Word: naylor
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Earlier in the festivities, a few people had made speeches. One of the presenters, a retired professor of economics from Duke University named Thomas Naylor, 73, who heads up a secessionist movement in Vermont, suggested that Maine secede from the union. I asked Naylor, who doesn't own or particularly like guns, what he thought of the Second Maine Militia. "It's a variation on the Swiss shooting club, with social and political overlays," he explained. "It's a fairly benign way of confronting one's powerlessness...
That means that barring a swift and sudden reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, by the end of the century an average July day will almost certainly be hotter than the hottest heat waves we experience now. And the extreme heat will wilt our crops. Battisti and Naylor looked at the effect that major heat waves have had on agriculture in the past - like the ruthless heat in Western Europe during the summer of 2003 - and found that crop yields have suffered deeply. In Italy, maize yields fell 36% in 2003, compared with the previous year, and in France they fell...
...cold, and they may flourish with rising levels of CO2. But research from Wolfram Schlenker at Columbia University shows that, as average temperatures continue to warm, those benefits dwindle and eventually reverse, and crop yields begin to decline. "It simply becomes too hot for the growing plants," says Naylor. "The heat damages the crops' ability to produce enough yield...
What's more, in their study, Battisti and Naylor looked only at the effect of higher temperatures - not at the possible effect of changing precipitation patterns. Yet many climatologists believe that global warming will make dry areas dryer and further damage farming, which is especially dire news for sub-Saharan Africa, a region that already struggles with heat waves, droughts and famines even as population continues to grow. "Climate change is going to be a major concern for Africa," says Nteranya Sanginga, director of the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Nairobi...
There's a limit, however, to our ability to adapt to climate change. We need to reduce carbon emissions sharply and soon. If we fail, a warmer future won't just be uncomfortable; it will be downright frightening. "We need to wake up and take care of this," says Naylor. "We won't have enough food to feed the world today, let alone tomorrow...