[A-List] Fwd: Russia's Agony a "Wake-Up Call" to the World

[Nadja Tesich]

Suzanne,
I don't know what to say any more. American people are guilty as hell
because they tell me  that they'don't want to think any more'.
Nadja

________________________________
> Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 17:15:01 +0200
> From: suzannedk at gmail.com
> To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu
> Subject: [A-List] Fwd: Russia's Agony a "Wake-Up Call" to the World
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Suzanne de Kuyper >
> Date: Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 5:12 PM
> Subject: Fwd: Russia's Agony a "Wake-Up Call" to the World
> To: "Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion."
> >
>
>
> In Al Gore's film of world warming the prognosis for California and the
> grain, fruit and vegetable crops there was that the Chinese coal
> emmissions trapped by the Rocky Mountains before they can be blown over
> them will drop coal emmissions poisons onto vital cropland as well as
> keep the rains away, probably meaning there will begin desertification
> in that area, rather sooner than later. Neither the Congress or the
> Senate allow debate about the world-warming so we must somehow force
> that discusssion to begin seriuosly. I am sure that many who pay big
> bucks to never have world warming mentioned in the halls of power were
> delighted when Al divorced his first sweetheart after a sexual scandal.
> His research was and is right-on. We are watching what he predicted.
> Suzanne
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Sid Shniad >
> Date: Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 8:19 PM
> Subject: Russia's Agony a "Wake-Up Call" to the World
> To:
>
>
> http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52455
>
> Russia's Agony a "Wake-Up Call" to the World
>
> Stephen Leahy
>
> VIENNA, Aug 11 (IPS) - A wind turbine on an acre of northern Iowa
> farmland could generate 300,000 dollars worth of greenhouse-gas-free
> electricity a year. Instead, the U.S. government pays out billions of
> dollars to subsidise grain for ethanol fuel that has little if any
> impact on global warming, according to Lester Brown.
>
> "The smartest thing the U.S. could do is phase out ethanol subsidies,"
> says Brown, the founder of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute,
> in reference to rising food prices resulting from the unprecedented
> heat wave in western Russia that has decimated crops and killed at
> least 15,000 people.
>
> "The lesson here is that we must take climate change far more
> seriously, make major cuts in emissions and fast before climate change
> is out of control," Brown, one of the world's leading experts on
> agriculture and food, told IPS.
>
> Average temperatures during the month of July were eight degrees
> Celsius above normal in Moscow, he said, noting that "such a huge
> increase in temperature over an entire month is just unheard of."
>
> On Monday, Moscow reached 37 C when the normal temperature for August
> is 21 C. It was the 28th day in a row that temperatures exceeded 30 C.
>
> Soil moisture has fallen to levels seen only once in 500 years, says
> Brown. Wheat and other grain yields are expected to decline by 40
> percent or more in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine - regions that
> provide 25 percent of the world's wheat exports. Russian Prime Minister
> Vladimir Putin announced a few days ago that Russia would ban all grain
> exports.
>
> Food prices will rise but how much is not known at this point, says
> Brown. "What we do know, however, is that the prices of wheat, corn,
> and soybeans are actually somewhat higher in early August 2010 than
> they were in early August 2007, when the record-breaking 2007-08 run-up
> in grain prices began."
>
> Emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2 from burning fossil fuels trap
> more of the sun's energy. Climate experts expected the number and
> intensity of heat waves and droughts to increase as a result. In 2009,
> heat and fire killed hundreds in Australia during the worst drought in
> more than century, which devastated the country's agriculture sector.
> In 2003, a European heat wave killed 53,000 people but as it occurred
> late in the summer crop, yields were not badly affected.
>
> If a heat wave like Russia's were centred around the grain- producing
> regions near Chicago or Beijing, the impacts could be many times worse
> because each of these regions produce five times the amount of grain as
> Russia does, says Brown. Such an event could result in the loss of 100
> to 200 million tonnes of grain with unimaginable affects on the world's
> food supply.
>
> "Russia's heat wave is a wake-up call to the world regarding the
> vulnerability of the global food supply," he said.
>
> The global climate is warming and most food crops are both heat and
> drought sensitive. Rice yields have already fallen by 10-20 percent
> over the last 25 years in parts of Thailand, Vietnam, India and China
> due to global warming, new research has shown. Data from 227
> fully-irrigated farms that grow "green revolution" crops are suffering
> significant yield declines due to warming temperatures at night,
> researchers found.
>
> "As nights get hotter, rice yields drop," reported Jarrod Welch of the
> University of California at San Diego and colleagues in the Proceedings
> of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Aug. 9. Previous studies
> have shown this result in experimental plots, but this is the first
> under widespread, real-world conditions.
>
> With such pressures on the world's food supply it is simply
> wrong-headed to use 25 percent of U.S. grain for ethanol as a fuel for
> cars, said Brown.
>
> "Ethanol subsidies must be phased out and real cuts in carbon emissions
> made and urgently," he said.
>
> (END/2010)
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