PATRICK’s Bay State swing — BAKER to roll out budget plan — NEAL says infrastructure bill could happen
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Wednesday, January 22, 2020
POLITICO MASSACHUSETTS PLAYBOOK: PATRICK’s Bay State swing — BAKER to roll out budget plan — NEAL says infrastructure bill could happen
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Climate scientists go above and beyond
Climate scientists go above and beyond
It was the end of an 11-day trek from Lukla, Nepal, mainly following river valleys with a team of scientists, a film crew and their porters and guides. The snow fell hard on the final leg into Base Camp at Mount Everest, and Heather Clifford had a bad headache. Worried it may be the onset of altitude sickness, she let a Sherpa take her pack and she struggled into camp.
Clifford, a 2011 Sandwich High School graduate and 2015 Clemson University graduate with a degree in environmental engineering, flew to Nepal last April to be part of an expedition, organized and funded by National Geographic and Rolex, to establish the world’s highest weather station on the summit of Mount Everest.
While the capstone was the weather station, the approach was to gather much-needed information across many disciplines and the team included geologists, glaciologists, biologists, cartographers and climate scientists. Climate change researchers fear the mountain regions of the world are taking a disproportionately big hit from global warming, but in these remote and hard-to-access areas there’s little solid information. A 2015 study by the Mountain Research Institute found that the density of weather stations above 14,763 feet is one-tenth what it is below that elevation and that long-term data doesn’t exist for areas above 16,400 feet.
The Mountain Research Institute report also showed that over the past 20 years, areas above 13,000 feet on the Tibetan Plateau warmed at a rate nearly 75% faster than those below 6,500 feet in elevation. A warming planet is believed to be the primary cause in shrinking ice caps and glaciers where nearly 70% of the world’s fresh water is locked in ice, according to the United States Geological Service.
The thousands of Himalayan glaciers that lace these lofty peaks and are a water source for millions are under siege. The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment, a five-year study by 350 researchers and experts released last January, forecast that glacier mass could decline by 9% to 32% in the Himalayas, depending on the region, by 2030. Within 80 years, the eastern Himalayan glaciers would have virtually disappeared, with other areas suffering as much as a 35% loss of mass.
Conversely, computer models predicted glaciers on the western side are expected to increase in size due to higher snowfalls forecast in those areas, but the Himalaya Assessment also worried that those computer models were weak due to a lack of fine-scale data.
Clifford, a first-year doctoral student at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, was on the expedition to collect ice cores from the Khumbu Glacier. She had been invited by the expedition’s lead scientist Paul Mayewski, director of the institute.
In a long career, Mayewski has led over 55 expeditions to practically anywhere on the planet that was remote and cold, including the Arctic, Antarctic, the Andes and Himalayas. In 2018, Clifford was on one of his expeditions to the Andes in Peru.
In Nepal, the party of 20 slept in lodges along the way, gradually gaining altitude, allowing their bodies time to adjust to the elevation. They drank sweet milk tea, ate yak meat, and her personal favorite, momos, a kind of steamed dumpling.
Along the way, the landscape changed from green to gray, from fields, trees and living things, to drab cobble and sand, rocks and boulders. Close up, the mountains seemed primordial, a place where the planetary, earth-creation forces were still at work.
The Himalayas are the product of a cyclopean collision of the Eurasian and Indian continental plates that began 225 million years ago and continues today. This is the land of year-round snow that has piled up for tens of thousands of years. As snow accretes in the mountains, the hexagonal shape of the flakes is compressed into the round sugar-sized grains that then pack tightly into a river of ice blocks that respond to the tug of gravity. The glacier creaks, groans and snaps as it slides inexorably downhill and over millions of years, this has ground down the Himalayan Mountains to one-tenth their original mass.
In the snow and darkness of that first night on Everest, base camp — essentially a tent village pitched on sand, gravel, ice and dirty snow just below a sweeping bend in the Khombu Glacier — had seemed a tentative outpost perched precariously on the verge of the outsized wilderness that surrounded it.
But the next morning, Clifford exited her tent to a sunny day, and the camp seemed more like a bustling village. Climbers gathered for the spring season were busy with preparations, and her expedition had its tasks. The headache was gone and she was surrounded by mountain peaks that pierced the sky.
They seemed so close, she said, that you could almost reach out and touch them, but watching a helicopter take off and become a small dot, flying up to Camp 2, nearly 4 miles distant and 4,000 feet up the mountain, gave her a sense of the massive scale.
Clifford, 26, felt a long way from the high school science labs in biology, chemistry and physics that challenged her and made her doubt she could ever be a scientist.
“You can’t really assess your own situation by saying, ‘I’ll work for an insurance company because I’m not good at biology.’ If you’re passionate about something, work towards that,” she said.
Clifford found her passion in an ecology class her junior year of high school, and an independent study project in which she read the United Nation’s Independent Panel on Climate Change report. “It made me want to build my future around studying climate change,” she said.
The opportunity at Everest was unique. With peaks that approach the cruising altitude of jetliners, the Himalayan mountain range is the only place in the world where mountain peaks pierce the jet stream. Generally found between 20,000 to 50,000 feet, jet streams exist at the boundaries of massive warm and cold fronts with the pressure differential creating rivers of wind that race at speeds approaching 300 mph. They move in a snaky circle around the earth and can cause large changes in local weather and climate.
Scientists worry that climate change has destabilized these rivers of wind leading to wild extremes of weather. Last August, a kink in the North Atlantic jet stream trapped warm air over Greenland, causing a record-breaking heat wave that pushed the air temperature over the ice cap to nearly 39 degrees, initiating melting of over 60% of the ice sheet, according to a report in the London Financial Times.
While the jet streams are monitored by instruments on both commercial and military aircraft, as well as other sampling methods like wind balloons and satellites, a permanent weather station would give instantaneous and continuous data on wind speed, temperature, barometric pressure and humidity that would make computer models forecasting weather or forecasting our climate change future, more accurate.
“There is no substitution for having high temporal resolution of those data sets, and located where they are gives you so much more,” said Baker Perry, a geographer and climate scientist at Appalachian State University.
“We know that the subtropical jet stream is critical to the onset and end of the monsoon season in Asia,” Perry said. “It’s a huge player in the lives of so many people.”
Changes in the monsoon season can affect billions in Southeast Asia. Dry seasons with little rain mean farmers don’t plant crops; too much rain and there’s flooding and disease. One-third of India’s electricity is generated by hydropower.
“The behavior of the polar and subtropical jet streams is a lot more erratic in recent years, presumably climate change. Having direct observation as to what’s happening in the jet stream would be very beneficial,” said Perry.
On this expedition, Perry was chosen to be one of the scientists to install three weather stations along the Everest climbing route, including one on the summit. For the vast majority of climbers, just climbing Everest is all they can handle.
The mountain was thought to be unclimbable until Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit in 1953. Using bottled oxygen and guides, the odds have dramatically improved: 76% of those who left base camp reached the top in 2018, a total of 802 summits. But there were also five deaths that year, according to Himalayan Database archives. The database found that 72 climbers have died of the nearly 8,000 who departed for the top from base camp between 2010 and 2019.
Overall, there’s about a 1 in 100 chance of dying, and the first obstacle mere feet from the tent village is formidable, the Khumbu Icefall, a massive frozen waterfall of enormous glacial blocks of ice.
“It was probably my favorite part,” Clifford said of walking around the edges of the icefall taking ice core samples. Glacial peaks, known as penitents, towered 20 feet overhead. Created when the snow goes straight from solid to gas, vaporizing in low humidity and a dew point below freezing, these fields of pinnacles are named for their resemblance to the pointed white hoods worn by Spanish religious orders during Holy Week.
“If you are walking through it, it’s as though you are in an ice forest,” said Clifford, who was not part of the climbing expedition.
But climbers have many more dangers ahead. They leave in the predawn hours to get through the icefall before the ice and snow on the glacier is weakened by the sun and begins to shift. Climbers have been killed when towering pillars of ice known as seracs collapse without warning. The glacier is moving and deadly crevasses sometimes open up underfoot. Others must be crossed using long ladders over a yawning abyss.
More crevasses and avalanches await climbers beyond Camp 1 in the snowbound Valley of Silence. From Camp 2, there’s an icy 4,000 foot high steep slope known as the Lhotse Face. One slip and you fall thousands of feet. When you hit Camp 4 at 26,000 feet, you’re in what is known as the Death Zone.
At sea level, the oxygen concentration in the atmosphere is approximately 21%. At 17,000 feet, there’s roughly half that amount. Perry would spend over a day near the summit, at around 29,000 feet where the oxygen was less than 7%, a third of what the inhabitants of Clifford’s home town of Sandwich took in with each breath.
During the long slow trek into base camp from Lukla, the climbers’ bodies adjusted to more efficiently harvest the available oxygen from the air. They breathed more deeply, using more of their lungs, and their bodies produced more red blood cells capable of absorbing and transporting oxygen and an enzyme that helps release it into body tissues.
Even so, in the Death Zone, the air pressure is so low that fluid can leak from capillaries and builds up in your lungs and/or your brain. Either can be fatal.
“It’s like being on another planet. Such a barren, inhospitable landscape. So windswept. Really cold,” Perry recalled.
Twenty-two climbers from the National Geographic/Rolex expedition left for the climb to the top on May 17 and didn’t return to base camp until a week later. They would spend three days above 21,000 feet, breathing bottled oxygen, but every step required extraordinary effort. Even though thirst and hunger are suppressed, it’s important to stay hydrated and to eat, but just melting snow to drink took most of the day.
“Everything feels like slow motion. My mind seemed always to be a little foggy,” Perry said.
But the ultimate foe proved to be the crowds. The desire for a bucket list achievement is not limited to Everest, but the sight of long lines at one of the world’s most dangerous places, waiting like a queue for popular movie, was mind-boggling.
It started early in the trip. Traveling with traffic through the Khumbu Icefall, Perry crested a big block of ice and saw 75 to 100 climbers standing in line waiting to climb a ladder up a vertical ice face.
“That’s when it became apparent there’s a lot of people up there that could cause major traffic jams,” he said.
Still, they were able to install two weather stations, one at Camp 2 at 21,207 feet, and a second near Camp 4, at a feature known as the Southern Col, at over 26,000 feet.
Another University of Maine researcher and Polish climate scientist Mariusz Potocki had built a special lightweight drill for the expedition that had enough power to drill into glacial ice at the South Col to successfully extract a 32-foot long ice core, the highest such sample ever taken.
By 12:30 p.m. on that afternoon, the party retreated to tents for the final push, the last 1,000 feet in elevation to the summit. They left for the top at 11 that night, climbing by the light of their headlamps. After a few hours, the pace slowed to a crawl as the line of people attempting to reach the roof of the world had created yet another traffic jam.
The lead, Panuru Sherpa, with 17 successful summits of Everest, made the case for abandoning the quest for the top. Climbers were getting cold and it would be another 7 to 8 hours before they’d get to the summit at this pace. It would leave them little time to work and they may not have enough oxygen for the descent.
“Everest is such an iconic peak, the highest place in the world, and there’s certainly that part of you that has that desire to get up there,” Perry said. “But those on this expedition understood that the primary mission was to do science and research.”
The team retreated to a small overhanging cornice known as The Balcony to set up the final weather station at 27,658 feet, which is still the highest such facility. It is powered by solar panels and has instruments that measure wind speed, air temperature and humidity and visible, ultraviolet and infrared radiation. Data is collected in 3-second intervals and transmitted by satellite.
Once assembled, the weather station is a little over 6 feet tall without the lightning rod, and weighs about 110 pounds. Because every pound adds to the burden of physiologically and physically overtaxed climbers, the pieces for the three weather stations were parceled out among five Sherpas.
The Balcony is small, and made for cramped working conditions. The first problem the team encountered was that the extreme cold had sucked the life out of the batteries for Potocki’s drill that was needed to sink screws into rock to hold the station in place.
“One of our largest Sherpas stuffed the batteries into his crotch and armpits and we sat there and waited in 10 below F,” Perry said. After an hour, the batteries warmed up enough to drill the holes for a mountain-climbing bolt that expands in the rock and holds when tightened.
Problem solved, but the crew soon found out they were missing two vital parts. The short tubes that attached the wind sensors to the frames had not been packed.
“When I realized that, I just sat down and put my hands on my helmet,” Perry said. But somehow, despite brains fogged by the high altitude, the team was able to hammer shovel handles into the right shape and, using duct tape, attach the sensors.
“When we got a text from a satellite phone from a colleague waiting for the data to show up and we had confirmation that it was transmitting as designed, that was the real sense of accomplishment,” Perry said. The sensors have since transmitted wind speeds up to 148 mph.
The climbers were in daily contact with those at base camp. But during the night and a few times daily, Clifford would be jolted by the roar of avalanches. One made it close enough that it sent a giant cloud of snow throughout the camp.
“It was nerve-wracking worrying about their safety,” she said. It was not all worry and work however. Clifford and University of Maine undergraduate Laura Mattas realized they had missed their May 11 graduation for Clifford’s master’s degree and Mattas’ bachelor’s degree, so they improvised a ceremony that included a cake and caps made from cardboard and tape and trash bags for gowns. Berry said the return to base was somewhat anticlimactic. Many of the climbers who had stood in line to reach the summit the day before had already departed. The Sherpas were still there packing and he celebrated with them.
“It was a celebratory atmosphere back there for sure,” he said.
The ice cores were already on their way to the University of Maine, each 3-foot section fitted with a temperature sensor and placed into a protective tube. They were walked back down the mountain, and then flown by helicopter to a freezer facility in Kathmandu for transport back to the U.S.
The ice cores are now in the Climate Change Institute’s walk-in freezer that keeps them at -13F. Clifford said the ice is a clearish-blue color, like hazy ice cubes. She will use a customized table saw to cut them into long thin slices, and then do a chemical analysis and Carbon 14 dating to find when the ice formed.
Like the amber that trapped prehistoric insects and pollen, the ice cores are time capsules of the conditions that existed tens of thousands, or more, years ago when they first fell as snow on Everest. Tests will look for isotopes that indicate the temperature at the time, and for dust, sea salt and other contaminants in the atmosphere, traveling back through time along the various layers of deposits in the ice core.
It’s lab work, and she’s good at that now, but the thrill of field work is still a big draw and she’d love to go to Antarctica to do more research.
“I would like to take a step outside my comfort zone and try something in science communication and policy,” Clifford said of her plans after she gets her doctorate. “It seems like that is very much needed in today’s climate.”
Thursday, January 2, 2020
NY Times Editorial Board | Double the Federal Minimum Wage
01 January 20
NY Times Editorial Board | Double the Federal Minimum Wage
Editorial Board, The New York Times
Excerpt: "Opponents of minimum-wage laws have long argued that companies have only so much money and, if required to pay higher wages, they will employ fewer workers."
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Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Getty Images)
Editorial Board, The New York Times
Excerpt: "Opponents of minimum-wage laws have long argued that companies have only so much money and, if required to pay higher wages, they will employ fewer workers."
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Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Getty Images)
How Long Can Nancy Pelosi Can Hold Back These Articles of Impeachment? Longer Than You Think
Eleanor Clift, The Daily Beast
Clift writes: "After what Republicans like to characterize as a rush to impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now getting grief from the GOP for slowing down the process."
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Cannabis. (photo: Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Eleanor Clift, The Daily Beast
Clift writes: "After what Republicans like to characterize as a rush to impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now getting grief from the GOP for slowing down the process."
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Cannabis. (photo: Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Illinois Gov Pardons 11,000 for Low-Level Marijuana Convictions as Weed Goes Legal
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Illinois governor JB Pritzker granted more than 11,000 pardons for low-level marijuana convictions on Tuesday, describing the step as a first wave of thousands of such expungements anticipated under the state's new marijuana legalization law."
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A bulletin board dedicated to Mario Aguilar hangs in the hallway at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, Connecticut. Since ICE detained him in September, students, teachers and administrators at the school have been pushing for his release. (photo: Will Lanzoni/CNN)
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Illinois governor JB Pritzker granted more than 11,000 pardons for low-level marijuana convictions on Tuesday, describing the step as a first wave of thousands of such expungements anticipated under the state's new marijuana legalization law."
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A bulletin board dedicated to Mario Aguilar hangs in the hallway at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, Connecticut. Since ICE detained him in September, students, teachers and administrators at the school have been pushing for his release. (photo: Will Lanzoni/CNN)
Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
Shoichet writes: "An immigration judge has granted asylum to a Connecticut high school student whose arrest sparked an outpouring of support from teachers and classmates."
EXCERPT:
Teachers told CNN they were devastated to learn recently that the homework they sent never made it to their student. An envelope filled with worksheets was returned to Aguilar's attorney, stamped "Return to sender. Refused." A handwritten note on the stamp said, "Unknown name" and "ID# required."
Without being able to keep up with his schoolwork while detained, Aguilar is behind in his classes, Brillante said. But teachers, she said, will do everything they can to help him get on track.
"When he gets back, he gets a clean slate," she said.
For students, the case has been an education unlike anything inside a textbook, the school's principal told reporters Tuesday.
"It is a wonderful lesson, I think, in civics for all of our students to learn about our systems, and even the broken parts of our system that need to be fixed," Principal Edith Johnson said. "And I know that this beautiful group of students that I lead in that school will be a part of mending a broken system."
Mike Bloomberg. (photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
Zack Linly, The Root
Linly writes: "I'm thinking former New York City mayor and new presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg must not have gotten the memo that Democratic candidates are supposed to be wooing the black vote."
After being further pressed on the issue, Bloomberg continued, “There was an awful lot of evidence presented at that time that they were involved. There’s been questions since then about the quality of that evidence. And so it’s, I’ve been away from it for so long, I just really can’t respond because I just don’t remember.” He then concluded, “There’s been plenty written about it and I suggest you go and read some of that. Next question...”
That’s right, Bloomberg really told the reporter to go Google it.
As reported by CBS:
All five men had their convictions vacated in 2002. During the Bloomberg administration, they filed a civil rights lawsuit against New York City, alleging malicious prosecution, racial discrimination and emotional distress. The Bloomberg administration spent nearly $6 million fighting the case over a decade, arguing that the authorities at the time had good cause and acted in good faith.
In 2014, less than a year after Bloomberg left office, New York City and the Central Park Five agreed to a $41 million settlement. Under the terms of the agreement, the city continued to maintain there was no wrongdoing by police or prosecutors in the case.
Considering this sordid past of his, which includes his pushing of “stop and frisk” policy as mayor, a thing he finally apologized for in November (completely unrelated to his decision to run for president, I’m sure), you would think he’d make it a point to do a better job showing contrition. I guess that’s just too much to ask of someone who is asking for our votes and our confidence in his ability to lead.
I suppose He figured at least didn’t respond like President Donald Trump who, as recently as 2016, still held the belief that the CP5 were guilty, saying to a CNN reporter, “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”
Of course, “do better than Trump” is obviously a low bar.
The Cuban people continue to outmaneuver every U.S. head of state ever since President Dwight D. Eisenhower. (photo: EFE)
61 Years Strong: Cuba's Revolution Lives On Despite Blockade
TeleSUR
Excerpt: "A day that will forever live in the hearts and minds of free men and women around the world, Jan. 1, 1959 marked the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, as the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista ended under the leadership of Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, and Raul Castro, among others."
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TeleSUR
Excerpt: "A day that will forever live in the hearts and minds of free men and women around the world, Jan. 1, 1959 marked the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, as the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista ended under the leadership of Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, and Raul Castro, among others."
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This photo shows a farm north of Dalhart, Texas in 1938 during the Dust Bowl - one of the most devastating environmental disasters in the history of American agriculture. Now, climate change threatens even more dramatic effects on world agriculture and, as a consequence, our diets. (photo: Dorothea Lange/Library of Congress)
Coffee, Avocados, Chocolate and Other Foods Climate Change Could Take Off The Menu
Pat Thomas, In These Times
Thomas writes: "What will we eat in the future? What was once a rhetorical musing has now become the critical question of our time as scientists grapple with tricky questions about life-and larders-in a climate-changing world."
Pat Thomas, In These Times
Thomas writes: "What will we eat in the future? What was once a rhetorical musing has now become the critical question of our time as scientists grapple with tricky questions about life-and larders-in a climate-changing world."
Agriculture is both a key contributor to climate change and one of the sectors most vulnerable to those changes. That fact alone should send an urgent message that the way we farm has to change. Instead, we see a stubborn cadre of policymakers, tech companies and big agribusinesses that believe business as usual can be maintained with only a few tweaks to the system.
The science, however, tells a different story.
Earlier this year a report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the world’s land and water resources are being exploited at “unprecedented rates,” and that topsoil is disappearing between 10 and 100 times faster than we can replenish it.
As climate change begins to bite and we experience floods, drought, storms and other types of extreme weather that deeply disrupt the global food supply, feeding ourselves is going to get harder.
Some of the world‘s most vulnerable places are already bearing witness to these effects. After decades of decline, world hunger and malnutrition has, since 2014, begun to climb steadily again. A 2016 study found that by 2050 the effects of climate change on diet will be responsible for 529,000 additional and avoidable deaths.
If you ever doubted that farming and food is a climate change issue, the rapidly mounting science is begging you not to doubt it anymore. Consider the studies published just this year:
• A University of Minnesota-led study noted that, while some places may be (temporarily) better off as the climate shifts, the long-term picture is grim. The world's top 10 crops—barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, grapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane and wheat—supply a combined 83 percent of all the calories produced on cropland. Climate change has already affected production of these key energy sources and some regions—notably Europe, Southern Africa and Australia—are faring far worse than others.
In the United States the study found that in eastern Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, climate change has been reducing corn yields even as it marginally boosts them to the northwest in Minnesota and North Dakota. There was a similar pattern for soybeans with reductions moving up from the south and east parts of the country, where slightly more warming has occurred than in states farther north. The changing climate is also reducing overall yields of other important crops, such as wheat and barley.
• A comprehensive synthesis of climate change impacts on the nutritional quality of our food found that, over the next 30 years, climate change and higher CO2 could significantly reduce the availability of critical nutrients, such as protein, iron and zinc by 19.5 percent, 14.4 percent and 14.6 percent, respectively.
• A Rutgers University study found that climate change may reduce the ability of soils to absorb water in many parts of the world. That could have serious implications for groundwater supplies, food production and security, stormwater runoff, biodiversity and ecosystem stability.
• The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is a panel studying the benefits of nature to humans. It reports that while there is three times more carbon in the soil than in the atmosphere, that carbon is rapidly being released by deforestation and poor farming practices. This, in turn, is fueling climate change—and compromising our attempts to feed a growing world population.
• Australian scientists at the University of Tasmania combed through United Nations data from the past half century, concluding that globally an is largely to blame for a rise in major food “shocks.” Overall, extreme weather was responsible for over half the times when crop growth ground to a halt, posing a major threat to global food security.
Food not crops
The University of Minnesota-led study, cited above, found that climate change is reducing consumable food calories by around 1 percent yearly for the top 10 global crops. This may sound small, but it actually represents some 35 trillion calories each year—enough to provide more than 50 million people with a daily diet of over 1,800 calories—the level that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says is essential to avoid food deprivation or undernourishment.
These figures are so staggering it’s hard to wrap our heads around just what they mean for the foods our families consume every day. Most of us understand the world in terms of food not crop yields. So apart from those top 10 staple crops—which are often incorporated as ingredients in a variety of everyday foods such as ready meals, bakery items and snacks—what other food favorites are starting to feel the climate squeeze? The list may surprise you.
• Coffee: At least 60 percent of current coffee species face extinction, according to a 2019 study. Coffee trees don’t thrive in extremes of temperature. They prefer the relatively cool mountainside regions of the tropics. In countries like Brazil, warmer temperatures and more prevalent weather extremes are beginning to affect yields. Climate change is also threatening native coffee trees that grow in the wild in Ethiopia. These are a valuable source of genetic diversity, which growers need to breed new strains of the plant that can thrive as the planet heats up.
• Tea: Most of the world’s tea is grown in China and India—both large regions with diverse climates. Changes in climate influence the taste and quality of tea. But they also, according to a 2019 report in the journal Nature, affect the quantity of tea that farmers can grow. In the rich tea-producing regions of southern China, overall rainfall is increasing and instances of heavy rain that can damage tea crops are becoming more frequent. In Assam in India, intense rains cause waterlogging and soil erosion that damages root development and reduces yield. At the other extreme, heat is also causing problems. Warmer temperatures mean insects that attack tea plants can survive the winter and reproduce in greater numbers. Plantation managers in Assam are already reporting pest management problems with their tea plants.
• Orchard fruits: For U.S. apple crops, hotter spring weather is causing an increase in diseases like fire blight (particularly problematic for organic farmers who don’t use antibiotics). Intense sunlight can cause burn marks on the skin, which often means the apples can be sold only at a reduced price for the farmer, for juicing or pulp. Japanese scientists have found that climate change is making popular apples like the Fuji less crisp and less sweet. Other orchard fruits like cherries, plums, pears, and apricots and peaches) benefit from exposure to temperatures below 45° F (7° C) each winter. Skip the required cold, and fruit and nut trees struggle to break dormancy and flower in the spring. This can mean a drop in both the quality and quantity of fruit that's produced.
• Avocados: This leathery looking fruit may look tough on the outside, but to reach its peak of yumminess it needs temperatures that are neither too hot nor too cold. Avocado crops in California have already suffered from heat waves and drought. One 2017 study led by the University of California, Merced, estimates that climate change will cut California avocado production in half by 2050. Mexico, which provides the U.S. with 80 percent of its avocados, is currently caught in a vicious downward spiral. Climate change is affecting its crops, but farmers are under pressure to grow more to keep up with surging global demand. Expanding their cropland through deforestation is contributing to the climate changes that are already threatening them.
• Bananas: As with other crops, some countries—including Ecuador, Honduras, and a number of African countries—may see a temporary boost in banana crop production as global temperatures rise. But a recent report suggested that 10 countries, including the world's largest producer and consumer of bananas, India, and the fourth largest producer, Brazil, will see a significant decline in crop yields.
• Chocolate: Some observers claim that climate change has pushed us to the brink of ‘peak chocolate.’ Most of the world’s chocolate is grown by smallholder farmers in Africa. But the combination of changing weather and crippling poverty means Africa’s cocoa farmers have had to switch to other crops to survive. In four decades, the amount of land available for growing cocoa has dropped 40 percent. In the next 40 years, the temperature in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, where 70 percent of cocoa is grown, is set to rise by 2°C, which would make it too hot and dry for cocoa trees. The world will likely start feeling the shortfall by 2020 when, according to a report by the Earth Security Group, world cocoa demand is set to outstrip supply by more than a million tons.
• Honey: Our honeybees are already under threat from Colony Collapse Disorder, and climate change is piling on the pressure. According to a study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, rising carbon dioxide levels are decreasing the protein levels in pollen. This means the bees aren't getting enough nutrition, which threatens their ability to reproduce and can cause early death. Warmer temperatures and the earlier arrival of spring means trees and plants are flowering before bees have grown out of their larval state. This means fewer worker bees to pollinate our fruits and vegetable crops, to collect pollen for the hive and to make honey.
• Maple syrup: Unpredictable, yo-yoing weather is shortening the ‘sugaring season —the period just before budding when the temperatures are mild enough to trigger a process where the trees turn stored-up starches into sugar sap. Too-hot temperatures produce a stress reaction in the trees that causes them to put more energy into producing seeds than into producing sap—and the sap that is produced under these conditions is not as sweet. This means it can take twice as many gallons of sap to produce a gallon of syrup.
• Peanuts: When it comes to growing conditions peanut plants can be fussy. They grow best if they have up to five months of consistent warmth, combined with about 20 to 40 inches of rain. But the rain has to taper off by the harvest season or farmers can find it hard to pull the peanut pods out of the ground. Too hot, too cold or too wet and crops can fail. Peanuts of course are legumes. According to a recent study of global legume and non-staple vegetable production, if greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current trajectory, peanut yields could fall by 35 percent by 2100 due to water scarcity and increased salinity and ozone.
• Seafood: It’s not just land-based harvests that will fail as climate change bites. As air temperatures rise, oceans and waterways also heat up and creatures who thrive in the cold, such as lobsters and salmon, can begin to decline. Warming seas also raise the risk of toxic marine bacteria, like vibrio, in raw seafood, like oysters or sashimi. Add these problems to that of obscene over-fishing and it might not be long before seafood is off the menu.
Meeting the challenges
Today, disruptions in the food supply chain can be found almost everywhere food is grown. The sheer scale of it is almost too much to take in, and some find it paralyzing.
But regenerative farmers and ranchers are taking action. They are rebuilding soil organic matter, restoring degraded soil biodiversity, improving the carbon-storage capacity of the land, diversifying their crops, planting varieties that are hardy and resilient.
Regenerative farmers and ranchers are reducing the use of energy-intensive chemical add-ons, including fertilizers and pesticides, making use of cover crops, crop rotations, compost and animal manures. They’re grazing and pasturing animals on grass and raising them in more naturalistic conditions.
Regenerative farmers and ranchers are thinking systemically. They’re moving beyond headline-grabbing techno-fixes like GMOs and synthetic biology to solutions that acknowledge the deeply interconnected nature of farming and the need to think and act systemically.
The choices we make now will decide what we can eat in the future. If we stay on our current path, doubling down on intensive, wasteful, polluting industrial farming, we may have no choice but to accept a world where farmers don’t matter and where we survive on a grim diet of techno-burgers, ultraprocessed GMO snacks and fake foods grown in industrial vats.
But change the rules of the game and our choices begin to multiply. It may not be possible to stop all the effects of climate change—we’ve let it go on for too long without addressing its biggest core causes: energy generation, industry and transport. But by acting on a new vision for food and farming, in line with the goals of the Green New Deal, we can begin to mitigate the worst of it and work with the rest to ensure a more stable future for everyone.
The farmers who are undertaking this task, including those who are members of the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers for a Green New Deal, are real climate heroes. We should be doing everything we can to support them.
Editor's Note: This is a lightly edited version of an article that was originally published on the blog of the Organic Consumers Association. You can read the original article here.
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