russian flag directly into the yellow mud of the northernmost spot on the planet. “The Arctic is ours,” declared Artur Chilingarov, the polar explorer, oceanographer, and Duma politician who led the expedition and also went down in one of the subs.321 Vaguely remembered for rescuing a stuck polar ship in the 1980s, he became an instant celebrity; President Putin later awarded him a gold Hero of Russia medal.
For the next several months, the world proceeded to go crazy about Russians staking out the North Pole. Western politicians spluttered in outrage. “This isn’t the fifteenth century,” Canada’s foreign minister Peter MacKay told a crowd of television reporters. “You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say: ‘We’re claiming this territory.’ ”322 Media reports framed the story as a thinly veiled grab for natural resources, citing a recent comment by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientist Don Gautier, who had ballparked that the Arctic could hold up to one-fourth of the last undiscovered hydrocarbons remaining on Earth. The presumption was that Russia had fired the opening salvo in a new sovereignty race for vast riches of untapped oil and gas—resources