Ah, kismet.   So I’m about to start writing a post criticizing the New York Times for the dreadful headline it ran on John Broder’s Thursday piece, “Scientists See More Deadly Weather, but Dispute the Cause,” when who should call me on the phone?

Broder was calling for some comments on climate politics, as he does every six months or so.   I said I thought the headline did not accurately reflect the story he wrote.

Broder called it a “crappy headline.”  He said of the two scientists he spoke to and quoted — NOAA’s Thomas R. Karl and NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth — “they don’t dispute the cause.”

Note:  It is always tricky when a reporter is talking to a blogger, so I specifically asked for permission to use each of these two quotes, and he gave it.

I have written about the work and the words of both Karl and Trenberth a number of times and, as readers know, each understands that climate change is contributing to more extreme weather.  The story makes that clear.

What is especially dismaying about this kind of misleading headline is that most people never read beyond the headline and NY Times headlines sweep across the internet.  This one appears to have been repeated at least 55,000 times.

The grim statistics on how few people actually read newspaper articles was something my parents, who were both in the newspaper business, told me repeatedly.  Here are some stats I found on the web:

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Our guest blogger is Noah Matson, Vice President for Climate Change and Natural Resources Adaptation at the Defenders of Wildlife.

In a disturbing trend of attacking the government’s ability to prepare for climate risks, the House passed an amendment to the fiscal 2012 agriculture spending bill that would prohibit the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) from implementing new regulations on climate change adaptation. This amendment puts the nation at increased risk of food disruptions, forest fires and huge economic losses.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who introduced the amendment, bizarrely claimed USDA’s climate adaptation policy was somehow a “backdoor door attempt to put a cap-and-trade program in place in the Department of Agriculture.”

Far from it. The commonsense USDA policy says only that agencies should plan for that future in a way that will prevent food disruptions, massive forest fires and economic hardships:

Through adaptation planning, USDA will develop, prioritize, implement and evaluate actions to minimize climate risks and exploit new opportunities that climate change will bring.

The nation is still immersed in intense weather and climate-related disasters – from the Mississippi flood, to the Texas drought, to the Arizona fire. Some of these extreme events are happening in the same place.

“I can’t get my crop out of one side of the levee because it’s too dry and I’ve lost my crop on the other side of the levee because it’s floating away,” said George Lacour, 48, of Morganza, Louisiana. The state is bearing the brunt of much of the Mississippi flood as well as a state-wide severe drought.

Looking at the past record would not have prepared anyone for the devastating weather events this year – and the future is going to be different yet. Don’t we want our government to be planning for those changes?

The conditions we are seeing this year are breaking records. According to Texan Matt Farmer, “It’s as dry as I’ve ever seen it in my lifetime. I don’t remember a drought this widespread. I’ve got a lot of country that’s blowing, but I can’t do a thing about it.”

This year’s events are also consistent with the conditions researchers project are coming with climate change. Looking at the past record would not have prepared anyone for the devastating weather events this year – and the future is going to be different yet. Don’t we want our government to be planning for those changes?

The Senate should do right by the country’s farmers, forests and the people and wildlife that rely on them, and reject this amendment.

Learn more from the Defenders of Wildlife on Congress’s June 3 vote to put the lives, livelihoods, property and security of Americans at increased risk< and the importance of a broad, comprehensive strategy to prepare for the impacts of climate change.

By the end of this year, solar PV production capacity will be at 50 GW (50,000 MW), up from 100 MW in 2000. That’s reason to celebrate on this International Solar Day.

But it’s also important to remember the implications of that growth. Solar PV manufacturing uses all kinds of toxic chemicals and materials that should be recycled. Many solar companies have take-back programs that minimize waste. But independent groups have called for mandatory recycling of panels.

Greentech Media had a piece on the issue this week:

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“Agriculture must, literally, return to its roots by rediscovering the importance of healthy soil, drawing on natural sources of plant nutrition, and using mineral fertilizer wisely.”

That’s the conclusion of a recent report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on sustainable agriculture.

When talking about sustainable agriculture, I often hear the criticism that “we cannot return to the methods of farming of 50 years ago.”  But that is not what sustainable agriculture is about. An increase in yields can be achieved with lower emissions (my working definition of sustainable) — not by being anti-science, but by re-imagining agriculture.

Methods of the past yielded less, which is not an option for a burgeoning global population. But the current fossil-fuel laden agricultural system is not an option either. So to meet today’s unique food and energy challenges of today, researchers and innovative companies are re-inventing agriculture and bringing ingenious solutions to realize true sustainability.

Here is a round-up of a few innovative methods.

Let’s begin with wheat, specifically perennial wheat.

Researchers at Michigan State University and the Land Institute have been working on creating a commercially-viable perennial version of wheat.  Contrary to the once-a-year, shallow-rooted annuals, perennial wheat has much deeper roots and can produce up to seven years in a row, thus reducing frequency of plowing. Deeper roots allow for greater uptake of nutrients, minimizing the amount of fossil-based fertilizers needed.

While perennial versions of wheat and other crops is still a ways off, a report from the Land Institute points out that “perennial crops could help restrain climate change. Their net values for global warming potential are negative, having been estimated at –200 to –1050 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents per ha per year, as compared with positive potentials of410 to 1140 kg per ha per year for annual crops.”  Clearly, more research is needed so that this important transition from annuals to perennials can take place.

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