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☆ Arid wheat fields and dead cows: a snapshot of Argentina's worst drought in decades
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Maximilian Heath | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The drought in Argentina has led to sharp cuts to the country's wheat harvest forecast and is threatening to derail corn and soy too. Russo said soil moisture levels were worse than the 2008/09 campaign, when the South American country produced only 31 million tonnes of soybeans, from 18 million hectares planted. Russo said that the current wheat crop forecast of 11.8 million tonnes, already slashed from an original 19 million tonnes, could be trimmed further. In 2008/09 the wheat harvest was 8.3 million tonnes. Reporting by Maximilian Heath in Navarro, Argentina Editing by Adam Jourdan and Matthew LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ As Maine’s winters shorten, tiny ticks threaten state’s mighty moose
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Lauren Owens Lambert | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

“We’ve seen that areas with lower moose density tend to have healthier moose with fewer ticks,” said state Moose Biologist Lee Kantar, who is running the study. Maine's moose population is currently the largest of all the lower 48 states at over 60,000 animals, according to state figures, thanks to an ideal habitat and careful management of the annual moose hunt. Kantar is now leading research to test whether thinning the moose population through increased hunting can help. It is unclear, he said, what an ideal moose population would be for Maine but he hopes the study will help answer that. Each year, the Maine moose hunt draws around 50,000 applications in a lottery for the 2,000 to 3,000 moose permits typically issued.

☆ Climate Change Is Real. Markets, Not Governments, Offer the Cure. - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Bret Stephens | Mr. Stephens Is An Opinion Columnist. Mr. Winter Is A Staff Photographer On Assignment In Opinion. | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +32 min

worse-case, highest-carbon-emission scenario.” (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the U.N. body that assesses climate change.) How do we weigh the risks of underreacting to climate change against the risks of overreacting to it? While he’s not an expert on climate change, he has spent decades thinking deeply about every manner of risk. That’s particularly true if climate change is akin to cancer — manageable or curable in its earlier stages, disastrous in its later ones. Maybe, I realized, in assessing my newfound concerns about climate change, my long-held beliefs might provide a solution — look to the market.

☆ Fact Check-Study on Greenland warming does not contradict human-driven climate change
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

Rather, the study focused on a natural Pacific Ocean weather anomaly and its role in a recent slowdown of Greenland warming. The study’s finding that the slowdown in Greenland warming was driven largely by CP ENSO events doesn’t dispute anthropogenic climate change, Matsumura said. In fact, CP ENSO events have been projected to increase under global warming, Matsumura added, and a frequent occurrence of La Niña would likely accelerate Greenland warming (here), (here). Reuters Fact Check has previously addressed claims that short-term trends in Arctic ice cover undermine the idea that human-driven climate warming is a threat (here). A study by researchers in Japan that explains cooler Greenland summers with less ice melt over the past decade does not undermine the notion of human-driven climate change.

☆ Climate reparations may be ethical, but they aren't the best fix, climatologist says
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-05 | by ( Natalie Tham | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Fida Hussain | Afp | Getty ImagesCalls for climate reparations for poorer countries hit hard by climate change are growing louder after catastrophic floods in Pakistan. "[Climate reparations are] the ethical thing to do," said Friederike Otto, a climatologist at the University of Oxford, "but a more equitable world is much better able to solve the complex crises we deal with. However, though climate reparations appear to be a relatively straightforward solution, their implementation isn't, Otto said. At the same time, for climate reparations to be successful, there needs to be an official classification of weather and climate events and natural hazards, she added. Andrew King, a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, is another proponent of climate reparations.

Tampa has been undergoing major infrastructure upgrades to protect the vulnerable city from flooding, but as Hurricane Ian barrels toward Florida’s west coast, the project is still years from completion. Construction is only about 30% done, said Sean Sullivan, executive director of the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. “The potential area of inundation for the same intensity storm would be greater in the Tampa Bay area,” he said. The region has not borne the brunt of a major hurricane since 1921. “The Tampa Bay area hasn’t seen this type of storm in decades, if not 100 years,” said Rick Davis, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Tampa office.

☆ ‘The Sixth Extinction,’ by Elizabeth Kolbert
▼ + stars: | 2014-02-16 | by ( Al Gore | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

There are psychological barriers to even imagining that what we love so much could be lost — could be destroyed forever. If trends continue, the global temperature will keep rising, triggering “world-altering events,” Kolbert writes. “By disrupting these systems,” Kolbert writes, “we’re putting our own survival in danger.”The earth’s water cycle is being dangerously disturbed, as warmer oceans evaporate more water vapor into the air. The extra heat is also absorbed in the top layer of the seas, which makes ocean-based storms more destructive. They struggle to absorb excess heat and carbon pollution — which is why, as Kolbert points out, coral reefs might be the first entire ecosystem to go extinct in the modern era.

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