A video from a Ph.D. student has helped unearth the truth about the effect of rising global temperatures on crop yields.
TikToker Roshan Salgado D'Arcy (@all_about_climate), who has degrees in earth and climate sciences, assessed the views of media personality Jordan Peterson on the relationship between those two subjects.
@all_about_climate Is more CO2 good or harmful for agriculture? Fact checking Jordan Peterson on climate change. #climatecrisis #climateemergency #carbonemissions #drought #extremeweather #climatedenier #climatedenial #allaboutclimate #rosh #climatescience #globalwarming #climatechange #agriculture #CO2 ♬ original sound - Rosh
"Not only has the planet got greener, it's got greener in the driest areas," Peterson claimed in a clip D'Arcy included. "And one of the consequences of that increased greening is that our agricultural production has become … much more efficient."
D'Arcy responded with caveats, noting that the planet has not gotten more lush since 2000 and that improved vegetative growth has only occurred in a few dry areas.
He admitted that agricultural production has increased every decade for the last 60 years but called it "a little bit misleading" to attribute that upward trend to carbon dioxide emissions.
D'Arcy cited the Green Revolution of the 1960s, in which the industry experienced biochemical, mechanical, and social improvements — like the exploitation of groundwater and the usage of pesticides — to boost food supplies.
However, he used data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Economic Research Service to explain that the growth rate of global agricultural outputs has decreased to the point that the 2010s were the worst it's been in 60 years.
D'Arcy also introduced a study that found that anthropogenic climate change has caused global agricultural productivity to decline by 21% since 1961 and a chart from the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security that showed that maize and wheat harvests have decreased among crucial breadbaskets.
"There's already evidence that harvests around the world have negatively suffered precisely because of climatic events, which have been made worse by climate change," he added, listing extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts, and wildfires.
"The data clearly shows that if the planet continues to warm, these negative effects will accumulate and will have a detrimental effect on our long-term ability to grow food and feed the world's population," D'Arcy concluded.
Luckily, some researchers are genetically modifying crops like wheat, tomatoes, and peaches to make them more climate resilient. Other measures to ensure food security include Andean communities in Peru utilizing ancestral farming practices to boost the region's crop yield and a nonprofit distributing sustainably produced plant-based foods in Africa.
Commenters were unimpressed by Peterson's talking points.
"All of his arguments are surface level. Just by looking beyond the first layer of something it's that easy to debunk Peterson," one user commented.
"Climate clearly isn't your area of expertise," another said.
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