Baalzamon said: Why will higher sea levels (for instance 6-8m) cause less farm food to be available? I'm not aware of very much farm land that is only 6-8m above sea level.
I guess it will cause people to move inland, which could in effect lead to farm land being sold to develop new properties for these cities.
I think the farming issue has more to just do with what these increased temps (and the relevant changes in weather) will do to crops vs what higher sea levels will directly do. |
Sea water moving inland can contaminate fresh water supplies, but that's not a universal truth by any means depending on the area.
People moving inland means either less farmland, more deforestation, or more congested cities, etc, and none are welcome. Some places already have rules about how farmland can be sold. Sometimes only portions of farms can be sold as non farming related, and others, it must remain farmland period. You wouldn't imagine how much farmland is for sale, that isn't selling, because the property is worth a ton in general, yet nobody will pay it, because it must remain a farm, or mostly, and it's nowhere near worth the cost as farmland. Ironic isn't it?
The change in temps, stable weather, rainfall, etc, would also mean it will likely become much more expensive or impossible to farm in some locations, which will almost surely mean a lack or no future farming in those locations. Lack of local food isn't a good thing for an area or a country, and no home grown food is downright scary because of how it could be used against you, especially in a world with less food to go around overall. Countries may have to pay big money to bring food in, or will have to subsidize farmers in a worthy manner to get them to grow, but either way it ends up leading to much higher food prices. Wanting faster internet is nowhere near as important as needing food, and if food is now so expensive you couldn't afford higher speed internet anyway, as well as other things, well, there goes progress.
This also could lead to a big push for urban farming, which would be a massive undertaking, but would alleviate some stress on the rural food supply. This however requires much more water supply from the city, more development, and more congestion, so there's always a downside.
It's never as cut and dry as the media proclaims it to be though. There are places in NA that have seen terrible flooding and have lost entire crops because of it this year. However, in other places, like my parents farm, this years weather was about as perfect as you could ask for, and to say they had a bumper crop would be an understatement. So while some places are yielding lower or losing crops altogether, other places are yielding much higher, and some places will be able to grow that couldn't before, so. For quite a while things will balance themselves out, but whether it goes beyond that is hard to say.