The latest weekly Drought Monitor update set another grim record. The brutal U.S. drought expanded to 65.45% of the contiguous U.S. — the highest ever in the Monitor’s 12-year history. The previous record was 64.8% — set just last week.

In the third quarter alone, crop production dropped $12 billion “due to this summer’s severe heat and drought.”  The drop in farm inventories was so sharp in the last quarter that it wiped 0.2% off of U.S. GDP in the latest revision.

In Texas, the drought has killed more than 300 million trees. Nearly 98% of Nebraska is in extreme to exceptional drought — 3 months ago, none of it was!

Climate Central explains:

The drought is the worst to strike the U.S. since the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s and lengthy droughts of the 1950s. It came on suddenly and largely without warning, and although the main trigger was most likely the pattern of water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the drought was exacerbated by extremely hot temperatures during the spring and summer. Climate studies have shown that the odds of severe heat waves are increasing due to manmade climate change.

As I wrote in July, “We’re Already Topping Dust Bowl Temperatures — Imagine What’ll Happen If We Fail To Stop 10°F Warming.” The WashPost reported in August:

The United States will suffer a series of severe droughts in the next two decades, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Moreover, global warming will play an increasingly important role in their abundance and severity, claims Aiguo Dai, the study’s author.

His findings bolster conclusions from climate models used by researchers around the globe that have predicted severe and widespread droughts in coming decades over many land areas…

“We can now be more confident that the models are correct,” Dai said, “but unfortunately, their predictions are dire.”

For more on what the models have been saying, see “James Hansen Is Correct About Catastrophic Projections For U.S. Drought If We Don’t Act Now.” I’ll do a post on Dai’s latest work in October.

Related Posts:

• Video: Chronicling The Extreme 2012 Drought
• My Nature Piece On Dust-Bowlification And the Grave Threat It Poses to Food Security

by Graham Readfearn, via DeSmogBlog

Dr. Russell McKenzie, an associate professor at Southeastern Louisiana University Department of Management and Business Administration, is rather pleased with the guy he has secured to speak to students and the public about the economic cost of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are honored to have someone of his stature speaking,” he told an online university community newspaper. In another story, Dr McKenzie added: “It’s not every day you have the opportunity to have a world renowned speaker to come to Southeastern”.

So who is this global powerhouse on climate change and economics? Sir Nicholas Stern, perhaps, author of the UK government’s “Stern Review”? Could it be James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and famed climate scientist?

No. The “world renowned speaker” appearing at Southeastern Louisiana University on 2 October is none other than Lord Christopher Monckton, the British hereditary peer who believes climate scientists are part of a plot to introduce a socialist world government.

Apparently, the university is “honored” to host a man who told told climate scientists through a partisan crowd that “we are coming after you. We are going to prosecute you, and we are going to lock you up”.

Honored to have someone who compared former Australian government climate policy advisor Ross Garnaut to a Nazi? Honored to have someone who tells young climate change campaigners that they are the “Hitler youth“? Honored to be in the presence of a person shown to have misrepresented climate science (repeatedly) and yet is promoted by coal mining magnate and world’s richest woman Gina Rinehart?

And yes, honored to host a man who has written that the chances of Barack Obama having been born in the US are  ”no better than 1 in 62,500,000,000,000,000,000“.

The lecture in question has been well promoted through official university channels and through a university-based website for student journalists which has written not one, but two stories promoting the event. Between 75 and 120 people are expected to attend.

News went out earlier this week to staff and students via the university’s weekly newsletter and on a 21 September daily bulletin, which included a link to a flyer promoting the event. The fawning newsletter article provided a potted biography of Lord Monckton:

Read more

by Robert Hutchinson and Molly Miller, via the Rocky Mountain Institute

Why just talk about energy when what people really need is comfort?

For example, when researching Reinventing Fire we spoke with a regional insulation installer who says he never needs to bring up energy to make a sale. He walks into a potential customer’s house, finds an overly chilly (often north facing) room and says, “Is this space uncomfortable? I bet you don’t use this room much.”

Why might selling space usability and comfort—as opposed to selling energy savings—work as a go-to-market model?

Because people get really engaged about comfort and not always excited about energy efficiency (confusion or…snore).

At home, at work, and even in our cars, comfort influences not only our happiness and well-being, but also our effectiveness and productivity. Studies show increased productivity and decreased absenteeism is directly tied to comfort; even a tiny increase in productivity has huge financial ramifications.

But it’s more than productivity. In many places (think Singapore or Houston) moving between high heat and humidity and freezing air-conditioned cabs and buildings feels as it if it is not very healthy. People certainly complain about it and blame summer colds on it!

Not only is cranked-up AC—or even a little bit of cold air near the door—potentially unhealthy, it can lead to Junk Under Your Desk Syndrome (JUYDS). If you need a heater or a fan in your personal workspace, you have this affliction. Or, rather, your building has this affliction—and it pays the price.

(If this blog were about energy, like many of our other blogs, we would mention that JUYDS can be death to plug loads, which make designing really good buildings very challenging these days, because they are so difficult to predict upfront—and increasingly, so large.

We spend thousands of dollars on Herman Miller chairs for people’s ergonomic comfort in our office buildings, but put little thought into their thermal comfort.

The good news today is we know much more about comfort and controls than we used to. First, well-designed, highly efficient buildings are also much more comfortable because they are usually meant to keep temperature stable—no freezing or broiling first thing in the morning, then the opposite later. Read more