Tegan Tuesday: War threatens food supplies, drives up prices

In 2020, world production of wheat was 731 million tons (1.7 trillion pounds), making it the second most produced cereal after maize. Since 1960, world production of wheat and other grain crops has tripled and is expected to grow further through the middle of the 21st century. Global demand for wheat is increasing due to the unique viscoelastic and adhesive properties of gluten proteins, which facilitate the production of processed foods, whose consumption is increasing as a result of the worldwide industrialization process and the westernization of the diet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat

Many people who are more informed, more educated, more aware of global politics than I, have discussed what’s going on with the Ukraine-Russian war. I’d like to pull the conversation back from the — equally valid! — discussions on nuclear or fossil fuel power, or NATO involvement, and talk about food. Specifically, wheat. The Ukrainian flag is a light blue band over a yellow band, and represents a blue sky over a ripe wheat field. Ukraine has been called the bread basket of Europe, and Ukraine is one of the five largest producers of wheat around the world. Unsurprisingly, wheat is a major part of Ukrainian culture, as well. One of the traditional plants for the Ukrainian flower crown (vinok) is wheat, worn during a harvest festival by an engaged woman, as good luck and honor, among other uses of wheat as a cultural icon. Ukraine and Russia together make up one-third of all wheat production and export globally. Because of the war, Ukraine is not harvesting winter wheat right now, nor planting any new crops (sunflowers and corn for oil are also supposed to be planted now).

Because of the war, Ukraine has no one to spare to transport or sell the wheat already harvested. Because of the war, Russia is banned from selling their wheat due to economic sanctions and countries making political stances against the Russian aggression and empire-building. Because of the war, people around the globe will be starving:

Grain prices were already rising before Russia invaded Ukraine, and recent days have seen unprecedented further gains as two of the world’s biggest producer are at war.

Wheat closed in Chicago at the highest price ever on Monday. Benchmark corn and soybean futures have each surged by 26% this year. Those kinds of increases in food-staple commodities have been associated with social unrest throughout history.

“Remember, bread riots are what started the Arab Spring, bread riots are what started the French Revolution,” said Sal Gilbertie, CEO of Teucrium, the largest U.S. exchange-traded fund issuer focused solely on agriculture funds. “It is a biblical event when you run low on wheat stocks. You won’t see a global food shortage. Unfortunately, what you’re going to see globally is that billions of people might not be able to afford to buy the food.”

Gilbertie doesn’t think the world will run out of wheat — but prices could continue to rise, and that will be most problematic for vulnerable global populations. “Ukraine dominates what they call the sun-seed market,” he said. “Sunflower oil is a major component of cooking oil and food, and you see palm oil rising, and soybean oil rising. That is a big deal, especially for the poorest of the poor, where cooking is a big part of the daily budget.”

Global food prices rose to a record high in February, led by vegetable oil and dairy products, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Wheat traded in Chicago, the international benchmark, has jumped more than 50 per cent since Russia invaded Ukraine. Prices rose to as high as $13.40 a bushel on Friday, while European milling wheat in Paris hit a record of €406 per tonne.

North American wheat harvests were curtailed by drought this past year, as were South American soybeans and corn. Severe weather all around the globe has impacted global food commodities, and food insecurity was already on the rise in many areas. The countries most reliant on Slavic wheat imports are in Africa or the middle east. Some particular countries are Egypt, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Turkey, and Yemen — all of these whom have a fair amount of unrest even with full access to foodstuffs. Sudan in particular has already been suffering from wheat shortages due to the closing of ports during protests. But countries like Lebanon are buying 96% of its wheat consumption from either Ukraine or Russia, Egypt buying 85%, Turkey buying 78%, and the others listed above with similarly high amounts of annual consumption supported from Slavic wheatfields. Some countries, like Egypt, have attempted to buy imports from countries like France, but France has not been able to keep up the demand. Lebanon doesn’t have their expected stockpiles, as the explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020 destroyed its only large grain silo. Turkey, in particular, needs wheat not just for it’s populace, but for it’s own exports: Turkey is a major producer and exporter of pasta, flour, biscuits, and semolina. Without the raw materials to make such items, Turkey’s economy will also suffer, along with everyone else in the region.

The price of bread has been a politically explosive issue in Egypt as on several occasions in the past 50 years it triggered angry protests, to which the Police usually responded by firing shots over the heads of demonstrators. Particularly strong protests were staged in March 2017 in Alexandria, Giza and many other areas after the government cut the supply of subsidized bread amid an economic crisis.

Also during the so-called “Bread Intifada” in January 1977 violent protests broke out and the Egyptian security forces killed 70 people and wounded more than 550 protesters, but in the end the government was forced to re-institute the subsidies.

Bread subsidies are considered a red line among Egyptians and people in other countries in the Middle East, as they are a staple for every family in the region. Bread is sold at very low prices, for example, a subsidized flat loaf costs 0.05 Egyptian pounds, less than one US cent, which covers only a small part of the real cost of producing it and the government coffers cover the rest.

It’s not just the general populace that is worried here either. The bakers who rely on the imported flour are the face of the government-subsidized bread for most families, and they are equally worried about what the future holds.

Tunisia’s government remains tightlipped on the flour shortages, even though the evidence is already apparent. Across the country, bakeries are shutting early, or rationing supplies, with anger growing among owners.

“There’s been a problem building for months,” said Hazem Bouanani, a baker. “Normally, we buy flour from mills and the government will reimburse us. For 10 months, we haven’t seen any payment.”

And that’s just wheat. Russia and Belarus also provide a significant amount of the world’s fertilizers, and the corn and soybeans grown in Ukraine feed livestock. People are going to starve. With a third year of a global pandemic, many industries failing or businesses failed, extreme weather patterns (flooding in Australia as we speak!); most people don’t have the funds to weather an additional hardship like severe food shortages.

This century is likely to be one instance of food insecurity after the next. I know that I will be working hard to have a large enough pantry to cushion any sudden surprises, considering how to eat more locally, and I think that I should look into how to support my local food banks. For those who wish to support those relieving the food insecurity of Ukrainian refugees, and many other global catastrophes, World Central Kitchen is usually one of the first organizations on the scene, and they provide hot food for all who can come.

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John Oliver on wrongful convictions, and some thoughts on the worship of process

John Oliver doesn’t get everything right, but he hits far more often than his misses, especially when critiquing aspects of domestic policy within the United States. In this case, the team at Last Week Tonight has put together an excellent video on the issue of wrongful convictions in the U.S., and how deeply fucked up that whole process is.

There’s one thread in this video that I want to pull a little, and that’s this:

When one of the West Memphis Three tried to get a new trial based on new evidence, including DNA, an assistant AG appeared before the state supreme court to try and talk them out of considering it, citing the harm that could do.

Judge: “What harm is there to allowing him to present all evidence?”

Assistant AG: “Well the harm is in the finality of a criminal judgment that is not demonstrated to have any constitutional or procedural defect, and just to try it again- I mean you’re suggesting, it sounds to me, Justice (inaudible), as though every 15 or 17 years or so we we really ought to try cases again to reestablish guilt so the harm is in is to the criminal justice system’s interest in finality.”

And a similar point comes up a little later, about a different case:

But the thing is a quick ruling like that is not remotely unusual. Many times appeals judges will just sign the state prosecutor’s documents without even changing the heading. One study looked at post-conviction appeals in the largest county in Texas, and found judges adopted the prosecutor’s findings verbatim in 96 of their rulings, and if at this point it seems like our whole system is set up to preserve its process even at the cost of human life, well during one death row appeal before the Missouri supreme court for this man, Joe Amrine one assistant ag basically admitted as much:

Judge: “You’re suggesting if we don’t find there’s a constitutional violation, then even if we find that Mr. Amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?

Assistant AG: “The US Supreme Court in Herrera- ”

Judge: “I’m asking if that’s what you are arguing this day-”

Assistant AG: “That’s – That’s correct, your honor.”

It’s popular on the left to compare the center and right-wing worship of capitalism to actual religion, both in the dedication of its believers, and in their refusal to acknowledge reality. That’s why, while there has been real social progress in recent decades (though we’ve got a long, long way to go), economic policy has been moving far to the right, with the help of both major parties. I think there’s another ideological commitment that getting close to being as destructive as worship of capitalism and profit, and that’s worship of “the process”.

This seems to be a largely Democratic belief system these days. The Republicans have more or less openly embraced fascism, and they have a clear set of goals – more power for them and their donors, no matter the cost to the United States or the world. Democrats, or at least the leadership and a majority of the party, seem to have little in the way of actual beliefs, beyond their belief in capitalism, and in the process. That’s why it seems like the GOP fights tooth and nail for what they want, testing every boundary and looking for every loophole, but the Democrats always seem to fall short on their “big policies” before they even start negotiating with the GOP.

The Democrats don’t test the boundaries in pursuit of their goals, because the boundaries are their goal. Most of the party doesn’t actually want change. They’re willing to accept change, so long as it is very small, very popular, doesn’t require much effort from them, and doesn’t threaten to meaningfully change anything at a systemic level. They’re willing to embrace change that doesn’t hurt the powerful, like Obama’s continuation of the war on terror, or Biden’s continuation of Trump’s border policies, but when it came time to “fight for healthcare”, a universal system was never seriously discussed, and a public option was taken off the table before negotiations really started. And when a candidate was winning the primary with his Medicare for All message, there was a coordinated effort to tilt the field to favor a far more right-wing candidate.

If we assume that they aren’t consciously working to prevent left-wing change (and I think that’s an unsafe assumption), then they seem to hold a devout belief that change can only be good if it happens “within the rules”, and they even avoid things that aren’t against the rules, or that just might be against the rules. One of the better examples of this is the “Day One Agenda” from The American Prospect. They pulled together a number of actions that are within the power of the Executive Branch, or that haven’t been ruled to not be within that power. The GOP has made it clear that there’s no real punishment for making unconstitutional executive orders, to the point where they kept re-wording their “Muslim ban” until it managed to get through the courts.

Biden, as has been pointed out many times, couldn’t even be bothered to do things – like forgiving federal student loan debt – that pretty much everybody agrees he has the power to do.

Protocols and processes can be good, in theory. It’s good to have rules restricting the use and accumulation of power – I want more of those! But adhering to protocol for its own sake, especially when the “other side” has openly changed it in ways that hurt people, isn’t much better than causing that harm in the first place. Our system and its rules are designed to prevent any changes that might disempower the ruling class, and it seems to be that spirit of the law that the Democratic Party is committed to following, no matter how many people are hurt as a result.

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We need to downsize the fish.

Going vegetarian or vegan has long been a big part of the environmental movement in general, and the climate movement in particular. The reason is pretty simple – producing a pound of meat generally requires around ten times as much resources as a pound of whatever food that livestock eats. Animals have to eat, and only a fraction of what we consume is turned into muscle.

We generally think about this in terms of land animals – cows, chickens, sheep, etc., but this also applies to fish. Raising something like a salmon is going to require more energy than raising the smaller fish that salmon eat. That means that if we want to continue using fish as a source of protein, it would probably be a good idea to farm those fish that are cheapest to raise, and as much as I love salmon, farming it is not a good use of our resources.

Increased demand for seafood has driven an expansion in aquaculture. However, 90 percent of commercial fish feed is made from food-grade fish such as sardines and anchovies that are edible to humans. To analyze the efficiency of aquaculture in terms of net nutrient production, researchers first quantified the volume of micronutrients and wild fish retained by fish-fed farmed salmon using 2014 data on Scotland’s farmed salmon production. They calculated the volume of micronutrients used as aquaculture inputs and compared it to salmon aquaculture nutrient outputs. Using these data, the researchers modeled several seafood production scenarios to assess potential sustainability benefits of alternative seafood systems.

The researchers found that in 2014, 460,000 tonnes of wild-caught fish were used to produce 179,000 tonnes of Scottish salmon. 76 percent of the wild-caught fish were edible for human consumption. The data also suggest that multiple alternative seafood production models would be more efficient in terms of net nutrient production, so could significantly reduce wild fish capture while increasing global seafood supply. However, these data were limited to only one year (2014). Future studies are needed to better understand how to operationalize a global shift away from farmed fish toward sustainable fisheries.
According to the authors, “Feed production now accounts for 90% of the environmental footprint of salmonid production. Allowing salmonid production to expand further via its current approach will place exceptional stress on global fish stocks already at their limit. Our results suggest that limiting the volume of wild-caught fish used to produce farmed salmon feed may relieve pressure on wild fish stocks while increasing supply of nutritious wild fish for human consumption.”

The authors add: “Nutritious fish stocks are being squandered by salmon farming. Scientists reveal that eating the wild-caught fish destined for salmon farms would allow nearly 4 million tons of fish to be left in the sea while providing an extra 6 million tons of seafood.”

I spent a semester in Tanzania, back in 2006, and one thing I noticed there was that many markets would have a bin or even just a pile of tiny dried fish that you could buy in bulk. It was basically an easy way to add protein to a meal, by just tossing a handful of dried minnows into whatever you’re making. They did not taste as good as salmon, but they get the job done, and if you’re a decent cook and have access to spices, you can do good things with them.

As with so many other things,  I think our best path forward is to work on having a diverse array of options for anything we need to do, so that a catastrophic failure in one area, like a livestock epidemic or extreme weather event, won’t be enough to cause mass starvation or malnutrition. The way we do things now is not the way things have to be.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work I do. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

A good response to transphobia in Texas, and a good discussion of puberty blockers

While we’ve had a fair amount of expansion in the civil rights of people who fall outside “traditional” gender and sexuality, recent years have brought a reactionary backlash by people to narrow-minded and bigoted to accept that these changes have only made the world better. As ever, this hate campaign is founded is misinformation, and so it’s also necessary to debunk that propaganda, and help people understand the facts. Minority groups have always made particularly good targets for this particular tactic, because it’s far more likely that the general public won’t know enough to spot lies when they’re told. The best way to guard against that is to use at least some of our free time on educating ourselves and others.

One of the current targets of the political campaign against trans rights is the collection of medications known as “puberty blockers”. These are medications that have been in use for a pretty long time, to help cis children deal with things like early onset of puberty. For trans kids, they buy time to consider their options, and figure out who they are. Because a small minority of the population has a personal reason to know about this stuff, it makes it easier for bigots to spread lies, or half-truths, in order to support legislation that causes needless harm. As usual, I think Rebecca Watson has done a good job in discussing this issue:

As always, Watson has a full transcript available on Skepchick, for those who don’t want to watch the video. In particular, I like her breakdown of the claims about puberty blockers that were used by Texas Republicans to justify targeting parents who support their trans kids:

So why do people like Abbott consider puberty blockers “child abuse” if a teen can go off them at any time and experience puberty like normal? Well, this was kind of tough to nail down, for the main reason that puberty blockers are overwhelmingly safe with little to no known negative side effects.

But opponents claim a few things about puberty blockers: one, that they’re irreversible (they are, as mentioned, easily reversible). And two, that they may cause loss of bone density and sterility later in life. I’ve even seen those things mentioned in places like the Mayo Clinic’s site, but they say blockers MAY cause these things. That’s not good enough for me so after reading far more research on this than I’d honestly like, it appears to me that the medical consensus is that none of that is true: puberty blockers do NOT cause loss of bone density or sterility. A systematic review of the literature by “authors designated by multiple pediatric endocrinology societies from around the globe” found “Adverse effects of GnRHa therapy are rare, and the associations of most reported adverse events with the GnRHa molecule itself are unclear. Decades of experience have shown that GnRHa treatment is both safe and efficacious.”

Further, “There is no substantiated evidence that GnRHa treatment impairs reproductive function or reduces fertility,” and in regards to bone density, while “GnRHa treatment slows mineral accrual, after discontinuation BMD appears not to be significantly different from that of their peers by late adolescence. Reports of BMD among children and adolescents verified a decrement in BMD at the achievement of near AH, while accrual resumed after therapy, regardless of whether or not calcium supplementation was given. By late adolescence, all subjects had BMD within the normal range.”

Note that these were kids who experienced early puberty and they had heavier bone density prior to taking blockers, but even if trans kids did experience a loss of density that’s something they and their doctor could watch for and control either by switching to a different puberty blocker or by taking medications to increase bone growth. In other words, even if it does happen in rare cases it’s simply not a big deal.

We know all this because we have DECADES of research on puberty blockers used not just in trans teens but in countless kids with “precocious puberty” (the medical term, which makes it sound cuter than it is). Puberty blockers are safe, easily accessible, and easily stopped and the body naturally “reverses” them.

If you like Watson’s work, consider supporting her on Patreon, and please consider giving to the groups she highlights.

If you haven’t read The Shock Doctrine, you really should. The audiobook is free!

Content warning: Descriptions of torture re: CIA, MkUltra, Cold War torture programs, and so on.

I’ve made this pitch before, but I’m making it again, and I’m going to keep making it. The audiobook for Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine is youtube, and EVERYONE should listen to it, or read a paper or e-book copy. It provides historical context for a lot of what has happened in the world since the 1970s, for what’s happening right now, and for what we can expect from the current COVID-19 crisis, and from the crises we will be seeing from climate change in the coming years. If you believe that healthcare should be available to all, or that everyone should be free to pursue happiness in their own way, then understanding what’s in this book is essential. People with an unimaginable amount of power continue to carry out the tactics described here, and resisting their efforts will require us to be able to understand what’s going on as it’s being done to us. This book is probably the best way to get that understanding.

 

New drought forecast for the 21st century looks grim. We urgently need to move food production indoors.

We need to move food production indoors. I keep saying it, but weirdly nobody running the world seems to read my blog. One of the central theses of this blog is that we missed the deadline on climate change, by at least a decade. That doesn’t mean we’re all doomed, but it does mean that returning to the global climate that gave birth to our current civilization is not an option. It could happen in a few hundred years, with active efforts from a global human society, but for that to happen, we need to survive those centuries of warming. To do that, we need to change how we do things in a number of ways, and agriculture is very near the top of that list.

A Washington State University-led research team analyzed climate, agricultural and population growth data to show continuing fossil fuel dependence will increase the probability of co-occurring droughts 40% by the mid-21st century and 60% by the late 21st century, relative to the late-20th century. That comes out to an approximately ninefold increase in agricultural and human population exposure to severe co-occurring droughts unless steps are taken to lower carbon emissions.

“There could be around 120 million people across the globe simultaneously exposed to severe compound droughts each year by the end of the century,” said lead author Jitendra Singh, a former postdoctoral researcher at the WSU School of the Environment now at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. “Many of the regions our analysis shows will be most affected are already vulnerable and so the potential for droughts to become disasters is high.”

I’d just like to pause to emphasized that. 120 million people dealing with severe drought each year. For a comparison, the WHO estimates the current annual number at 55 million, and they don’t even specify “severe” drought. I’ve mentioned before that starvation and malnutrition around the globe isn’t due to a lack of resources, but the factors that create that artificial scarcity are likely to be exacerbated by this increase in drought, causing mass famine well before we get to the point where conventional farming can’t produce enough food because of climate change. Without systemic change, this could mean anywhere from hundreds of millions to billions starving to death.

But because we know this is coming, I would argue that none of those deaths are unavoidable, even now. We could invest heavily in various forms of indoor food production, which can recycle water used, and be immune to things like drought. Making that a global priority now would mean that our inevitable mistakes will do less harm, because conventional farming is still producing food. If, as seems more likely, the people running the world continue to procrastinate on avoiding our looming extinction, then we’re going to have much less leeway. We’ve already lost a lot of that slack, but I fear we’re going to lose what remains pretty quickly.

The elevated risk of compound droughts estimated by Singh and colleagues is a result of a warming climate coupled with a projected 22% increase in the frequency of El Niño and La Niña events, the two opposite phases of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

The researchers’ projections show that nearly 75% of compound droughts in the future will coincide with these irregular but recurring periods of climatic variation in the world’s oceans, which have played a large role in some of the greatest environmental disasters in world history.

[…]

The researchers’ analysis specifically focused on ten regions of the planet that receive most of their rainfall during June-September, have high variability in monthly summer precipitation and are affected by ENSO variations, factors that lead to an increased potential for co-occurring drought. Several of the regions analyzed include important agricultural regions and countries that are currently facing food and water insecurity.

Their results indicate areas of North and South America are more likely to experience compound droughts in a future, warmer climate than regions of Asia, where much of the agricultural land is projected to become wetter.

Food produced in the Americas could therefore be more susceptible to climatic hazards. For instance, the United States is a major exporter of staple grains and currently ships maize to countries across the globe. Even a modest increase in the risk of compound droughts in the future climate could lead to regional supply shortfalls that could in turn cascade into the global market, affecting global prices and amplifying food insecurity.

“The potential for a food security crisis increases even if these droughts aren’t affecting major food producing regions but rather many regions that are already vulnerable to food insecurity,” said coauthor Weston Anderson, an assistant research scientist at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland. “Simultaneous droughts in food insecure regions could in turn amplify stresses on international agencies responsible for disaster relief by requiring the provision of humanitarian aid to a greater number of people simultaneously.”

There is some good news, Anderson said. The researchers’ work is based on a high fossil fuel emissions scenario, and in recent years, the global community has made progress toward lowering carbon emissions which would greatly mitigate the frequency and intensity of co-occurring droughts by the end of the 21st century.

Also, the occurrence of nearly 75% of compound droughts alongside ENSO events in the future climate highlights the potential to predict where these droughts may occur with a lead time of up to nine months.

“This means that co-occurring droughts during ENSO events will likely affect the same geographical regions they do today albeit with greater severity,” said Deepti Singh. “Being able to predict where these droughts will occur and their potential impacts can help society develop plans and efforts to minimize economic losses and reduce human suffering from such climate-driven disasters.”

Research and development of new technologies should always be an ongoing investment we make as a society. That said, it is not necessary to do more research and development in order to take major action on climate change. We already have everything we need to make a huge difference in what our future looks like, except for a political and economic system that actually values humanity (let alone the rest of life). I know I keep repeating myself, but until real change actually happens, it needs to be repeated, and said in different ways and different contexts. The people who currently run the world, and the political and economic systems that put them in power are not going to save us. I don’t think they particularly want to, but I also don’t think they’re capable of doing it.  We can work within the system to do at least some good, but that will not be enough. I feel like that should be increasingly obvious to people, given how many decades it’s been since the IPCC was first convened. Vote, protest, and do all the rest, but we need to view democracy as a part of our daily lives and our daily work, not just something we participate in now and then. We need to stop relying on political parties for our political organizing, and start organizing more directly to put real pressure on politicians no matter who’s in office, and to work towards revolutionary change in who our society serves.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work I do. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Tetrapod Tuesday (Yes, I have a problem with alliteration, and no, I’m not going to stop)

Today is a Tegan-less Tuesday. This may shock you, but earning a PhD takes a lot of work, so instead you get to hear from a couple members of the household who haven’t made an appearance in a while.

When it’s nice out, we let His Holiness Saint Ray the Cat join Raksha on some of her daily outings. He has long since gotten over his childhood trauma, and actually enjoys going outside, sneaking through bushes, and eating grass. The problem is, while he has yet to try to leave our yard, he does like investigating bushes, which means that to let him out, we have to be willing to rummage around in bushes to get him if he’s not ready to go inside when the time comes. In other words, he’s been shut inside for most of the winter, and was thrilled to get the sun and wind on his fur, and grass in his teeth.

The image shows a stocky male cat with a hint of "tomcat jowls". He's got thick, medium-short fur that stands out like deep velvet. He's facing the camera, with his head looking off to his right. His left leg, chest, throat, muzzle, and center forehead are snowy white. The rest of his head and ears, and his back and tail are a brindled golden-tan and gray-black. He's sniffing the breeze after eating some of the green grass he's standing on, and licking his lips. Next to his right leg, which is the same brindle as his back and tail, is the base of a small street lamp

Having sampled the grass by the lamppost, His Holiness sniffs the air and licks his lips.

Just after taking this picture, I went to pick up after the dog, and he scampered into a row of cedar trees where the food waste bins are kept out of sight. I took the dog back to the trash bin behind the house, and went over to root around in the bushes and trees for His Holiness. Apparently it wasn’t necessary, because when I glanced back out at the green, I realized the good saint had scampered back into the open as I started my search, so I followed him over to his next patch of grass, by a maple tree. Raksha also took an interest.

The image shows a brindled black, gold, and gray cat with white legs eating grass at the base of a tree, in the foreground of the photograph. Further back, on sun-lit grass, is a medium-sized dog, approaching the tree. She's black with creamy fur on her legs, eyebrows, and cheeks. Her large, pointed ears are aiming in two different directions. Both animals have their fur glowing with sunlight.

Raksha wandered over to join us

For those who don’t know, Raksha’s about 15 years old now. I got her from a shelter in Indiana in the summer of 2007, and they said she’d been born that March. Since then she’s been with me in Indiana, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Scotland, and now Ireland, and I’m pretty sure this is going to be her last stop. She’s needed arthritis meds to be able to walk at all for the last couple years, and she’s almost completely blind in the dark now. I’m pretty sure she mostly just sees general shapes, because this past winter, she thought the wreath the neighbors had hung on the door might be a person a number of times. She also has some trouble with her throat, and I’m getting her checked for kidney problems tomorrow.

All that said, she’s still enjoying life, and interprets most sudden movements when we’re outside as an invitation to play, which is endearing.

The cat is… as he always is. Forever wanting more food, and otherwise generally acting like a stuffed animal.

The image shows a cat and a dog by a tree. The cat, with brindled black and gold-gray fur, and white legs and throat, is eating grass. if you look closely, you can see sunlight turning his eye golden as he munches. The dog is mid-sized, and black with cream legs, face (except for a black stripe on her snout), cream-colored fur on the inside of her pointed ears. She's sniffing the tree. Both of them have their fur glowing in the sun.

This is the Best Tree, at least for today. Good grass, interesting smells – it’s got everything a tree needs!

I think everybody’s glad for spring. Soon it’ll be warm enough to have the windows open all day, and to spend at least some of my time working outside (It’s a pity I don’t have a laptop, or it’d be more). When that starts, you’ll get to see His Holiness sulking in his leash and harness, because I don’t trust him not to get into trouble while I work, and I definitely don’t trust in his ability to survive as a street cat. I’ve also been training him to come for treats when I play a flute my grandmother left to me, so maybe you’ll get a video of him watching me play as though he actually cares about the music!

As always, if you enjoy the contents of this blog, please consider helping support my work at patreon.com/oceanoxia. My immigration status in Ireland prohibits me from getting a normal job, so for the foreseeable future, this is my only source of income. I am eternally grateful to my current and past patrons, and I’m sure the knowledge of that fills their every waking moment with delight. For just pennies a day, that could be your life!

More than surface level: Greenland is melting from the bottom up

We get fairly regular updates about ice melting in Greenland. From growing pools of water on top of the ice, to algae trapping heat and accelerating the melt – the news is pretty consistent, and pretty grim. The other side of that has been meltwater pouring down inside the ice, and unfortunately that process has been causing the ice to melt from underneath.

Each summer, thousands of meltwater lakes and streams form on the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet as temperatures rise and daily sunlight increases. Many of these lakes quickly drain to the bottom of the ice sheet, falling through cracks and large fractures which form in the ice. With a continued supply of water from streams and rivers, connections between surface and bed often remain open.

As part of the EU-funded RESPONDER project, Professor Poul Christoffersen from Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute has been studying these meltwater lakes, how and why they drain so quickly, and the effect that they have on the overall behaviour of the ice sheet as global temperatures continue to rise.

The current work, which includes researchers from Aberystwyth University, is the culmination of a seven-year study focused on Store Glacier, one of the largest outlets from the Greenland Ice Sheet.

“When studying basal melting of ice sheets and glaciers, we look at sources of heat like friction, geothermal energy, latent heat released where water freezes and heat losses into the ice above,” said Christoffersen. “But what we hadn’t really looked at was the heat generated by the draining meltwater itself. There’s a lot of gravitational energy stored in the water that forms on the surface and when it falls, the energy has to go somewhere.”

To measure basal melt rates, the researchers used phase-sensitive radio-echo sounding, a technique developed at the British Antarctic Survey and used previously on floating ice sheets in Antarctica.

“We weren’t sure that the technique would also work on a fast-flowing glacier in Greenland,” said first author Dr Tun Jan Young, who installed the radar system on Store Glacier as part of his PhD at Cambridge. “Compared to Antarctica, the ice deforms really fast and there is a lot of meltwater in summer, which complicates the work.”

The basal melt rates observed with radar were often as high as the melt rates measured on the surface with a weather station: however, the surface receives energy from the sun while the base does not. To explain the results, the Cambridge researchers teamed up with scientists at the University of California Santa Cruz and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

The researchers calculated that as much as 82 million cubic metres of meltwater was transferred to the bed of Store Glacier every day during the summer of 2014. They estimate the power produced by the falling water during peak melt periods was comparable to the power produced by the Three Gorges Dam in China, the world’s largest hydroelectric power station. With a melt area that expands to nearly a million square kilometres at the height of summer, the Greenland Ice Sheet produces more hydropower than the world’s ten largest hydroelectric power stations combined.

“Given what we are witnessing at the high latitudes in terms of climate change, this form of hydropower could easily double or triple, and we’re still not even including these numbers when we estimate the ice sheet’s contribution to sea-level rise,” said Christoffersen.

To verify the high basal melt rates recorded by the radar system, the team integrated independent temperature measurements from sensors installed in a nearby borehole. At the base, they found the temperature of water to be as high as +0.88 degrees Celsius, which is unexpectedly warm for an ice sheet base with a melting point of -0.40 degrees.

“The borehole observations confirmed that the meltwater heats up when it hits the bed,” said Christoffersen. “The reason is that the basal drainage system is a lot less efficient than the fractures and conduits that bring the water through the ice. The reduced drainage efficiency causes frictional heating within the water itself. When we took this heat source out of our calculations, the theoretical melt rate estimates were a full two orders of magnitude out. The heat generated by the falling water is melting the ice from the bottom up, and the melt rate we are reporting is completely unprecedented.”

The study presents the first concrete evidence of an ice-sheet mass-loss mechanism, which is not yet included in projections of global sea-level rise. While the high melt rates are specific to heat produced in subglacial drainage paths carrying surface water, the volume of surface water produced in Greenland is huge and growing, and nearly all of it drains to the bed.

That closing paragraph is a doozy, especially considering the recent NOAA report predicting a foot of sea level rise by 2050. I’ve been making climate communication a central part of my life for over a decade now, and the consistent theme throughout is that things seem to be moving faster than the scientists expect. This seems to be in keeping with that pattern. It may be that any contribution this melting is currently making is accounted for by the NOAA report, but it also seems likely to me that these findings will lead to some big headlines in the coming years as scientists work out exactly what this means for the future of ice melt.

Video: Post-Satire Capitalism

I don’t know if satire is dead, but a lot of this video gets at how I’ve been feeling for a while now. Life has a sort of surreal quality, with the cheerleaders of capitalism becoming ever more cartoonish in their praises for murderous profiteers. How is it that these people have so much power? How is this supposed to be the best the world can be?

How can this possibly last?

It can’t.

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