US Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Bakes Wheat, Fruit Crops (reuters.com) 117
An unprecedented heat wave and ongoing drought in the U.S. Pacific Northwest is damaging white wheat coveted by Asian buyers and forcing fruit farm workers to harvest in the middle of the night to salvage crops and avoid deadly heat. From a report: The extreme weather is another blow to farmers who have struggled with labor shortages and higher transportation costs during the pandemic and may further fuel global food inflation. Cordell Kress, who farms in southeastern Idaho, expects his winter white wheat to produce about half as many bushels per acre as it does in a normal year when he begins to harvest next week, and he has already destroyed some of his withered canola and safflower oilseed crops.
The Pacific Northwest is the only part of the United States that grows soft white wheat used to make sponge cakes and noodles, and farmers were hoping to capitalize on high grain prices. Other countries including Australia and Canada grow white wheat, but the U.S. variety is especially prized by Asian buyers. "The general mood among farmers in my area is as dire as I've ever seen it," Kress said. "Something about a drought like this just wears on you. You see your blood, sweat and tears just slowly wither away and die."
The Pacific Northwest is the only part of the United States that grows soft white wheat used to make sponge cakes and noodles, and farmers were hoping to capitalize on high grain prices. Other countries including Australia and Canada grow white wheat, but the U.S. variety is especially prized by Asian buyers. "The general mood among farmers in my area is as dire as I've ever seen it," Kress said. "Something about a drought like this just wears on you. You see your blood, sweat and tears just slowly wither away and die."
Poptarts? (Score:2)
All you need to do is toss some sugar on top.
There's plenty of money on Wall Street (Score:1, Insightful)
They are getting it all for free. Those damn people can cover all the losses ten times over. Why is everybody cutting them all this slack?
Link to full article (Score:5, Informative)
(It was missing from the post.)
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-weather-agriculture-idUSL2N2OK2Z9
Far more common as time goes on (Score:5, Insightful)
Researchers from the World Weather Attribution network have concluded [bbc.com] that events like these which would have occurred 1 year in 1000 are now about 150x more likely because of manmade climate change. These types of events will simply become the norm going forward. While the catastrophic effects of climate change are still perhaps a generation away, we have started to see significant effects already.
Re:Far more common as time goes on (Score:4, Insightful)
Famine will come, but first is booming prices.
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As Kosh of the old Babylon 5 put it
The original Babylon learned of this. Climate change disrupts the agriculture, hungry peasants start to revolt, trade routes disrupted, scarcity of everything.
Then the invasion of refugees (Sea People) from places that have it even worse. Destabilisation breaks down alliances, war ravages the land, and cities are abandoned. Followed by 500 years of dark ages.
But none of that would happen now. We see the looming threat and are going all out to avert it. History never repeats.
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>Climate change disrupts the agriculture, hungry peasants start to revolt, trade routes disrupted, scarcity of everything.
> Then the invasion of refugees (Sea People) from places that have it even worse.
If you haven't read it yet, the book "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed " sums up the Mediterranean situation you refer to very well.
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Are you MAD?
roughly 1/2 of voters are screaming mad to ROLL COAL and make things worse.
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Tip #7: If a person says something utterly, obviously wrong, they may be employing irony for purpose of humour or sarcasm. Is this not done in your culture?
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The so called "Sea People" marauded the coasts of the Mediterranean, not Babylon.
You might want to open a map and look where Babylon is.
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You might want to open a map and look where Babylon is.
Mesopotamia did not escape the Bronze Age Collapse. You are being awfully picky about an off-the-cuff metaphor. We are really talking about the present day, and the lessons of history. In an interconnected world, a famine in one area is a disaster everywhere. Just look at the current shortages from a relatively minor bit of trade disruption.
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Yes, yes we will. That's why the open questions are, what will we do? What can we do?
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Probably not bad enough to give up the SUV yet though, more likely to boost AC sales.
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The C$1.72 a litre gasoline might be an encouragement, it's partially caused by the heat shutting down oil refineries, of course the oil companies blame it on the nickel carbon tax and lack of pipelines shipping us raw bitumen.
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Researchers from the World Weather Attribution network have concluded [bbc.com] that events like these which would have occurred 1 year in 1000 are now about 150x more likely because of manmade climate change. These types of events will simply become the norm going forward. While the catastrophic effects of climate change are still perhaps a generation away, we have started to see significant effects already.
You have your numbers wrong (and maybe so does BBC). The actual report says that events which (hypothetically since nobody living today was there) would have occurred once-every-150,000 years are now occurring at a probability of once-every-1000 years -- that is the 150:1 increase in occurrence probability.
The greater significance of that study/report is that it's a comparison between pre-industrial versus post-industrial revolution (so essentially pre-1900s versus 1900-2021).
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Clarksons Farm (Score:4, Informative)
If you want a better idea of how difficult and expensive farming can be you should watch Jeremy Clarkson attempt to farm his own land. The weather and timing is everything.
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Do you seriously believe their intent was to build a fully functional Caterham? It's not like Top Gear would do stupid and childish stuff to amuse their audience, would it now.
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Yeh, because right wingers are known for their creativity and humour, said nobody ever.
Re:Clarksons Farm (Score:4, Informative)
I’m familiar with all his Top Gear episodes. Yes the show has comedic moments but it really shows the struggles farmers face.
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OTOH, there is not much that Clarkson can't ruin.
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[1] [reddit.com] [2] [google.com]
We can't afford to NOT address climate change. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we please stop arguing about how much it costs to de-carbonize the economy and instead start recognizing that it will be much, much more expensive to NOT address climate change?
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Until you can convince the largest and third largest CO2 producers to at least start cu
Re:We can't afford to NOT address climate change. (Score:4, Funny)
I don’t understand this logic. My neighbors yard looks like shit with a car on blocks and a jungle growing. Therefore I don’t have to maintain my property either.
Re:We can't afford to NOT address climate change. (Score:5, Insightful)
US's tire fire is pretty big, the second biggest in the neighborhood, but they're actively reducing it every year. You could scream at them to extinguish the entire thing this second, but that'd be very difficult to accomplish.
China's tire fire dwarfs everyone else. By a lot. And they keep adding tires. When you ask them to reduce it, they toss on more tires.
India's tire fire is slightly smaller than the US, but also keeps adding more burning tires. When you ask them to reduce it, they also toss on more tires.
While the US is not the hero of this story, you can truthfully say they understand the problem and are working to reduce it. Steadily so.
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The US elected Trump 4 years back on the promise of lighting a bigger tire fire and are likely to do it again.
And China with 4 lots compared to America's one lot is actually burning less tires.
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The US elected Trump 4 years back on the promise of lighting a bigger tire fire and are likely to do it again.
No, people voted for Trump because he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, not because he lighted tires on fire, although those activities share a similar domain.
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America burns more tires per capita than any other country. By a wide margin.
50% of Americans are in favor of burning a lot more tires.
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China's tire fire dwarfs everyone else. By a lot.
Only in absolute terms. On per capita terms they are much better. But I agree with you. The solution is to ensure that poor people stay poor. They are Chinese. They don't deserve energy. It was their choice to not get born in God's own country.
The "I got mine fuck everyone else" attitude is why a lot of people look down on the USA.
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China's tire fire dwarfs everyone else. By a lot.
Only in absolute terms. On per capita terms they are much better.
ROFL... "They are only DEAD in absolute terms. On per capita terms they are much better."
Per capita measurement is a statistical attempt to obfuscate the reality of the problem. There is not less climate change in a country because it has a higher population.
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Nope. Per capita is the only way to judge the world because the earth doesn't care where people drew arbitrary lines on it.
Unless it is you support inequality. They are just Chinese right? Fuck them. They don't deserve energy, power or a good life. We should ensure we keep them in abject poverty for the good of the planet!
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There is not less climate change in a country because it has a higher population.
But there is less what they can do about it.
Wow, a no brainer ... idiot..
Re:We can't afford to NOT address climate change. (Score:5, Insightful)
How about doing so by not buying their crap?
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How about doing so by not buying their crap?
This.
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Agreed.
To back up what you are saying, Chine produces as much cement in 3 years, as the US did during the entire 20th century.
The process of making cement produces 900kg of CO2 for each ton of cement produced. Let that sink in for a moment.
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The process of making cement produces 900kg of CO2 for each ton of cement produced
This doesn't sound right. It would mean they are producing more CO2 than cement.
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900kg is less than a ton. And it's an accurate citation. See Hasanbeigi, A.; Price, L.; Lu, H.; Lan, W. Analysis of energy-efficiency opportunities for the cement industry in Shandong Province, China: A case study of 16 cement plants. Energy 2010, 35, 3461-3473.
Look up how much CO2 it takes to produce a ton of steel or other metals and you'll real
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Wow that's kind of crazy. Thanks.
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900kg is less than a ton. And it's an accurate citation. See Hasanbeigi, A.; Price, L.; Lu, H.; Lan, W. Analysis of energy-efficiency opportunities for the cement industry in Shandong Province, China: A case study of 16 cement plants. Energy 2010, 35, 3461-3473.
Does not make any sense anyway. As it would imply you need "2 tons of raw material" to make one ton of cement, and half of that is going to be CO2 in the end.
HOW SHOULD THAT BE PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE???
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I dunno Angelo. Maybe should you use your supposed physics degree.
CaCO3(s) -> CaO (s)+ CO2(g)
And then there's the small matter of the fuel input that you burn to calcine the war materials [wikipedia.org]. Perhaps you should ask anyone who's ever made a wood fire where all their heavy fuel went.
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Chine produces as much cement in 3 years, as the US did during the entire 20th century.
Sure.
And how should that be physically possible?
You are just utter stupid: Let that sink in for a moment.
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Follow the links from this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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My current subscription package does not include The Washington Post. Would I have better luck finding the article at a local library?
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Can we please stop arguing about how much it costs to de-carbonize the economy
No, because if de-carbonizing is going to be politically acceptable, it needs to be done cost-effectively. So arguing about the costs is exactly what we need to do.
We are currently putting a lot of money into really dumb stuff (ethanol, solar-backed-battery subsidies) and underfunding things a hundred times as cost-effective: contraceptives for 3rd-world women, switching new coal plant construction in India, Africa, and Indonesia to gas or solar.
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China's Belt & Road program is doing the latter and has been for years, only recently has the IMF/World Bank started to hesitantly endorse renewable energy projects and even those are mostly to benefit a specific industry rather than a country's population.
Re:We can't afford to NOT address climate change. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, the much, much greater costs of climate change are externalized to the greater population. If there's a famine because crops fail, and people start dropping dead from heat waves and get their cities leveled by historic hurricanes, that doesn't show up on the balance sheet for next quarter.
I really hope the oil oligarchs get sued to cover the losses of these farmers and lose, because losing that kind of lawsuit would revolutionize the climate-fixing model we're operating under. If there's a precedent for "your polluting processes caused my crops to fail" the math starts to be very different.
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Sure but where do I write than on the balance sheet in a way that appeases shareholders?
No shit, Sherlock. (Score:2)
Captain Obvious strikes again! ...
I know you probably knew this already and that you're saying this for the dimwits who haven't caught on yet. It's sad, I know. Let's hope modern civilization still has a chance.
Re:We can't afford to NOT address climate change. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that doesn't work when you open your borders to let more people ... in.
Yes, it does. When young people of child-bearing age migrate from the 3rd-world to the 1st-world, their birthrate drops below what it would have been if they had stayed home.
Migration is good for reducing the global population.
Migration also incentivizes smaller families in poor countries. Rather than having many children, it is better to have fewer, educate them well, and send them off to America or the EU so they can send back remittances.
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Migration also incentivizes smaller families in poor countries. Rather than having many children, it is better to have fewer, educate them well, and send them off to America
This doesn't match what I've seen. In poorer countries, the chances of educating your kids well is low enough and expensive enough that people just send them north with whatever education they picked up.
Re: We can't afford to NOT address climate change. (Score:2)
Re:We can't afford to NOT address climate change. (Score:5, Interesting)
Never lived in the Third World, have you? The single limiting factor is culture, and as their culture changes to allow family planning and smaller families they will do exactly that. It's happening absolutely everywhere that improved education and higher standards of living take hold. My in-laws in Peru had 13 kids, 8 of whom lived to adulthood. The largest family of the next generation was 4 kids, and of the next generation the largest so far has been three, most have 1-2, several have zero. It's the very same as happened here in the Untied States, because people are people no matter where they're born.
BTW, want your economy to crash? One easy step, just eliminate immigration! Agriculture, construction, travel, food service, and manufacturing industries all rely heavily on immigrant labor, not because it's cheap but because there aren't enough people willing to do those jobs since there's enough work out there that citizens don't need to pick strawberries or put on roofs for a living. Shut down immigration and the economy comes to a screeching halt.
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If those jobs paid 50k with benefits you might have something, but they don't. Those industries should all be regulated and people might actually want to fucking do the jobs. Would groceries go up? Absolutely! Just like everything else goes up when minimum wage goes up, but turns out that more wages and jobs is better for everyone.
So no, we don't REALLY need those immigrants, but we do need live-able wages and benefits.
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Ever picked strawberries for 10 hours in the sun? $25/hr isn't going to bring in people who have any other choice. Some jobs are just better automated, but that takes time. In the meantime we have immigrants doing that job while the strawberry picking robot is perfected and made financially viable.
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while the strawberry picking robot is perfected and made financially viable.
It's here [traptic.com].
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Good, it's about frelling time. Now I need a new example (not that there's any shortage of them).
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I've done grape harvest a few times so I totally understand where you are coming from. Given many of these jobs are in fact seasonal, I think I would rather work that kind of temp job then doing uber/lift, door dash, other lame gig jobs.
A lot of it comes down to wages and schools telling everyone how special they are and they MUST go to college and that life will be just perfect after that. That just doesn't work for everyone or even most people. From the cries of people wanting student debt forgiven, it do
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My in-laws in Peru had 13 kids, 8 of whom lived to adulthood.
My in laws in Thailand had also 14 kids, 9 made it to adulthood, but 3 died early.
Everyone of them has: one single kid And so has the generation afterwards.
I only know a handful of Thai who have 2 kids, and not a single one who has more than 2.
very same as happened here in the Untied States, because people are people no matter where they're born. Very true outside of the USA. Looking at the USA I'm not really sure if that are people living there.
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simply by being additional bodies on day one.
They are not "additional bodies". Immigrants existed before they immigrated.
the single limiting factor on their population is food
There is nowhere in the world where this is true. Even in poor countries, obesity is more common than insufficient food.
ending the practice of sending food aid to starving countries....
There are no "starving countries". Birth rates drop when countries experience prosperity, higher literacy, better education, better healthcare, and longer life expectancy. Nowhere are birth rates dropping because of a lack of food. Food insecurity drives birth rates higher, not lower.
Here is a list of countries [wikipedia.org]
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It's funny how Americans think they aren't descended from people who crammed themselves into boats to get over there because conditions were so bad in their own countries.
Re:We can't afford to NOT address climate change. (Score:5, Informative)
You don't seem to understand that the U.S. economy is based on an infinite growth model. That's why the DOW is higher year over and year. Guess how an economy grows? It needs more people buying and working or is all comes tumbling down. Since our existing population isn't having enough kids to even sustain our population we need immigration.
You can look at countries like Italy that have been in negative population growth for a while and they were struggling immensely with their economies. It is the natural limit of capitalism which requires infinite growth. An influx of immigration for France, Britain, and Italy all significantly improved their economies. Japan went through the same thing and in many ways is still dealing with as they haven't opted to increase immigration but have stepped up automation.
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You can look at countries like Italy that have been in negative population growth for a while and they were struggling immensely with their economies.
Has nothing to do with birth rates.
It is Mafia, corruption and incompetence (of the government). Perhaps you want to look up their previous five or six "presidents" - don't know from my head how they call their "prime minister".
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Solution: don't have kids, or don't have as many kids. Awesome. Western Civilization is already doing that.... Except that doesn't work when you open your borders to let more people
A border where a person moves from one area to another suddenly magically duplicates that person? What kind of magic wizardry is this? The xenophobic kind? Shit man why don't we start pushing food over country borders if it is a magic duplication machine. We can shutdown farms and reduce CO2 emissions. Or does this only work on dark fruits?
There's a connection, if they can make it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, but since climate change is a global phenomenon we can't get away with "but that state is...". It's everyone's problem and consequently everyone can be part of the solution.
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History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
The Roaring 20's were great, right up until they weren't.
You had a huge market crash, Great Depression,
and the Dust Bowl:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Then as now, there will be the usual suspects and the usual finger-pointing, and the usual politicking, and the usual denial of responsibility. Millions will suffer terribly through no fault of their own.
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Does this mean the Jitterbug will come back into fashion?
(Asking for a friend)
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Does this mean the Jitterbug will come back into fashion?
History doesn't repeat, it rhymes. This time it will be "twerking".
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These same people:
- Hate socialism, but want crop subsidies.
- Hate globalism, but rely on Asian buyers.
- Deny climate change, but are surprised when freak weather events keep killing their crops.
Yes, very sad... Anyway.
https://i.redd.it/ptl094yn3v57... [i.redd.it]
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The US is the only first-world country ... (Score:2)
... where this is a problem. Others have dimwits too, yet they are quite marginalized, and rightfully so. In the US things are different. This wouldn't be such a problem in some small nation/banana-republic with little influence and a moderate eco-balance - in the US however, this is a major problem. A two-party system, sub-par education and dependent privately owned media are probably the main sources of this misery.
But it's too EXPENSIVE (Score:4, Interesting)
Despite the fact that it has been rural conservatives staunchly voting for climate-denying oil-toadies, I feel for all the farmers right now. We knew this would happen, we told you it was coming, and you were duped by bought-off politicians who lined their pockets and are absolutely going to leave to hang. Your land will be bought for pennies on the dollar and some agricorp will destroy an aquifer to grow almonds or alfalfa or something equally stupid and water-hungry and make a profit and bail when the land is dead and nobody can live there anymore.
When they tell you change is too expensive, tell them that the status quo will eventually kill us, but only after impoverishing and starving us first.
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Your land will be bought for pennies on the dollar and some agricorp will destroy an aquifer to grow almonds or alfalfa or something equally stupid and water-hungry and make a profit and bail when the land is dead and nobody can live there anymore.
Sounds like it doesn't it. But the age old battle between drinking water and agriculture, and now industry will put a dent in any grandiose plans to be a modern day robber baron. The state has the power to be the deciding factor on what happens, while they're being pulled in multiple directions by powerful interests.
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Despite the fact that it has been rural conservatives staunchly voting for climate-denying oil-toadies, I feel for all the farmers right now.
What are you talking about? Ever since 2007 CO2 emissions have been falling in the USA, sure there's been a little year to year backtracking but on a multi-year rolling average it's been on the decline since then. The CO2 emissions now has been the lowest in 25 years.
We got this reduction in CO2 from the use of natural gas to replace coal. It's those "oil toadies" that gave that to us. We'd be getting more reductions faster if we could have built more nuclear power plants in the USA. Jimmy Carter kille
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overly dramatic much..
geez, what a diatribe
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Alfalfa actually does not need much water.
But digging into it I figured that farmers, especially in California, simply are doing irrigation wrong.
Look at this for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It gets interesting at minute 18:00 (unles you do not know the stuff before, then everything is interested).
However looking how the land is used, with endless fields of Alfalfa and not a single other plant giving shadow and conserving water (like Elephant grass and its related grasses): simply makes me si
We need more power (Score:3)
We really need to bite the bullet, develop and deploy next gen fission energy before the real population centers of the earth begin consuming as much energy per capita as the affluent nations already do. Requiring everyone to regress to the stone age isn't really a good solution.
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You missed it by this much the slashdot article on solar and power lines. Problem isn't we don't have solutions. Problem is getting them implemented enough to make a difference.
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Smarter countries than USA are implementing fission along with other solutions as they uplift their populaces' wealth.
Don't think the stupidity of USA is that of mankind.
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Requiring everyone to regress to the stone age isn't really a good solution.
False dichotomy. Everyone does need to regress to the stone age - ONLY those 'real population centers' do and we can effect that though far more certain to be successful military investment than in fusion...
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So you're a member of the "nuke asia" coalition or do I misunderstand your suggestion?
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We really need to bite the bullet, develop and deploy next gen fission energy before the real population centers
Too late. You should have been doing this 30 years ago. Now we need to address the solution in a shorter term way.
No more Top Ramen? (Score:2)
Top Ramen prices will skyrocket. What on earth will college kids eat now?
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Top Ramen prices will skyrocket. What on earth will college kids eat now?
My guess is that they will eat food.
Mmmm! (Score:3)
Bakes Wheat, Fruit
Fruitcake!
Note to Idaho farmers: (Score:1)
keep electing brain-dead Republicans, things will get better soon.
drought - not global warming (Score:2)
Can we talk solutions? (Score:2)
Here's a IEA prediction on cost of energy from different sources: https://www.iea.org/reports/pr... [iea.org] (Look for the graph about 1/4 the way in.)
Here's a comparison on energy sources on CO2 emissions and safety: https://ourworldindata.org/saf... [ourworldindata.org]
Here's a compilation of sources giving energy return on energy invested: https://world-nuclear.org/info... [world-nuclear.org] (Chart is about 1/4 the way in.)
Because public perception is important here's some polling: https://news.gallup.com/poll/2... [gallup.com]
What metrics on choosing sources of
Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
See Poe's Law:
Without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views such that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
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It's kind of off topic. A good joke should relate in some way to the story. Hard to see how it relates to the story.
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Irony.