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California farms, vineyards in peril from warming, U.S. energy secretary warns
Jim Tankersley, Los Angeles Times
‘We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California,’ Steven Chu says. He sees education as a means to combat threat.
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California’s farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday.
In his first interview since taking office last month, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama’s cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration’s plans to combat it.
(4 February 2009)
Forecast: doomed! Stephan Faris’s book is a grim reality check
Jonathan Hiskes, Gristmill
The cover of the new climate change travelogue from journalist Stephan Faris makes it pretty clear his news will be grim. On the front of , Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley ($25, Henry Holt and Company), a lifeless desert floor extends to an ominous red glow on the horizon. It could be a stretch of former Sudanese farmland swallowed by the Sahara’s southward creep. Or it could be somewhere in southeastern Australia, where an extended drought has decimated a once-thriving rice-growing region. But the spirit of impending doom is tough to miss.
Forecast’s goal isn’t to prove climate change’s existence (Faris isn’t a scientist), or propose solutions (there’s none of that). Instead, it catalogues how the effects of climate change aren’t waiting 50 years down the road, they’re underway already. Rising temperatures are extending the reach of malaria and other tropical diseases. Polar bears, of course, face a melting habitat. Winemakers can offer an expanding variety of low-priced offerings as more areas become warm enough for growing grapes.
(4 February 2009)
It’s Getting Wicked
Agence France-Presse via Grist
Climate change is combining with Australia’s record-breaking drought to strangle the nation’s largest river system, threatening to devastate food supplies, a report said Wednesday.
The government’s Murray Darling Basin Authority said water flow was near historic lows in the system, which provides water to Australia’s “food bowl”, a vast expanse of land almost twice as big as France that runs down the continent’s east coast.
…”There’s no doubt we’ve got this alignment of long-term change, climate change, and we’ve got the short cycle, this incredible drought,’ said Rob Freeman, the authority’s chief.
(4 February 2009)
