Sean Fleming, Senior Writer - World Economic Forum
Stephan: I have been talking about climate change migrations, and here is the most recent data. Once again it confirms Schwartz' Law of Climate Change: it is going to happen sooner than predicted, and it is going to be far worse than previously assumed.
Billions more people could be living in desert-like conditions unless climate change is addressed. Credit: REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
In the next 50 years, a third of the world’s population could be living in areas as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara now.
Humans have adapted to live in a narrow band of environmental and climatic fluctuations, but temperature rises threaten this.
Health, food security and economic growth would face huge challenges outside the temperature ranges we currently inhabit.
By 2070, one-third of people could be living in conditions that are outside humanity’s comfort zone. That’s the conclusion of a group of scientists from the US, China and Europe who have analysed rising global temperatures and compared them to average climatic conditions over the last 6,000 years.
Their research warns that unless decisive action is taken to reverse the damage done by greenhouse gases, billions of people could be living in what are “unliveable” circumstances.
Climate change-related rapid temperature rise combined with population growth means that about 30% of the world’s projected population will live in places […]
Stephan: It was 130°F in shade in Death Valley, California. To be honest, even though I have been in the Sahara desert, and spent weeks in the Egyptian-Libyan desert in both of which the temperature would get to 114°, I can't really imagine what 130° is like. What I do know is that within minutes, in full sun, one would be in life-threatening danger.
As I write this it is 110°F in Los Angeles and 113° in Phoenix. This is becoming the new norm, and its effect on the American Southwest is going to be devastating.
The Badwaters Basin area of the Death Valley Desert in California pictured on February 26, 2019. Credit: Eric Baradat, AFP
A temperature of 54.4 degrees Celsius (130°F) in the shade at Death Valley in the US state of California on Sunday might be the hottest temperature ever recorded on earth, officials say.
A temperature of 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius) recorded in California’s Death Valley on Sunday by the US National Weather Service could be the hottest ever measured with modern instruments, officials say.
The reading was registered at 3:41 pm at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center in the Death Valley national park by an automated observation system — an electronic thermometer encased inside a box in the shade.
In 1913, a weather station half an hour’s walk away recorded what officially remains the world record of 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 degrees Celsius). But its validity has been disputed because a superheated sandstorm at the time may have skewed the reading.
The next highest temperature was set in July 1931 in Kebili, Tunisia, at 131 degrees Fahrenheit (55.0 degrees Celsisus) — but again, the […]
Stephan: Did you know what a derecho was? I had never heard the word until I read about the catastrophic destruction the people of Iowa suffered a few days ago. The word means: "A derecho (/dəˈreɪtʃoʊ/, from Spanish: derecho[deˈɾetʃo], "straight" as in direction) is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms known as a mesoscale convective system[1] and potentially rivaling hurricanic and tornadic forces." Basically it is an inland hurricane, and like sea rise, tornadoes, and heightened temperatures, derechos are part of America's new normal climate. And since derechos will be occurring in agricultural areas they are going to have a big effect on your food budget.
‘Grain bins were crumpled like aluminum foil. Three hundred thousand people remained without power in Iowa and Illinois on Friday.’ Credit: Robert Franklin/AP
I know a stiff wind. They call this place Storm Lake, after all. But until recently most Iowans had never heard of a “derecho”. They have now. Last Monday, a derecho tore 770 miles from Nebraska to Indiana and left a path of destruction up to 50 miles wide over 10m acres of prime cropland. It blew 113 miles per hour at the Quad Cities on the Mississippi River.
Grain bins were crumpled like aluminum foil. Three hundred thousand people remained without power in Iowa and Illinois on Friday. Cedar Rapids and Iowa City were devastated.
The corn lay flat.
Iowa’s maize yield may be cut in half. A little napkin ciphering tells me the Tall Corn State will lose $6bn from crop damage alone.
We should get used to it. Extreme weather is the new normal. Last year, the villages of Hamburg and Pacific Junction, Iowa, were washed down the Missouri River from epic floods that scoured tens of thousands […]
Stephan: Donald Trump and his orcs have made it their mission to serve the interests of the chemical agriculture corporations with no concern for the other beings with whom we share the planet. As a result, first, it was the devastation wrought on the bees; now it is the birds. Please can we get this monster and his orcs out of the White House and the government? It is up to you.
Sedge Wren perched on a branch singing. Credit: Getty
Environmentalists and farmers were relieved to discover that the mysterious and sudden drop in bee populations in the past decade turned out to be linked to neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides that are chemically akin to nicotine. Solving that mystery was not merely important to ecologists, but also crucial to human survival: if major bee communities become extinct or near-extinct, it could devastate human food sources.
Yet as history shows, pesticides applied to kill one type of pest don’t generally stay confined to those animals. (See also: DDT.) Horrifyingly but perhaps unsurprisingly, scientists now believe that bees aren’t the only animals that are adversely affected by neonicotinoids. Many bird species, too, appear to be in decline as a result of neonicotinoids trickling up through the food chain.
According to a new research paper published in Nature Sustainability, rising use of neonicotinoids led to a drop in bird biodiversity in the United States between 2008 and 2014, scientists say. While bird populations have […]
Mark Mazzetti and Nicholas Fandos, - The New York Times
Stephan: First, we had news reports, then we had the Mueller Report, then multiple sworn testimonies in front of Congressional committees, and now we have this from a Republican-led Senate committee. If Donald Trump were a normal person in a normal trial, there is no doubt in my mind that he would be convicted of treason. I cannot imagine how the evidence could be made more irrefutable unless someone produces a video of Trump and Putin actively colluding. Trump should have been convicted of his impeachment, and he should now be in prison. History will be quite damning about this and the behavior of Moscow Mitch and his fellow Republicans. The fact that this report is now coming out condemns them all.
President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at the Group of 20 summit in Japan last year. Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — A sprawling report released Tuesday by a Republican-controlled Senate panel that spent three years investigating Russia’s 2016 election interference laid out an extensive web of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russian government officials and other Russians, including some with ties to the country’s intelligence services.
The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, provided a bipartisan Senate imprimatur for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government undertook an extensive campaign to try to sabotage the 2016 American election to help Mr. Trump become president, and some members of Mr. Trump’s circle of advisers were open to the help from an American adversary.
The report drew to a close one of the highest-profile congressional inquiries in recent memory, one that the president and his allies have long tried to discredit as part of a “witch hunt” designed to undermine the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s stunning election nearly […]
