Food production shocks 'will happen more often because of extreme weather'
News
Explainer: How and why the UK government hopes to
fast-track fracking
UK ministers have announced a series of measures designed to
fast-track shale gas planning applications in England. The
government says shale gas is a “national priority” and that today’s
measures will ensure the industry gets up and running without
delay. Carbon Brief runs through the changes and explores the
government’s argument for fracking.
Climate and energy news
Food production shocks ‘will happen more often
because of extreme weather’
Climate change and a growing population mean that food
“shocks” – where the production of staple crops such as rice, wheat
and soybean falls by 5-7% – will triple in just 25 years, according
to new research. The report by the UK-US Taskforce on Extreme
Weather and Global Food System Resilience says the odds are
currently once-in-a-century but such an event will occur every 30
years or more by 2040, leaving people in developing countries
vulnerable to instability and conflict. Global food shortages would
expose Britain to greater risk from terrorism, saysThe Times. Agriculture faces a triple
challenge, reports New Scientist: boosting yields to feed a
growing global population, reducing its impact on the environment
and becoming more resilient to increasingly extreme
weather.
El Niño could break
record
This year’s El Niño could be the most powerful on record, US
forecasters said yesterday. Already the second strongest for this
time of year in more than 60 years, scientists say this year’s
event could be on a par with the record-breaking 1997-98 El Niño.
With a 90% chance of persisting throughout the northern hemisphere
winter, the super El Niño means 2015 is very likely to be the
warmest year on record, says The New York Times. Dubbed the ‘Godzilla
El Niño’ or ‘Bruce Lee El Niño’, the weather event looks set to
bring record rain to the west coast of the US but is unlikely to
assuage the severe drought across California, says The Daily Mail.
Pacific island nation calls for moratorium on new
coal mines
The president of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati has
written a letterto world leaders, urging
them to support a global moratorium on new coal mines in a bid to
slow sea level rise. Most of Kiribati’s population lives on atolls,
some just two metres above sea level, which are already suffering
erosion of the coastlines. RTCChas the story.
US states seek to halt Obama’s climate
plan
Fifteen US states have launched an effort to halt President
Barack Obama’s landmark climate policy while they prepare a
full-blown legal challenge to have it overturned. West Virginia
Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said in a statement, “With this
rule, the EPA is attempting to transform itself from an
environmental regulator to a central planning agency for states’
energy economies … it flies in the face of the powers granted to
states under the U.S. Constitution.” The Hillhas the
story.
Fast-track fracking taps well of northern
anger
The rolling hills of North Yorkshire are likely to be the
next battleground in the fight over fracking, says the Financial
Times, with many opposing plans to drill for shale gas among the
picturesque market towns. Zeal from the Conservative party in
Westminster is not roundly echoed among local Tories, while local
protest groups say tourism, the area’s biggest industry, will
suffer, and that water supplies could be affected.
Climate and energy comment
Britain’s sorry struggle with the shale
revolution
David Cameron may be casting a long envious glance at
America’s booming shale industry but Britain’s dash for shale gas
seems more akin to a barely discernible shuffle, says an editorial
in today’s Financial Times. With Britain on course to import 75% of
its oil and gas by 2030, we must set about tapping our shale gas
reserves, it says. But fracking will only take off if communities
are properly compensated and can be persuaded to “abandon their
resistance to an industry that is safer than many realise”. The
government announcing it will step in to override any “slow and
confused” local drilling applications is a reasonable response but
ministers must be wary of “riding roughshod” over local
authorities, says the FT, having previously promoted the importance
of local decision-making.
The Direction of Japan’s Post-Fukushima Energy
Policy: Q&A
After restarting a nuclear reactor earlier this week on the
southern island of Kyushu despite deep divisions within the country
about the future of the industry, Bloomberg has a brief Q&A on
where Japan is heading energy-wise. Questions include, what do
policymakers want? What are the risks? And has clean energy gained
ground?
New climate science
Has there been a
hiatus?
While every decade since the 1960s has been warmer than the
one before, the pace of the rise in global mean surface temperature
slowed a bit from 1998- 2013 – sometimes called the ‘hiatus’.
Although Earth’s climate is undoubtedly warming, natural
fluctuations in the climate can temporarily overwhelm global
warming in any given year or even decade, a new paper
explains.
Other stories
- If global warming really did pause, the planet
just pressed ‘play’ again (The Washington Post) - Costa’s last stand: climate change could see
tourists swap the Med for the
Baltics (The Guardian) - US oil futures drop to lowest since
2009 (The Financial Times) - German coal reserve plan could breach EU
rules (Carbon Pulse) - Global insurer Aviva warns of ‘grave reputational
risks’ of Carmichael mine (The Guardian) - ()