Drought Across PlanetFebruary 3rd, 2011 Things are not well in the world. Drought is wracking parts of Kenya, China, and Brazil. This is aggravating the food crisis which is growing with prices going through the roof. I don't want to be an alarmist but the tree die off in the Amazon could be really serious for fighting global warming. Tonight on PBS they noted that there are thousands of planets discovered in space and at least 60 or so of them are earth size, but nobody knows if any of them are earth-like. Are the super rich going to fly away and leave the rest of us with the remains of a planet? Good riddance if they do decide to go.
I don't have much to say about this, not that I don't think the situation is serious but because other than pushing politicians to make the courageous choices and bring about real change by ending polluting industries and technologies, talk doesn't cut it. As Malcolm X said we bring about change by the "ballot or the bullet". We either get serious or pretty soon we will not have a choice, we will be running with no place to go.
From Guardian.UK
Mass tree deaths prompt fears of Amazon `climate tipping point'Scientists fear billions of tree deaths caused by 2010 drought could see vast forest turn from carbon sink to carbon source
Damian Carrington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 February 2011 19.00 GMT
Billions of trees died in the record drought that struck the Amazon in 2010, raising fears that the vast forest is on the verge of a tipping point, where it will stop absorbing greenhouse gas emissions and instead increase them.
The dense forests of the Amazon soak up more than one-quarter of the world's atmospheric carbon, making it a critically important buffer against global warming. But if the Amazon switches from a carbon sink to a carbon source that prompts further droughts and mass tree deaths, such a feedback loop could cause runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences.
"Put starkly, current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world's largest forest," said tropical forest expert Simon Lewis, at the University of Leeds, and who led the research published today in the journal Science. Lewis was careful to note that significant scientific uncertainties remain and that the 2010 and 2005 drought – thought then to be of once-a-century severity – might yet be explained by natural climate variation.
"We can't just wait and see because there is no going back," he said. "We won't know we have passed the point where the Amazon turns from a sink to a source until afterwards, when it will be too late."
Alex Bowen, from the London School of Economics and Political Science's Grantham research institute on climate change, said huge emissions of carbon from the Amazon would make it even harder to keep global greenhouse gases at a low enough level to avoid dangerous climate change. "It therefore makes it even more important for there to be strong and urgent reductions in man-made emissions."
The revelation of mass tree deaths in the Amazon is a major blow to efforts to reduce the destruction of the world's forests by loggers, one of the biggest sources of global carbon emissions. The use of satellite imagery by Brazilian law enforcement teams has drastically cut deforestation rates and replanting in Asia had slowed the net loss. Financial deals to protect forests were one of the few areas on which some progress was made at the 2010 UN climate talks in Cancún.
The 2010 Amazonian drought led to the declaration of states-of-emergencies and the lowest ever level of the major tributary, the Rio Negro. Lewis, with colleagues in Brazil, examined satellite-derived rainfall measurements and found that the 2010 drought was even worse than the very severe 2005 drought, affecting a 60% wider area and with an even harsher dry season.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/03/tree-deaths-amazon-climate
From the New York Times
Crops Wither and Prices Rise in Chinese Drought
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: February 3, 2011
HONG KONG — A severe drought in northern China has badly damaged the winter wheat crop and left the ground very dry for the spring planting, fueling inflation and alarming China's leaders.
President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao separately toured drought-stricken regions this week and have called for "all-out efforts" to address the effects of water shortages on agriculture, state media reported on Thursday. Mr. Wen made a similar trip just 10 days ago and called for long-term improvements in water management.
Rising food prices were a problem last autumn, even before the drought began, prompting the government to impose a wide range of price controls in mid-November. The winter wheat crop has been parched since then in northern China while unusually widespread frost has hurt the vegetable crop in southern China. State media began warning a week ago that price controls on food might not be effective.
Some of the driest areas are close to Beijing, which has had no appreciable precipitation since Oct. 23, although there were brief snow flurries on Dec. 29. If the drought lasts 11 more days it will match one in the winter of 1970-71 as the longest since modern recordkeeping started in 1951, according to government meteorologists quoted by state media.
Particularly hard hit have been Hebei Province, which is next to Beijing and which Mr. Hu visited from Tuesday to Thursday, and southern Shandong Province to the east, which Mr. Wen visited on Wednesday and Thursday. The dirt in farmers' fields has become bone dry and is easily lifted by breezes, coating trees and houses in fine dust.
Food prices have been rising around the world, a result of weather problems in many countries, like the unusual heat wave in Russia last summer. High food prices have been among the many reasons for protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world.
But even a prolonged drought in China appears highly unlikely to cause acute food shortages. China has spent years accumulating very large government reserves of grain and also has $2.85 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, giving it virtually unlimited ability to import food as long as major grain producers do not limit exports.
When commodity prices last surged in 2007 and 2008, however, at least 29 countries sharply curbed food exports in attempts to prevent domestic food prices from rising as quickly as world prices. And if China does become a large importer of wheat — it imports a lot of soybeans but tries to be essentially self-sufficient in rice and other grains for national security reasons — then it could push up world prices and make it harder for poor countries to afford food imports.
China's wheat imports have risen to 893,700 metric tons in 2009 and 1.2 million metric tons last year from just 31,900 metric tons in 2008, according to figures from Global Trade Information Services, a data company in Columbia, S.C.
But those totals are small compared with global output that according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reached 682 million metric tons in 2009, the most recent year for which figures are available. China accounted for one-sixth of global wheat production that year, which could make a broad failure of the Chinese crop hard to replace immediately.
Higher food and energy prices are spreading to other parts of China's economy, contributing to broader inflation. Prices rose 4.6 percent last year, according to the consumer price index, but Chinese and Western economists say that the index understates the true extent of inflation because of methodology problems. The National Bureau of Statistics has said that it is trying to improve the index.
The government has cushioned the effects of rising food prices by encouraging provinces and cities to sharply raise the minimum wage, which has been climbing 18 percent a year in Guangdong Province, in southern China.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/world/asia/04china.html
US Drought website
http://www.drought.gov/portal/server.pt/community/drought_gov/202;jsessionid=ABAD7F61D536E9A370B48DF3CD84B83F
From Daniels Trading Co.
Africa's best coffee beans, other ag industries suffer from droughtFeb 03, 2011 10:36 AM
January production of Africa's best coffee beans was slashed by 27 percent last month as a result of a drought that has Kenya's economy suffering the most since 2008, Bloomberg reports.
Kenya's overall agriculture industry has suffered as a result of La Niña, according to domestic meteorologists who say rainfall might slip for the remainder of 2011. The last three months of 2010 also ended up being drier than usual. Consequently, reduced harvesting will continue damaging the national economy.
Reduced crop yield "would have a chain effect on the economy," Peter Mutuku, senior corporate currency trader at Bank of Africa, told Bloomberg. "It would have a direct effect on a huge employment sector. Foreign-exchange reserves would also be affected, bringing pressure to bear on the shilling."
Two top buyers of Kenyan beans - Nestle and Starbucks - suffered since they rely on the East African nation's beans, often considered Africa's best.
Twenty-five percent of Kenya's gross domestic product and half of its exports depend on agriculture. The nation's economy is believed to be East Africa's most vibrant and largest. The country last had low growth three years ago when violence followed a disputed election.
"The worst-case scenario is it could knock 2 percent off of GDP in 2011," Wolfgang Fengler, the World Bank's chief economist in Kenya, told Bloomberg, noting what would happen if no rain fell in March.
http://www.danielstrading.com/resources/news/Futures-Market-News/Africa-s-best-coffee-beans-other-ag-industries-suffer-from-drought_800384194/
From Reuters
Thu Feb 3, 2011 8:15pm EST
* FAO Food Index hits record high in January
* Bad weather to exacerbate rising global food prices
* U.N. WFP chief warns of volatility, disruptions
By Svetlana Kovalyova and Christopher Doering
MILAN/WASHINGTON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Global food prices tracked by a U.N. agency hit their highest level on record in January, a problem set to worsen after a massive snowstorm in the United States and floods in Australia.
The United Nations said on Thursday its Food and Agriculture Organisation Food Price Index rose for the seventh month in a row to reach 231 in January, topping the peak of 224.1 last seen in June 2008. It is the highest level the index has reached since records began in 1990.
"These high prices are likely to persist in the months to come," FAO economist and grains expert Abdolreza Abbassian said in a statement.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/food-prices-idINSGE71203E20110204
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