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Archive for July, 2012
U.S. drought could have global impact on food prices
Posted by Marketplace: Jeff Horwich on July 21st, 2012
Marketplace: Jeff Horwich: The weather forecast offers no relief for weeks across much of the U.S. breadbasket. Corn and soybean prices are at new records today -- wheat is rising too. And when we have this kind of farming weather, the whole world suffers with us. Rob Bailey is a senior research fellow on energy, environment and resources with the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the UK. Good to talk with you. Rob Bailey: Hello. Horwich: We're very focused on how our drought effects us here at home,...
Australia: Emails show government wary of ethanol target
Posted by Sydney Morning Herald: James Robertson on July 21st, 2012
Sydney Morning Herald: THE state government was told a year ago there was not enough ethanol in Australia to fulfil its law requiring that ethanol make up 6 per cent of all petrol in NSW.
The Herald revealed this month that oil companies have been unable to source enough ethanol to comply with state law.
Senior government figures had warned last year that the 6 per cent targets, adopted in September, were unachievable, emails obtained by the Herald under freedom of information laws show.
''There is insufficient...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Australia: Emails show government wary of ethanol targetCanada: Ontario’s corn crop withers under drought
Posted by Toronto Star: Alyshah Hasham on July 21st, 2012
Toronto Star: Beneath the blistering sun the parched cornfields of Ontario are "wavy like a roller-coaster.'
In a few grateful pockets (mostly south and west of London) the million-dollar rain has come, giving some fields tall, green stalks and potentially bumper yields.
In others, "the crops look completely burnt off, as if they've been dead for two weeks,' says Greg Stewart, a corn specialist at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.
The months of drought plaguing southern Ontario...
Vancouver plans to face climate change head-on
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 21st, 2012
Vancouver Sun: The city of Vancouver has designed a climate change “adaptation” strategy to tackle a potential increase in street flooding, sewer backups, damaged forests and heat-related illnesses by 2050.
The strategy, scheduled to go to council for approval in principle Tuesday, suggests nine measures to address the potential impacts of climate change, which is expected to bring more intense rain and windstorms, hotter and drier summers and rising sea levels, affecting the city’s economic prosperity and livability....
Record Summer Temperatures, By The Numbers
Posted by Climate Central: Andrew Freedman on July 21st, 2012
Climate Central: The weather this summer has been so extreme that it has rivaled the most destructive and unbearable summers in U.S. history, years that are infamous in weather lore. Those years include 1934 and 1936, which were in the middle of the Dust Bowl era, as well as 1954 and 1988, which was the year that Yellowstone National Park burned and NASA scientist James Hansen first warned the U.S. Senate about the consequences of manmade global warming.
As a reporter and analyst on the extreme weather and climate...
Snapshot of the Drought’s Impact Across the Country
Posted by Climate Central: Dan Yawitz on July 21st, 2012
Climate Central: The record-breaking drought currently affecting a majority of the country has only gotten worse in the past week, and shows no signs of improving. More than a third of U.S. counties have been declared federal disaster areas. As the heat and dry weather have persisted, the threat to American farmers and ranchers has increased, as the drought continues to dry out already-suffering crops and pastures.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has forecasted that corn and soybean yields will drop 12 percent...
‘Dirty snow’ hastens glacial melt in Himalayas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 21st, 2012
Inter Press Service: Every morning, as Gian Pietro Verza walks up the lateral moraine of the Khumbu Glacier in this Himalayan country's north-east to take measurements, the wind makes colourful prayer flags flutter noisily. That same wind carries soot particles that are causing the snow on the mountains to melt faster.
The Italian scientist and mountaineer has been working at the Pyramid International Observatory below Mt Everest since 1987, and has seen the rapid retreat of the glaciers around him even in the last...
Dry as a bone: Drought’s wide impact is likely to last for years
Posted by Kansas City Star: Rick Montgomery and Ian Cummings on July 21st, 2012
Kansas City Star: Of all natural disasters, drought is the most common and the least understood. It doesn’t hit like a hurricane, earthquake or twister. You can’t see it coming on satellite radar, experts note, which may be why many people disregard the effects. Around Kansas City, drought creeps — first claiming the Missouri crop grower, then the Kansas cattleman who can’t afford grain to feed livestock. In time, grocery shoppers around the nation will wonder what’s with the higher prices for produce and hamburger....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Dry as a bone: Drought’s wide impact is likely to last for yearsSearching for Clues to Calamity
Posted by New York Times: Fred Guterl on July 21st, 2012
New York Times: SO far 2012 is on pace to be the hottest year on record. But does this mean that we’ve reached a threshold — a tipping point that signals a climate disaster? For those warning of global warming, it would be tempting to say so. The problem is, no one knows if there is a point at which a climate system shifts abruptly. But some scientists are now bringing mathematical rigor to the tipping-point argument. Their findings give us fresh cause to worry that sudden changes are in our future. One of them...
Himalayan glaciers melting more rapidly
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 21st, 2012
IRIN: The Himalayan glaciers that feed major south Asian rivers like the Indus, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges are melting more rapidly, reveals a major new study which says that soaring global temperatures are not the only reason.
The study, led by Yao Tandong, director of the Institute of Tibetan Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and eminent glaciologist and paleo-climatologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, is the most comprehensive examination so far of the region's...