[✔️] August 8, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Food is basic, FEWS NET, Beckisphere, Opinion on Big Oil, Greenland Ice Shelf, 2012 Spitzer interviews Hansen

Tue Aug 8 06:31:39 EDT 2023

/*August 8*//*, 2023*/

/[ food is basic ]/
*The climate wrecking ball striking food supply*
Ayurella Horn-Muller
Extreme weather events and our warming planet are primed to strike 
commodities and the food supply like never before.

Why it matters: The recent global heat wave, deadly floods across 
China's grain belt and wildfires that spanned several continents have 
put a spotlight on how climate change may wreak havoc on the world's 
most-consumed food crops.

The big picture: Studies show that future climate projections indicate 
significant reductions of crop yields in high-risk regions.

Crop shortages may also put upward pressure on food prices, which 
emerged as a major source of pain for consumers during the current 
inflation spike, and during Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Zoom out: Multiple economists told Axios that the long-term threat of 
climate change to food supply and consequences for costs of major crop 
commodities increasingly calls for deliberate climate mitigation and 
adaptation measures.

What they're saying: "The literature is pretty clear" that if the 
observed increased frequency of extreme weather events continues, it 
will hurt crop yields in particular, Roderick Rejesus, agricultural 
economist at North Carolina State University, told Axios.

"It's possible we could face unprecedented market impacts if we don't do 
anything in terms of mitigation and adapting," Rejesus said.
State of play: Corn, wheat and rice together make up a major portion of 
the human diet, accounting for roughly 42% of the world's food calories.

A 2022 Scientific Reports paper found that under global warming by 2°C 
(3.6°F) and relative to 1986–2005, corn yield will decrease worldwide, 
and increase little under global warming by 1.5 °C (2.7°F) — with the 
loss risk of corn by 2°C "much more serious."
Reality check: The latest UN climate change report suggests that human 
actions may have rendered the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C target, and 
possibly even its 2°C benchmark, infeasible, Axios' Andrew Freedman 
reported.

The UN report also found that climate change has fueled "mostly 
negative" yield impacts across sub-Saharan Africa, South America, the 
Caribbean, southern Asia and western and southern Europe, per Carbon Brief.
How it works: When it comes to consumer prices, what we pay for the food 
we eat isn't only reflective of yields, but the whole supply chain.

Between the lines: Events that lead to supply chain disruptions — like 
the recent suspension of the Black Sea grain deal, the war in Ukraine, 
or severe drought in major production regions — can create volatility 
and uncertainty in the global market, which can increase commodity prices.

One example: Rice production in India, the world's largest rice 
exporter, has been constrained by both droughts and heavy rains. On July 
20, the Indian government banned exports on non-basmati white rice, 
which is already pushing up international prices.
"We should be anticipating some drastic supply shocks," Seungki Lee, 
agricultural economist at Ohio State University, told Axios.
Zoom in: Price hikes are more imminently visible as a result of extreme 
weather events. But in the long run, when the contribution of recent 
climate trends slowing down crop yield growth compounds with lags in 
production growth, it can have a slow-burn effect on consumer costs, 
according to Cornell economist Ariel Ortiz-Bobea.

The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2023-2032 report projects global 
agricultural and food production to continue to increase over the next 
ten years, but at a slower pace of growth than the previous decade.
"Temperatures are higher, productivity is lower. The impacts are already 
here. They've already happened," said Ortiz-Bobea.
Of note: Don’t forget the developing El Niño, which layers onto the 
impacts of climate change, and can have highly varying effects on yields.

A July report by Capital Economics projected that, when compared to 
soybeans and corn, global harvests of rice and wheat are the most 
at-risk during this El Niño.
Meanwhile, efforts to develop climate-resilient varieties of major crops 
are among leading adaptation measures pursued across the public and 
private sector.

Yes, but: Some experts, like Ortiz-Bobea, are skeptical of claims that 
U.S. agriculture is becoming more climate-resilient.

"With all the lip service that people are giving [development of 
drought-tolerant crops], I don't see it in the data," said Ortiz-Bobea, 
who led a 2021 study showing that global farming productivity is 21% 
lower than it would be without climate change.
Other emerging solutions include an increasing reliance on less-familiar 
crops that require less water — like sorghum, an ancient grain with 
drought-tolerant properties, Civil Eats reported.

The intrigue: Sorghum could be a promising alternative to some major 
crops. But it, along with grower incentives, has received much less 
research attention — and that must change, according to Corey Lesk, a 
Dartmouth College climate scientist and research associate.

He noted the same goes for other crops more popular in developing 
countries, like millet and cassava.
The bottom line: "It's pretty much every summer now that a 
record-breaking heatwave is happening, not just in one breadbasket, but 
multiple breadbaskets around the world," Lesk said. "We are currently 
heading into a climate regime that we have never seen before."
https://www.axios.com/2023/08/07/climate-commodities-food-supply

- -

/[ FEWS NET is the Famine Early Warning Systems Network  ]/
*Monitoring & forecasting acute food insecurity*
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) is a leading 
provider of early warning and analysis on acute food insecurity around 
the world.
Acute food insecurity refers to rapid-onset or short-term food 
insecurity of an extent that merits emergency response. Its severity is 
defined by assessing the degree to which households can meet basic 
survival needs and maintain normal livelihoods. The Integrated Food 
Security Phase Classification (IPC) phases mapped above represent FEWS 
NET’s analysis of the most likely acute food insecurity outcomes for 
near-term (4 months into the future) and medium-term (8 months into the 
future) projection periods.
https://fews.net/

- -

/[ see the latest ]/
*Search for Analysis*
As an early warning system, FEWS NET is dedicated to providing 
decision-makers with forward-looking information to guide their 
humanitarian response plans. Along with its regular monthly reports and 
maps, FEWS NET also produces alerts, special reports, and in-depth 
thematic products.
https://fews.net/report-search?sortBy=date&filters%5B0%5D%5Bidentifier%5D=type&filters%5B0%5D%5Bvalue%5D=report&filters%5B1%5D%5Bidentifier%5D=lang&filters%5B1%5D%5Bvalue%5D=en&filters%5B2%5D%5Bidentifier%5D=type&filters%5B2%5D%5Bvalue%5D=report&size=50

/[ The Beckisphere video is a smorgasbord of climate news stories 
https://youtu.be/df8qle-l2VQ  ]/
*INDIA picks CLEAN ENERGY over COAL. FIRST nuclear plant joins US grid 
in 30 YEARS! | RECAP*
Beckisphere Climate Corner
Aug 7, 2023  #climatechange #cleanenergy #news
If you like the work I do, please consider joining the Beckisphere 
Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/beckisphere or buying me a cup of 
coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/beckisphere. Remember to talk 
about the climate crisis every day and support your local news 
organizations!

Source list- https://www.notion.so/bca7ae1e28ae4e30bce5698821737bae

    Timestamps-
    00:00 Intro
    00:16 July was HOT
    01:28 AMOC collapse
    03:48 India energy
    04:56 Personal ad
    05:11 Canada's fossil fuel subsidies
    06:29 Britain's fossil fuel leases
    07:45 US drilling on public lands
    9:00 US clean energy transmission
    9:48 US nuclear plants
    11:50 Yemen oil tanker
    13:24 Closing notes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df8qle-l2VQ

/[  Opinion ] /
*Behind All the Talk, This Is What Big Oil Is Actually Doing*
Aug. 7, 2023
By Jason Bordoff
Mr. Bordoff is the founding director of the Center on Global Energy 
Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
If you’ve been listening to the world’s major energy companies over the 
past few years, you probably think the clean energy transition is well 
on its way. But with fossil fuel use and emissions still rising, it is 
not moving nearly fast enough to address the climate crisis.
In June, Shell became the latest of the big oil companies to curb plans 
to cut oil output, announcing that it will no longer reduce annual oil 
and gas production through the end of the decade. The company also 
raised its dividend, diverting money that could be used to develop clean 
energy. BP’s share prices surged this year when the company walked back 
its plan to reduce oil and gas output.

The industry can point to efforts to reduce emissions and pursue green 
energy technologies. But those efforts pale in comparison with what they 
are doing to maintain and enhance oil and gas production. As the 
International Energy Agency put it, investment by the industry in clean 
fuels “is picking up” but “remains well short of where it needs to be.”

Overall, oil and gas companies are projected to spend more than $500 
billion this year on identifying, extracting and producing new oil and 
gas supplies and even more on dividends to return record profits to 
shareholders, according to the I.E.A.

The industry has spent less than 5 percent of its production and 
exploration investments on low-emission energy sources in recent years, 
according to the I.E.A. Indeed, the fact that many companies (with some 
notable exceptions) seem to be prioritizing dividends, share buybacks 
and continued fossil fuel production over increasing their clean energy 
investments suggests they are unable or unwilling to power the 
transition forward.

Contrary to their rhetoric, the behavior of these companies suggests 
that they believe a low-carbon transition will not occur or they won’t 
be as profitable if it does.

Exxon Mobil recently noted in a regulatory filing that “it is highly 
unlikely that society would accept the degradation in global standard of 
living required” to achieve net-zero emissions. And while Shell claimed 
it was still committed to net zero by 2050, it made clear it also 
believed that achieving that goal was out of its hands: “If society is 
not net zero in 2050, as of today, there would be significant risk that 
Shell may not meet its target.”

This view may be understandable, given that the world is not on track to 
achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Absent major policy changes, the 
I.E.A. projects that oil and gas use will continue rising through the 
end of the decade and then plateau. Rising prosperity in developing and 
emerging-market nations requires enormous increases in energy use, and 
there are real tensions between those aspirations and decarbonization.

And even governments strongly committed to slowing climate change, 
including the Biden administration, have nonetheless encouraged energy 
companies to produce more oil to keep gasoline prices in check.

As temperatures around the Northern Hemisphere this summer reach levels 
testing the limits of human survival, will society accept the 
consequences of continued business as usual? History suggests that 
climate action will proceed “gradually and then suddenly,” as a 
character in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” says of bankruptcy. 
That’s what happened in 1970 when chronic smog and polluted waters 
spurred one in 10 Americans to take to the streets on the first Earth 
Day and propelled the passage of America’s landmark environmental laws.

The fact that shareholders seem to prefer that oil profits be 
distributed as dividends rather than reinvested more in low-carbon 
energy solutions suggests they are also skeptical about the industry’s 
ability to be as profitable in clean energy. Their behavior suggests a 
preference for investing in other companies they believe have a 
competitive advantage in those technologies.

The world will still use oil for decades even if it accelerates climate 
action — and even a net-zero world would still use some oil and gas, 
with technology able to capture emissions. Even if oil use falls, some 
oil companies thus seem to be planning to be among the last producers 
standing.

One problem with this is that not every company can be the last 
standing. Another is that many companies are not even taking the steps 
necessary to reduce emissions from their own oil and gas operations, 
which today far exceed the emissions from all of the world’s cars combined.

The seven major publicly traded oil and gas companies, like Shell and 
BP, known as the supermajors, produce only 15 percent of the world’s oil 
and gas, but as the I.E.A. has noted, they have “an outsize influence on 
industry practices and direction.” They also have the technological and 
engineering prowess to advance clean energy.

Most of the world’s oil and gas is supplied by companies totally or 
partly owned by governments, and many of them are also falling short in 
their climate efforts, as evidenced last month when several of the 
largest-producing countries reportedly blocked a Group of 20 agreement 
to reduce fossil fuel use and triple renewable energy by 2030. This is 
especially troubling because nationally owned companies can take a 
longer-term view and look beyond quarterly shareholder pressures, though 
they also face demands to satisfy national budget needs.

A successful transition will be easier to achieve if the big energy 
companies play a larger part in it. Low-carbon technologies such as 
carbon capture and hydrogen are well suited to the oil industry’s skills 
and capital budgets.

Industry leaders face a stark choice: Either match their rhetoric with 
actions demonstrating convincingly that they are prepared to invest at 
scale in clean energy or acknowledge that their plan is to be among the 
last producers and bet on a slower transition...

- -

    *One Comment *
    Carmel Fruit Farmer
    Aug. 7
    It is futile to shame corporations for chasing profits in any legal
    way possible- that is how capitalism works.  Such shaming may make
    an interesting article, but any positive result needs to come from
    the political backlash such journalism inspires.

    Perhaps the most fundamental measure of a Democracy's legitimacy
    lies in its ability to regulate capitalism in a way that allows it
    to function sustainably.,  Corporations are not organized to police
    themselves to serve the public good, or even support the long term
    survival of homo sapiens.   Short term profits are the key for the
    professional survival of management.   A functional government must
    regulate corporations to stop them from behaviors that are murderous
    of the public good.

    Our problem is that profits made from destroying our planet are used
    to manipulate our government not to act in the long term public
    interest.  If we fail to correct this quickly, we have no future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/opinion/oil-fossil-fuels-clean-energy.html 

/[ Ice Science  ]/
*Rapid Basal Channel Growth Beneath Greenland's Longest Floating Ice Shelf*
Ash Narkevic, Bea Csatho, Toni Schenk
First published: 09 June 2023
https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL103226

Rapid Basal Channel Growth Beneath Greenland's Longest Floating Ice Shelf
Ash Narkevic, Bea Csatho, Toni Schenk
First published: 09 June 2023

https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL103226Abstract

    Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier (N79) is one of the two main outlets
    for Greenland's largest ice stream, the Northeast Greenland Ice
    Stream, and is the more stable of the two, with no calving front
    retreat expected in the near future. Using a novel surface elevation
    reconstruction approach combining digital elevation models and laser
    altimetry, previously undetected local phenomena are identified
    complicating this assessment. N79 is found to have a complex network
    of basal channels that were largely stable between 1978 and 2012.
    Since then, an along-flow central basal channel has been growing
    rapidly, likely due to increased runoff and ocean temperatures. This
    incision threatens to decouple the glacier's northwestern and
    southeastern halves.

*Key Points**
**We created a novel ice surface elevation reconstruction with annual 
change rates by fusing altimetry and digital elevation models**
**
**A rapidly growing basal channel is identified near the grounding line 
of Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden glacier, with implications for stability**
**
**We believe this channel growth to be the result of warming ocean water 
and increased runoff leading to more intense meltwater plume activity*

    Plain Language Summary
    Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden Glacier (N79) has one of the longest floating
    ice tongues in Greenland and is one of two outlets for the island's
    longest ice stream. While many of Greenlands's outlet glaciers have
    been retreating due to climate change, it was believed that N79
    would remain relatively stable. By combining multiple data sources,
    we have created an improved reconstruction of the glacier, revealing
    previously overlooked features which may threaten that stability.
    Most notably, a large, rapidly growing along-flow channel was
    identified at the bottom of the ice shelf near the grounding line,
    which threatens to cut completely through the glacier. We attribute
    this behavior to the ice bottom topography and pre-existing patterns
    of stress in the ice interacting with warming ocean water and
    increasing meltwater discharge, focusing the melting of the ice
    tongue in specific locations.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL103226

/[The news archive - looking back at a classic discussion ]/
/*August 8, 2012 */
August 8, 2012: On Current TV's "Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer," NASA 
climate scientist James Hansen discusses the risk of climate change, and 
the concept of fee-and-dividend as a way to reduce emissions.

http://youtu.be/F6B6ovpWpTs

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