Dramatic Depletion of World Food Production Linked to Wildfires
World climate events these past days have been so extreme and have caused so much destruction and loss of life, you might think you’re sitting through a bad disaster movie. But as tragic as the terrible flooding in Pakistan, China and Eastern Europe has been, the heat and wildfires in Russia will have a very serious long-term effect, that of drastically increasing atmospheric CO2 and Methane concentrations and thereby increasing the risk of drought and wildfires in many parts of the world.
Another long-term effect will be that of severely depleting world grain supply, already at a low level. Gwynne Dyer explains the implications of this in his disturbing article for Straight.com, “Gwynne Dyer: Russian response to wildfires gives an early glimpse of climate change impact.”
Russia Burning: The View From Above and at Ground Level
Note from Dorothy: As of today – Sunday, August 8 – there are 554 fires burning in Russia, in 190,000 hectares. On Friday, the air temperature in Moscow reached 37.3 C, beating the previous 1920 record by nearly 2 C. According to BBC World News, carbon monoxide was at six times the danger level. There [...]
A New Global Warming Prediction: two articles on more extreme global climate change to come
Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago, Professor Chris Field said greenhouse gases increased far more rapidly than expected between 2000 and 2007; “We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we’ve considered seriously in climate policy.”
Prof Field said his 2007 report, which predicted temperature rises between 1.98F (1.1C) and 11.52F (6.4C) over the next century, seriously underestimated the scale of the problem.
