climate change

A White House report submitted to Congress this week recommends that moderate funding go toward geoengineering in an effort to fight climate change, says The New York Times.

One of the largest family-owned wineries in the United States, Jackson Family Wines, is facing climate change head-on, even as experts predict falling grape yields because of shifting weather patterns, says The New York Times. The makers of Kendall-Jackson chardonnay, a “supermarket staple,” the Jackson clan has deployed high-tech water-efficiency programs, drones and old-school falcons to manage pests in the wake of California’s drought and higher temperatures.

As two-thirds of marine species off the Northeast coast adjust their range due to rising ocean temperatures, fishermen are frustrated by outdated catch regulations, says The New York Times. “Lobster, once a staple in southern New England, have decamped to Maine. Black sea bass, scup, yellowtail flounder, mackerel, herring and monkfish, to name just a few species, have all moved to accommodate changing temperatures,” says the Times.

Temperatures in the Arctic are expected to be 27 degrees Fahrenheit above normal this week, which has scientists unnerved, says The New York Times. In mid-November, temperatures were 35 degrees above the average, before cooling again. But the “heat” has returned.

Hunger experts at an FAO meeting in Rome said that if women farmers had the same access as men to land, tools, and credit, crop yields would rise by at least a third and there would be 150 million fewer hungry people in the world, Reuters reports.

Officials in 24 states want president-elect Trump to cancel the Clean Power Plan put forth by the Obama administration, says Reuters. The plan calls for lowering power-plant emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, but the Supreme Court has delayed its implantation until a U.S. district court in the District of Columbia decides whether the order is legal.

Erik Solheim, executive director of the UN Environment Program, says he’s troubled by president-elect Trump’s appointments so far, says Reuters. " I am concerned that some elite American politicians deny science. You will be in the Middle Ages if you deny science," he said.

The U.S. Energy Department says it won’t provide President-elect Trump’s Energy Department transition team with a list of department employees involved with climate science or the society memberships of lab workers, says Reuters.

Worried that federal climate databases might soon be taken offline, scientists are frantically trying to download as much data on climate change as they can before the Trump administration takes office, says The Washington Post.

Sub-Saharan Africa will likely need to boost food imports or expand its farmland if it is going to feed a population expected to increase 2.5-fold by 2050, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The other option – increasing yields on current farmland to reach self-sufficiency – should be pursued but is likely to fall short.

Californians could see higher food prices, as well as increases for electricity, new homes and gasoline, thanks to two new state laws, adopted last summer, that are designed to lower climate emissions, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Cattle ranching and rice farming are the most plausible sources of rising methane gas emissions, says a new report led by the French Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE). The researchers “reported that methane concentrations in the air began to surge around 2007 and grew precipitously in 2014 and 2015,” says Reuters.

A new report on consumer beliefs by the Pew Research Center found that a lot of Americans aren’t swayed by scientific findings that GMOs are safe to eat, that food beliefs are generally non-partisan, and that plenty of Americans are generally skeptical about science.

“Climate change and the flow of farm chemicals and coastal sediment into the waters that wash over one of Australia’s most significant nature areas, the Great Barrier Reef, pose the biggest threats to its survival, according to a government report to Unesco released early Friday,” says The New York Times.

Snowmelt from the northern Sierra Nevada provides water for a large part of California during the warm months. An analysis by UCLA says that if greenhouse-gas emissions are not curbed, the snowpack that provides the water could be half its current size by the end of the century, reports public radio KPCC-FM in Pasadena.

If Donald Trump pushes ahead with his promises to dismantle President Obama’s climate-change policies, he’ll face tough fights from environmental groups. But Trump has a few tactics he can use to outmaneuver the opposition, reports The New York Times.

Donald Trump now says he has an “open mind” about the Paris Agreement, an international deal to curb greenhouse-gas emissions that was signed by more than 190 countries, including the U.S. During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to cancel U.S. involvement in the agreement, calling climate change a hoax.

In FERN’s latest story, published with Switchyard Magazine, reporter Robert Kunzig takes us to the upper Mississippi River Delta, where the idea of growing more fruits and vegetables — to ease the burden on California in the climate-change era — is taking root.