But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or the advantages of the market had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism. —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
California’s Central Valley is one of Earth's most productive agricultural areas. The area is so productive because the 450-mile-long valley is surrounded by mountain ranges that, for millenniums, have eroded and enriched the soils below. The valley has a moderate Mediterranean climate with skilled farmers and workers, making it an agricultural powerhouse.
The Central Valley grows 230 types of crops, and in only one percent of the country's total farmland, it grows eight percent of our food by value. Any food you can think of except for tropical is grown there. Kiwi, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, asparagus, apricots, broccoli, and so many other yummies are shipped to all areas in the States. It would be devastating to lose it to climate change. Next week does not look promising for this critical fresh food source.
Extreme heat can directly reduce both pollinators and plants’ ability to reproduce, develop and survive. Heat stress can hinder photosynthesis in crop plants and diminish the nutritional value of their flowers. If flowers produce less nectar and pollen, bees will have less food to support the development, survival and reproductive success of their colonies.
Fewer bees means less pollination, and lower crop yields.
“We know that heat is directly impacting the quantity and the quality of floral resources,” said Jenna Walters, a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University’s Pollination Ecology Lab who led the review. “How that indirectly impacts specifically understudied bees, like solitary specialist bees, is one of the biggest neglected problems in our field and one of the biggest things we need to focus on.”
Most studies focus on honeybees and bumblebees. But most of the world’s roughly 20,000 bee species are solitary, some of which depend on just one plant. Squash bees, as their name implies, feed exclusively on pollen from squash and other gourds. If larvae are fed other types of pollen in the lab, they don’t develop. Undernourished bees get smaller over generations, which means they can’t fly as far. And that means they’ll pollinate fewer crops.
“We simply don’t know how heat is impacting the nutrition of bees and how that is impacting development of bees and populations and communities of bees in our landscapes,” Walters said.
Extreme heat is directly linked to the mortality of wildlife.
In the early 20th century, pioneering naturalist Joseph Grinnell and his team studied the flora and fauna of California, conducting meticulous surveys across large swaths of the state, including the Mojave Desert. They collected 100,000 specimens and took 74,000 pages of field notes, creating an invaluable baseline against which to measure long-term change.
Several years ago, a research team from the Grinnell Resurvey Project at the University of California, Berkeley set out to find how desert birds had fared over the last century. The changes were profound. In a study published last fall, the team found that on average temperatures in the desert had increased 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, making one of the world’s hottest places even hotter.
They also found that nearly a third of the 135 bird species present a century ago are far less common today and not nearly as widespread. The “heat stress associated with climate change” is the culprit, the study concluded, because desert birds need more water to keep cool, but it is not available.
“We often think that climate change may cause a mass mortality event in the future, but this study tells us that the change in climate that has already occurred is too hot and in certain areas, animals can’t tolerate the warming and drying that has already occurred,” said Eric Riddell, a physiological ecologist and the lead author.
The hot and hotter temperatures affect agriculture, wildlife, and livestock that are already vulnerable to human cruelty.
And humans are not adaptable to these temperatures.
Parts of southern and western Europe have been experiencing unusually high temperatures. Areas of Spain and Portugal have recorded daily maximum temperatures in the high 30s celsius for more than a week, exceeding 40C in parts of southern Spain on Sunday. Italy, France, Germany and the Benelux region also reached the low- to mid-30s celsius in places at the weekend.
The heat is caused by a large area of high pressure that is stagnating over Europe and preventing the usual pattern of low pressure systems moving eastwards into Europe from the Atlantic. This is known as a blocking high and results in very dry and stable conditions, as the fronts associated with more dynamic weather patterns are forced away by the high pressure.
The wave of #chaleur which currently concerns #Alpes is severely affecting the high mountain cryosphere.The residual snow on the #glaciers melts quickly.Impressive flow on the outlet torrents of the Blanc and Noir glaciers, at Pré de Madame Carle.This phenomenon has triggered a heat dome, in which warm air is trapped under the blocking high. The pressure acts like a lid, forcing rising warm air to sink, compressing it slightly and raising its temperature as a result. The heating effect is also exacerbated by the dry conditions, as drier air is able to heat quicker than humid air.
The heat dome is likely to expand as it strengthens in the coming days, possibly spreading as far north-east as central Europe and bringing highs of more than 30C to parts of the continent each day. Spain will be particularly badly affected and is likely to hit the low- to mid-40s celsius daily, particularly across southern regions.
So many stories, so little time.
The “calm down” set fancy themselves professional and sober-minded, a tasteful levee protecting the marvel of our civilization from the uninformed and hysterical masses.
The “calm down” person’s business is the business as usual.
They defend the status quo with a practiced rueful resignation: “Believe me, I wish things were different too, but it’s just the way things are.” Only “the way things are” is on an historic and murderous losing streak.
They love to second guess the “strategies” of those who are trying to actively change or challenge the “way things are.”
“Isn’t that kind of approach counterproductive?” the “calm down” type will ask.
They worry anger or a more direct approach will turn off their friends like the “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” lady or the “don’t let the horrible be the enemy of the atrocious” guy.
When you express alarm about how rapidly the climate is warming, the “calm down” crowd will correct you with the most remedial facts. They believe that for you to be so bothered when they are not, there must be a fundamental misunderstanding on your part.
“You do know the global warming temperature is taken from a multiyear average, not single extreme heat events, right?” they will say, like a gentle bemused uncle or aunt letting the kids know that elephants don’t actually talk like they do in story books.
“Yes, I know. But is it possible these extreme heat events, because of the rapid rate of change, even if only lasting for months or weeks could trigger other thresholds if—”
But they’ve already moved on.
The “calm down” does not have time for questions in response to their answers.
So much more at the link.