[✔️] March 30, 2024 Global Warming News | Idaho report, Food costs up with heat, Research paper, Mental stress, Bombay Beach, 2015 Kich- Christie

Sat Mar 30 11:20:31 EDT 2024

/*March*//*30, 2024*/

/[ resiliency projections ]/
*Idaho 2C Climate Outlook: NCA5 Update*
American Resiliency
Mar 28, 2024
The NCA5 outlook for Idaho is high-change, but in your most populated 
areas you do show some serious potential for resilience building.  Let 
me walk you through the projected changes to seasons, precipitation, 
snowpack, and fire risk.

Here's a link to the NCA5
https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/

Join our Discord:
https://discord.gg/F3n32TJ5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hRggKUELCQ

/[ Journalist Kate Yoder ]/
*Extreme Heat Is Driving Up Food Prices — and It’s Only Going to Get Worse*
New research shows that climate change is already fueling heatflation.
By Kate Yoder , GRIST
Published March 29, 2024
Sometimes climate change appears where you least expect it — like the 
grocery store. Food prices have climbed 25 percent over the past four 
years, and Americans have been shocked by the growing cost of staples 
like beef, sugar, and citrus.
While many factors, like supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, 
have contributed to this increase, extreme heat is already raising food 
prices, and it’s bound to get worse, according to a recent study 
published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. The 
analysis found that heatflation could drive up food prices around the 
world by as much as 3 percentage points per year in just over a decade 
and by about 2 percentage points in North America. For overall 
inflation, extreme weather could lead to anywhere from a 0.3 to 1.2 
percentage point increase each year depending on how many carbon 
emissions countries pump into the atmosphere.

Though that might sound small, it’s actually “massive,” according to 
Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. “That’s 
half of the Fed’s overall goal for inflation,” he said, referencing the 
Federal Reserve’s long-term aim of limiting it to 2 percent. The Labor 
Department recently reported that consumer prices climbed 3.2 percent 
over the past 12 months.

The link between heat and rising food prices is intuitive — if wheat 
starts withering and dying, you can bet flour is going to get more 
expensive. When Europe broiled in heat waves in 2022, it pushed up food 
prices that were already soaring due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 
(known as the breadbasket of Europe), researchers at the Europe Central 
Bank and Potsdam Institute in Germany found in the new study. Europe saw 
a record-breaking 9.2 percent inflation that year, and the summer heat 
alone, which hurt soy, sunflower, and maize harvests, might have been 
responsible for almost a full percentage point of that increase.
To figure out how climate change might drive inflation in the future, 
the researchers analyzed monthly price indices for goods across 121 
countries over the past quarter-century. No place on the planet looks 
immune. Countries in North Africa and the Middle East, where hot 
temperatures already push the comfortable limits of some crops, are 
expected to see some of the biggest price shocks.

The study’s results were striking, Wagner said, but at the same time 
very believable. He thinks the calculations are probably on the 
conservative end of the spectrum: “I wouldn’t be surprised if follow-up 
studies actually came up with even higher numbers.”

It adds up to a troubling picture for the future affordability of food. 
“The coronavirus pandemic demonstrated how sensitive supply changes are 
to disruption and how that disruption can awaken inflation,” David A. 
Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown University Law 
Center, wrote in an email. “The disruptive effects of climate change are 
orders of magnitude greater than those of the pandemic and will cause 
economic dislocation on a far greater scale.”

The world began paying attention to the dynamic between climate change 
and higher prices, or “climateflation,” in March 2022, soon after Russia 
invaded Ukraine, when the German economist Isabel Schnabel coined the 
term in a speech warning that the world faced “a new age of energy 
inflation.” A few months later, Grist coined the term “heatflation” in 
an article about how blistering temperatures were driving up food prices.

The difference between the terms is akin to “global warming” vs. 
“climate change,” with one focused on hotter temperatures and the other 
on broader effects. Still, “heatflation” might be the more appropriate 
term, Wagner said, given that price effects from climate change appear 
to come mostly from extreme heat. The new study didn’t find a strong 
link between shifts in precipitation and inflation.

The research lends some credibility to the title of the landmark climate 
change bill that President Joe Biden signed in 2022, the Inflation 
Reduction Act. While it’s an open joke that the name was a marketing 
term meant to capitalize on Americans’ concerns about rising prices, it 
might be more fitting, in the end, than people expected. “We shouldn’t 
be making fun of the name Inflation Reduction Act, because in the long 
run, it is exactly the right term to use,” Wagner said.
https://truthout.org/articles/extreme-heat-is-driving-up-food-prices-and-its-only-going-to-get-worse/ 

- -

[ /See the research journal /*communications *earth & environment ]
*Global warming and heat extremes to enhance inflationary pressures*
Maximilian Kotz, Friderike Kuik, Eliza Lis & Christiane Nickel
Communications Earth & Environment volume 5, Article number: 116 (2024) 
Cite this article
6114 Accesses
1335 Altmetric
*Abstract*

    Climate impacts on economic productivity indicate that climate
    change may threaten price stability. Here we apply fixed-effects
    regressions to over 27,000 observations of monthly consumer price
    indices worldwide to quantify the impacts of climate conditions on
    inflation. Higher temperatures increase food and headline inflation
    persistently over 12 months in both higher- and lower-income
    countries. Effects vary across seasons and regions depending on
    climatic norms, with further impacts from daily temperature
    variability and extreme precipitation. Evaluating these results
    under temperature increases projected for 2035 implies upwards
    pressures on food and headline inflation of 0.92-3.23 and 0.32-1.18
    percentage-points per-year respectively on average globally
    (uncertainty range across emission scenarios, climate models and
    empirical specifications). Pressures are largest at low latitudes
    and show strong seasonality at high latitudes, peaking in summer.
    Finally, the 2022 extreme summer heat increased food inflation in
    Europe by 0.43-0.93 percentage-points which warming projected for
    2035 would amplify by 30-50%.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-01173-x

/[ Portland, Maine - thoughtful press ]/
*Among other impacts, climate change will affect our collective psyche, 
scientists say*
Efforts to close Maine's gap between mental health needs and services 
must account for the increasing needs driven by climate change, a 
scientist says.
Penelope Overton
Press Herald
March 28, 2024
Climate change is sinking into our psyche, one way or the other, but few 
of us – not even climate scientists – are trained to deal with the 
resulting feelings of grief and hopelessness, a climate researcher told 
scientists and advocates Thursday.
Susanne Moser, who lectures on climate change adaptation, science and 
policy interactions at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and 
Antioch University of New England, was the keynote speaker at the annual 
Maine Sustainability & Water Conference in Augusta.
“We’re from New England, right, so what do we do? We put up a stiff 
upper lip and think well that’s not my issue,” Moser said. “Well let’s 
just acknowledge it’s been a tough year in Maine. Many of you have lived 
through the extreme storm events of last year.”

About a third of the luncheon crowd that gathered to hear Moser speak at 
the Augusta Civic Center raised their hand when she asked who had been 
directly impacted by the December and January storms. She considers 
these people trauma victims, even though we don’t think of them that way.

“None of us are trained on how to deal with that,” Moser said. “But 
there are things that we can do.”
Improving individual and community resiliency is paramount to avoid 
professional burnout among the climate scientists, nonprofit advocates, 
government and community officials, and first responders who must help 
Maine chart a safe path into a precarious future, Moser said.
Moser likened the need for climate scientists to manage their anxiety 
amid a spate of bad news – such as the record-setting world temperatures 
or federal disaster declarations in Maine last year – to the need for an 
airline traveler to put on their own oxygen mask before trying to help 
others.

And the others will need it, especially Maine’s young people, Moser said.

Earlier this month, scientists who advise the Maine Climate Council 
talked about climate change’s impact on Mainers’ mental and physical 
health, the need to prepare to help those who can’t adapt, and the need 
to communicate climate information with hope.
“We see increasing evidence for a wide range of adverse mental health 
impacts from direct exposure to a climate hazard, such as an extreme 
storm or heat wave, as well as indirectly through climate anxiety,” said 
Rebecca Lincoln, a toxicologist with the Maine Center for Disease 
Control and Prevention.

Efforts to close Maine’s persistent gap between its mental health needs 
and services must account for the increasing needs driven by climate 
change, Lincoln said. Emergency preparedness must include increased 
mental health services as natural disasters become more frequent.

For some, resiliency will not come easy. Maine state geologist Steve 
Dickson warned about the impact that a changing sense of place will have 
on some Mainers, especially those who earn their living from fishing, 
farming or the forests.
“We need to prepare for the inability of some to adapt – that burden 
falls more heavily on some than others,” Dickson said. “We need to work 
on the loss of cultural heritage, including a sense of place that is so 
important here in Maine.”

Susie Arnold, the director of the Center for Climate and Community at 
Island Institute, a nonprofit based in Rockland, said the question she 
is asked most frequently when she delivers public talks about climate 
change is if there is anything that gives her hope in the face of 
looming climate collapse.

As a scientist, Arnold decided to do some digging into hope.

“It turns out that hope is more than a feeling,” said Arnold, co-chair 
of the Climate Council’s science and technical subcommittee. “Just as we 
can measure changes in climate variability, scientists can also measure 
hope … It can be taught, it can be learned, and thankfully it can be 
restored.”

The key difference between hope and optimism, or wishful thinking, is 
action, Arnold said. Climate anxiety has been shown to lead to both 
action and paralysis, research shows. But hope leads to more climate 
action than anxiety, without the risk of emotional paralysis.

Even though we are scientists, Arnold said, “we must be hopegivers, too.”
https://www.pressherald.com/2024/03/28/among-other-impacts-climate-change-will-affect-our-collective-psyche-scientists-say/

/[ NYTimes - photos and essay - crash is global. ]/
*The Secret to Surviving Climate Apocalypse*
By Jaime Lowe
Photographs by Nicholas Albrecht
March 29, 2024
There are two ways to experience the town of Bombay Beach, Calif., as a 
visitor: gawk at the spectacle or fall into the vortex. Thousands of 
tourists cruise through each year, often without getting out of their 
cars to see decaying art installations left over from an annual 
mid-March gathering of artists, photographers and documentarians known 
jokingly as the Bombay Beach Biennale. When I went to the town for the 
first time in 2021, I was looking for salvation in this weird desert 
town on the Salton Sea south of Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National 
Park. I dropped in, felt vibes and left with stories. I stared at the 
eccentric large-scale art, posted photos on Instagram of ruin porn and a 
hot pink sign on the beach that said, “If you’re stuck, call Kim.” I 
posed in front of a mountain of painted televisions, swung on a swing 
over the edge of the lake’s retreating shoreline and explored the 
half-buried, rusted-out cars that make up an abandoned ersatz drive-in 
movie theater. On that trip, it felt as if I were inside a “Mad Max” 
simulation, but I was only scratching the surface of the town.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/29/opinion/climate-art-salton-sea-bombay-beach.html

/[The news archive - Koch-ruption ]/
/*March 30, 2015 */

March 30, 2015: The Washington Post connects the dots between New Jersey 
Governor Chris Christie's ties to the Koch brothers and his state's 
abandonment of clean-energy efforts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/wind-power-or-hot-air-foes-question-christies-shift-on-clean-energy/2015/03/29/f8faf97e-d3e3-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html 

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