America's Food System Could Be More Vulnerable to Climate Change Than We Thought

Mother Jones - Tim McDonnell

New research quantifies the devastating impact of extreme weather on essential crops.

OMMB/Shutterstock

For billions of people around the world, the most immediate threat posed by climate change is at the dinner table, as staple crops face a steadily worsening onslaught of drought, heat waves, and other extreme weather events. The United States certainly isn't immune to these challenges; for proof, just look at California, where an unprecedented drought has cost the state's agriculture industry billions.
Still, the conventional thinking among many scientists is that developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia—where people are typically hit harder by food price spikes and generally more reliant on agriculture as a primary source of income—are the most vulnerable to food-related climate impacts.
A paper published today in Nature may add a wrinkle to that assumption. Scientists often track the impact that an individual weather disaster has on crops (again, see California), but the new research takes it a step further.
A team of scientists from Canada and the United Kingdom compiled the first-ever global tally of how weather disasters over the past 50 years cut into production of staple cereals. After merging a database of global weather records with a UN record of country-level crop production, the researchers found that, as a rule of thumb, droughts and heat waves typically cut a country's cereal production by 10 percent. That basically accords with predictions from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's predictions for agricultural vulnerability in the future.
But unexpectedly, the researchers also found that the impacts were 8 to 11 percent more severe in developed countries than in developing ones.
"That was a surprise to us," said Navin Ramankutty, an agricultural geographer at the University of British Columbia.
Ramankutty said it's not yet clear why droughts and heat waves tend to hit yields in the United States, Europe, and Australia harder than those in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. But he suspects it relates to how farmers set their priorities. In developed countries, the emphasis is often on maximizing profit with big monoculture farms that work great in good climates but get trashed when the weather turns sour. Farmers in developing countries, by contrast, may prioritize minimizing their risk, taking a smaller yield in exchange for better resilience.
Of course, these findings don't mean developing countries are out of harm's way. They still face major challenges from climate change, since comparatively small yield losses can have an outsized impact on local economies and food security. But Ramankutty says the new research shows that even in the developed world, farmers may be more at risk from climate change than anyone previously realized.

The Ethics Of Climate Change: A Primer

Washington Post - Christine Emba

A coal-fired power plant in Colstrip, Mont. (James Woodcock/Billings Gazette via Associated Press)

With a ratcheting up of awareness culminating in the Paris climate change conference, 2015 may have been the year that the threat of climate change was finally taken seriously. But a question remains: Who, if anyone, is most deserving of blame, and who should be held responsible?
Today, six of the top 10 greenhouse gas emitters are developing countries, with China the largest contributor at approximately 28 percent of the global total. Yet on the per capita level, the United States and Canada emit more than double the global average.
Pope Francis pointed out in his controversial encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si that, “regarding climate change, there are differentiated responsibilities.” He said greater attention should be given to the needs of the vulnerable in a debate often dominated by more powerful interests, and that in many cases, developed countries have caused harm to less wealthy nations while fueling their own economies.
Although developing nations like China and India are catching up in the emissions race, it was countries such as Great Britain and the United States that have led significant global warming over the past century, producing significant economic development that accrued mainly for their own citizens. From 1850 to the year 2011, the United States alone produced 27 percent of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions.
The least developed countries, on the other hand, emit the least carbon dioxide. But the effects of climate change — extreme weather, rising seas, higher food costs, increased risk of drought, fire and flood — tend to fall most heavily upon the global poor.
At the United Nations Climate Change conference, held in Paris in December, 196 countries approved a climate accord seeking to hold the increase in global average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. This is to be achieved through “nationally determined contributions” of emission reductions, created in the context of each country’s individual circumstances. In theory, this should allow developing countries to shoulder less of the burden. Richer countries have also pledged technology and financial resources to help less-advanced countries adopt cleaner energy sources and adapt to climate change.
Individually, the United States has recently begun to take action against companies seen as having irresponsibly hastened climate change or deceived the public about its risks. In late 2015, the New York attorney general launched an investigation into whether oil giant ExxonMobil lied to the public about the risks of climate change in order to increase profits. Just yesterday, the Obama administration filed a lawsuit accusing the German automaker Volkswagen of violating emissions laws.
Yet it’s not just corporations at fault, or even governments. Through our everyday actions, we are all at some level responsible for climate change and its impacts on future generations. The more uncomfortable question is whether some of us are more at fault than others.
What makes climate change a moral issue in the first place? Are developed countries more morally culpable than those still developing, and do ethical standards demand they shoulder a larger emissions-reduction burden than developing nations? Should organizations that deny or misinform the public about climate change be held at fault?

Researchers Advance Propulsion Toward Low-Carbon Aircraft

NASA - Nancy Smith Kilkenny

Hybrid Electric Aircraft Concept. Credit: NASA.

When Orville Wright traveled to Cleveland for the dedication of the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory in the 1940s, he had already witnessed the advancement of aircraft from his Kitty Hawk model to the winged machines that fought in World War II.
Today, the lab, now known as NASA Glenn Research Center, has engineers and scientists engaged in an agency-wide effort to develop alternative designs for large passenger aircraft using low-carbon propulsion technology that Wright may have never dreamed of.
Since the beginning, commercial planes have been powered by carbon-based fuels such as gasoline or kerosene. While these provide the energy to lift large commercial jets into the world’s airspace, electric power is now seen as a new frontier for providing thrust and power for flight.
Just as hybrid or turboelectric power has improved fuel efficiency in cars, boats and trains, aeronautical engineers are exploring how planes can be redesigned and configured with electrical power.
One of NASA’s goals is to help the aircraft industry shift from relying solely on gas turbines to using hybrid electric and turboelectric propulsion in order to reduce energy consumption, emissions and noise.
“Aircraft are highly complex machines,” says Jim Heidmann, manager for NASA’s Advanced Air Transport Technology project. “Moving toward alternative systems requires creating new aircraft designs as well as propulsion systems that integrate battery technologies and electromagnetic machines like motors and generators with more efficient engines.”
Glenn researchers are looking at power systems that generate electricity in place of, or in addition to, thrust at the turbine engine and then convert that electricity to be converted into thrust using fans at other places on the aircraft.
“These systems use electric motors and generators that work together with turbine engines to distribute power throughout the aircraft in order to reduce drag for a given amount of fuel burned,” says Amy Jankovsky, subproject lead engineer. “Part of our research is developing the lightweight machinery and electrical systems that will be required to make these systems possible.”
In addition to designing better motors, generators and integrated electrical system architectures, Glenn engineers are also researching the basic materials that go into those components. Research is being performed on the conductors inside, and the insulation around the wires. Along with studying the design of motors and the architecture of power electronics, engineers are improving magnetic materials and semi-conductors to make these motors and electronics lighter and more efficient.
“Our work is laying a foundation for planes that will require less fossil fuel in the future,” says Glenn Engineer Cheryl Bowman, a technical lead on the project. “Considering that the U.S. aviation industry carries over 700 million passengers every year, making each trip more fuel efficient (by up to 30 percent) can have a considerable impact on the nation’s total use of fossil fuels.”

Links

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What Does The Paris Agreement Mean For The World's Other 8 Million Species?

The Guardian - Jeremy Hance
In December, the world’s nations agreed on an aggressive plan to combat climate change. But what, if anything, will the landmark Paris agreement do for thousands of species already under threat from global warming?

A snorkeler encounters a whale shark. Photograph: Alamy

The word “biodiversity” is employed once in the Paris agreement’s 32 pages. “Forests” appears a few times, but “oceans”, like biodiversity, scores just a single appearance. There is no mention of extinction. Wildlife, coral reefs, birds, frogs, orchids, polar bears and pikas never show up anywhere in the document.
This is hardly surprising: the landmark agreement in Paris – the boldest yet to tackle climate change (which is saying something, but not nearly enough) – was contrived by one species for the benefit of one species. It was never meant to directly address the undeniable impacts of global warming on the world’s eight million or so other species – most of them still unnamed. But many experts say this doesn’t mean biodiversity won’t benefit from the agreement – especially if the 196 participants actually follow through on their plegdes and up their ambition quickly.

Chinstrap penguins in Half Moon Bay in the South Shetlands, Antarctica. Chinstrap penguin populations have plummeted in recent years with research pointing to climate change as a likely cause. Chinstrap penguins depend on krill populations, but these may be in decline due to less sea ice.

Photograph: Paul Goldstein/Exodus/REX/Shutterstock

“[The agreement] is critical for people and it is critical for biodiversity,” said Edward Perry, Birdlife’s climate change policy coordinator, who dubbed the passage of the Paris agreement in December “monumental.”
Most biodiversity experts concurred that the Paris agreement was an important step forward, but none thought it would be enough to counter the vast risks posed to biodiversity by global warming. Indeed a recent study in Science found that more than 5% of the world’s species will likely go extinct even if we manage to keep temperatures from rising more than 2C, the uppermost target outlined in Paris.
“[The Paris agreement] doesn’t go far enough, but that really misses the point,” said Nancy Knowlton, a coral reef expert with the Smithsonian Institution. “It moves us in the right direction, finally, and future efforts can be even more ambitious. To paraphrase Voltaire, we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Biodiversity in the oven
Scientists have identified thousands of species that have already been hit by global warming or will likely be in the near-future. For example, Edward Perry pointed to a recent scientific review by his organisation that found a quarter of the world’s most-researched birds have already been negatively impacted by climate impacts.
“According to climate projections, there will be more than twice as many losers than winners under climate change [for birds],” said Perry, who noted that, to date, scientist have pointed to 2,300 birds with traits that makes them “highly vulnerable” to global warming.
Already, climate change has disrupted some bird’s food sources, messed with the timing of fledgling and migrations, and shrunk the range of cold-loving species.
Birds are a good example of how climate change is already impacting wildlife because they are the best studied group on the planet. Yet, they aren’t the only ones feeling the heat. Climate change is also likely playing a role in the current amphibian crisis, which has seen around 200 amphibians vanish for good in recent decades.
Robin Moore, co-founder of the Amphibian Survival Alliance and author of In Search of Lost Frogs, said there is good evidence that climate change may have exacerbated the spread of the frog-killing disease, chytridiomycosis, with research has showing that warmer temperatures probably helped the disease spread across both Costa Rica and Australia. Moreover, the disease is likely able to adapt quicker to climatic changes than its victims.
“Pathogens are always smaller than their hosts, with faster metabolisms, and should therefore be able to acclimate more quickly to temperature shifts,” explained Moore. “This is a phenomenon that will not just affect amphibians!”

A southern Corroboree frog sits on the hand of Taronga zoo keeper Adam Skidmore in 2006. Once an abundant species, today it is listed as Critically Endangered due to the chytrid fungus, which may have been exacerbated by climate change. Photograph: Mark Baker/AP

Currently, habitat destruction remains the biggest threat to amphibians, making species more vulnerable to even slight climatic changes, according to Moore.
“Amphibians have survived four mass extinctions associated with major climate disturbances. What is pushing them over the edge now, I believe, is a perfect storm of lethal conditions that we have created.”
Still, no one knows for certain how climate change will impact the majority of the world’s individual species, just as we don’t even know how many species share our planet (pegged at anywhere from 3 to 100 million, though a study in 2011 came up with an estimate of 8.7 million). But we can broaden our view. Just as there are some human communities living on the front lines of climate change – such as low-lying island states or drought-prone countries – there are also particular environments that scientists view as super vulnerable to climate change.

Coral reefs and cloud forests

Coral reefs are considered one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, and the most species-rich in the oceans. Their counterpart on land may well be cloud forests, which are high-altitude forests often blanketed in clouds – and also ridiculously rich in biodiversity. Similarly, coral reefs and cloud forests occupy very small slices of the planet: cloud forests make up only around 1% of the world’s forests and coral reefs less than 1% of the ocean’s floor. And both are feeling the heat.

Coral reef showing a diversity of corals in Fiji. Photograph: Pete Oxford/Minden Pictures/Corbis

Coral reef expert, Joshua Cinner with James Cook University, said that climate change is delivering three separate punches to coral reefs: hotter oceans lead to higher incidences of coral bleaching, ocean acidification (which, like global warming, is caused by carbon dioxide emissions) makes it more difficult for corals to build and maintain their skeletons, while more powerful storms fueled by climate change can wreck reefs.
For reefs, Cinner said, the climate crisis “isn’t something off in the far-flung future. It has already happened, and will continue to happen.”
This year, record high temperatures driven by climate change – and exacerbated by El Niño – has led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to declare only the third global coral reef bleaching event on record. The key here is global: usually bleaching events are regional or localised.
When it comes to coral reefs, Cinner called the Paris agreement “a step in the right direction,” but also pointed out that even keeping temperatures below rising 1.5C – an aspirational goal in the Paris agreement – would not be enough to avoid further damage to the world’s reefs.
“It is important to understand that it is not like 2C, or even 1.5C, is a threshold whereby everything will be OK...The point is that even with a 1.5 degree rise, we are looking at very serious problems for many coral reefs.”
Amphibian-expert Moore agreed that there was significant uncertainty about biodiversity even with the 1.5 degrees goal in the Paris Agreement.
“It’s impossible to know what a world with temperatures 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will look like...but just talking about it ad nauseam is like debating who should call the fire department whilst watching your house burn down.”
Instead, he said, it’s time for action.

Cloud forests, like coral reefs, have evolved to survive within certain temperature gradients. Already, scientists have documented cloud forests literally migrating upslope to escape warming. But, according to David Lutz, a forest ecologist with Dartmouth, cloud forest species “do not appear to be migrating as fast as they need to be to keep up” with steadily rising temperatures.

Cloud forest in the Alerce Andino National Park in Chile. Photograph: FLPA/REX Shutterstock

“As the world grows warmer – or as periodic heat waves become more fierce – these species literally have nowhere to go but heaven,” said William Laurance, a noted rainforest scientist with James Cook University. “I think we’ll lose more biodiversity from tropical mountains than anywhere else in the world.”
The situation becomes even more complicated by the fact that many of these forests won’t even be able to migrate as far as possible. Instead, as tree seedlings sprout upslope they will run into high-elevation cattle ranching, at least in the Andes.
“As trees attempt to migrate up into this grassland, they will be either eaten by cows, or burned when the pastures are intentionally burned to encourage grass growth,” said Lutz.
If strategies to allow cloud forest to migrate as far as possible aren’t developed many of them are likely to vanish, taking innumerable species found no-where else with them.

Paris and beyond
The Paris agreement noted “the importance of ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems, including oceans, and the protection of biodiversity,” but went into few details about how individual countries should, or even could, go about safeguarding imperiled species in the face of rising temperatures.
What the agreement did do, however, was acknowledge the importance of conservation in protecting carbon sinks, often referring specifically to forests.
Moore, who called this inclusion “particularly significant,” said “we cannot talk about addressing climate change without stemming the rampant loss of the world’s forests.”
Experts said they hoped the agreement would boost initiatives like REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), a UN programme that proposes to use funding from rich nations to pay developing countries to keep forests standing. Under negotiation for the better part of a decade, REDD+ projects are just beginning to launch – and the initiative made a number of important appearances at the Paris talks.
Prior to the meeting, the UK, Germany and Norway put down $5bn to reduce deforestation in the tropics, while African nations pledged to restore 100 million hectares of forest across the continent over the next 15 years. If done correctly – and with involvement by locals and indigenous groups – such programmes could go a long way toward preserving biodiversity on land.
But, some experts have become concerned not just about direct impacts on biodiversity from climate change, but how a warmer future could increasingly pit humans against wildlife.
“We have anecdotal evidence that poaching increases when droughts or floods affect food production,” explained Nikhil Advani, WWF’s senior program officer of climate change adaptation, who also noted that when hydroelectric power plants fail during droughts people often turn to forests for fuel.
He added that many of the big mammals that WWF focuses on “will be more affected by these indirect impacts from people than any direct impact of climate change.”
The international group is launching a crowdsource data campaign, WWF Climate Crowd, in order to better understand such threats.

The Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruviana) male portrait showing typical crest. This species is largely found in cloud forests. Photograph: Andean Cock-of-the-rock/Flip De Nooyer/ Foto Natura / Mi

Climate change poses a unique difficulty to biologists as they have to cut through several layers of uncertainty to understand how biodiversity might respond in 10, 20 or even 100 years. But given the rising observable impacts on species – from Arctic ice melt to worsening forest fires to record droughts in the Amazon – the risks are impossible to ignore.
“I just can’t get past the nagging feeling that we’re putting off a lot of tough decisions,” said Laurance, who attended the talks in Paris and pointed to plans by India and China to keep building new coal-fired power plants despite the countries’ climate commitments.
“[We’re] essentially relying on our children and grandchildren to make even bigger sacrifices and bear heavier costs because we weren’t really willing to grapple with these issues ourselves.”
But Knowlton with the Smithsonian Institution is more optimistic.
“When social change happens it can happen very quickly – this is what gives me hope...Will climate change in ten years look like marriage equality today? I think so.”
The existence of thousands of species may well depend on it.

Links

• Zoos could become 'conservation powerhouses'
• Wild things return to Angkor Wat
• How humans are driving the sixth mass extinction