If the latest news reports are any indication, the droughts that have wracked a large portion of the contiguous United States continued piling on the damage in Texas and Oklahoma through 2012. The effects will reverberate for years — and global warming will make such brutal droughts (or worse) the region’s normal climate if we keep listening to the deniers’ call to inaction.

It’s a particular bitter irony, given that the political and media cultures of both states, with Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) leading the charge, have been contributing enthusiastically to climate change denialism.

The National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration recently determined that 2012 was the hottest year on record for the lower 48 states, and research by NOAA and other institutions has linked extreme events like Texas and Oklahoma’s drought to climate change. As of December 2012, more than 42% percent of the lower 48 states were experiencing “severe” drought conditions, and 63% of the United States’ new winter wheat crop is in the drought-hit areas.

In Texas in particular, the situation is sufficiently dire that the Republicans in charge of the state are being forced to finally take concrete steps to build new reservoirs and repair the state’s water infrastructure:

In 2011, the last time the Legislature convened for one of its biennial sessions, Representative Allan Ritter, a Republican and the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, was unsuccessful in getting lawmakers to approve legislation imposing an annual fee on water users like homeowners and businesses to help finance projects in the state water plan.

But on Thursday, Mr. Ritter proposed bills that would draw $2 billion from the state’s emergency Rainy Day Fund to establish a water infrastructure bank that would lend money for the projects. This time, his proposals received support from Republican leaders and groups that are often on the opposite sides of issues, including the Sierra Club’s Texas chapter, the Texas Association of Business and other industry groups. At least 20 percent of the money available in the fund would be used for conservation and reuse efforts.

“There were people who were trying to talk about water last time, and there wasn’t any money, and there wasn’t the critical mass,” said James Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, Austin. “Elite opinion begins to coalesce after a little while, and it takes people a while to get the issue out there, and I think that’s part of what’s happened with water.”

The Texas drought began in 2010 and is now the third-worst the state has seen since 1895, when record-keeping first began. The Texas Water Development Board estimates that without additional water supplies the state will be short 8.3 million acre-feet of water by 2060 (3.07 acre-feet is equivalent to one million gallons) and the shortfall could cost the state $116 billion that year. Even more tragically, since Texas is a conservative state and stingy with its budgets, the need to address straining water supplies is crowding out other critical investments such as eduction and social services.

The situation is much the same in Oklahoma, according to EnidNews.com. Gary McManus, a climatologist for the Oklahoma Climatological survey, expects the drought to topple state records again going all the way back to 1895:

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Image: Phil Plait

So Slate had the wisdom to whisk Phil Plait and his “Bad Astronomy” blog away from Discover. That means Slate readers now learn things like:

The claim that there’s been no global warming for the past 16 years. This is blatantly untrue, a ridiculous and obviously false statement.

Sure, folks can get that here — see “Video And Charts Make Clear The Planet Is Still Warming.” But then not everyone reads Climate Progress, I’ve been told.

Slate certainly has a significant readership, folks who I hope take to heart Plait’s blunt conclusion:

So let this be clear: There is no scientific controversy over this. Climate change denial is purely, 100 percent made-up political and corporate-sponsored crap. When the loudest voices are fossil-fuel funded think tanks, when they don’t publish in science journals but instead write error-laden op-eds in partisan venues, when they have to manipulate the data to support their point, then what they’re doing isn’t science.

Now all Slate needs to do is drop confusionist Bjorn Lomborg, and they’ll actually be unconfusing their readership on climate science.

The world wastes from one-third to one-half of the four billion metric tons of food it produces each year, according to a report released last week by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Because any item of food also represents an entire chain of production, wasted food also translates into wasted fresh water, wasted energy, wasted cropland, and further contributions to global warming with no discernible counter-balancing benefit.

And even as the world wastes huge amounts of food, its ability to produce that food is being put under added stress by global warming and climate change. Studies by Oxfam and other research groups show extreme weather, higher temperatures, flooding and pest outbreaks could increasingly destabilize food production, driving prices up by as much as 180 percent by 2030. East Africa has already seen the worst drought in 60 years, decimating its food supply as climate change makes reduced rainfall a “chronic problem.”

The problem is especially unnerving because, as the report notes, the global population is expected to surge another 2.5 billion by 2075, bringing the total well beyond 9 billion. And according to the UN, nearly 870 million people were already chronically malnourished between 2010 and 2012. As societies become more affluent, global meat consumption per capita is expected to rise 40 percent by 2050, which exacerbates the problem as feeding people with meat is far more inefficient in terms of water, land, and energy input.

The report found that the problem spans both first-world and third-world countries, with most of the waste occurring on the consumer-side in the first case, and on the supplier-side in the second:

In less-developed countries, such as those of sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia, wastage tends to occur primarily at the farmer-producer end of the supply chain. Inefficient harvesting, inadequate local transportation and poor infrastructure mean that produce is frequently handled inappropriately and stored under unsuitable farm site conditions.

As the development level of a country increases, so the food loss problem generally moves further up the supply chain with deficiencies in regional and national infrastructure having the largest impact. […]

In mature, fully developed countries such as the UK, more-efficient farming practices and better transport, storage and processing facilities ensure that a larger proportion of the food produced reaches markets and consumers. However, characteristics associated with modern consumer culture mean produce is often wasted through retail and customer behavior. […]

Controlling and reducing the level of wastage is frequently beyond the capability of the individual farmer, distributor or consumer, since it depends on market philosophies, security of energy supply, quality of roads and the presence of transport hubs. These are all related more to societal, political and economic norms, as well as better-engineered infrastructure, rather than to agriculture. In most cases the sustainable solutions needed to reduce waste are well known. The challenge is transferring this know-how to where it is needed, and creating the political and social environment which encourages both transfer and adoption of these ideas to take place.

The Washington Post‘s Brad Plumer went through the report and listed a whole host of concrete examples of how this takes place: In developed countries such as America and the UK, between 30 and 50 percent of all food bought is thrown away by the purchaser, due to marketing strategies that encourage bulk buying and other issues. Major supermarket chains will often reject whole crops for purely aesthetic reasons — practices that lose the UK one-third of the food it produces, for example. Plumer previously noted other issues in developed countries, including over-zealous sell-by dates, large portion sizes at restaurants that go uneaten, flaws in the processing and distribution chain, and the simple willingness of households to throw out 14 to 25 percent of the food they buy simply because it’s cheap.

In developing countries, the problem is much more one of inadequate infrastructure: India loses at least 40 percent of its food en route between growers and consumers due to lack of refrigeration, bad roads, and corruption. Africa has many similar problems. Countries such as Pakistan and the former Soviet Republicans have out-dated and inadequate storage facilities — Pakistan loses 16 percent of its grain production annually because poor storage allows for rodent infestation. Rice loss in Southeast Asian countries ranges from 37 percent all the way up to 80 percent.

On top of this, about 70 percent of the 3.8 trillion cubic meters humans use annually goes into agriculture, meaning the potential for wasted water resources is huge. About 550 billion cubic meters of water are wasted around the world each year producing crops that are never consumed. And by 2050, demand for water in food production could be driven to 10 or even 13 trillion cubic meters per year.

Related Post:

• Oxfam Warns Climate Change And Extreme Weather Will Cause Food Prices To Soar

Emissions would need to peak in 2016 and drop 5%/year through 2050

University of Reading news release

Tough limits on global emissions of greenhouse gases could avoid 20% to 65% of the damaging effects of climate change by 2100, according to new research led by the University of Reading’s Walker Institute and published today in Nature Climate Change.

The most stringent emissions scenario in the study keeps global temperature rise below 2 degrees C and has global greenhouse gas emissions which peak in 2016 and then reduce at 5% per year to 2050. The 2 degree target is the focus of international climate negotiations, the latest round of which took place in Doha in December 2012. However, relatively little research has been done to quantify the worldwide benefits, in terms of avoided or reduced impacts, of the 2 degree target.

Of the impacts studied, crop productivity, flooding and energy for cooling are the areas that see the greatest benefit from emission reductions: global impacts in these areas are reduced by 40% to 65% by 2100 if warming can be limited to 2 degrees. In contrast, the adverse impacts of climate change on water availability are only reduced by around 20% when emission limitations are imposed. This is because even a small amount of warming can alter rainfall patterns sufficiently to reduce water availability.

Limiting emissions also has the effect of delaying climate change impacts by many decades. One example from the new research shows global productivity of spring wheat could drop by 20% by the 2050s, but such a drop in yields is delayed until 2100 with stringent emission limits. Similar delays are seen in increased exposure to flood risk and rising energy demand for cooling.

Professor Nigel Arnell, Walker Institute Director, University of Reading, said:

“Our research clearly identifies the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions — less severe impacts on flooding and crops are two areas of particular benefit. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions won’t avoid the impacts of climate change altogether of course, but our research shows it will buy time to make things like buildings, transport systems and agriculture more resilient to climate change.”

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Edward Davey, said: “We can avoid many of the worst impacts of climate change if we work hard together to keep global emissions down. This research helps us quantify the benefits of limiting temperature rise to 2°C and underlines why it’s vital we stick with the UN climate change negotiations and secure a global legally binding deal by 2015.”

The new research provides the first comprehensive assessment of the benefits of limiting global greenhouse gas emissions. A range of impact indicators are considered including: flooding, water availability, crop productivity and energy for heating and cooling.

Related Posts:

• An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces
• Study: We’re Headed To 11°F Warming And Even 7°F Requires ‘Nearly Quadrupling The Current Rate Of Decarbonisation’

Okay, a carbon tax is a pretty obvious choice if one cares at all about science, humanity, and the national debt. Still, it’s nice to see even a centrist group like the Washington Post editorial board endorse it.

In a piece headlined, “A sweltering planet’s agenda,” they explain that 2012 “offers a vision of what will happen more often on a planet that is heating — slowly and fitfully, not every year warmer than the last, but inexorably.” They note that lack of absolute certainty as to just how bad global warming will be is no excuse for inaction. Quite the reverse:

That’s an argument not for doing nothing but for managing the risks, spending now to avoid the likelihood of much greater costs later, as any good business would do in the face of certain threats of uncertain magnitude.

The smartest hedge would be a national carbon tax. It would marshal the market’s power to wring carbon out of the economy, putting decisions about the direction of energy and manufacturing in the hands of consumers and businesses that meet their demands, not Congress and interest groups that lobby lawmakers. When people must pay something for their pollution, they pollute less and invest in cleaner alternatives. A carbon tax would provide more certainty to industry and investors who currently can only guess at what climate policy will look like year to year.

But, given the dim debate on global warming in Congress, another consequence of a carbon tax might be more appealing to policymakers: revenue. Resources for the Future estimates that a tax set at $25 per ton of carbon dioxide would raise $125 billion annually — more than would be saved by eliminating the mortgage interest tax deduction. Even if much of that were rebated to ensure that low-income households weren’t unduly hurt — the right policy — a sizable chunk would be left to shrink the deficit or ease the major tax reform that Washington’s leaders have been promising.

Implementing a national carbon tax would be only one step toward addressing climate change, a problem that must ultimately be dealt with globally. But it would be a big one.

Perhaps the Post should have pointed out just why there is a “dim debate” on global warming in Congress, as they have in the past — see WashPost stunner [4/18/11]: “The GOPs climate-change denial may be its most harmful delusion.” Still, it’s worth remembering that this is a paper that has worked hard to appeal to conservatives by publishing the nonsense of deniers and confusionists:

• WashPost [4/12/11] back to running climate and energy disinformation from the likes of Bjorn Lomborg
• WashPost [12/8/09] goes tabloid, publishes second falsehood-filled op-ed by Sarah Palin in five months — on climate science and the hacked emails!
• WashPost [4/2/09] lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages!

In case you were wondering just who is the Washington Post‘s editorial board and how do they decide to write editorials, they provide the answer here:

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Monthly temperature extremes have become much more frequent, as measurements from around the world indicate.

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research News Release

On average, there are now five times as many record-breaking hot months worldwide than could be expected without long-term global warming, shows a study now published in Climatic Change. In parts of Europe, Africa and southern Asia the number of monthly records has increased even by a factor of ten [full graphic in the study]. 80 percent of observed monthly records would not have occurred without human influence on climate, concludes the authors-team of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Complutense University of Madrid.

“The last decade brought unprecedented heat waves; for instance in the US in 2012, in Russia in 2010, in Australia in 2009, and in Europe in 2003,” lead-author Dim Coumou says. “Heat extremes are causing many deaths, major forest fires, and harvest losses – societies and ecosystems are not adapted to ever new record-breaking temperatures.” The new study relies on 131 years of monthly temperature data for more than 12.000 grid points around the world, provided by NASA. Comprehensive analysis reveals the increase in records.

The researchers developed a robust statistical model that explains the surge in the number of records to be a consequence of the long-term global warming trend. That surge has been particularly steep over the last 40 years, due to a steep global-warming trend over this period. Superimposed on this long-term rise, the data show the effect of natural variability, with especially high numbers of heat records during years with El Niño events. This natural variability, however, does not explain the overall development of record events, found the researchers.

Natural variability does not explain the overall development of record events

If global warming continues, the study projects that the number of new monthly records will be 12 times as high in 30 years as it would be without climate change. “Now this doesn’t mean there will be 12 times more hot summers in Europe than today – it actually is worse,“ Coumou points out. For the new records set in the 2040s will not just be hot by today’s standards. “To count as new records, they actually have to beat heat records set in the 2020s and 2030s, which will already be hotter than anything we have experienced to date,” explains Coumou. “And this is just the global average – in some continental regions, the increase in new records will be even greater.”

“Statistics alone cannot tell us what the cause of any single heat wave is, but they show a large and systematic increase in the number of heat records due to global warming,” says Stefan Rahmstorf, a co-author of the study and co-chair of PIK’s research domain Earth System Analysis. “Today, this increase is already so large that by far most monthly heat records are due to climate change. The science is clear that only a small fraction would have occurred naturally.”

Related Post:

• Nature: Strong Evidence Manmade ‘Unprecedented Heat And Rainfall Extremes Are Here … Causing Intense Human Suffering’
• Hansen et al: “Extreme Heat Waves … in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 Were ‘Caused’ by Global Warming”

“Now no one can deny that the world is getting warmer.” The federally commissioned report [by over 240 scientists] reveals that the US is already reeling under the impact of global warming. [UK Guardian editorial]

Heatwaves, droughts, floods, intense downpours, rising sea levels and melting glaciers are now causing widespread havoc and are having an impact on a wide range of fronts including health services, infrastructure, water supply, agriculture, transport and flood defences.

Nor is there any doubt about the cause of these rising temperatures. “It is due primarily to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuel,” the report states. As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere soar, temperatures rise and chaos ensues. Air pollution intensifies, wildfires increase, insect-borne diseases spread, confrontations over water rights become more violent and storm surges rise. This is the near future for America and for the rest of the world. Earth is set to become a hotter, drier, unhealthier, more uncomfortable, dangerous and more disaster-prone place in coming years.

… After poring over the 1,146 pages of the assessment, readers will be under no illusions about what is happening to our planet. The robustness of its rhetoric is especially striking because it contrasts so noticeably with the debate – or to be precise, lack of debate – on climate change that occurred during last year’s presidential campaigning.

Related Post: “Assessment Warns Of Devastating 9°-15°F Warming Over Most Of U.S.”

Emergency rock blasting on a portion of the Mississippi River and a change in weather is giving the Army Corps of Engineers increasing confidence it can keep the river—a major conduit of bulk materials like grains, fertilizer and fuel oil—open to shippers through spring. [WSJ]

The question of whether Vermont’s only nuclear plant can continue operating without the approval of state regulators goes before a federal appeals court Monday in a dispute that has gained increasing attention nationally about the boundaries of federal authority over a controversial power source. [NYT]

The world could avoid much of the damaging effects of climate change this century if greenhouse gas emissions are curbed more sharply, research showed on Sunday. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first comprehensive assessment of the benefits of cutting emissions to keep the global temperature rise to within 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, a level which scientists say would avoid the worst effects of climate change. [Reuters]

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the Senate’s top Republican lawmaker on energy policy, will shortly travel to Japan for meetings about nuclear power and exporting natural gas from her state. [The Hill]

Auto makers wrestling with ambitious mileage goals have touted hybrids and electrics as the wave of the future, but they have found a quicker path to improved fuel efficiency, reinventing the way traditional gas-powered cars are built. [WSJ]

BP wants a federal judge to rule that the roughly 800,000 barrels of oil that the government says was collected at the head of its runaway undersea Gulf of Mexico well in 2010 should not be counted in determining the company’s civil fine for Clean Water Act violations. [Fuel Fix]