The Future Has Arrived

via Wikipedia

Would you like to know what your world is going to look like by, say, 2030? A little peek at the wonderful things we’ll be using? Lives we’ll be living? Did vat-grown meat ever become a thing? Are more of us vegetarian? How did that whole Trump presidency work out?

Getting a look is easier than you think. All we have to do is look at Puerto Rico today. Today Puerto Rico is a land of sunshine, environmental devastation, and the threat of starvation.

This year has seen three major global warming-intensified storms hit in the Caribbean and southern US in a row. One, Irma, was rated a Category 5 only because there is nothing higher than C5. This is pretty much exactly in line with NASA, NOAA, and international modelling of the effects of a warming planet. The ocean has been soaking up amazing amounts of both carbon and heat over the last couple of decades. Now, when a depression forms over the ocean, there is much more energy available for it to soak up. And the more energy it gets from a warmer ocean, the bigger the eventual storm.

On the West Coast of North America, this will play out in two ways; the warming ocean will also create larger storms, and the warmer air will pick up more water. As little as 1/2 of one percent more moisture in the air can lead to an increase of fifty millimetres or more (2”+) of rain. With the logging of the last century, this will mean more mudslides, silting of rivers, damage to spawning grounds, and impacts on municipal water supplies.

On the US’ south and East coasts, storms, particularly hurricanes, will be larger, more damaging, and bring more flooding with larger storm surges. Maria, the hurricane that has wiped our about 80% of Puerto Rico’s crops and up to 80% of some neighbourhoods, is the third storm to hit US territory. This too is in line with the models. And it is this sequentiality that is the problem.

In Houston TX, some places recieved over a metre of rain in 24 hours. As the centre of the US petrochemical industry, Houston has claimed the lion’s share of US aid. Florida recieved much of the rest. Puerto Rico, not being a state but rather a protectorate, is coming a poor third. It doesn’t hurt that both Texas and Florida voted heavily for the current president.

This is one year. What will it be like when we’ve had a decade or more of these disasters. Drought and wildfire in the Midwest, or wildfire or floods on California. In Canada, the prairies are overdue for a drought, a wildfire almost took out Ft. McMurray last summer, and the interior of BC has been devastated by one this summer. Insurance against natural disasters is becoming harder to get, and insurance companies are losing their collective minds.

So here’s the thing about Puerto Rico: 80% of their food crops have been destroyed. The protectorate is poor. And, as Amartya Sen has pointed out, in order to survive famine, you have to be able to either buy food in the market, or move to where you can buy or grow food. And the US has been exploiting the fact that if you just provide food aid, you destroy the local markets, making the population dependent on provided food. It’s actually better to slowly substitute money for food aid, in order to build the market back up.

So what are the odds that the current US government will provide a guaranteed annual income to the residents of Puerto Rico? Because it will take years for PR to recover (if ever—there are more storms coming). Or Puerto Rico becomes a state of refugees, moving en masse to the continental United States. And how do you think that’s going to go over in the present political environment in the US?

That’s your future too. There will be a storm. Or another natural disaster. And the country will be overextended, so disaster relief will be limited or non-existant. So you either try and rebuild where you are, or become an internal refugee.

Murphy’s Law dictates that when the disaster hits, it will destroy the most important stuff; transportation corridors, the electrical grid, food. Just like Puerto Rico. And that it will happen at the worst time. The 1% think they can get out of this—it’s why Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. It’s why they’re buying bunkers in New Zealand. And it won’t help.

We cannot keep going the way we are. That route means we’re reduced to a hundred thousand humans, or so. Worst case, we turn the planet into Venus for a couple of million years. As Michael Crichton said in Jurassic Park: “I don’t fear for the future of life on Earth. [...] I fear for the future of human life on Earth.” We have to downshift in a radical way. Converting to sustainable power doesn’t mean we get to keep this life of insane consumerism. Sustainable power means that we live a medieval life in some comfort. If we start yesterday, we might be able to keep the losses to a few billion humans.

The Word: It's Worse Than We Think

via Simon and Schuster

Looking at the UCL-Lancet Commission on Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change report and one thing becomes clear; the future is going to be so much worse than we think.
As the project summary says:

A major report on managing the health effects of climate change, launched jointly by The Lancet and UCL, says that climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.

The commission reviewed the likely health impacts of climate change on human societies – and documented ways to reverse those impacts. It concluded that there is a need for policymakers, practitioners and the public to act urgently on the human health effects of climate change.

The report is already six years old, and the major problems identified still haven't made it into public discussion in North America. As the Lancet editorial opens:

Climate change will have its greatest impact on those who are already
the poorest in the world: it will deepen inequities and the effects of global warming will shape the future of health among all peoples. Yet this message has failed to penetrate most public discussion about climate change. And health professionals have barely begun to engage
with an issue that should be a major focal point for their research, preparedness planning, and advocacy [...].

Climate change and the projected effects of a changing climate develop quickly into a highly complex group of  inter-related problems: including disease, food, water and sanitation, shelter and settlements, extreme events, population and migration, and politics.
In the Commonwealth Health Ministers briefing on food [pdf], the study points out the following:

• Climate change will worsen any existing food insecurity--anything bad now will only get worse.
• The changes brought about by global warming will necessitate changes to agricultural practices--this is everything from what is grown, where it is grown, to how it is grown. But when it comes to the necessity of using GMOs, "the Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (also known as the World Agriculture Report), which was written by over 400 scientists, rejects that view. It sees ‘...a major role for agricultural knowledge, science and technology...to increase adaptive capacity and enhance resilience through purposeful biodiversity management’. The options set forth include ‘...irrigation management, water harvesting and conservation technologies, diversification of agriculture systems, the protection of agro-biodiversity and screening germ-plasm for tolerance to climate change."
• The globalised food and agriculture system serves the interests of large
  corporations, while neglecting the needs of the increased numbers of
  hungry people. Can't say that much clearer, can you?
• Agricultural practices and the global food system are major contributors to global warming. So, business as usual is just not an option.
• The current methods of dealing with disaster and distributing food
  aid tend not to alleviate the long-term situation, often resulting in
  dependency upon aid. And that doesn't solve any long-term problems.
• The impact of climate change on global food security, and in turn the public health risks, need to be tackled holistically. Simply put, there's no single solution. Because the problem is the system, the system must be attacked simultaneously from multiple angles in multiple ways. Which is good, because the only way the system can be taken down is to hit it hard, hit it fast, and hit it in so many ways that the corporations cannot respond effectively.

Six years on, and this still isn't in the everyday discourse. Frankly, every news report should be seen through the lens of climate change. Collapsing economy? Probably good news, as people in economic trouble burn fewer fossil fuels. In Canada, Bill C 51? A tool to prevent concerned citizens worried about climate change from interfering with the corporate right to profit while destroying the world. As Naomi Klein says, This Changes Everything.
Film: ‘Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change’

Will the Soil Save Us?

The model projected changes (above) in
global soil carbon as a result of root-soil interactions,
with blue indicating a greater loss of soil carbon to the atmosphere.
Courtesy: Benjamin Sulman, Princeton Environmental Institute

Conventional projections of global carbon dioxide emissions suggest that enhanced plant growth may help to sequester more soil organic carbon (SOC)--particularly in our soils. Under this scenario, Canada comes out a winner in Global Climate Change (GCC), with the prairie provinces expected to grow a wider range of crops with a lengthened growing season.
But, as with every aspect of GCC, this may not be the case. The paper Microbe-driven turnover offsets mineral-mediated storage of soil carbon under elevated CO2 in Nature Climate Change suggests that this is only partly true. Morgan Kelly's piece for Reporting Climate Science says:

Researchers based at Princeton University report...that the carbon in soil — which contains twice the amount of carbon in all plants and Earth’s atmosphere combined — could become increasingly volatile as people add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, largely because of increased plant growth. The researchers developed the first computer model to show at a global scale the complex interaction between carbon, plants and soil, which includes numerous bacteria, fungi, minerals and carbon compounds that respond in complex ways to temperature, moisture and the carbon that plants contribute to soil.

The study in NCC suggests that SOC sequestration increases under rising atmospheric carbon--but only in stabilization of ‘new’ carbon in protected SOC pools which may equal or exceed microbial priming of ‘old’ SOC in ecosystems with readily decomposable litter and high clay content (emphasis mine). However, carbon losses induced through accelerated decomposition dominate the net SOC response in ecosystems with more resistant litters and lower clay content.
So, little from column A, little from column B. An undisturbed deciduous  forest with readily composting leaves and grasses might sequester more SOC than, say, a coniferous forest. And there's no guarantee that farmland will sequester more SOC.

Holographic System

Browsing the "environment" section of the Guardian online, I came across a couple of stories that interested me. One was from the incomparable Evan Fraser and Elisabeth Fraser, about whom the Guardian says:

Evan Fraser holds the Canada research chair in Global Food Security in the department of geography at the University of Guelph. He is the author of Empires of Food: Feast Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. Elizabeth Fraser is completing her MA in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo

They list ten things that we should know about the food system. The first three points run:

1. There's enough food for everybody

The most important thing to know about the global food system is also one of the least appreciated: there is enough food for everyone on the planet to live a healthy and nutritious life. In fact, the UN tells us that there is about 2,800 kcal per person per day available. But, the global food system is deeply inequitable. There are about 842 million people hungry on the planet, while at the same time there are about 1.5 billion who are overweight or obese.

2. Price volatility

The price of food is wildly volatile. In 2008, the United Nations Food Price Index almost doubled in less than a year before crashing in 2009. Prices then shot up again in 2010 and 2011. Despite this volatility, our supply of food stayed stable throughout this period. This suggests that the price of food is not determined by our ability to produce food at a global level.

3. One third of food is wasted

Approximately one third of the world's food is wasted before it is consumed (pdf). In the developed world most of the waste happens at the consumer end, when food spoils in grocery stores or in refrigerators. Most of the waste in the developing world happens on the farm as a consequence of inefficient storage and processing facilities.

These three points alone begin to explore the incredible complexity of the modern industrial food system. The second point, that prices are unhinged from production, tell me one of the reasons the system is in such a mess--it is tied to the international speculation casino. I've written before about how after 2007, big money was looking for a safe harbour, and enormous volumes descended on agriculture futures contracts, driving up the consumer price index internationally.

Friday Means...Link-straveganza!

There's bad news coming, and it's called the TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership. It's another of these Free Trade corporate rights deals being made behind our backs. In Canada, there's a total of three people allowed to see the full text of the deal and they are not allowed to tell Canadians what's in the damned thing until after it has been signed. The TPP would include Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand, Brunei, and possibly China. Over at Grist, Heather Smith takes on the recent leak of the draft text and points out just how bad for the planet this deal is going to be.

via University of Colorado

 In somewhat related news, there's been a drought of MSM (main stream media) coverage of global climate change. Grist is once again on the story:

The University of Colorado’s Center for Science & Technology Research monitors mentions of “global warming” and “climate change” in five major U.S. newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. Check out the [...] sad graph [above] showing its latest findings

Cacao tree via Luisovalles at Wikipedia

Science Daily is reporting on the use of genetic testing to identify various cultivars of cacao beans;

 The ability to authenticate premium and rare varieties would encourage growers to maintain cacao biodiversity rather than depend on the most abundant and easiest to grow trees. Researchers have found ways to verify through genetic testing the authenticity of many other crops, including cereals, fruits, olives, tea and coffee, but those methods aren't suitable for cacao beans. Zhang's team wanted to address this challenge.
Applying the most recent developments in cacao genomics, they were able to identify a small set of DNA markers called SNPs (pronounced "snips") that make up unique fingerprints of different cacao species. The technique works on single cacao beans and can be scaled up to handle large samples quickly. "To our knowledge, this is the first authentication study in cacao using molecular markers," the researchers state.

Science Daily is also reporting two linked stories. First, that the effects of livestock on climate change are underestimated:

 While climate change negotiators struggle to agree on ways to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, they have paid inadequate attention to other greenhouse gases associated with livestock, according to an analysis by an international research team.
A reduction in non-CO₂ greenhouse gases will be required to abate climate change, the researchers said. Cutting releases of methane and nitrous oxide, two gases that pound-for-pound trap more heat than does CO₂, should be considered alongside the challenge of reducing fossil fuel use.
The researchers’ analysis, “Ruminants, Climate Change, and Climate Policy,” is being published today as an opinion commentary in Nature Climate Change, a professional journal.

And second, that there may be a chance of lowering the emission of greenhouse gases from cattle:

A new research project looks into the possibilities of adapting every aspect of cattle husbandry and selection processes to lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

The key to the project, Garnsworthy says, is that cattle vary by a factor of two or three in the amount of methane their stomachs produce. It is therefore possible to imagine a dairy herd producing the same volume of milk for lower greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, different diets mean that cows can produce the same amount of milk with lower emissions. "It is possible to imagine cutting emissions from cattle by a fifth, using a combination approach in which you would breed from lower-emitting cattle as well as changing their diets," Garnsworthy said.

Katy Salter, writing for The Guardian, points out the rise in expensive slices of toast as the Next Big Thing:

Toast is trendy. Yes, you read that right: toast. Obviously we're not talking marge on Mighty White, but rather the artisanal slices served with hand-churned butter and homemade jams that have been popping up on "toast menus" around San Francisco and now New York. And if that all sounds too yuppy and insufferable for words, brace yourself: there's more. Some of those slices are selling for $4 a pop. That's about £2.43 a slice at the current exchange rate.

England v. Canada on Climate Change

Via Wikipedia

From the Guardian:

Droughts could devastate food production in the England by the 2020s, according to a report from the government's official climate change advisers. Without action, increasingly hot and dry summers may mean farmers will face shortfalls of 50% of the water they currently use to grow crops. The report, from the climate change committee (CCC), also warns that current farming practices may be allowing the country's richest soils to be washed or blown away.
The future risks to England's food supply are becoming more apparent, with MPs warningthis month that the government's failure to protect the most valuable farmland from flooding "poses a long-term risk to the security of UK food production" and food experts cautioning that crop yields are reaching their maximum biological limits. Extreme recent weather – the wettest recorded autumn followed by the coldest spring in half a century – cut wheat yields by one third, leading to the import of 2.5m tonnes of wheat, the same amount that is usually exported.
"If we don't start acting now we will be in serious trouble," said Lord John Krebs, who led the CCC report. "We already rely on food imports to a significant extent." About 40% of the UK's food is imported.
[...]
Friends of the Earth's Andrew Pendleton said: "Climate change poses a devastating threat to our environment, food supplies and security, which could trigger future economic crises. Urgent government measures are needed."

Friday Food Link-straveganza

With a warning that Canada should be paying particular attention to--but won't--the Guardian is reporting on the public policy failure around floods.

A high proportion of the most valuable agricultural land is at risk of flooding, the MPs said. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images  via The Guardian

Ministers are failing to protect the UK's most valuable farmland from flooding, posing a long-term risk to the security of UK food production, according to an influential group of MPs.
A run of poor weather since 2011 has led to extensive flooding of properties but has also severely dented the production of many foods, with the UK now being a net importer of wheat.
The environment select committee's report also said the government's spending by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to protect homes from flooding is not keeping pace with the rising risk, which is increasing as climate change intensifies downpours, and were also failing to act effectively to block the building of new homes on floodplains.
"Record rainfall in the past two years has led to extensive flooding, cost the economy millions and caused disruption and distress to householders and communities across the UK," said Anne McIntosh, a Conservative MP, and chair of the commons select committee on environment, food and rural affairs.
Extreme weather events are not just a problem for the UK. In a related article, the Guardian reports on the new UN World Meteorological Organization report that points out the unprecedented climate extremes seen around the world over the last decade.

If you think the world is warming and the weather getting nastier, you're right, according to the United Nations agency committed to understanding weather and climate.
The World Meteorological Organization says the planet "experienced unprecedented high-impact climate extremes" in the ten years from 2001 to 2010, the warmest decade since the start of modern measurements in 1850.
Those ten years also continued an extended period of accelerating global warming, with more national temperature records reported broken than in any previous decade. Sea levels rose about twice as fast as the trend in the last century.
A WMO report, The Global Climate 2001-2010, A Decade of Climate Extremes, analyses global and regional temperatures and precipitation, and extreme weather such as the heat waves in Europe and Russia, Hurricane Katrina in the US, tropical cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, droughts in the Amazon basin, Australia and East Africa, and floods in Pakistan.

Looking at something a bit lighter, let's learn how to make an excellent lamb kofte, shall we?  Felicity Cloake writes in the Word of Mouth blog about the process. As an aside, this is part of a series of posts; How to Cook the Perfect. And this is how you present a recipe in a blog post, people. We've really got to up our game. This gives you the information you need, the context to work from, and a sense that maybe the writer has actually tried to make the recipe (I'm reminded of the scene in Julie and Julia where Julia Child discovers that Ms. Rombauer hasn't checked the recipes in Joy of Cooking to see if they even work). It's like linking to source articles when writing an opinion piece--it adds a level of verifiability to your work.

So here's Felicity herself to tell you about the process of making kofte.

There's also a report that world food prices have fallen--not much, but still...

Global food prices fell 1% in June due to improving supply prospects, the United Nations' food agency has said , raising forecasts for wheat and maize output in the new season.
Food prices spiked during the summer of 2012 due to a historic drought in the US but prospects for a rebound in global grain supply and good weather forecasts are now weighing on markets.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) price index that measures price changes for a basket of cereals, oil seeds, dairy, meat and sugar, fell for a second month running to 211.3 points in June – its lowest level since February.

 That puts food prices below the threshold for civil unrest, according to NECSI--the New England Complex Systems Institute, about whom I've blogged before.

If you haven't discovered it yet, there's a lovely interactive map  sponsored by The economist that lets you see where you--and pretty much everyone else, ranks in terms of food security. Click on your country (or the country you're interested in) and pull up the world ranking of food security and what went into generating that rank. Canada, by the way, ranks 8th worldwide. Among the key findings?

Falling national incomes hurt food security in some developed countries over the past year.

Greece recorded the steepest fall among developed nations, dropping six places. Greece’s GDP has plummeted by more than 20% since the 2008-09 global recession. Income per person dropped in most advanced economies in the past year, the result of weak economies. Although this reduced food security in these countries, they remain, for the most part, in the top 20% of the index and thus are not in serious danger of food insecurity.

And, finally, if you're not following the Journal of Peasant Studies, you're missing out. Open source, peer reviewed.

Four New Environmental Research Letters

Implications of regional improvement in global climate models for agricultural impact research 

Global climate models (GCMs) have become increasingly important for climate change science and provide the basis for most impact studies. Since impact models are highly sensitive to input climate data, GCM skill is crucial for getting better short-, medium- and long-term outlooks for agricultural production and food security. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) phase 5 ensemble is likely to underpin the majority of climate impact assessments over the next few years. We assess 24 CMIP3 and 26 CMIP5 simulations of present climate against climate observations for five tropical regions, as well as regional improvements in model skill and, through literature review, the sensitivities of impact estimates to model error. Climatological means of seasonal mean temperatures depict mean errors between 1 and 18 ° C (2–130% with respect to mean), whereas seasonal precipitation and wet-day frequency depict larger errors, often offsetting observed means and variability beyond 100%. Simulated interannual climate variability in GCMs warrants particular attention, given that no single GCM matches observations in more than 30% of the areas for monthly precipitation and wet-day frequency, 50% for diurnal range and 70% for mean temperatures. We report improvements in mean climate skill of 5–15% for climatological mean temperatures, 3–5% for diurnal range and 1–2% in precipitation. At these improvement rates, we estimate that at least 5–30 years of CMIP work is required to improve regional temperature simulations and at least 30–50 years for precipitation simulations, for these to be directly input into impact models. We conclude with some recommendations for the use of CMIP5 in agricultural impact studies.

Global crop exposure to critical high temperatures in the reproductive period: historical trends and future projections

Long-term warming trends across the globe have shifted the distribution of temperature variability, such that what was once classified as extreme heat relative to local mean conditions has become more common. This is also true for agricultural regions, where exposure to extreme heat, particularly during key growth phases such as the reproductive period, can severely damage crop production in ways that are not captured by most crop models. Here, we analyze exposure of crops to physiologically critical temperatures in the reproductive stage (T_crit), across the global harvested areas of maize, rice, soybean and wheat. Trends for the 1980–2011 period show a relatively weak correspondence (r = 0.19) between mean growing season temperature and T_crit exposure trends, emphasizing the importance of separate analyses for T_crit. Increasing T_crit exposure in the past few decades is apparent for wheat in Central and South Asia and South America, and for maize in many diverse locations across the globe. Maize had the highest percentage (15%) of global harvested area exposed to at least five reproductive days over T_crit in the 2000s, although this value is somewhat sensitive to the exact temperature used for the threshold. While there was relatively little sustained exposure to reproductive days over T_crit for the other crops in the past few decades, all show increases with future warming. Using projections from climate models we estimate that by the 2030s, 31, 16, and 11% respectively of maize, rice, and wheat global harvested area will be exposed to at least five reproductive days over T_crit in a typical year, with soybean much less affected. Both maize and rice exhibit non-linear increases with time, with total area exposed for rice projected to grow from 8% in the 2000s to 27% by the 2050s, and maize from 15 to 44% over the same period. While faster development should lead to earlier flowering, which would reduce reproductive extreme heat exposure for wheat on a global basis, this would have little impact for the other crops. Therefore, regardless of the impact of other global change factors (such as increasing atmospheric CO₂), reproductive extreme heat exposure will pose risks for global crop production without adaptive measures such as changes in sowing dates, crop and variety switching, expansion of irrigation, and agricultural expansion into cooler areas.

Assessing climate change impacts on sorghum and millet yields in the Sudanian and Sahelian savannas of West Africa

Sub-Saharan West Africa is a vulnerable region where a better quantification and understanding of the impact of climate change on crop yields is urgently needed. Here, we have applied the process-based crop model SARRA-H calibrated and validated over multi-year field trials and surveys at eight contrasting sites in terms of climate and agricultural practices in Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The model gives a reasonable correlation with observed yields of sorghum and millet under a range of cultivars and traditional crop management practices. We applied the model to more than 7000 simulations of yields of sorghum and millet for 35 stations across West Africa and under very different future climate conditions. We took into account 35 possible climate scenarios by combining precipitation anomalies from −20% to 20% and temperature anomalies from +0 to +6 °C.
We found that most of the 35 scenarios (31/35) showed a negative impact on yields, up to −41% for +6 °C/ − 20% rainfall. Moreover, the potential future climate impacts on yields are very different from those recorded in the recent past. This is because of the increasingly adverse role of higher temperatures in reducing crop yields, irrespective of rainfall changes. When warming exceeds +2 °C, negative impacts caused by temperature rise cannot be counteracted by any rainfall change. The probability of a yield reduction appears to be greater in the Sudanian region (southern Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, northern Togo and Benin), because of an exacerbated sensitivity to temperature changes compared to the Sahelian region (Niger, Mali, northern parts of Senegal and Burkina Faso), where crop yields are more sensitive to rainfall change. Finally, our simulations show that the photoperiod-sensitive traditional cultivars of millet and sorghum used by local farmers for centuries seem more resilient to future climate conditions than modern cultivars bred for their high yield potential (−28% versus −40% for the +4 °C/ − 20% scenario). Photoperiod-sensitive cultivars counteract the effect of temperature increase on shortening cultivar duration and thus would likely avoid the need to shift to cultivars with a greater thermal time requirement. However, given the large difference in mean yields of the modern versus traditional varieties, the modern varieties would still yield more under optimal fertility conditions in a warmer world, even if they are more affected by climate change.

Impacts of recent climate change on Wisconsin corn and soybean yield trends 

The US Corn Belt supports agroecosystems that flourish in a temperate climate regime that could see significant changes in the next few decades. Because Wisconsin is situated on the northern, cooler fringes of this region, it may be the beneficiary of a warmer climate that could help support higher corn and soybean yields. Here we show that trends in precipitation and temperature during the growing season from 1976–2006 explained 40% and 35% of county corn and soybean yield trends, respectively. Using county level yield information combined with climate data, we determined that both corn and soybean yield trends were enhanced in counties that experienced a trend towards cooler and wetter conditions during the summer. Our results suggest that for each additional degree ( °C) of future warming during summer months, corn and soybean yields could potentially decrease by 13% and 16%, respectively, whereas if modest increases in total summer precipitation (i.e. 50 mm) were to occur, yields may be boosted by 5–10%, counteracting a portion of the negative effects associated with increased temperature. While northern US Corn Belt regions such as Wisconsin may benefit from a warmer climate regime and management changes that lengthen the crop-growing period in spring and autumn, mid- to high-latitude crop productivity may be challenged by additional summertime warming unless adaptive measures are taken.

Raj Patel and the Misanthropocene

via Wikipedia

Raj Patel tweeted out the line:
Climate change got you hating humanity? You might be living in the Misanthropocene.
I cracked up. I frequently find myself living in the Misanthropocene--just ask my kids, neighbours, friends. It's something that goes along with my (some would say appallingly naive) love for humanity. Raj was pointing out a new short essay he's written for Earth Island Journal, where he talks about similarities between earthquakes and climate change. I can relate, living in an earthquake zone that is ripe for a 9+ any day now.
I love the way he defines an earthquake as a "ideal disaster" :

Let’s run with this for a moment. An “ideal disaster” has three characteristics. First, it needs to be small enough to do something about. So the sun exploding is not an ideal disaster. It’s paralytic, too big to do anything about.
Second, an ideal disaster is one that is sufficiently far in the future to be able to mitigate. When I was growing up in England we had something called the Three Minute Warning – the time between the detection of Soviet nuclear missiles and the moment when London would be incinerated. This, too, was not ideal.
Beyond being sufficiently clear and insufficiently present, the final and unspoken quality of the ideal disaster is that it be narratable as a disaster. Before we can set about mitigating the worst, we need to be able to tell stories about what “it” is.

Climate change isn't perfect. It's really really big. It's already here. And it's really hard to get a good narrative going about it. That's why I don't actually talk that much about climate change. Instead, I talk about food security. Even without climate change, it's a big challenge. But it is one that I can tell a story about, a story that fits into my personal narrative about my life. From growing up linked to a small old-school mixed farm that I loved, to my dad buying a farm when I was about 14 (where we lived in pretty primitive conditions for years: outhouse, hauling water from the city, no running water), to my family returning to the family farm while my kids were growing up, this is the story of my life. I grew up in a caker household, so I taught myself to cook.

via Harper Collins

I read Heidi and thought of all those wonderful cheese and bread meals she and her grandfather ate. I grew up heavily influenced by hippies, back-to-the-landers, and radical politics. My life narrative seems to be all about food.
So it makes it easy for meto cast my life narrative in food security terms. Climate change, not so much. The earliest I ran into climate change was ~1974 (I think in a book about environmental issues put out by Playboy Press)--and I didn't get it. The essay about how much topsoil was disappearing from Iowan farms was the one I read. Or the over-use of water from the Ogallala Aquifer by farmers growing lettuce in the desert.

Saturated thickness of the Ogallala Aquifer
in 1997 after several decades of intensive withdrawals:
The breadth and depth of the aquifer generally decrease from north to south.
via Wikipedia

Farming is also one of those things I think we can actually do something about. I did it. I went back to the farm, learned how to grow food, and did it without pesticides, herbicides, or off-farm inputs of NPK. We raised animals without industrial methods and sold them to people who were happy to get them. We weren't perfect, but we learned.
I can't change the climate--that requires massive changes in public policy that I probably won't be able to influence (but make me dictator for a day, baby, and look out!), but I can continue to influence how people think about food and how it gets to them. Food is an "ideal disaster" for me.

The Slow Moving Cranberry Crisis

The Cranberry Harvest on the Island of Nantucket, Eastman Johnson, 1880.
Courtesy Wikipedia

Delawareonline is reporting that cranberry growers in the state are becoming nervous about their future prospects becuase they are seeing signs of climate change.

Despite enjoying a near-record, 768 million-pound nationwide harvest in 2012, growers are voicing concern that global warming will sour the industry’s long-term outlook, increasing losses to weather-related blights and fruit rots and tempting more producers to grow the tangy berry offshore.

 Of course, "offshore" is having the same climate-related problems. But Massachusetts is experiencing problems with earlier spring weather and cranberry growth leaving the plants more vulnerable to frost. And Mass. is pretty focused on cranberries, having maintained a research centre for cranberries at the University of Massachusetts since 1910.

“The growers are at the point where there’s concern that the climate is changing,” said Brian Wick, director of regulatory services for the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association. “We are seeing these sort of extremes in weather.”
[...]
“They’ve noticed over the past several years that we’re dealing with many more extremes,” Wick said.

This disruption in growing patterns caused by weather extremes is not, of course, confined to Massachusetts, but is being experienced everywhere. From the American drought to an extended hurricane season, to changes in the monsoon season and populations relying on disappearing rivers, there's a lot happening out there.

So far, 2012 has delivered plenty of weather extremes in Delaware, including the hottest spring on record, the third-hottest summer and, through October, the hottest year-to-date by a wide a margin. Along the way, there have been periods of severe drought and intense rain, including Hurricane Sandy’s deluge.
Delaware Agriculture Secretary Ed Kee has remained optimistic.
“Climate change is something that people are talking about, but we think a lot of it can be dealt with genetically,” through development of hardier and more tolerant crops, Kee said. “Climate is changing, but it’s a slow process.”

But the problem is, is that it is not such a slow process anymore.  Those weather extremes in Delaware are already happening. That means that the changes are upon us. The Arctic has lost its summer sea ice cover at least 20 yars before the most pessimistic forecast had it vanishing. Things are speeding up and the future looks bleak. A safe, secure, stable food system is essential for maintaining a safe stable society. Just ask the governments that faced the Arab Spring uprisings. It is also pretty necessary for maintaining life on Earth.

English Honey Production

Image from Wikipedia

With all the trouble bees are having with colony collapse disorder, varroa mites, and the like,now we need to add climate change to the mix.

Varroa mite on honeybee. From Wikipedia

The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA)  is reporting [pdf] that:

Britain’s beekeepers have endured a desperately difficult summer with average honey yields down to just eight pounds per hive, compared to a yearly average of 30 pounds, according to the results of the British
Beekeepers Association’s latest annual Honey Survey announced today, 30 October.

Honey bees produce honey as a food store. In a normal year this store should be sufficient to see them through the winter months. The nation’s honey bees now face an even more trying winter than usual with vastly depleted stores and even greater reliance than usual on the feeding skills of beekeepers to prevent mass starvation occurring through the dark winter months when honey bees would normally feed on honey produced over the previous summer.

Nearly nine in ten (88 per cent) of the 2,700 beekeepers who took part in the survey cited rain and cold weather as the main cause of depleted honey supplies this year, conditions which caused the BBKA to issue an unprecedented mid-summer warning to beekeepers to check the stores in their honey bee colonies and to feed them if they were inadequate to avoid starvation

The British over-winter drought broke this late spring with massive storms, leading into a wet and miserable summer. The summer was so bad that bees were unable to collect food enough to feed themselves. Makes me wonder how the British Black Bees that were found this year are doing.

James Hansen

...has been trying to get people to pay attention to the climate change crisis for quite a while now. He's been pretty gosh-darned prescient about it as well. Now, even moneynews.com is running a Thomson/Reuters article about the threat to global food security. And they're hitting the proper notes: big trouble is here. More people on the way. Distribution, not production, is a major problem.
There's even a mention of stockpiling more grain. Now, for 14,000 years, civilizations have known that keeping about five years supply on hand was about right. Famine would come--and it always came, although often for different reasons each time--and five years of grain was about right to cover shortage and ensure seed supplies. When civilizations could not or would not keep stores on hand, when they became reliant on imports to cover shortages, they failed. And usually very quickly. As usual, I point to Empires of Food as essential reading.
But notice, despite NECSI's work trying to bring attention to the role of speculative money in driving food bubbles and crisis, still almost no mention of it in the business press.

A Year Getting Worse II

The US drought is starting to raise eyebrows in the business world. So we can expect our politicians to start noticing soon. That usually means that its going to cost the taxpayer for some ad hoc design program that's intended to be a temporary measure, but has a good chance of becoming a permanent feature distorting markets across the globe. The beginnings of this are in place as the US has declared 1,297 counties in 29 states “disaster areas.” The USDA has cut its corn production forecast by 1.8 billion bushels and lowered yield expectations to 146 b/a from 166 b/a back in June of this year. Corn futures have hit an all time high of $8US a bushel, and as the primary crop in the US is industrial corn, that makes a heck of a difference (all figures current to 19 July/12). So what does this mean for you and I, sitting here in Canada, wondering what to do next? Well, it means some of our industrial farmers will be doing better this year. But with Canada's integration with global markets, it does not mean that Canadians will see any benefit. We will not be seeing any drop or even stability in the prices we pay in the supermarket. About 40% of North American corn production is used for animal feed (regardless of whether or not its good for the animals involved) so we can expect to see a hike in meat prices come through the industrial food system. When? That's a trickier story. If markets are efficient and honest, meat prices should begin to rise over the next six to twelve months. This would mean producers looking at older, cheaper supplies they have in stock and calculating when they will run out and newer, more pricey supplies begin to be used. What is far more likely—as the oil industry has shown us time and time again—is that the old stock will become re-valued at the new international price, and prices will rise immediately, in order to maximize profits. There is actually wiggle room available: about 40% of corn grown in NA is designated for biofuel production. With dramatically increased feed-stock prices, corn-derived fuel will quickly become uneconomic to produce and sell (unless, of course, oil heads well north of $120/bbl in the very near future). Reduced demand from biofuel manufacturers would free up stocks to go for animal feed, and help keep a check on the price rise. The problem, of course, is the ubiquity of corn in the food system. If you're shopping the produce aisles, you might be in reasonable shape. But if you shop the inner aisles you'll find corn or corn-derived products in pretty much everything. For example, the citric acid used as a preservative in tomato sauce: corn-derived. HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup), of course. But also margarine, candies, ketchup (and catsup), peanut butter, and mayonnaise. (And a lot of non-food products like paint, printing inks, and photographic films). But this is going to be the new normal. If not drought, floods. If not floods, tornadoes. Or other extreme weather events. North Americans have had artificially low food prices for decades, and that period is about to come to a close as a result of global climate change. Recent projections have put temperature rise at 8-10 degrees over the rest of the century. This means that all of us are going to be to suffering for a short time, those of us under 40 are really going to notice the changes, and those under twenty might not make it.

A Year Getting Worse

Al Jazeera English is reporting

The US department of agriculture has declared a natural disaster in 26 states where the Midwest drought has done considerable damage to this year's corn crop.

High temperatures and drought in the farm belt have devastated farms and are pushing up the price of corn and other crops.

This is both as bad as it sounds and not quite as bad as it sounds. As  Hannah Poturalski, a staff writer with the Middletown Journal in Ohio puts it: "Ohio is among 29 states with counties now designated as natural disaster areas due to the drought." That is to say, it's not the entire state that has declared drought condition, but counties within it have. Still, when you look at the map, the situation is pretty severe.

According to the US Drought Monitor on July 05, 2012, "Analysis of the latest drought monitor data revealed that 46.84 percent of the nation’s land area is in various stages of drought, up from 42.8 percent a week ago...Looking only at the 48 contiguous states, 55.96 percent of the country’s land area is in moderate drought or worse." in the July 10, 2012 news release, the Drought Monitor notes:

[W]ith the hot weather that covered much of the central and eastern United States, only a few scattered areas of dryness and drought experienced significant improvement. In addition, the areas with the greatest temperature anomalies (average daily maxima 10 to 13 degrees above normal) generally coincided with an area of scant rainfall across the Midwest, northwestern Ohio Valley, and southern Great Plains, resulting in another week of widespread deterioration and expansion of dryness and drought in these regions.
In the hottest areas last week, which were generally dry, crop conditions deteriorated quickly. In the 18 primary corn-growing states, 30 percent of the crop is now in poor or very poor condition, up from 22 percent the previous week. In addition, fully half of the nation’s pastures and ranges are in poor or very poor condition, up from 28 percent in mid-June. The hot, dry conditions have also allowed for a dramatic increase in wildfire activity since mid-June. During the past 3 weeks, the year-to-date acreage burned by wildfires increased from 1.1 million to 3.1 million as of this writing.

That's about 4800 square miles or 12545 square kilometres burned over so far this year.  The Drought Monitor has also produced the following animation of drought conditions in the US over the last 12 weeks:

 There is some hope for rain in some area this week, but overall, this means trouble. With corn crops not producing ears (check out the Al Jazeera footage, above), and with pasture, soy, and other crops affected, the industrial food system is going to be seriously strained this year. Combined with big money building speculative bubbles in the food system, we could be facing a doubling or better of food costs this year.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the period from January through June was "the warmest first half of any year on record for the contiguous United States."
The average temperature was 52.9 degrees Fahrenheit, or 4.5 degrees above average, NOAA said on Monday. Twenty-eight states east of the Rockies set temperature records for the six-month period.
A heat wave blistered most of the United States in June, with more than 170 all-time temperature records broken or tied during the month. On June 28 in Norton, Kan., for instance, the temperature reached 118 degrees, an all-time high. On June 26, Red Willow, Neb., set a temperature record of 115 degrees, eclipsing the 114-degree mark set in 1932.

I'm not saying that it will get as bad as this 1942 Alfred Eisenstaedt photo of the dustbowl, at least not this year.

unpublished, from Life

But don't think it can't happen again. Dr. David Schindler, over at the University of Alberta, has pointed out that the Twentieth Century was the wettest century in the Pallister Triangle in the last 10,000 years. It has also been the only century we've farmed in the Triangle, so our perceptions are kind of skewed. And the past century also had four major drought events, including the one above. So Global Climate Change is going to matter here in North America.