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pscot

pscot's Journal
pscot's Journal
July 17, 2017

Drought in Northern China Is Worst on Record, Officials Say



Officials governing a large area of northern China say their region is suffering from the worst drought on record, leading to crops wilting and farmers and herders growing desperate to get water to farmlands, grasslands, animals and their households.

The drought is affecting the northeastern and eastern areas of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, which is near Beijing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/world/asia/china-drought.html?mtrref=flipboard.com&_r=0
July 17, 2017

"This year was not bad, it was catastrophic"

http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-europe-farming-drought-idUKKBN19Z1XW

ROME/MADRID (Reuters) - Italian durum wheat and dairy farmer Attilio Tocchi saw warning signs during the winter of the dramatic drought to come at his holding a mile away from the Tuscan coast.

"When it still hadn't rained at the beginning of spring we realized it was already irreparable," he said, adding that he had installed fans to try and cool his cows that were suffering in the heat.

Drought in southern Europe threatens to reduce cereal production in Italy and parts of Spain to its lowest level in at least 20 years, and hit other regional crops including olives and almonds.

Castile and Leon, the largest cereal growing region in Spain, has been particularly badly affected, with crop losses estimated at around 60 to 70 percent.
July 16, 2017

Contesting the 45th: big oil jumps in

Big Oil has jumped into a special Washington State Senate election, in the 45th District on the Eastside, the nationally watched battle whose outcome will decide which party controls the Legislature.
Phillips 66 has given $100,000 to a group called Citizens for Progress Enterprise Washington -- spelled "Enterpise" in its Public Disclosure Commission filing -- that is making "independent" expenditures boosting Republican candidate Jinyoung Englund.

Englund is a protege of U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., the Eastern Washington GOP lawmaker who serves in the House Republican leadership. She has worked in a variety of Republican causes, including the 2012 Mitt Romney campaign.

Englund just moved into the district, no doubt following the Republican's master plan for national domination

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Connelly-Big-oil-enters-State-Senate-race-11290348.php?cmpid=twitter-desktop

July 13, 2017

Severe summer heatwave and drought strongly reduced carbon uptake in Southern China

ABSTRACT
Increasing heatwave and drought events can potentially alter the carbon cycle. Few studies have investigated the impacts of hundred-year return heatwaves and droughts, as those events are rare. In the summer of 2013, southern China experienced its strongest drought and heatwave on record for the past 113 years. We show that the record-breaking heatwave and drought lasted two months (from July to August), significantly reduced the satellite-based vegetation index and gross primary production, substantially altered the regional carbon cycle, and produced the largest negative crop yield anomaly since 1960. The event resulted in a net reduction of 101.54 Tg C in carbon sequestration in the region during these two months, which was 39–53% of the annual net carbon sink of China’s terrestrial ecosystems (190–260 Tg C yr−1). Moreover, model experiments showed that heatwaves and droughts consistently decreased ecosystem vegetation primary production...

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep18813?sf96181537=1

July 9, 2017

Jobless Rate for Post-9/11 Vets Jumped to 5.1 Percent in June

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/07/07/jobless-rate-post-911-vets-jumped-51-percent-june.html?ESRC=todayinmil.sm

The unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans rose again in June to 5.1 percent despite an improving economy that added 220,000 jobs, which was well above market expectations, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

The BLS report on the employment situation nationwide in June showed that the jobless rate for post-9/11 vets, called "Gulf War-era II" veterans by the BLS, continued the trend of lagging behind the unemployment rates for all veterans, and for the civilian population.

The unemployment rate for post-9/11 vets of 5.1 percent in June was up from 4.6 percent in May and 3.9 percent in April. In May, the unemployment rate for all veterans was 3.4 percent, a 10-year low, and in June it was 3.7 percent
July 6, 2017

"A common misconception is that the cows rear end emits methane,"

Cows are notorious for the amount of methane they produce. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas (GHG), but just how much do cows actually give off and how does this compare to other methane emission sources? This post tries to give an overview of all things methane and cows..

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https://muchadoaboutclimate.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/how-much-methane-does-a-cow-actually-produce/

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