Extreme weather increasing level of toxins in food, scientists warn | The Financial Express

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GR:  With increasing levels of pesticides and natural toxins, the Earth factory farm won’t be producing healthy food.  Shortened life spans in the human future?

“As they struggle to deal with more extreme weather, a range of food crops are generating more of chemical compounds that can cause health problems for people and livestock who eat them, scientists have warned.

“A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that crops such as wheat and maize are generating more potential toxins as a reaction to protect themselves from extreme weather.But these chemical compounds are harmful to people and animals if consumed for a prolonged period of time, according to a report released during a United Nations Environment Assembly meeting in Nairobi.

“Crops are responding to drought conditions and increases in temperature just like humans do when faced with a stressful situation,” explained Jacqueline McGlade, chief scientist and director of the Division of Early Warning and Assessment at UNEP.

“Under normal conditions, for instance, plants convert nitrates they absorb into nutritious amino acids and proteins. But prolonged drought slows or prevents this conversion, leading to more potentially problematic nitrate accumulating in the plant, the report said.”  Source: Extreme weather increasing level of toxins in food, scientists warn | The Financial Express

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New Extreme Climate to Hurl More Rain Bombs at Texas, Light off Another Record West Coast Heatwave | robertscribbler

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More Severe Storms

They call them rain bombs. A new breed of severe storm fueled by a record hot atmosphere. One capable of dumping 2-4 inches of rainfall an hour and generating voracious flash floods that can devour homes and cars in just minutes. And in southeast Texas, the rain bombs have been going off like gangbusters.

In this week’s most recent iteration of flaring, climate change induced, storms, a region north of Houston and South of Dallas saw flood after flood after flood. Now, hundreds of people have been forced to abandon inundated homes, thousands of cars have been submerged, and seven people are dead. Rainfall totals for the region over the past seven days have averaged between 7 and 10 inches. But local amounts in the most intense bombification zones have come in at 16, 19, and even as high as 30 inches in Washington County. All time record rainfall totals that might be associated with a powerful hurricane. Floods that would typically happen only once every 500 years. But in the new moisture-laden atmosphere of a record warm world, a garden variety thunderstorm now has enough atmospheric oomph to frequently set off what were once multi-century floods.

Source: New Extreme Climate to Hurl More Rain Bombs at Texas, Light off Another Record West Coast Heatwave | robertscribbler

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Sierra Club Releases 2016 Report Card for Arizona Legislature and Governor | Sierra Club

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Phoenix, AZ – The 52nd Legislature’s focus was on limiting safeguards for much of what makes Arizona special. Legislators sought to further weaken water laws, promoted unaccountable special taxing districts to accommodate unsustainable developments, clouded the future of rooftop solar, and passed bills to hinder protection of public lands via national monuments and via the use of impacts fees for regional parks and open space.

Bahr, Sandy“The Arizona Legislature is determined to allow harm to what makes Arizona special – unique and threatened rivers such as the San Pedro, endangered Mexican gray wolves, public lands around Grand Canyon,” said Sandy Bahr, Chapter Director for Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon (Arizona) Chapter. “Rather than taking advantage of our 300-plus days of sunshine and growing solar industry and the jobs its provides, legislators passed a bill to hinder installations and even considered proposed constitutional amendments that would have likely destroyed the rooftop solar industry in Arizona.”

Source: Sierra Club Releases 2016 Report Card for Arizona Legislature and Governor | Sierra Club

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Fishermen battling for Brexit | Environment | The Guardian

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GR:  As the human population grows and fish populations shrink, it is critical that we drastically cut our fishing activities.  These people are only concerned with immediate self-interest.  They ignorantly continue the human devastation of the Earth and scream for more.  Do they realize that their continued over-harvest will end their industry?

The EU referendum has united an often fractious industry, with skippers in ports from northern Scotland to Cornwall desperate to dump imposed quotasby Severin Carrell in Fraserburgh, Steven Morris in Newlyn and Henry McDonald in Lough Neagh. Main picture: Murdo MacLeodWilliam Whyte has a new flag flying from the rigging of his vast blue-hulled trawler, its fabric snapping in the brisk breeze coming in off the North Sea. It features the cartoon of a militant-looking fish wearing armour, a union jack shield at its waist and the legend “Fishing for Leave”.

Source: Salt in their veins and fire in their bellies: fishermen battling for Brexit | Environment | The Guardian

Record Rain Events a Global Pattern | Climate Denial Crock of the Week

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GR:  As predicted by scientists more than 30 years ago, the storms are growing stronger.  As the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans warm, the storms will continue to grow.

Climate denial:  “This weekend’s record flooding in Germany was a reminder of one of the most basic, first-order-physics predictions of climate science – warmer air holds more moisture. The pattern of increase in record breaking precipitation events is well documented and global, as my friend Stephan Rahmstorf reminded me this morning with a graph from a recent study of similar events.”

Potsdam University: Heavy rainfall events setting ever new records have been increasing strikingly in the past thirty years. While before 1980, multi-decadal fluctuations in extreme rainfall events are explained by natural variability, a team of scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research detected a clear upward trend in the past few decades towards more unprecedented daily rainfall events. They find the worldwide increase to be consistent with rising global temperatures which are caused by greenhouse-gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Short-term torrential rains can lead to high-impact floodings.

More at: Record Rain Events a Global Pattern | Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Dishonest Donald Denies The Ongoing California Drought as Lake Mead Hits New All-Time Record Low | robertscribbler

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We now find that under the current amount of warming, the probability of a severe drought year has approximately doubled. — Park Williams, assistant research professor at Columbia University’…

Source: Dishonest Donald Denies The Ongoing California Drought as Lake Mead Hits New All-Time Record Low | robertscribbler

Philippines New President Duterte Supports Population Control

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Philippines Population Control Needed

GR:  Joe Bish of the Population Media Center points out that “the advocacy group Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD) have voiced support of improved implementation of the RH Law, while sensibly tacking away from a 3 child policy. It is likely that the RH Law, as written, contains a default 2-child or less policy anyway — we already know that when a country’s women have the means and agency to achieve reproductive self-determination most will choose to have 2 children or fewer. Recall Iran, Thailand and Japan, just to name a few.”

Like many other countries, the Philippines needs to control its population growth.  Though the country’s economic growth is strong, at least 25% of the population remains poor.  If the country’s current 1.6% growth rate holds, the population will double in 44 years.  Poverty expansion is very likely.

DuterteBusiness World Online:  “INCOMING president Rodrigo R. Duterte will aggressively implement the country’s family planning law to push his economic growth agenda, one of his aides said on Monday, in a move that could add to simmering tensions with the Catholic Church.

Congress passed a law in “December 2012, despite opposition from Church leaders, allowing public health centers to hand out contraceptives such as condoms and pills, and teach sex education in schools.

Mr. Duterte is pushing for “rapid and sustained implementation” of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012, said Ernesto dM. Pernia, whom Mr. Duterte has named as his economic planning secretary.

“If you enable families to limit and phase their children to what they can afford and what they can provide for, then that’s going to have an effect on poverty and inequality,” Mr. Pernia said in an interview with ANC.

Such a beautiful land, should not be spoiled by overpopulation and poverty.

Homeowners kept in dark about climate change risk to houses, says report | Environment | The Guardian

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GR:  Efforts by governments to support development by hiding important information from consumers is rampant in the U. S.  I am not surprised that this is true in Austrailia as I assume that it is true worldwide.

Guardian:  “The risk that houses in some areas of Australia are likely to become uninsurable, dilapidated and uninhabitable due to climate change is kept hidden from those building and buying property along Australia’s coasts and in bushfire zones, a Climate Institute report says.

“The report says there is untapped and unshared data held by regulators, state and local governments, insurers and banks on the level of risk, but that most homebuyers and developers are not told about the data and do not have access to it. The full scale of risk may only be recognised through disaster or damage, or when insurance premiums become unaffordable Climate Institute report“Even when public authorities, financial institutions and other stakeholders possess information about current and future risk levels, they are sometimes unwilling, and sometimes unable, to share it with all affected parties,” the report released on Monday says.”

Source: Homeowners kept in dark about climate change risk to houses, says report | Environment | The Guardian

How fracking can contribute to climate change | Environment | The Guardian

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One of the justifications for fracking is the use of natural gas as a bridging fuel between coal and a low-carbon future. However natural gas is mostly methane, which has strong global warming impacts in its own right. Natural gas therefore only provides climate benefits over coal if the leakage is no more than 2-3%.

We cannot measure leaks from every pipe joint. One alternative is to measure the sum of lots of leaks from a distance. Flights over US shale gas fields reveal large methane sources, but these areas also have cattle farms that produce methane and the two sources need to be separated.

Source: How fracking can contribute to climate change | Environment | The Guardian