Tag: earth

WINTER WHEAT CROP IN POOR SHAPE AMID DROUGHT

WINTER WHEAT CROP IN POOR SHAPE AMID DROUGHTOnly 28% of the U.S. winter wheat crop is in good or excellent condition, one of the worst starts for the crop in years, said the USDA’s Crop Progress report on Monday. Three-quarters of winter wheat land is in drought, including nine of every 10 acres in Kansas, the top wheat producing state.

By comparison, at this point in 2021, 45% of the U.S. crop was in good or excellent condition and in 2020, 43% rated as good or excellent. Brownfield Ag News said this year’s rating of 24% was the lowest since 1992, when it was 23%.

Wheat is a hardy crop grown in a wide range of climates and soils but best suited to temperate regions with annual rainfall of 12 to 36 inches. In the United States, the central and southern Plains are the heart of winter wheat production. Winter wheat is sown and sprouts in the fall, lies dormant during the winter and is harvested in late spring and summer.

In its first listing of winter wheat condition this fall, the USDA said 22% of wheat in Kansas was in good or excellent condition. In Oklahoma, the corresponding rating was 11% and in Texas, it was 4%.

Nationwide, 35% of winter wheat rated as poor or very poor, compared to 21% one year ago.

LINK: https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/winter-wheat-crop-in-poor-shape-amid-drought

World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

Key UN reports published in last two days warn urgent and collective action needed – as oil firms report astronomical profits

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/world-close-to-irreversible-climate-breakdown-warn-major-studies

What is solarpunk and can it help save the planet?

The solarpunk aesthetic depicts nature and technology in harmony
The solarpunk aesthetic depicts nature and technology in harmony

Lush green communities with roof top gardens, floating villages, transport fuelled by clean energy and hope-filled sci-fi tales. Imagine a world in which existing technologies are deployed for the greater good of both people and the planet.

LINK: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57761297

Burn Wild

Burn Wild

For more than a decade two mugshots of fugitive environmentalists have sat amongst airplane hijackers, bombers and murders on the FBI’s Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists list.

One of the photos is of a tall, hipster looking engineer from Seattle. He’s wearing a red shirt, has a light shadowy beard.

His name: Joseph Mahmoud Dibee.

The other photo is of a young white woman with thick eyebrows, piercing brown eyes and long brown hair. Across her back is a large tattoo: a bird with its wings outstretched, soaring.

Her name: Josephine Sunshine Overaker.

To the authorities, Joseph Mahmoud Dibee and Josephine Sunshine Overaker are dangerous, violent extremists, part of an eco-terrorist movement that in 2005 the then Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI called the number one domestic terror threat in America.

And now one of them – Joseph Dibee – has been caught.

For the past eighteen months journalist Leah Sottile has been recording with Joe Dibee as his case progresses through the courts and as she works to understand the truth behind the mugshots and how they ended up here.

Burn Wild is a story of radical environmentalism and morality that journeys into one of the most thorny and murky questions of our time: How far is too far to go to stop the planet burning?

Answering this will take Leah and producer Georgia Catt into radical activist communities past and present on both sides of the Atlantic, amongst people who’ve spent their lives running from the authorities, and those who carry the weight of that word – terrorist – on their shoulders.

In this story people will take away very different things on what they hear, but where you sit isn’t a question of the past. It’s a question of right now.

All available episodes (8 total)

‘Soon the world will be unrecognisable’: is it still possible to prevent total climate meltdown?

Record high temperatures and extreme weather events are being recorded around the world. Photograph: Ian Logan/Getty Images
Record high temperatures and extreme weather events are being recorded around the world. Photograph: Ian Logan/Getty Images

Blistering heatwaves are just the start. We must accept how bad things are before we can head off global catastrophe, according to a leading UK scientist

How the US Military is Preparing for Climate Change – The Green Line – Ep 1

How the US Military is Preparing for Climate Change - The Green LineWhilst debates around Climate Change still rage on US TV, the US Military has been quietly preparing for the now inevitable. Planners are now acutely aware of just how quick Climate Change is coming down upon us, and how dramatically it will change the geopolitics of the planet. What wargames are the military running in preparation for this? Which theatres do they project to be the most impacted? and is the US ready for a worst-case scenario? We ask our panel of experts. On the panel this week: – Sharon Burke (Ecospherics/Fmr White House) – John Conger (Center for Climate and Security/Fmr White House) – Larry Wilkerson (Fmr Chief of Staff to Colin Powell) This is Part 1 of our special 5-Part Series focusing on The Geopolitics of Climate Change This Production was Brought to you by The Red Line and Mission Climate Project

LINKS:

https://theredline.libsyn.com/how-the-us-military-is-preparing-for-climate-change-the-green-line-ep-1

https://www.theredlinepodcast.com/post/how-the-us-military-is-preparing-for-climate-change

Global wildlife populations have declined by 69% since 1970, WWF report finds

The Amazon pink river dolphin population has dropped drastically in 22 years.
The Amazon pink river dolphin population has dropped drastically in 22 years.

The world’s wildlife populations plummeted by an average of 69% between 1970 and 2018, a dangerous decline resulting from climate change and other human activity, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) warned in a report Thursday.

LINK: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/world/wwf-living-planet-report-2022-climate-intl-scli-scn/index.html

Living in the Time of Dying

Living in The Time of Dying is an unflinching look at what it means to be living in the midst of climate catastrophe and finding purpose and meaning within it. Recognising the magnitude of the climate crisis we are facing, independent filmmaker Michael Shaw, sells his house to travel around the world looking for answers. Pretty soon we begin to see how deep the predicament goes along with the systems and ways of thinking that brought us here.

Featured in this documentary are Professor of Sustainability and founder of the Deep Adaptation movement Jem Bendell, award winning journalist and author of “The End of Ice” , Dahr Jamail, Dharma teacher and author of Facing Extinction Catherine Ingram and Stan Rushworth, a Native American Elder, teacher and author who brings an especially enlightening viewpoint to these questions.

While it becomes clear that catastrophic climate change is now inevitable it also opens up a whole new set of questions: How exactly did we arrive at this point? What new choices can we make now re how to live our lives and what actions make sense at this time. The people interviewed in the documentary, all highly regarded and well known spokespeople on the issue, argue it’s too late to stop what is coming but in no way is it too late to regain a renewed, life giving relationship with our selves and our world.

Bruno Latour’s ‘Facing Gaia’ with Tim Howles

Bruno Latour's 'Facing Gaia' with Tim HowlesTim is Junior Research Fellow in Political Theology at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, and Researcher Director at the “Laudato Si’ Research Institute”, a new institute conducting academic research in the field of ecology and social change. He is also an ordained Priest in the Church of England. In this episode we discuss Bruno Latour’s text ‘Facing Gaia’.

 

LINK: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bruno-latours-72594262

These Trees Are Spreading North in Alaska. That’s Not Good

White spruce trees are expanding into the Arctic tundra with stunning speed, with potentially serious consequences both for the region and the world.

These Trees Are Spreading North in Alaska. That’s Not Good
IN THE SUMMER of 2019, Roman Dial and his friend Brad Meiklejohn hired a single-engine bush plane out of Kotzebue, on the northwest coast of Alaska. Even those wings could only get them within a five-day hike of where they wanted to be: deep in the tundra, where Dial had noticed peculiar shadows showing up in satellite images.

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