Climatologist: “Along with the U.S., France, and China all are experiencing some pretty nasty drought that is going to have a major global impact on commodities, wheat in particular.”

Parts of West Texas, Oklahoma and adjoining states are suffering from a drought that rivals the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.  Some scientists say this is a kind of “global weirding” heralding climate change.

Were it not for the Biblical flooding of the Mississippi River and, well, Biblical whirlwinds slamming the Midwest, the “hellish” side of Hell and High Water would be the big news.  Last month a “record breaking 1.79 million acres burned across the country” and most of that was in Texas, NOAA reported.

The Houston Chronicle reported this week, “Texas’ farmers and ranchers are coping with their eighth drought in the last 13 years, and this one, while still young, has a chance of slamming producers with their biggest losses ever, officials said.

Nearly four fifths of Texas is under extreme or exceptional drought.  Reuters reports, the “dire drought” has “expanded across the key farming state of Kansas … the top U.S. wheat-growing state” over the last two weeks, “adding to struggles of wheat farmers already dealing with weather-ravaged fields.”

“It is pretty bad,” said Kansas state climatologist Mary Knapp. “For a lot of these areas… the last significant rainfall was in July of last year.”

It’s not just the United States that is being slammed.  As AFP reports, “Central China’s worst drought in more than 50 years is drying reservoirs, stalling rice planting, and threatens crippling power shortages as hydroelectric plants lie idle, state media said Wednesday.”

The UK’s Guardian explains the “drastic” measures the Chinese are taking :

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With politics at play, will the U.S. commit to a climate fund?

Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) was “one of President Reagan’s senior speech writers” from 1981 to 1988.  Reagan, of course, famously said “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.”

So it is perhaps not a complete surprise that at a House hearing on UN climate talks chaired by Rohrbacher, he actually asked:

“Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?” the California Republican asked Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate diplomat and lead witness at the hearing. “Or would people be supportive of cutting down older trees in order to plant younger trees as a means to prevent this disaster from happening?”

Seriously.   Even the centrist mavens at Politico were taken aback, titling their story, “Do trees cause global warming?”

But they should remember that this is a guy who, in a 2007 hearing, said of previous warm periods in the paleo-record, “We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?”

Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, dismissed Rohrbacher’s anti-scientific comment in an email to me:

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Popular Science has posted an amazing collection of photos, “Amid Floods, Dwellers Turn Homes Into Islands.”

They cry out for captions — and I welcome reader suggestions.  “Fortress America” comes to mind.

Here are more photos, with captions courtesy of John Dunne:

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Solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors within three to five years because of innovations, said Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co. (GE)

Of course, being cheaper than new nuclear isn’t hard when cost curves are moving in opposite direction (see “Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve?“).

Here is the solar cost curve (in blue) from the recent IPCC report on renewables:

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Dan Weiss, in a CAP cross-post

Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of “summer driving season.” Families pack up their cars or minivans to visit relatives and friends. Or they hop on America’s highways to enjoy our national parks, forests, beaches, and cities. The car trip is as American as apple pie or baseball.

This summer, however, Americans’ car trips are going to be much more expensive. Gasoline prices are nearly a dollar per gallon more than last year””a one-third leap. These higher prices are directly related to higher oil prices, which are $23 per barrel more than one year ago. This is a 33 percent hike.

Adding insult to injury, a significant portion of the gasoline price increase is due to speculators exploiting fears about the impact of instability in the Persian Gulf on the future price of oil. Reliable evidence indicates that speculators prey on these fears by bidding up oil prices, which ultimately hit $114 per barrel a month ago.

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Switzerland decides on nuclear phase-out by 2034

Calif. can meet 75% of its clean energy goals with existing technologies — study

California regulators are jumping hurdles to meet their target of 1990 emissions levels by 2020, but they still have the long view in their sights.

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A new study from the Electric Power Research Institute finds that a “smart grid” would cost up to $475 billion, the total economic and environmental value provided would range between $1.2 and $2 trillion.

Here are two EPRI figures comparing today’s power system to the “energy internet”:

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If you tuned in to the House Natural Resources Committee yesterday expecting to learn about roadblocks to wind and solar development, you may have been surprised to hear yet again about how to grow the profits of Big Oil companies.

Chairman Doc Hastings’ (R-WA) Natural Resources Committee bumped the hearing entitled “Identifying Roadblocks to Wind and Solar Energy on Public Lands and Waters – The Wind and Solar Industry Perspective.” They replaced it with part three of their oil above all look at gas prices, including witnesses associated with the Koch brothers and Jack Abramoff.  Brad Johnson has the story.

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