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<font size="+2"><i><b>December 7, 2021</b></i></font><br>
<br>
<i>[ this top story will likely be repeated ]</i><br>
<b>Extreme weather and pandemic help drive global food prices to
46-year high</b><br>
Current high food prices, combined with the ongoing pandemic, will
make the global food supply highly vulnerable to extreme weather
shocks in 2022.<br>
<br>
by JEFF MASTERS -- DECEMBER 6, 2021<br>
Global food prices in November rose 1.2% compared to October, and
were at their highest level since June 2011 (unadjusted for
inflation), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) said in its monthly report on December 2. After adjusting for
inflation, 2021 food prices averaged for the 11 months of 2021 are
the highest in 46 years.<br>
<br>
The high prices come despite expectations that total global
production of grains in 2021 will set an all-time record: 0.7%
higher than the previous record set in 2020. But because of higher
demand (in part, from an increased amount of wheat and corn used to
feed animals), the 2021 harvest is not expected to meet consumption
requirements in 2021/2022, resulting in a modest drawdown in global
grain stocks by the end of 2022, to their lowest levels since
2015/2016.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://i1.wp.com/yaleclimateconnections.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/1121_fao-food-price.jpg?w=974&ssl=1">https://i1.wp.com/yaleclimateconnections.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/1121_fao-food-price.jpg?w=974&ssl=1</a><br>
<br>
The November increase in global food prices was largely the result
of a surge in prices of grains and dairy products, with wheat prices
a dominant driver.<br>
<blockquote>Drought & heat-related crop insurance payouts now
top $2.6B in the United States -- and quickly rising. Most losses?
Not in the West, but in the Northern Tier.<br>
<br>
The overall economic cost expected to exceed $5B. <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://twitter.com/SteveBowenWx/status/1466102990411083786">https://twitter.com/SteveBowenWx/status/1466102990411083786</a><br>
</blockquote>
<b>Extreme weather a key factor in high food prices</b><br>
Food prices are complex, with weather, biofuel policies, trade
policies, grain stocking policies, and fluctuating international
financial conditions all important factors. High fuel prices, supply
chain disruptions resulting from the pandemic, and high fertilizer
prices are all contributing to the current high global food prices.<br>
<br>
According to Reuters, global fertilizer prices have increased 80%
this year, reaching their highest levels since the 2008-2009 global
financial crisis. Primary causes of the current high prices include
extreme weather events (particularly the February cold wave in Texas
and Hurricane Ida in August), which disrupted U.S. fertilizer
production, and the high cost in Europe of natural gas, a key
component in producing fertilizer). Fertilizer shortages threaten to
reduce grain harvests in 2022, according to CF Industries, a major
fertilizer producer.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/12/extreme-weather-and-pandemic-help-drive-global-food-prices-to-46-year-high/">https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/12/extreme-weather-and-pandemic-help-drive-global-food-prices-to-46-year-high/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ most wildfires and highest CO2 ] </i><br>
<b>From Siberia to the U.S, wildfires broke emissions records this
year</b><br>
By Kate Abnett - December 6, 2021<br>
BRUSSELS, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Wildfires produced a record amount of
carbon emissions in parts of Siberia, the United States and Turkey
this year, as climate change fanned unusually intense blazes, the
European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said on
Monday.<br>
<br>
Wildfires emitted 1.76 billion tonnes of carbon globally in 2021,
Copernicus said. That's equivalent to more than double Germany's
annual CO2 emissions.<br>
Some of the worst-hit hotspots recorded their highest wildfire
emissions for any January-November period since Copernicus' dataset
began in 2003, including parts of Siberia's Yakutia region, Turkey,
Tunisia and the western United States...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/siberia-us-wildfires-broke-emissions-records-this-year-2021-12-06/">https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/siberia-us-wildfires-broke-emissions-records-this-year-2021-12-06/</a><br>
<p>.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[ Language changes</i><i> and word counts ]</i><br>
<b>The language of climate is evolving, from ‘change’ to
‘catastrophe’</b><br>
“Climate emergency” was used just 17 times prior to January 2019,
but 283 times since.<br>
BY TALIB VISRAM -- 12-6-21<br>
“Global warming” is out. “Climate catastrophe” is in.<br>
<br>
The language of climate change has shifted over time, according to
data collected by language learning platform Babbel, and the Media
and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) at the University of Colorado
at Boulder. Particularly, the words and phrases more frequently
utilized by media outlets reflect the worsening of the crisis,
bringing more intense terms like “catastrophe” and “emergency” into
the mainstream lexicon, as opposed to subtler choices prevalent at
the beginning of the 2000s. Linguistic experts say the media’s
choices, which have been influenced by scientists and organizations
like the UN, are important because they convey to the public an
increasingly urgent threat.<br>
<br>
Babbel and MeCCO, a volunteer-led initiative that tracks climate
terminology in the press and its impact on popular opinion, scanned
news stories from January 2006 to October 2021 in major U.S.
publications, including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall
Street Journal, and found some recognizable trends. Notably,
“climate catastrophe” has been used 1.5 times more in 2021 than in
2020. They did the same study with British publications, including
The Guardian, The Times, and The Sun, where this trend was even more
apparent: they used it three times more.<br>
<br>
Another noticeable pattern is the fading-out of “global warming” and
“greenhouse effect.” Publications used “global warming” 157 times in
October 2021, versus 378 times at its peak in June 2008, a fall of
141%—despite an increase in climate reporting. “Greenhouse effect”
peaked in 2008 and 2010, then dropped off and never regained the
same usage levels. Even the once-prevailing phrase “climate change”
has dipped in usage, by 133% less than at its peak in January 2008.<br>
<br>
Word choices by the press in this field matter because they are
influential on public opinion, says Todd Ehresmann, senior linguist
at Babbel. “News outlets have a strict duty to accurately represent
the true state of things,” he says. “By using phrases that reflect
the urgency of the situation, media outlets are conveying the
importance of addressing these issues.” As the climate situation has
escalated, those more emphatic and urgent terms like “emergency” and
“catastrophe,” as well as “climate crisis” and “climate breakdown,”
are necessary.<br>
<br>
Similarly, Ehresmann says “global warming” is no longer accurate
enough. As temperatures have risen by 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit per
decade over the past 40 years, a more accurate term is “global
heating.” In 2018, a leading climate scientist at the U.K. Met
Office declared that was the preferred term, and a German scientist,
founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research,
agreed: “‘Global warming’ doesn’t capture the scale of destruction,”
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber said. “Speaking of hothouse Earth is
legitimate.” Meanwhile, “greenhouse effect,” prevalent in the early
2000s in the years following An Inconvenient Truth, is a clearly
defined scientific term, but doesn’t have a sense of urgency or
trigger an emotional response.<br>
<br>
2019 seemed to be a shifting point for the linguistics of climate.
The UN started to use more emphatic language, such as in the
Secretary General’s address at the Climate Action Summit. Groups
such as Al Gore’s Climate Reality project, as well as Greenpeace and
the Sunrise Movement, petitioned news organizations to alter their
language; there were even protests outside of The New York Times
building to force the change. In May 2019, The Guardian officially
changed its style guide. “The phrase ‘climate change’ sounds rather
passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a
catastrophe for humanity,” said The Guardian‘s editor-in-chief,
Katharine Viner. International newspapers such as EFE in Spain, and
The Hindustan in India, also made official changes.<br>
<br>
Babbel did this research because, as a language app, it’s concerned
with how popular speech continually evolves. And, media outlets are
a “barometer” of why we tend to talk a certain way. “The language we
choose conveys our attitudes towards the topic,” Ehresmann says. “By
normalizing this language, we are galvanizing ourselves against the
mortal threat of rising global temperatures.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90702024/the-language-of-climate-is-evolving-from-change-to-catastrophe">https://www.fastcompany.com/90702024/the-language-of-climate-is-evolving-from-change-to-catastrophe</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ Look to the future to record the past ]</i><br>
<b>This Mysterious, Indestructible 'Black Box' Will Tell The Future
What Happened to Us</b><br>
PETER DOCKRILL -- 6 DECEMBER 2021<br>
At a distant end of the Earth – hidden somewhere on the remote
Australian island of Tasmania – a strange structure is about to
witness and record the end of the world as we know it.<br>
The project, called Earth's Black Box, is a giant steel
installation, soon to be filled with hard drives powered by solar
panels, each of them documenting and preserving a stream of
real-time scientific updates and analysis on the gloomiest issues
the world faces.<br>
<br>
Information related to climate change, species extinction,
environmental pollution, and impacts on health will all be
chronicled in the monolithic structure – so that if some future
society might one day discover the archive, they'll be able to piece
together what happened to our planet.<br>
<br>
"Unless we dramatically transform our way of life, climate change
and other man-made perils will cause our civilization to crash," the
Earth's Black Box website explains.<br>
<br>
"Earth's Black Box will record every step we take towards this
catastrophe. Hundreds of data sets, measurements and interactions
relating to the health of our planet will be continuously collected
and safely stored for future generations."<br>
<br>
In a sense, the box, which evokes the brutalist design of Norway's
famous 'Doomsday Vault', actually serves a somewhat complementary
purpose.<br>
<br>
While the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a fortress designed to
protect a vital backup of the world's seeds in case the worst ever
happens, Earth's Black Box is conceived as an ongoing record of the
world's trajectory towards a dire predicament.<br>
<br>
"The idea is if the Earth does crash as a result of climate change,
this indestructible recording device will be there for whoever's
left to learn from that," Jim Curtis, executive creative director at
marketing agency Clemenger BBDO, told the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation (ABC).<br>
<br>
"It's also there to hold leaders to account – to make sure their
action or inaction is recorded."<br>
<br>
The project – a collaboration between Clemenger BBDO, creative
agency The Glue Society, and researchers at the University of
Tasmania – is due to be completed in its undisclosed location in
early 2022, but the box's systems are already partially active, in
that they are 'live recording' environmental updates in a beta test.<br>
<br>
Part of the point of the exercise, the box's makers say, is to help
nudge humanity away from doomsday-like scenarios, with the mere
existence of the installation hopefully encouraging today's society
to act more progressively and responsibly in terms of climate action
and environmental stewardship.<br>
<br>
"When people know they're being recorded, it does have an influence
on what they do and say," The Glue Society's Jonathan Kneebone told
the ABC.<br>
<br>
"That's our role if anything, to be something in the back of
everyone's mind."<br>
<br>
While some might belittle Earth's Black Box as a PR stunt designed
to capture people's attention – as opposed to a serious scientific
documentation project – there's no doubting the world urgently needs
more attention and action on these issues, no matter how those
eyeballs are secured.<br>
<br>
In a world where ice sheets are destabilizing in response to
unprecedented levels of global warming, where greenhouse gas
emissions are headed the wrong way, where water is running out, and
where animals are vanishing with such speed that scientists say
we've entered our planet's sixth mass extinction, this is not the
time to look away.<br>
<br>
"The purpose of the device is to provide an unbiased account of the
events that lead to the demise of the planet, hold accountability
for future generations, and inspire urgent action," the Earth's
Black Box makers say.<br>
<br>
"How the story ends is completely up to us."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.sciencealert.com/this-mysterious-indestructible-black-box-will-tell-the-future-what-happened-to-us">https://www.sciencealert.com/this-mysterious-indestructible-black-box-will-tell-the-future-what-happened-to-us</a><br>
<p>- - <br>
</p>
<i>[ See what they are doing .]</i><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.earthsblackbox.com/">https://www.earthsblackbox.com/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ Photos from San Francisco ]</i><br>
<b>Photos: King Tides Offer Window Into a Bay Area Marked by the
Climate Crisis</b><br>
SF NEWS -- 5 DECEMBER 2021<br>
MATT CHARNOCK<br>
King tides — which average two feet higher than normal tides —
flooded parts of San Francisco this weekend. And by doing so, they
gave us a glimpse into how the city might look in the future with
rising sea levels.<br>
Over the weekend, the moon, Earth, and sun all came into a specific
alignment, causing an unusually strong gravitational pull that made
Bay Area coasts see rare high tides. In some areas like Half Moon
Bay, the highest lunar tides of the year rose to 6.7 feet 9 a.m. —
before dramatically plunging to about 1.5 feet lower than usual at 4
p.m., according to KRON4. While king tides are normal occurrences
that can happen multiple times a year, they exacerbate sea level
rise and have the potential to cause unusually severe coastal
flooding.<br>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/KJBaylor/status/1466859178798968833">https://twitter.com/KJBaylor/status/1466859178798968833</a></p>
<p>Twitter was inundated with images showing a temporarily flooded
San Francisco. Sidewalks along the Embarcadero were wet with sea
water; those who chose to catch their breath on benches along Pier
39 found their feet soaked; Ocean Beach saw a recent sand
restoration project effectively disappear back into the ocean.
(Other parts of the Bay Area also experienced these exaggerated
tides — as evident by this tweet of cyclists riding through a
partially submerged San Francisco Bay Trail.)<br>
<br>
Over the next three decades, the San Francisco Bay could swell by
up nearly two feet — a figure that could more than triple by the
end of the century. Because of this looming climate catastrophe,
SF Port Commission released a report in November saying the City
will need to raise parts of the Embarcadero by some 6 feet to
avoid the worst of the flooding, per KQED.<br>
<br>
So... let this weekend's king tides serve as a concrete example —
albeit a tempered one — of what's to come, should we not steer
ourselves away from the worst of the climate crisis. And because
pictures really are worth a thousand words, especially as they
pertain to natural phenomena, here are some of the most affecting
images of Saturday and Sunday's king tides.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://sfist.com/2021/12/05/photos-king-tides-offer-window-into-a-bay-area-marked-by-the-climate-crisis/">https://sfist.com/2021/12/05/photos-king-tides-offer-window-into-a-bay-area-marked-by-the-climate-crisis/</a></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[The news archive - looking back]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming
December 7, 1999</b></font><br>
December 7, 1999: The New York Times reports:<br>
<blockquote>"In a concession to environmentalists, the Ford Motor
Company said today that it would pull out of the Global Climate
Coalition, a group of big manufacturers and oil and mining
companies that lobbies against restrictions on emissions of gases
linked to global warming.<br>
<br>
"Ford's decision is the latest sign of divisions within heavy
industry over how to respond to global warming. British Petroleum
and Shell pulled out of the coalition two years ago following
criticisms from environmental groups in Europe, where there has
been more public concern than in the United States. Most
scientists believe that emissions from automobiles, power plants
and other man-made sources are warming the Earth's atmosphere.<br>
<br>
"British Petroleum and Shell were so-called general, or junior,
members of the lobbying group. Ford is the first company belonging
to the board that has withdrawn, and the first American company to
leave the coalition, said Frank Maisano, a spokesman for the
coalition."<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/07/business/ford-announces-its-withdrawal-from-global-climate-coalition.html">http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/07/business/ford-announces-its-withdrawal-from-global-climate-coalition.html</a><br>
<br>
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