One problem many scientists have is that they don't seem to know much science. I suspect that they are mainly bureaucrats in science institutions rather than real scientists, and their concerns are mundane things like office assignments, budgets and PR work to maintain funding. They are more politician than anything.

It’s taken a long time, but the issue of global climate change is finally getting the attention it deserves.

This fellow must have been under a rock for the past couple of decades to make a statement like this. Finally?

Collectively, we are beginning to acknowledge that our long addiction to fossil fuels — which has been harming our national security, our economy and our environment for decades — must end.

No, we are not. Those who think at all know that with 80% of energy coming from fossil fuels their use will not end soon if ever. Sloppy thinkers say things like "addiction" as if it made sense. Energy is not optional. It makes about as much sense as claiming that we are addicted to oxygen as it does to say that we are addicted to fossil fuels.

Although I’m a climate scientist by training, I worry about this collective fixation on global warming as the mother of all environmental problems. . . we now face a global crisis in land use and agriculture that could undermine the health, security, and sustainability of our civilization.

That's not news. It has always been so. How could anyone not know this? Even the Romans had this problem eons ago, and told tales of their ancestors having the same problems eons before them. See Critias.

. . . we’ll need to double, perhaps triple, the agricultural production of the planet in the next 30 to 40 years.

Meeting these huge new agricultural demands will be one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. At present, it is completely unclear how (and if) we can do it.

That goal can be met by raising production in undeveloped areas to developed country standards. The real question is "how do we proceed with development"? It isn't solely an agricultural issue, and isn't usefully viewed as a distinct problem.

Then comes the bog standard brain dead litany of environmental doomers: Ecosystem degradation, Freshwater decline, Widespread pollution, Greenhouse gas emissions. Consider one of them.

Widespread pollution. Agriculture, particularly the use of industrial fertilizers and other chemicals, has fundamentally upset the chemistry of the entire planet. Already, the use of fertilizers has more than doubled the flows of nitrogen and phosphorus compounds in the environment, resulting in widespread water pollution and the massive degradation of lakes and rivers. Excess nutrient pollution is now so widespread, it is even contributing to the disruption of coastal oceans and fishing grounds by creating hypoxic “dead zones,” including one in the Gulf of Mexico. Given our current practices, future increases in food demand will dramatically increase water pollution and ecosystem destruction through agricultural effluent. Ironically, the fertilizer runoff from farmlands compromises another crucial source of food: coastal fishing grounds.

It isn't the use of fertilizers, industrial or otherwise, that causes pollution. It is wasting them in ignorance or indifference. If they are cheap then it makes sense to pour them on rather than risk using too little, and that means that excesses will wash away. They are not inherently problematical but dullards make such claims out of ignorance and spite. One of the best ways to increase production is to increase fertilizer use, but it must be done properly, in a balanced way with all nutrients in proper ratios, and soil that is properly amended to be functionally fertile.

Consider another.

Greenhouse gas emissions. Last, but certainly not least, land use is also one of the biggest contributors to global warming. Of the three most important man-made greenhouse gasses — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — land use and agricultural practices, including tropical deforestation, emit 30 percent of the total. That’s more than the emissions from all the world’s passenger cars, trucks, trains and planes, or the emissions from all electricity generation or manufacturing. Compared to any other human activity, land use and agriculture are the greatest emitters of greenhouse gasses. The vast majority comes from deforestation, methane emissions from animals and rice fields, and nitrous oxide emissions from heavily fertilized fields. Yet, for some reason, agriculture has been largely able to avoid the attention of emissions reductions policies.

Animals don't emit methane in large quantities. Bacteria do as they digest cellulose, and will do so whether animals eat the cellulose or not. Unless you burn organic matter and take the fast path back to CO2 then the slow path of methane production, which is then further converted to CO2, will be followed in the natural carbon cycle. Plowing land to grow crops is not natural and resultant emissions can fairly be considered to be anthropogenic. Animals will eat vegetation whether there are humans or not. Indeed, there were more of them before humans came along.

Similarly, nitrous oxide emissions are the natural nitrogen cycle. Atmospheric nitrogen is fixed and then subsequently digested by bacteria in multi-step processes that end in N2, but with intermediate steps - coming and going - that include gases such as ammonia and nitrous oxide. Sooner or later, one way or another, all of the nitrogen in every plant will be recycled back to the atmosphere where it came from in the first place. It will not accumulate in the biosphere since it's like candy to living things and they eat it until it is all gone. It is the limiting nutrient in most ecosystems, always in short supply. That's why there are blooms of algae in waters that get fertilized, and why the bloom soon fades. Without a continuous supply of nitrogen life fades away.

One of the chief reasons that policies fail is that they are based on poor problem analysis. The larger the scope and scale of such policies the greater the failure. Fossil fuel use will not end. If oil becomes more scarce then more gas and coal will be used, more low grade oils will be used - squeezed from sand and shale, hydrates will be mined, the Arctic will be drilled. Whatever. The addiction meme is just stupid. Just as agricultural production must double or triple, so must energy production. Saving little green teacups of emissions won't accomplish anything at all. If the air has too much CO2 then we will have to spend energy to scrub it out. Get used to it. Deal with it.

Agricultural methods must improve whether there are climate concerns or not. These are not linked problems except through energy use. In the end that's the issue. Deal with energy and the rest can follow, though there's no guarantee that it will since our "scientists" seem so very, very confused.