A2: Warming- Offense- Drought Resistant Crops

A2: Warming- Offense- Drought Resistant Crops

Why the increase? Their 2004 study, and other more recent studies, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature's fertilizer, bathing the biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2 to bulk themselves up -- carbon is the building block of life -- and release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: "Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century." Lush as the planet may now be, it is as nothing compared to earlier times, when levels of CO2 and Earth temperatures were far higher. In the age of the dinosaur, for example, CO2 levels may have been five to 10 times higher than today, spurring a luxuriantly fertile planet whose plant life sated the immense animals of that era. Planet Earth is also much cooler today than during the hothouse era of the dinosaur, and cooler than it was 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warming Period, when the Vikings colonized a verdant Greenland. Greenland lost its colonies and its farmland during the Little Ice Age that followed, and only recently started to become green again. This blossoming Earth could now be in jeopardy, for reasons both natural and man-made. According to a growing number of scientists, the period of global warming that we have experienced over the past few centuries as Earth climbed out of the Little Ice Age is about to end. The oceans, which have been releasing their vast store of carbon dioxide as the planet has warmed -- CO2 is released from oceans as they warm and dissolves in them when they cool -- will start to take the carbon dioxide back. With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green, especially in areas such as Canada's Boreal forests, which have been major beneficiaries of the increase in GPP and NPP.

Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of UNEP, said: "Billions of people across the tropics depend on crops such as rice, maize and wheat for their very survival. These new findings indicate that large numbers are facing acute hunger and malnutrition unless the world acts to keep emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases." "The population of Asia is expected to increase by 44 percent in the next 50 years and yields must at least match that growth rate if famine is to be avoided. Currently more than half the people in South East Asia have a calorie intake that is inadequate for an active life, and ten million children die annually from diseases related to malnutrition.

A2: Warming- Offense- Drought Resistant Crops

Data shows that warming increases drought resistance- solves shortages

Idso 2( Sherwood Idso , Pres. Center for Study of CO2 and Global Change, 7-31-02, http://www.co2science.org/articles/V5/N31/EDIT.php ) ET

In discussing these several observations, Kimball et al. note that "growth stimulations were as large or larger under water-stress compared to well-watered conditions." They also note that "roots were generally stimulated more than shoots," and that "woody perennials had larger growth responses to elevated CO2, while at the same time their reductions in stomatal conductance were smaller." Also, although "growth stimulations of non-legumes were reduced at low-soil nitrogen," they note that "elevated CO2 strongly stimulated the growth of the clover legume both at ample and under low nitrogen conditions." All of the above observations are consistent with what has been observed in other types of CO2 enrichment experiments over the years, with one significant exception. The CO2-induced decreases in stomatal conductance observed in the FACE studies are about 50% greater than those observed in prior non-FACE experiments, which suggests that the water use efficiency of these particular crops - and perhaps other plants as well - may be increased considerably more by the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content (perhaps by as much as 50% more) than what had previously been thought likely. In conclusion, we can safely say that the wealth of FACE data that has been obtained since 1989 has only served to strengthen our positive view of the historical and still-ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content. Earth's biosphere, of which we are an integral part, has already benefited immensely from the 100-ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration brought to us as an unanticipated consequence of the Industrial Revolution; and we and all of nature will benefit still more from increases yet to come.

Food shortages cause extinction.

Plumb ’08(George, Environmental Activist, may 18, http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080518/FEATURES05/805180310/1014/FEATURES05) ET

Once again the world's food situation is bleak. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the price of wheat is more than 80 percent higher than a year ago, and corn prices are up by 25 percent. Global cereal stocks have fallen to their lowest level since 1982. Prices have gone so high that the United Nations World Food Program, which aims to feed 73 million people this year, reported it might have to reduce rations or the number of people it will help. Food riots are happening in many countries and threaten to bring down some countries as starving people demand better from their government. However, this time the problem will not be so easy to solve. There are some 75 million more people to feed each year! Consumption of meat and other high-quality foods — mainly in China and India — has boosted demand for grain for animal feed. Poor harvests due to bad weather in this country and elsewhere have contributed. High energy prices are adding to the pressures as some arable land is converted from growing food crops to biofuel crops and making it more expensive to ship the food that is produced. According to Lester Brown, president of the World Policy Institute, "This troubling situation is unlike any the world has faced before. The challenge is not simply to deal with a temporary rise in grain prices, as in the past, but rather to quickly alter those trends whose cumulative effects collectively threaten the food security that is a hallmark of civilization. If food security cannot be restored quickly, social unrest and political instability will spread and the number of failing states will likely increase dramatically, threatening the very stability of civilization itself."

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