Agriculture

By Amaia J. Gavica/Cronkite News ( Cronkite News ) – WASHINGTON – For 31 straight days last summer, temperatures in Phoenix hit or topped 110 degrees, the longest such streak ever. That searing Arizona heat dehydrates crops and evaporates water the state needs to conserve. Creating shade is one way to combat the problem. By […]

Agriculture

America’s Red Snow: Hottest Winter on Record, Largest Wildfires in Texas History

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency announced Friday that the winter of 2023-24 was the hottest on record in U.S. history. Global records have been kept since about 1850, with the widespread use of mercury thermometers. The average surface temperature of the US this past winter was 37.6°, which is […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan is among Top 10 Countries facing Severe Climate Impacts, and Must not be Excluded from Talks: UN

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty

By RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service ( RFE/ RL ) – A top UN official expressed concerns that Afghanistan has been excluded from global discussions on climate change, despite being among the top 10 countries worldwide facing climate-related issues. Afghanistan has been excluded from the UN’s global climate summit talks since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Roza […]

Agriculture

The Real Risk that “Worthless” Forest Carbon Offsets will exacerbate Climate Change

The Conversation

By Julia P G Jones, Bangor University; and Neal Hockley, Bangor University | – In early 2023, the Guardian published an article suggesting that more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets are worthless. These credits are essentially a promise to protect forests and can be bought as a way to “offset” emissions elsewhere. Verra, the […]

Agriculture

This Year’s El Niño, a Preview of Global Heating to Come, Will Affect Wheat and Global Food Supply

The Conversation

By David Ubilava, University of Sydney | – The World Meteorological Organization has declared the onset of the first El Niño event in seven years. It estimates 90% probability the climatic phenomenon, involving an unusual warming of the Pacific Ocean, will develop through 2023, and be of moderate strength. El Niño events bring hotter, drier […]

Agriculture

‘We are gambling with the future of our Planet for the sake of Hamburgers’: Peter Singer on Climate Change

The Conversation

By Peter Singer, Princeton University | – (The Conversation) – I wasn’t aware of climate change until the 1980s — hardly anyone was — and even when we recognised the dire threat that burning fossil fuels posed, it took time for the role of animal production in warming the planet to be understood. Today, though, […]

Agriculture

Time to Dial it Back: We Humans have Exceeded the Boundaries of 80% of the Planet’s Key Systems

The Conversation

By Steven J Lade, Australian National University; Ben Stewart-Koster, Griffith University; Stuart Bunn, Griffith University; Syezlin Hasan, Griffith University; Xuemei Bai, Australian National University | – (The Conversation) – People once believed the planet could always accommodate us. That the resilience of the Earth system meant nature would always provide. But we now know this […]

Agriculture

One Third of the Food Americans Buy is Wasted, Hurting the Climate and Consumers’ Wallets

The Conversation

By Brian E. Roe, The Ohio State University | – You saw it at Thanksgiving, and you’ll likely see it at your next holiday feast: piles of unwanted food – unfinished second helpings, underwhelming kitchen experiments and the like – all dressed up with no place to go, except the back of the refrigerator. With […]

Agriculture

Ending Amazon Deforestation: The Future of the World’s largest Rainforest

The Conversation

By Jennifer Weeks, The Conversation | – Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was greeted with applause and cheers when he addressed the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov. 16, 2022. As he had in his campaign, Lula pledged to stop rampant deforestation in the Amazon, which his predecessor, Jair Bolsanaro, […]